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Presented by Facebook: The unofficial guide to official Washington. | | | | | |  | | By Tara Palmeri | | | |  | DRIVING THE DAY | | “The next few days will be a time of intensity.” With those words to colleagues Saturday, House Speaker NANCY PELOSI teed up the pivotal week to come — one which will shape the trajectory of the Biden presidency, the 2022 campaign and the nation’s economy for years to come. “This week, we must pass a Continuing Resolution, Build Back Better Act and the BIF,” Pelosi wrote. Today, Pelosi added this: “I’m never bringing a bill to the floor that doesn’t have the votes,” she said on ABC’s “This Week.” So where does that leave things? Where we’re at: The continuing resolution has already passed the House, the BIF is awaiting a vote (which Pelosi had promised would be held Monday) and Saturday night, the House Budget Committee moved forward the mammoth reconciliation package, aka BBB. The BBB is headed for a vote on the floor this week, even while it’s far from final as Democratic leaders grasp for “an endgame compromise that can pass both the House and Senate,” write Jennifer Scholtes and Caitlin Emma. The policy disagreements: WSJ’s Gabriel Rubin has a useful breakdown of five key areas of discord among Democrats on the BBB (in addition to the overall cost): health care, climate, long-term home care and child care, immigration and taxes. (Nothing too complicated!). A couple good reads on that front: — Health care: WaPo’s Paul Kane breaks down the health care debate, in which competing priorities are being championed by Pelosi (shoring up the Affordable Care Act), Sen. BERNIE SANDERS (expanding Medicare) and House Majority Whip JIM CLYBURN (expanding Medicaid). Which will get the ax if Dems have to downsize? — Taxes: House Dems want to expand their Child Tax Credit payment program by expanding the definition of what it means to be someone’s “child” so that kids being raised by someone who isn’t a relative can benefit — which, reports Brian Faler, could pose a huge bureaucratic headache for the IRS. The political reality: Democrats are increasingly convinced that the only way they can salvage their midterm prospects is to muscle through the infrastructure and reconciliation bills and “hold up tangible achievements to voters,” writes NYT’s Jonathan Martin. But, much like on the policy front, Democrats disagree over the best course of action politically. “Liberals believe voters will punish them in 2022 if they do not fulfill Mr. Biden’s sweeping campaign agenda, in part because it would demoralize their core voters and ensure that some of them would stay home,” Martin writes. “Some moderates, however, think that the historically difficult first midterm for the president’s party would be made worse if they handed Republicans fodder to portray them as tax-and-spend liberals at a moment when inflation has jumped.” — That gridlock risks depressing the enthusiasm of Democratic voters, writes AP’s Steve Peoples. Party strategists tell him that failure to pass the BBB “could devastate Democrats in the 2022 vote and raise questions about Biden’s path to reelection if he decides to seek a second term.” Cue JAMES CARVILLE: “Quoting Benjamin Franklin, if they don’t hang together, they’ll hang separately.” — Biden’s weak poll numbers are already endangering TERRY MCAULIFFE in Virginia’s gubernatorial race. “Voters didn’t send Democrats to Washington to sit around and chitty-chat all day,” McAuliffe told J-Mart. “They need to get this done.” Washington Examiner’s David Drucker finds the same thing in Virginia — Meanwhile, GOP leaders are delighted at Democrats’ dilemma. Senate Minority Leader MITCH MCCONNELL tells the NYT: “It’ll have a serious negative impact if they don’t pass it, and it’ll have a serious negative impact if they do pass it.” — But the whole situation is not without risks for Republicans. As GOP leadership mounts a major whipping campaign against the BIF, it’s become “a complicated vote for many moderate House Republicans, who are under intense pressure from party leaders not to deliver a win for Biden — and potentially hurt their chances of flipping the House,” report Sarah Ferris and Nicholas Wu. Still, that pressure goes both ways: Minority Leader KEVIN MCCARTHY’s hard opposition to the bill has “inflam[ed] many of his conference's moderates,” setting up the BIF vote as a gauge of GOP leadership’s ability to marshal its members. Good Sunday morning, and thanks for reading Playbook. Drop us a line: Rachael Bade, Eugene Daniels, Ryan Lizza, Tara Palmeri. | | A message from Facebook: Why Facebook supports reforming Section 230
The internet has changed a lot in the last 25 years—the last time comprehensive internet regulations were passed.
