You’re going to Disneyland! (just not the White House)

From: POLITICO West Wing Playbook - Tuesday Apr 11,2023 10:04 pm

Apr 11, 2023

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Hosting championship teams has been a White House tradition for decades. But, during the Biden era, some professional sports leagues feel like the White House is shutting them out.

So far, the Golden State Warriors are the only 2022 champs from the four major pro sports leagues to go to the White House for a celebratory event.

With a new baseball season underway, the Houston Astros have yet to toast their 2022 World Series win at the White House. The Los Angeles Rams also have not gone to the White House for their 2022 Super Bowl victory. And with the Stanley Cup playoffs beginning in a few days, the Colorado Avalanche players are still waiting for their White House event celebrating their 2022 title.

“It is certainly an expectation, and this trend is disappointing,” said a top official from a professional league, who asked not be named because they were not authorized by their employer to comment publicly.

Biden is a sports fan and the championship ceremony is certainly the kind of bipartisan, nonpolitical event he relishes. But current and former White House officials say coordinating these visits can be tricky. The White House typically tries to schedule championship events when a team is already going to be in the D.C. area for a game, but the timing doesn’t always work out.

White House officials also noted the Biden administration had a backlog of championship events after Covid kept teams from the White House during the pandemic’s early years — and after some teams boycotted the Trump administration.

Even still, league officials said they felt like Biden hasn’t shown much interest in the custom, certainly not on the level as BARACK OBAMA, who relished in hanging out with championship winning teams or even DONALD TRUMP, who canceled events in a state of pique but also hosted his famous fast food buffet for the Clemson Tigers’ football squad.

Some sports league officials who spoke with West Wing Playbook said they perceived part of the problem to be rooted in the Office of Public Engagement, which typically plans these types of White House events. OPE has had some turnover, with STEVE BENJAMIN taking over earlier this month as the office’s third director since the start of the Biden administration.

Some league officials also noted that despite Biden’s own interest in sports, the administration as a whole hasn’t appeared to elevate the leagues and their players compared to previous administrations.

That dynamic played out clearly last month when the White House hosted the cast of “Ted Lasso” — Apple TV+’s hit comedy about a fictional soccer coach — to discuss mental health care. League officials said the White House missed an opportunity to invite actual pro athletes to the White House, noting many of them have been vocal about the importance of mental health and also have significantly larger social media followings and cultural relevance than the “Ted Lasso” stars.

A White House official said that the Biden administration has worked with a number of athletes to highlight important causes such as gun violence, criminal justice reform and mental health. Last month, they noted, Biden met in the Oval Office with DAMAR HAMLIN, the Buffalo Bills safety who went into cardiac arrest during an NFL game in January. There was no press coverage of the event, which was made public via a note from an official in a White House pool report.

The lack of championship events extends to college sports, too. The University of Georgia football team, which has won back-to-back national championships, has yet to visit the White House despite public calls from players and Georgia’s congressional leaders for a victory ceremony.

Although first lady JILL BIDEN and Louisiana State University basketball star ANGEL REESE appear to have resolved their beef about whether NCAA women’s runner-up Iowa should join LSU at a White House victory celebration, Reese and her team could be waiting a while to step foot in the West Wing.

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POTUS PUZZLER

With help from the White House Historical Association

Which president developed the first flower garden on the White House grounds?

(Answer at bottom.)

The Oval

TIMING IS EVERYTHING: While the president spends the next week abroad in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, a bit of chaos waits for him at home, our ADAM CANCRYN reports. With a widening divide over gun violence, fallout from leaked Pentagon documents, continued efforts to restrict abortion access and questions about his 2024 reelection plans, what’s happening domestically could eclipse Biden’s time in his ancestral homeland.

And the politics awaiting the president in Belfast aren’t easy either. With Biden expected to meet with the main parties of Stormont, Northern Ireland’s devolved legislative body that was created as part of the Good Friday Accords, several politicians were already sounding off.

Baroness KATE HOEY, a Northern Ireland politician, said any attempts to restore Stormont would “backfire” and looked askance at his strong ties to Ireland. "We all know where his allegiance lies and it’s not with the pro-Union community in Northern Ireland,” she said in a recent interview. JIM ALLISTER, another Unionist politician in Northern Ireland, also called Biden’s stance “anti-British and anti-Unionist.”

WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE WANTS YOU TO READ: This deeply reported look at how second gentleman DOUG EMHOFF found his voice on the issue of anti-Semitism by the LA Times’ COURTNEY SUBRAMANIAN. Emhoff, a Reform Jew and not a regular temple-goer, found himself reacting to increasing public displays of anti-Semitism. And recognizing the importance of his role as the first Jewish spouse of a president or vice president, he looked for opportunities to respond. The story details his private conversations about the issue with his wife, Vice President KAMALA HARRIS, and Biden, and follows him to Auschwitz, where he marked Holocaust Remembrance Day earlier this year.

WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE DOESN’T WANT YOU TO READ: This story by CNN’s PRISCILLA ALVAREZ about how “U.S. asylum officers are frustrated by policy whiplash under Biden, and some are considering leaving their posts, as administration officials contemplate restarting controversial Trump-era border policies that would largely limit who could seek refuge in the U.S. ‘At this point, I can’t tell the difference between Biden immigration policy and Trump immigration policy,’ one asylum officer told CNN.”

BEHIND THE MASCOT: White House press secretary KARINE JEAN-PIERRE revealed on Twitter it was deputy press secretary EMILIE SIMONS in the Easter Bunny mascot during Monday’s press briefing. In an email to West Wing Playbook, Simons said following in the bunny steps of MEGHAN HAYS and SEAN SPICER, among others, was a “once in a lifetime hopportunity.” [Grrrrrrrooooooooaaaannnnnnnnn]

AND THE DNC HOST IS… Chicago! The city, which beat out Atlanta and New York, will host the 2024 Democratic National Convention taking place from Aug. 19-22. The Chicago Sun-Times’ LYNN SWEET has more details here.

Send in your restaurant recs please!

THE BUREAUCRATS

PERSONNEL MOVES: AMANDA FUCHS MILLER is now deputy assistant secretary for higher education programs in the Office of Postsecondary Education at the Education Department, DANIEL LIPPMAN has learned. She most recently was general counsel for Sen. BRIAN SCHATZ (D-Hawaii).

AS WE TOLD YOU: The State Department announced on Tuesday that MATTHEW MILLER, longtime Democratic operative and former Biden administration flack, will be joining the ranks as its spokesman. You’re probably wondering right now: ‘Wait, didn’t I know this already? Is this Monday’s newsletter???’ Fret not. Yes, you heard the news from us yesterday, courtesy of Lippman. It’s now official.

Agenda Setting

A UNIFIED FRONT: Republican and Democratic lawmakers are demanding answers about the leaked Pentagon documents, which included information about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Senate Majority Leader CHUCK SCHUMER on Tuesday said he’s requested classified briefings for members on the matter when lawmakers return from recess next week, our ANTHONY ADRAGNA and KATHERINE TULLY-MCMANUS report.

[OPRAH VOICE] ‘YOU GET AN ELECTRIC VEHICLE!’: The Biden administration's push for electric vehicles may come at a perfect time, as analyses of the growing market indicate Americans have pent-up demand for battery-powered cars and trucks, our MIKE LEE and DAVID FERRIS report. That could help speed up the president’s goal of getting more battery-powered vehicles on the road.

ARTIFICIAL RIGHTS: ALONDRA NELSON, the former principal deputy director for science and society at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, spoke to NYT’s EZRA KLEIN about the importance of an artificial intelligence Bill of Rights, an effort to regulate AI practices, something the administration has publicly supported.

“One of the things I hope that we can do coming out of this moment of ChatGPT and the immense possibilities of what automated technologies can bring to the world, both good and bad, is to think about the choice architecture that’s being presented to us,” Nelson said. Listen to their full conversation here.

IT’S NO BILL OF RIGHTS BUT … WSJ’s RYAN TRACY reports that the Biden administration is considering regulations on AI features like ChatGPT, with the Commerce Department on Tuesday issuing a “public request for comment on what it called accountability measures, including whether potentially risky new AI models should go through a certification process before they are released.”

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