Politico

First lady Jill Biden tested positive for Covid-19 Monday evening and is “currently experiencing only mild symptoms,” according to the White House.

The first lady will remain at her home in Rehoboth Beach, Del., her communications director Elizabeth Alexander said in a statement.

This is the first lady’s second Covid diagnosis. She first tested positive in August 2022.

President Joe Biden tested negative for the virus on Monday night and will continue to test this week and monitor symptoms, according to a White House statement.

The president was scheduled to attend the G-20 summit in India later this week, but those plans could be disrupted by a positive Covid diagnosis.

According to the White House, the economy is on a steady upswing. Voters aren’t buying it, however, despite the declining inflation and steady job growth that President Joe Biden has repeatedly highlighted in speeches.

Biden again leaned into his economic achievements Monday with an appearance at the Tri-State Labor Day Parade in Philadelphia.

America has “the strongest economy in the world,” he told the crowd packed with union workers, highlighting the “nearly 13.5 million jobs” he credits his administration with creating.

For months, the president and members of his Cabinet have crisscrossed the country to preach the message the administration has packaged as “Bidenomics,” and in anticipation of the Labor Day holiday, Biden has been driving that message even harder.

In an op-ed in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Sunday, the president wrote that unemployment was “below 4 percent for the longest stretch in 50 years” and that wages and job satisfaction were up while inflation was down “near its lowest point in over two years.” On Friday, following the release of a jobs report that showed employers added 187,000 jobs in August, he boasted that America was in “one of the strongest job-creating periods in our history.”

But according to a Wall Street Journal poll released Monday, the president’s proselytizing has done little to sway voters.

The poll — which surveyed 1,500 registered voters from Aug. 24 to 30 and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points — found that 59 percent disapprove of Biden’s handling of the economy, compared with 37 percent who approve. According to the poll, 63 percent also disapprove of how the president has handled inflation and rising costs, while 34 percent approve.

Republicans, meanwhile, have tried to hammer Biden over his handling of the economy, tying “Bidenomics” to inflation, which hit a 40-year high last year but this summer dropped to its lowest point in two years, easing concerns over the threat of a recession.

“Joe Biden’s ‘Bidenomics’ has led to the loss of $10,000 of spending power for the average family,” South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott said during the GOP presidential primary debate last month.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis likewise slammed the White House’s economic message during the debate, saying the country must “reverse Bidenomics so that middle-class families have a chance to succeed again.”

And former President Donald Trump, the Republican frontrunner, captioned a video he posted on social media recently: “The Biden Economic Bust will be replaced with the historic Trump Economic Boom!” The 2024 campaign, he said in the video, will be all about who can “rescue” the country from “the burning wreckage of Bidenomics,” which he said would be defined by “inflation, taxation, submission, and failure.”

The actual numbers show the economy steadying since last year’s peak inflation.

Optimism about a “soft landing” has been growing as inflation has steadily ticked down from 9.1 percent last year to 3.2 percent now. Though the economy is growing more slowly than it did during the post-pandemic boom, the GDP rose at a 2.1 percent annual rate from April to June. And while the unemployment rate rose from 3.5 percent to 3.8 percent in August, the highest level since February 2022, it remains low by historical standards.

It’s also much lower than when Biden entered office at the height of the Covid pandemic. In January 2021, unemployment was at 6.3 percent, after reaching a record 14.7 percent in April 2020 as the economy sputtered from shutdowns and disruptions.

The Biden administration sought to offer Americans some reprieve from the economic fallout of the pandemic with a generous economic stimulus package passed along party lines in March 2021. The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, however, likely contributed to the jump in inflation the following year, thoughseveral other factors — including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the Federal Reserve’s repeated rate hikes — also had a large hand in the record rise.

Though Bidenomics has struggled to catch fire as Americans grapple with the persistent effects of inflation, Biden has remained intent on selling his sweeping economic agenda — and drawing a contrast with his predecessor’s policies, as he barrels toward a likely rematch with Trump.

