Politico

Matthew Miller, a veteran Democratic communications operative, is the top contender to be the spokesperson for the State Department, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Miller led the effort to confirm Antony Blinken to be secretary of State earlier in the Biden administration and had a more recent stint last year as a special advisor to the National Security Council at the White House to lead communications and legislative work on the Ukraine invasion.

Miller would replace Ned Price, who took a policy focused role in Blinken’s office. The three people familiar with the matter were granted anonymity to freely discuss the information ahead of a formal announcement, which has not been scheduled yet.

Neither Miller nor the State Department immediately responded to requests Monday for comment.

Miller is currently a partner at the strategic advisory firm Vianovo, where he advises boards, executives and well-known individuals on “government investigations, congressional inquiries, high-stakes litigation, activist campaigns, and social and political issues,” according to his firm’s biography. He is also an MSNBC analyst.

Miller served as director of the office of public affairs at the Justice Department in the Obama administration and has also worked as communications director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.).

President Joe Biden on Monday said he plans to run again in 2024 but that he’s not ready to make it official, as questions continue to swirl about the timing of his reelection campaign.

“I plan on running,” Biden told “Today” co-host Al Roker. “But we’re not prepared to announce it yet.”

It isn’t the first time the president has made clear his intentions, but his answer is further affirmation as Biden slips past his closest advisers’ previously outlined launch dates in February and, now, April. It’s also on par for Biden, who has been known for dragging his feet on decisions around seeking the presidency.

In November, Biden told reporters his intention “is to run again,” making clear it was his plan regardless of the midterm election results. Then in February, first lady Jill Biden told The Associated Press there’s “pretty much” nothing left to do but make the announcement.

“How many times does he have to say it for you to believe it?” the first lady said.

Even with Biden’s repeated reassurances, the 80-year-old president’s hesitancy to give the all-clear has left the Democratic Party in a state of limbo, as other potential presidential aspirants and major donors quietly develop a Plan B while publicly supporting Biden.

But just as Biden has done, his inner circle continues to insist privately that he will run, with top advisers Anita Dunn, Jen O’Malley Dillon and Mike Donilon effectively overseeing the campaign-in-waiting. As POLITICO reported last month, Biden’s advisers have also taken steps to staff a campaign and align with a top super PAC, Future Forward.

With Democrats’ better-than-expected midterms performance and no real primary challenge threat, there’s little urgency to announce. Waiting to give the official signoff also allows Biden to avoid having to report fundraising totals and other paperwork that comes along with a formal announcement.

Former President Donald Trump’s arraignment Tuesday is not a priority for President Joe Biden, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday.

“So first, I have to say this, it’s an ongoing case, so we’re just not going to comment on the case specifically itself,” Jean-Pierre said. “Look, the president is going to focus on the American people like he does every day. This is not something that is a focus for him. He is going to focus on things like making sure that that we lower, continue to lower prices for the American people.”

Jean-Pierre’s comments came minutes after Trump turned himself in to authorities in the Manhattan district attorney’s office, where he will be booked on criminal charges connected to his alleged role in a hush money payment made to porn star Stormy Daniels.

“Of course, this is playing out on many of the networks here on a daily basis for hours and hours,” Jean-Pierre said. “So, obviously, he will catch part of the news when he has a moment to catch up on the news of the day, but this is not his focus for today.”

The White House has stuck to a “no comment” script since the news broke that Trump had been indicted Thursday.

Jean-Pierre said that when the White House first learned about the indictment, the president was not given a heads up.

The press secretary also said that the White House is prepared for any unrest that may happen in relation to Trump’s indictment. Biden on Monday said he has faith in New York City’s police ahead of potential unrest in the city.

House Republicans charged into the majority vowing an investigative onslaught against President Joe Biden and Democrats.

But they’ve gotten almost nowhere so far — and some in the party are getting frustrated.

According to interviews with more than a dozen House Republicans, a sizable chunk of the conference is focused on preventing a banking crisis and a looming debt fight instead of on Biden family oversight or a politicized government panel. At the same time, the party base is chafing at the lack of big bombshells and concrete steps against administration officials to back up all of lawmakers’ talk.

“All of us hear from constituents that they’re very anxious for results. And our task, part of our task, is explaining to people what this process is about, and what to expect,” Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), a member of House GOP leadership, said in a brief interview. “I think some people get anxious because they just want immediate results.”

Republicans have fired off scores of letters, issued subpoenas and initial reports and held a handful of hearings. But part of the problem is the lofty expectations they set coming in.

Long before GOP lawmakers settled their speakership fight, they promised voters they’d deploy the chamber’s oversight power against President Joe Biden on a host of issues. They vowed to find a smoking gun that links Biden to his family’s overseas business dealings. They even embraced comparisons of their investigative efforts to Congress’ storied 1970s Church Committee, which uncovered significant abuses by the intelligence community.

