Politico

NEW YORK — The head of the Teamsters said Sunday that he has asked the White House not to intervene if unionized UPS workers end up going on strike.

Negotiations between the delivery company and the union representing 340,000 of its workers have been at a standstill for more than a week with a July 31 deadline for a new contract approaching fast.

The union has threatened a strike if a deal is not reached by the time the collective bargaining agreement expires. Asked during a webcast with members Sunday on whether the White House could force a contract on the union, Teamsters President Sean O’Brien said he has asked the White House on numerous occasions to stay away.

“My neighborhood where I grew up in Boston, if two people had a disagreement and you had nothing to do with it — you just kept walking,” O’Brien said.

“We don’t need anybody getting involved in this fight,” he said.

The Teamsters represent more than half of the Atlanta-based company’s workforce in the largest private-sector contract in North America. If a strike does happen, it would be the first since a 15-day walkout by 185,000 workers crippled the company a quarter century ago.

Before contract talks broke down, both sides had reached tentative agreements on several issues, including installing air conditioning in more trucks and getting rid of a two-tier wage system for drivers who work weekends and earn less money. A sticking point in negotiations is wage increases for part-time workers, who make a minimum of $16.20 an hour, according to UPS.

Last week, UPS said it will temporarily begin training nonunion employees in the U.S. to step in should there be a strike.

A federal appeals court has put a temporary hold on a district court judge’s unusual order restricting a wide swath of federal officials and agencies from communicating with social media companies about content on their platforms.

A three-judge panel considering emergency matters for the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday granted the Biden administration’s request to put the far-reaching preliminary injunction on hold for now while the case is referred to another appeals panel that will consider a longer-term stay of U.S. District Court Judge Terry Doughty’s Independence Day order.

That second panel will be the one to rule on the merits of Doughty’s ruling, issued in connection with a lawsuit filed by the Republican attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana claiming that Biden administration officials violated the First Amendment by pressuring social media companies to remove or edit user posts that contained alleged disinformation about Covid-19, elections and the content of Hunter Biden’s laptop.

Justice Department officials and the White House complained that Doughty’s broadly worded injunction prohibiting various officials and agencies from discouraging social media firms from hosting First Amendment-protected content was difficult to implement and could cause cautious federal officials to refuse to deal with companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google.

Doughty’s order included exceptions for various categories of content including criminal activity, signs of malicious cyber activity and threats to public safety or security, but DOJ lawyers said those categories were ill-defined.

The stay — while temporary — underscores that Doughty’s ruling is unlikely to be the last word on an issue that has animated the political right. Conservatives in the House grilled FBI Director Chris Wray about the ruling during a hearing on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.

In addition, the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government has set a hearing for Thursday to discuss the lawsuit that led to Doughty’s order. Among the scheduled witnesses is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longshot candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.

The appeals court’s order did not explain the rationale for granting what the court called a “temporary administrative stay” of Doughty’s injunction. The order Friday was issued by Judge Carl Stewart, an appointee of President Bill Clinton; Judge James Graves, an appointee of President Barack Obama; and Judge Andrew Oldham, an appointee of President Donald Trump.

Doughty, based in Monroe, La., is also a Trump appointee.

Louisa Terrell, a top aide to President Joe Biden and his director of legislative affairs, plans to step down from her position, according to two people familiar with her plans.

The White House is expected to announce the departure as early as Friday.

Terrell, who has been with Biden since the start of his presidency, played a key role during the first two years of his administration in getting his key legislative priorities passed, including the bipartisan infrastructure bill and last year’s Inflation Reduction Act.

As the president gears up for reelection, and the opportunities for pushing additional legislation through the House dwindles after Republicans regained control of the chamber, speculation about Terrell’s departure had grown for months. She stayed in the job well into Biden’s third year largely to deal with the high-stakes negotiations with Republicans over spending and the debt ceiling increase.

