Playbook PM: Jobs report paints a ‘mixed picture’ for Biden

From: POLITICO Playbook - Friday Dec 03,2021 06:16 pm

Dec 03, 2021

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IT’S BAAAAACK! — The White House Correspondents’ Association announced today that its annual dinner — informally and half-self-effacingly known as “Nerd Prom” — will return in-person next spring. After a two-year pandemic hiatus, D.C. journos and pols will be back mingling in the cavernous ballroom of the Washington Hilton on April 30, 2022. All guests and dinner staff will be required to be vaccinated.

JOBS REPORT BREAKDOWN — What’s the big takeaway from the November jobs report? Well, it’s a bit of a “mixed picture,” per the AP.

— The topline numbers: “The government reported Friday that private businesses and other employers added just 210,000 jobs in November, the weakest monthly gain in nearly a year and less than half of October’s gain of 546,000,” AP’s Christopher Rugaber writes. “But other data from the Labor Department’s report painted a much brighter picture. The unemployment rate plummeted from 4.6% to 4.2% as a substantial 1.1 million Americans said they found jobs last month.”

— The big picture: “The U.S. economy still remains under threat from a spike in inflation, shortages of labor and supplies and the potential impact of the omicron variant of the coronavirus. But for now, Americans are spending freely, and the economy is forecast to expand at a 7% annual rate in the final three months of the year, a sharp rebound from the 2.1% pace in the previous quarter, when the delta variant hobbled growth.”

— Important context, from WaPo’s Philip Bump: “The odds are good that the November total is being underreported — as happened nearly every other month this year.”

At the White House, President JOE BIDEN touted the low unemployment rate while nodding at Americans’ widespread pessimism about the economy — and touting his Build Back Better package as a way to change those perceptions.

“Despite this progress, families are anxious — anxious about Covid, anxious about the cost of living, the economy more broadly; they’re still uncertain. I want you to know I hear you,” Biden said. “It's not enough to know that we're making progress. You need to see it and feel it in your own lives, around the kitchen table, in your checkbooks.”

Biden also took a moment to thank Congress for passing the continuing resolution late Thursday night — averting a government shutdown — and said he would sign it into law later today. “Funding the government isn't a great achievement. It’s the bare minimum of what we need to get done,” Biden said. “But in these times of bipartisan cooperation, that's worth recognition.”

Biden’s voice sounded hoarse, leading some on Twitter to poke a little fun at the president. After his prepared remarks, Fox News’ Peter Doocy asked Biden if he was OK. Biden said he had tested negative for Covid-19 and chalked it up to “a 1-and-a-half-year-old grandson who had a cold who likes to kiss his Pop.” The clip

PLEADING THE FIFTH — “ JOHN EASTMAN, the attorney who helped former President DONALD TRUMP pressure then-Vice President MIKE PENCE to overturn the 2020 election, has asserted his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, according to a letter he delivered to the Jan. 6 committee explaining his decision not to testify,” Kyle Cheney reports . “Eastman’s decision is an extraordinary assertion by someone who worked closely with Trump to attempt to overturn the 2020 election results.” The letter

Happy Friday afternoon.

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SCOOP — The New Yorker’s DAVID REMNICK recently hosted ANDREAS MALM , an environmental extremist who favors blowing up pipelines and other acts of what he calls “intelligent sabotage” — and what others call terrorism — on Remnick’s “New Yorker Radio Hour” podcast. Malm, for instance, has pointed to the destruction of Nigerian oil infrastructure in 2016, when oil workers were also kidnapped, killed and injured, as a model. (Malm told Remnick he doesn’t favor “harming” people, and “wouldn't recommend” kidnapping.)

Remnick’s controversial September podcast episode — casually titled, “Should the Climate Movement Embrace Sabotage?” — was criticized at the time, mostly by conservatives. “@NewYorker literally platforming a terrorist,” tweeted JERYL BIER. BENJAMIN WEINGARTEN called Remnick an “insurrectionist.” STEPHEN L. MILLER said Remnick was “soft endorsing terror acts against national pipelines in the name of climate.”

But the podcast didn’t just catch the attention of a few right-wingers on Twitter. Now, Betsy Woodruff Swan and Zack Colman report that a DHS threat center in Texas, housed in the Fort Worth Police Department, issued a four-page “situational awareness bulletin,” published for the first time exclusively by POLITICO, raising terrorism concerns about what Malm told Remnick.

The intelligence bulletin, “Activist Encouraging Pipeline Sabotage,” was shared with law enforcement officials across the United States. Read Betsy and Zack’s excellent — and nuanced — report, “How to blow up a podcast.”

JAN. 6 AND ITS AFTERMATH

WHO’S TALKING — The Jan. 6 select committee has expanded its investigation to Arizona officials, Arizona Republic’s Yvonne Wingett Sanchez and Ronald Hansen report. “Those working with the bipartisan select committee have talked with members of the Arizona Legislature, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, the county recorder, the secretary of state and other Arizona residents familiar with the efforts to pressure Congress to reject President Joe Biden’s win in Arizona and elsewhere. … Maricopa County Supervisor CLINT HICKMAN, a Republican who headed the county board until Jan. 6, was among those questioned about the period leading up to the riot. … The interview touched broadly on the board’s activities surrounding the November 2020 election, he said.”