“The guy who held this job before me was just one of two presidents in history … who left office with fewer jobs in America than when he got elected to office,” Biden said Monday, as he touted his credentials as “the most pro-union president” in American history.

“We’re replacing trickle-down economics with what everyone on Wall Street is referring to these days as ‘Bidenomics,’” he told the crowd in Philadelphia. “And guess what. It’s working.”

White House domestic policy adviser Neera Tanden said Sunday that she’s convinced that the Inflation Reduction Act’s Medicare drug price negotiation program will be upheld in court.

Speaking on “The Katie Phang Show” on MSNBC, Tanden said, “There is nothing in the Constitution that stops Medicare from negotiating drug prices. We really, we feel very strongly about our ability to win these lawsuits because this is just a basic principle.”

On Tuesday, the federal government announced the first 10 drugs that will be subject to price negotiations between Medicare and and pharmaceutical companies, including drugs that treat diabetes, heart failure and blood clots.

But drug makers and trade associations have filed multiple lawsuits challenging the program, which is designed to lower costs for Medicare patients.

“Everybody negotiates prices,” Tanden told Phang. “What the pharmaceutical companies are doing are they’re going to the courts to ensure that they can charge any price they can get away with, and that is wrong.”

Tanden also said she expects the program to be expanded, with 15 or 20 drugs added in future installments.

“It’s really important to remember that for medications that aren’t on this list, they may be on future lists,” she said, noting that “prices have been lowered already for insulin.”

Speaking from one of Florida’s regions hardest hit by Hurricane Idalia, President Joe Biden called on Congress to quickly boost FEMA’s disaster fund budget that a series of natural disasters across the country has depleted

“Every American rightly expects FEMA to show up when they are needed to help in a disaster,” Biden said in Live Oak on Saturday. “I’m calling on the United States Congress, Democrats and Republicans, to ensure the funding is there to deal with the immediate crises, as well as our long-term commitments to the safety and security of the American people.”

On Friday, the White House announced that it had asked Congress to approve $4 billion in emergency disaster aid, which adds to a $12 billion request made last month. But that funding request could face significant hurdles amid a larger congressional spending fight this fall.

FEMA currently has around $3.4 billion left in its emergency disaster fund, and its dwindling balance is forcing the federal government to restrict its usage to life-threatening emergencies. That stipulation limits the agency from helping bankroll projects that aim to rebuild infrastructure that disasters have damaged in recent years.

After a wildfire destroyed parts of Maui and storms that have hit communities on both coasts in the past month, Biden has sought to show that his administration has responded to the crises in full force. The federal government’s shrinking disaster fund could impair those efforts if further disasters come.

FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell, who has become a face of the Biden administration’s response to natural disasters, has also pressed for Congress to boost funding.

“I want to stress that while immediate needs funding will ensure we can continue to respond to disasters, it is not a permanent solution,” Criswell said at a press briefing this week. “Congress must work with us on the supplemental request that the administration has made on behalf of FEMA.”

As he made remarks from Florida, flanked by state and local officials, Biden made an effort to characterize FEMA’s funding as a non-partisan issue. Gov. Ron DeSantis, notably, did not meet with Biden as he surveyed the hurricane’s damage in Florida on Saturday.

“Senator Rick Scott, who was with me today, I want to thank him for his cooperation, his help,” Biden said. “He shares the view I do about FEMA, they’re doing an incredible job. But the work, in a sense, is just beginning. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

The White House said Friday that it is asking Congress for an additional $4 billion in emergency disaster aid to help respond to the fallout from a string of natural disasters across the country.

The new request comes on top of the $12 billion that the administration sought earlier this month, as part of a broader supplemental funding package that it’s urged lawmakers to attach to an upcoming short-term spending bill.

“The President has been clear that we’re going to stand with communities across the Nation as they recover from disasters for as long as it takes,” a spokesperson for the Office of Management and Budget said in a statement, citing the “intensity of disaster activity” around the U.S. as triggering the extra financial need. “We urge Congress to take swift action on supplemental appropriations.”

