SCOTUS rejects bid to overturn Biden’s win in Pennsylvania

In a one-sentence order, the high court acted without comment or noted

dissent in the matterPAGE 7

Flournoy denied again

Pick frustrates women who sought a different

history-maker.PAGE 8

Steakhouses, bars and ski trips: GOP carries on amid pandemic

Many Republicans are refusing to let the coronavirus interfere

with their holiday plans.PAGE 4

V O L . 1 4 • N O . 6 7 | W E D N E S D AY, D E C E M B E R 9 , 2 0 2 0 | P O L I T I C O . C O M

Matt Wuerker

The cartoonist’s daily take on the world of politics.

PAGE 18

Dems signal early opposition to Defense pick

President-elect Joe Biden’s choice to lead the Pentagon is fac-ing early resistance from Demo-crats on Capitol Hill, indicating a potentially rocky confirmation process for one of the top Cabinet posts.

Retired Army Gen. Lloyd Austin, who has yet to be officially unveiled as Biden’s nominee for Defense secretary, is already running into stiff opposition from some Demo-crats, many of whom appeared un-willing on Tuesday to exempt him from a law intended to preserve ci-vilian control of the military.

That rule — which requires a Pentagon chief to be at least seven years removed from the military — isn’t likely to tank Austin’s nomi-nation, with key Republicans say-ing Tuesday they would support providing the prospective nominee a waiver. But several Biden allies expressed concerns about grant-ing a waiver for Austin just a few years after supporting one for James Mattis, President Donald

Trump’s first Defense secretary.“This is becoming a trend, and I

don’t like it. It is difficult to imag-ine voting for a Mattis waiver and not an Austin waiver,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), who supported a Mattis waiver, told POLITICO. “I think for everybody it’s going to be hard to justify doing it for one dis-

But their resistance to providing Austin with a waiver isn’t likely to sink his nomination

AOC, Rice face off for powerful committee post

A pair of high-profile New York-ers are jockeying for a prized slot on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, a competition that could have long-lasting reverbera-tions in the Democratic Caucus and for influential states.

Both Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Kathleen Rice are pri-vately angling for one of the few open seats on one of the House’s most powerful committees. But other members of the New York delegation are so far refusing to

publicly wade into the battle, meaning the state could be shut out altogether of the slot being va-cated by outgoing Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.).

As the Democratic panel that

PATRICK SEMANSKY/AP

President Donald Trump Trump hasn’t had a single veto overridden, with Republicans loath to confront such a wildly popular figure among the GOP base, but many in his party are signaling they’ll override a veto.

Republicans plot their first and last Trump rebellion

Sen. Jim Inhofe is among Don-ald Trump’s most loyal support-ers. But with Inhofe and legions of other Republicans preparing to defy the president on a major defense bill, Trump decided to make one last push.

In a 30-minute phone call Monday night, Trump told Inhofe (R-Okla.) that he still planned to veto the National Defense Autho-rization Act because it doesn’t bend to his whims — targeting social media companies and maintaining bases named for Confederate soldiers. The Senate

Armed Services chair said he ex-plained to Trump the importance of the bill. It delivers pay raises to U.S. troops and is intended to strengthen the national defense.

Perhaps most important, In-hofe is forging ahead without the president: “We have a difference

No one seems to know what’s going on with coronavirus relief anymore.

In the span of an afternoon, Sen-ate Majority Leader Mitch McCo-nnell suggested dropping discus-sions on the two biggest sticking points. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin offered a new proposal to

Speaker Nancy Pelosi. A bipartisan group of senators is still working to finalize language on a $908 bil-lion package. And President Don-ald Trump endorsed new stimulus checks.

While there’s an uptick in the flurry of activity surrounding bi-partisan talks, there’s so far little evidence actual progress is being made, even as Democratic and Re-

publican leaders insist that Con-gress will not leave for the holidays without a deal.

“We’ll stay here until we get commonsense agreement,” said Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who is leading the so-called 908 coalition.

The struggle to reach an agree-ment on coronavirus relief comes as Covid-19 cases continue to reach

Confusion amid flurry of stimulus plans

After four years of hand-wringing over Trump’s presidency, the annual defense policy bill is where GOP lawmakers draw the line

BY ANDREW DESIDERIOAND CONNOR O’BRIEN

BY HEATHER CAYGLE,SARAH FERRIS

AND SUSANNAH LUTHI

NDAA on page 11

STIMULUS on page 13

BY BURGESS EVERETTAND ANDREW DESIDERIO

BY MARIANNE LeVINEAND BURGESS EVERETT

AUSTIN on page 10

COMMITTEE on page 14

AP FILE PHOTO 2015

Retired Gen. Lloyd Austin, who left the military in 2016, led U.S. Central Command and was the top U.S. commander in Iraq.

Ocasio-Cortez Rice

2 | POLITICO | W E D N E S D AY, D E C E M B E R 9 , 2 0 2 0

W E D N E S D AY, D E C E M B E R 9 , 2 0 2 0 | POLITICO | 3

Trump lawyer who attended White House party tests positive for CovidAnother main fi gure in President Donald Trump’s legal battle to challenge the results of the 2020 election has tested positive for Covid-19, people inside the White House and Trump campaign confi rmed on Tuesday.

Jenna Ellis, who has worked side by side with Rudy Giuliani on behalf of the Trump campaign to fi le lawsuits in battleground states, has tested positive for the contagious disease. It is unclear when Ellis was told of her diagnosis, but Giuliani was diagnosed with the coronavirus on Sunday and was admitted to Georgetown University Hospital as a precaution.

Ellis caused a stir with White House offi cials who learned they were at a Christmas party last Friday with the Trump campaign attorney, who attended as a guest of trade adviser Peter Navarro. She was not feeling well, one person familiar with Ellis’ diagnosis said, and was not wearing a mask while mingling with the other guests, which included top administration offi cials. A senior White House offi cial confi rmed they were told of Ellis’ diagnosis.

“This is bound to become a super spreader. She was mingling with everyone and no one was wearing a mask,” said one party attendee.

A person who attended a Christmas party at the White House on Monday evening with campaign staff said Ellis’ diagnosis was discussed by guests at the party. That person noted that some of the guests chose not to bring family members or spouses because of how lax the White House has been with coronavirus precautions.

Axios was fi rst to report that Ellis tested positive.

Ellis’ diagnosis is the latest wrench thrown into the Trump campaign’s eff orts to advance their baseless claims of voter fraud and dispute President-elect Joe Biden’s victory. Another member of the Trump campaign’s legal team, Boris Epshteyn, also tested positive for the virus in recent weeks.

Neither Ellis nor the Trump campaign responded to a request for comment.

— Meridith McGraw

Judge tosses criminal charge against Flynn following Trump pardonA federal judge has closed the four-year-old criminal case against former national security adviser Michael Flynn, acknowledging the pardon that President Donald Trump issued last week to the only Trump administration offi cial charged in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.

U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan — who’d been wrestling for months with a highly unusual request from Attorney General William Barr to drop the prosecution — said Tuesday that bid was rendered

moot by Trump’s decision to grant Flynn a sweeping pardon for his alleged lies to the FBI and any other off enses he may have committed in connection with Mueller’s probe.

“The history of the Constitution, its structure, and the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the pardon power make clear that President Trump’s decision to pardon Mr. Flynn is a political decision, not a legal one,” Sullivan wrote in a 43-page opinion. “Because the law recognizes the President’s political power to pardon, the appropriate course is to dismiss this case as moot.

Although Sullivan ultimately ended the case, he lambasted the Justice Department for what he said was a highly questionable, if not indefensible, decision to drop the charges against Flynn. Sullivan also asserted that judges have the power to reject the dismissal of charges in a criminal case when the government’s actions are called into question.

Sullivan declared that the explanations Barr off ered through his deputies for the decision to abandon the case were “dubious to say the least” and would arguably overcome the long-held “presumption of regularity” that government offi cials are generally aff orded by the courts.

Sullivan said many of the rationales off ered by the government “appear pretextual, particularly in view of the surrounding circumstances.”

“For example, Mr. Flynn was serving as an adviser to President Trump’s transition team during the events that gave rise to the conviction here, and, as this case has progressed, President Trump has not hidden the extent of his interest in this case,” Sullivan said.

Sullivan also noted that

Flynn’s attorney, Sidney Powell, had acknowledged conferring with Trump about the status of the case in the weeks preceding a September hearing.

Flynn pleaded guilty in December 2017 to lying to the FBI about his pre-inauguration contacts with Russia’s U.S. ambassador, Sergey Kislyak. Aft er initially cooperating with Mueller, Flynn came before Sullivan for sentencing in late 2018 at a hearing in which Sullivan excoriated the former national security adviser for his conduct. But Sullivan opted against sentencing Flynn immediately, instead giving him a chance to fi nish his cooperation with prosecutors.

In his ruling Tuesday, Sullivan pointedly cited Supreme Court precedent declaring that accepting a pardon amounts to a “confession” of guilt. The judge also said it did not mean Flynn had committed no crime.

“The pardon ‘does not, standing alone, render [Mr. Flynn] innocent of the alleged violation,’” Sullivan added.

Sullivan noted questions some critics have raised about whether Trump’s pardon sought to rule out future charges against Flynn. While a president can block future charges for past conduct, the pardon power does not permit clemency for future actions.

But the judge said the intricacies of those issues would be left for another day, if they arise.

“The scope of the pardon is extraordinarily broad — it applies not only to the false statements off ense to which Mr. Flynn twice pled guilty in this case, but also purports to apply to ‘any and all possible off enses’ that he might be charged with in the future in relation to this case and Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation,”

the judge wrote. “However, the Court need only consider the pardon insofar as it applies to the off ense to which Mr. Flynn twice pled guilty in this case.”

— Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney

On his way out of office, Trump appoints Conway, Chao to government positionsPresident Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he would appoint former White House aide Kellyanne Conway to the board of visitors of the U.S. Air Force Academy.

The president also announced the nominations of Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao and Lynn Friess, the wife of Republican megadonor Foster Friess, as members of the board of trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union, would be named to the Library of Congress Trust Fund Board, Trump said.

The news came in a list provided by the White House of more than two dozen intended appointments to “key administration posts” — consisting mostly of seats on panels including the National Cancer Advisory Board, Puerto Rico’s Financial Oversight and Management Board, the Community Development Advisory Board, and others.

Conway, who served as counselor to the president from the outset of the administration until her resignation in August, was the most prominent name on that list. She most recently acted as an adviser to Trump’s 2020 campaign.

— Quint Forgey

GOP Rep. Mooney wants to condemn lawmakers who call on Trump to concedeRep. Alex Mooney introduced a

resolution on Tuesday to formally condemn any lawmakers who call on Donald Trump to concede “prematurely” from the presidential race despite having lost — the latest example of how Trump’s Hill allies are eager to prove their loyalty to the president.

The West Virginia Republican, a member of the hard-line House Freedom Caucus, off ered the resolution during a private GOP conference call. But it has little chance of being adopted and was referred to committee since there is no requirement that the resolution receive a vote in conference.

“I call on my fellow colleagues in the House GOP Conference to join me in sending a strong, united message of support for President @realDonaldTrump,” Mooney tweeted Tuesday morning. “No Republican member should prematurely call on President Trump to concede before these investigations are complete.”

Mooney’s resolution — which would also affi rm the House GOP’s support for “Trump’s eff orts to investigate and punish election fraud” — comes aft er Trump demanded to see The Washington Post’s list of 25 Republicans who have recognized Joe Biden as president-elect.

“25, wow! I am surprised there are so many. We have just begun to fi ght,” Trump tweeted over the weekend. “Please send me a list of the 25 RINOS. I read the Fake News Washington Post as little as possible!”

Mooney’s resolution could earn him major points with Trump and with conservatives back home in West Virginia, which is getting a new congressional map in 2022. The state’s three House seats will likely be condensed into two — and Mooney’s district in the central portion of the state would be impacted.

But Mooney’s eff ort sparked pushback from several GOP members on the call, including Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois — one of the few Republicans who has been willing to challenge Trump’s false claims of voter fraud.

As Trump’s legal challenges have been crumbling and battleground states have been certifying Biden’s victory, Trump’s biggest supporters on Capitol Hill have been racing to show their support for the president — and he has been taking notice.

Last week, Trump publicly praised Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), who indicated he intends to challenge Biden’s Electoral College votes when they are offi cially certifi ed by Congress on Jan. 6.

Several other GOP House members have signaled they will also object to the vote-counting process, though the long-shot eff ort won’t get out of the starting gate without a Senate sponsor. And even then, the math is virtually impossible for Trump to overturn the election results in Congress.

— Melanie Zanona

DREW ANGERER/GETTY IMAGES

Good, clean holiday funFirst lady Melania Trump on Tuesday off ers hand sanitizer to a child as they make Christmas cards during the annual Marine Toys for Tots Drive at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling in Washington. “I know that many of you have a family member serving in the military and I want you to know how special they are to our nation – they are true heroes,” Trump said at the gathering.

