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Welcome to The Daily 202! Tell your friends to sign up here. On this day in 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned in his State of the Union speech about the threat of “communist imperialism.” The Soviet threat is “unique in history,” he said.
Bipartisan bridge, border tour: Biden starts to hone his 2024 pitch
President Biden isn’t expected to make a formal announcement about his 2024 plans for weeks, but he’s already fine-tuning his argument to the voters after losing the House of Representatives to Republicans, which will likely smother his legislative priorities for the next two years.
Biden has no shortage of potential role-models among presidents who endured unhappy midterms — with the caveat that while all happy midterms are alike, every unhappy midterm is unhappy in its own way. (h/t Tolstoy.)
Already, the president has held two events that seem to encapsulate his post-midterm message.
- First, while Republicans labored to elect a House Speaker, Biden held a bridge-building event with prominent Republicans, notably Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has described divided government as an opportunity to tackle big, controversial policies.
- No, really, a literal bridge-building event. Biden may have intended the event to show what his White House can do with a little GOP goodwill, but with the speakership in doubt because of resistance from 10 percent of the GOP’s half of the House, the symbolism went further.
- On Sunday, Biden made his first trip to the southern border as president, after two years of Republican demands he go see the chaos and struggles there for himself.
My colleague Cleve R. Wootson, Jr., filed this dispatch while on the trip, with Biden trying “to blunt criticism that his immigration policies have been ineffective and increasingly less humane than he promised.” Those are usually Republican and Democratic criticisms, respectively.
It’s a bit early to talk about a 2024-minded pivot to the center — for one thing, Biden hasn’t shied from disappointing progressives in his first two years on issues like voting rights, “defund the police” (which he opposes) — or, yes, immigration. Or throwing rhetorical bombs at the GOP.
Wiped out in 1994, Bill Clinton promised a “new social compact” in his 1995 State of the Union speech, and talked up what The Washington Post called a “tax-cutting, regulation-trimming, program-shaving and government shrinking” agenda that Republicans cautiously cheered.
A year after that speech, which one prominent GOP figure called the “most conservative State of the Union by a Democratic president in history,” Clinton went a step further, using his 1996 address to Congress to declare “the era of big government is over.”
The watchword for his quest for a second term was “triangulation” — basically putting space between traditional Democrats and finding a lane just to the left of Republicans to win back disaffected centrist voters.
George W. Bush admitted the 2006 midterms were “a thumping” for the GOP and announced the departure of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld after years of Democratic demands he be fired over the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Among the legislative casualties in that election’s aftermath was a comprehensive immigration reform plan Bush strongly supported. The most notable bipartisanship of the era was action to counter the financial crisis of 2007-2008, which effectively forced cooperation in Congress.
In his first news conference after the 2010 midterms, Barack Obama called the results a “shellacking” for Democrats and acknowledged he seemed removed from Americans’ everyday struggles in the “bubble” of the White House.
After a compromise on extending Bush-era tax cuts, the “T” word made a return, even if top Obama adviser Dan Pfeiffer denied it, insisting Obama had always been interested in “avoiding ideological rigidity and working with people he doesn’t always agree with to make progress for the country.”
After Democrats lost the Senate in a “Red wave” in 2014, Obama announced executive actions like plans to restore ties with Cuba and spare millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation, before taking something of a defiant victory lap on the strong U.S. economy in his 2015 State of the Union.
Well, his first news conference after the 2018 “Blue Wave” that returned the House to Democratic control was classic Trump theater. He insisted the election had been “a great victory,” mocked Republicans who lost, suggested losing the House was good for him, seemed to offer Democrats a deal on infrastructure in return for not investigating him and suggested he had a secret plan on the issue of abortion.
But arguably the most interesting legislative development after that election was the cooperation between the Democratic-held House under Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and the White House on the USMCA trade agreement (a.k.a. the “new NAFTA”). The two sides worked out deals on issues like labor and climate protections to such a degree that Senate Republicans complained.
Biden’s midterms were obviously less unhappy than many of his predecessors’, and much less unhappy than forecast in early 2022. Whether his 2024 will be happier will turn, in part, on what he does with last November’s results.
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McCarthy faces another test with House rules package
“Today, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), fresh off a contentious fight over whether he should wield the gavel, will face a test of his leadership when the chamber tries to pass the rules under which it will operate for the 118th Congress. Among the provisions: one that would make it easier for McCarthy’s detractors to start the process of removing him. McCarthy can afford to lose to only four GOP votes, and already there is grumbling from some GOP lawmakers about parts of the package,” John Wagner and Mariana Alfaro report.
Georgia grand jury investigating Trump election interference completes probe
“Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney, who was overseeing the panel, issued a court order Monday morning saying the special grand jury had completed a final report on its investigation. He said the report was accepted by a majority of the county’s judicial bench and that the 26-member panel was being officially dissolved,” Holly Bailey reports.
George Santos broke campaign finance laws, nonpartisan watchdog says
“The alleged wrongdoing includes masking the true source of his campaign’s funding, misrepresenting his campaign’s spending and using campaign resources to cover personal expenses,” Isaac Stanley-Becker reports.
7,000 nurses strike at 2 New York City hospitals after talks collapse
“More than 7,000 nurses at two major New York hospitals walked off the job Monday morning, protesting pay and staffing arrangements they contend have overwhelmed health care professionals during the coronavirus pandemic and beyond,” Jacob Bogage reports.