Facebook supports updated regulations —like reforming Section 230, to set standards for the way larger tech companies enforce rules about content. | | | WHOSE PARTY IS IT? — At the biennial Mackinac Republican Leadership Conference this weekend in Michigan, GOP bigwigs gathered at the Grand Hotel to hobnob, listen to 2024 hopefuls and chart a course for the party in the midterms and beyond. And though the party faithful agreed on many of the particulars (e.g. opposition to masking mandates and critical race theory in schools), disagreements about a broader question hung over the event: What exactly is former President DONALD TRUMP’s role in the party’s future? — One side of things: “I hope President Trump runs again,” Sen. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-S.C.) said on Saturday night, per Detroit News’ Craig Mauger. Flashback to Wednesday: Trump slammed Graham in a statement for being “unwilling to fight” to overturn the results of the 2020 election. (FWIW, our favorite Graham line from Mackinac, on golfing with Trump: “I’ve come to like him, and he likes him. That gets us through 18 holes. The first nine, I’ll tell him why I like him. The back nine is why he likes him.”) — The other side: “Ours is not a movement dependent on any one person,” BETSY DEVOS said Saturday, also lamenting that conservative “principles have been overtaken by personalities,” per Freep’s Paul Egan. (DeVos, you may remember, resigned as Trump’s secretary of education following the Jan. 6 insurrection, and supported invoking the 25th amendment to remove him from power.) Meanwhile, Trump held a rally Saturday night in Perry, Ga., with a bevy of GOP political candidates. Speaker after speaker pushed lies about the integrity of the 2020 election, reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and Trump trained much of his ire on those Republicans who didn’t bow to his desire to overturn the results — especially Gov. BRIAN KEMP. — “At one point, Trump said STACEY ABRAMS would be a better governor than Kemp,” the AJC writes. Said Trump: “Stacey, would you like to take his place? It’s OK with me.” — Trump also brought on stage Lance Cpl. HUNTER CLARK, who was photographed pulling a baby over a wall to get to safety during the evacuations from Kabul, per Fox News . “In the front row, Trump left 13 empty seats with roses placed atop them to pay tribute to the 13 U.S. service members who lost their lives.” | | | |   | | | THREE TOP SUNDAY READS… — Today, Germans go to the polls to pick ANGELA MERKEL’s successor. Over her 16 years in power, she’s been one constant in the shifting sands of the European Union experiment as it has suffered through terror attacks, a financial and austerity crisis, Brexit, a mass influx of immigrants and now a pandemic. After the election results are announced, she’ll leave behind not just a world that has radically shifted, but also a Germany that has evolved into a “modern society — and a country less defined by its history,” writes NYT’s Katherine Benhold. — How the anti-vax movement penetrated the NBA — and started winning. Rolling Stone’s Matt Sullivan reports that the league, which a year ago earned plaudits for its ultra-serious handling of the pandemic, is now in the midst of a full-blown civil war over the virus that’s spilling over into public view. At the annual summer meeting of the NBA player’s union, star players made clear that a vaccine requirement mandated by the league would be a “non-starter.” — Was the push to overturn the 2020 election a low point for U.S. democracy, or just a dress rehearsal? That sobering thought comes from election law expert Rick Hasen in a new Q&A with our own Zack Stanton. Says Hasen: “The rhetoric is so overheated that I think it provides the basis for millions of people to accept an actual stolen election as payback for the falsely claimed earlier ‘stolen’ election. People are going to be more willing to cheat if they think they’ve been cheated out of their just desserts.” Companion reading: “Can Joe Biden Recover?” by NYT’s Ross Douthat: “Along with any worries about Trump stealing the next presidential election … Democrats should recognize the possibility that he might simply win it. What’s gone wrong for Biden is a combination of bad luck, bad choices and inherent weakness.” SUNDAY BEST … Rep. PRAMILA JAYAPAL (D-Wash.) on the BIF vote this week on CNN’s “State of the Union”: “I don't believe there will be a vote [Monday]. … I mean, the speaker is an incredibly good vote-counter. And she knows exactly where her caucus stands. And we have been really clear on that.” — On the moment that she broke into tears in the Oval Office meeting with Biden: “I hope we never stop feeling the emotion of why we’re here and why it’s important to do what we’re doing. But it was a lovely moment. And the president also sheds