A daily diary of the Trump presidency

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It’s not just the White House flouting pandemic rules to mark this town’s schmooziest season.

Some corners of the GOP, in-cluding members of Congress, are refusing to let the coronavirus intrude on their holiday gather-ings and in-person fundraisers — whether it’s on the slopes of Utah or in the steakhouses of Washington.

Meanwhile, discussions are underway about holding the Con-servative Political Action Confer-ence — a massive, yearly affair — in person early next year, according to multiple sources.

The event planning comes as the nation is battered by another brutal surge in coronavirus cases, prompting a fresh round of warn-ings from public health experts to hunker down and avoid group set-tings, particularly indoors. And it underscores the resistance among many in the GOP, led by President Donald Trump, to adjust to the new normal of the pandemic.

“It’s an honor to be invited to the White House for anything. It’s spe-cial and to see the decorations,” said pro-Trump commentator Harlan Hill. “I think it’s important that we go show that we support the presi-dent and that our support hasn’t wavered through the election fraud scandal.” He added that the White House is “taking all appropriate precautions” to keep people safe.

Another person who plans to at-tend one of the Christmas bashes at the White House added: “Why

wouldn’t we? A lot of these things are going to be appropriately scaled and take proper precautions. But it doesn’t cancel the season.”

The majority of Washington’s lavish holiday parties have, of course, been called off. The Capi-tol physician has specifically in-structed lawmakers to avoid din-ners, receptions and other events. Given their frequent travel and in-teraction with other members on the floor — not to mention the age of many — members of Congress are at great risk of contracting and spreading the virus.

That warning came after an in-creasing number of lawmakers have

tested positive for the coronavirus in recent weeks, prompting con-gressional leaders in both the House and Senate to institute new health protocols on Capitol Hill. That in-cludes canceling the weekly Sen-ate GOP lunches, after gathering in person for months.

House Democrats and Republi-cans also recently scrapped plans for a new member’s dinner inside the Capitol just before Thanksgiv-ing, switching to carry-out meals after facing backlash as both pre-pared to host indoor events.

Still, groups of dozens or more people have flocked to congres-sional hangouts such as the nearby Capitol Hill Club, where a group of Texas Republicans organized a meet-and-greet to honor their seven incoming freshmen mem-bers the week before Thanksgiving. (The Capitol Hill Club has imple-mented some precautions during the pandemic, including limiting the number of guests per table and contact tracing.)

GOP members have also gathered at swanky downtown restaurants. That includes a holiday party Mon-day night hosted by Rep. Billy Long of Missouri in a backroom at Joe’s Seafood, an upscale surf ’n’ turf restaurant near the White House, according to a person familiar with the plans. The same evening, Rep. Kevin Brady hosted a “small” din-ner at the same restaurant for all outgoing Texas Republicans, his office confirmed.

Brady “will be following all D.C. COVID-19 health and safety proce-dures and guidelines,” his spokes-person said.

At the Capital Grille last month, some Republican members on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee gathered for an indoor dinner, according to a source famil-iar with the event. Members were spread out among several tables in order to practice social distancing.

But one GOP lawmaker who was also at the restaurant that night, freshman Rep. Bryan Steil of Wisconsin, tested positive for coronavirus just a few days later, highlighting the potential risks of

dining together in closed spaces.At Bullfeathers, another popular

watering hole on Capitol Hill for lawmakers and staffers, a group of maskless patrons were seen packed together in a tight space while eating and drinking, according to a picture that went viral on Twitter last week. After a complaint, D.C.’s Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration said it was looking into the matter.

Not every event is a massive, maskless affair: Many of the festiv-ities have been billed as a “socially distanced event” on invitations. Some have virtual options, includ-ing the Texas meet-and-greet at the Capitol Hill Club. And at least two in-person events — a “cigar and spirits” night in Old Town Alex-andria hosted by Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona and a breakfast fund-raiser for Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma at the Monocle — were recently canceled as cases spiked in D.C. and beyond.

But a ski trip fundraiser in Utah scheduled for early next month, hosted by Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and Sen.-elect Roger Marshall of Kansas, is still on.

“Utah’s ski resorts are open. We are following all the state and coun-ty COVID policies. We will be ski-ing outdoors at socially distanced intervals,” Lee spokesperson Conn Carroll said of the event.

Many Democrats, and some Republicans, say in-person gath-erings are reckless at a time when hospitals are running out of beds and some cities are running out of places to store bodies.

“I think it’s absolutely insanity, and I think it’s dangerous, it’s ir-responsible, it’s insane, and I think just by example, they’re going to cause more people to die because people will look at that and say, ‘Oh, it must be OK,’” said Sally Quinn, a longtime journalist and fixture in D.C.

The holiday party lineup is the latest example of the starkly dif-ferent ways the two parties have responded to this year’s public health crisis.

The White House is planning to host over 20 parties for the holi-

days, according to The Washington Post, including a “congressional ball” on Dec. 10. The administra-tion will host an in-person Ha-nukkah celebration as well, ac-cording to a person who received an invitation.

Vice President Mike Pence, who leads the coronavirus task force, is also slated to throw a Christmas celebration at the Naval Observa-tory on Tuesday evening.

A spokesperson said that around 200 guests will mingle inside a tent that can hold 700 people in order to allow extra space for social distanc-ing. Masks will also be required of attendees, the spokesperson added.

“The Vice President’s Residence is absolutely taking safety precau-tions,” said Kara Brooks, commu-nications director to second lady Karen Pence.

One senior administration of-ficial said the White House spread the parties out among multiple nights to allow for smaller guest lists and social distancing.

Yet at the State Department, Sec-retary of State Mike Pompeo and his wife, Susan, reportedly invited hundreds of guests for various in-door holiday functions.

One day before one of the parties, the State Department was notified that a person tested positive who had recently spent time at Blair House — the president’s official guest house — where the party is scheduled to be held, according to two State Department officials. The space was quickly being cleaned.

“As a vaccine is nearly ready for distribution, it makes sense to avoid parties and just stay home. There-fore I will pass on those two events, as much fun as they would be,” said one Republican lobbyist, who was invited to both the White House and the State Department parties.

In contrast, Democrats in Con-gress have moved almost every public and private event to a virtual setting, from farewell gatherings for departing lawmakers to spar-kling wine-tasting fundraisers. Speaker Nancy Pelosi organized a livestream to view the annual Christmas tree lighting at the Capitol, where the public was not allowed to gather.

Meanwhile on Embassy Row — home to some of the most exclusive events in Washington — the cele-brations have been largely shifted to outdoor spaces.

But at least one socialite, Sheikha Rima Al-Sabah, the wife of the Ku-waiti ambassador, has been quietly criticized in D.C. social circles for recently hosting an indoor ladies’ lunch for around 10 people and oth-er events, according to one person familiar with the event. The Em-bassy of Kuwait did not respond to a request for comment.

And others on the D.C. party circuit are skipping their annual celebrations.

“The time isn’t right, and it just wouldn’t be very fun or safe right now,” said Ron Bonjean, a partner of ROKK Solutions who is known for throwing epic Christmas bashes every year. “We will be back soon, but the CDC would probably also seriously advise against clowns on stilts or the use of a flamethrower at the moment.”

Alex Isenstadt and Nahal Toosi contributed to this report.

BY SARAH FERRIS,MELANIE ZANONA

AND DANIEL LIPPMAN

Steakhouses, Hill bars and ski trips: GOP carries onMany GOP membersare refusing to let thepandemic interrupt their holiday plans

SUSAN WALSH/AP

While Democrats in Congress have moved most public or holiday events to a virtual setting, many GOP members have gone ahead with large gatherings and in-person fundraisers. “It’s irresponsible,” said journalist Sally Quinn.

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Donald Trump’s efforts to over-turn the presidential election have met with defeat in every swing state and in nearly every court where his cases have been heard. But Trump’s campaign to pressure GOP elected officials to support his baseless claims of a rigged election — and his success in convincing a majority of the party that widespread voter fraud occurred — is already show-ing signs of having far-reaching ef-fects that will reshape the Republi-can Party for years to come.

State party chairs are tearing into their governors. Elected offi-cials are knifing one another in the back. Failed candidates are seizing on Trump’s rhetoric to claim they were also victims of voter fraud in at least a half-dozen states.

As his presidency comes to a close, Trump has not only im-printed his smash-mouth style on the GOP, he has wrenched open the schism between the activist class and the elected class, according to interviews with more than a doz-en Republican Party officials and strategists in the states.

“This is Hatfield and McCoy stuff, but it’s McCoy on McCoy, or Hatfield on Hatfield,” said Michael Brodkorb, a former deputy chair of the Minnesota Republican Party. “To see activists across the coun-try really just with pitchforks and torches at the capitols … it’s just bonkers.”

In the short term, the forces unleashed by Trump threaten the party’s prospects in the Jan. 5 Geor-gia Senate runoff. But the infighting also stands to reshape the party for the long haul, with implications for the midterm elections and the presi-dential nominating contest in 2024.

In recent weeks, the chair of the Arizona Republican Party, Kelli Ward, told the state’s Republican governor to shut up on Twitter in a feud over the integrity of Ari-zona’s election, which Biden won — choosing Trump over the state’s highest-ranking Republican Par-ty official. Ward’s counterpart in Georgia, David Shafer, joined the state’s two Republican senators in attacking the state’s Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffens-perger, while leaving Trump to tear into Republican Gov. Brian Kemp.

In Michigan, the state Republi-can Party chair, Laura Cox, stood by Trump’s campaign as it pressed Republican lawmakers to override the popular vote in her state — something Republican legislative leaders have said repeatedly they won’t do.

Enmity between the Republican Party’s populist and establishment wings has existed in some form for years, long predating Trump. But Trump’s domination of the party has exacerbated the gulf between them, and his persistent demand that Republicans choose sides has left little room for compromise.

He is leaving the party at an un-familiar crossroads: The outgoing president is a defeated candidate, but unlike recent one-term presi-dents, he is adored by the base and

the cause of a significant expansion of the GOP’s ranks. Millions of Re-publican voters remain convinced, without evidence, that the election was unfairly taken from him. And Trump will leave behind a party apparatus controlled by loyalists unbeholden to less populist, less Trumpian holdovers.

The result is that many of the party’s field officers in the states are preparing to dig in to ensure that Trump — and his style of poli-tics — remains the party’s guiding light. That is putting them at cross-purposes with more traditional Re-publicans, such as Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, who are positioning them-selves as alternatives to Trump.

Trump has suggested that he will run again, but many Republicans

aren’t convinced. Saul Anuzis, a former chair of the Michigan Re-publican Party, said, “I suspect we’ll see 15 people running for president again next time around.”

The signs already point to a pro-tracted intraparty war. In Arizona, where Trump was the first GOP nominee to lose since 1996, Daniel Barker, a former Arizona Court of Appeals judge who started a PAC of Republicans supporting Biden, said “there clearly is a major problem” in the Republican Party, even with Trump’s loss.

“If people for the next two or three years view Trump as hav-ing 60 or 70 million votes, it’s go-ing to be hard to say no to him,” Barker said, fearful that Trump or T r u mpia n ca nd idates w i l l maintain a hold on the party. In response, members of Barker’s group are weighing whether to be-

gin recruiting Republican-minded independents to run in Arizona if Trump-oriented candidates clog the Republican Party field.

Stan Barnes, a former Arizona state lawmaker and a longtime Re-publican consultant, predicted the name-calling between Republicans is “a fever that will come and go.” Still, he said, “it’s acute.”

After Ward’s back-and-forth with Ducey last week, Barnes said, “You just don’t often get the leader of the party willing to say out loud, ‘Hey, governor, shut the hell up,’ and then the governor responds in kind.”

He called it a “special occurrence I’ve never seen before.”

And it isn’t just in Arizona. Fear-ful of alienating Trump’s base in Georgia, Sen. Kelly Loeffler over

the weekend declined to answer multiple questions during a debate with the Rev. Raphael Warnock, her Democratic opponent, about whether it was wrong for Trump to attack Kemp — the governor who appointed her to her seat in 2019.

In New Hampshire, a small group of Republicans is openly discuss-ing impeachment of Gov. Chris Sununu, a popular Republican who just won reelection in a landslide. The crime was his imposition of a coronavirus-related mask or-der, though the state party chair, Stephen Stepanek, defended the governor.

And in Massachusetts, Gov. Charlie Baker — who is popular in his state — has been hammering the president for his “wildly inappro-priate” challenge of the election, while the GOP chair, Jim Lyons, advances the “Trump movement”

in his heavily Democratic state.Rob Gray, a veteran Republi-

can strategist who advised Baker and three former Massachusetts governors — Mitt Romney, Paul Cellucci and William Weld — said the relationship between Baker and Lyons isn’t caustic, but it is “uncomfortable.”

