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Presented by Uber: | | | | | |  | | By Alex Thompson and Tina Sfondeles | Presented by Uber | Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Alex | Email Tina Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from Allie Bice and Daniel Payne VALERIE BIDEN OWENS, Joe’s younger sister and one of his closest confidants, is writing a memoir, West Wing Playbook has learned. “Growing Up Biden: A Memoir” is set for release next April, according to an Amazon pre-order page. The cover features a photo of all the Biden children — Joe, Valerie, JIMMY and FRANK — with their mother along with a cursive note: “Photo by dad.” The 75-year-old Valerie, or “Val” as many call her, is perhaps the closest person to the president with the possible exception of his wife, JILL, and son, HUNTER . She has been at the center of Joe’s political and personal life since she was born. Among all the books likely to be written about Biden, hers could provide the most intimate of portraits. Her publisher Celadon Books did not immediately respond for comment. Some Joe allies were surprised Val did not follow Joe into the White House. With a federal investigation into Hunter and Joe wanting to signal a break from DONALD TRUMP , however, Biden pledged at the outset of his administration that, “No one in our family and extended family is going to be involved in any government undertaking or foreign policy ... And nobody has an office in this place.” By the time she was six, Joe described Val as his “best friend,” as he put it in his 2007 memoir. When Joe’s first wife was killed in a car accident, Val quit her job as a teacher and moved in with Joe, becoming the daily caretaker for her nephews, Hunter and BEAU . “Valerie Biden was the cornerstone that allowed me to sustain and then rebuild my family,” Biden wrote in the same memoir. “When Neilia died, my sister was the person I trusted completely with my sons.” He trusted her when it came to politics too. Val managed every one of her brother’s political campaigns — including for high school student government — until his run for the presidency in 2020. She was seen as his gatekeeper and his protector. Val “was the one I was most nervous to meet,” Jill wrote in her own memoir, “Where the Light Enters,” recalling the early days of her relationship with Joe. “Her approval could make or break my standing in Joe’s life. She was understandably protective of him, and I was self-conscious about being the new, young girlfriend,” she continued. So Jill did what anyone would and “just kept putting off our meeting.” When they did finally meet, things got weird … and funny. “She must have realized I was nervous, because as she handed me a sandwich, she started goofing around,” Jill wrote. “Here’s your tuna fish!” Val exclaimed. Jill remembered that Val then “started mewling like a cat. ‘Meow, meow, meow!’ she said as she pawed at my shoulder. It was charmingly quirky, and her smile disarmed me.” Jill continued: “She still tells the story of our first meeting — and we still laugh at the ‘meow.’” Do you work in the Biden administration? Are you in touch with the White House? Are you PETER VELZ? We want to hear from you — and we’ll keep you anonymous: westwingtips@politico.com. Or if you want to stay really anonymous send us a tip through SecureDrop, Signal, Telegram, or Whatsapp here. | | A message from Uber: Meet Asad. An immigrant from Afghanistan and a former interpreter with the US Army, Asad sends money home to his wife and kids every chance he gets. Asad says that driving with Uber gives him the flexibility he needs to visit his family for 2 or 3 months a year—and one day, he hopes, it’ll help bring them to the US. Watch his story in his own words below. | | | | | | With the Partnership for Public Service Which president turned down an honorary degree from the University of Oxford? (Answer at the bottom.) | | | MORE ON THAT BIDEN CALL — We reported yesterday that Biden privately called the mayor of Wilmington, Del. after three police officers were shot and injured earlier this month. The News Journal moved the story forward today with an interview with Mayor MIKE PURZYCKI. Paraphrasing the mayor, The News Journal wrote that, “Biden wanted to make sure Wilmington was getting the resources it needs to deal with the surge in gun violence the northern Delaware city has experienced while ensuring no requests from city officials have been ignored by federal department heads.” BEER MONEY: White House interns are one step closer to getting a paycheck. Yes, those cushy and sometimes life-changing internships are unpaid. But a draft of a House Appropriations Committee bill released on Wednesday includes $4.5 million in funding to pay White House and other Executive Office of the President interns. If it clears the House, the measure will go before a friendly chairman in a Senate subcommittee: Sen. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN . The Maryland Democrat played a big role in getting the Senate to pay its interns. It’s the first time an appropriations committee has pushed for pay for White House interns specifically, according to Pay Our Interns, a group that raised hell and prodded lawmakers to begin paying congressional interns back in 2019. The group is also pushing for all federal agencies to pay their interns. | | | PRESS CORPS PROTIP: BE PREPARED TO NAME NAMES — At Wednesday’s White House briefing, JEN PSAKI went full Riddler on Reuters correspondent NANDITA BOSE, who said her outlet’s reporters had spoken to activists angry that Biden was “betraying Black voters” by not lobbying for federal voting rights legislation more forcefully. “Who’s saying that?” Psaki asked. “A lot of civil rights activists and voting activists,” replied Bose. “Like who?” Psaki shot back. Bose ultimately told Psaki she would be willing to “reach out to you with names” after the briefing finished; though she probably could have anticipated the conversation going this way. The name-names tactic is one the press secretary has deployed before to deflect questions premised on what “people are saying.” Bose told us in a Twitter DM that she did follow up with Psaki on that list of activists’ names. FROM QUINT FORGEY | | | CIAO, CINDY — As had been rumored, Biden will tap CINDY McCAIN, wife of the late Sen. JOHN McCAIN (R-Ariz.) and a key supporter of Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign, as ambassador to the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization, which is headquartered in Rome. The White House also announced 16 other nominations this afternoon, including: MICHAEL CARPENTER, managing director of the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement at the University of Pennsylvania, to be representative to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe; and former Delaware Gov. JACK MARKELL to be representative to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. CLAIRE CRONIN, majority leader of the Massachusetts state legislature, is Biden’s pick to be ambassador to Ireland (in case you haven’t heard, Biden’s Irish). And Long Beach, Calif. Mayor ROBERT GARCIA, an early and avid supporter of Vice President KAMALA HARRIS’ 2020 presidential run, nabbed a post as one of the trustees of the Harry S. Truman Scholarship fund. PACK YOUR BAGS: Biden plans to quickly replace the regulator of U.S. mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac after a Supreme Court ruling Wednesday gave him greater authority to fire the official — but the White House isn’t saying who they will put in his place. A White House official confirmed to KATY O’DONNELL that the president will move to replace Federal House Finance Agency Director MARK CALABRIA, a Trump appointee who has sought to reduce the government's role in the housing market, “with an appointee who reflects the administration's values." Asked at the press briefing if Biden has a replacement in mind, Psaki demurred. (C’mon Jen. It’s your turn to name names!) | | | |   | | | | | | BLOCKED FROM THE LEFT — Sen. ELIZABETH WARREN is blocking a swift confirmation of JAMES KVAAL, Biden’s pick to be the No. 3 official at the Education Department, as she presses the administration over its management of the $1.6 trillion portfolio of federal student loans, MICHAEL STRATFORD reports. FILLING THE COURTS: The Senate confirmed DEBORAH BOARDMAN to the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, 52-48 this evening. MARK YOUR CALENDARS: The Senate Judiciary Committee will vote on DAVID CHIPMAN’s nomination to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives; UR JADDOU to be director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services; EUNICE LEE to be a judge on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals; VERONICA ROSSMAN to join the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals; and four district court judges. The Foreign Relations Committee will vote on assistant secretary of State nominees MICHELE SISON, TODD ROBINSON and DANIEL KRITENBRINK as well as six nominees to ambassadorships in Africa. | | | A WELL-READ GENERAL — The military’s top officer on Wednesday pushed back against GOP lawmakers who have said the Pentagon’s efforts to combat racism and promote diversity are making the armed forces too “woke,” CONNOR O’BRIEN reported. Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. MARK MILLEY was responding to claims the Pentagon had embraced critical race theory when he told lawmakers that members of the military should be "open-minded and be widely read." "I've read Mao Tse Tung. I've read Karl Marx. I've read Lenin. That doesn't make me a communist," Milley said at a House Armed Services hearing. "So what is wrong with understanding, having some situational understanding about the country for which we are here to defend?" Defense Secretary LLOYD AUSTIN offered a more pointed response. “We do not teach critical race theory,” Austin said. “We don’t embrace critical race theory, and I think that’s a spurious conversation.” | | | Mark Gallogly, secretive mogul with climate-related investment interests, is advising Biden team on climate (Business Insider’s Justin Rood) Senate Republicans grow skeptical of Biden's interest in an infrastructure deal (Our own Marianne LeVine and Burgess Everett ) Interio Secretary Deb Haaland says no plan 'right now' to ban new oil, gas leasing (Reuters’ Valerie Volcovici) Head of Border Patrol resigning from post (The Hill’s Lexi Lonas) Afghan government could collapse six months after U.S. withdrawal, new intelligence assessment says ( The Wall Street Journal’s Gordon Lubold and Yaroslav Trofimov) Kamala Harris is set to visit the border (Our own Daniel Lippman) Biden prepares a major border shake-up (Axios’ Mike Allen) | | | DOUG EMHOFF gives his first sit-down interview to PETER ALEXANDER, with excerpts airing on NBC Nightly News at 6:30 p.m. ET with more tomorrow on the Today Show, MSNBC and NBC. | | | The president and first lady JILL BIDEN attended the funeral ceremony for late Sen. JOHN WARNER at the Washington National Cathedral, where the president delivered remarks. The president then met with a bipartisan group of lawmakers to talk about infrastructure. Office of Management and Budget acting director SHALANDA YOUNG, Domestic Policy Council director SUSAN RICE, National Economic Council director BRIAN DEESE, head of legislative affairs LOUISA TERRELL and counselor STEVE RICCHETTI were also in attendance. Later, he and Attorney General MERRICK GARLAND met with stakeholders to discuss ways the Biden administration is acting to keep cities and neighborhoods safe. The two delivered remarks about the administration’s gun crime prevention strategy in the State Dining Room. | | | She participated in a virtual discussion with 20 members from leading civil rights and voting rights groups, including Fair Fight’s STACEY ABRAMS, NAACP’s DERRICK JOHNSON and Poor People’s Campaign’s Rev. Dr. WILLIAM J. BARBER II. Later, she held a roundtable with LGBTQ+ advocates marking Pride Month. “My pronouns are she & her. You as community activists, you all have your eyes and ears on the ground,” she said during the meeting, where every attendee’s name cards had preferred pronouns. “As you know I have been working on issues of equality and fairness, justice for a very long time. And there's still so much work to be done.” | | | Biden’s deputy chief of staff JEN O’MALLEY DILLON met her husband, PATRICK DILLON, on the campaign trail while working for former U.S. Sen. JOHN EDWARDS’s 2003 presidential bid. But according to the New York Times, Jen said the pair’s “first impressions weren’t the greatest.” “I come from the grass roots camp, and thought a lot of myself, doing ‘field,’ and he’s the communications side — the message guy. I thought of him as stuffy.” Patrick agreed that “it wasn’t love at first sight.” But eventually, the two began working closely together on that campaign and became friends. It was a trip to the Iowa State Fair — the starting place of all storybook romances — that made them realize there was more than a friendship going on. “It was pretty quickly just the two of us,” Jen told the Times in 2007. “We won a stuffed animal — the whole goofy, corny story.” And that, folks, is up there as one of the more positive things to have come out of Edwards’ foray into presidential politics. | | | MILLARD FILLMORE. During a visit to England, Fillmore turned down the degree, saying that: "I have not the advantage of a classical education, and no man should, in my judgment, accept a degree he cannot read." We want your tips, but we also want your feedback. What should we be covering in this newsletter that we’re not? What are we getting wrong? Please let us know. Edited by Emily Cadei | | A message from Uber: After moving to the US, Asad worked as a taxi driver before switching to Uber. Since then he’s done over 12,000 trips.
As he explains, the ability to make his own hours gives Asad the freedom to take 2-3 months off a year to go back to Afghanistan to see his wife and kids. He also supports his 2 sisters, both widows, as well as several nieces and nephews. They all rely on Asad to send money as often as he can.
“Back home, I am the only hope for my entire family,” he says. “One day I hope to bring them here.”
To see more stories like Asad’s, click here.
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