POLITICO NIGHTLY: Warning signs mount on Russia-Ukraine

 

BY RENUKA RAYASAM AND TYLER WEYANT With help from Myah Ward National security adviser Jake Sullivan speaks during the daily White House press briefing. | Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images ‘THREAT IS IMMEDIATE’ — That was national security adviser Jake Sullivan’s assessment of the possibility of a Russian invasion of Ukraine. The appearance by Sullivan at today’s White House briefing, along with a flurry of evacuation moves and continued intelligence reports on Russian troops, painted a gloomy picture for the days ahead. Here’s is the latest from POLITICO reporters around the world: — Americans, Britons urged to leave: Sullivan urged Americans still in Ukraine to depart the country within the next 24 to 48 hours, saying President Joe Biden would not send troops into harm’s way to evacuate U.S. citizens who could have left the Eastern European country when they had the chance. In a statement late today, the U.K. urged British nationals to “leave now via commercial means while they remain available.” — More troops headed to Poland: Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered 3,000 troops from the 82nd Airborne Infantry Brigade Combat Team to Poland, a senior DoD official told POLITICO. The contingent will add to forces ordered to deploy there last week and will bring the total number of U.S. troops sent to Poland and Germany to 5,000. — Invasion could come before Olympics end: Three official sources in Washington and Europe told Nahal Toosi and Paul McLeary that intelligence shared with them by the United States pinpointed Feb. 16 as a possible start date for the invasion. Publicly, however, aides to Biden would not confirm a specific date other than to say that — counter to much public speculation and some previous assessments from Washington — an invasion could begin before the Feb. 20 end of the Beijing Winter Olympics. — Biden and Putin plan to talk Saturday: Biden and the Russian leader will hold a call on Saturday morning, a senior administration official told POLITICO. Russia proposed a Monday call, the official said, but the U.S. counterproposed Saturday, and Moscow accepted. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s authors at rrayasam@politico.com and tweyant@politico.com, or on Twitter at @renurayasam and @tweyant .   STEP INSIDE THE WEST WING: What's really happening in West Wing offices? Find out who's up, who's down, and who really has the president’s ear in our West Wing Playbook newsletter, the insider's guide to the Biden White House and Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details that you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today.     AROUND THE NATION THE LULL THE LULL MIGHT END — Renu emails Nightly: When the pandemic first settled into our daily life — when we started to realize that two weeks to flatten the curve was woefully inadequate — many predicted that so much forced home life would also spark a divorce surge. Nearly two years later, it’s clear that marriages didn’t buckle under the virus. But now, on the cusp of our second pandemic Valentine’s Day, with mask and other mandates lifting, there’s a sense among divorce lawyers that some long-delayed splits are on the way. The Covid lull may end the divorce lull.  “Some speculate there may be, quote unquote, pent up demand,” said Cary Mogerman, a St. Louis-based attorney who is the president of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers. “I will say this: Last month, I’ve seen a lot of new traffic and it’s different than last year at this time.” The divorce rate has been on the decline for decades , and so far, the pandemic hasn’t disrupted that long-term trend, said Wendy Manning, founder of the Center for Family and Demographic Research at Bowling Green State University. Manning and her team looked at administrative data in 35 states and found that the number of divorces continued going down in 2020. In some states, divorce declined more than it had in previous years. The pandemic absolutely increased relationship conflict , Manning said. Couples continued to fight over many of the same issues, child care, money, housework, rather than social distancing or masking. But couples are generally less likely to get divorced during times of economic uncertainty, Mogerman said. In the aftermath of the 2008 recession, he said that his phone didn’t ring for six months. So the reason that divorces didn’t spike before — the economy and life uncertainty — may also be the reason that they could start to take off this year. Divorce is expensive, moving out can be tricky and court proceedings were delayed by the pandemic. Even so, Manning isn’t ready to predict a 2022 divorce surge. She believes there are also pandemic-related reasons why fewer couples are splitting up — it’s been harder to have an affair and some families benefited from extra bonding time at home. Marriage rates, as well as divorce rates, are on the decline. Those who are getting married tend to be more educated and wealthier, giving them a better chance of weathering the pandemic with minimal economic disruption. “There is a lot of media right now about how marriage is the pathway to success in life,” Manning said. But as much as Democrats and Republicans want to support stable families and marriage, there isn’t a readymade policy that can just promote marriage and prevent potential divorce surge, she said. “You can’t just slap marriage on people,” she said. Still, romantics have at least one reason to take heart this year. Nearly 2.5 million weddings are expected to take place in 2022, according to the Wedding Report, an industry trade group. That’s the most weddings since 1984, which is also around the time that divorce rates started dropping.   DON’T MISS CONGRESS MINUTES: Need to follow the action on Capitol Hill blow-by-blow? Check out Minutes, POLITICO’s new platform that delivers the latest exclusives, twists and much more in real time. Get it on your desktop or download the POLITICO mobile app for iOS or Android. CHECK OUT CONGRESS MINUTES HERE.     