“I would say the Trump element of the party here is a faction,” Gray said. “The push and pull on the party are Trump supporters ver-sus [more moderate] Weld Repub-licans and practical institutionalist members of the Republican State Committee.”

In red swaths of the country, that push and pull is lopsided in Trump’s favor — and for good reason. De-spite Trump’s loss last month, the GOP’s success in congressional and

legislative races across the country was widely viewed as a testament to Trump’s appeal to voters previ-ous Republicans have been unable to turn out — something state party chairs will be loath to let go.

Jeff Kaufmann, chair of the Iowa Republican Party, had planned to retire after the election but said he intends to stay on in part because he sees the party expanding — with a coalition that will depend on main-taining “an element of our party that is populist, that is blue collar. And that’s something that Trump gave to us.”

Kaufmann, a former Iowa state lawmaker who has been the state party chair since 2014, said “as the party chair, we have to ensure that Donald Trump’s attitude to-ward establishment-era politics” is maintained, describing part of that appeal as giving “the middle finger

to the establishment.”“The Mitt Romney-lites of the

world, the Ben Sasse-lites of the world, they’re hanging on, they’re waiting, and they’re going to ap-pear again, and they’re going to be well-funded,” Kaufmann said. “Whether it be 2024 or 2028, one way or another, we’re going to all have that ‘come to Jesus’ moment when we decide who do we want as our candidate again, and God help us if it’s a Mitt Romney-type again.”

Publicly, the national party is taking all comers for 2024. Last week, Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Commit-tee, invited about a dozen potential 2024 presidential candidates to the RNC’s meeting on Amelia Island, Fla., in what was widely viewed as a show of neutrality ahead of the next nominating process. Even if the party isn’t neutral, the rise of outside fundraising in recent years has diminished the signifi-cance of party organizations. And Trump’s romp through the 2016 primary field demonstrated the ability of a candidate to overcome the GOP’s existing infrastructure in the states.

“One of the best-kept secrets in politics today is that the party structure is not as relevant as it used to be, because each candidate is a free agent,” said Pat McCrory, the former Republican governor of North Carolina. “After the can-didates are selected is when [the party] becomes more important to help get a ground game going.”

But in the run-up to the cam-paign, the deck will be stacked in favor of Trump — or candidates who are in his good graces. Many state party chairs who were viewed as disloyal to the president have been ousted since his 2016 elec-tion, and many chairs who were initially skeptical of Trump have been won over by his popularity with the party’s base.

“All of these people, ironically or brilliantly, Trump was able to unite, to a large extent,” Anuzis said. “The hawks got a defense buildup, the Rand Pauls got a pull-out from the Middle East … con-servatives got their judges. … You can go through there and see how he was very adept at dealing with the various constituencies and making people feel good.”

That goes from top to bottom — from the RNC down to state and county parties, as well as local clubs that remain instrumental in off-year voter registration efforts and in fielding down-ballot candidates.

In a measure of how deeply Trump’s influence penetrates in the states, Michael Burke, chair of the Republican Party in Pinal County, Ariz., sent Ducey a letter last month on behalf of 13 of the 15 Republican county chairs across Arizona calling for the governor to reconvene the Legislature to address GOP concerns about the vote in that state.

Burke said the “chances are getting slimmer every day” that Trump will prevail in his chal-lenges to the election. But regard-less, Burke said, “It’s still Donald Trump’s party. He’s probably, I believe, going to be the most con-sequential former president in our lifetime.”

Of tension in the party, he said, “I think it will be long-lasting.”

BY DAVID SIDERS

Trump blows a hole in the GOP on his way outPOTUS’ last-gasp efforts to overturn the election are reshapingthe Republican Party

EVAN VUCCI/AP

President Donald Trump leaves the party at an unfamiliar crossroads: He is a defeated candidate, but unlike recent one-term presidents, he is adored by the base and is the reason for a significant expansion of the GOP.

“This is Hatfield and McCoy stuff, but it’s McCoy on McCoy, or Hatfield on Hatfield. To see activists across the country really just with

pitchforks and torches at the capitols … it’s just bonkers.”— Michael Brodkorb Former deputy chair, Minnesota Republican Party

W E D N E S D AY, D E C E M B E R 9 , 2 0 2 0 | POLITICO | 7

The Supreme Court has rejected a bid by a Republican member of Congress and other GOP activists to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s win in Pennsylvania.

In an order Tuesday afternoon, the justices turned down the emer-gency request from Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) and two other House candi-dates to decertify the results of last month’s election in the Keystone State.

The high court acted without comment or noted dissent in the matter on the last day under federal law for states to submit their slates of presidential electors without be-ing subject to potential contest in Congress.

Kelly’s suit, which was rejected by Pennsylvania courts, argued that legislation the state adopted last year allowing for no-excuse, mail-in voting violated the state constitution and that the results of last month’s vote should therefore be invalidated.

Critics said the request for the Supreme Court to take up the case was ill-founded because the justices do not typically step in to enforce state law provisions. They also faulted Kelly for waiting more than a year — and until after the hard-fought election was complete — to raise the legal challenge.

“Granting an injunction would sow chaos and confusion across the Nation while inflaming base-less concerns about electoral im-propriety and ensnaring the Judi-ciary in partisan strife,” lawyers representing Pennsylvania wrote in a brief early Tuesday opposing Kelly’s request. “This case reaches the Court against the backdrop of unfounded claims — which have been repeatedly rejected by state and federal courts — that wrongly impugn the integrity of the demo-cratic process and aim to cast doubt on the legitimacy of its outcome.”

Kelly’s last-ditch maneuver at the high court drew little attention until Sunday, when Justice Samuel Alito unexpectedly accelerated the state’s deadline to respond to the emergency application from Wednesday to 9 a.m. Tuesday. That prompted speculation among some conservatives that Alito or other

Republican-appointed justices were planning to grant Kelly relief before Tuesday’s milestone to name presidential electors.

A contingent of Trump sup-porters tried to fan the flames around the case. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) sought to inject himself into Kelly’s case, going on a media campaign offering to present oral arguments, should the court have heard the case. Roy Moore, who in 2017 lost a special Senate election in Alabama to Doug Jones, also sub-mitted a friend of the court brief that seemingly argued most early and mail voting should be deemed unconstitutional.

The high court’s action came af-ter a day of jockeying over the im-port of that so-called safe-harbor deadline, as well as the dozens of election-related suits Trump and his allies have filed in state and federal courts across the country.

Media attention to the safe-har-bor milestone prompted the Trump campaign to issue a public state-ment earlier Tuesday arguing that the date is of little consequence.

“The ‘Safe Harbor Deadline’ is a statutory timeline that gener-ally denotes the last day for states to certify election results,” Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis said. “However, it is not un-precedented for election contests to last well beyond December 8.”

“Justice Ginsburg recognized in Bush v. Gore that the date of ‘ul-timate significance’ is January 6, when Congress counts and certifies the votes of the Electoral College,” they added. “The only fixed day in the U.S. Constitution is the inau-guration of the President on Janu-ary 20 at noon. Despite the media trying desperately to proclaim that the fight is over, we will continue to champion election integrity un-til legal vote is counted fairly and accurately.”

While the statement cited lan-guage Ginsburg used in the ruling that settled the election for George W. Bush, the campaign did not note that it appeared in a dissenting opinion and that the passage was endorsed by only one other member of the court, Justice John Paul Ste-vens. The court’s majority in that momentous decision indicated the case was of great urgency because of the safe-harbor date.

BY SARAH FERRIS,HEATHER CAYGLE

AND MELANIE ZANONA

Supreme Court rejects bid to overturn Biden’s win in Pennsylvania

EMILY MATTHEWS/PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE VIA AP

The Supreme Court rejected an emergency request by Rep. Mike Kelly, shown at an event in October, to decertify election results in Pennsylvania.

Trump amps up pandemic politics at ‘vaccine summit’

President Donald Trump on Tuesday gathered people at the W hite House to celebrate the “miracle” of a coronavirus vaccine.

But the vaccine-makers declined to attend. An introductory video tossed some of Trump’s own gov-ernment scientists under the bus. And the man Trump tapped to help speed vaccine development spent the morning distancing himself from the executive order Trump signed at the event.

Instead, the event — or Trump’s part of it, at least — was the typi-cal Trumpian mixture of political theatrics, bragging, grievances and accolades doled out based on fealty to his preferred narrative. In the audience were the Trump politi-cal allies, including Govs. Ron De-Santis of Florida and Greg Abbott of Texas, who have most vocally supported the president. And the White House launched the event with a video misleadingly portray-ing people like Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, as naysayers about Trump’s vaccine timeline.

The setup reflected the broader politicization of the pandemic that has become entrenched as Trump nears his departure date and Pres-ident-elect Joe Biden prepares to replace him. Trump has retreated from regularly discussing the pan-demic and rarely appears alongside medical professionals. Meanwhile, Biden has made the pandemic a central plank of almost all pub-lic appearances, and on Tuesday appeared in Wilmington, Del., alongside many of his incoming top health care aides.

The result was essentially a Tuesday split-screen: Trump’s overly optimistic “I told you so” predictions versus Biden’s “we’ll get there, but it will be tough” message.

In Washington, Trump vowed: “We think by spring we will be in a position nobody would have be-lieved possible just a few months ago,” he said. “They say it’s some-what of a miracle, and I think that’s true.”

B ut i n W i l m i n g ton, B id en warned: The country is “in a very dark winter” — a nod to the record-breaking case surge — and “things may well get worse before they get better.”

The White House event was predicated as a signing ceremony for an executive order designed to pressure vaccine manufacturers to prioritize shipments within Amer-ica over other countries — although the order didn’t appear to have any legal teeth.

The gathering opened with a video castigating media pundits, Biden and Fauci for offering more cautious assessments of the vaccine development timeline.

“Very few people thought this was possible,” Trump said during the event. “Of course, they’ll be saying now, ‘We always told you

it would be so,’ but we have them saying a little bit different.”

But many of the remarks the video highlighted were mislead-ingly portrayed. Fauci, for in-stance, was shown saying a vac-cine arrival “could be January, could be later,” a statement that is largely true, especially for the majority of the population. Biden was also shown saying there is “no prospect” for the majority of the public to get a vaccine before the middle of 2021, a timeline that mostly tracks with the tentative rollout schedule.

Meanwhile, in Delaware, Fauci appeared via video at the Biden event, which also featured the president-elect’s top incoming health staffers.

In a prerecorded message, Fauci cautioned that “the road ahead will not be easy. We have got a lot of hard and demanding work to do in the next year.”

He also offered what could be interpreted as an implicit rebuke of the incumbent president’s mes-saging throughout the public health crisis.

“In the fight against this pan-demic, we must lead with science,” Fauci said, adding that “a key piece of our ongoing work is communi-cating consistently with the Ameri-can people.”

Vivek Murthy, Biden’s choice to again become surgeon general, highlighted the “fear, anxiety, anger and distrust that so many Americans are feeling right now.”

And Rochelle Walensky, his pick to head the Centers for Dis-ease Control and Prevention, sug-gested that “the nation is coding” like a hospitalized patient in critical condition.

Back in Washington, the presi-dent was effusive in his praise of Operation Warp Speed, the ad-ministration’s initiative to speed vaccine development. The effort

passed a major milestone Tuesday morning when the Food and Drug Administration released a positive analysis of the safety and efficacy of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine as it pursues emergency authorization for its drug.

One of the people Trump gave kudos to at the event was Moncef Slaoui, whom the president selected in May to help accelerate vaccine research. Yet earlier in the day, Slaoui had distanced himself from Trump’s executive order.

“We feel that we can deliver the vaccines as needed, so I don’t know exactly what this order is about,” he said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

It is uncertain how enforceable Trump’s executive order will be, as drugmakers have already made initial agreements to deliver sup-plies to various countries. During his news conference, Trump refer-enced the Defense Production Act — a law that lets the government mandate production of certain ma-terials in a crisis — and claimed the government had the ability to force the issue.

“We don’t think it will be neces-sary,” the president said. “If it is, it’s a very powerful act.”

Trump also strayed from the topic of the event during a brief Q-and-A with reporters, once again airing his false assertions that he won reelection and encouraging others to find the “courage” to overturn the results and award him a second term.

“If somebody has the courage, I know who the next administration will be,” Trump said.

Courts across the country have repeatedly rejected the Trump campaign’s attempts to challenge the results of the election in several battleground states that Trump lost to Biden, though the president has continued to keep up the fight and raise money for his political efforts.

EVAN VUCCI/AP

President Donald Trump on Tuesday hands a pen to Vice President Mike Pence during a vaccine event at which Trump aired his usual grievances.

BY NICK NIEDZWIADEK

Trump’s ‘I told you’predictions contrastedwith Biden’s ‘it will betough’ warning

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As President Barack Obama’s Pentagon policy chief, Michèle Flournoy nurtured a new genera-tion of women in national security who have long pushed for her ap-pointment as the first female De-fense secretary.

Now that President-elect Joe Biden has passed over Flournoy, those same women are outraged over what they say is a missed op-portunity to make history.

