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The power players, latest policy developments, and intriguing whispers percolating inside the West Wing. | | | | |  | | By Eli Stokols and Lauren Egan | Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from Allie Bice. Send tips | Subscribe here| Email Eli | Email Lauren For the first few weeks, it took White House staffers by surprise. There would be a quiet knock at their door (if their office had a door). And then an unexpected visitor — their boss — walked in. Since taking over as chief of staff, JEFF ZIENTS has spent much of his days moving through the West Wing. Often, instead of responding to questions via email, he’ll do so in person, popping upstairs to see senior adviser ANITA DUNN, or down to the basement to see speechwriters and checking in on various teams clustered throughout the building, according to several staffers familiar with Zients’ roaming. Recently, after dropping in on National Security Adviser JAKE SULLIVAN, he joined the NSC’s all-staff meeting that had been underway. Zients has also wandered across West Executive Drive and into the EEOB, as he did last week for Ike’s Taco Tuesday lunch, the staffers said. “Jeff is definitely getting his steps in,” one staffer quipped. Zients is known as an experienced manager comfortable with delegating assignments down the chain of command and setting internal deadlines for goals, results and determining next steps. But he has also spent his early time in the chief of staff role brandishing his accessibility and building relations. It’s not just the random stop-bys and taco noshing. Starting this week, he will start holding town halls on campus to facilitate more direct communication among staff. The first is set for Friday. The meetings, which will be open to several dozen aides chosen by lottery to attend in person, will provide “an opportunity to hear from senior staff on policy and priorities and for staff to provide feedback to the Chief of Staff and White House leadership,” one White House official told West Wing Playbook. The plan is for Zients and one or two other senior officials to give a short presentation at the outset and then open things up for roughly 45 minutes of questions, the official said. It’s not clear how frequently the gatherings will take place, possibly every few months, but more are in the offing to accommodate those who aren’t invited to this week’s, which will take place in the EEOB’s South Court auditorium. And all administration staffers will get a Zoom link to watch live. The town hall idea comes on top of other traditions Zients has implemented inside 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., including Wednesday morning bagel deliveries from Call Your Mother, the D.C. franchise he helped start. Zients has also penned hand-written thank you notes to several staffers and continues to utilize the chief of staff’s office — and outdoor patio — for Friday happy hours. According to people familiar with the gatherings, he’s held recent happy hours for members of the budget team and for those involved in the reopening of the Navy Mess, the basement cafeteria where staffers with access often eat breakfast and lunch. Zients is a familiar face to many given his work leading the administration’s early Covid-19 response and, last year, a quiet effort to manage staff transitions following the midterms. And at Biden’s request last year, he helped oversee the building and launch of the government website for the administration’s student loan forgiveness program, working with the Office of Management and Budget and Dept. of Education to ensure the site, where people can determine if they qualify, was operational. The role, which has not been reported on previously, was a reprisal of Zients’ initial work with then-Vice President Biden to fix the glitch-prone online healthcare marketplace during the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act roll-out in 2013. Despite all that history, he also embarks on the staff outreach from the perch of a relative outsider in a White House filled with longtime Biden loyalists. His predecessor, RON KLAIN, had worked with the president for decades and had years-long relationships with other staffers and Democratic lawmakers. Zients, who is an increasingly active caller and texter (although this reporter’s most recent text to Zients went unresponded to ��), has worked to keep in touch with staff in the building and a growing number of key allies on the Hill. According to a person familiar with the conversation, he texted Rep. PRIMILA JAYAPAL (D-Wash.), the leader of the House Progressive Caucus who had a close relationship with Klain, on Tuesday to discuss her Seattle Times op-ed praising Biden’s economic agenda. MESSAGE US — Are you ATTENDING ZIENTS’ FIRST TOWN HALL? We want to hear from you. And we’ll keep you anonymous! Email us at westwingtips@politico.com. Did someone forward this email to you? Subscribe here!
