| | | | |  | | By Renuka Rayasam | | 
Anti-vaccine mandate protesters gather during a Portland Public Schools board meeting to discuss a proposed vaccine mandate for students in Portland, Oregon. | Nathan Howard/Getty Images | ZOOM CLASS DISMISSED — During the entire 2020-2021 school year, long after the pandemic began, San Francisco classrooms largely remained closed to students. That frustrating state of affairs helped motivate voters to oust three incumbent school board members in a school board recall on Tuesday night. But you don't need a long lockdown to find voters who are mad about Covid protocols, and a whole lot more, in public schools. The politics of school boards have gone national. These typically staid local affairs have the air of a battleground Senate race. One striking example: Parents in an affluent neighborhood of Austin, Texas — the Lake Travis Independent School District — started a political action committee earlier this year with the goal of raising $100,000 for their local school board races in 2022. They're not trying to oust anyone. In Lake Travis, classrooms reopened in the fall of 2020. Students don't have to wear masks. They went to prom and graduation. Yet, pandemic school policy has still supercharged its school board races. The PAC's goal: to protect two incumbents who helped keep schools open and mask-free, and to win an open seat in May's school board race. Lake Travis Families PAC parents are worried their school board will be taken over by people who support masks or closures, said Brendan Steinhauser, a Texas GOP strategist consulting the Lake Travis Families PAC. These days, the parents who started the PAC have expanded their angst beyond the pandemic. They're especially focused on fears that critical race theory materials might slip into the curriculum despite a statewide ban on teaching it. "I do not agree with modern progressivism that claims my kids are oppressed because they are Hispanic," wrote Christian Alvarado, one of the parents who started the PAC, in a Facebook post. "I want my kids taught how to think, not what to think, with age-appropriate curriculum." The group is nonpartisan, but some of the talking points are a direct rebuke of Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe's memorable assertion during his failed Virginia campaign that parents shouldn't tell schools what to teach. "It's a bit of a defensive posture to say we support parental rights," Steinhauser said. Most of Lake Travis is in a congressional district with a Republican lawmaker. But it has a lot in common with the purpling districts that Democrats won during the Trump years: a fast-growing, wealthy enclave . Now Republicans hope to harness pandemic parental anger — and the latest school culture war issues — to retake the suburban battlegrounds. Voter opinions on pandemic school closures started diverging early in the pandemic, in May 2020, once former President Donald Trump said he supported school reopening, according to an AEI report by Vladimir Kogan, an Ohio State University political scientist who studies school board races. Now, the public is broadly in favor of school reopenings, Kogan said in an interview with Nightly. School board races tend to be uncompetitive, off-cycle affairs. Incumbents usually win with low turnout, a truism that was confirmed by data collected by Kogan and his team from 2002 and 2016. This cycle, the Lake Travis Families PAC is trying to raise the stakes. There is a bond package under consideration to add more schools to the district to accommodate its rapid growth. It's an issue that might normally animate a local school board race. But the bond doesn't figure into the PAC's positioning in any way. Instead its organizers are focused on more polarizing issues — masks and closures and critical race theory — that dominate national headlines to turn out voters in May. While the volunteers are parents in their 30s and 40s, their targets are anyone who lives in the community and votes in a school board race, Steinhauser said. And perhaps not just school board races. "I do think an impact will be that these folks will become frequent voters and influencers in their community," Steinhauser said. "This is how you build a coalition." Listen for more: Playbook author Ryan Lizza sat down with Siva Raj and Autumn Looijen, co-founders of the Recall SF School Board campaign, about their journey from concerned parents to political activists.
| | | | Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. A programming note: We'll be off this Monday, Feb. 21, for President's Day. But we'll be back and better than ever Tuesday, Feb. 22. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight's author at rrayasam@politico.com, or on Twitter at @RenuRayasam.
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People sing the Ukrainian national anthem in front of Independence monument to mark newly created "Unity Day" in Kyiv, Ukraine. | Chris McGrath/Getty Images | THE DATE WORTH WATCHING — Our colleagues at National Security Daily write that the focus on today, Feb. 16, was always a bit overblown: "The time frame to really keep an eye on is what happens shortly after Feb. 20." "After Feb. 20 was always the more important time frame," said Michael Kofman, an expert on Russia's military at the CNA think tank. "We're looking to see what Russian forces do then." That's when the largest military exercise since the Cold War is scheduled to end, after which leaders in Moscow and Minsk promised Putin's troops would head home. More headlines from POLITICO's newsrooms on both sides of the Atlantic: — 'New normal': NATO sees no signs of a Russian retreat from the Ukrainian border, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said, and is exploring plans to increase its forces in Eastern Europe in response to a "new normal" of Russia aggression, threats and coercion. "So far, we do not see any sign of de-escalation on the ground — no withdrawals of troops or equipment," Stoltenberg said at a news conference following the first session of a two-day meeting of allied defense ministers at NATO headquarters in Brussels. — Russia mocks Feb. 16 predictions: Russia's EU ambassador denied the country was set to invade Ukraine today — after intelligence reports had pointed to it as a possible date for a Russian attack. "Wars in Europe rarely start on a Wednesday," Vladimir Chizhov told German newspaper Die Welt. "As far as Russia is concerned, I can assure you that there will be no attack this Wednesday," he said, adding there would be "no escalation in the coming week either, or in the week after that, or in the coming months." — 'No meaningful pullback': Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the United States has seen no pullback of Russian forces at the Ukrainian border, disputing claims from Moscow that the Kremlin has pulled back some of its forces. "Unfortunately, there's a difference between what Russia says and what it does, and what we're seeing is no meaningful pullback," Blinken said in an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America." "The contrary, we continue to see forces, especially forces that would be in the vanguard of any renewed aggression against Ukraine, continuing to be at the border to mass at the border."