WHAT'D I MISS? — FDA delays meeting on kid vaccines as Pfizer promises more data: The Food and Drug Administration is delaying its planned Tuesday meeting of outside advisers to consider recommending Covid-19 vaccines for children under 5 years old after new data from Pfizer and BioNTech convinced regulators to wait for more information about the effectiveness of a third dose. Peter Marks, director of the agency’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, declined to explain what new information prompted the decision. — Trucker convoy forces Canada’s largest province into state of emergency: Ontario Premier Doug Ford declared a state of emergency today in a province struggling to break up trucker protests besieging Ottawa and jamming an economically crucial bridge to the United States. The leader of Canada’s most-populous province said his Cabinet will enact orders making it illegal to block and impede the movement of goods, people and services along critical infrastructure. The punishments include fines as high as C$100,000 and up to a year in prison. Hundreds of truck drivers and their supporters gather to block the streets of downtown Ottawa, Ontario. | Spencer Platt/Getty Images — American truckers distance from Canada protests: The vehicle blockades that have snarled North American supply chains, paralyzed Canada’s capital and inspired threats of a copycat convoy to Washington, D.C., may have started with truck drivers irate about mask and vaccine mandates. But the grievances of the protests’ biggest champions bear little similarity to the demands that U.S. truck drivers’ union reps and trade groups typically bring to Washington. — Dem duo’s warning of CIA ‘warrantless backdoor searches’ revives domestic spying debate: A newly declassified letter from two Democratic senators warning that the CIA has been conducting “warrantless backdoor searches” of Americans’ data is roiling Washington’s long-running debate over balancing national security with civil liberties. In an April letter declassified on Thursday, Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico allege that the CIA “has secretly conducted its own bulk program … outside the statutory framework that Congress and the public believe govern this collection.” — Sarah Palin’s lawyers: New York Times libeled her amidst pattern of sliming conservatives: Sarah Palin’s lawyers offered jurors a simple explanation for why The New York Times used a 2017 editorial to link Palin to a deadly shooting in Arizona six years earlier: a long-standing political vendetta against conservatives . On several occasions during his summation of the evidence in a Manhattan courtroom, Turkel argued that the Times’ decision to reference Palin’s political action committee in the editorial spurred by a shooting at a GOP congressional baseball practice in Virginia was part of a pattern at the newspaper of slurring Republicans. NIGHTLY NUMBER 8 The number of accounts a POLITICO analysis found associated with deceased politicians that still have money in the bank , some with hundreds of thousands of dollars, or debts that, according to Federal Election Commission records, remain unpaid. These zombie PACs and campaign committees have been paying for such things as communications consulting, campaign contributions, car rentals, or fees for former associates.  PUNCHLINES COLD SOUP TURNS HOT TOPIC — Political cartoonists and satirists had a field day with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s gestapo-gazpacho mixup, and Matt Wuerker and Brooke Minters found the best bits on the incident for the latest Weekend Wrap. PARTING WORDS A view of SoFi Stadium as workers prepare for Super Bowl LVI in Inglewood, Calif. | Ronald Martinez/Getty Images BIG GAME, BIGGER SPORT — Before you get your snacks and drinks ready for the Super Bowl, read Derek Robertson ’s essay, coming Sunday in POLITICO Magazine, on the NFL’s unlikely journey to becoming America’s most resilient institution. Here’s an excerpt: A recent Los Angeles Times/SurveyMonkey poll found that one-third of its respondents declared themselves less of a football fan than they were five years ago, and that those in that cohort were far more likely to express discomfort with the league’s recent gestures toward solidarity with the movement for racial justice. Keep in mind, however, that people say plenty of surprising things to pollsters, and then consider the disconnect between said responses and the league’s reality: NFL ratings are the highest they’ve been since 2015, and football is consistently and overwhelmingly the most-watched thing on television. Franchise values continue to climb to dizzying heights. Even in-person attendance is slightly up from before the pandemic. Disgruntled fans can claim all they want that they’ve kicked the habit over some cultural grievance, but all evidence indicates they’re still crawling back each autumn and winter Sunday. Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here.   Follow us on Twitter Chris Suellentrop @suellentrop Tyler Weyant @tweyant Renuka Rayasam @renurayasam Myah Ward @myahward   FOLLOW US

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POLITICO NIGHTLY: Good news for the biggest unvaxxed group

 

