Politico

Julie Chávez Rodríguez was tapped on Tuesday to become President Joe Biden’s campaign manager for the 2024 election, elevating her current role as the highest-ranking Latina in the White House.

Chávez Rodríguez currently serves as a senior adviser and as director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. While Chávez Rodríguez, 45, has not run a campaign before, she is a veteran of the Obama administration and worked on Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign as deputy campaign manager.

Here are five things to know about Chávez Rodríguez:

Chávez Rodríguez is the granddaughter of labor icon César Chávez

Chávez Rodríguez is the granddaughter of labor icon César Chávez, who fought for better living and working conditions for farmworkers in the 1960s and 1970s.

Biden currently has a bronze bust of Chávez displayed in the Oval Office, and first lady Jill Biden planted a rose in the Rose Garden to honor Chávez.

Political activism

When Chávez Rodríguez was younger, she attended a lot of rallies as a young activist. Once, at 9 years old, she was arrested during a protest for distributing fliers about pesticide risks.

Work at the César Chávez Foundation

Before entering politics, Chávez Rodríguez was the director of programs at the César Chávez Foundation.

The foundation started as the National Farm Workers Service Center but has become the César Chávez Foundation, which hopes to expand on Chávez’s early work to improve the quality of life for Latinos and working people.

Obama administration

When Barack Obama ran for president in 2008, she traveled to Colorado to volunteer, knocking on doors for his campaign. This led her to a job in the Obama administration in 2011.

During the Obama administration, Chávez Rodríguez served as special assistant to the president and senior deputy director of public engagement in the office of public engagement.

Kamala Harris work

Chávez Rodríguez, a native of California, worked for then-Sen. Kamala Harris as California state director in 2016 and later helped with her presidential bid in 2019.

Chávez Rodríguez went on to work on Biden and Harris’ campaign as deputy campaign manager.

Chávez Rodríguez has served as a senior adviser and director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs since January 2021.

President Joe Biden announced that he’s running for reelection on Tuesday morning. Here’s the who’s captaining the ship:

Julie Chávez Rodríguez, Campaign Manager

After serving as one of Biden’s senior advisors and White House director of intergovernmental affairs, Chávez Rodríguez will pivot to leading the reelection push. She has never run a campaign before, but she served as the deputy campaign manager on Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’ last campaign and is close with the president.

A longtime Democratic aide, she’s currently the highest ranking Latina in the White House. She also served in several roles in the Obama administration, and is the granddaughter of labor icon Cesar Chávez.

Quentin Fulks, Principal Deputy Campaign Manager

A democratic strategist, Fulks was most recently the campaign manager for Sen. Raphael Warnock’s reelection campaign last year — the first successful reelection bid for a Democratic senator in Georgia in more than 30 years. Before that, he was the deputy campaign manager and senior political adviser to Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, helping flip the seat blue in 2018. He has also held several positions at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, EMILY‘s List and Priorities USA.

Kevin Muñoz, Media Relations

Most recently an assistant White House press secretary, Muñoz will take care of press for the reelection bid initially as a larger team is built out. None of the other hires on the comms team or their potential roles in the campaign have been set in stone, two people familiar with the process said. At least one other campaign staffer is set to be announced soon.

National Co-chairs

Rep. Lisa Blunt-Rochester (D-Del.) has been close with Biden for years, helping him choose his running mate for the last campaign. A long-time family friend, she’s also the first woman and first African American to represent Delaware in Congress.

Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), another longtime ally, threw his support behind Biden in 2020. That gave the president a stamp of approval among Black voters at at a critical time for the campaign, following a string of losses to Sen. Bernie Sanders and coming just days before the state’s primary.

Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) has served as the “bridge” between the Hill, the White House and foreign capitals during the Biden presidency. Abroad, he has served almost as a proxy to Biden, being talked about in the U.S. and internationally as a shadow secretary of State.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), a veteran and the first Thai American woman in Congress, was floated as a vice presidential candidate in 2020. Since then, she has been a Biden ally, but also challenged the president two years ago for not naming Asian American Cabinet secretaries, vowing to oppose nominees on the floor before backing down.

Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas) has been a staunch defender of the administration’s handling of the southern border crisis, an issue that’s likely to be central in the 2024 presidential campaign. One of the first two Latinas to represent Texas in the House of Representatives, she represents El Paso, the largest city at the U.S. border.

Jeffrey Katzenberg, a film producer and major Democratic fundraiser, has been key to Biden’s presidential endeavors, backing him in 2020 and raising millions of dollars for Dems alongside the president.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who was also floated as a potential vice presidential candidate, has been a close Biden ally for years. She vocally backed the president despite dwindling Democratic enthusiasm earlier this year, and endorsed him for president in 2020.

President Joe Biden on Tuesday formally launched his campaign for a second term in 2024, asking voters to keep him in office and “finish the job” of a historic American recovery that started after he vanquished Donald Trump in 2020.

Biden’s long-awaited announcement allows him to begin fundraising 18 months out from the November general election. In a video, the president echoed several familiar themes he outlined when he first took charge of the country during the spiraling Covid-19 pandemic and resulting economic turmoil, taking office days after insurrectionists seized the U.S. Capitol.

“When I ran for president four years ago, I said we are in a battle for the soul of America. And we still are,” he said in the video, titled “Freedom” and filled with images from his visits across the country touting his legislative accomplishments.

“The question we are facing is whether in the years ahead we have more freedom or less freedom. More rights or fewer. I know what I want the answer to be and I think you do, too,” he said. “This is not a time to be complacent. That’s why I’m running for re-election.”

Biden, already the oldest U.S. president at 80, faces no shortage of obstacles in a campaign that will force him to balance his daily demands at the White House with the rigors of raising money and pressing the flesh in several battleground states. Little mystery looms over how he plans to tackle the job: He will rely on the same inner circle of top advisers he has maintained since his 2020 campaign, and in many cases far longer. And he has already remade the Democratic National Committee in his image, reordering the early state primary calendar to promote South Carolina to first, demoting Iowa, and choosing a union-focused bid by Chicago to host his DNC festivities next summer.

While he’s managed to quiet most of his party’s restive elements, Biden enters the race in historically precarious territory. His approval ratings hover in the low 40s, tumbling and remaining there since he presided over the chaotic and deadly U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. That’s around the mark where several of his predecessors stood at this point in their presidencies before they were denied second terms, though Barack Obama is an exception.

But White House officials and presidential advisers have repeatedly pointed to the unpopularity of Biden’s potential opponents, namely Trump, whose approval ratings are generally worse than his. And Biden himself is known to implore Americans to compare him “to the alternative — not the Almighty.”

Biden’s entry comes as Trump continues to lead the Republican primary field, though that contest is far from settled. The president could face a rematch with Trump, a battle the White House and party leaders feel secure about not just because Biden won in 2020 but also because of better-than-expected midterms last fall. Trump also is 76. But should Biden encounter another Republican rival such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is 44, it would present possible new challenges given his relative youth.

Biden has received clean bills of health from his doctors. If elected, he would be 86 at the end of his second term, nearly a decade older than the U.S. male life expectancy. His advisers, when pressed on the potential for yawning age gaps between Biden and his GOP opponent, argue the president has the stamina and exuberance to withstand the grueling job and campaign. They contend any Republican who makes it out of the primary — whether it’s Trump or someone else — is likely to have adopted or at least embraced the former president’s MAGA movement that Democrats view as extreme and unappealing to average voters.

Biden reminded voters of that in his video, which begins with scenes from the Jan. 6 insurrection.

“Every generation of Americans has faced a moment when they’ve had to defend democracy, stand up for our personal freedoms and stand up for our right to vote and our civil rights,” Biden said. “This is ours. Let’s finish the job.”

Along with pointing to sharp contrasts in their approaches on everything from abortion rights to expanding healthcare and raising taxes on the wealthy, Biden’s reelection push also will revolve around what he helped deliver over his first four years.