In phone calls, tweets and texts, Flournoy supporters, whose ranks include plenty of men, argue that Biden’s decision to instead choose retired Army Gen. Lloyd Austin for the top Pentagon job has sent a terrible message to women trying to break into the boys’ clubs that have long controlled U.S. military leadership. Some wonder whether Flournoy’s experience and willing-ness to speak her mind actually worked against her, while Austin is seen as more likely to simply carry out orders.

Compounding their frustration is the fact that this is the second time Flournoy has been denied the chance to lead the Pentagon. Flournoy was widely seen as Hill-ary Clinton’s pick for Defense sec-retary had she won the presidential election in 2016, but her potential nomination was thwarted by Don-ald Trump’s upset victory.

“That sound you hear is the de-jected silence of women realizing the bar they have to overcome to achieve their ambitions is (once again) higher than men will ad-mit,” Katrina Mulligan, managing director for National Security and International Policy at the Center for American Progress, wrote on Twitter.

True, Biden is making history in another way: If confirmed, Austin would be the first Black person to lead the Pentagon. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus, which had urged Biden to include more Black people in his Cabinet, were among supporters of the choice. But Flournoy backers, while stressing they have no personal beef with Austin, nonetheless said the former undersecretary of Defense was the better choice, not merely because of her gender, but because she was the most qualified candidate.

Some also pointed out that Aus-tin faces hurdles that would not have arisen with Flournoy. For starters, he will need a congressio-nal waiver to take the job because he has not been out of uniform for the required seven years, a result of rules designed to ensure civil-ian control of the military. While Democrats went along in giving such a waiver to retired Gen. Jim Mattis to serve as Trump’s first De-fense secretary, some vowed not to make such an exception again any-time soon.

Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) noted those concerns Tuesday morning in a Twitter thread, writ-ing that “choosing another recently retired general to serve in a role de-signed for a civilian just feels off.”

“After the last 4 years, civil-military relations at the Pentagon definitely need to be rebalanced,” wrote Slotkin, a former CIA ana-lyst. “Gen. Austin has had an in-credible career — but I’ll need to understand what he and the Biden administration plan to do to ad-dress these concerns before I can vote for his waiver.”

The decision to tap someone from the ranks of retired military brass could also undermine Biden’s message that he will put diplomacy at the heart of his foreign policy, others said.

“If Biden wants to deemphasize the military, nominating a 4-star so recently retired that he needs a congressional waiver appears to send [the] opposite message,” Rosa Brooks, a Georgetown University professor and former Pentagon of-ficial, wrote to POLITICO. “I believe he is being badly advised on this, and that this decision will (and should) face substantial pushback in the Senate.”

A spokesperson for Flournoy did not immediately offer comment for this story, and a spokesperson for the transition declined to comment.

In recent days, many women and men in national security circles have signed on to letter-writing and Twitter campaigns urging Biden to choose Flournoy, who had long

been the rumored frontrunner for the Pentagon job. The rally behind Flournoy began after Biden did not put forth a Defense nominee when announcing other members of his national security team last month. At the time, POLITICO reported that Biden was not sold on her for the job.

Yet Flournoy supporters said she was easily the most qualified person for the job — she served in the Pentagon and has extensive knowledge of Defense policy in both the private and public sectors. But people close to the transition said

Biden never developed the kind of strong personal relationship with Flournoy that he has sought in his Cabinet picks, and thus wanted to consider alternatives.

Some obser vers wondered whether Flournoy’s résumé and reputation damaged her standing among Biden and his aides — that perhaps she was too experienced and connected, and that would have given her sway that could have rattled others.

Flournoy and Biden have clashed over policy issues, including her support for the Obama adminis-tration’s surge of troops into Af-ghanistan, a move Biden opposed. At the time, then-national security adviser Tom Donilon, who now advises Biden, was incensed by

the way Flournoy sided with the Joint Chiefs of Staff in their push to surge troops, according to one former defense official.

“She really advocated for depart-mental policy [and] she would not be beaten down to accept where [Donilon] was coming from,” the person said. “There was no love lost there.”

Austin, meanwhile, wouldn’t generate as much tension in the policy process, two former Defense officials said.

As the top commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Austin initially ar-

gued for keeping several thousand troops in the country to train the fledgling Iraqi military. But the Obama administration, for reasons including frustrations in negotia-tions with Iraq’s government, ulti-mately prevailed, withdrawing all the troops by the end of 2011. That decision would later be blamed for the Islamic State terrorist group’s rise in the region.

Austin did get support from sev-eral prominent women. On Tues-day morning, Susan Rice, a former Obama national security adviser, tweeted that Austin was “a strong leader, a kind man of decency, prin-ciple and integrity,” and that “this country will benefit yet again from his service.”

Rice, who also is Black, was her-

self passed over by Biden for the role of secretary of State amid concerns about her ability to obtain Senate confirmation.

Messages of support for Austin also came from Congressional Black Caucus Chair Karen Bass, former Ambassador Dana Shell Smith and national security expert Juliette Kayyem.

Some progressives had raised concerns about the possibility of Flournoy leading the Pentagon, pointing to her ties to the defense industry. Flournoy co-founded a think tank, the Center for a New American Security, and a consult-ing firm, WestExec Advisors, both of which take money from defense contractors. She’s also on the board of Booz Allen Hamilton, a manage-ment and information technology consulting firm.

But the general mood among progressives was simply to voice concerns about Flournoy, not to oppose her. It’s unlikely that Aus-tin, with his military background and membership on the board of defense company Raytheon Tech-nologies, will ease worries among progressives about the militariza-tion of U.S. foreign policy.

One Flournoy supporter called the overall narrative about Biden’s decision to sideline Flournoy “de-moralizing,” saying it was reminis-cent of the disdain shown by Trump and his aides toward experts in various fields including national security.

“The message this decision sends is that you can still be the most qualified person in the room and be passed over precisely because your experience, relationships, and dedication to the field are seen as a liability,” the person said.

BY LARA SELIGMANAND NAHAL TOOSI

Biden’s pick for Defense secretary frustrates womenThis is the second timeFlournoy has beendenied the chanceto lead the Pentagon

AP FILE PHOTO 2010

Michèle Flournoy was seen as Hillary Clinton’s pick for Defense secretary had she won in 2016; Joe Biden chose retired Army Gen. Lloyd Austin. Flournoy’s supporters say Biden’s decision sends a terrible message to women trying to break into the boys’ clubs that have controlled military leadership.

“That sound you hear is the dejected silence of women realizing the bar they have to overcome to achieve their ambitions is (once again) higher than men will admit.”

— Katrina Mulligan Center for American Progress

W E D N E S D AY, D E C E M B E R 9 , 2 0 2 0 | POLITICO | 9

The Democrats’ 2020 platform was unambiguous: Donald Trump had damaged the civil-military bal-ance and Joe Biden would repair it.

But the president-elect has qui-etly slotted his own coterie of for-mer military officials into key tran-sition positions and is now ready to tap a retired general to run the Pentagon.

The moves have sparked con-cerns that Biden may further undermine the delicate balance between civil and military author-ity after Trump’s norm-busting presidency included enlisting multiple retired officers to fill top civilian positions and even seek-ing a congressional waiver to ap-point retired Marine Corps Gen. Jim Mattis as Defense secretary — a position traditionally reserved for a civilian.

Already, Biden’s transition team has appointed at least four retired generals or admirals and a former top enlisted Marine. And POLITICO reported on Monday that retired Gen. Lloyd Austin is his pick to be the next Defense secretary.

The concerns reflect the diffi-culty Biden’s team will encounter as it tries to live up to the standard Democrats set during their four years of Trump criticism. Even if Biden is not eschewing norms the way Trump did, his team’s choices will be scrutinized for any evidence the incoming president is straying from the traditions he has pledged to uphold.

“I think it’s one more example of the pernicious trend of civilians taking shelter behind the legitima-cy of uniforms,” said Kori Schake, director of foreign and defense policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute who has worked in the Pentagon and the State Department and on the Na-tional Security Council. “The civil-ians on his defense team deserve more confidence from him than this portrays.”

A Biden transition official in-sisted that, unlike in past transi-tions, the roles are not meant to be political. Individuals “were chosen because they are well-respected in their fields and, in many cases, for their extensive experience in the federal agencies they will now help review for the incoming Biden-Harris administration,” said the official, who agreed to respond to questions only anonymously.

It is logical, the official added, that some defense and intelli-gence experts will have military backgrounds.

But the civil-military balance is an acute topic of debate in mili-tary circles and among scholars who specialize in the tradition of civilian control of the armed forces and the military’s deeply held pro-fessional commitment to remain apolitical.

Trump appointed an unusually high number of retired generals to top civilian posts, including the secretaries of Defense and Home-land Security, national security adviser and several positions on

the White House National Security Council, as well as White House chief of staff.

The president also has been roundly criticized for politicizing the military. He short-circuited the military justice system with pardons, threatened to use active-duty troops to respond to protesters demonstrating for racial equality and siphoned off billions from the Pentagon budget to build his bar-rier along the U.S.-Mexico border. Trump also repeatedly referred to his military leaders as “my gener-als” and frequently bashed political opponents while speaking to mili-tary audiences.

The Biden team made a point of addressing the issue in the Demo-cratic Party platform, pledging to restore balance.

The platform said Democrats would “end the Trump Adminis-tration’s politicization of the armed forces and distortion of civilian and military roles in decision-making.”

But in one major respect the president-elect is so far not fol-lowing his own advice, say multiple retired officers and scholars: He’s using too many retired generals in his political operation.

A recent trend of retired gener-als endorsing political candidates has emerged in both parties, which have tried to outdo each other with competing rosters of former senior officers supporting their candidate.

Hundreds of prominent former military commanders publicly en-dorsed Biden during the campaign and others lent their support to Trump.

“I think it’s problematic when you ask retired military to sign en-dorsement letters supporting this candidate or that candidate,” said Peter Feaver, a former National Se-curity Council official in the George W. Bush administration and now a scholar on civil-military relations at Duke University. “They are trad-ing on the nonpolitical status of the military institution to make that endorsement.”

What’s worse, he said, is they now commonly attack the op-posing side, so it is “not just ano-dyne endorsements but actually lead[ing] the partisan attack on the other candidate. That’s especially problematic.”

A mong Biden’s m ajor sup-porters are retired Gen. Stan-ley McChrystal, the former top commander in Afghanistan, and retired Adm. William McRaven, who oversaw the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Both have criti-cized Trump and played advisory roles on the Biden campaign. And they have briefed the president-elect in recent days.

But the news that Austin, who also briefed Biden recently, will be his secretary of Defense will raise additional concerns.

Like Mattis, the four-star Aus-tin, who left the Army in 2016, will require a waiver from Congress because of the law that prohibits retired officers from serving as sec-retary of Defense for at least seven years after they leave the service.

Mattis, who served as Trump’s first Pentagon chief, was the first retired general to be granted such a waiver since George Marshall in 1950.

“The law was put in place to make sure there was a separation between the civil and military au-thority,” said Charles Allen, a re-tired Army colonel and a scholar on civil-military relations at the Army War College. “You want to have the military to have autonomy, but also to be subordinate to civil-ian authority as prescribed in the U.S. Constitution and by law, and not supplant it.”

He added: “If you bring in a per-son with a military background, they are very informed by the cul-ture that exists within their service. Their worldview and how they go about solving problems may be more restrictive than if they were from another civilian or outside agency.”

Feaver also said that four years

ago, Mattis was widely viewed as a necessary exception due to the concern that Trump and his team were inexperienced and the revered retired Marine would provide some stability. But the circumstances are different now.

“What I found distressing about Austin,” Feaver said in an inter-view, “is that everybody under-stood it was problematic to issue the waiver for Mattis. But it made sense to do so given the extraordi-nary situation. We are supposed to be in a return to normalcy.”

But some also fear the Biden transition team is taking things in a new and potentially damaging direction by bringing on so many retired senior military officers at this early stage to take on tradi-tionally civilian tasks.

“The really unusual thing was how prominent senior retired mil-itary were in the landing teams,” said Feaver, referring to the “agency review teams” that were estab-lished after the election to man-age the handoff at federal agencies.

“That is a very political post and almost always is done by civilian political people,” he said at a recent discussion on civil-military rela-tions hosted by the University of Texas at Austin. “The Biden team used quite a large number of senior military on those landing teams. I winced a little.”

One of the most prominent on the Pentagon transition team is retired Navy Adm. Michelle Howard, a for-mer vice chief of naval operations who is listed only as a professor at The George Washington University. She has also been mentioned as a possible candidate to serve as Navy secretary, the service’s top civilian.

The Pentagon transition team also includes John Estrada, a former ambassador who previously served as sergeant major of the Marine Corps, the branch’s top noncom-missioned officer. He is listed on Biden’s website only as a retired State Department official.

