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The power players, latest policy developments, and intriguing whispers percolating inside the West Wing. | | | | |  | | By Daniel Lippman, Eli Stokols, Lauren Egan and Ben Johansen | Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Eli | Email Lauren In the extremely insular, high-striving ecosystem that is the West Wing, no status symbol is more important than one’s office space. Where one works is, quite literally, a reflection of power, even if the offices themselves kinda suck. Recently, something monumental took place with respect to this form of White House hierarchy — three of the most coveted offices opened up as top aides departed for the Biden campaign. But now, after some jockeying, those spots all have new occupants. Read into this as much as you care: BRUCE REED, deputy chief of staff for policy and a longtime Biden hand, has moved into the office vacated by former senior adviser MIKE DONILON, according to a White House official. Donilon had left the White House to join the Biden reelection campaign, leaving behind an office highly desired for its location: it’s the closest to the Oval Office and sits next to Biden’s dining room. But the move wasn’t much of a strain for Reed, whose previous office was less than 20 feet away. Reed’s new space has a storied history. It was occupied at various times by top aides under President BARACK OBAMA: DAN PFEIFFER, DAVID PLOUFFE and DAVID AXELROD. But the digs aren’t exactly as glamorous as one would expect for such a prestigious workplace — the office is very small and has a window so tiny that very little natural light gets through. The other highly sought-after office has gone to long-time Biden aide ANNIE TOMASINI, who was recently promoted to White House deputy chief of staff focusing on personnel, operations and the president’s schedule and travel. Her spot previously belonged to JEN O’MALLEY DILLON, the former White House deputy chief of staff who also left for the Biden campaign. Tomasini’s new office, which lacks any windows (just like many other basement-level West Wing offices) sits down the hall from the Oval, a bit further than Reed’s but close to chief of staff JEFF ZIENTS’ corner office. “It’s two of the most coveted offices in the world, steps away from the Oval. Why would there be any sensitivities about who sits there?” one Biden staffer said when West Wing Playbook last wrote about the office musical chairs. (Most White House staffers work across the White House in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.) Deputy chief of staff NATALIE QUILLIAN also will get an upgrade in the latest White House office shuffle. After working in the northwest part of the West Wing basement, she will move into the office that previously belonged to Reed. Axelrod called the location of Reed's office “incomparable,” but said a downside is that the president can drop in any moment — and he recounted one memorable example. “I was lunching in my office with the journalist MARK LEIBOVICH, dining on a care package from Manny’s, my favorite Chicago deli,” Axelrod told West Wing Playbook. “Leibo was eating corned beef, and I was holding a gigantic turkey leg when the boss walked in. He was incredulous, and said, ‘What is this? King Henry’s court?’” Plouffe said in an email that despite its proximity to the Oval Office, he sometimes saw mice running around the area, which also had poor cell reception — a common complaint throughout the White House. “It doesn’t have much of a view, but that’s for the best, so you don’t regret all you’re missing outside the building,” he said. MESSAGE US — Are you ELIZABETH ROBERTS, deputy director of writing at the White House? 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!
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| | U.S. TO BEGIN GAZA AIRDROPS: President Biden on Friday announced that the U.S. will begin air dropping humanitarian aid and supplies into Gaza, our LARA SELIGMAN, ALEX WARD and Eli report. The shift in policy comes a day after the deadly attack by Israel’s military on an aid convoy in Gaza that appeared to have left more than a hundred dead. That attack, one official said, provided “the final impetus” for the president to sign off. The decision also signals that the administration is running out of patience with Israeli Prime Minister BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, who U.S. officials have been imploring to help open up aid corridors. “The truth is, aid flowing into Gaza is nowhere near enough now. It’s nowhere nearly enough. Innocent lives are on the line and children’s lives are on the line,” Biden said of the current state of aid to Gaza. “We should be getting hundreds of trucks in, not just several.” That blunt assessment was echoed by National Security Council spokesman JOHN KIRBY in the briefing room Friday. But even after Kirby said the current aid getting to Gaza “is not meeting the need,” he stopped short of criticizing Israel more directly. POST-SOTU TRAVEL: As most presidents do, Biden will hit the road following Thursday’s State of the Union address. On Friday, he’ll head to Pennsylvania (probably so he can at least spend the night in Wilmington) before heading to Georgia next Saturday, the White House announced Friday afternoon. The events will take place in the Philadelphia and Atlanta areas. LET’S TALK ABOUT SEX, BABY: During his first year in office, Biden thought a lot about loneliness during the pandemic and asked aides on several occasions how young people could “make love” under such duress. That’s one, uh, titillating detail from a TYLER PAGER deep dive into the many ways Biden’s presidency has been informed by the conversations with regular folks: his grandkids, the parishioners he chats with about the renewable fuel standard after mass, the gardner at his Wilmington home complaining about inflation. Big on human interactions and reading his briefing books (if not much else), Biden has tried to operate as president much as he did in the Senate. And staffers have learned to