Biden will point to the calendar to make his case. He took the oath of office in 2021 at a U.S. Capitol battered by an insurrectionist siege just two weeks earlier. There, with America’s tradition of peaceful transfers of power never appearing more fragile, the ceremony unfolded within a circle of security forces evocative of a war zone and devoid of crowds because of the coronavirus pandemic. Instead, on that cold Washington morning filled with snow flurries, Biden gazed out on the National Mall to see more than 200,000 American flags planted to symbolize those who could not attend in person.

Biden reminded voters that some of those threats the nation faced to democracy at the start of his term remain.

“This shouldn’t be a red or blue issue. To protect our rights. To make sure that everyone in this country is treated equally. And that everyone is given a fair shot at making it,” he said in his announcement video. “But around the country, MAGA extremists are lining up to take those bedrock freedoms away.”

And then he began to shepherd legislation into law. The list is not insignificant, from billions of dollars to address the pandemic and infrastructure projects, to major pushes on climate change and mental health, bipartisan deals on gun safety and domestic microchip manufacturing, as well as measures to protect veterans from toxic burn pits and shield marriages between same-sex couples. Biden nominated, and Democrats confirmed, Ketanji Brown Jackson to serve on the Supreme Court, making her the first Black woman in the high court. And there’s the prolific string of federal judges that have been nominated under this White House.

But few, if any, of those efforts have been as daunting as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Biden and Western allies rallied to the side of Ukraine, supplying it with weapons and reinforcement and imposing heavy sanctions on Russia. On the one-year anniversary of the war, Biden made a triumphant visit to Kyiv that many in the U.S. and around the world saw as an act of defiance against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked aggression. But Biden still faces the tall task of navigating European divisions over how to end the war.

His political objectives at home are far more straightforward, particularly among Democrats. He faces no credible threats from within his own party, having spent months rallying the next generation of Democrats behind his increasingly inevitable reelection run. Biden’s team has been coordinating with donors, inviting heavy hitters to the White House and arranging small clutches with others said to already be planning events.

And his team believes the electoral map remains tilted in his favor. In 2020, he won back the Great Lakes trio of states — Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — that Trump swiped four years earlier and Biden has relentlessly campaigned in those states, touting his middle class roots and union support. And Democrats believe that suburban dismay at Trump’s behavior and some extreme Republican positions on issues like abortion and guns could slide new battleground states like Georgia and Arizona in the president’s column.

But beyond his own general election, the 2024 race will again be a test of Biden’s down-ticket prowess.

Democrats hold a slim majority in the Senate and have a daunting path to retaining it. Their path to regaining the House runs through some states where they faltered in 2020 over issues like urban crime, namely in New York. Democrats were quick to rally around the standard bearer in the minutes after Biden’s announcement, with elected officials seemingly racing each other to put out statements of support.

Biden, in a way, remains an unlikely recipient of his party’s love. Four years ago, in his third run for the presidency, Biden staked his candidacy less on any distinctive political ideology than on galvanizing a broad coalition of voters around the notion that Trump posed an existential threat to American democracy. After a series of early setbacks, a dramatic comeback in the South Carolina primary paved the way for the field to coalesce around Biden, who then benefitted from a pandemic campaign that largely kept him off the road and away from his frequent verbal missteps.

Since taking office, Biden has tried to take down the temperature in Washington, work across the aisle and ignore Trump. But his predecessor has displayed a remarkable hold on the Republican party and, at least for now, possesses a commanding lead in the GOP primary field.

And it is the danger that Trump poses that stands as Biden’s primary motivation to run again. Earlier this month, Trump became the first former president charged with a crime and stands at the center of several more legal probes. But he also remains, in Biden’s estimation, an existential threat to the republic — and the incumbent president, advisers have said, does not believe anyone else in the Democratic party could take on and defeat Trump.

Biden’s video predominately featured Kamala Harris, who will remain his running mate, ending a Beltway parlor game with little connection to reality that the vice president could be replaced on the ticket. Harris, the first woman and person of color to serve as vice president, got off to a rocky start in the post but has found her footing in recent months, particularly as a passionate voice on abortion rights.

