Politico

President Joe Biden is rolling out two new red-state picks for the federal bench — both of whom are expected to clear a critical political hurdle in the Senate.

Biden’s two nominees are both set to fill judicial vacancies in Louisiana: Jerry Edwards, Jr. is a top federal prosecutor in the state, according to a forthcoming White House announcement that POLITICO reviewed, while Brandon Scott Long is a former deputy chief of staff to FBI Director Chris Wray.

Both picks must go through the Senate tradition known as the blue slip, which affords home-state senators effective veto power over federal district court nominees they disapprove of. That puts Biden’s judicial picks in red states in limbo unless they win the sign-off of the Republican senators who represent those states.

One red-state Biden judicial nominee withdrew from consideration last month amid uncertainty over whether his state’s two GOP senators would exercise their blue slip power to block him.

But Wednesday’s nominees don’t appear in peril: Both Louisiana senators are expected to secure blue slips for confirmation hearings, according to a person familiar with the nomination process who was granted anonymity to discuss private deliberations.

The new judicial picks underscore the Biden White House’s continued focus on filling vacancies on the federal bench, where major policy matters are often settled after presidents in both parties use executive orders to make decisions without congressional involvement.

Donald Trump’s White House famously put a massive emphasis on confirming judges. Then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell prioritized that work, which resulted in the Senate confirming 234 Article III judges (including three Supreme Court justices) — an enormous number.

Trump’s overhaul of the federal judiciary left Democrats reeling; Biden’s team has kept up a healthy confirmation pace, however, getting more judges through during its first two years of work than Trump did during his first two years in power.

Biden has now nominated 170 people to federal judgeships, according to the White House, 64 percent of whom are people of color. Edwards, if confirmed, will be the first person of color to serve as a judge in the Western District of Louisiana.

Long has worked in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Louisiana since 2014. From 2005 to 2010, he was an associate at the firm King & Spalding. Wray was a partner at the firm at the same time. From February 2020 until July 2021, Long was Wray’s deputy chief of staff.

In addition to the two judicial picks, the president is also nominating Rebecca Lutzko to be U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio. She joined that office as a prosecutor in 2005 and currently heads its appellate division. Cleveland.com reported in January that she was the likely pick for the job.

Further, Biden is nominating Philip S. Hadji to the Court of Federal Claims and Kenechukwu Onyemaechi Okocha to D.C. Superior Court.

It was treated as a political coup inside the White House when, during the president’s State of the Union address this past spring, he more or less goaded Republicans into saying that cuts to major entitlement programs would not be part of their debt ceiling demands.

When the deal ultimately came together, President Joe Biden explicitly touted that he kept Social Security and Medicare off the chopping block.

But that was last week.

This week, the White House has begun warning anew that Republicans are coming after those social insurance programs, in what seems destined to be an oft-repeated line between now and November 2024.

A memo from deputy press secretary and senior communications adviser Andrew Bates seizes on House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s announcement that he would be forming a congressional commission that would look into broader deficit and debt reduction. McCarthy’s directive was to examine “the entire budget,” and he noted, “The majority driver of the budget is mandatory spending. It’s Medicare, Social Security, interest on the debt.”

The memo goes on from there:

The Wall Street Journal reinforced this, reporting that Speaker McCarthy “wants to organize a bipartisan commission to look at the entirety of government spending, including mandatory spending programs like Medicaid and Social Security.” ….

These new statements from the Speaker demonstrate that the House GOP are reversing the promise they made to President Biden and the country in the State of the Union, and that to shield billionaires and multinational corporations from paying a cent more in taxes, they very much intend to slash Americans’ Medicare and Social Security benefits.

The American people – including majorities of conservatives – reject that approach, and support President Biden’s work to stand up for the benefits they pay their entire lives to earn.

There is something decidedly D.C. about the exchange, with each side engaged in some sleight of hand: A memo (giving the appearance of a more serious response than a statement) being put together to chastise the possible creation of a commission (being put together to stave off demands for actual legislation).

But it does underscore something larger about Biden world’s political bearing.

A president who has made the pursuit of bipartisan deals a calling card over the past year has clear limits on the places he will go for those deals. He also has some well-honed instincts — and very clear polling — about how to run campaigns and what makes voters tick … or scared.

During the 2022 midterms, abortion may have been the preeminent issue for Democrats on the ballot. But not too far behind were attacks on Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) for proposing a budget blueprint that called for entitlement cuts (the senatorended up having to backtrack).

The issue of entitlement programs also played prominently in Biden’s re-election announcement. And he hit on them again Tuesday in comments at the outset of a cabinet meeting, noting that his just-signed spending agreement with the GOP “protects Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid, veterans’ care, and economic progress like the $470 billion in private investment we’ve attracted to the United States in manufacturing, clean energy, and our historic investments to fight climate change.”