The pressure on Republicans stems chiefly from the gap between their voters’ hopes and Washington reality — for example, Johnson said some of his constituents want them making indictments and arrests, which Congress doesn’t have the power to do. But Republicans also acknowledge some of their problems are self-inflicted as they face growing pains readjusting to the majority.

One GOP aide, granted anonymity to speak frankly, described an internal perception that the politicized government subpanel run by Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) had gotten off to a “rocky start” after its initial hearing revealed little new information. That same hearing sparked public kvetching among outside groups and high-profile pundits, who questioned both the structure and the strategy of the panel.

“There’s always going to be people who want to go 110 miles an hour and get frustrated with the pace of how things work,” said Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.), a member of both the politicized government panel and the Oversight Committee. He noted many House Republicans are new to life in the majority.

Then there’s Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.). He’s in a perilous position for a leading Republican, facing skepticism from some Fox News figures who have publicly questioned if he’ll be able to back up his goals for a Hunter Biden probe, given that the president’s son has been under a separate federal investigation for roughly five years.

“I see people go on TV and comment on — ’we should be doing this or we should be doing that’ — but a lot of those people have … been involved in investigations in the past and I don’t think they ever got any information,” Comer said, noting that he’s only been officially wielding the gavel for two months.

Additionally, the Oversight chair has to step lightly around potential turf wars as he pursues a broad scope of investigations that risk elbowing into the jurisdiction of other committees. Comer shot down talk of internal conflict, particularly with the Energy and Commerce Committee’s health subpanel chief, Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.). The two men share a home state and are close, Comer said; if they had an argument, “it wouldn’t be over baby formula.”

Republicans have also faced staffing issues. Reps. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.) and Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) brought up concerns about personnel as part of a strategy meeting with Jordan earlier this year. And while the House Judiciary Committee now has more than 50 GOP staffers, and requested a budget bump, it’s still shaking off a public perception that a core group of Jordan confidants are running it.

Gaetz, asked about the meeting, said members left the regularly scheduled sitdown feeling like they were all on the same page. And Jordan spokesperson Russell Dye said in a statement that the subpanel had “hired a talented and aggressive team,” in addition to an existing Judiciary Committee roster that led former President Donald Trump’s defense during House impeachment inquiries.

Regardless, there are fresh signs that the GOP conference’s investigative focus is diverging.

Gaetz crossed wires with Comer after the Florida Republican tweeted that he and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), with the chair’s “blessing,” would conduct a transcribed interview with a woman who has accused Biden of sexual assault, an allegation the president denies. Comer countered that there had been a “miscommunication” and that Gaetz, who is not a member of the Oversight, hadn’t spoken with him before the tweet.

“We’re following the money, we’re following the bank records. … We’re not going to get distracted on anything else, any sideshows,” Comer said, adding that Gaetz “can do whatever he wants” in the Judiciary Committee or its politicized government subpanel.

Both Comer’s and Jordan’s committees have been highly productive, but only a slice of what they’ve done so far has gained traction beyond friendly GOP outlets. As of Monday, the Judiciary Committee has sent 148 letters, received nearly 114,000 documents, issued 11 subpoenas, conducted six transcribed interviews and scheduled nine interviews or depositions. They’ve also put out two reports and issued a brief to members on subpoena compliance, with Jordan signaling he intends to dole out information to the public as he gets it.

“[We’re] going as aggressive but thorough and consistent with the Constitution as we can,” Jordan said. He dismissed any Church Committee comparison, because the decades-old panel is linked to a foreign intelligence surveillance law that Republicans have “all kinds of concerns with.”

Comer released a report last month focused on Hunter Biden and other Biden family members’ receipt of more than $1 million from an associate who made a deal with a Chinese energy company — though Republicans didn’t draw a direct link to the president, which has been their stated goal.

The Treasury Department also has granted Comer’s panel access to so-called suspicious activity reports related to Hunter Biden and associates. But the committee has yet to release any new findings from those activity reports, which are records submitted by banks that don’t necessarily indicate wrongdoing.

“I get a lot of advice, but we’ve had a strategy and we’ve been very transparent about it. … I feel like in two short months we’ve made a significant amount of progress,” Comer said.

Comer waved off questions about when he would subpoena Hunter Biden, accusing Biden world and the media of having “just assumed” that was a step he would quickly take. And while he said he’s purposely conducted his investigation more privately, he said he released the report on the financial payments in part because “I was seeing criticism from the left and the right that we hadn’t issued any subpoenas — when we had, we just hadn’t talked about it.”

But those movements still haven’t hooked some of Comer and Jordan’s more centrist party colleagues.

Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said he gets asked about the investigations back home “primarily from Republican activists” but added that “I don’t pay much attention to it.” Another GOP lawmaker, granted anonymity to speak candidly, shrugged off investigations as designed to “make you feel good” but “never yield anything.”

And while Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.) characterized Comer’s work as “important,” he described a split among constituents: Some conservatives positively cite Comer’s frequent TV hits, but among another “tuned-in” group he outlined “a frustration that … when is anyone going to be held accountable?”