White House aides have insisted there was never any discussion of replacing Harris, and acknowledge that Black women remain the heart of the Democratic Party. But those close to Biden recognize that the president’s age could place Harris far closer to the center of this campaign this time around.

President Joe Biden on Tuesday formally launched his campaign for a second term in 2024, asking voters to keep him in office and “finish the job” of an historic American recovery that started after he vanquished Donald Trump in 2020.

Biden’s long-awaited announcement allows him to begin fundraising 18 months out from the November general election. In a video, the president echoed several familiar themes he outlined when he first took charge of the country during the spiraling Covid-19 pandemic and resulting economic turmoil, taking office days after insurrectionists seized the U.S. Capitol.

“When I ran for president four years ago, I said we are in a battle for the soul of America. And we still are,” he said in the video, titled “Freedom” and filled with images from his visits across the country touting his legislative accomplishments.

“The question we are facing is whether in the years ahead we have more freedom or less freedom. More rights or fewer. I know what I want the answer to be and I think you do, too,” he said. “This is not a time to be complacent. That’s why I’m running for re-election.”

Biden, already the oldest U.S. president at 80, faces no shortage of obstacles in a campaign that will force him to balance his daily demands at the White House with the rigors of raising money and pressing the flesh in several battleground states. Little mystery looms over how he plans to tackle the job: He will rely on the same inner circle of top advisers he has maintained since his 2020 campaign, and in many cases far longer. And he has already remade the Democratic National Committee in his image, reordering the early state primary calendar to promote South Carolina to first, demoting Iowa, and choosing a union-focused bid by Chicago to host his DNC festivities next summer.

While he’s managed to quiet most of his party’s restive elements, Biden enters the race in historically precarious territory. His approval ratings hover in the low 40s, tumbling and remaining there since he presided over the chaotic and deadly U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. That’s around the mark where several of his predecessors stood at this point in their presidencies before they were denied second terms, though Barack Obama is an exception.

But White House officials and presidential advisers have repeatedly pointed to the unpopularity of Biden’s potential opponents, namely Trump, whose approval ratings are generally worse than his. And Biden himself is known to implore Americans to compare him “to the alternative — not the Almighty.”

Biden’s entry comes as Trump continues to lead the Republican primary field, though that contest is far from settled. The president could face a rematch with Trump, a battle the White House and party leaders feel secure about not just because Biden won in 2020 but also because of better-than-expected midterms last fall. Trump also is 76. But should Biden encounter another Republican rival such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is 44, it would present possible new challenges given his relative youth.

Biden has received clean bills of health from his doctors. If elected, he would be 86 at the end of his second term, nearly a decade older than the U.S. male life expectancy. His advisers, when pressed on the potential for yawning age gaps between Biden and his GOP opponent, argue the president has the stamina and exuberance to withstand the grueling job and campaign. They contend any Republican who makes it out of the primary — whether it’s Trump or someone else — is likely to have adopted or at least embraced the former president’s MAGA movement that Democrats view as extreme and unappealing to average voters.

Along with pointing to sharp contrasts in their approaches on everything from abortion rights to expanding healthcare and raising taxes on the wealthy, Biden’s reelection push also will revolve around what he helped deliver over his first four years.

Biden will point to the calendar to make his case. He took the oath of office in 2021 at a U.S. Capitol battered by an insurrectionist siege just two weeks earlier. There, with America’s tradition of peaceful transfers of power never appearing more fragile, the ceremony unfolded within a circle of security forces evocative of a war zone and devoid of crowds because of the coronavirus pandemic. Instead, on that cold Washington morning filled with snow flurries, Biden gazed out on the National Mall to see more than 200,000 American flags planted to symbolize those who could not attend in person.

Biden reminded voters that some of those threats the nation faced to democracy at the start of his term remain.