Republicans, to a degree, understand it is a vulnerability. Months before Biden’s State of the Union address, Donald Trumpwarned congressional Republicans not to touch Social Security or Medicare in the debt ceiling negotiations. But, as Bates’ memo notes, a faction of the party never was comfortably on board with keeping those programs untouched. And in the debt ceiling deal aftermath, McCarthy has tried to throw that faction a bone. He may have given the White House one, too. McCarthy’s office did not return a request for comment.

Read the full memo here.

With the debt ceiling drama now behind him, President Joe Biden is starting to focus more on the mechanics of his reelection campaign.

The president’s team is in talks with Gov. JB Pritzker (D-Ill.) about holding a fundraiser later this month, according to two people familiar with the event.

A fundraiser by Pritzker, a billionaire who has promised to help pay for the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 2024 along with other stakeholders on the host committee and elsewhere, would be a major boost to Biden in the final days of the current campaign finance quarter.

The details of the event have not been finalized and are subject to change. But one of the dates being considered is June 28.

The Pritzker event is one of several high-dollar gatherings being discussed by Biden’s team that could be held before the second quarter ends on June 30. Campaigns must file their finance reports in mid-July.

Biden’s allies have expressed confidence in the president’s ability to raise huge sums of cash for his re-election campaign, especially with the threat of the return of former President Donald Trump energizing the Democratic base. But Biden’s campaign has not revealed how much money he brought in during the first 24 hours of his reelection campaign, unlike four years ago when his team announced that he had reaped $6.3 million in that time period after his 2020 kickoff.

Aides have said they are implementing a policy of not announcing sporadic fundraising totals this go-around. But Biden’s campaign also has not disclosed who will lead his fundraising team this cycle.

Biden has begun the process of courting Democrats with deep pockets, however, and several top donors and elected officials were encouraged by the president tapping Hollywood honcho Jeffrey Katzenberg as a campaign co-chair to help guide not only fundraising but also manage relationships between the party’s donor circles and Biden world. A few days after launching his 2024 bid, Biden met with leading donors and fundraisers in Washington at an event hosted by the Democratic National Committee.

In his first Oval Office address Friday evening, President Joe Biden will speak to a “crisis averted” as he’s set to sign a deal to raise the nation’s debt limit and avoid an economic catastrophe.

“Essential to all the progress we’ve made in the last few years is keeping the full faith and credit of the United States and passing a budget that continues to grow our economy and reflects our values as a nation,” Biden will say from the White House room historically reserved for major presidential remarks, according to excerpts of his speech from the White House.

“And that’s why I’m speaking to you tonight. To report on a crisis averted and what we are doing to protect America’s future. Passing this budget agreement was critical. The stakes could not have been higher.”

The president’s decision to deliver a primetime address from the Oval speaks to just how close the country was to an economic meltdown, averted just days before Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the U.S. would run out of cash to pay its bills for the first time in the nation’s history.

“No one got everything they wanted but the American people got what they needed. We averted an economic crisis and an economic collapse,” the excerpts say.

Biden’s remarks will cap weeks of tense negotiations between the White House, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and top Republicans. The nail-biting back and forth left the country, and the world, on the edge as the so-called X date — on which economists predicted globe turmoil would occur if an agreement wasn’t met — rapidly approached.

The Biden-McCarthy deal marked a victory for the president five months into a divided government, a period in which it remained unclear whether the White House could find common ground with House Republicans.

While Biden isn’t expected tout the legislation as a Democratic win on Friday, his team does plan to use the deal to his political advantage and to portray the president as a steady figure in contrast with the more extreme wings of the Republican Party, POLITICO reported this week. The thinking is that voters will reward the president for working in a bipartisan manner.

A debt ceiling default may have been averted, an economic calamity may have been avoided, and President Joe Biden may soon be taking what amounts to a victory lap with an Oval Office speech Friday night. But not everyone is heading into the weekend high on good vibes.

One group in particular is feeling burned by how the week went down: student debt relief advocates.

As details of the agreement began to circulate late Saturday night, those advocates said they were surprised to hear it included a provision effectively requiring the Biden administration to start collecting federal student loan payments — which have been paused since 2020 — at the end of the summer.

At first, some advocates thought it was a mistake. That’s because they hadn’t received a heads up about it from the White House. Nor had the possibility of its inclusion been raised when a group of debt relief advocates met with senior administration officials just weeks earlier at the White House.

But when the text of the agreement was released the next day — confirming that restarting payments was part of the legislation — advocates said they felt like the sacrificial lamb of the whole deal making process.