Another member of the transi-

tion team is the “self-employed” Karen Gibson. T he Biden an-nouncement doesn’t note that Gibson retired this year from the Army as a three-star general who last served as deputy director of national intelligence.

Gibson is also pulling double duty as a member of the agency review team for the intelligence community, which is overseeing the Biden transition for the nation’s spy agencies.

And that team is co-chaired by Vincent Stewart, a retired Marine Corps three-star who ran the De-fense Intelligence Agency and is also reportedly on the short list to be Biden’s CIA director.

If this trajectory continues, it could have a detrimental effect on the military’s ethical standing, said Marybeth Ulrich, a retired Air Force colonel who specializes in civil-military relations.

“You don’t want people lobby-ing for these jobs — still on active duty or even retired,” she said. Or for the presidential candidates or their campaigns signaling to the se-nior officer ranks that “you give me your support now, I give you a job.”

If the generals agree even im-plicitly to such an arrangement, she believes, “You would be trad-ing on your profession.”

Others worry it may already be too late.

“I think that whatever norm there might have been about re-tired or even active-duty people not seeming to render opinions about policy matters, I think that’s dead,” said retired Maj. Gen. Charles Dun-lap, a former deputy judge advocate general of the Air Force.

But Ulrich, who now teaches at the Air Force Academy, believes that civilian and even some mili-tary leaders must appreciate more fully why limiting the role of retired generals in democratic government matters.

In her view, senior military of-ficers still have a responsibility to adhere to the profession’s nonparti-san principles when they retire and remain bound by their professional ethics in civilian life.

Ulrich said she will be looking to see if Biden follows Trump in ap-pointing multiple generals to top civilian posts, not just in the Pen-tagon or intelligence agencies but elsewhere in the government. Her advice for the incoming team: “Be careful of the numbers.”

“It’s a bad sign in another coun-try if you assign generals to do things that aren’t even national security-related. Like to run some other department,” she said, cit-ing the example of retired Gen. John Kelly, who was Trump’s White House chief of staff. “That’s what happens in military governments.”

“I don’t think they are aware of what some of these underlying principles are and how some of these choices might undermine those principles,” she added.

“It’s something we ought to pay attention to and watch it to make sure things don’t get too far out of kilter so the balance is broken,” added the Army War College’s Al-len. “For me, I think the concern is you want to have unchallenged civilian control of the military. You want the military to be subordinate to civilian authority and not sup-plant it.”

BY BRYAN BENDER

Biden’s reliance on retired brass sets off alarm bells‘I winced a little,’ saidan ex-national security aide of retired officerson transition teams

AP FILE PHOTO 2014

Gen. Lloyd Austin led the U.S. Central Command under President Barack Obama. Austin is now Joe Biden’s pick for Defense secretary. Biden’s transition team has appointed at least four retired generals or admirals.

10 | POLITICO | W E D N E S D AY, D E C E M B E R 9 , 2 0 2 0

tinguished retired general officer and not another.”

Picking a nominee who requires a waiver makes a post that is or-dinarily drama-free much more complicated. It also puts Congress in the awkward position of doing something that most agreed should be incredibly rare; a waiver must be approved by both chambers, giving the House a stake in confirming a Cabinet official.

Biden had faced enormous pres-sure from the Congressional Black Caucus to select an African-Ameri-can as Defense secretary. Many ex-pected Michèle Flournoy, a former undersecretary of Defense for pol-icy in the Obama administration, to be picked to lead the Pentagon, thereby sidestepping the waiver is-sue. If confirmed, Austin would be the first Black Defense secretary.

“I, like many other senators, have real reservations about giving an-other waiver under federal law for a recently retired general to become secretary of Defense,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said on Fox News. “I can tell you that senators across the spectrum, from liberal Demo-crats to conservative Republicans, are opposed to doing that again.”

Austin, who left the military in 2016 after serving for 41 years, led U.S. Central Command, a role in which he was responsible for all U.S. military operations in the Middle East. He was previously the top U.S. commander in Iraq.

A fter officially announcing Austin as his choice on Tuesday, Biden wrote in an Atlantic op-ed that Austin “should be confirmed swiftly” and said he hopes Congress grants a waiver. The president-elect cited Austin’s role overseeing the drawdown of U.S. troops from Iraq and ending Operation Iraqi Freedom, hailing him as a man of “extraordinary skill and profound personal decency.”

His distinguished record as a military officer, though, doesn’t appear to be enough to move some Democrats.

“I have the deepest respect and admiration for Gen. Austin, and his nomination is exciting and historic. But I believe that a waiver of the seven-year rule would contravene the basic principle that there should be civilian control over a nonpo-litical military,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Com-mittee who opposed a Mattis waiver in 2017. “That principle is essential to our democracy, and it’s the rea-son for the statute, which I think has to be applied, unfortunately, in this instance.”

Blumenthal and the 16 other Democrats who opposed a waiver for Mattis appeared unwilling to back off their opposition. “I didn’t for Mattis, so I probably wouldn’t for him,” Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) said bluntly.

But Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Armed

Services panel, expressed openness to supporting a waiver for Austin, even though he said in 2017 that he would not support an exemption for future nominees.

“The burden of proof is on the administration. It also comes down ultimately to the quality of the nom-inee,” Reed said. “Gen. Austin is an outstanding officer, and I think he should have an opportunity to talk about his vision for the Department of Defense, and that I think is the decisive factor. But still I think the preference would be for someone who’s not recently retired.”

Austin’s nomination is already putting many Democrats who op-posed a waiver for Mattis in the politically tough spot of having to reverse course or vote to sink one of Biden’s top Cabinet picks. Democrats who have long favored preserving civilian control of the military indicated they would be willing to give Biden the benefit of the doubt.

“I want to hear from the Biden administration, the Biden team, about why they feel this pick, with the necessary waiver, is so critical,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who opposed Mattis’ waiver. “I in-herently trust the Biden adminis-tration on issues of national secu-rity in ways that I do not inherently trust the Trump administration. So I’m certainly — given that I’m a be-liever in his policy, I’m much more willing to give him deference.”

It’s unclear whether Biden’s

transition team consulted with Senate Democrats prior to select-ing Austin. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on Tuesday: “I’m just looking at all of this now.”

Notably, top Republicans, who are favored to retain control of the Senate after the Georgia runoffs in January, suggested they had no issue with granting a waiver to Austin.

“I would do it in a heartbeat,” Armed Services Chair Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) said. “It’s not so much because of Austin. I don’t know him that well. I just never have be-lieved that we should have to have that seven-year period in there. I just don’t believe that. I would sup-port any of the waivers.”

Though the Senate easily ap-proved a waiver for Mattis in 2017, deliberations in the House dis-solved into a partisan battle after Trump’s transition team nixed the retired Marine general’s planned testimony before the House Armed Services Committee. Most House Democrats dropped their support for a waiver after Mattis failed to testify, and the measure passed largely along party lines.

Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), a former senior Pentagon official who worked with Austin, said she isn’t sold. Granting a waiver “just feels off” despite her “deep respect” for the retired four-star general, the House Armed Services member said in a statement.

“[A]fter the last four years, civil-

military relations at the Pentagon definitely need to be rebalanced,” Slotkin said. “General Austin has had an incredible career — but I’ll need to understand what he and the Biden Administration plan to do to address these concerns before I can vote for his waiver.”

But Austin got an early boost in his looming confirmation battle from House lawmakers in both parties.

Rep. Anthony Brown (D-Md.), vice chair of the Armed Services Committee, quickly backed Austin. Brown publicly supported Flournoy to be Defense secretary and voted against the waiver for Mattis.

“Lloyd Austin is top flight and he’s the right choice to lead our ci-vilian & military personnel at the Pentagon,” Brown wrote Twitter on Monday.

GOP Rep. Don Bacon of Ne-braska, a retired Air Force briga-dier general, also said he’ll support a waiver for Austin.

“It does not bother me to have a retired general be the secretary of Defense,” Bacon said in an inter-view on C-SPAN. “He is retired, so he’s now a civilian.”

“He’ll have to answer some ques-tions during his tenure at Central Command when ISIS took control of a third of Syria and a third of Iraq,” he predicted. “He’ll prob-ably have to answer some ques-tions there. But from my perspec-tive, I think he’s going to be a good choice.”

Austin running into stiff opposition from some DemsAUSTIN from page 1

AP FILE PHOTO 2015

The reported nomination of retired Army Gen. Lloyd Austin to serve as secretary of Defense has been praised by some centrist Democrats and Republicans, but liberal Democrats are concerned about the waiver that Austin, who retired from the military in 2016, will need to serve in the Cabinet post. “This is becoming a trend, and I don’t like it,” Sen. Brian Schatz said.

W E D N E S D AY, D E C E M B E R 9 , 2 0 2 0 | POLITICO | 11

on this,” he said Tuesday.Trump’s grip over his party has

never been seriously challenged in Congress, despite four years of hand-wringing over his erratic foreign policy, hard-line tariff re-gime and scattershot approach to legislation. Trump hasn’t had a single veto overridden, with Re-publicans loath to confront such a wildly popular figure among the GOP base, though they have tanked some of his nominees and tried to influence him behind the scenes.

But now at the ebb of his power and in the waning days of his presi-dency, Trump has met his match in defense hawks and the annual defense bill. It has passed 59 years in a row, and even loyal Trump sup-porters are looking past his Twit-ter attacks and plotting a rebellion against a president who often seeks vengeance against those who break with him. And they’re acting like it’s no big deal.

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) ar-gued that Congress needs to save Trump from himself.

“I just don’t want him to be the president who, after 59 [NDAAs], vetoes one,” Cramer said in an in-terview. “And given his legacy of supporting the military and re-building the military and what he’s done to position ourselves, I would just hate for that to end after 59 in a row.”

Republicans’ nonchalance about crossing the president is strik-ing given their mostly unfettered loyalty to him over the past four years. When asked whether he has any reservations about buck-ing the president, Cramer said: “No. None. Politics isn’t part of the calculation.”

“It’s not about going against the president,” added Sen. Marco Ru-bio (R-Fla.), a potential presiden-tial contender. “What he wants is very legitimate. But at the end of the day, when you balance the eq-uities … there are more pluses than minuses.”

Still, 40 House Republicans voted with Trump on Tuesday and a number of GOP senators — like Rand Paul of Kentucky, Josh Haw-ley of Missouri and Mike Braun of

Indiana — will, too, when the fi-nal conference report comes to the Senate. Those who support the bill realize that even as Joe Biden pre-pares to take office, they are still taking a risk going against Trump. He’s already started urging primary challenges against GOP officials he finds wanting.

“It’s no fun in today’s Republican Party to override the president. I mean, he has a following that is intensely loyal. Some of our Re-publican constituents are inclined, always, to take the president’s side,” said one Senate Republican granted anonymity to discuss po-litical sensitivities.

Trump has been aggressively working to derail the legislation. It’s arguably been his biggest recent priority apart from his attempt to overturn the election he lost, which

has elicited muted criticism from Republicans.

Trump tweeted that he wants the GOP to “vote against the very weak National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which I will VETO.” And while Republican leaders have been hopeful he wouldn’t follow through with the veto threat, the White House made official on Tuesday that it “strongly opposes” the leg-islation and that Trump’s advisers would recommend he veto it if it is sent to his desk.

Some of Trump’s fiercest allies on Capitol Hill, on the other hand, were eager to use the NDAA fight to show their loyalty to the president.

The conservative House Freedom Caucus had initially organized a news conference for Tuesday after-noon to lay out their agenda for the new Congress. But at the last min-

ute, the group changed the topic of the presser to focus on supporting Trump’s veto threat and calling out its GOP colleagues who vowed to override him.

“We support our president. We’re standing with him,” said Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.). “If he vetoes this bill, we will support his motion and his right to do so.”

But to hear senators talk about the bill, there’s little conflict at hand with the president. They sim-ply frame it as a tactical disagree-ment. And they say Trump knows he might get rolled. The House vote Tuesday night suggests the presi-dent’s veto would be overridden.

“The president’s been made aware of the fact that the 230 and the base naming is not enough to tip the balance to not allow it to go forward for our military,” said Sen.

Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), who just won a new six-year term. She shrugged off the possibility of retribution: “I’m pro-military and I’m from a pro-military state, so I’m not really worried about that.”

The $740 billion defense bill in-cludes dozens of bipartisan priori-ties, including many that Trump himself has touted. It’s one of the few must-pass bills in Congress every year, prompting Democrat-ic and Republican leaders in both chambers to affirm their intent to override a presidential veto.

Many in the GOP say they want to address Section 230, which pro-vides legal protections for social media companies from content posted on their platforms. But they say that the NDAA’s national-se-curity importance transcends all else — including opposition from their party’s leader.

In the end, for Republicans, it’s a choice between having a defense bill and not having one; and they say the latter would be disastrous.

“It’s a very significant national security document that’s done every single year,” Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) said, rattling off what he sees as big wins in the bill not just for the country but for his state in particular. “It is very consequential.”