A Delaware native, Terrell first met Biden when she was 5 years old. She also attended kindergarten with the president’s son, Beau, who died of a brain tumor in 2015. Terrell started working for Biden when he was a senator as a counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee. She also served as his deputy chief of staff in his personal Senate office.

Joe Biden’s Gen Z whisperer has a warning for the president: Get going on addressing youth enthusiasm now, or it may be too late.

John Della Volpe, one of the Biden 2020 campaign pollsters, has issuedthese admonitions in briefings with the president’s reelection team and in conversations with top White House aides.

Having analyzed youth voter data for more than two decades, he told West Wing Playbook that voters under 30 today are less likely to identify as Democrats compared to spring 2019. More consider themselves independents, and fewer see politics as a “meaningful way to create change.”

The last three cycles saw historic levels of youth participation — and the cohort is as progressive as ever — but if these voters stay home in 2024 as a result of these shifts in attitudes, Della Volpe said, it could doom the incumbent president and Democrats.

“I feel like it’s a responsibility to ring this alarm now, when there’s time to do something about it,” said Della Volpe, the director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics. “These voters gotta buy into the values of the party and the candidates … and to appreciate the fact that politics can make a difference. You can’t do that in a full-week ad buy after Labor Day.”

Biden world insists it’s not taking young people for granted. One of Della Volpe’s former students, Richard Sweeney, was recently hired by senior Biden aides as a White House policy analyst with a special focus on young people. Sweeney will be meeting with young advocates and working across departments — the Office of Public Engagement, the Office of Political Strategy and Outreach, digital and comms — to reach young people on priorities such as climate, LGBTQ issues and abortion rights, a White House official said.

And Christian Tom, who until last August worked under former Office of Digital Strategy director Rob Flaherty, just returned to the White House last week to lead that operation and find new ways to engage with young people.

Yes, that will mean more White House celeb sightings like BTS and Olivia Rodrigo. But Tom’s office is working closely with senior advisers who monitor focus group research to ensure they’re hitting key policy issues. His team is also deploying a rapid response strategy that leans on its social media influencer network.

After the Supreme Court’s student loan decision came down last month, senior White House officials hopped on a Zoom call with a couple dozen influencers who synthesized the information on their respective accounts, driving around 6 million views across TikTok, Instagram and Twitter, according to a White House official. One user, Vivian, a former Wall Street trader also known as @yourrichbff, posted a video breaking down the decision, and this week posted anotherTiktok highlighting what comes next.

On the campaign side, Flaherty will join the reelect in a senior role, where he’ll have a hand in digital strategy, though his official title and start date haven’t been announced.

Biden’s team will also lean on young surrogates like “Tennessee Three” Rep. Justin Jones, 27, who was expelled by Republicans after protesting in support of gun restrictions, and Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.), a 26-year-old member of the president’s national advisory board.

“Youth turnout is something that we should never think is in the bag. This surge we’ve seen since 2018, even though it has really kept up over the last three cycles, is also very new,” Frost told West Wing Playbook.

Messaging on Biden’s record is a piece of it, but surrogates will also tap into opposition to Donald Trump and a rollback of rights. Finding new ways to do this is vital, Frost said.

A video of Frost on stage in Washington with Paramore and his Ron Desantis F-bombwent viral last month, but a bigger impact occurred the next week when the band let Frost’s team set up atable at its Orlando show and collect signatures to get an abortion constitutional amendment on the Florida ballot in 2024. They secured around 1,800 signatures at the venue in just hours.

For its part, the DNC is training young voters on how to mobilize on college campuses, working with gun violence prevention groups and providing resources to help these voters land jobs in Democratic politics.

The DNC will also leverage partnerships with youth voter groups like NextGen America, the country’s largest youth voter operation. The organization plans to spend tens of millions to get Biden reelected, said its president, Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez.

“No candidate can alone win with the youth vote,” she said, “but I can promise you that if a Democrat doesn’t have the youth vote, they will lose.”