be ready for his reactions to the information he absorbs from the outside (MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” which the president watches while working out, also falls into this category). Like Obama, Biden reads letters from regular Americans — but, Pager reports, not as many. Obama read 10 a night, while Biden reads five over the weekend and his “aides have asked staffers in the correspondence office to select letters that skew toward the positive.” WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE WANTS YOU TO READ: This piece by Axios’ ZACHARY BASU, about how the GOP stance on reproductive rights since Roe v. Wade was overturned has quickly become one of the party’s biggest political vulnerabilities heading into the 2024 election. After the Alabama Supreme Court declared that embryos created through in-vitro fertilization treatment should be considered children, Republicans have struggled to take a stance on the issue — which Americans overwhelmingly support. And as Basu highlights, one explanation for the silence is a bill co-sponsored by 125 House Republicans, including Speaker MIKE JOHNSON last year, declaring that life begins “at the moment of fertilization.” “The Biden campaign and other Democratic groups have a colossal war chest and no shortage of opportunities to hammer Republicans on reproductive rights — with more land mines still looming,” Basu writes. Deputy press secretary ANDREW BATES shared the piece on X. WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE DOESN’T WANT YOU TO READ: This op-ed by WaPo’s FAREED ZAKARIA, who argues that Biden’s support of Israel makes him look “ineffective and weak.” Although the U.S. has urged the Israeli government for a humanitarian pause and for a greater protection of Palestinian civilians, the plea has fallen on deaf ears, making American policy in Israel “hapless, ineffective and immoral,” Zakaria writes. He adds that the president’s language on Israeli bombings in Gaza being indiscriminate and over the top “suggests weakness and passivity.” COVER HIS EARS: The Biden campaign is increasingly taking steps to shield the president from pro-Palestinian protests at events, EVERYONE at NBC reports (seriously, so many bylines!). Making events smaller, withholding their exact location from the public until the last minute and avoiding college campuses are all steps aides have taken to prevent the demonstrations, as well as in one case, considering hiring a private company to vet attendees. The efforts have proven successful, as there have been zero disruptions at White House or campaign events since he was interrupted a dozen times at a Virginia event focused on abortion rights in January.
| | NOT (QUITE) ABANDONING: A new national organization called the Black Muslim Leadership Council is adding to the choir of groups pushing President Biden to call for a permanent cease-fire in Gaza, NBC’s YAMICHE ALCINDOR reports. The group stresses that it is also focused on domestic issues, and is not in the “Abandon Biden” camp. “I am focused on building and definitely not abandoning,” said SALIMA SUSWELL, the founder and chief executive of the council.
| | A CLARIFICATION: Some of you (cough: LISA KASHINSKY: cough) thought that MARTY WALSH, a walking billboard for Dunkin Donuts, actually said he would make sure the postal service “ran on Dunkin” in his new role as a USPS board member. We regret to inform you that we were joking when we included that “statement” in yesterday’s newsletter. He never said that. More regular readers of this newsletter would know by now that Sam inserts a Dunkin joke every time Walsh is mentioned. NOT, EXACTLY, DIPLOMATIC: The State Department’s Inspector General office on Friday released a searing report that described how the ambassador to Singapore, JONATHAN KAPLAN, “threatened staff, wasted money and poorly promoted US interests,” Bloomberg reports. Employees at the embassy described a sense of fear and direct threats of reprisal from Kaplan, and noted that he developed poor relations with Singaporean ministries. As Bloomberg notes, the report will likely draw more scrutiny to the common practice of presidents tapping campaign donors without diplomatic experience to be ambassadors — as was the case with Kaplan.
| | | | SOMETHING ELSE YOU CAN PICK UP WITH YOUR BATTERIES, SHAMPOO AND GATORADE: CVS and Walgreens will begin dispensing the abortion pill mifepristone this month, our KELLY HOOPER reports. Officials at the country’s two largest pharmacies announced the move on Friday, saying they received certification to dispense the drug under new Food and Drug Administration guidelines issued last year. The companies will begin distribution in a handful of states, including New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Illinois, before expanding to all other states where abortion is legal. “Today is an important milestone in ensuring access to mifepristone, a drug that has been approved by the FDA as safe and effective for more than 20 years,” Biden said in a statement. “I encourage all pharmacies that want to pursue this option to seek certification.”
| | Inside the White House Program to Share America’s Secrets (Time’s Massimo Calabresi) The Man Who Now Controls the U.S. Border (The Atlantic’s David Frum) Maria Bartiromo hyped the false Biden-bribe story hundreds of times (WaPo’s Philip Bump) Settlement in Japanese court ends embarrassing episode for the Atlantic (WaPo’s Erik Wemple)
| | | It was a 21-year-old JOHN F. KENNEDY on a visit to see his father, the U.S. ambassador in London, who took tea in March 1939 with a royal group that included the 12-year-old Princess Elizabeth. Thanks to DAVID CHARTER for the question! His book, “Royal Audience,” a deep dive into the relationship between Queen Elizabeth II and US presidents, is out March 5! A CALL OUT! Do you think you have a harder trivia question? Send us your best one about the presidents, with a citation or sourcing, and we may feature it! Edited by Eun Kyung Kim and Sam Stein.
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