Lunchtime reads from The Post
Back in their districts, House speaker holdouts get cheers, jeers and shrugs
“Some people lamented dysfunction in Congress but weren’t sure whom to blame or called it business as usual; others said they were apathetic about politics and uninterested in the convoluted drama. And many voters were thrilled at the holdouts’ disdain for the GOP establishment. McCarthy’s opponents mostly represent solidly conservative districts, increasingly common as gerrymandering has shrunk the number of competitive seats nationwide,” Hannah Knowles and Yvonne Wingett Sanchez report.
With McCarthy elected speaker, House GOP readies for fiscal showdowns
“In the hours before the 15th and final speaker vote, Republicans sketched out the early contours of what they might pursue over the next year — slashing spending by billions of dollars, largely targeting federal health, education, labor and other domestic agencies that Democrats say are already underfunded,” Tony Romm reports.
The feds say they’re in for the long haul in the Jan. 6 investigation. There is a time limit.
“Heading into the third year of the investigation, the pace of arrests has slowed dramatically, even as federal prosecutors have just three years left until the statute of limitations runs out on most Jan. 6 offenses. And just as the Justice Department is set to get millions of additional dollars to fuel its investigation, it will also face scrutiny from a Republican-controlled House from members who have called to defund the FBI and who have heavily criticized the Justice Department’s Jan. 6 probe,” NBC News’s Ryan J. Reilly reports.
Conservatives take aim at tenure for university professors
“The indefinite academic appointments that come with tenure — the holy grail of university employment — have faced review from lawmakers or state oversight boards in at least half a dozen states, often presented as bids to rein in academics with liberal views,” the Associated Press’s Heather Hollingsworth reports.
New variant is ‘most transmissible’ yet, could fuel covid wave
“XBB.1.5, pegged by the World Health Organization as “the most transmissible” descendant yet of the omicron variant, rose from barely 2 percent of U.S. cases at the start of December to more than 27 percent the first week of January, according to new estimates by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,” Fenit Nirappil and Lauren Weber report.
Biden makes first Mexico visit amid concerns over migration, fentanyl
“On the eve of Monday’s summit, Biden and President Andrés Manuel López Obrador projected an image of camaraderie riding together in the U.S. leader’s limousine from the airport into the Mexican capital. In recent days, the Mexican leader provided crucial support for two of Washington’s priorities — signing on to a U.S. plan that will send more border-crossers back into Mexico, and capturing Ovidio Guzmán, an alleged fentanyl kingpin and the son of Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán,” Mary Beth Sheridan and Toluse Olorunnipa report.
Immigration pivot shows Biden facing hard reality of border politics
“It was a deflating and lonely moment for a president who had promised to leave President Donald Trump’s harsh immigration policies in the dustbin of history. Instead, Biden’s administration will continue to expel people who cross the border illegally amid record numbers of apprehensions — a move to the center that could threaten support from liberal groups if he seeks a second term. The plans drew immediate outrage from Democratic and Republican lawmakers, who themselves have failed for decades to create a functioning immigration system,” Maria Sacchetti and Nick Miroff report.
Biden gears up for ‘Chapter 2,’ anticipating clashes, cooperation with GOP
“Senior White House officials are planning to counter an expected onslaught of oversight by Republican lawmakers by working with the GOP behind the scenes on bipartisan bills as Biden gears up for a reelection bid he has said he intends to wage. The strategy also involves moving aggressively to implement and publicly celebrate pieces of the multi-trillion-dollar rush of legislation already passed over the past two years, providing a counterweight to GOP moves to probe missteps and controversies from the same period,” Toluse Olorunnipa and Yasmeen Abutaleb report.
The final speaker vote count, visualized
“Following a week of voting that stretched to 15 ballots, Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was elected speaker of the House. The House had struggled to elect a new speaker, with McCarthy repeatedly failing to gain the requisite majority of the chamber — despite major concessions to the holdouts in his party,” Kevin Schaul, Nick Mourtoupalas, Kati Perry and Hannah Dormido report.
A ‘born alive’ measure is one of the House GOP’s priorities. Here’s what it would actually do.
“House Republican leaders have vowed swift action on a number of measures related to abortion this year — including one that compels health care providers to provide life-sustaining care to infants born after an attempted abortion,” the 19th’s Mel Leonor Barclay and Shefali Luthra report.
“But, reproductive rights advocates and physicians say, the rights of infants born by any method, including after an attempted abortion, are already protected by a bipartisan 2002 law that established that infants have the rights of a full human. Live births after an attempted abortion are exceedingly rare, and the proposed measure would take away power over medical interventions from families and physicians.”
House Republicans turn focus to spending, China after dramatic speaker vote
“The House will dive into its first week of substantive work with bills to cut Internal Revenue Service funding and investigate economic competition from China, after a leadership election that underscored Republican divides and the fragile position of Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.),” the Wall Street Journal’s Nick Timiraos reports.
Biden is in Mexico today.
At 4:55 p.m., the Bidens will leave for the National Palace in Mexico City, where they will participate in a welcome ceremony hosted by Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
Biden will hold a bilateral meeting with López Obrador at 6 p.m.
At 7:45 p.m., the Bidens will participate in a dinner with López Obrador, his wife, Beatriz Gutierrez Muller, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his wife, Sophie Gregoire Trudeau.
Always gonna remember the week cspan was like Bravo
— Jack Herrera (@jherrerx) January 7, 2023
Thanks for reading. See you tomorrow.