Playbook PM: Bracing for a ‘viral blizzard’

From: POLITICO Playbook - Friday Dec 17,2021 06:26 pm

Dec 17, 2021

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We might not get a white Christmas, but a “viral blizzard” could be on the way.

That’s according to MICHAEL OSTERHOLM, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, who told CNN that “in the next three to eight weeks … millions of Americans are going to be infected with this virus, and that will be overlaid on top of Delta, and we're not yet sure exactly how that's going to work out.”

Here’s a roundup of some of today’s top coronavirus news:

1) The question of how to protect children has been on the minds of millions for months. Two pieces of news suggest that some clarity may be coming.

— First, Pfizer and BioNTech have officially submitted a request for FDA approval of their vaccine for children as young as 12, Katherine Ellen Foley writes . “In the new data, their vaccine was 100 percent effective at preventing symptomatic Covid-19 in children who received the vaccine up to four months after their second dose.”

— Meanwhile, the Biden administration is rolling out a new policy today to help curb coronavirus infections in schools while preserving kids’ ability to learn. “The strategy includes a ‘test to stay’ approach: Instead of mandatory quarantines for students identified as close contacts of a Covid-positive peer, those students could remain in school if they test negative for the virus at least twice during the week after an exposure,” NBC’s Erika Edwards and Heidi Przybyla report.

2) The prospect of returning to offices and normal work settings is getting murkier. “Companies forging ahead on in-person work face the question of whether to require booster shots, as the need for extra protection against the Omicron variant becomes increasingly clear,” NYT’s Emma Goldberg and Lananh Nguyen write . “The Washington Post, which is bringing its employees back to the office by mid-February, told staff they will have to get boosters and submit to weekly testing. Few other private employers have come out publicly on the issue, though the Metropolitan Opera, the National Football League and several universities have put in place some form of booster requirement.”

3) NYT’s Mitch Smith writes of the continued state of “constant crisis” that awaits doctors and nurses in hospitals. “The medical workers have cried in the dimly lit hallways. They have seen caseloads wane, only to watch beds fill up again. Mostly, they have learned to fear the worst.”

4) The House Oversight Committee released a new report this morning, finding that the Trump administration made “deliberate efforts to undermine the nation's coronavirus response for political purposes,” CNN’s Lauren Fox and Daniella Diaz report . “Many pieces of the report were a summation of documents and interviews they've released throughout the year, but the report also outlined new examples where health guidance was adapted despite officials' concerns about the potential harmful effects of the changes.”

5) New research shows that white supremacists and far-right extremists are deploying Covid conspiracy theories on Telegram to “expand their reach and recruit followers,” AP’s David Klepper and Lori Hinnant report in Paris. “The tactic has been successful: Nine of the 10 most viewed posts in the sample examined by the researchers contained misleading claims about the safety of vaccines or the pharmaceutical companies manufacturing them. One Telegram channel saw its total s jump tenfold after it leaned into Covid-19 conspiracy theories.”

Happy Friday afternoon.

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CLICKER — WaPo’s fact checker extraordinaire Glenn Kessler posted his year-end wrapup, “The biggest Pinocchios of 2021,” this morning. “In compiling this list, which has no particular order, we mostly focused on claims that earned Four Pinocchios during the year,” Kessler writes. In total, about a dozen Republicans appear on the list, with Democrats represented by President JOE BIDEN, TERRY MCAULIFFE and D.C. Mayor MURIEL BOWSER.

Speaking of statements that need a hearty fact check … Former President DONALD TRUMP has another … uh, bizarre, interview out today with journalist Barak Ravid, shared exclusively with the “Unholy” podcast. In it, Trump uses anti-Semitic tropes claiming that “evangelical Christians love Israel more than the Jews in this country. It used to be that Israel had absolute power over Congress. And today, I think it's the exact opposite. And I think Obama and Biden did that. … The Jewish people in the United States either don't like Israel or don't care about Israel. I mean, you look at The New York Times: The New York Times hates Israel, hates them. And they’re Jewish people that run the New York Times.” The clip … The full episode … More from Nick Niedzwiadek