President Joe Biden on Thursday made his strongest public promise yet that the United States is “serious” about orchestrating a prisoner swap to secure the release of Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter detained in Russia.

“I’m serious on a prisoner exchange,” Biden said at a news conference in Helsinki. “And I’m serious about doing all we can to free Americans being illegally held in Russia or anywhere else for that matter, and that process is underway.”

Last week, officials from the Kremlin said they were in talks with U.S. counterparts regarding a potential swap that would include Gershkovich, who has been held in Russia since March. The Biden administration confirmed these discussions but said they had not yet “produced a clear pathway to a resolution.”

Biden’s remarks are perhaps the strongest demonstration of his commitment so far in a public setting. The parents of Gershkovich said in a Wednesday interview with ABC’s “Nightline” that the president had personally assured them he would do “whatever it takes” to get their son home.

Gershkovich was apprehended on espionage charges during a reporting assignment in Yekaterinburg, Russia. Acting as a correspondent following the invasion of Ukraine, he is currently detained in Moscow’s infamously harsh Lefortovo prison. Both the U.S. government and the Journal deny the accusations against Gershkovich.

Yevgeny Prigozhin might want to watch out for any poisoning attempts by Russian President Vladimir Putin, President Joe Biden joked during a press conference on Thursday.

“If I were he I’d be careful what I ate. I’d keep my eye on my menu,” Biden said during a joint press conference with Finnish President Sauli Niinistö in Helsinki.

Biden was asked whether the Wagner leader’s attempted coup last month could raise new concerns about Putin taking drastic new measures in Russia’s war on Ukraine. He responded that he was not aware of Prigozhin’s whereabouts or his current relationship to Putin, and jokingly advised Prigozhin to remain on high alert for potential poisoning.

“But all kidding aside, who knows,” Biden continued. “I don’t know, I don’t think any of us know for certain what the future of Prigozhin is in Russia.”

The Secret Service is closing its investigation into cocaine found in the White House without naming a suspect, officials told lawmakers on Thursday.

Secret Service briefed Oversight Committee members and staff about its investigation into the found cocaine, which was left in an area for storing electronics that can be accessed by both White House visitors and staff. President Biden was not at the White House at the time the cocaine was found.

“This investigation will come to a conclusion tomorrow,” Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), a member of the Oversight Committee told reporters after the briefing.

The Secret Service confirmed in a statement that it was closing the investigation, saying, “at this time, the Secret Service’s investigation is closed due to a lack of physical evidence.”

Mace added that lawmakers were told investigators would not be able to find the individual responsible “and therefore it is concluded.” A law enforcement official previously told POLITICO that it was unlikely a culprit would be found because the area where it was found is highly trafficked.

The Secret Service told lawmakers that it had a list of roughly 500 suspects that includes both staff and visitors.

But their investigation on who deposited the cocaine at that location or when it was left there was “inconclusive,” according to Oversight Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who attended the briefing.

White House officials condemned North Korea for launching an intercontinental ballistic missile on Wednesday, saying it “needlessly raises tensions” and “risks destabilizing” the region.

Pyongyang test-fired its first ICBM in three months days after it threatened “shocking” consequences because of Washington’s military presence along the peninsula. The missile flew about 620 miles before landing in the waters between the Korean Peninsula and Japan, South Korean and Japanese officials said.

“The United States strongly condemns the DPRK for its test of a long-range ballistic missile,” National Security Council spokesperson Adam Hodge said in a statement, using an abbreviated name for North Korea. “This action demonstrates that the DPRK continues to prioritize its unlawful weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs over the well-being of its people.”

North Korea has long lambasted the U.S. for its military ties with South Korea, deploying dozens of rockets over the past year in a show of protest.

The latest launch is a “brazen violation” of multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions, Hodge added. Despite the rising tensions, he said, Washington remains open to diplomacy with North Korean officials.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.