President Joe Biden has vowed repeatedly to ensure that communities hit in recent weeks by wildfires and flooding get as much federal assistance as they need to recover, insisting during an appearance Thursday at FEMA headquarters that “every single Cabinet agency has some contribution they can make and some responsibility.”

The president visited Maui in mid-August after wildfires tore through the Hawaiian island, meeting with survivors and surveying the damage. On Saturday, Biden is slated to fly to Florida to tour areas hardest hit by Hurricane Idalia, which made landfall as a Category 3 storm earlier this week. The administration has also dispatched FEMA teams to both areas to aid with the ongoing recovery.

“I’m here to make clear that our nation has your back,” he said during his Thursday trip to FEMA. “And we are not going to walk away.”

But keeping that pledge may rely heavily on securing more emergency money from Congress as part of a spending bill it must pass by Sept. 30 to keep the government open. FEMA has just $3.4 billion left in its disaster relief fund, Administrator Deanne Criswell said earlier this week. The agency expects to exhaust that remaining amount by the first half of September.

While there is bipartisan support for replenishing the government’s disaster funds, conservative lawmakers have balked at the administration’s broader funding request over its inclusion of $24 billion in military aid to Ukraine.

Some Florida Republicans have since called for splitting the package and approving the disaster funding on its own. But the White House has signaled opposition, insisting that all of the funding included in its supplemental package is considered urgent.

“We need this money done,” Biden said. “And we need to do it in September. We can’t wait.”

A federal judge on Tuesday declared a New Jersey law that would ban a private immigration detention contract with federal authorities from being renewed “unconstitutional” — paving the way to keep the state’s last detention center open.

The opinion by U.S. District Court Judge Robert Kirsch, sitting in Trenton, could allow the center in Elizabeth run by private corrections company CoreCivic to remain open just days before its contract was set to expire. Federal officials have written in court filings that they “fully intend” to extend the private detention contract.

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, in 2021 signed a law that prohibited new and extended immigrant detention contracts between federal authorities and state, local and private entities. While there were four facilities in the state that held such contracts as the bill was making its way through the Legislature, only the one run by CoreCivic remains.

The legal challenge put Murphy — a progressive who once proclaimed New Jersey a “sanctuary” state for immigrants — at odds with the Biden administration. Attorneys for the Biden administration wrote earlier this summer that the law would be “catastrophic” to federal immigration authorities.

Tyler Jones, a spokesperson for the governor, said Murphy was “disappointed” by the opinion but said other parts of the law remain in place.

“The Governor is pleased that the rest of the law that applies to public entities remains intact,” Jones stated. “He understands that the Attorney General’s Office will appeal today’s decision and seek to reinstate the entirety of the law.”

In a statement, Michael Symons, a spokesperson for the Attorney General’s office, said that “private detention facilities threaten the public health and safety of New Jerseyans, including when used for immigration purposes.”

Other blue states have faced legal issues on similar laws that look to prohibit immigration detention within their borders. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked a similar California law in September 2022 that prohibited private immigration detention.

CoreCivic sued to block the New Jersey law earlier this year, arguing it violated the U.S. Constitution’s “supremacy clause” — which bans state law from overriding federal law. On Tuesday, Kirsch agreed.

“A state law that wholesale deprives the federal government of its chosen method of detaining individuals for violating federal law cannot survive Supremacy Clause scrutiny,” the judge wrote. “[The law] would impose on the United States an intolerable choice between either releasing federal detainees or carrying out detention in an entirely novel way.”

Attorneys for the Biden administration argued in court filings that the closure of the CoreCivic facility would create logistical issues for enforcing immigration law, since New Jersey would be without a detention center. Building a Department of Homeland Security detention facility from scratch would be costly and take time, officials wrote in court filings, and transportation of detainees could also take up resources. The closure of the facility could result in the “possible release of certain dangerous noncitizens,” federal officials wrote. Detainees would also be taken away further from their families, officials argued.