“This shouldn’t be a red or blue issue. To protect our rights. To make sure that everyone in this country is treated equally. And that everyone is given a fair shot at making it,” he said in his announcement video. “But around the country, MAGA extremists are lining up to take those bedrock freedoms away.”

And then he began to shepherd legislation into law. The list is not insignificant, from billions of dollars to address the pandemic and infrastructure projects, to major pushes on climate change and mental health, bipartisan deals on gun safety and domestic microchip manufacturing, as well as measures to protect veterans from toxic burn pits and shield marriages between same-sex couples. Biden nominated, and Democrats confirmed, Ketanji Brown Jackson to serve on the Supreme Court, making her the first Black woman in the high court. And there’s the prolific string of federal judges that have been nominated under this White House.

But few, if any, of those efforts have been as daunting as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Biden and Western allies rallied to the side of Ukraine, supplying it with weapons and reinforcement and imposing heavy sanctions on Russia. On the one-year anniversary of the war, Biden made a triumphant visit to Kyiv that many in the U.S. and around the world saw as an act of defiance against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked aggression. But Biden still faces the tall task of navigating European divisions over how to end the war.

His political objectives at home are far more straightforward, particularly among Democrats. He faces no credible threats from within his own party, having spent months rallying the next generation of Democrats behind his increasingly inevitable reelection run. Biden’s team has been coordinating with donors, inviting heavy hitters to the White House and arranging small clutches with others said to already be planning events.

And his team believes the electoral map remains tilted in his favor. In 2020, he won back the Great Lakes trio of states — Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — that Trump swiped four years earlier and Biden has relentlessly campaigned in those states, touting his middle class roots and union support. And Democrats believe that suburban dismay at Trump’s behavior and some extreme Republican positions on issues like abortion and guns could slide new battleground states like Georgia and Arizona in the president’s column.

But beyond his own general election, the 2024 race will again be a test of Biden’s down-ticket prowess.

Democrats hold a slim majority in the Senate and have a daunting path to retaining it. Their path to regaining the House runs through some states where they faltered in 2020 over issues like urban crime, namely in New York. Democrats were quick to rally around the standard bearer in the minutes after Biden’s announcement, with elected officials seemingly racing each other to put out statements of support.

Biden, in a way, remains an unlikely recipient of his party’s love. Four years ago, in his third run for the presidency, Biden staked his candidacy less on any distinctive political ideology than on galvanizing a broad coalition of voters around the notion that Trump posed an existential threat to American democracy. After a series of early setbacks, a dramatic comeback in the South Carolina primary paved the way for the field to coalesce around Biden, who then benefitted from a pandemic campaign that largely kept him off the road and away from his frequent verbal missteps.

Since taking office, Biden has tried to take down the temperature in Washington, work across the aisle and ignore Trump. But his predecessor has displayed a remarkable hold on the Republican party and, at least for now, possesses a commanding lead in the GOP primary field.

And it is the danger that Trump poses that stands as Biden’s primary motivation to run again. Earlier this month, Trump became the first former president charged with a crime and stands at the center of several more legal probes. But he also remains, in Biden’s estimation, an existential threat to the republic — and the incumbent president, advisers have said, does not believe anyone else in the Democratic party could take on and defeat Trump.

Biden’s video predominately featured Kamala Harris, who will remain his running mate, ending a Beltway parlor game with little connection to reality that the vice president could be replaced on the ticket. Harris, the first woman and person of color to serve as vice president, got off to a rocky start in the post but has found her footing in recent months, particularly as a passionate voice on abortion rights.

White House aides have insisted there was never any discussion of replacing Harris, and acknowledge that Black women remain the heart of the Democratic Party. But those close to Biden recognize that the president’s age could place Harris far closer to the center of this campaign this time around.

President Joe Biden launched a second campaign for the presidency — and Republicans couldn’t be more thrilled about it.

GOP officials aren’t overly pollyannaish about their prospects of winning by the White House, though they think they’re good. But the possibility of being able to simply talk about Biden rather than all their internal party drama has them downright giddy.

