With the help of Allie Bice
Welcome to the POLITICO Transition Manual 2021, your guide to the first 100 days of the Biden administration.
JOE BIDEN and Republicans are united in at least one thing: they do not support the New York Times editorial board.
The august official newspaper has long been a popular punching bag for conservatives, but on Thursday morning it was the Biden government nudging the Gray Lady, after publishing an editorial instructing the president to “Facilitate executive actions”.
White House Communication Director KATE BED FIELD tweeted that “the editorial board’s arguments are tricky,” adding “I can’t help remembering that during the primaries they encouraged voters to consider what a president could do through executive action.”
JOHN ANZALONE, The Biden campaign researcher, said the Transition Playbook, “It is difficult to be so high in the ivory tower. You really can’t make a good judgment because you can’t see the floor. “
Thursday’s volley was not just about executive orders – and Biden’s team points to polls arguing that they are popular – but a continuation of Biden’s battle with the Times editorial board that has been going on since the primaries Democratic presidential candidates.
It is not so much about individual editorials, but the whole spirit of the board. Biden campaign officials say it is not that they are leftists. They point out that the council was indifferent to Biden and BERNIE SANDERS, who ended up being the two strongest candidates in the presidential race. If Biden had followed the advice of the editorial board, he would have lost, they argue.
“Unfortunately, the New York Times editorial board is often a barometer of where not to be, as long as you want to win elections in real life, rather than on Beltway’s Twitter,” said a former Biden campaign official.
“There are some in the progressive movement that are increasingly defining themselves – sometimes intentionally – adopting attitudes and positions that unnecessarily alienate the available voters. It is incredibly destructive to the causes we are fighting for ”.
Despite dismissing the board, Biden’s team doesn’t seem to be able to ignore them. This can come from top to bottom: Biden has been reading the newspaper’s editorial page since childhood with his uncle, EDWARD BLEWITT “BOO-BOO” FINNEGAN.
“Boo-Boo can be a great friend. He was a brilliant guy – the only person with a college degree in the house, ”wrote Biden in his 2007 memoirs.“ He made me read the New York Times editorial page, then sit down and discuss politics with me and my friends. ”
Still, Biden’s team has been enjoying putting him on the Times editorial board since winning the presidential primaries. A Biden campaign advisor nailed a printed meme from an editorial board member BINYAMIN APPELBAUM at Biden’s campaign headquarters, two former campaign officials told the Transition Playbook (Applebaum declined to comment).
At the Democratic National Convention in August, Biden’s team chose a security guard from the Times, JACQUELYN BRITTANY, to officially put his name on the nomination and give the story to the Washington Post, the Times’ main rival.
Biden took a selfie with excited Brittany – “I love you,” she said – in the elevator on the way to meet the Times’ editorial board last winter, a moment captured on video.
When the Times endorsed ELIZABETH WARREN and AMY KLOBUCHAR soon after, Biden tweeted the meeting Brittany and said he was “honored” for his endorsement.
Brittany, Biden’s team believed, illustrated how the Times’ editorial board was disconnected from the country. And Brittany, who says she still works for the Times, doesn’t disagree.
Asked why she thinks the editorial board did not endorse Biden, Brittany told us, “I would probably say because it was the most real interview. I think they wanted everything to be political, everything according to the book, and it didn’t work like everyone else did. “
“I love The New York Times, but in that case, I think it was more of a voice for the people, you know,” she said.
“I think it’s all common sense and common sense is not that common.”
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In the Oval Office, where he signed two executive health decrees and apologized for keeping reporters waiting outside in the cold before entering the room.
With Biden in the Oval Office.
With the Presidential Transition Center
Which future president was the first person to serve two cabinet roles simultaneously?
(The answer is at the bottom.)
WHITE HOUSE VIEW HUAWEI AS SECURITY ‘THREAT’ – White House Press Secretary JEN PSAKI dubbed Huawei, a Chinese telecommunications company, as a threat to national security on Wednesday after the appointment of the Secretary of Commerce GINA RAIMONDO refused to commit to keeping it on the agency’s blacklist.