“It was a total surprise. We felt like the biggest bargaining chip of the debt ceiling,” said Natalia Abrams, president of the Student Debt Crisis Center. “The lack of discussion of this is what led to more of a feeling that we were used.”

Persis Yu, deputy executive director and managing counsel at the Student Borrower Protection Center, said that “student loan borrowers got the bad end of this deal.”

“Borrowers are in a much more precarious state right now than they were before the debt deal,” she said.

White House spokesperson Abdullah Hasan disagreed.

“No president has fought harder for student debt relief than President Biden. The administration announced in November that the student loan payment pause would end in August — this bipartisan budget agreement makes no changes to that plan,” he said in a statement.

“President Biden protected the student debt relief plan in its entirety from congressional Republicans who were threatening to tank our economy unless they could gut the plan. He stopped congressional Republicans from taking away our ability to pause student loan payments in future emergencies,” Hasan said.

He also noted that Biden plans to veto the GOP-resolution repealing the administration’s student debt relief plan and that, at the Supreme Court, the administration is defending its plan against “special interests attempting to deny relief to millions of hard-working Americans, most of whom make less than $75,000 a year.”

Biden himself has pushed back on criticism that he made too many concessions in the debt ceiling negotiation process.

As for what he did give up, Biden has stressed that the reality of a split Congress forced his hand. Neither Democrats nor Republicans, he notes, will get everything they want. “That’s the responsibility of governing,” he said in a speech on Sunday.

But that’s little solace for student debt relief groups. They say that Biden gave up one of the administration’s most important tools to protect borrowers if the Supreme Court strikes down the president’s plan to cancel up to $20,000 in federal loans. The court is expected to announce its decision in the coming weeks, and both the president and debt relief advocates have expressed doubt that the administration will be allowed to move forward with the proposal.

Should that happen, then extending the payment pause would have been a logical fall back option, advocates argue. Now… that’s gone.

“Codifying the end of the payment pause before you know how the Supreme Court will rule on broad-scale relief is reckless and tells student debtors that they’re bargaining chips not worth fighting for,” said Braxton Brewington, spokesperson for the Debt Collective.

For the White House, it’s a major gamble though one that has some logic to it. The president and his team have flirted with ending the payment pause several times now, only to keep it in place. The debt ceiling deal forces their hand, and places some of the responsibility on the shoulders of Republican leaders.

Still, the process of getting there was messy. Some Democrats on Capitol Hill expressed frustration about being kept in the dark during the debt ceiling negotiations. And some student loan relief advocates say it has led them to rethink their relationship with the White House going into Biden’s reelection.

“It’s a moment when folks are taking a beat to reassess how we can be most effective going forward,” said an advocate who asked not to be named to protect their relationship with the administration.

President Joe Biden had just handed out the last diploma after standing on stage for the Air Force Academy’s commencement ceremony for hours when he turned to his left and began to bound off stage, not noticing the sandbag below.

The subsequent moment — one many close to the president have privately feared — was captured on video and went viral online just a touch faster than the White House could respond.

There, plain as day, was the president tripping and falling on a stage. And there, within mere moments of the images beginning to spread on the internet, was White House communications director Ben LaBolt, taking to Twitter to downplay what happened.

“He’s fine. There was a sandbag on stage while he was shaking hands,” LaBolt wrote in response to a video of the fall.

Biden wasn’t down for long, quickly helped up by Air Force officials. But the moment could linger in an unforgiving, highly polarized political environment in which the president, at 80 already the oldest person ever to hold the office, is seeking a second term. A week that showcased the calling cards Biden possesses (capped by a debt ceiling deal that passed the House with far more votes than expected) now also exhibited his vulnerabilities.

“I think Biden has a very credible record on which to run. The way they navigated the debt ceiling negotiation shows the value of experience,” said David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama. “His argument about wisdom is a real argument.”

But, he continued: “This is a liability that comes with age. Incidents like these are going to be blown up. They are going to be a greater concern than it would be if he were twenty years younger. This is a burden he is going to have to overcome. This is going to be an ongoing challenge.”

Questions about Biden’s age can’t be shaken. And clips like the ones that came Thursday don’t help with the White House’s task of trying to dismiss those subterranean concerns from within the party.

Even after a successful midterm election cycle last fall, Biden’s approval rating remains stuck around 40 percent. And recent polls have shown that a majority of Americans would prefer a different Democratic candidate next year. Perhaps as much as the economy, national security or cultural issues, it is Biden’s age that could be a determining factor for voters. That’s true even if Republicans renominate former President Donald Trump, who is 76.

It’s no surprise that Republicans, eager to exploit the issue, seized on his fall immediately. The Republican National Committee and House Judiciary Committee’s Twitter accounts were among those tweeting out a video of the president stumbling to the ground and being helped up.