For weeks, Republicans have been dogged by Donald Trump’s legal sideshows in four separate jurisdictions, riven by disagreements over abortion and Russia’s war against Ukraine, and unsteadied by some of the former president’s rivals taking shots at its putative party leader.

GOP operatives and candidates say now that Biden has announced his reelection bid, Republicans will have a chance to reset the contours of the race.

“He’s such an easy target,” said David Carney, a Republican strategist based in New Hampshire. Lower-polling candidates also stand to benefit, Carney said. They can more directly make their case for taking on the president in November 2024.

“It’s a good applause line — ‘I’m going to kick the shit out of Biden’ — everyone likes that on our side,” Carney added. “It gives a very safe topic to talk about.”

Already, those vying for the nomination are eager to turn attention to the other party. Vivek Ramaswamy, a 37-year-old biotech entrepreneur fighting to boost his standing out of the low-single digits, said Monday that Biden’s expected announcement “solidifies what the opposition looks like.” And he noted that Biden — like Trump in 2020 — is unlikely to face any primary debates, despite having at least two Democratic opponents and being unpopular even among his own base.

“I think that helps sharpen the case I’m making that this isn’t even about Republicans and Democrats,” Ramaswamy said. “It’s about the managerial class versus the everyday citizen, and the Democratic Party and the leadership of it all the way up to Biden represents the managerial class.”

Nachama Soloveichik, communications director of Nikki Haley’s presidential campaign, said her team welcomes the opportunity to make a contrast with the current president.

“Joe Biden’s administration has been defined by weakness and incompetence,” Soloveichik said in a statement to POLITICO. “Nikki Haley is running for president to make America strong and proud, and we will continue to contrast her hard work and positive vision with Biden’s hide-in-the-basement campaign.”

Opposition parties long for races to be referendums on the person in power. And the desire for the current 2024 GOP field to turn the spotlight on Biden echoes how Democrats felt about Trump in 2020 and — before then — how Republicans felt about former President Barack Obama.

“Now the cat’s out of the bag,” is how Ward Baker, a Nashville-based GOP strategist, put it. “We have someone to run against.”

But that desire to shift the focus onto the current president is even more acute this cycle as Republicans face major existential questions of their own. GOP candidates are desperately trying to avoid issues that have proven to be political minefields — abortion, the war in Ukraine, reforming Medicare and more — all while wrestling with the legal troubles besetting their own frontrunner.

“For elected officials and party leaders, knowing that it’s Biden will be a useful thing,” said David Kochel, the veteran Iowa Republican strategist.

Jim McLaughlin, the veteran Republican pollster who works for Trump, predicted that Biden’s official announcement could boost the former president even more, assuming that Trump himself drew effective contrasts with his successor.

“The more he talks about issues, and the more he stays focused on issues, the better off he is, because then he can contrast his record versus Joe Biden’s on issue after issue,” McLaughlin continued. “Voters think the country was doing better and Donald Trump did a better job than Joe Biden on the issues that they care about most.”

Even Trump skeptics within the Republican ranks agreed that Biden officially jumping in could boost the former president. “It’s definitely good for Republicans,” said Mike Madrid, the Republican strategist and co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. “It’s definitely good for Trump. It literally gives Trump the matchup that he needs to start defining the contours of the race.”

Of course, it remains an open question how and even whether Trump will take advantage of Biden’s reelection launch. On Thursday, at his first public rally following Biden’s announcement, Trump plans to appear in Manchester. But that will also come just days after jury selection gets underway in a civil trial over allegations that he raped the magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll. Trump denies the allegations.

All of which could lead to Trump reverting to the mean.

“Trump actually likes attacking Republicans more than he likes attacking Democrats,” Kochel said. “That’s going to remain a feature of his approach.”

Polling shows that neither Trump nor Biden are names that most voters want to see on a November 2024 ballot — but particularly not Biden. An NBC poll released Sunday found that 70 percent of voters, including 51 percent of Democrats, don’t want the president to run again — with nearly half of those people citing his age as a major concern. In contrast, 60 percent of voters said they don’t believe Trump should run again.