| | | | GO INSIDE THE 2023 MILKEN INSTITUTE GLOBAL CONFERENCE: POLITICO is proud to partner with the Milken Institute to produce a special edition "Global Insider" newsletter featuring exclusive coverage, insider nuggets and unparalleled insights from the 2023 Global Conference, which will convene leaders in health, finance, politics, philanthropy and entertainment from April 30-May 3. This year’s theme, Advancing a Thriving World, will challenge and inspire attendees to lean into building an optimistic coalition capable of tackling the issues and inequities we collectively face. Don’t miss a thing — subscribe today for a front row seat. | | | | | | | | | With help from the White House Historical Association Which president was the first to hold a State Dinner for an Italian president? (Answer at bottom.)
| | | |  President Joe Biden meeting invited guests at Ulster University on April 12, 2023 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. | Charles McQuillan/Getty Images | DISPATCH FROM IRELAND: Is this what they call a bad omen? Ahead of Biden’s speech in Belfast, “local police lost documents that detailed sensitive security information related to the president's visit,” USA Today’s JOEY GARRISON and KEVIN JOHNSON report. “The documents contained names of Belfast police and postings, but nothing related to the Secret Service's operations, which oversees the president's security during foreign trips, or its security plans.” ON A MORE POSITIVE NOTE… Dublin’s Rascals Brewing Company is offering a free pizza and a half priced drink to the president should he stop by. “We weren’t sure where exactly he’s going to be, so we put the message out there, like sending up a bat signal, only it’s a Rascals pizza signal,” the restaurant’s marketing manager JOE DONNELLY told the Independent.ie. Biden, so far, has not swung by. GOOD POOL DAY: Biden popped into McAtee’s deli and bakery in Dundalk after arriving in Ireland and it was, well, vintage Biden. The clerk called him “Joe,” which Bloomberg’s JENNIFER JACOBS caught on video. He told the pool he bought “10 pounds of pastry” and, according to MATT VISER of the Washington Post, questioned “why the hell my ancestors left. It’s beautiful here.” ON BIDEN’S IRISHNESS: And if you read one piece contextualizing Biden’s trip — and Irishness — within his political persona and positioning, we’d recommend this one by the Financial Times’ EDWARD LUCE. “Even more often than he recites Heaney, Biden tells voters that being middle class is a ‘value’, not an economic measure,” Luce writes. “His account of that value — getting up when you are knocked down, making a better life for your children, judging a person’s honesty by the sweat on their brow — is indistinguishable from how he depicts Irishness.” AND IN CASE YOU HAVEN’T GOTTEN ENOUGH IRISH CONTENT: Our PETER CANELLOS details past presidents’ visits to Ireland, writing that the country “is where U.S. presidents go to go home again. No other ancestral homeland has anything like its mystical allure.” WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE WANTS YOU TO READ: This piece by NYT’s CARL HULSE about how Mississippi Republican Sen. CINDY HYDE-SMITH’s move to block a judicial nominee is “the last straw for liberal judicial advocacy groups that have been clamoring for Senate Democrats to quit honoring the more than century-old ‘blue slip’ process for district court vacancies.” Deputy press secretary ANDREW BATES emailed the piece around to reporters. WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE DOESN’T WANT YOU TO READ: This opinion piece by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s PATRICIA MURPHY bemoaning the Democratic National Committee’s decision to hold its 2024 nominating convention in Chicago, rather than Atlanta. “But more important for Democrats than anything, Atlanta and the South represent the fight for civil rights in a way that no other part of the country can,” Murphy writes. “Those fights should be at the center of every choice the DNC makes, including its selection of a 2024 convention city.” WEDDING DEETS: BRYAN RAFANELLI, the wedding planner behind the marriage of the president's granddaughter NAOMI BIDEN and PETER NEAL, released behind-the-scenes photos of the couple’s wedding reception in the White House’s State Dining Room back in November 2022. Brides’ LILLY BLOOMQUIST has more details.