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CONGRESS

COUNTDOWN TO DEFAULT — A big D.C. think tank altered its projection for how long lawmakers have to lift the debt limit before a default, NYT’s Alan Rappeport reports. “The United States faces a default sometime between Dec. 21 and Jan. 28 of next year if Congress does not act to raise or suspend the debt ceiling, the Bipartisan Policy Center warned on Friday. The projection was a more narrow window than the nonpartisan think tank previously provided last month and the group suggested that the actual deadline, or X-date, could be in the earlier end of that range.”

THE GOP CIVIL WAR — House Minority Leader KEVIN MCCARTHY at a news conference this morning said that the recent behavior of GOP Reps. PAUL GOSAR, MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE and LAUREN BOEBERT are “things we would not want to deal with,” per our colleague Nicholas Wu. He also said he had talked to Majority Leader STENY HOYER about the issue and lowering the temperature across Congress.

THE PANDEMIC

REINFECTION ON THE RISE — According to a new study, a prior coronavirus infection will not provide much by way of protection against the Omicron variant. “Scientists in South Africa say omicron is at least three times more likely to cause reinfection than previous coronavirus variants such as beta and delta, according to a preliminary study published Thursday,” WaPo’s Amy Cheng reports . “Statistical analysis of some 2.8 million positive coronavirus samples in South Africa, 35,670 of which were suspected to be reinfections, led researchers to conclude that the omicron mutation has a ‘substantial ability to evade immunity from prior infection.’”

WAITING GAME — The supply is there for Covid-19 vaccines and boosters across the U.S., but retail suppliers are struggling to keep up with the demand. “Vaccine seekers in some states face waits of days or weeks for doses as local health officials hustle to improve access to meet surging demand,” WSJ’s Sharon Terlep, Tarini Parti and Sarah Nassauer report. “CVS Health Corp., Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. and Walmart Inc., which are facing staffing shortages, now say they may not be able to accommodate people without appointments.”

AMERICA AND THE WORLD

FROM RUSSIA, WITH DEMANDS — “The Kremlin said Friday that President VLADIMIR PUTIN will seek binding guarantees precluding NATO’s expansion to Ukraine during a planned call with U.S. President Joe Biden, while the Ukrainian defense minister warned that Russia could invade his country next month,” AP’s Vladimir Isachenkov and Yuras Karmanau report in Moscow.

— Biden told reporters this morning that he is in contact with European allies and Ukraine: “What I am doing is putting together what I believe to be — will be the most comprehensive and meaningful set of initiatives to make it very, very difficult for Mr. Putin to go ahead and do what people are worried he may do.”

FOR YOUR RADAR — “Talks to revive the Iran nuclear deal stalled on Friday, with Western allies warning the effort was a step closer to collapse after Tehran’s negotiating team barely inched from its tough stance over a grueling week of negotiations,” WSJ’s Laurence Norman reports.

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THE WHITE HOUSE

THE VACANT ADMINISTRATION — WSJ’s Andrew Ackerman writes that Biden’s “desire to appease both liberal and moderate Democrats has left several top Wall Street regulatory posts unfilled, slowing the implementation of President Biden’s agenda nearly a year into the administration.” Biden’s pick of SAULE OMAROVA to be comptroller of the currency and JEROME POWELL to return as Fed chair have drawn ire from the moderate and progressive wings of the party, respectively. Plus, there are “also vacancies in top roles at the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., and additional positions on the Fed’s board of governors to fill.”

BEYOND THE BELTWAY

RACIAL RECKONING — AP’s Aaron Morrison, Helen Wieffering and Noreen Nasir have a deep dive on how racism runs rampant in the nation’s top military institutions.“The nation’s military academies provide a key pipeline into the leadership of the armed services and, for the better part of the last decade, they have welcomed more racially diverse student bodies each year. But beyond blanket anti-discrimination policies, these federally funded institutions volunteer little about how they screen for extremist or hateful behavior, or address the racial slights that some graduates of color say they faced daily.

“Less attention has been paid to the premiere institutions that produce a significant portion of the services’ officer corps – the academies of the U.S. Army, the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Merchant Marine. Some graduates of color from the nation’s top military schools who endured what they described as a hostile environment are left questioning the military maxim that all service members wearing the same uniform are equal.”

PLAYBOOKERS

OUT AND ABOUT — Queen Elizabeth II was honored with the second annual Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Woman of Leadership Award at the Library of Congress on Thursday night. British Ambassador Karen Pierce accepted on her behalf. The evening included a cocktail reception and awards ceremony with performances by the U.S. Military Band, the American Pops Orchestra and Soloman Howard, followed by a private dinner in the member’s room. SPOTTED: House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Martha Stewart, James Rothschild and Nicky Hilton Rothschild, David Rubenstein, Saudi Ambassador Princess Reema bint Bandar Al-Saud and Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden.

MEDIA MOVE — Brad Bosserman will be chief revenue officer of Laura McGann and Mark Bauman’s new media company launching early next year. He most recently was head of corporate and brand partnerships at POLITICO. … Mikayla Bouchard is joining CNN as managing editor of Washington beats. She previously was an assistant editor in the NYT’s D.C. bureau.

TRANSITION — Mason DiPalma will be deputy comms director for the Republican State Leadership Committee. He currently is comms director for Rep. Anthony Gonzalez (R-Ohio).