BY RENUKA RAYASAM With help from Tyler Weyant Two girls read a book together during a lesson at a school in Louisville, Ky. | Jon Cherry/Getty Images THE WHEELS ON THE BUS COME OFF AND OFF — As I type this, I am silently praying that my 2-year-old, asleep in the next room, doesn’t wake up from his midday nap. He’s home from day care because, for the second time in less than three weeks, another child in his classroom tested positive for Covid. That triggered a mandatory five-day quarantine period for the entire group, per the latest CDC guidelines. Before this past month, during almost two years of a pandemic, neither of my kids had to quarantine — not even during the early days, when childcare providers didn’t have access to vaccines nor when Delta swept through the country. There were relatively few Covid cases in their day care and none in their classrooms. Then Omicron came along. Now my 2-year-old has spent a good part of his January mornings watching “ The Stinky & Dirty Show” at home on the sofa. The under-5 set is the biggest group of people not yet eligible for a vaccine — at least not for another few weeks. Pfizer and BioNTech asked the FDA today to authorize a vaccine for kids from six months to 5 years old. But the immune response in clinical trials has been lackluster. If approval comes, it would still take months before this group would be considered fully vaccinated. Until then, Covid protocols for the under-5 set are proving to be the trickiest terrain yet in the pandemic. CDC protocols for my sons are still stricter than those for older kids even though risks are generally lower. “What the U.S. preschoolers went through this winter was hell,” said Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease specialist from the University of California, San Francisco, about early childhood centers shutting down during the Omicron surge. About a dozen states have moved to a test-to-stay approach for elementary schools and high schools, following the CDC guidance for school-age children, which allows K-12 students to stay in schools after exposure as long as they test negative. Massachusetts is rolling out test-to-stay for child care centers , too, but in most states early childhood centers are on their own to procure tests and navigate guidance. A vaccine for younger kids might lead more states to change their guidance. With vaccines not yet available, it’s been harder to design Covid rules for younger kids, said Ibukun Kalu, a pediatric infectious diseases specialist at Duke University Medical Center. Test-to-stay works in the K-12 setting, she said, and it could work in day cares and preschools, with the caveats that toddlers aren’t exactly the most diligent maskers. In any case, flexibility is key. “We do not want our youngest children bearing the burden of society as they are trying to grow up,” Kalu said. The pandemic protocols for day care are far stricter than what is required for other dangerous and scary respiratory illnesses, said C. Buddy Creech, a pediatric infectious diseases expert at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. “For influenza or RSV, we know that we are sending them back to day care with virus in their nose,” Creech said. “We have done that for every single respiratory virus, even those with devastating effects.” Our day care doesn’t quarantine a class if a kid has a runny nose or fever, but tests negative for Covid. They are allowed to come back once they are fever free for 24 hours. And as long as hospital systems and health care providers continue to be overwhelmed with Covid cases, these stricter protocols still make sense, Creech said. Younger kids can be a source of asymptomatic spread to vulnerable adults, even though they aren’t really a huge risk to one another. “I have not yet admitted a classroom of preschoolers that all got Covid,” Creech said. But Gandhi argues that young kids should be allowed to stay in their classes if they show no Covid symptoms, just like they do with other illnesses. Even a test-to-stay strategy would be expensive and burdensome, she argues. Vaccines are available to protect teachers and older adults. The CDC changed its guidance on kids older than 5 even though vaccine uptake among the group is low, she points out. Less than 20 percent of U.S. kids aged 5 to 11 have been fully vaccinated, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation review of federal data. “It doesn’t change anything to keep a two-year-old at home,” Gandhi said, meaning that closing day care centers when young kids test positive isn’t going to make a dent in the pandemic trajectory. Well, it may not make a dent in El Paso case counts, but it certainly upended our lives this week. At some point this afternoon, our 2-year-old did wake up. We had lunch together and then my mother-in-law came back for the second time today to watch him. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at rrayasam@politico.com, or on Twitter at @RenuRayasam. WHAT'D I MISS? — New Mexico’s Luján suffers stroke: Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) suffered a stroke last Thursday while home in New Mexico , according to his chief of staff Carlos Sanchez. He then “underwent decompressive surgery to ease swelling” but is resting comfortably and expected to make a full recovery. — Former Alabama Sen. Doug Jones to help guide Biden’s SCOTUS nominee through Senate: Former Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.) has been tapped to help guide President Joe Biden’s first Supreme Court nominee through the confirmation process, according to a source familiar with the matter. “We intend to have that team in place before the president makes that [Supreme Court] selection,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said during her press briefing. “And it won’t just be one person.” Jones served in the Senate from 2018 to 2021 and is now a political commentator for CNN. — DeSantis asks Florida supreme court to weigh in on congressional map: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, in another sign that he may veto a new congressional map being drawn by the state Legislature, asked the state’s highest court today to tell him whether or not a 200-mile congressional district linking Black neighborhoods must be kept intact. DeSantis recently submitted his own proposed map that throws out the district now held by Rep. Al Lawson, a Black Democrat from Tallahassee. — Wray denies FBI tougher on Jan. 6 than 2020 protests: FBI Director Christopher Wray is rejecting claims that his agency’s