More telling may be how fast Biden allies inside and outside the White House quickly circled the wagons around him. A crew that prides itself on ignoring the conversation on Twitter moved swiftly on to the platform to cast the president’s fall as not all that unusual and his presence on stage during a long ceremony as a sign of stamina. Biden, former chief of staff Ron Klain tweeted, “stood on stage and shook hands with graduates for almost 2 hours. He tripped over a sandbag as he moved to greet some guests. Calm down you nervous nellies.”

Kate Bedingfield, who LaBolt replaced as communications director, tweeted a couple of times about the incident. “I know I personally have never, ever tripped over anything a day in my life, not once. I’m sure these top Democrats haven’t either. Mountain goats, these folks!” she wrote. Bedingfield also tweeted a video of Obama tripping as he came up some stairs to take the stage at a rally. “Shhhhh don’t tell ‘top Democrats.’” We all know how this worked out for President Obama’s re-elect,” she wrote.

While the rapidity and volume of Team Biden’s response may have belied their expressed nonchalance about the incident, it’s certainly true that Biden is hardly the first president to slip or fall on the job, or to absorb the broader public discussion of their health and fitness for office. President Gerald Ford, a former college athlete, was lampooned to great effect on Saturday Night Live by a constantly falling Chevy Chase after he tripped coming down the stairs from Air Force One in the rain. Ford was just 62 at the time. President George H.W. Bush also fell while bowling in Milwaukee during the 1992 campaign. And other older presidents, from Ronald Reagan to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, saw their aides go to great lengths to conceal various frailties.

Trump’s slow and halting walk down a not very steep ramp following a commencement ceremony at West Point also went viral in the summer of 2020, prompting speculation about his own fitness and a bit of mockery from then-candidate Biden. Trump, seemingly aware of the potential political damage, said that the ramp had been “very long and steep” and added that “the last thing I was going to do is ‘fall’ for the Fake News to have fun with.”

Reacting to news of Biden’s fall during a campaign stop Thursday in Iowa, Trump said it was “too bad” that the president fell and “not inspiring,” while betraying a trace of self-awareness with an oblique reference to his own experience. “I hope he wasn’t hurt,” the former president said. “The whole thing is crazy, you gotta be careful about that. Because you don’t want that, even if you have to tiptoe down a ramp.”

Biden has fallen before. The most notable moment was in March 2021 when he stumbled more than once while boarding Air Force One for a flight to Atlanta. When he finally reached his cabin, he looked around and bellowed a four-letter expletive, according to a person who witnessed the moment of frustration.

Publicly, Biden advisors often say that the president’s age is irrelevant, as they tout what they say is his robust energy while also noting that voters in 2020 elected him. But Biden has physically slowed since then. His doctor has said his gait has stiffened, and the president moves more gingerly than he did before breaking his foot playing with one of his dogs during the transition.

Most people in his orbit say that Biden has not lost a step mentally, but tires more easily than he used to. They say that makes him appear frailer than he is and leads to his lifetime stutter to reappear. Aides have also taken care to not overburden his schedule. His days rarely start early and often feature down time in the middle, according to two people familiar with his routine but not authorized to publicly discuss the matter.

Deputy White House press secretary Andrew Bates called that “laughably untrue” and pointed to Biden’s travel schedule. “President Biden has traveled more in 2023 than President Obama had to the equivalent time in 2011; including to a Ukrainian warzone as he kept restoring our stature in the world,” Bates said. “You saw his qualified leadership when he, in real-time and on national television, baited congressional Republicans into committing not to cut Medicare during the State of the Union. And you saw it when he shook the hands of 921 Air Force cadets today before briefly tripping over a sandbag and then getting right back up.”

As his reelection campaign and message begin to take shape, Biden himself has addressed the age question head-on, attempting to reframe the matter as one of experience: the “wisdom” acquired over a long life in politics as an asset. He joked about it at the White House Correspondents Dinner but at several other instances, he’s offered a terse but confident reply to the question of whether he’s too old to hold the job for another six years: “Watch me.”

And people are. Three hours after an RNC researcher tweeted the video Thursday, it had already been seen more than 8 million times.

In the days after striking a deal with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to raise the nation’s debt ceiling, White House officials sought to downplay what they privately considered to be a substantial victory.

Aides feared that any crowing about the agreement would endanger its passage. They advised allies to be restrained, fearful of driving up Republican opposition.

But there was another consideration at play. Biden world wanted to emerge from the process with the public perception of being the “adults in the room;” mediators in an era of sharp partisanship. Getting lawmakers to collectively step back from the financial cliff was as big a victory as any specific provision from the debt ceiling package. And it would serve as a blueprint for the reelection campaign to come.

