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Presented by The American Petroleum Institute (API): The unofficial guide to official Washington. | | | | |  | | By Eugene Daniels | | | |  | DRIVING THE DAY | | Happy Saturday, y’all! JUST THAT KIND OF WEEK — Merriam-Webster’s top words of the week: “minor” and “gaffe.” “President [JOE] BIDEN made a statement using the former word in a manner that many people felt qualified as an example of the latter,” the dictionary website wrote, citing the president’s remarks about Russia and Ukraine on Wednesday. — The latest on that topic: “Top U.S. and Russian diplomats agreed Friday to keep talking in the standoff over Ukraine, even though their meeting produced no movement in the crisis,” AP’s Matthew Lee and Jamey Keaten report. Secretary of State ANTONY BLINKEN told Russian Foreign Minister SERGEY LAVROV the U.S. “would give Russia written responses to Moscow’s proposals next week and suggested the two would likely meet again shortly after that — offering some hope that any invasion would be delayed for at least a few more days.” — The U.S. Embassy in Kyiv announced that “[t]he first shipment of assistance recently directed by President Biden to Ukraine” arrived Friday night , containing nearly 200,000 pounds of “lethal aid, including ammunition for the front line defenders of Ukraine.” — Sen. CHRIS MURPHY (D-Conn.), who took part in a bipartisan delegation of senators that traveled to Ukraine to meet with President VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY this week, wrote an article on Medium about the experience. Two notable bits: (1) “The Biden team encouraged our trip, and a week before the trip was set to leave, Secretary of State Antony Blinken made a rare visit to Capitol Hill to brief us on the issues he recommended we raise in Kyiv.” (2) Murphy writes that Zelenskyy gave the group “a good list” of the sanctions that would be most effective in preventing Russian President VLADIMIR PUTIN from invading his country. ON THE DOMESTIC FRONT — The big story of the week is about voting and elections — the collapse of Biden’s efforts to enact voting rights reforms, and the ongoing revelations about former President DONALD TRUMP’s plans to overturn the results of the 2020 election, and both men’s attempts to use executive orders to bend things to their will. WHAT’S THE PLAN NOW, JOE? — As I first reported Friday night, civil rights leaders are profoundly frustrated that voting rights legislation has no path forward for the issue in the Senate. But they’re also undeterred in demanding action on the issue. What that means: (1) Far from easing the pressure on the White House and the Senate, that reality increases it. In the eyes of these civil rights leaders, with the Senate stalled out, Biden simply has no excuse for not aggressively implementing new executive actions on the topic. Rev. AL SHARPTON says that he and other civil rights leaders plan to meet with Biden to press him on the issue. And since they’re asking for things they believe the White House can ostensibly do without Congress, the only barrier is what’s actually within the president’s power (the limits of which, it’s worth noting, are a topic of debate). (2) They want EOs with teeth. “I am supportive of executive orders that are substantive; I’m not supportive of executive orders that are symbolic,” MARC MORIAL, president of the National Urban League, said. “They’ve got to keep this issue elevated and they’ve got to continue to use the bully pulpit. They cannot let this fall into a second tier issue. The president’s got to use his power to continue to educate the people about the importance of voting rights. We think that the president, the vice president, should be talking about democracy every week.” (3) Beyond EOs, they want the DOJ to “escalate the pushback” against states that have enacted restrictive voting measures, in the words of MELANIE CAMPBELL, CEO of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation. (But, as a Justice Department official noted, the DOJ often operates with some degree of independence and doesn’t typically preview enforcement actions — which could leave the Biden White House in a lurch.)