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BACKLOG ON JUDGES – Once MERRICK GARLAND, Biden’s appointed attorney general and other senior Justice Department officials are confirmed, Senate Democrats will have to decide whether to focus on confirming additional DOJ nominees or to shift attention to the courts and move Biden’s judicial choices, JOSH GERSTEIN and MARIANNE LeVINE report.
“I am very concerned about the potential leadership gap” in the Justice Department, “senator. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL (D-Conn.) He said. But Blumenthal added that, “once we have the lead in the main court, we should potentially turn to the judges because some of those vacancies are pending.”
LAST MINUTE BRANDS MAY HAVE BEEN TOO LATE – The Pentagon has suspended processing a series of president DONALD TRUMPlast-minute appointed to defense advisory councils while the new government seeks to eliminate those loyal to the former president, LARA SELIGMAN reports.
The movement effectively avoids a number of Trump allies, Including COREY LEWANDOWSKI and DAVID BOSSIE, to effectively participate in panels charged with advising the Secretary of Defense, at least for the time being.
BIDEN IS NOT FACILITATING EXECUTIVE ORDERS: If Wednesday was the “climate day at the White House,” as Biden said, today is the day of medical care. The Biden administration said it would reopen the Obamacare registration site, HealthCare.gov, making it easier for uninsured people to get coverage during the pandemic, SUSANNAH LUTHI reports.
Biden is also planning to restore some Obamacare marketing funds that the Trump administration destroyed, and will soon begin to review whether to overturn the Trump administration’s changes, seen as undermining health law and Medicaid.
Biden also rescinded the so-called Mexico City policy, which prohibited US foreign aid from going to organizations that offer abortion or abortion counseling, ALICE MIRANDA OLLSTEIN reports. Trump had expanded the policy.
CUE THE LETTERS OF REPUBLICAN SUPERVISION: The members of the ranking of three committees of the Chamber – Reps. JIM JORDAN (R-Ohio), JAMES EAT (R-Ky.) E VIRGINIA FOXX (R-Va.) – sent a letter to the President of the University of Pennsylvania AMY GUTTMAN on Wednesday, asking for more information about Chinese donations to the Ivy League school in light of “the university’s close relationship with the Biden family”. (Biden taught at the university after leaving office in 2017 and helped found the Penn Biden Center.)
RON OZIO, a Penn spokesman, said the Penn Biden Center only received gifts totaling $ 1,100 from two donors, both American. The university said in the past that it does not specifically request donations to the Penn Biden Center.
Garland said in favor of Susan Davies as assistant attorney general for antitrust (The Intercept)
What “unity” and pornography have in common (The Washington Post, but this is the rewrite of the Transition Playbook title)
Congressman Jason Crow (D-Colorado) is lobbying Lloyd Austin not to move the US Space Command to Alabama (Colorado Public Radio)
A few months after arriving in Washington, RON KLAIN he found himself involved in a campaign financial scandal that made the front page news and disqualified him for the elections.
The job he was looking for: a freshman seat in the Student Senate at Georgetown University.
Georgetown’s student newspaper, The Hoya, reported on November 2, 1979 that “formal charges” had been made against Klain, “which resulted in his disqualification from the election.”
“Klain violated the rules that prohibit candidates from campaigning less than 15 meters from a polling place.” BRAND WHITE, the newspaper’s chief editor, wrote. “The fine for violation[,] a dollar, in combination with six poster violations for 75 cents, put Klain above the $ 15.00 spending limit and was the basis for his dismissal. ”
MONICA MEDINA, another freshman who ran a fine with Klain, was also caught in the scandal. She was fined for the same poster violations, but her “original expenses, in addition to the fines imposed, were still within the campaign’s spending limits.”
Klain and Medina were married seven years later. Here is a picture of them together in 1979.
JAMES MONROE he served as secretary of state and secretary of war for a brief period between 1814 and 1815.
Monroe was confirmed by the Senate in November 1811 as secretary of state. But after the British burned the White House in the War of 1812, the Secretary of War JOHN ARMSTRONG – who was sure the redcoats were going to Baltimore instead of DC – was expelled. Monroe wrote to the president JAMES MADISON asking for the position. He served in both positions until the end of the war.