With the debt ceiling bill having passed the House on Wednesday, and soon to pass the Senate, the president’s team is aiming to use the negotiations around it to its political advantage, according to more than a half dozen people familiar with the plan but not authorized to discuss internal strategy. Biden’s advisers are betting that voters will reward him for getting a big thing done in a bipartisan fashion. They plan to portray the president as a steady hand in stark contrast to the extremes of the Republican Party.

The strategy has risks: Biden has rankled some progressives — over some of the compromises he made with McCarthy — who have warned that it could impact enthusiasm among voters next year. His above-the-fray approach also largely ceded the messaging space to the GOP, worrying some Democrats that they lost an important political cudgel.

But those close to his reelection bid believe that the president’s poise will stand in sharp relief to the overheated political brinkmanship put forth by Republicans, especially by Biden’s most likely 2024 opponent, Donald Trump.

“There are some MAGA Republicans in the House who know the damage that it would do to the economy,” said Biden recently when asked whether he would shoulder any blame if that nation defaulted, underscoring his argument that politics was being placed ahead of patriotism. “And because I am president, and presidents are responsible for everything, Biden would take the blame. And that’s the one way to make sure Biden is not reelected.”

Biden has long prized bipartisanship, warmly recalling his decades in the Senate when reaching across the aisle happened with more regularity than it does today. In his first two years, he was able to shepherd some bipartisan legislation through — including a massive infrastructure bill as well as a more modest gun safety package — although he relied on only Democrats for Covid funding and his signature Inflation Reduction Act and used executive action for items like student debt relief. But now, with Republicans narrowly in control of the House, Biden has no choice but to work with the opposing party on legislative matters, including on warding off a catastrophic default.

Republicans have charged that Biden was slow to the negotiating table; the White House counters by saying that McCarthy was tardy in producing his spending plan. Early meetings were contentious, and the process was grueling, but senior White House aides tasked with building support for the agreement stressed that it protects nearly the entirety of Biden’s legislative accomplishments while bolstering his image as a cross-aisle dealmaker.

In addition to advising allies not to boast, Biden himself has publicly downplayed his enthusiasm for the deal, casting it as a necessary compromise that left neither side fully satisfied. But in private, White House officials argue that he effectively out-negotiated the GOP, agreeing to small, near-term concessions in exchange for preserving a litany of major economic investments that make up the core of his case for reelection. They also note that the debt ceiling won’t need to be negotiated again until after Biden’s name is on the ballot one final time — effectively removing the main leverage point Republicans had.

On a Tuesday call with allies to outline the deal, senior aides credited Biden with staving off the vast majority of the GOP’s proposals, spending as much time walking through the provisions that didn’t make it into the bill as those that did. They touted the agreement as protecting top climate, infrastructure and health priorities, while averting significant funding cuts.

“It would’ve been over $130 billion of cuts to these programs,” Michael Linden, a senior Office of Management Budget official involved in the negotiations, said on the call, according to audio obtained by POLITICO. “Fundamentally, that was unacceptable to us, and I’m pleased to report that is not what this deal does.”

The White House has repeatedly made that case — that the big pieces of the president’s accomplishments have been enshrined — while trying to tamp down pockets of unhappiness among progressives who have worried for months that Biden is tacking to the center at the expense of the big-swing agenda that thrilled Democrats’ base in his first two years.

But allies argue the debt ceiling battle is less the sign of a pivot than an adjustment befitting Biden’s self-styled image as an experienced pragmatist. When the White House had the votes, it pushed through as many major Democratic priorities as it could. Now, with only partial control of Congress, Biden has sought to pick his spots and protect his gains. The White House believes voters approve of the approach.

“[The president] pledged to make bipartisan progress in the best interests of the country,” said White House spokesman Andrew Bates, “while at the same time fighting through genuine disagreements with congressional Republicans and standing firm against agendas he disagrees with.”

Though West Wing aides tout their relationship with progressives, those on the left say they have, at times, felt shortchanged, watching their priorities fall away. When the debt debate began, House Democrats and some allies privately – and sometimes publicly – worried that Biden would fall back into an overly generous negotiating posture. When talks with McCarthy started, they questioned why he was negotiating at all.

“What scares me the most about that posture is that it seems so deeply out of tune with the political reality of who the Republican Party is today,” said Natalia Salgado, federal affairs director of the left-wing Working Families Party. “This is not the Republican Party of the ’90s. This is not even the Republican Party of the early aughts. This is a whole different beast. And so the playbook that he is using and that he is entering these discussions is no longer valid.”

But ultimately, there was a sense of relief among most liberals that the final deal wasn’t worse. More Democrats in the House ended up voting for the measure than Republicans.