| | | | A message from The American Petroleum Institute (API): Massive, intertwined, fundamental. Words to describe meeting the world’s growing need for energy while ushering in a lower-carbon future is It’s the opportunity of our time, and progress is underway in America. America leads the world in emissions reductions, and America’s natural gas and oil supply chain is committed to accelerating progress. See our plan to drive technology breakthroughs, mitigate emissions from operations, and partner, innovate and advance cleaner fuels together. | | | WAS THAT THE PLAN, DONALD? — “Law enforcement officials, members of Congress and the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol are digging deeper into the role that fake slates of electors played in efforts by Trump to cling to power after he lost the 2020 election,” as NYT’s Luke Broadwater and Alan Feuer report . “The false slates, put forth in seven contested swing states, appear to have been part of a strategy by Mr. Trump’s allies to disrupt the normal workings of the Electoral College. After election officials in those states sent official lists of electors who had voted for Mr. Biden to the Electoral College, the fake slates claimed that Mr. Trump had won.” Trumpworld was subject to a cascade of news Friday, as the former president marked his first full year out of office: — Revealed: the executive order prepared for then-President Trump that would have directed the secretary of Defense to seize voting machines used in 2020 as part of an attempt to hold on to power despite losing a free and fair election. Our Betsy Woodruff Swan landed the mega-scoop. The never-issued order was “among the records Trump’s lawyers tried to shield from Jan. 6 investigators.” (Seriously, take a minute to read it if you haven’t already.) — The identity of the “Trump-world mystery figure who sued [Verizon] to block the Jan. 6 committee from getting his phone records” has been confirmed: It’s DAN SCAVINO, Trump’s longtime social media manager. Nicholas Wu and Kyle Cheney have the details at Congress Minutes. — A retired judge gave federal prosecutors the green light to review more than 3,000 communications obtained from “18 electronic devices seized from RUDY GIULIANI’s home and offices in Manhattan last spring,” reports WaPo’s Shayna Jacobs. “The Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office has been investigating Giuliani’s dealings in Ukraine while he was representing Trump. Prosecutors have said Giuliani might have acted as an unregistered foreign agent, which was the basis for the agents’ search.” — Speaking of Rudy … “IGOR FRUMAN, one of Rudy Giuliani’s former associates, was sentenced to one year and one day in prison on Friday for his role in a scheme to funnel Russian money into U.S. elections,” writes CNN’s Kara Scannell.
| | | | A message from The American Petroleum Institute (API):   | | | Good Saturday morning, and thanks for reading Playbook. Drop us a line: Rachael Bade, Eugene Daniels, Ryan Lizza, Tara Palmeri. FOR YOUR RADAR — A “who’s who” of anti-vaccine activists are planning to descend on the national capital this weekend “for a rally against Covid-19 vaccine mandates,” reports NBC’s dystopia beat reporter, Ben Collins . “Organizers of the rally, ‘Defeat The Mandates: An American Homecoming,’ say they are expecting tens of thousands of attendees who will begin their protest at the Washington Monument at 10:30 a.m. ET Sunday.” BIDEN’S SATURDAY — The president has nothing on his public schedule.
| | | | JOIN NEXT FRIDAY TO HEAR FROM GOVERNORS ACROSS AMERICA : As we head into the third year of the pandemic, state governors are taking varying approaches to public health measures including vaccine and mask mandates. "The Fifty: America's Governors" is a series of live conversations featuring various governors on the unique challenges they face as they take the lead and command the national spotlight in historic ways. Learn what is working and what is not from the governors on the front lines, REGISTER HERE. | | | | | PHOTO OF THE DAY
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Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov greet each other before their meeting in Geneva on Friday. | Alex Brandon, Pool/AP Photo | | | PLAYBOOK READS | | 9 THINGS WE READ THAT STUCK WITH US … — Today, as Roe v. Wade marks its 49th anniversary, a new CNN poll finds that 69% of Americans are opposed to overturning the landmark Supreme Court decision. And as a ruling looms that would do exactly that, CNN’s Ariel Edwards-Levy notes that the possibility provokes a major intensity gap: Thirty-five percent “say they’d be angry if Roe were completely overturned, with another 25% saying they’d be dissatisfied. By comparison, just 12% would be satisfied, and 14% happy.” Related reading: NYT Opinion’s Ilana Panich-Linsman and Lauren Kelley have an interactive talking with women who got abortions before Roe. … For WaPo, James Robenalt looks at Jan. 22, 1973, the day Roe was decided, LBJ died and HENRY KISSINGER flew to Paris to end the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. — This was Wall Street’s worst week since the start of the pandemic. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq “wrapped up their worst weeks since March 2020,” report WSJ’s Hardika Singh and Anna Hirtenstein, while the Dow had its worst weekly performance since Oct. 2020. Why? Investors are “worried about the prospect of higher interest rates and their effect on valuations.” — Surprising phrase of the day: “modern supply-side economics.” That’s how Treasury Secretary JANET YELLEN described the Biden administration’s approach to the economy Friday. NYT’s Alan Rappeport reports that Yellen “cast in a new light many policies the Biden administration has already been promoting: infrastructure investment, more money to combat climate change and spending on early childhood education to let more parents join the labor force. She said this version of supply side economics, rather than spurring growth by cutting taxes and loosening regulation, will make the economy more productive while reducing inequality.” Curious how JOE MANCHIN will react to this line from Yellen’s remarks: “The lagging labor force participation rate is driven in large part by a combination of factors that disincentivize work, such as inadequate paid leave and high child care costs.” — As the Covid pandemic enters its third year, CDC Director ROCHELLE WALENSKY says the agency needs help to fight coronavirus. “The CDC alone can’t fix this,” she told Erin Banco , calling for a complete overhaul of the U.S. public health system. “One could say you could dump money into a system and try and get it to work better. But you can’t,” Walensky said. “You can’t create a workforce. You have to upskill the workforce.” — Will Russia invade Ukraine? FIONA HILL thinks so. Here’s what the Russia expert told Puck’s Julia Ioffe : “If we call [Putin’s] bluff, he has to do something, because otherwise none of his threats are credible. … There’s a lot of East Europeans and a lot of Ukrainians saying, Oh, this is just a bluff, he keeps doing this. But you know, the more they say that also, the more likely it is he’ll do something to teach them a lesson.” Read more for Hill’s description of the moment Trump realized “how Russia was like North Korea” after having “thought that Putin was more than that” — Good news: ”Wage growth is finally at its highest level in decades.” Bad news: It’s being outpaced by inflation. “Although average hourly wages rose 4.7 percent last year, overall wages fell 2.4 percent on average for all workers, when adjusted for inflation,” writes WaPo’s Abha Bhattarai. — Blocked: Biden’s vaccine mandate for federal employees. As Reuters reports, U.S. District Judge JEFFREY BROWN, a Trump appointee based in Texas, ruled Friday that the administration couldn’t require America’s 3.5 million federal workers to be vaccinated, and blocked the government from disciplining them. — LGBTQ advocacy groups are split over what to do about Sen. KYRSTEN SINEMA. This week, the Arizona Democrat lost the support of several groups associated with the progressive wing of the party, including NARAL and EMILY’s List. But NBC’s Matt Lavietes reports that “major LGBTQ advocacy groups — which are normally united on advancing a progressive agenda — have been divided in their response to the openly bisexual senator’s actions.” (Among those groups: the Human Rights Campaign and Lambda Legal.) — Home-schooling is on the rise — and some parents are sticking with it. “The proportion of American families home-schooling at least one child grew from 5.4% in spring 2020 to 11.1% in fall 2021,” reports L.A. Times’ Laura Newberry , with a look at that trend in California.
| | | | A message from The American Petroleum Institute (API):   | | | CLICKER — “The nation’s cartoonists on the week in politics,” edited by Matt Wuerker — 16 keepers GREAT WEEKEND READS, curated by Ryan Lizza: — “Anatomy of a murder confession,” by The Marshall Project’s Maurice Chammah: “Texas Ranger James Holland became famous for cajoling killers into confessing to their crimes. But did some of his methods — from lying to suspects to having witnesses hypnotized — ensnare innocent people, too?” — “13,000 Pounds at 118 Miles Per Hour,” by Ben Ryder Howe in New York: “It was the deadliest wreck in years. And the man behind it was one of the FBI’s most notorious informants.” — “GIFs Are For Boomers Now, Sorry,” by Vice’s Amelia Tait: “The humble image file was once everywhere, but it’s increasingly falling out of favour among young internet users.” — “Leaked Messages Show Gettr in Crisis Mode Over Joe Rogan Criticism,” by Mother Jones’ Dan Friedman and Ali Breland: “They suggest deeper involvement in the MAGA company by a controversial Chinese billionaire than previously acknowledged.” — “Why Millions Think It Is Trump Who Cannot Tell a Lie,” by NYT’s Thomas Edsall: “The capitulation to and appeasement of Trump by Republican leaders is actually setting up even worse possibilities than what we’ve lived through so far.” — “America’s Next Food Craze Is Buried in Appalachia,” by Outside’s Rowan Jacobsen: “All over America’s ancient eastern mountains, there’s an organism that lives underground, tethered to tree roots, waiting to be hunted. It’s among the world’s rarest and most expensive foods, and it grows in a wide range of conditions. But there’s only one guy in the country who really knows how to find it. Rowan Jacobsen joins him in the search for the Appalachian truffle.” — “Marianne Williamson: A Politico or Apolitical?” by Casey Schwartz in the NYT Magazine: “The outsider from the 2020 presidential race ponders what’s next.”
