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Presented by Mastercard: POLITICO's must-read briefing on what's driving the afternoon in Washington. | | | | | |  | | By Eugene Daniels, Garrett Ross and Eli Okun | | | COVID SURGE RAGES IN WASHINGTON — NBC Washington’s @TomLynch_: “DC reports record shattering 3,763 new covid cases over the weekend (Friday through Sunday) for average of 1,254 daily cases. 1 covid death reported.” — The pandemic appears to have claimed another stunning milestone: “The U.S. population grew at a slower rate in 2021 than in any other year since the founding of the nation,” according to Census data released today. — Wall Street watchers are “dialing back their growth projections for next year as fading hopes for the president's sweeping economic agenda and heightened concerns about the new Covid variant have suddenly clouded the outlook,” Kate Davidson reports. — And here’s a happy thought for your afternoon: “I don’t think it’s possible that we’re going to eradicate this infection, because we’ve only eradicated one infection in human history, and that’s smallpox,” Dr. ANTHONY FAUCI tells The Atlantic’s Peter Nicholas. — OK, so here’s an actual happy thought: The FDA is expected to authorize Pfizer and Merck’s coronavirus treatment pills as soon as this week, which “could ease the burden” on stressed hospitals, Bloomberg’s Josh Wingrove, Jennifer Jacobs and Robert Langreth report. JAN. 6 ANNIVERSARY — Former President DONALD TRUMP announced today that he will hold a news conference in 16 days at Mar-a-Lago. The significance? That date is Jan. 6, 2022 — exactly one year after the deadly pro-Trump riot at the U.S. Capitol. In a statement announcing the presser, Trump continued to push the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him, decried the Jan. 6 select committee’s work and “RINOs,” and downplayed the gravity of what happened during the attack on the Capitol. He said he would touch on all of these topics in his speech. “Until then, remember, the insurrection took place on November 3rd, it was the completely unarmed protest of the rigged election that took place on January 6th,” Trump said. More from Insider This comes just a day after Speaker NANCY PELOSI said Congress is planning a “solemn observance” of Jan. 6. Meanwhile, Rep. SCOTT PERRY (R-Pa.) said today that he will not voluntarily comply with a request for information from the Jan. 6 select committee, claiming that the panel is “illegitimate, and not duly constituted under the rules of the U.S. House of Representatives,” in a pair of tweets. But, as Kyle Cheney and Nicholas Wu write , “despite legal challenges to the committee’s legitimacy, federal courts have repeatedly found the panel to be duly authorized and pursuing a legitimate legislative goal.” Perry was reportedly the first sitting House member from whom the committee has asked for information and an interview. What do you do the day after you storm the Capitol? N.Y. Mag’s Kerry Howley answers that in a look at three Jan. 6 rioters : “Hundreds of people caught on-camera committing what was arguably sedition went home to families that feared them, strangers who admired them, federal agents already setting up surveillance. Over a year’s time, many of their lives would be transformed. They would discover the dark state of American prisons. They would be fired and divorced and bankrupt and subject to extraordinary kindness from strangers. They would become fodder for the kind of conspiracies that had summoned them to D.C. in the first place. They would become a price paid for the right to stand on a dais and say, You’ll never take back our country with weakness.” Good Tuesday afternoon. | | | | A message from Mastercard: Holiday cheer is in the air and shoppers are returning to stores in force, including millions of small businesses across America. Mastercard SpendingPulse data shows that total retail sales are up nearly 30% compared to last year. By empowering small businesses with digital payment solutions, data insights and the tools to operate more efficiently, Mastercard is committed to helping them during this holiday season, and thrive in the future. | | | CLICKER — “The Year In Charts,” by Steven Rattner, an Obama Treasury alum, for NYT Opinion: “U.S. Covid Deaths Raced Ahead … Blue Counties Got Vaccinated … The Labor Market Tightened … Wages Jumped For Workers At The Bottom … Inflation Came Back To Bite Us … Household Balance Sheets Grew Stronger … Biden’s Approval Rating Slumped … Slim Majorities Inhibited Biden … The Climate Outlook Stayed Bleak … Gun Violence Surged (Again).” (IR)RECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES MINEWORKERS PRESS MANCHIN ON BBB — The United Mine Workers of America, a powerful labor union with roots in Sen. JOE MANCHIN’s home state is asking the West Virginia Democrat to reconsider his opposition to the Build Back Better Act. “We are disappointed that the bill will not pass,” UMWA President CECIL ROBERTS said in a statement. “We urge Senator Manchin to revisit his opposition to this legislation and work with his colleagues to pass something that will help keep coal miners working, and have a meaningful impact on our members, their families and their communities.” CNN’s Matt Egan writes that the group “called out several items that it believes are crucial to its members and communities, including extending the fee paid by coal companies to fund benefits received by victims of black lung,” CLIMATE ACTIVISTS KEEP THEIR FINGERS CROSSED — Meanwhile, climate advocates and some lawmakers are still hoping that BBB’s climate provisions can be rescued, Josh Siegel and Kelsey Tamborrino report . Specifically, they’re targeting “a sweeping series of tax credits aimed at encouraging a transition to clean energy. But they don't know how close that might be to the House-passed reconciliation bill’s $550 billion in overall climate and clean energy incentives — more than $300 billion of which was directed toward tax credits. … ‘We have no choice but to forge a path forward. The planet is warming and we are already experiencing violently weird weather all the time,’ Sen. BRIAN SCHATZ (D-Hawaii) told POLITICO.” | | | | POLITICO TECH AT CES 2022 - We are bringing a special edition of the POLITICO Tech newsletter to CES 2022. Written by Alexandra Levine and John Hendel, the newsletter will take you inside the most influential technology event on the planet, featuring