tears when he tells stories. And it’s one of the beautiful things about him, is the compassion. And I felt like we shared that moment, because I know, from talking to him before, that he also identifies with the immigrant experience of his ancestors, his — the previous generation. So it was wonderful.” Rep. JOSH GOTTHEIMER (D-N.J.) on the BIF vote on “State of the Union”: “Every single Democrat in the House voted to bring it to the floor for a vote this week. We’re going to do it. We’re going to have the votes. It will come up [Monday], and we’re going to vote this week, early this week.” Sen. CORY BOOKER (D-N.J.) on the infrastructure bill and reconciliation on NBC’s “Meet the Press”: “We see this as one package. The president as recently as last week has said, ‘Look, don't separate this. This is one package that we're looking at.’ And so I just want to make sure this is not about a bunch of people who are battling it out in Congress. This is about the American people.” DHS Secretary ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS on the images from the border on “Meet the Press”: “I'm intensely and immensely proud of the men and women of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. In fact, in Del Rio, Texas, I saw them act heroically. You know, what those images suggest does not reflect who CBP is, who we are as a department, nor who we are as a country.” — On bipartisan criticism: “Getting hit from both sides in the matter of immigration is no surprise. We are in the epicenter of the country's divide, regrettably.” Texas Gov. GREG ABBOTT on Biden’s threat that border agents could lose their jobs on “Fox News Sunday”: “I have worked side by side with those border patrol agents, I want them to know something: If they are at risk of losing their job, got a president who is abandoning his duty to secure the border, you have a job in the state of Texas. I will hire you to help Texas secure our border.” BIDEN’S SUNDAY — The president will return to the White House from Camp David. | | | | INTRODUCING 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. GET A FIRST LOOK AT CONGRESS MINUTES HERE. | | | | | | | PLAYBOOK READS | | | 
PHOTO OF THE DAY: Michael Kovrig embraces his wife Vina Nadjibulla after arriving in Toronto on Saturday, Sept. 25, after China, the U.S. and Canada completed a high-stakes prisoner swap including Kovrig and Michael Spavor, who were being held by China, in exchange for a Huawei executive. | Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press via AP | THE WHITE HOUSE COALITION CRUMBLING? — The floodgates opened this week for Democratic criticism of Biden’s immigration approach, Sabrina Rodríguez reports. The more aggressive pushback now constitutes “a crack in the Democratic coalition that threatens the party’s morale and unity,” Sabrina writes. — The Atlantic’s Caitlin Dickerson declares, “Democrats’ Free Pass on Immigration Is Over: As he extends Trump-era policies, President Biden discovers that many voters are no longer willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.” CONGRESS WHAT WENT WRONG — Negotiators’ failure to reach an accord on even a slimmed-down police reform bill can be traced to Congress missing the moment, NBC’s Leigh Ann Caldwell writes: Too much time had elapsed since the mass protests last year in the wake of GEORGE FLOYD’s murder. By the end of this summer, “[t]he political will was gone. So was the momentum.” ANOTHER ONE — Rep. BRIAN BABIN (R-Texas) tested positive for the coronavirus Saturday, he announced. A dentist, Babin is fully vaccinated and started having “mild, cold-like symptoms” Friday, he said. POLITICS ROUNDUP IT’S NOT JUST FOR DEMOCRATS — In the wake of GAVIN NEWSOM’s blowout win in the California recall election, a consensus emerged that he’d found success by nationalizing the race and making it about Trump, and that the approach offered a model for other Dems. But as the AP finds in Arkansas, where SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS’ gubernatorial campaign is in full swing, some Republicans are just as eager to nationalize their campaigns, too — talking up Trump, taking swings at Biden and often straying from the local issues. | | A message from Facebook: Facebook invested $13B in teams and technology to enhance safety