He added: “[Trump’s] not wrong. Something needs to be done on Sec-tion 230. That’s the challenge here.”

But Trump may be right that try-ing to force Congress to act is the only way to spur legal changes to tech companies. There is no con-sensus in Congress on a standalone bill; if there was, it probably would have passed already.

So some Republicans are still listening to his arguments, even as enough people in the GOP ap-pear willing to buck the president and potentially force the first — and only — veto override of his presidency.

“The president has a point,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), who is undecided. “Mark my words: We’ll still be holding hearings on 230 two years from now.”

Melanie Zanona contributed to this report.

On NDAA, Trump’s grip on the GOP is challengedNDAA from page 1

Senior Republicans on Tuesday refused to acknowledge the transi-tion of power to Joe Biden, even as they met to plan his inauguration next month.

The top GOP leaders in the Sen-ate and House rejected a symbolic resolution during a meeting of the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies that would have essentially affirmed Biden as president-elect.

The Democratic measure sought to notify the American people that Congress is preparing for the inauguration of Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris “in coordination with health experts” as “we observe this transition of power.” It’s the latest sign that Hill Republicans won’t challenge Presi-dent Donald Trump’s scorched-

earth battle to overturn the results of a free and fair election.

All Republicans opposed the measure: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Minor-ity Leader Kevin McCarthy and Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri, who chairs the Senate’s committee overseeing the inauguration. The resolution failed on a 3-3 vote, with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Ma-jority Leader Steny Hoyer and Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, the top Democrat on the panel, in favor.

“The extent to which Republi-cans are refusing to accept the out-come of the election and recognize Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as our next president and vice president is astounding,” Hoyer, who had of-fered the resolution, said after the meeting.

Republicans, however, felt that Hoyer’s motion was more of a po-litical gambit intended to put them

publicly at odds with Trump and argued the measure is unneces-sary to proceed with inaugural planning. The bicameral commit-tee planning Biden’s inauguration has already met several times, and plans are going forward without Trump’s concession.

“It is not the job of the Joint Con-gressional Committee on Inaugu-ral Ceremonies to get ahead of the electoral process and decide who we are inaugurating,” Blunt said in a statement. “I would hope that, going forward, the members of the JCCIC would adhere to the com-mittee’s long-standing tradition of bipartisan cooperation and focus on the task at hand.”

But Pili Tobar, communications director for the Presidential Inau-gural Committee, said Biden and Harris will be sworn in on Jan. 20, adding, “We look forward to con-tinuing to work closely with the

Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies and plan a safe inauguration that engages Americans across the country.”

Officials from Biden’s inau-guration committee have been meeti ng w ith Cong ress’ joi nt committee since last week, ac-cording to officials involved with the planning.

Democrats in Congress are step-ping up the pressure on their GOP counterparts as Trump intensifies his implausible efforts to remain in power.

In recent days, Trump has per-sonally intervened in three states in a failed attempt to have election results overturned after exhausting nearly all legal options. The presi-dent has repeatedly falsely claimed the election was stolen from him due to voter fraud, statements that are not based in reality or fact.

Few Republicans in Congress

have been willing to publicly ac-knowledge Biden as the winner of the election, refraining until Trump and his allies have exhausted their legal options.

T hose who do acknowledge Biden’s victory risk the wrath of the party’s leader, who has no plans to exit the stage after he leaves the White House. Over the weekend, Trump blasted the two dozen or so Republicans who have acknowl-edged Biden’s victory as “RINOS” or Republicans in name only.

Ea rl ier T uesday, Rep. A lex Mooney (R-W.Va.) offered a reso-lution during a House GOP confer-ence call that would condemn any lawmaker who urges Trump “to concede prematurely before these investigations are complete.”

That motion, however, will be referred to committee, with no requirement that it come up for a vote.

BY SARAH FERRIS,HEATHER CAYGLE

AND MELANIE ZANONA

GOP leaders block measure affirming Biden as president-elect

GRAEME JENNINGS/AP

“I just don’t want him to be the president who, after 59 [NDAAs], vetoes one,” Sen. Kevin Cramer said. “And given his legacy of supporting the military and rebuilding the military and what he’s done to position ourselves, I would just hate for that to end after 59 in a row.” Added Cramer: “Politics isn’t part of the calculation.”

12 | POLITICO | W E D N E S D AY, D E C E M B E R 9 , 2 0 2 0

Global Pulse

Everything you need to know about the

people and politics driving global health.

pol i t ico.com/GlobalPulse

W E D N E S D AY, D E C E M B E R 9 , 2 0 2 0 | POLITICO | 13

record levels and the economy is showing signs of slowing down. And even though lawmakers are trying to project newfound op-timism, the dilemmas that have befuddled negotiations remain the same.

Less than an hour after McCo-nnell proposed dropping liability protections and state and local aid, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) accused him of “sabotaging” ongoing biparti-san talks, and several Democrats agreed.

McConnell has long called a li-ability shield his “red line,” while Democrats have rejected his leg-islation that hasn’t included state and local assistance. The GOP leader suggested those fights can continue next year, given the likely need for another package, first telling his members in a confer-ence call and then delivering re-marks to the press about a possible compromise.

But any hope of breaking the deadlock by dropping conten-tious provisions seems to be a pipe dream. Schumer argued that leaving out state and local as-sistance would lead to sweeping public sector layoffs and scoffed at the idea McConnell was trying to compromise.

“State and local funding is bipar-tisan, unlike the extreme corporate liability proposal Leader McCon-nell made, which has no Democratic support,” Schumer told reporters. “Sen. McConnell is trying to pull the rug out from beneath the Gang of Eight” negotiators.

Me a nwh i le, M nu ch i n sa id Tuesday afternoon that he spoke with Pelosi and offered a $916 bil-lion proposal that would provide money for both state and local governments and include liability protections.

W hile talks have stalled for months over the same issues, sena-tors insist that this time is differ-ent because rank-and-file members

are now pushing for a concrete proposal.

“Their position hasn’t changed in six months,” said Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), referring to the clash between party leaders. “The only thing that’s changing is you’ve got a group of, now, a dozen sena-tors, who clearly really want the $908 billion framework to move forward.”

That proposal includes $160 billion for state and local govern-ments, a temporary liability shield for businesses and money for trans-portation, vaccines and schools. But it has yet to be finalized.

“Mitch doesn’t want a deal,” Manchin said. “You have to have both.”

T he $908 bi l l ion proposa l, however, doesn’t include direct payments, a point of contention from the unlikely duo of Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Hawley said in an interview that he spoke with Trump again Tuesday afternoon about the

need to include direct checks in any coronavirus relief package, a pro-posal that has divided Senate Re-publicans but that the White House appears to support.

The whirlwind of discussions comes as Congress faces an im-minent deadline to avert a gov-ernment shutdown. McConnell and Pelosi have said coronavirus relief should be included in leg-islation to fund the government. Both chambers of Congress are set to pass a one-week spending bill to give Congress until Dec. 18 to avoid a shutdown and approve a coronavirus package.

But when Biden is in office, Dem-ocrats are sure to keep pushing for a larger package. Pelosi said whatever ultimately comes together before the holidays won’t be enough to qualify as fiscal stimulus, adding, Congress must pass something “bigger” next year.

Caitlin Emma contributed to this report.

STIMULUS from page 1

Stimulus talks have sound, fury, few results

Welcome to PI. Send me your best lobbying tips: coprysko@politico.com. And follow me on Twitter: @caitlinoprysko.

MBA adds McSally, Riggleman aideThe Mortgage Bankers Association has hired Borden Hoskins as an associate vice president for legislative affairs. Hoskins joins the industry group after serving as a legislative assistant for former Sen. Martha McSally (R-Ariz.), legislative director for outgoing Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-Va.) and a GOP staffer for the House Financial Services Committee. Hoskins plans to register to lobby, and told PI in an interview that he’s excited to work for MBA given its “tremendous reputation in town and with its members.” Robert Broeksmit, the group’s president and CEO, alluded to Hoskins’ previous experience as a mortgage loan originator, praising his “strong understanding of the real estate finance industry, which will help MBA advance its influence on Capitol Hill. Our members will also be well served by his deep familiarity with the legislative and public policy process.”

Free-traders press transition on tariffsMore than 150 trade groups and businesses wrote to President-elect Joe Biden’s transition team this week to “strongly encourage” the incoming administration to quickly review current U.S. trade policy, which of course includes the tariffs on more than $350 billion worth of Chinese goods instituted by the Trump administration. In a letter to the Biden team, organized by Americans for Free Trade and Farmers for Free Trade, the groups called President Donald Trump’s China tariffs, as well as his levies on steel and aluminum imports that have hit key U.S. allies, a “blunt instrument” that could hamper U.S. industries’ recovery from the coronavirus-induced recession. The letter’s signatories, which include the National Retail Federation, National Restaurant Association, Distilled Spirits Council of the United States and more, argue that “U.S. businesses and consumers have paid over $68 billion in tariffs” as a result of Trump’s trade war. And while they acknowledge China’s “systemic” unfair trade practices, “finding a way to remove the tariffs while creating an effective new, multilaterally-supported approach to China trade issues would provide an immediate economic boost to U.S. companies, especially small and medium sized companies,” they say.

Jobs report Paul Blair is now vice president

of government affairs at Turning Point Brands. He was previously strategic initiatives director for Americans for Tax Reform.

Drew Colliatie is now associate director of government relations at Raytheon. He was previously director of government relations at AUVSI and is a Hill veteran.

— Caitlin Oprysko

POLITICO INFLUENCE

President Dona ld T ru mp is getting behind a second round of stimulus checks, even as several of the leading coronavirus relief bills leave out new direct payments to Americans.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has spoken repeatedly with the presi-dent about the matter, including on Tuesday afternoon. He said Trump will likely support at least $1,200 in payments for individuals, and could even go higher.

“I’d be surprised if he didn’t support $1,200 for individuals and $2,400 for couples,” Hawley said on

Tuesday afternoon after their con-versation. “My sense is that it’s a very high priority. And he indicated as much to me on Saturday night when I spoke to him about it. He reiterated it again when I spoke to him today.”

Hawley has urged Trump to veto any bill that lacks direct payments, and he said the president listened to his argument.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made a new proposal to Democrats to drop arguments over liability shields and state and local aid. And a bipartisan group of lawmakers continued meeting

about their $908 billion plan.T reasu r y Secreta r y Steven

M nuch i n spoke w ith Spea ker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday afternoon about a $916 billion coronavirus bill that includes $600 payments to in-dividuals, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy told reporters.

None of those proposals include new direct checks, which were included in March’s CARES Act. Ben Williamson, a White House spokesman, confirmed that Trump supports including them in the next round of aid.

“While the amount is yet to be determined, direct payments to

American workers continue to be a high priority of the president’s,” Williamson said.

Moreover, liberal senators are joining Hawley’s efforts, and House Democrats’ previous bills include new payments. And Hawley says the support is gaining steam with Republicans, too, according to his private conversations.

“It’s very much alive and I think the president’s support is a very big deal,” Hawley said. “I can say with great confidence that he has been very supportive of direct pay-ments, and I’d be surprised if that changed.”

BY BURGESS EVERETT

Trump backs new stimulus checks amid Hawley push

SARAH SILBIGER/AP

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has long called a liability shield his “red line,” while Democrats have rejected his legislation that hasn’t included state and local assistance. The GOP leader suggested those fights can continue next year, given the likely need for another package.

14 | POLITICO | W E D N E S D AY, D E C E M B E R 9 , 2 0 2 0

Intense competition for slot on powerful committeeassigns committee slots prepares to make a decision sometime this month, some Democrats have sug-gested the New York delegation needs to coalesce behind a single candidate. That person could then be put forward in a slate of candi-dates endorsed by Democratic lead-ers — virtually guaranteeing that they hold onto a seat for New York.

“There still could be conversa-tions between the two candidates, and if they could come to an agree-ment and make a proposal, that would be something I’m sure the delegation would listen to,” said Rep. Gregory Meeks, a senior mem-ber of the delegation. “But we’ll see what happens.”

Senior Democrats insist they are still far away from discussing potential slates for exclusive com-mittees, with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) continuing to negotiate the ratios for each panel. But that hasn’t stopped both Rice and Ocasio-Cortez from pushing for a spot on the Energy panel now, with both touting the support of the New York delegation, circulating separate letters with their home state’s endorsement.

Ocasio-Cortez, whose d is-trict spans parts of the Bronx and Queens, has insisted she alone has the state’s backing.

“I’m the only member to have the full region’s endorsement for New York state,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a brief interview this week. Asked about the state’s support of Rice as well, the freshman Democrat said: “She has a couple signatures but she does not have the region’s endorse-ment, nor does she have the support of Dean Nadler.”

House Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler, dean of the delegation, signed a letter supporting Ocasio-Cortez but notably did not sign Rice’s letter. His office, as well as Rice’s office, declined to comment.