| | TRAVEL OFFICE CHANGES: ADRIAN CULEA, who wrote and recited a haiku over the press charter airplane’s intercom to thank the traveling press at the end of the president’s 2021 summer trip to Europe, recently left his post as director of the White House Travel Office. He is now an adviser on congressional affairs at the Department of Energy. — SOPHIA RUBIO has also departed the White House, where she was serving as associate director of the travel office, and is now a public engagement specialist at the Department of Commerce. THE CARSTENS GUARANTEE: ROGER CARSTENS, the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, made the rounds on TV networks Wednesday morning to call on Russia to allow American Embassy officials to visit detained Wall Street Journal reporter EVAN GERSHKOVICH. Carstens “pledged to find a way to secure his release and that of another American, PAUL WHELAN,” WSJ’s LOUISE RADNOFSKY, GORDON LUBOLD and ANN M. SIMMONS report.
| | WH WANTS YOU TO GET AN ELECTRIC CAR ALREADY: The Environmental Protection Agency unveiled a sweeping new set of pollution rules Wednesday aimed at incentivizing the use of battery-powered vehicles, part of the Biden administration’s larger climate goals, our TANYA SNYDER, JAMES BIKALES and ALEX GUILLÉN report. Under the new rules, “carbon dioxide emissions for new cars and light trucks would need to fall by 49 percent on average from 2027 to 2032. The agency is also proposing tightened standards for medium- and heavy-duty vehicles, with the latter including dump trucks, school buses and tractor-trailers.” FOR THE NERDS: Alex breaks down the 1,475 pages of EPA’s proposed regulations here. NEW FRONT IN THE ABORTION WARS: Amidst state’s efforts to restrict abortion access, the Biden administration is looking to add new language to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act that would “bar health care providers and insurers from turning over information to state officials for the purpose of investigating, suing or prosecuting someone for seeking or providing a legal abortion,” our ALICE MIRANDA OLLSTEIN reports. The change aims to “offer stronger legal protections to people who obtain abortions in their state or who cross state lines for the procedure, as well as their doctors and loved ones.”
| | White House prepares for legal and political battle on abortion pill (WaPo’s Meryl Kornfield, Rachel Roubein and Laurie McGinley) US would support Colombian, Panama forces to slow migration (AP’s Elliot Spagat and Rebecca Santana) Russia jamming U.S. smart bombs in Ukraine, leaked docs say (POLITICO’s Lara Seligman)
| | | | DOWNLOAD THE POLITICO MOBILE APP: Stay up to speed with the newly updated POLITICO mobile app, featuring timely political news, insights and analysis from the best journalists in the business. The sleek and navigable design offers a convenient way to access POLITICO's scoops and groundbreaking reporting. Don’t miss out on the app you can rely on for the news you need, reimagined. DOWNLOAD FOR iOS– DOWNLOAD FOR ANDROID. | | | | | | | | | JARED BERNSTEIN, a member of Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers, was not a fan of 2014 Oscar-award winning comedy-drama “Birdman,” about a former superhero actor who gets involved in a Broadway production. “Everyone said ‘Oh, you’ve got to see Birdman.’ Well, all’s I can say is it totally flew over my head,” Bernstein wrote in his “On the Economy” blog back in January 2015. “Mostly I didn’t get it, but the parts I thought I got seemed trite (the tortured Ed Norton character who can only be real on stage…gimme a break!).” “What am I missing?” Bernstein added. “I’m obviously no English major and perhaps all the symbolism eluded me. But I think it’s a hoax.”
| | | | On Jan. 14, 1964, President LYNDON B. JOHNSON welcomed President ANTONIO SEGNI to the White House. During the State Dinner, they dined on Maryland crab meat, filet of beef, waffled potatoes, brie cheese, mocha mousse, and more. A CALL OUT — Do you think you have a harder trivia question? Send us your best one about the presidents with a citation and we may feature it. Edited by Eun Kyung Kim and Sam Stein. | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |  |