“We had colleagues who were willing to hold our economy hostage and threaten a total meltdown of our economy,” said Rep. Annie Kuster (D-N.H.), chair of the centrist New Democrat Coalition. “That’s frightening to me. That’s not American. But what has come out of that is not a perfect agreement, but an agreement, nevertheless, that I think will get strong support from both sides of the aisle.”

Some Democrats harbor fears that measures in the bill — including enhanced work requirements for those on federal food aid — could further hurt enthusiasm among voters who, polls show, already are lukewarm about another Biden candidacy. An upcoming Supreme Court decision against the president’s student debt relief plan could be another blow, they said.

Several Republicans eyeing Biden’s job came out blasting the agreement, suggesting that it constituted government overreach and facilitated more Democratic-driven spending.

“Prior to this deal our country was careening towards bankruptcy. And after this deal, our country will still be careening towards bankruptcy,” said Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is running for president. “In Washington, D.C., they do these cycles to just get them through the next election. And that’s ultimately one of the reasons why they continue to fail.”

But White House aides believe that the debt ceiling negotiations will be yet another moment for Democrats to portray Republicans as extreme.

“This was a crystal clear example of a key contrast that is extremely favorable for President Biden: complete chaos and a willingness to upend our economy from MAGA Rs vs the stable, steady hand of the President able to craft a deal and keep moving us forward,” said former White House communications director Kate Bedingfield. “Couldn’t be clearer for voters: they are for chaos, he is for progress.”

Holly Otterbein contributed to this report.

For 11 days this spring, President Joe Biden iced out his Democratic allies as he negotiated with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy over raising the nation’s debt limit.

With Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries at the table, Biden was convinced the talks had grown too unwieldy. The White House wanted to narrow the conversation, leaving other Democrats to steam.

Progressives openly criticized Biden. Allies, such as Congressional Black Caucus Chair Steven Horsford, vented that the White House needed to do more to communicate about Republican demands. Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal warned of backlash in the streets if Biden gave in to Republicans.

After the deal was announced Saturday night, his team went into overdrive to ensure that the frustration they’d sparked from within their party didn’t metastasize into a full blown revolt. Administration officials placed over 100 one-on-one calls with House Democrats. They held wonky virtual meetings over the negotiation details and took pointed questions on the policy they’d agreed to.

The ice-then-court strategy worked. On Wednesday evening, 165 House Democratic voted for the Biden-McCarthy bill, more than the 149 House Republicans who supported the measure. Many of those Democrats who had voiced opposition to the bill praised the White House for negotiating what they still consider to be a terrible piece of legislation and, ultimately, supported it.

It was a major victory for Biden, not just preventing an economic calamity that could have come with a debt ceiling breach but proving — five months into a divided government — that the White House and House Democrats have persevered through what seemed, at times, like a rocky relationship.

“It’s the most incredible thing,” Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) said of the president, a close ally who Biden explicitly asked to help sell the bill in one of their regular conservations throughout the process. “I don’t know if he’s that lucky or that skillful. Whatever it is, it’s damn sure working.”

Not all Democrats left the process happy. Progressives, in particular, remained upset that the president backtracked on his pledge to not negotiate around the debt ceiling at all. But when it became clear that Republicans would not support a “clean” lift of the debt ceiling, Democrats said they felt a collective sense of being in the trenches.

That gave Biden some space to engage in negotiations. Helping matters was that the end deal exceeded expectations that the House Republicans had set after having successfully passed their own, far more conservative version of a debt ceiling hike in late April.

“We were operating with hostage takers who were attempting to take no prisoners. And I think Joe Biden, if I might say, did a miraculous and important job of holding off the tsunami,” said Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), who supported the bill. “We were in a bloody war. We were apt to get mutilated. We didn’t. We came out, we’re standing.”

The White House’s Hill outreach kicked off shortly after the deal with McCarthy was announced Saturday evening. Several White House officials — including chief of staff Jeff Zients, top adviser Steve Ricchetti, Office of Management and Budget director Shalanda Young, and legislative affairs director Louisa Terrell, among others — spent the bulk of their Memorial Day weekend on the phone with individual House Democrats. That was followed by six hours of policy-oriented virtual meetings with lawmakers and in-person appearances at caucus meetings by senior officials, according to White House officials granted anonymity to describe the behind-the-scenes blitz.

Once-skeptical Democrats took particular solace in the inclusion of Young, a former House staffer beloved throughout the caucus, in the negotiating room. Not part of the tight circle of longtime Biden advisers, she was viewed as both a credible messenger and trusted negotiator. Jeffries told reporters that she received a standing ovation during Wednesday’s caucus meeting even before she started to speak.