Several Democrats privately pointed out that Ocasio-Cortez was the first candidate to declare her intentions to run for the seat, and was the only one to do so at a New York delegation meeting roughly two weeks ago.

In a brief interview last week, Rice, who represents parts of Nas-sau County on Long Island, con-firmed she was vying for the spot but declined to go further.

According to each candidate’s letters obtained by POLIT ICO, Ocasio-Cortez — who began circu-lating her draft earlier — secured 15 signatures compared with Rice’s 13, though neither has the unanimous support of the delegation.

Meeks, who sits on the House Steering Committee, said the state delegation has, indeed, thrown its support behind both candidates and said it has not endorsed one candidate over the other.

“We think that given what’s important to New York, it would be great if we could get two more members on Energy and Com-merce,” Meeks added.

But the more likely scenario is that neither would get a spot given how competitive it is — more than a dozen Democrats are vying for what will be just two to four open seats with lawmakers from several regions angling for the spots.

So far, most Democrats have de-

clined to weigh in on the race pub-licly for fear of drawing the ire of either Ocasio-Cortez or Rice. Some members privately worry about giving a more prominent platform to Ocasio-Cortez’s environmental plank — including her controversial “Green New Deal” — but don’t want to invite scrutiny from the New York Democrat and her millions of Twitter followers or potentially even draw a primary challenge.

Rice, meanwhile, has more se-niority in the delegation. But, as a vocal Pelosi critic, Rice has made some enemies and was shut out of a much-desired spot on the House Judiciary Committee two years ago. Rice isn’t guaranteed a posi-

tion on the exclusive Energy and Commerce panel either.

Rice has yet to say how she plans to vote for speaker this time around but has been notably less vocal in her criticism of Pelosi compared with two years ago. With a slim-mer House majority and potential absences related to the coronavirus, Rice’s vote could be critical to Pelo-si’s whip count for the speakership.

The Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, which oversees all committee assignments faces a similar conundrum when it comes to Texas, where two members from the delegation — Lizzie Fletcher and Sylvia Garcia — are both vying for a spot on the Energy and Commerce

panel, also likely canceling out the state’s chances of landing a seat.

“It puts us in a difficult situation when you have to pick one colleague over the other colleague,” said se-nior Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas.

Lawmakers in Texas and New York — two of the largest House delegations — are traditionally able to use their weight to land their members on influential commit-tees. But in both cases, the states’ delegation is declining to put for-ward a single name, potentially weakening their hand in the tightly competitive contest for the com-mittee seats.

This year’s contest for the open committee slots has become one of the most competitive to come before the Steering Committee in recent years, according to several senior Democrats on the panel. The seats come not just with a boost in profile within the caucus, but also in their own fundraising. And af-ter last month’s election reshuffled some of the regional power dynam-ics, Democrats also have a large class of rising sophomores — with many eager to move up the leader-ship ranks.

Energy and Commerce Chair Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) has talked to all the members who are inter-ested, according to a person famil-iar with those conversations. Some senior Democrats on the commit-tee privately would prefer Steering not offer the seat to Ocasio-Cortez,

whose aggressive style of politics could complicate bipartisan work during the Biden era. Pallone de-clined to comment on her interest in the panel.

Energy and Commerce has the widest range of jurisdiction of any House panel, giving its mem-bers outsize influence on Congress’ most significant legislation. The committee presides over most health policy issues, including drug pricing; national energy policy from nuclear waste to renewable energy; regulation of clean air and safe drinking water; the communica-tions industry; motor vehicle safety and more.

Ma ny law ma kers sa id their phones were ringing all weekend with calls from the dozen-plus candidates and their supporters, including Rice. Ocasio-Cortez told POLITICO that she, too, has been talking to members, though several Democratic steering mem-bers said they hadn’t fielded a call from her, which some said was surprising given the forceful pitch that candidates typically make for themselves.

“They all have good records, so this will be presented very intensely at the Steering and Policy Commit-tee,” said Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), who sits on the steering panel.

“We take our work very seri-ously, and we know how important these committee assignments are to members.”

COMMITTEE from page 1

ABOVE: JACQUELYN MARTIN/AP; LEFT: TOM BRENNER/GETTY IMAGES

New York Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (above) and Kathleen Rice are privately angling for one of the few open seats on the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee. “I’m the only member to have the full region’s endorsement for New York state,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

W E D N E S D AY, D E C E M B E R 9 , 2 0 2 0 | POLITICO | 15

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra was the chief le-gal nemesis of the Department of Health and Human Services for most of the Trump presidency.

Now, the man who challenged President Donald Trump’s efforts to gut the Affordable Care Act, stop legal immigrants from using health programs, detain migrant children and curb access to abortion is Pres-ident-elect Joe Biden’s pick to run the agency he antagonized.

Becerra, if confirmed, will get to refocus the sprawling department’s work on expanding health coverage and fortifying the ACA, with the law appearing likely to survive its latest bout at the Supreme Court. He’ll also have to reverse signa-ture Trump policies on reproduc-tive health, refugees and safety net programs like Medicaid. With Congress gridlocked on many of those issues, Becerra’s HHS would become the Biden administration’s prime engine for change on a host of policy priorities.

“It would be hard to find any-one who has worked so hard to undo Trump’s agenda on health,” said Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “Now he’ll have an opportunity to do it proactively.”

But Becerra, a former long-time congressman and the son of Mexican immigrants, would take the reins with little experience running huge bureaucracies and a short résumé dealing with public health or safety net programs out-side a courtroom or congressional hearing room.

Five of the past six health secre-taries were governors or had prior experience working in the execu-tive branch. Biden’s first choice for HHS, Rhode Island Gov. Gina Rai-mondo, turned down the job to stay in her state during the pandemic.

And while Becerra will work in tandem with experts like Vivek Murthy, a former surgeon general who’s returning in a beefed-up role, and Anthony Fauci, the infectious diseases expert who’ll be Biden’s chief medical advisor, many have expressed concern that he lacks experience in the kind of complex health matters he’ll confront at the agency.

“I would have liked to see the HHS secretary have public health experience,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), a leading House pro-gressive, said in an interview. “I know it’s typical to have more of a manager, but I think the current situation warrants it.”

Biden allies mobilized quickly on Monday to head off those concerns, touting Becerra’s stewardship of California’s Justice Department — a job that consisted primarily of co-ordinating a slew of multistate law-suits — and his deep involvement in the 2010 passage of Obamacare as a member of House leadership.

“The California Justice Depart-ment probably is bigger than many state governments in terms of its reach and its scope,” said Obama

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who praised Becerra as a “smart, strategic” pick who will be able to recruit top talent around him.

Those who worked with him at California’s DOJ also praised his willingness to push for structural changes, including creating new legal teams and changing a paper résumé requirement that he wor-ried was discouraging young talent

from applying.And former Sen. Barbara Boxer

(D-Calif.), who served in Congress with Becerra during passage of the health law, vouched for his health policy chops.

“He really understands Obam-acare from the ground up, and when he saw it being wrecked, he went to court to stop it,” she said in an interview. “He knows these laws — whether they protect insurers

or consumers — inside and out.”Becerra’s expertise will serve the

Biden administration beyond the pandemic, his backers say, particu-larly when it comes to expanding the ACA and reversing the Trump administration’s regulations and executive orders that sought to undermine Obamacare’s insurance marketplaces and put a conserva-tive spin on Medicaid and other safety-net programs. Becerra has also spent considerable time fo-cused on immigration issues, in-cluding the treatment of unaccom-panied immigrant minors, which falls under HHS’ jurisdiction.

“Having a very experienced law-yer at the top of HHS may be quite important as the department tries to think creatively about how to use executive action,” Levitt said. “We will get through this pandemic, and there will be a whole bunch of health care issues still to deal with.”

Becerra’s nomination, which Biden was set to formally announce at an event in Wilmington, Del., on Tuesday, is already facing opposi-tion from conservative lawmak-ers and deep-pocketed advocacy groups that are pointing to his long record of support for abortion rights and single-payer health in-surance. It’s a tactic the foes hope will most immediately stoke Re-publican turnout in Georgia’s run-off elections, which could decide if the Senate remains in GOP hands.

Critics are keying on Becerra’s defense of a California law, which the Supreme Court struck down, that required pregnancy centers that oppose abortion to post in-

formation on the legal right to obtain an abortion. They also cite his prosecution of two conservative activists who filmed sting videos of Planned Parenthood staff, and his litigation against the Trump administration’s efforts to prevent federal family planning funds from going to Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers.

Susan B. Anthony List, a lead-ing anti-abortion group that has invested $4.1 million to secure GOP victories in Georgia next month, says it expects Becerra’s nomina-tion to be “very motivating” for conservative voters and donors who see divided government as their only bulwark against a progres-sive social and economic agenda.

“It underscores the importance of the Senate and the difference that would be made by a Leader [Mitch] McConnell versus a Leader [Chuck] Schumer to make sure the worst of these [Cabinet] picks can be held back,” said Mallory Quigley, a spokesperson for the group.

Officials at another conserva-tive activist organization, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about the situation, said it received two six-figure contribu-tions Monday morning after news of Becerra’s selection reached its own donor network. The group is considering using the funds to launch a series of ad buys related to abortion that would air in Georgia between now and the Jan. 5 runoffs.

The appeals are already gaining some traction. Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) released a statement Monday citing “serious concerns”

about Becerra’s “100% rating from Planned Parenthood” and “sup-port for abortions,” while Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) called him “a radical.”

Yet Democrats and progressive groups see Becerra’s nomination as historic and are arguing that he’s uniquely positioned to lead the agency at a time when low-income workers and communities of color are disproportionately suffering not just from Covid-19 but from the underlying health inequities that have exacerbated the virus’ impact.

T hey say Becerra, raised by working-class immigrant parents and the first in his family to go to college, can reach marginalized communities who have been dis-trustful of government and may be reluctant to take a Covid vac-cine once one is available. Since his days as a Los Angeles congressman, Becerra has been a regular on Uni-vision, Telemundo and Spanish-language news shows, and has built up trust and popularity that will be crucial for the challenges the Biden administration will face.

“He’s a well-known name and face that people are familiar with,” said Amanda Renteria, who worked with Becerra as the former chief operating officer for the California Department of Justice and now runs Code for America. “That’s going to be really important as we commu-nicate about the vaccine and how we get this right.”

Adam Cancryn, Gabby Orr, Jeremy White and Katy Murphy contributed to this report.

BY ALICE MIRANDA OLLSTEIN

Trump’s health nemesis set to reverse his policiesXavier Becerra will take over HHS with immense power to undo Trump’s actions

JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY IMAGES

“The California Justice Department probably is bigger than many state governments in terms of its reach and its scope,” said Obama HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius of Joe Biden’s pick of California Attorney General Xavier Becerra (above) to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.

“I would have liked to see the HHS secretary

have public health experience. I know it’s typical to have more of a manager,

but I think the current situation warrants it.”

— Rep. Pramila Jayapal

16 | POLITICO | W E D N E S D AY, D E C E M B E R 9 , 2 0 2 0

President-elect Joe Biden has vowed to immediately reverse the Trump administration’s restrictive immigration policies.

It could take years to deliver on the promise.

Yes, Biden will be able to rescind some policies through the stroke of a pen on Day One. But scores of other policies face massive hurdles, according to a dozen people on both sides of the issue. A lengthy, cum-bersome regulatory process will draw out rule changes. Months of legal challenges could imperil executive orders. A recalcitrant Congress is unlikely to swiftly change laws. And a divided public and shifting border situation could create political difficulties.

The result is that millions of im-migrants — from those seeking to escape their countries to wealthy foreign investors — will likely remain under a lingering Trump regime for months, even years in some cases. Asylum-seekers will need to seek protections in a third country rather than at the U.S. border. The government will still be able to deny green cards to im-migrants seeking food stamps. Visa applications can still be denied over past social media posts.

In total, Trump has made more than 400 alterations to immigra-tion policy in the past four years, some since Election Day, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a think tank with staffers across the political spectrum that provides data and analysis on immigration policy. Together, the moves have reshaped virtually every part of the U.S. immigration system through executive action, policy guidance and regulatory change.

The bureaucratic realities reflect the difficulties Biden will have ful-filling his lofty pledges to erase the central pillars of Trump’s legacy. In addition to immigration, Biden has pledged to reenter global agreements and institutions Trump abandoned, defend and expand Obamacare, and overhaul Trump’s approach to the coronavirus pandemic. But immi-gration stands out as one of the most heated and complicated areas Biden will encounter in his campaign to unwind four years of Trump.

“The majority of the Trump administration immigration re-forms will be difficult to address immediately either because of le-gal rule-making barriers, practical realities on the ground or a lack of bandwidth given how many priori-ties the Biden administration has in contrast to the singular focus on immigration the Trump immi-gration had,” said Leon Fresco, an immigration attorney who worked in the Obama administration and sits on a Department of Homeland Security advisory board.