For Trump, the moment itself is fraught and could ultimately boomerang months from now. In the primary, he is currently ascendant. But he faces a bruising general election against a candidate who has already beaten him. And recent surveys have been mixed on whether Trump or Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — who has yet to declare his own candidacy — are more likely to beat Biden in a general election matchup.

“DeSantis squeaked out a tough victory in 2018 and won by 20 points in 2022,” Kochel said. “Electability is a strong argument for Nikki Haley, Tim Scott — all of them. Trump has extremely high negatives, and very low favorables, except within the base of the party. Trump has the worst general election argument of any of the candidates or potential candidates.”

President Joe Biden is set to announce his reelection bid Tuesday morning along with two staffers who will be tasked with guiding his campaign.

Julie Chavez Rodriguez, currently a senior adviser to the president and the director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, will serve as campaign manager. And Quentin Fulks, who managed Raphael Warnock’s 2022 Georgia Senate campaign, is also set to serve as deputy campaign manager, according to two people familiar with the decisions but not authorized to speak publicly.

The first two staff hires will allow Biden to once again demonstrate a commitment to diversity and trust in his party’s next generation of talent. Fulks, 34, is Black, and Rodriguez, 45, is the granddaughter of labor icon Cesar Chavez and the highest-ranking Latino in the White House.

At least one other campaign staffer is set to be announced soon as well. Kevin Muñoz, who recently left his job as an assistant White House press secretary, will handle press for the reelection effort initially as it builds out a larger team. None of the other hires on the communications team or their potential roles in the 2024 campaign have been finalized, according to two people familiar with the process.

There have been discussions with former White House press aide T.J. Ducklo to return to Biden world in an official capacity. While Ducklo resigned from an administration job after getting into a verbal altercation with a reporter at POLITICO, two people familiar with the 2024 discussions said there is still a lot of goodwill toward him. That is especially true among senior and other colleagues who feel like they spent time in a foxhole during a difficult but ultimately successful 2020 cycle.

Michael Tyler, an alum of Sen. Cory Booker’s 2020 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee, is also being considered for the role of communications director, though no final determination on that position has been made.

Rodriguez has never led a campaign before. But she was a senior adviser and deputy campaign manager on Biden’s 2020 run and is close to the president and well respected by the quintet of top Biden aides expected to help guide the reelection effort: Mike Donilon, Anita Dunn, Jen O’Malley Dillon, Steve Richetti and Bruce Reed. She also built up goodwill from her time working in the Obama administration.

“She isn’t the most operational person they could have gone with, but she has close relationships with the president and his staff,” one person who has worked with Rodriguez said. “She gets shit done and doesn’t piss people off while doing it.”

Fulks is a close adviser to Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and is participating in a fellowship at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Others also in the mix for top jobs are DNC executive director Sam Cornale, DNC deputy executive director and longtime Elizabeth Warren adviser Roger Lau, and Emma Brown, who managed Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly’s successful 2022 campaign.

Sam Stein contributed to this report.

Domestic policy adviser Susan Rice is stepping down from her post.

Rice, who also served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, helped the Biden administration with expanding the Affordable Care Act.

“As the only person to serve as both National Security Advisor and Domestic Policy Advisor, Susan’s record of public service makes history,” President Joe Biden said in a statement Monday. “But what sets her apart as a leader and colleague is the seriousness with which she takes her role and the urgency and tenacity she brings, her bias towards action and results, and the integrity, humility and humor with which she does this work. I thank Susan for her service, her counsel and her friendship. I will miss her.”

Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s debt limit bill hits the floor this week, a major test of the California Republican’s leadership of his complex conference and a launchpad for more substantive discussions with the White House.

McCarthy (R-Calif.) was confident on Sunday when asked about the bill’s prospects in the House.

“We will hold a vote this week and we will pass it,” he told Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures. “I cannot imagine someone in our conference that would want to go along with Biden’s reckless spending.”