But it wasn’t just the quality of the messenger that mattered to House Democrats. It was the extensiveness of the briefings.

“The White House did something very smart: They spent two days with members, virtually, three hours a day for two days explaining, answering questions, responding,” Clyburn said, adding that he hadn’t seen that level of engagement on an issue since he was elected to Congress in 1993. “I think that’s what made the difference.”

Jeffries himself praised the White House’s communication with the Hill and White House officials say they kept in touch with leadership through the process. The full-bore outreach was needed after House Democrats showed initial displeasure at not being briefed about the deal immediately after it was announced Saturday. The White House also knew that Democrats would be called upon to deliver at least some votes for final passage in the House and couldn’t risk further revolt.

“I’ve been through about seven hours of briefings,” said Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), the top Democrat on the Education and the Workforce Committee. “We’ve had a pretty good idea of what’s in the bill.”

The debt ceiling battle was the first main test of how Biden would operate as president in a divided government. It came amid a bumpy transition from Democratic to Republican control — along with the handoff of power from longtime Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Jeffries. Many House Democrats have privately expressed frustration that the White House has not been more communicative about its priorities or taken clearer stances on controversial GOP bills. There is a feeling among House Democrats that the White House pays more attention to the Senate, which remains in Democratic hands and is responsible for approving its nominees.

While the experience over the debt bill mended some of those worries, there is still plenty of frustration.

Horsford went public with his criticism of how the White House handled the bill last week — and reiterated his reproach during a virtual meeting with top White House aides on Sunday.

He said he spoke with administration officials about “ways that we can improve the outreach, the communication and the engagement, particularly on the communities who helped deliver the wins that produced the Biden-Harris administration,” adding that they have been “very receptive.”

The secrecy surrounding the negotiations left a sour taste for some progressives as well, including Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), the top Democrat on the Natural Resources Committee, who bristled at being shut out of discussions around energy permitting.

“The whole presence of the Democratic caucus, that wasn’t there,” Grijalva said, adding that he got the equivalent of a shrug from the White House in response to his concerns.

“This is the situation we find ourselves in,” Grijalva said when asked to characterize the response from Biden aides.

The lingering frustration prompted Jayapal to seek a meeting with the White House following the debt ceiling vote, emphasizing the need to talk through Biden’s communication strategy even as she praised the president for minimizing the concessions in the deal.

Jayapal voted against the bill’s passage. But it was precisely because the measure was able to pass with a mix of Republican and Democratic votes that a large number of progressives felt comfortable opposing it.

“Since we all expect this deal is gonna get done, then I think it’s appropriate for a significant number of progressives to push back” against many of its provisions, said Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), the Progressive Caucus whip.

The centrist New Democrat Coalition, a group that the White House knew early on would be needed for many of the party’s votes, leveraged that position to advocate for two key policies: permitting reform and funding veterans’ health programs. They said that working with the White House — including giving them their policy positions — paid off, both in keeping lines of communication open and in shaping the legislative product.

“We were able to change the negotiations and get some significant wins for veterans, namely, getting the funding for the toxic exposure fund — the PACT Act — into mandatory funding. That’s huge,” said the Coalition chair, Rep. Annie Kuster (D-N.H.).

The nearly 100-member coalition, in turn, came out early in support of the bill, swiftly boosting the measure’s whip count and lending a degree of legitimacy to the final product in Democratic circles.

In dozens of private briefings with lawmakers and allies over the last three days, senior White House aides offered variations on the same argument: Compare the compromise bill to what Republicans initially demanded back in April, and then decide which side got the better end of the deal.

“I don’t want to overstate it; it’s still going to be painful,” Michael Linden, an OMB aide involved in the negotiations, told outside allies during a private Tuesday call, according to audio obtained by POLITICO. “But it is a much, much, much improved situation from where the Republicans started.”

Biden officials put special effort into selling Democrats on work requirement provisions for government food assistance programs, insisting that they’d lessened the blow by expanding access to those programs for veterans and the homeless. Still, those provisions sparked deep concern among large blocs of progressives and Black lawmakers.

Even Clyburn had reservations, saying in an interview that he sought second opinions from Reps. Lauren Underwood (D-Ill.) and Gwen Moore (D-Wis.) on whether the White House’s argument held water.

“I was guided by them, because when I go out to sell something, I want to know what it is I’m trying to sell,” he said.

They both concluded that the White House’s calculations were likely correct, a finding later reinforced by the Congressional Budget Office’s projection released Tuesday.

The twist — which effectively turned one of McCarthy’s touted achievements into a lament for some conservatives — proved critical for dozens of Democratic lawmakers in the final hours ahead of the vote.