All but one member of New Jersey’s Democratic Congressional delegation recently wrote to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, calling on the Biden administration to rescind its opposition to the law, saying detainees at the Elizabeth center have been treated poorly and the community is against holding immigrants there.

“For nearly three decades, the [Elizabeth Detention Center] has faced lawsuits, complaints, and media reports alleging inhumane conditions, including physical and verbal assault and poor medical and sanitary conditions,” Rep. Rob Menendez (D-N.J.) said in a statement. “With this ruling, immigrants detained at the EDC will continue to be at risk of the shameful conditions that have stained this facility and harmed our community members.”

CoreCivic Director of Public Affairs Ryan Gustin welcomed the judge’s ruling.

“CoreCivic plays a valued but limited role in America’s immigration system, which we have done for every administration — Democrat and Republican — for nearly 40 years, including more than 20 years at Elizabeth Detention Center,” Gustin said in a statement. “Our sole job has been and continues to be to help the government solve problems in ways it could not do alone — to help manage unprecedented humanitarian crises, dramatically improve the standard of care for vulnerable people, and meet critical public safety needs efficiently and innovatively.”

As of Monday, there were 235 immigrant detainees at the Elizabeth facility, according to ICE spokesperson Emilio Dabul.

Elizabeth is one of the largest and most diverse cities in the state, with nearly half of its population being foreign born, according to U.S. Census data.

The bill passed the Legislature along party lines. State Sen. Gordon Johnson (D-Bergen), who was the top sponsor of the bill while he was in the Assembly, condemned the court’s opinion.

“We don’t need ICE in New Jersey and I’m shocked the federal court is stripping us of our right to opt out of their unAmerican, inhumane immigration policies,” he said in a statement.

ICE and the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday

Read the judge’s opinion here.

By the end of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, President Joe Biden was sure he made the right decision after watching the events unfold in the Situation Room.

“Biden didn’t have time to voraciously consume the news, but he was well aware of the coverage, and it infuriated him. It did little to change his mind, though,” Franklin Foer writes in his upcoming book, an excerpt of which was released Tuesday. “In fact, everything he’d witnessed from his seat in the Situation Room confirmed his belief that exiting a war without hope was the best and only course.”

“So much of the commentary felt overheated to him. He said to an aide: ‘Either the press is losing its mind, or I am,’” Foer writes.

The chaotic and violent withdrawal from Afghanistan is well-known, but in his new book “The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden’s White House and the Struggle for America’s Future,” Foer recounts an unflinching look at the previously untold timeline of events leading up to the withdrawal and the aftermath of it. The book, which is set to be released next week from Penguin Random House, recounts the first two years of the Biden presidency, ending with the 2022 midterm elections. Foer is a staff writer at The Atlantic and former editor at The New Republic.

When National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan relayed the news to Biden that former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country, he writes, Biden exploded in frustration and said, “Give me a break.”

In the excerpt, Foer depicts a scene that went viral of the withdrawal: when dozens of Afghans climbed onto the side of a jet to escape the country.

“Only after the plane had lifted into the air did the crew discover its place in history,” Foer writes. “When the pilot couldn’t fully retract the landing gear, a member of the crew went to investigate, staring out of a small porthole. Through the window, it was possible to see scattered human remains.”

Multiple people were killed during the U.S.-led airlift from Kabul International Airport. The withdrawal received heated criticism, especially from Republican lawmakers who have called for investigations surrounding the departure. Within days of the withdrawal, Biden’s poll numbers went down, with a majority of Americans disappointed in his handling of the withdrawal.

When former ambassador to Afghanistan John Bass touched down in Afghanistan after the plane’s departure to lead the evacuation effort, he toured the gates of the airport where he was greeted “by the smell of feces and urine, by the sound of gunshots and bullhorns blaring instructions in Dari and Pashto.”