every major and emerging industry in the technology ecosystem gathered together in one place. The newsletter runs from Jan. 5-7 and will focus on the public policy related aspects of the gathering. Sign up today to receive exclusive coverage of the Summit. | | | | | THE PANDEMIC IT HAPPENS — Scientists racing to keep up with the pandemic are taking a more, uh … unsavory route than usual. “Public-health experts traditionally track the spread of an infectious disease through clinical data such as test results, hospitalizations and deaths. As Covid-19 continues to spread, scientists are turning to an alternative measure: wastewater analysis,” WSJ’s Josh Ulick writes . “SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, can be shed in an infected person’s feces. By sampling sewage at waste-treatment plants, scientists can get a picture of how widespread Covid-19 has become in a community, and how its prevalence changes over time.” REPORT CARD — After releasing our “State Pandemic Scorecard” last week, Dan Goldberg sat down with top officials from the states that received the higher marks for insight into how they did it. “Our nine policy hackers — who came from states as diverse as Nebraska and Hawaii — provided some of the most candid assessments we’ve yet heard about the challenges state leaders faced, lessons they learned and the humbling experience of realizing just how powerless they often were to protect people’s lives or to convince people to protect themselves. Importantly, they also identified some critical problems that still need to be fixed as we enter year three of the pandemic.” THE ECONOMY SUPPLY CHAIN OF COMMAND — As American consumers spend more and more, the world is feeling the effects as the U.S. economy is “sucking in imports, straining global supply chains and pushing up prices,” WSJ’s Tom Fairless writes in Frankfurt . “The force of the American expansion is also inducing overseas companies to invest in the U.S., betting that the growth is still accelerating and will outpace other major economies.” AN ECONOMIC HISTORY LESSON — NYT’s Neil Irwin writes that the key to understanding the current state of the economy may be found in the Reagan administration. “It is easy to recall the 1980s as being a boom time for the United States economy — a time of gleaming excess that, among other things, powered RONALD REAGAN to a landslide re-election in 1984. But the decade didn’t start out quite so sunny. And understanding the history of how the economy went from bust to boom in the early 1980s offers a surprising model for optimism about how the American economy could progress in the next couple of years. All it would take is for the Federal Reserve to pull off a delicate economic pivot that is the mirror image of the one it managed four decades ago.” ALL POLITICS REDISTRICTING READ — An evenly split panel of Republicans and Democrats in California approved a new congressional map late Monday night. The takeaway: “more challenging districts for Republican incumbents without substantially undermining the prospects of vulnerable Democrats,” Jeremy White writes . “While Democrats are poised to absorb California’s overall loss of a House seat due to declining population, the emerging map could point to Democrats holding ground or picking up seats.” HOW IT HAPPENED — The 2020 primary in Los Angeles County that saw malfunctions and exceedingly long lines “was even more chaotic and poorly planned than previously indicated, according to an unpublished consultants’ report obtained by POLITICO,” Kim Zetter writes . “The report holds implications for other local governments as they increasingly adopt the same kinds of election changes implemented last year in Los Angeles County … Those include an expansion of early voting; a switch from neighborhood precincts to vote centers where anyone registered in the county can cast ballots; and the use of electronic devices instead of paper ‘poll books’ to verify voters’ eligibility.” The report | | | | 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. | | | | | VALLEY TALK BIG TECH ON THE HOT SEAT — Lawmakers are urging tech companies to “limit the visibility and reduce the risks of a website that provides detailed instructions about suicide and has been linked to a trail of deaths,” NYT’s Gabriel Dance and Megan Twohey report. “Responding to a New York Times investigation of the site published this month, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce on Monday released a bipartisan statement requesting briefings from search engines, web-hosting companies and other tech companies whose services might have been leveraged by the suicide site.” The original investigation BEYOND THE BELTWAY DEEP IN THE HEART — Texas Gov. GREG ABBOTT has a tradition of delivering pardons each Christmas season. But this year, there’s one name among the potential recipients that is drawing most of the attention: GEORGE FLOYD. “Abbott has not said whether he will posthumously pardon Floyd this year for a 2004 drug arrest in Houston by a former officer whose police work is no longer trusted by prosecutors. Texas’ parole board — stacked with Abbott appointees — unanimously recommended a pardon for Floyd in October,” AP’s Paul Weber writes in Austin. AMERICA AND THE WORLD KHASHOGGI LATEST — Months before JAMAL KHASHOGGI’s murder, his fiance, HANAN ELATR, “surrendered her two Android cellphones, laptop and passwords when security agents surrounded her at the Dubai airport. They drove her, blindfolded and in handcuffs, to an interrogation cell on the edge of the city, she said. There, she was questioned all night and into the morning about her fiance,” WaPo’s Dana Priest reports . It was also there that they installed a powerful spyware — Pegasus — on Elatr’s phone. “The new analysis provides the first indication that a UAE government agency placed the military-grade spyware on a phone used by someone in Khashoggi’s inner circle in the months before his murder.” PLAYBOOKERS WOOHOO! — Mediaite named Rachael, Eugene, Ryan and Tara to their “Most Influential in News Media 2021” list. Coming in at No. 1 on the rundown: Tucker Carlson. The full list ENGAGED — Briana Pittelli, an account director at ROKK Solutions, and Michael Crespo got engaged on Friday. | | | | A message from Mastercard:   Mastercard is helping entrepreneurs thrive during this holiday season and into the future. 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