Still, the speaker can only lose four Republicans and still pass his debt limit legislation. Most House Republicans are on board, but McCarthy’s leadership team remains short of the 218 votes it needs for passage. Conversations continued over the weekend to try and bring stragglers into the “yes” camp.

Even if McCarthy is able to push his debt limit bill to House approval, the legislation is dead-on-arrival in the Democratic-controlled Senate. Instead, the GOP debt bill is effectively a messaging tool for Republicans in their push for talks with President Joe Biden, who has thus far insisted on a no-strings-attached increase of the debt limit.

The Treasury Department has already been using “extraordinary measures” for months to hold off a default while an unclear “X-date” looms. But there could be more clarity soon: The Congressional Budget office and the Bipartisan Policy Center are planning to release updated projections the second week of May.

Agitation for changes to the legislation began almost as soon as the bill text was released last week, including a higher bar for work requirements for Medicaid and food assistance programs and a sooner start date. As written, the measure would require Medicaid recipients to work 80 hours per month, or 20 hours per week.

“Work Requirements in the House debt limit bill must begin in 2024, not 2025 (as is currently drafted). The reason we demanded 72 hours to review legislation is so we could identify and fix issues with specifics precisely like this. Let’s Get to Work!” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) wrote on Twitter over the weekend.

Gaetz was in a meeting last Thursday with McCarthy’s leadership team, Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.) and leaders of different factions of the conference, discussing both work requirements and the general temperature across the conference.

The elimination of certain tax credits, from ethanol to biofuels, is another source of stress for some members, but confidence that those wouldn’t survive any White House deal has dialed down the concerns.

Other bill components include the claw-back of upsent pandemic funds and IRS funding for customer service and finding tax cheats, a cap on spending to levels from fiscal year 2022, a roll back energy tax credits from Inflation Reduction Act and tighter work requirements for recipients of food stamps and Medicaid benefits. As written, it would raise the debt limit through March of 2024 or until the debt grows to $32.9 trillion, whichever comes first.

The House Rules Committee takes up the bill Tuesday afternoon, a precursor to a floor vote. Should McCarthy need more time to whip votes, the House, which does not return from its weekend recess until Tuesday, is scheduled to be in on Friday.

President Joe Biden is eyeing longtime Democratic operative Michael Tyler for the role of communications director on his 2024 campaign, according to two people familiar with the deliberations.

Tyler has held numerous high-ranking positions within the Democratic Party in addition to working at various groups within the progressive advocacy ecosystem. He recently helped the city of Atlanta with its unsuccessful bid for the Democratic National Convention in addition to working on Sen. Cory Booker’s 2020 presidential campaign and as chief of staff for the Democratic National Committee.

Tyler is widely regarded as a savvy operative with extensive experience on ballot access issues and party infrastructure matters. But he has also operated largely behind the scenes, suggesting that the communications director role for the campaign is not being envisioned as public facing.

Both people familiar with the deliberations cautioned that no decision has been made. But Biden’s consideration of Tyler for the senior position is another marker of a campaign in waiting inching closer to an actual announcement.

The president is slated to release a video as soon as Tuesday that would formally declare his intention to run for office again — though like any Biden-specific decision, it is subject to his whims and the timing could change.

But the president and his top aides are well into the process of identifying some prominent staffers for the reelection effort. He is eyeing Julie Chavez Rodriguez, who is currently a senior adviser and assistant to the president, for the role of campaign manager.

While she has extensive experience from working in both the Biden and Obama White Houses, and has served on previous campaigns, Rodriguez has not held a job that approaches the typical responsibilities of a campaign manager in a presidential race. Bloomberg was first to report that Rodriguez was under serious consideration for the post after POLITICO and other outlets included her name in several stories about Biden’s shortlist.

Biden famously keeps close counsel and has leaned on largely the same group of aides to chart his political career over the course of several decades. But, like Tyler, Rodriguez is not widely considered to be a core Biden insider, suggesting that the president may be looking to expand — and diversify — his inner circle as he embarks on a bid for a second term at the age of 80.