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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NATION DEBT: Trump made a campaign promise to eliminate the national debt over 8 years.

 

Trump made a campaign promise to eliminate the national debt over 8 years.

The national debt was $20 trillion when he took office.

It was nearly $24 trillion before the pandemic began, largely due to his tax cuts for the wealthy.

It was nearly $28 trillion when Trump left office.

That's the third highest debt increase (relative to economy size) of any presidential term in history.

Now Republicans want to block a measure raising the debt ceiling, and allow America to default on its obligations, because "Republicans will not facilitate another reckless, partisan taxing and spending spree," according to Mitch McConnell.

But, and this is very important - raising the debt ceiling is necessary precisely because of the situation Republicans under Trump got us into before and during the pandemic.

It has very little to do with what Democrats may or may not spend tomorrow.

So in typical fashion, what's happening here is Republicans (again) caused the financial problem. And Republicans (again) are actively working to prevent a solution. So Republicans can blame Democrats for failing to solve a problem (again) that was caused by Republicans (FU*KING AGAIN).

NATIONAL DEBT

 

Trump made a campaign promise to eliminate the national debt over 8 years.

The national debt was $20 trillion when he took office.

It was nearly $24 trillion before the pandemic began, largely due to his tax cuts for the wealthy.

It was nearly $28 trillion when Trump left office.

That's the third highest debt increase (relative to economy size) of any presidential term in history.

Now Republicans want to block a measure raising the debt ceiling, and allow America to default on its obligations, because "Republicans will not facilitate another reckless, partisan taxing and spending spree," according to Mitch McConnell.

But, and this is very important - raising the debt ceiling is necessary precisely because of the situation Republicans under Trump got us into before and during the pandemic.

It has very little to do with what Democrats may or may not spend tomorrow.

So in typical fashion, what's happening here is Republicans (again) caused the financial problem. And Republicans (again) are actively working to prevent a solution. So Republicans can blame Democrats for failing to solve a problem (again) that was caused by Republicans (FU*KING AGAIN).

RSN: FOCUS: What Manchin's Op-Ed Lamenting the National Debt Is Really About

 

05 September 21

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FOCUS: What Manchin's Op-Ed Lamenting the National Debt Is Really About
Jim Newell, Slate
Newell writes: "West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, the swing vote on the Biden agenda, likes to set a marker when heading into a busy legislative session."

His op-ed about the national debt is not really about the national debt.

West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, the swing vote on the Biden agenda, likes to set a marker when heading into a busy legislative session. Before the June session, when Democrats were hoping to advance some version of the voting rights and election reform-focused For the People Act, Manchin wrote an op-ed saying he wouldn’t support it. That bill, and new iterations of it, now sit in a state of permanent limbo. Now, as Congressional Democrats draft a $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill addressing health care, child care, climate change, and the remainder of their spending agenda, Manchin has written another op-ed arguing the following case: What if, instead of doing that, we didn’t?

Manchin had already said that he had “serious concerns” about a $3.5 trillion bill back in mid-August. But in a Wall Street Journal op-ed published Thursday, and in related remarks to the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce, Manchin called for a “strategic pause” on consideration of the proposal.

“Instead of rushing to spend trillions on new government programs and additional stimulus funding, Congress should hit a strategic pause on the budget-reconciliation legislation,” Manchin wrote in the Journal. “A pause is warranted because it will provide more clarity on the trajectory of the pandemic, and it will allow us to determine whether inflation is transitory or not.”

Democrats understand that Manchin, the most conservative Democrat in the Senate, isn’t keen on passing a $3.5 trillion, party-line bill. What drives them up the wall, though, are the arguments he’s using against it.

Nowhere in his many complaints about the national debt, and how adding an excess $3.5 trillion in debt now could accelerate inflation, is an acknowledgement of the relevant fact that Democrats are not writing a bill that adds $3.5 trillion to the debt. The budget blueprint that Democrats have already passed would only allow them to add about half of that to the debt, if they were so inclined—the rest would be offset with tax increases and other savings found by the Senate Finance Committee. But Democrats, specifically to satisfy Joe Manchin, have also said many times that they would pay for the entire bill anyway. Some of the accounting will be gimmickry, sure, but Manchin didn’t complain about the accounting gimmickry in the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which he adored.

Maybe these are famous last words, but I don’t see Manchin ultimately tanking a reconciliation bill over concerns of this nature. Something is likely to pass, even if the final product is a skeleton of Bernie Sanders’ transformative vision. Instead, his op-ed is the latest step in a coordinated effort from centrist Democrats in both the House and Senate, and their outside peers, to secure leverage over the endgame.

Manchin and those aligned with him needed to do something to regain some influence. The original legislative strategy that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi put together was that the House would not pass the Senate-approved bipartisan infrastructure bill—which centrists desperately want to see signed int o law—until the Senate had also sent over an adequate reconciliation bill. By holding the bipartisan deal hostage, progressives, in theory, could compel centrists’ participation in the reconciliation bill.

Centrists, then, came up with a plan to free the hostage. In August, nine House moderates, led by New Jersey Rep. Josh Gottheimer, threatened not to pass the budget blueprint that would set up the reconciliation process until they got a vote on the bipartisan deal. After some delayed votes and torrid late-night negotiating sessions, the Gott Gang and House Democratic leaders struck a deal: The House would vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill no later than Sept. 27. The House moderates were egged on in these negotiations by Manchin and Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, as well as by the well-financed centrist group No Labels.

Pelosi said afterwards that she had always intended to hold a vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill by the end of September, as that’s when the existing highway bill expired. What the moderates secured, then, was a public acknowledgement from Pelosi that her open-ended commitment to hold the Senate bill hostage was untenable.

And so it does not surprise me that, shortly after House moderates put an expiration date (Sept. 27) on whatever leverage progressives had, Joe Manchin would write an op-ed calling for a “strategic pause” to slow the reconciliation process down. There is indeed a considerable amount of strategy in the pause Manchin proposes, but it has little to do with the misleading debt and inflation arguments he makes in his piece. Manchin, and fellow moderates, want to see the bipartisan infrastructure deal passed out of the House so that they have the ability to walk from the reconciliation bill if they want to. That ability would give them the absolute upper hand in negotiations over it.

Progressives do still have another card to play, and they’re talking a big game about playing it: They could vote down the bipartisan infrastructure bill when it comes to the House floor until there is, at least, some shared understanding about the broad contours of the reconciliation bill. But they may not have the numbers, depending on the number of House Republicans who will vote for the bipartisan infrastructure bill. They would also find themselves in a difficult spot, as time went on, holding out against a top piece of Biden-supported legislation while surface transportation authorization has lapsed.

Again, odds are this all gets worked out some way, as both pieces of the Biden agenda have attained a certain too-big-to-fail status. If it all goes south, though, there will have been a bigger problem at play from which all the threats and hostage-taking were merely symptoms: Democrats on opposing wings of the party do not trust each other to hold up their ends of the bargain. If they did, there would not be so much angst and strategic plotting about something as basic as the sequencing of votes.

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