AFTERNOON READS — POLITICO Magazine: “Superspreaders and ‘Cancel Culture’ and Mar-a-Lago, Oh My: Our Insane Year in 21 Headlines” … Katelyn Fossett in today’s Women Rule: “The state of women in 2021, in 12 numbers”

JAN. 6 AND ITS AFTERMATH

WHO’S TALKING … BRANDON STRAKA, a Trump ally who spoke at the Jan. 5 “Stop the Steal” rally and entered the Capitol with the pro-Trump mob the next day, “has provided investigators with information they say ‘may impact the government's sentencing recommendation,’” Kyle Cheney reports. “It's an indication that Straka, one of the few Jan. 6 defendants who is also of interest to congressional investigators, has cooperated with prosecutors in a substantive way.”

WHO’S NOT … ROGER STONE met with the Jan. 6 select committee this morning, albeit for a brief and unproductive session. “Stone emerged from the deposition after only an hour-and-a-half and told reporters he invoked the Fifth Amendment, which offers protection against self-incrimination, ‘not because I have done anything wrong, but because I am fully aware of the House Democrats' long history of fabricating perjury charges,’” CNN’s Zachary Cohen and Holmes Lybrand report . “‘I question the legitimacy of this inquiry,’ Stone said, ‘based on the fact that Speaker Pelosi rejected the appointment of Republicans to this committee and seated two anti-Trump Republicans. This is witch hunt 3.0.’”

CONGRESS

TAKING ATTENDANCE — One area where Congress is finding bipartisan agreement as the year comes to close: proxy voting. Anthony Adragna writes for Congress Minutes that 20 senators missed the first of a series of votes this morning. Here’s Anthony: “We get it. It sucks to be stuck here going into the holidays. Sorry, this is part of the job description. Believe it or not, members of the press and staff on the Hill also have holiday plans we'd rather be doing. But come to an agreement rather than skipping out on a basic part of the job!”

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.

INFRASTRUCTURE IN ACTION

— The bipartisan infrastructure bill signed into law a month ago is set to revive “a polluter’s tax that will inject a new stream of cash into the nation’s troubled Superfund program,” WaPo’s Dino Grandoni reports. “The renewed excise fees, which disappeared more than 25 years ago, are expected to raise $14.5 billion in revenue over the next decade and could accelerate cleanups of many [Superfund] sites that are increasingly threatened by climate change.”

The EPA today announced that 49 toxic waste sites would receive new cleanup funding totaling $1 billion from the infrastructure law. The sites include “a neighborhood in Florida with soil contaminated from treating wooden telephone poles, a former zinc and copper mine in Maine laced with leftover metals, and an old steel manufacturer in southern New Jersey where parts of the Golden Gate Bridge were fabricated.”

— The Grio’s April Ryan writes that many Black communities are hoping America’s “history of redlining and racist transportation design practices may finally be addressed” as federal funds go to “infrastructure projects intended to reconnect Black neighborhoods with the worlds they’ve long been shut out from.”

For example: “In Richmond, Virginia, a very real conversation is being had about capping Interstate 95 in the area or constructing a bridge over at least a portion of the 179-mile stretch of Virginia’s I-95 superhighway. The objective is to reconnect Jackson Ward, a once culturally and economically rich and predominantly Black district that was split by the construction of I-95.”

THE ECONOMY

INFLATION WATCH — WSJ’s Peter Santilli and Gwynn Guilford have a helpful visual guide to what the historic inflation levels of fuel, cars, food, apparel and medical care actually look like.

POLICY CORNER

IMMIGRATION FILES — Biden’s retooled “Remain in Mexico” policy has led to “Chaos, confusion and disillusionment” for those who were first enrolled in the program, WaPo’s Arelis Hernández reports in El Paso . “The Trump-era program — formally known as Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) — returns border-crossers to Mexico to await the outcomes of their asylum claims and resumed earlier this month under court order. Although the Biden administration said it has made changes to the program that make it more humane, several of the first enrollees interviewed by The Washington Post said they did not understand documents they were asked to sign, did not have access to lawyers and were puzzled about why they were not released along with some of their compatriots.”