“Dust assaulted his eyes and nose. He felt the heat that emanated from human bodies crowded into narrow spaces,” Foer writes.

Biden would shower Bass with ideas to evacuate more people.

“The president’s instinct was to throw himself into the intricacies of troubleshooting,” Foer writes. “‘Why don’t we have them meet in parking lots? Can’t we leave the airport and pick them up?’ Bass would kick around Biden’s proposed solutions with colleagues to determine their plausibility, which was usually low. Still, he appreciated Biden applying pressure, making sure that he didn’t overlook the obvious.”

“In total, the United States had evacuated about 124,000 people, which the White House touted as the most successful airlift in history,” Foer writes. “Bass also thought about the unknown number of Afghans he had failed to get out.”

ALBANY, N.Y. — The Biden administration pushed back Monday at criticism that it hasn’t done enough to help New York address its migrant crisis, citing two dozen areas where the city can strengthen its migrant operations.

Two letters obtained by POLITICO were sent to Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams on Monday from Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that come in response to the city and state’s concerns over not getting more help from the federal government.

Mayorkas mentioned structural and operational issues found during a week-long assessment of the city’s operations starting on Aug. 7, but didn’t give specifics, saying the recommendations would be first shared Monday with the city.

“The structural issues include governance and organization of the migrant operations, including issues of authority, structure, personnel, and information flow,” Mayorkas wrote. “The operational issues include the subjects of data collection, planning, case management, communications, and other aspects of day-to-day operations.”

A White House official said the recommendations to the city include improving data collection at intake, better communication with the migrants and bolstering information for the migrants regarding their ability to apply for work authorization and the need to apply for asylum.

“We are hopeful that our recommendations will equip the city to take additional steps to improve the migrant operations and maximize the value of our continued partnership and your support,” Mayorkas added.

The letters come after Hochul took to the podium last week saying the crisis “originated with the federal government, and it must be resolved with the federal government.”

In her address and in a letter to the Biden administration, Hochul requested they identify federally owned land and sites to use as temporary shelters for the roughly 100,000 asylum-seekers that landed in New York City this year.

In response, Mayorkas said the Biden administration provided access to a hangar at John F. Kennedy Airport and identified 11 federal sites across the state to house migrants as the city faces an influx of 100,000 asylum-seekers over the past year that has strained city services.

“We look forward to hearing from the city and state on the viability of these sites,” he said in his letter to Hochul.

In addition, he pointed to a lease for the temporary use of Floyd Bennett Field to house migrants. He said a lease was sent to the city and state on Aug. 21, by the Department of Interior and a team has been discussing the lease in person.

“DOI seeks to finalize that lease as soon as you are ready,” he said.

Avi Small, a spokesperson for the governor, told POLITICO that many of the sites proposed by the federal government have been far away from New York City, where migrants are located. He noted the state is ready to move forward with the lease for Floyd Bennett Field, but referred to City Hall as to why it has not been signed yet.

“As Governor Hochul has repeatedly said, this crisis will only abate once the federal government takes action on work authorization and allows migrants to be resettled permanently, and we look forward to learning additional details from the Department of Homeland Security during today’s briefing,” Small said to POLITICO.

As for the operational and structural concerns, Small referred to a letter from Hochul’s attorney sent out earlier this month detailing concerns in the city’s efforts.

In regards to the calls by Hochul to “let them work,” Mayorkas said his department is aware of the need to issue work authorization in a timely manner and is considering changes to make the process faster. But, he did note that there are statutory constraints that hinder these efforts.

A White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said a specific statutory constraint holding up the process is the 150-day waiting period required before asylum-seekers can apply for a work permit. That’s along with an additional 30 days of waiting before they can receive an employment authorization document.

“We are exploring all options available to improve operational efficiency, including through additional staffing and technology improvements to streamline case processing, as well as improved methods of communicating information about the employment authorization process with noncitizens,” Mayorkas said.