With help from Allie Bice and Daniel Payne Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. Did someone forward this to you? Subscribe here! Have a tip? Email us at transitiontips@politico.com. If you’ve ever texted with the White House’s comms shop, keep in mind: Years after President JOE BIDEN leaves office, his aides’ text messages will be released to the public, just like paper documents, just like emails. Biden’s White House is the first in history to fully embrace texting as a mode of communication, more than a decade after many Americans adopted the technology as a quicker and easier way to communicate than email or phone. One of the reasons for the White House’s lag behind the rest of America (besides Washington’s general lack of tech savvy) is that previous administrations didn’t want to take the time to figure out how texting could comply with public records laws. “The same way that emails have to be preserved and captured because they could shine a light on the decision making and the policy making of an administration, if texts are being used in the same way, they should be saved and preserved and made transparents,” said LISA ROSENBERG, executive director of Open the Government, a coalition that promotes transparency. “The mode of communication doesn’t matter. It’s the substance.” Rather than preserve aides’ text exchanges, President BARACK OBAMA opted to simply bar aides from texting on their government-issued phones, according to his former staffers. President DONALD TRUMP initially did the same thing, former staffers confirmed. “Texting would clearly have created an added efficiency that I would have welcomed to communicate both with staff and members of the media,” said SEAN SPICER, Trump’s first White House press secretary. But as many journalists were aware, some Trump aides used personal cell phones to text. That was allowed as long as they saved the texts, perhaps by taking a screenshot and then emailing it to their government accounts. At least one former White House staffer said that didn’t happen, though. And some staffers used disappearing message apps — like Signal and WhatsApp — where messages could not be archived. In early 2018, Trump’s chief of staff JOHN KELLY banned personal cell phone use in the West Wing complex as he tried to crack down on leaks. The phones had to be left at home, in cars or placed in White House lockers. Soon after, because of repeated requests, select senior staff were given the ability to text on their government phones, three former Trump aides said. But by then, they said, staffers were so accustomed to emailing and calling that the method wasn’t fully utilized. And some worked in parts of the White House complex where cell phone service was spotty. The Biden White House has cracked the text preservation nut. It’s employing a software program on government-issued cell phones that automatically archives text messages as required by federal law. But even under Biden, only certain categories of aides, including those who communicate with the media, are allowed to text about official business. The White House declined to say how many staffers total can text. “For the sake of responsiveness and engagement, select White House staff, including certain members of the communications and press teams, are allowed to text for official business,” a White House official said. “Those texts are preserved, consistent with the Presidential Records Act.” The stats on how texting has overtaken American life are plentiful: 81 percent of Americans text regularly; 97 percent of adults text weekly, according to Pew Research Center. Six billion messages are sent each day in the U.S. according to CTIA, a trade association representing the wireless communications industry. As the practice became more popular, the National Archive and Records Administration has worked with the White House counsel’s office to develop its own guidance on the use of text messaging in the federal government. “Neither the Federal Records Act nor the Presidential Records Act prohibit the use of text messages, whether on work cell phones or personal cell phones,” the National Archives public and media communications wrote in a statement. “However, in 2014, both the FRA and the PRA were amended to require government employees who create or send a record using a non-official electronic messaging account to either copy or forward such record to their official account within 20 days.” But saving messages is challenging because of the difficulty associating them with individual accounts, trouble with searches, and ownership concerns involving technology companies. For those reasons and more, the NARA guidance indicates that personal accounts should be used in limited cases. The Presidential Records Act, which requires a president to preserve and eventually make public records relating to their official duties, was passed after RICHARD NIXON tried to hide White House tapes as part of Watergate. It makes records available to the public through the Freedom of Information Act beginning five years after the term ends though the president may restrict access to certain categories of records — national security, for example — for up to 12 years and even after that the current president could invoke executive privilege, experts say. The odds are good, however, that Biden aides’ texts will be released to the public at some point, emojis and all. It’s just a question of when. PSA — We’re going to be experimenting with some new items and sections. Tell us what you like and what you hate. Do you work in the Biden administration? Are you in touch with the White House? Are you ADAM SCHULTZ? We want to hear from you — and we’ll keep you anonymous: transitiontips@politico.com. Or if you want to stay really anonymous send us a tip through SecureDrop, Signal, Telegram, or Whatsapp here. You can also reach Alex and Theo individually. We just want to talk about Outkast, Adam! | 