| | | | DON'T MISS CONGRESS MINUTES: Need to follow the action on Capitol Hill blow-by-blow? Check out Minutes, POLITICO's new platform that delivers the latest exclusives, twists and much more in real time. Get it on your desktop or download the POLITICO mobile app for iOS or Android. CHECK OUT CONGRESS MINUTES HERE. | | | | | | | | — Biden's SCOTUS shortlist staffs up to handle the media barrage: The three leading contenders to be President Joe Biden's nominee to the Supreme Court are turning to trusted hands to help navigate one of Washington's most grueling and stage-managed processes . Circuit Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson has enlisted Robert Raben, the founder of the consulting firm The Raben Group and former assistant Attorney General during the Clinton administration, to help with the deluge of press scrutiny, with a small assist from onetime Biden spokesman TJ Ducklo. For South Carolina District Judge J. Michelle Childs, the role is largely being played by Amanda Loveday, a South Carolina-based Democratic operative with ties to Biden and Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) — one of the judge's biggest boosters. And for California Supreme Court justice Leondra Kruger, the task has been taken on by Tracey Schmaler, a comms specialist who led former attorney general Eric Holder's press team. — Ottawa police warn occupiers: 'Leave now': Police are warning convoy protesters to leave Ottawa or face arrest . But so far there are no signs that hundreds of semi trailers, tractors and pickups clogging the capital city's downtown core are willing to budge. In one act of defiance, a group of demonstrators started roasting a pig in the middle of a major downtown street as the police warning came down. Officers moved through the streets around Parliament Hill this morning distributing flyers — one side English, one side French — warning of the consequences. — Biden names 2 people to replace Eric Lander in top science roles: Biden named Alondra Nelson, the deputy director for science and society in the Office of Science and Technology Policy, as director of the office. The president also announced that Francis Collins, who retired in December from his role as director of the National Institutes of Health, would serve as his top science adviser and co-chair of the president's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology. Nelson and Collins will perform these roles until "permanent leadership is nominated and confirmed," the White House said today. — Biden administration weighs changes to Trump-era Medicare policy: The Biden administration is debating whether to overhaul a major Trump-era program tied to Medicare as soon as this week in the face of rising pressure from prominent progressive Democrats, more than a half-dozen people familiar with the matter told POLITICO. The Trump program — known as a direct contracting model — allows private companies to participate in Medicare as part of a broader health department effort to improve care while limiting the government's costs. — Exiled Chinese billionaire and Steve Bannon financier files for bankruptcy: Exiled Chinese billionaire and Steve Bannon ally Guo Wengui filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy days after a court ordered him to pay $134 million for attempting to avoid debt collection . In the petition, Guo, who also goes by Miles Kwok and Kwok Ho Wan, claims that his debts are not consumer or business-related, rather "litigation expenses, claims and judgments." His legal issues are rooted in a $30 million loan from the Pacific Alliance Asia Opportunity Fund that was never repaid, and is now estimated at more than $116 million due to interest accrual.
| | | | | | | | | FREEDOM HITS THE HILL — Enes Kanter Freedom, waived this week by the Houston Rockets after getting traded by the Boston Celtics, made the Senate rounds for meetings to discuss China and Turkey's rocky human rights records — an issue close to his heart, Nancy Vu and Burgess Everett write.
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| Freedom also attended a Senate GOP lunch, deeming it "amazing" and adding that he and members talked about "life." He left the lunch in conversation with Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) about basketball. Why was he there? Freedom made waves for his criticism of the Chinese government and their abuses against the Uyghur Muslim minority. He dinged the NBA for failing to call out China while benefiting from merchandise made in the country — and its stars, including LeBron James, Jeremy Lin and Michael Jordan. Freedom is also an outspoken critic of Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Small rumor: Some conservatives speculated that Freedom was waived by the Houston Rockets because of his outspoken rhetoric. But he had not made a huge impact so far this season on the Celtics. Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here. | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |
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