| | | | 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. | | | | | | | PLAYBOOKERS | | Marjorie Taylor Greene gave Liz Cheney an, um … unintentional seal of approval, flagging the latter’s conservative chops during a visit on Steve Bannon’s show. “[Cheney] is not a Democrat,” Greene said. “As a matter of fact, she has a very conservative voting record. More conservative than some of my Republican colleagues, by the way.” Mitt Romney sent out a remembrance of Meat Loaf, who memorably supported his 2012 presidential campaign. Arnold Schwarzenegger was involved in a four-car crash Friday in Los Angeles, but is uninjured, according to his spokesman. IN MEMORIAM — “Thich Nhat Hanh, Zen Master and Political Reformer, Dies at 95,” by NYT’s Seth Mydans: “A monk with global influence and an ally of Martin Luther King, he championed what he called ‘engaged Buddhism,’ applying its principles in pressing for peace.” NEW NOMINEE — The White House announced Biden will nominate Dara Lindenbaum as an FEC commissioner, as Axios’ Lachlan Markay scooped . She’s currently a member at Sandler Reiff Lamb Rosenstein & Birkenstock. STATE DEPARTMENT DEPARTURE LOUNGE — Jonathan Pershing is leaving his post as the administration’s No. 2 climate diplomat to return to the Hewlett Foundation, NYT’s Lisa Friedman scooped. HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Reps. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio) and Rick Crawford (R-Ark.) … Kendra Barkoff Lamy of SKDK … Josh Earnest … Carol McDonald … Reuters’ Jim Oliphant … Jack St. John … Dave Schnittger of Squire Patton Boggs … Dan Scandling of APCO Worldwide … Ado Machida … Josh Riley … Rob Collins of S-3 Public Affairs … Melissa Byrne … Rebecca Wasserstein … POLITICO’s Zach Warmbrodt and Jesse Shapiro … CNN’s Sarah Jorgensen … WaPo’s Julie Zauzmer Weil … Skadden’s Ken Gross … Francie Harris of the Department of Commerce … Brianna Ehley of Finsbury Glover Hering … AHIP’s Adam Beck … NBC’s Ashley Codianni … former FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn … Buckley Carlson of Rep. Jim Banks’ (R-Ind.) office … former Rep. Melissa Bean (D-Ill.) (6-0) … Kevin Bohn … Heather Kennedy … Derek Dye … Ginny Simmons … Nicholas Monck … Laura Allen … Cara Baldari … Anna Sperling McAlvanah … David Sanders … Chase Burgess THE SHOWS ( Full Sunday show listings here): CBS“Face the Nation”: Secretary of State Antony Blinken … Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) … Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) … Scott Gottlieb … focus group on Biden’s first year in office. CNN “State of the Union”: Secretary of State Antony Blinken … Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) … Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) … Alyssa Farah Griffin and David Urban. NBC“Meet the Press”: Secretary of State Antony Blinken … Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) … Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) … new polling. Panel: Peter Baker, Carlos Curbelo, Symone Sanders and Kristen Welker. ABC“This Week”: Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) … Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) … Anthony Fauci. Panel: Sarah Isgur, Donna Brazile, David Sanger and Michel Martin. MSNBC “The Sunday Show”: House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) … Howard Dean … Ari Berman … Donna Edwards … Tim Wise. Gray TV “Full Court Press”: Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) … Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.). FOX “Fox News Sunday,” guest-anchored by Shannon Bream: South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem … Mike Pompeo. Panel: Marc Thiessen, Julie Pace and Mo Elleithee. CNN“Inside Politics”: Panel: Asma Khalid, Jeff Zeleny, Rachael Bade, Astead Herndon and Susan Glasser. 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.
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