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Our work to reduce harmful content is never done. Learn more about how we're making our platforms safer. | | | BEYOND THE BELTWAY 2022 WATCH — With Rep. KAREN BASS (D-Calif.) jumping in, the Los Angeles mayoral race is surging to the forefront of California’s political minds, report the L.A. Times’ David Zahniser, Dakota Smith and Benjamin Oreskes. Homelessness is the top issue in the city’s first “wide-open mayoral election since 2013,” which will also constitute another battle between progressives and the center-left. POLICY CORNER UNDER THE HOOD — Extremism researchers have been handed a massive data dump after Anonymous hacked Epik, “an Internet-services company popular with the far right,” and revealed hundreds of thousands of transactions that lay bare who’s behind hate online, WaPo’s Drew Harwell, Hannah Allam, Jeremy Merrill and Craig Timberg report . “[I]t could take months before they can process the full cache — the equivalent of tens of millions of pages. Many are digging for information on who owns and administers extremist domains about which little was previously known.” PRO-POT, ANTI-FEDERAL LEGALIZATION — Some say that it’s high time for federal action to loosen marijuana restrictions. But the current system — a patchwork of state-sanctioned fiefdoms — has become entrenched, and some business owners, regulators and lawmakers are worried that a shakeup “will invite industry behemoths to eat up small companies and push minority-owned firms out altogether,” Natalie Fertig writes. AMERICA AND THE WORLD A MAJOR DEEP DIVE — Yahoo News is out this morning with an explosive investigation by Zach Dorfman, Sean D. Naylor and Michael Isikoff: “In 2017, as JULIAN ASSANGE began his fifth year holed up in Ecuador’s embassy in London, the CIA plotted to kidnap the WikiLeaks founder, spurring heated debate among Trump administration officials over the legality and practicality of such an operation. “Some senior officials inside the CIA and the Trump administration even discussed killing Assange , going so far as to request ‘sketches’ or ‘options’ for how to assassinate him. Discussions over kidnapping or killing Assange occurred ‘at the highest levels’ of the Trump administration, said a former senior counterintelligence official. ‘There seemed to be no boundaries.’” | | | | BECOME A GLOBAL INSIDER: The world is more connected than ever. It has never been more essential to identify, unpack and analyze important news, trends and decisions shaping our future — and we’ve got you covered! Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, Global Insider author Ryan Heath navigates the global news maze and connects you to power players and events changing our world. Don’t miss out on this influential global community. Subscribe now. | | | | | | | PLAYBOOKERS | | OUT AND ABOUT — The cast and producers of HBO’s limited series about the Watergate break-in called “The White House Plumbers” (directed by “Veep” showrunner David Mandel) had dinner outside on Friday night at Cafe Milano. SPOTTED: Woody Harrelson, who plays E. Howard Hunt, and Justin Theroux, who plays G. Gordon Liddy; Other guests included John McCarthy, Reema Dodin, Liz Johnson, Symone Sanders, Shawn Townsend, Domnhall Gleeson, Ike Barinholtz, Tara Grace, Tammy Haddad, Len Amato, Gregg Fienberg, Annie Fitzgerald and David Bernad, the executive producer who got pitched the show after hearing the inside story from his father, a D.C. neurologist. Bernad was also toasted for his recent show, “The White Lotus.” Dinner guests asked Symone Sanders about what happened at “The View” earlier Friday. BIRTHWEEK (was Wednesday): Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Institution HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Rep. Barry Moore (R-Ala.) … Beto O’Rourke … WaPo’s Dave Weigel (4-0) and Kathleen Parker (7-0) … Evan Hollander of the House Appropriations Committee … Robert Kagan … POLITICO’s Patterson Clark and Casey Miles … APCO Worldwide’s Josie Martin … former Rep. Frank Guinta (R-N.H.) … Bill Scher … Jordan Cohen of the NYT … Ben Freed … Missy Edwards of Missy Edwards Strategies … Jon Rosborough … Tom Gannon of Mastercard … David Sanders … Mark Isakowitz of Google … photographer Stephen Voss … Jeff Eshelman of IPAA … Doug Sosnik … Greg Lorjuste … Sam Drzymala … John Fitzpatrick … Dayne Cutrell … Brennan Georgianni of the American Cleaning Institute … Matt Krack of Fair Fight Action … former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman … former Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer … Max Schechter … Sam Myers Sr. … Wally Stern (93) Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here. Send Playbookers tips to playbook@politico.com. Playbook couldn’t happen without our editor Mike Zapler, deputy editor Zack Stanton and producers Allie Bice, Eli Okun and Garrett Ross. | | | | Sponsored Survey SHARE YOUR OPINION: Please take a short, 3-question survey about one of our advertising partners. | | | | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Subscribe to the POLITICO Playbook family Playbook | Playbook PM | California Playbook | Florida Playbook | Illinois Playbook | Massachusetts Playbook | New Jersey Playbook | New York Playbook | Brussels Playbook | London Playbook View all our political and policy newsletters | | Follow us | | | | |  |