STEP INSIDE THE WEST WING: What's really happening in West Wing offices? Find out who's up, who's down, and who really has the president’s ear in our West Wing Playbook newsletter, the insider's guide to the Biden White House and Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details that you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today.

ALL POLITICS

2022 WATCH — Long Beach Mayor ROBERT GARCIA is entering the race to replace retiring Rep. ALAN LOWENTHAL (D-Calif.), Jeremy White reports. “Garcia is the first Latino and first openly gay mayor in Long Beach’s history. He has strong connections to California’s LGBTQ community, which could provide a pillar of support for his campaign. He also built his profile in recent years as a prominent surrogate for Vice President KAMALA HARRIS’ presidential campaign and then as an enthusiastic supporter of President Joe Biden.”

BEYOND THE BELTWAY

ABORTION FILES — A new wrinkle in the debate over abortion and the viability of Roe v. Wade is emerging, as medical advancements are seeing babies “surviving earlier than once thought possible, intensifying debate about how early in a baby’s development to use aggressive lifesaving treatments,” WaPo’s Ariana Eunjung Cha reports. “Abortion opponents cite cases like Zeke’s to challenge the concept of fetal viability — a central issue in a case argued earlier this month before the U.S. Supreme Court court about Mississippi’s abortion restrictions that has the potential to overturn nearly 50 years of abortion precedents. The antiabortion movement is harnessing advances in neonatology to suggest that the notion of viability laid out in Roe v. Wade … will soon be obsolete as a matter of science and of law.”

AMERICA AND THE WORLD

FROM RUSSIA, WITH DEMANDS — Russia submitted a draft treaty this morning, requesting that NATO “halt all military activity in Eastern Europe and Central Asia in a sweeping proposal that would establish a Cold War-like security arrangement, a goal that is unlikely to be realized but poses a challenge to diplomatic efforts to defuse a military standoff along Russia’s border with Ukraine,” NYT’s Andrew Kramer and Steven Erlanger report in Kyiv, Ukraine . “The demands went far beyond the current conflict between Ukrainian government forces and Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. And most were directed not at Ukraine, which is threatened by the troop buildup, but at the United States and Ukraine’s other Western allies.”

FOR YOUR RADAR — The scheduled opening of a new military base — Marine Corps Base Camp Blaz — is “the latest sign that Guam, a remote U.S. outpost in the Pacific Ocean, is becoming more crucial for military planners as they sharpen their focus on Asia, and tensions with China rise,” WSJ’s Alastair Gale reports in Dededo, Guam. “U.S. military officials say that the island, already home to Air Force and Navy bases, would be a major staging point for bombers, submarines and troops in any conflict involving the U.S. in the Pacific, including any clash over Taiwan if the U.S. were to become involved.”

PLAYBOOKERS

SPOTTED: Northwell Health CEO Michael Dowling hosted a dinner at the Viceroy Hotel on Thursday with Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Hyphen’s Aqeela Sherrills, who anchors the White House’s Community Violence Intervention Collaborative, and other stakeholders to discuss gun violence prevention.

FIRST IN PLAYBOOK — Carole Johnson, the White House Covid-19 response team’s testing coordinator, is moving to HHS to be director of its Health Resources and Services Administration. Senior HHS official Tom Inglesby is headed the other way, joining the White House Covid-19 response team to focus on expanding testing. He was the health department’s senior adviser for the Covid response and directed the Johnson Hopkins Center for Health Security prior to joining the administration.

TRANSITION — Kylie Nolan is now deputy comms director for the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs GOP under Rob Portman (R-Ohio). She most recently was comms director for Rep. Adrian Smith (R-Neb.), and is a Cory Gardner and Pat Roberts alum.

WELCOME TO THE WORLD — Chris Irvine, news editor at the Washington Examiner, and Elizabeth Irvine, VP of marketing at MarketMuse, early this morning welcomed Sophie Rebecca Irvine, who came in at 8 lbs and joins big brother Finley.

BONUS BIRTHDAY: Bloomberg’s Chris Collins

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