That won’t stop Biden from try-ing. According to a person familiar with the plans, the incoming presi-dent plans to hire a high-ranking official at the Justice Department who will focus specifically on dis-mantling Trump’s immigration

policies. The incoming adminis-tration could argue that any policies created under acting Homeland Se-curity Secretary Chad Wolf should be tossed out after a federal judge concluded last month that he was not lawfully serving since he lacked Senate confirmation.

But Biden’s efforts could be thwarted if migration at the south-ern border surges next year, as some expect it to, since a spate of hur-ricanes in Central America, the economic downturn and Trump’s departure. And the incoming presi-dent’s focus on immigration could end up losing out to other priori-ties — the most pressing of which includes controlling the Covid-19 pandemic, digging the country out of a painful economic reces-sion, restoring relationships with the countries Trump alienated and tackling climate change.

“Reversing everything President Trump did to secure our borders, curb asylum abuse and protect American workers isn’t only bad policymaking that will trigger a crisis, it’s a political plank walk,” said RJ Hauman, government re-lations director at the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which favors immigration restric-tions. “We hope that common sense and the weight of responsibility for a nation reeling from a pandemic will alter Biden’s radical immigra-tion plans once he enters the Oval Office.”

The Biden transition did not re-spond to questions about its im-migration agenda.

The incoming president also faces enormous pressure from pro-gressive circles to follow through

on his promises to quickly undo Trump’s policies and be more welcoming to immigrants than President Barack Obama, who was dubbed the “deporter in chief.”

As this pressure has mounted, Biden has placed staffers with immigration policy backgrounds throughout his administration.

For DHS secretary, Biden will nominate Alejandro Mayorkas, the first immigrant and Latino to lead the department. Over at the White House, Pili Tobar, who worked for the Latino Victory Project and the advocacy group America’s Voice, will become deputy communica-tions director. And Julie Chavez Rodriguez, who previously helped run her grandfather Cesar Chavez’s foundation, will lead the White House Office of Intergovernmen-tal Affairs.

Biden’s team will have a few moves it can do right away.

After entering office, Biden is expected to instantly repeal the ban on travel from several Muslim-majority countries, halt further funding for the southern border wall and lift a moratorium on for-eign workers implemented during the pandemic.

But other steps will take longer.For instance, Biden wants to

raise annual refugee admissions from 15,000 to 125,000 but must first build up the capacity to accept such a swift increase. His team will also take over the arduous cam-paign to find the families of more than 600 children separated from their parents at the southern bor-der. Other regulatory changes will naturally take time, such as revis-ing the criteria used to turn away

or admit asylum-seekers.And even Biden’s goal of fully re-

instating an Obama-era program that offers work permits and legal protections to so-called Dream-ers — the hundreds of thousands of immigrants who came to the United States illegally as children — is expected to face years of court challenges.

“It’s going to have to be a very thorough undertaking,” said Manar Waheed, a senior legislative and advocacy counsel with the Ameri-can Civil Liberties Union’s immi-gration wing. “There are many, many regulations that have to be rescinded, and it can’t be undone overnight. And that’s just to get back to where we were, not even to move forward.”

Immigration advocacy groups, many of which worked to turn out voters for Biden this fall, are now leaning on the Biden administra-tion to act aggressively.

Greisa Martinez, executive di-rector of United We Dream, is among those pushing for an in-definite moratorium on deporta-tions and detentions of immigrants. Biden has currently pledged only a 100-day pause on deportations. Martinez also wants Biden to al-low the return of people the Trump administration deported who still have family in the U.S.

“In the first 100 days, we believe he needs to be bold, swift and act without hesitation,” she said. “Black and Latinx people showed up for real change in November and gave him a real mandate.”

Other advocacy groups, such as Movimiento Cosecha, are pushing for Biden to extend legal protections

for undocumented immigrants be-yond Dreamers and those displaced by war and natural disasters.

“We want to see a program … that protects anybody, that doesn’t ex-clude anybody due to age or country of origin,” said Carlos Rojas Rodri-guez, an organizer who confronted Biden on the campaign trail about his immigration record. “If you’re a person of good moral character, you shouldn’t live under the fear of being separated from your family.”

Then there’s the desire to offer a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million immigrants in the country illegally — a policy change that would require Congress to act.

Biden has vowed to push Con-gress to craft an immigration deal, but that will be tough even if Demo-crats win a narrow majority in the Senate by capturing both Senate seats set for runoff elections in Georgia next month.

In recent years, Congress has re-peatedly tried and failed to enact major overhauls to the immigration system. Presidents of both parties, including George W. Bush, Obama and Trump, have all urged Con-gress to act to no avail.

Still, Democrats plan to offer a comprehensive immigration bill that Biden can support. Rep. Linda Sánchez (D-Calif.) is drafting legis-lation Democrats hope to introduce in January.

“There are no magic wands for transforming immigration policy, but what you can change on Day One is the atmospherics around immigration,” said Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute. “Changing policy is going to take time.”

BY ANITA KUMARAND ALICE MIRANDA OLLSTEIN

Undoing Trump’s immigration policies will take timeJoe Biden can changea few policies on DayOne, but most couldtake years to undo

MARK LENNIHAN/AP

Demonstrators in New York rally on Nov. 9 asking President-elect Joe Biden to prioritize immigration reform. Biden has vowed to lift the Muslim travel ban and halt deportations for 100 days, but it will likely take years to completely undo President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, experts say.

OPINION

W E D N E S D AY, D E C E M B E R 9 , 2 0 2 0 | POLITICO | 17

P resident-elect Joe Biden cited the New Deal as a major American inflection

point in his victory address to the nation, indicating that we will need an equally massive policy response now to battle the Covid-19 pandemic and heal our damaged economy. And as he no doubt learned from Franklin Roosevelt, the window of opportunity for a president to achieve that kind of sweeping impact starts to close the moment he takes office.

In the coming weeks and months, there will be enormous pressure — from Republicans, from polluting and self-promoting industries, and from pundits who still think climate change is too controversial to address — for Democrats to limit their scope, to think small, to negotiate with a Republican Senate that has little interest in negotiating. The Biden-Harris administration and elected Democrats across the country should ignore such advice and build a political and governing movement that truly meets the moment.

To go big in the way the country expects, given the struggles millions of Americans are still going through, the administration will need a cohesive, unifying theme that creates a common story about its major goals. Just as the Great Depression called for a shared understanding of what needed to be done and why, the effort to “build back better” will depend on a genuine sense of common purpose in rebuilding infrastructure, rejuvenating the economy and restoring public health.

The common thread we need is obvious, and they shouldn’t miss it: It’s climate change. Beginning with its crucial first 100 days, the Biden-Harris administration — and Democrats in Congress and elsewhere — should close ranks around one big theme with many facets: The need to fight climate change and build a forward-looking, climate-friendly economy that’s strong enough to weather the shocks we know are coming.

For too long, “climate” policy has been treated as a discrete bucket of ideas divorced from our wider reality. It’s now clear that our entire national policy portfolio — economic development, transportation planning, housing and urban renewal, agricultural practices, not to mention oil and gas drilling — is really about climate change and how we intend to deal with it. It’s not just the elephant in the room. It’s the whole room.

Viewing the necessary work ahead through this lens has two enormous advantages over the alternatives. On the policy side,

it’s big enough to encompass all of the administration’s major goals. Tackling climate change will require major action on transportation, infrastructure, energy supply, public health and more. On the political side, climate action polls extraordinarily well — two-thirds of Americans think government should do more on climate — in a way that much of the political class has yet to internalize, even as the numbers get stronger for Democrats every election cycle.

The American people already understand the climate challenge to an extent that isn’t readily apparent inside the Beltway. The more aware Democrats become of this fact, the clearer our choices become. The most recent version of a long-running Yale poll called “Global Warming’s Six Americas,” released in October, had some remarkable findings:

• In 2014, the ratio of Americans alarmed about climate change to those who were dismissive was roughly 1to 1. There are now roughly four alarmed citizens for every American dismissing the science of climate change — the highest ratio since the program began collecting data in 2008.

• Only 18 percent of Americans are now “dismissive” or “doubtful” about the science of climate change and the need for action. More than half (54 percent) think the opposite,

falling into the “alarmed” or “concerned” categories.

• For policymakers, the question is no longer how to explain the risks to the American public — it’s how we intend to address those risks and decarbonize our economy.

In other words, Democrats are in the enviable position of being on the right side of the science and public opinion at the same time. What’s better politics than taking necessary steps that Americans are already pushing us to take?

Indeed, the House Democratic majority has already been doing this, and it works. Climate policy comes under two very broad headings: ways to avert further catastrophe and ways to mitigate the damage we know is already happening. House Democrats

have voted overwhelmingly for both kinds of pro-climate policies time after time over the past two years in a way matched by few other policy areas. The House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis played a key role in building Democratic support for a comprehensive, rather than piecemeal, approach to climate policy, and its final report issued earlier this year will serve as a basis for our thinking in the upcoming Congress.

Bills to ban offshore drilling off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge saw few Democratic defections and even attracted considerable Republican support. So did bills to protect wilderness and create more conservation-friendly outdoor recreation jobs. A bill to improve federal planning for extreme weather events introduced by Rep. Matt Cartwright, a Democrat in a Pennsylvania swing district, passed the House without opposition — and Rep. Cartwright was reelected this year in an unexpectedly tough political environment even as his district went for Donald Trump.

Put simply, pro-climate policies unite Democrats and voters. Climate change is already affecting millions of lives across the country, and anyone looking for a key to revitalizing Democratic fortunes in any region, with any demographic,

should look first to direct and practical climate solutions.

Farmers know climate change is going to wreak havoc on their crops; Democrats should offer comprehensive environmental mitigation measures and economic assistance plans. Coastal areas — including politically contested regions like South Florida — are in serious danger of flooding and even disappearing; Democrats have everything to gain by campaigning on and implementing coastal resilience plans and other job-creating solutions like the Ocean-Based Climate Solutions Act, the first comprehensive legislation for addressing climate impacts to the ocean and utilizing it to curb greenhouse gases and boost resilience.

By the same token, millions of Americans have been crying out for heightened emphasis on environmental justice and attention to the disparate effects of existing pollution sources. Vice President-elect Kamala Harris understands the importance of responding to this enormous and long-ignored issue; in July, she introduced the Senate version of a bill co-authored by me and Rep. A. Donald McEachin, the Environmental Justice for All Act. To his credit, President-elect Joe Biden made a point of demonstrating during the presidential debates how out of touch the Trump administration has been on this front.

Our country’s best hope for the future is a decarbonized economy built around sustainable jobs and powered by clean energy. Rather than trying to explain each individual project or set of projects in isolation, fighting repeated hand-to-hand battles against the usual demagoguery and anti-government rhetoric, the Biden-Harris administration should continue what it started during the campaign. It should unite the country around a common theme and a set of important and achievable policy goals, an ambitious effort to retool our economy and our institutions to meet the challenge of climate change that we all know is very real.

As vice president, Biden led the “cancer moonshot” effort to break through long-standing barriers and deliver a major win not just for his fellow countrymen, but for all humanity. That same spirit can now animate his entire presidency. Addressing climate change is necessary to make America stronger and safer, but it’s also part of our leadership role in protecting the entire planet. That’s the kind of president Biden promises to be, and it’s the kind of president he can be if he uses the right strategy to mobilize and unite the country in a way that truly meets the moment.

Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) is chair of the House Committee on Natural Resources.

BY REP. RAÚL GRIJALVA

Biden needs to go big on the climateThe nation must unitearound a shared themeto bring about change.Climate change is it.

ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES

President-elect Joe Biden should focus the first day and weeks of his administration on pushing a coherent plan to fight climate change that involves infrastructure, energy, housing and other issues, the author writes.

For too long, “climate” policy has been treated as a discrete bucket of ideas divorced from our wider reality. It’s now clear that our entire

national policy portfolio is really about climate

change and how we intend to deal with it.

18 | POLITICO | W E D N E S D AY, D E C E M B E R 9 , 2 0 2 0

SCOTT STANTIS CHICAGO TRIBUNEJOEL PETT LEXINGTON HERALD-LEADER

MATT WUERKER

CARTOON CAROUSEL

W E D N E S D AY, D E C E M B E R 9 , 2 0 2 0 | POLITICO | 19

Transition Playbook

Tracking the appointments, the

people, and the power centers of

the next administration.

Polit ico.com/Transit ionPlaybook

20 | POLITICO | W E D N E S D AY, D E C E M B E R 9 , 2 0 2 0

WHY DOES WASHINGTONWANT ME TO TAKE ALL OF THESE?

INSTEAD OF THIS?

Simple and effective combination medicines are under attack.

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Washington bureaucrats would hinder the development of these important medical advances under a proposed rule. This rule would harm patients with chronic conditions by reducing their ability to receive these innovative new medicines.

HELP PROTECT LIFE-SAVING COMBINATION MEDICINES.

GO TO WWW.THENATIONALCOUNCIL.ORG/PROTECTPATIENTS TO STOP CMS.