“I prefer listening to the complaints of the Freedom Caucus than I do in focusing on the process of arriving at the deal,” said Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.). “The fact that the ultra-MAGA Republican wing of the MAGA Republican Party is so opposed to this, I think it’s a testament to how successful a negotiation this has been for the Biden administration.”

Kevin McCarthy and Joe Biden achieved what once looked improbable: A bipartisan deal to raise the debt ceiling. Now any one senator has the leverage to bring the country right to the brink of default.

After the House’s planned Wednesday vote to raise the debt ceiling through 2024, the Senate will have only days before the June 5 deadline. And Senate leaders may have to do procedural acrobatics to clear the bill through their chamber in time to keep financial markets and everyday Americans comfortable.

“If somebody used every procedural motion, we wouldn’t even be done by June 5,” said Sen. Debbie Stabebow (D-Mich.), the No. 3 Democratic leader, who supports the deal. “Anyone who runs this out just to be an obstructionist, I think would be extremely irresponsible.”

Stabenow, like many senators, foresees some Senate magic as the weekend gets closer and senators want to go home. But it could be a bumpy ride: Due to the quirks of the upper chamber, individual senators can drag out a bill for roughly a week, as all 100 members must agree in order to fast-track legislation.

It’s a very Senate debate, albeit one with serious ramifications if the country gets too close to the cliff. In 2011, Standard and Poor’s downgraded the United States’ credit rating several days after Congress voted to raise the debt ceiling. Fitch has already put the U.S. on a negative ratings watch for this year’s saga.

But if conservatives get what they want, namely roll call votes on altering the bill, they may acquiesce and give the country plenty of breathing room before June 5.

“There are a lot of things that they could still do to convince me to collapse time,” said Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who had threatened to “use every procedural tool” to impede a bill that didn’t have significant spending cuts. “If they don’t do those things, then I might do that.”

There are tactics Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer can use to minimize debate time and keep things moving but, in all likelihood, he’ll have to strike a deal of his own on the debt limit.

It won’t be a new version of a debt agreement; there’s not enough time for senators to change the bill and send it back to the House. Instead, Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell will have to make a deal on amendment votes. Presumably, all of them would fail, but such an agreement would make individual senators feel heard on a two-year budget deal that takes the debt ceiling drama out of Washington until 2025 — and in turn, gives them political cover to allow the legislation to come to a quick vote.

“I haven’t heard much of a desire to delay the inevitable,” said Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who once forced Senate clerks to read the entire American Rescue Plan.

A variety of senators are already making their demands known. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) says he “will use all powers available” to get a vote on redoing the legislation’s small boost to defense spending, arguing it is insufficient. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) wants to strip approval of the Mountain Valley Pipeline from the bill; Kaine has fought the pipeline for months.

And Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), no stranger to using impending deadlines as leverage, wants to vote on an alternative debt ceiling proposal that would raise the debt limit for a shorter time span while imposing hundreds of billions in budget cuts. He readily admitted his amendment won’t pass but said people need to see it get a vote.

“I don’t think there are 50 votes. I think about half of the Republican caucus will support mine. No Democrats will support it. But the American people need to know that’s where we are,” Paul said.

Some senators are already signaling they want to make the chamber look somewhat dignified in comparison to a House GOP majority that’s riven over the deal. McConnell and Schumer both endorsed the agreement Tuesday, a significant development as both urged Congress to send the bill to the president’s desk. McConnell called it a “historic agreement” while Schumer said he would move to pass it “as soon as we can.”

Both Senate Democrats and Republicans will meet for party meetings Wednesday and begin to assess what it will take to move the bill through the Senate quickly. On the Republican side, there’s already a split between McConnell allies and conservatives like Paul, Lee and Johnson.

“It’s just a question of figuring out what the appetite is for amendments. And how our guys want to proceed. If they want to, there are a number of procedural ways they could slow it down,” said Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.).

This time, progressive grumbling could also become an issue. Some on the left are worried about additional work requirements for government benefits, losing billions for IRS enforcement and the potential environmental impact of the new pipeline. It’s still unclear if they’ll demand amendment votes.

“We don’t build a stronger future as a nation by helping out tax cheats and taking away food from hungry people. This is just wrong,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who did not say whether she would oppose the bill. “I have concerns and I continue to read.”

At the moment, there’s a feeling in both parties that finishing up before the weekend is achievable, despite all the complaints about what’s in the deal. Democratic and Republican Party leaders are lining up behind the deal and conservatives are signaling they’ll allow it to move quickly — as long as they get their amendment votes.

Of course, it only takes one dissatisfied senator to change all that.

“It’ll still pass before the deadline. It may be three in the morning on June 6,” said Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.). “But for all practical purposes, we’re going to do the deadline.”