aggressive investigation of the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6 contrasts with a lackluster response to violence and unrest that accompanied some Black Lives Matter protests across the country during the spring and summer of 2020. Speaking in California, Wray offered his most detailed public rebuttal yet to critiques of the bureau put forward in recent months by some Republican lawmakers and other allies of former President Donald Trump, as well as attorneys for those charged with crimes related to the Capitol riot. — Cawthorn sues N.C. election board over reelection challenge: Rep. Madison Cawthorn is suing members of the North Carolina State Board of Elections who allege that he is ineligible for reelection because his involvement at a Jan. 6, 2021, White House rally that “amounted to an insurrection.” Cawthorn (R-N.C.), who filed for candidacy in the state’s 13th Congressional District last month, spoke at a rally on Jan. 6 in front of the White House before rioters stormed the Capitol. Trump, whose speech headlined that rally, urged attendees to march on the Capitol, told them to “be strong” and said that “you’ll never take back our country with weakness.” FROM THE EDUCATION DESK An entrance sign near the main gate at Howard University. | Drew Angerer/Getty Images ‘A MIX OF FEAR AND CONFUSION’ — Nightly deputy editor Tyler Weyant emails: For the second day this week, and the third time in 2022, historically Black colleges and universities across the country were subject to bomb threats. More than a dozen HBCUs received threats today, after at least six received threatening messages Monday. At many schools, classes were canceled and students and staff sheltered in place until given the all-clear from authorities. The FBI, in a statement, said the agency “is aware of the series of bomb threats around the country and we are working with our law enforcement partners to address any potential threats.” The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is also involved. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas met last week with more than 40 HBCU presidents on campus safety and security following a series of bomb threats. The incidents have created a tense atmosphere on HBCU campuses, said Ivory Toldson, a Howard University professor and Obama-era executive director of the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities. “There’s a mix of fear and confusion, but knowing that, we have to make sure that we stay strong ourselves through it,” he said. “We all know that domestic terrorism is real and that there there are people out there with different capacities,” Toldson said. “You just never know. You always have that threat looming in the back of your mind that, what if this really is real, what if it is being orchestrated by people who can actually pull it off. So it’s a real fear.” Toldson also said that the added expense of sweeping campuses due to these threats could be a “pretty heavy burden for a lot of HBCUs,” a concern that was echoed by House Homeland Security Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.). “This rash of threats against HBCUs put further strain on campuses and communities that were already under great stress, as they try to operate safely during the pandemic,” Thompson said in a statement. AROUND THE WORLD PUTIN STEPS TO THE MIC — Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the United States of “ignoring” his security demands in a written document delivered to Moscow last week, but he appeared open to continuing talks with Washington and its allies aimed at resolving the worsening security crisis on the Russia-Ukraine border, Quint Forgey writes. Appearing at a joint news conference in Moscow with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Putin said Russian officials had “analyzed the response given in writing” by the United States, “but now, it’s already clear … that Russian concerns were basically ignored.” “We didn’t see an adequate response to our key concerns: non-expanse of NATO, the refusal to deploy [an] offensive weapon next to the Russian borders and bringing back the military infrastructure of the alliance to the status quo of 1997, when the Russia-NATO treaty was signed,” Putin said. In his first public remarks on the U.S. written response, Putin fiercely attacked the United States, claiming that U.S. officials “don’t care that much about Ukrainian security” and are merely using Ukraine as a “tool” to “hinder the development of Russia.” Still, Putin sounded somewhat optimistic about the potential for a diplomatic outcome to the Russia-Ukraine crisis, saying, “I hope that eventually we will find a solution, even though it’s not going to be easy. We understand that. But I’m not ready to talk [about] what kind of solution it will be.” NIGHTLY NUMBER $30,012,386,059,238.29 The United States’ total public debt outstanding as of Monday, according to Treasury Department data. This is the first time the national debt has topped $30 trillion. PARTING WORDS Decorations for the upcoming Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympics are seen on a road. | Andrea Verdelli/Getty Images AN OLYMPIC PRELIM — Join our colleague and China Watcher author Phelim Kine on Wednesday at 9 a.m. Eastern (10 p.m. Beijing) for a Twitter Spaces event where he and a panel will take your questions and dig into the key issues roiling the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics. Panelists include Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), the co-chair of the Congressional Executive Committee on China; Sophie Richardson, China director, Human Rights Watch; Noah Hoffman, U.S. winter Olympian and a board member of Global Athlete; and Melissa Chan, a contributor for Global Reporting Center.   Follow us on Twitter Chris Suellentrop @suellentrop Tyler Weyant @tweyant Renuka Rayasam @renurayasam Myah Ward @myahward   FOLLOW US

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