As for himself? Barr said his focus is “not on those things,” pointing to issues like bank solvency.

“We all have a role to play, and I’ve got enough on my plate right now,” he said.

These should be celebratory times for Democrats. But as Donald Trump is set to get booked on Tuesday over a hush money payment he made to a porn star, a chunk of the party is growing anxious. An uneasy déjà vu has set in.

“Last time people were rooting for Donald Trump, he ended up president of the United States,” said Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif). “We’ve seen this story before.”

The electoral potency of Trump is once more the central element of the Democratic Party’s internal debates. Back in 2016, Trump was supposed to have been the perfect opponent: too crude and way too outrageous to win a general election. As Hillary Clinton’s campaign geared up for that November’s race, many were rooting for Trump to be the GOP nominee, believing that he’d be the easiest Republican to beat.

It didn’t work out as planned. And the shock many in the party experienced because of it compelled them to pledge that they’d take a more sober-minded approach to the possibility of a Trump revival.

But with Trump once more eyeing the White House, the conventional wisdom is again forming that he would be the easiest Republican to defeat, owing to the myriad of legal problems he’s facing.

“I’d say in a general election Trump may be the weakest of the major GOP contenders,” said Democratic strategist Mark Longabaugh. “And he likely will take on more water over time as several of the other legal cases play out.”

Tommy McDonald, a Pennsylvania-based Democratic strategist who worked as a media consultant for Sen. John Fetterman’s campaign, conceded that the “universal consensus” was that Trump was “the weakest candidate” in the GOP field. But he said he’s personally not sure of it — given the passionate following he maintains and the historic underappreciation of his support.

Inside the White House, a more bullish view of the race has come into focus.

President Joe Biden’s most senior advisors have watched Trump’s GOP poll numbers surge, which have only reinforced their belief that the nation’s 45th president will stand as the Republicans’ nominee to be its 47th, according to four Biden allies not authorized to publicly discuss private conversations.

And they believe Trump is also likely the Republicans’ most beatable nominee.

First and foremost, Biden world points to the 2020 election as the top reason for confidence in a potential rematch: We beat Trump once, they say, and will again.

Trump won in 2016 by the slimmest of margins, losing the popular vote to Clinton but squeaking out victories in a series of battleground states to capture the electoral college. He did so in part because swing voters, Independents and some late-deciders broke toward him after a series of October surprises, along with Clinton fatigue and a thirst for change. Some first-time voters and disaffected Democrats also went for Trump, while some on the left opted to stay home.

But four years later, many of those same swing voters broke away from him, weary of his chaos and frustrated by his handling of the COVID pandemic.

Biden advisors are confident that those swing voters are now permanently out of Trump’s reach, according to the four senior people. They have a difficult time imagining that a voter who went for Trump in 2016, but then ran away from him in 2020, would return to cast their ballot for the former president after the Jan. 6 insurrection, several criminal investigations and years of election denialism.

“What possibly would you like about what Trump has done since Election Day 2020?” one Biden aide mused.

They also point to the affirmative case for Biden, including two years of job growth, as well as steady leadership during the COVID pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Anne Caprara, who ran Hillary Clinton’s 2016 super PAC, Priorities USA, argued that 2024 is a fundamentally different political moment than when Trump defied the odds and captured the presidency.

“When we dealt with Trump the first time around, he was a different quantity. People knew him as an entertainer and he had this kind of bulletproof image … people saw him as this successful businessman who they’d grown up with or seen on TV for so many years,” she said. “And I just think he’s got a much different image now.”

It’s an image that she believes is far more flawed. “I think it’s absurd to think that the former president facing an indictment over allegations from Stormy Daniels is not a negative for him in the general election,” she said.

Joe Caiazzo, a Democratic strategist and Clinton campaign alumni, agreed. “It’s tough to tell where the public will be by the fall of 2024, but getting indicted has never served a candidate well,” he said.

But even as many Democrats are quietly betting that Trump is the most damaged potential GOP nominee, some are wondering whether that viewpoint misses something fundamental about his support. They fret that they might jinx the election too.

“Trump is a tremendously flawed candidate who has hurt his party in every election since 2016, but it’s impossible to say that he is the weakest because none of these other Republicans have been on the national stage before,” said Dan Pfeiffer, who served as an adviser to former President Barack Obama. “Given the Republican bias in the Electoral College — any Republican, including Trump, could win the election.”

Trump defied the odds once before. While his portion of the electorate may have shrunk since leaving office, he won more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016 and his MAGA base remains fervent.

In private conversations, top Biden allies share two chief concerns.

The first is Biden’s age. He’ll turn 82 years old soon after he faces voters again and he moves and speaks noticeably slower than even two years ago. If he were to suffer some sort of health crisis, that would rattle voters and dramatically intensify the scrutiny on the person who is just a heartbeat away from the Oval Office, Vice President Kamala Harris. Already, Biden advisors are preparing for a greater number of Republican attacks on Harris this coming campaign as a means of stoking fears about the president’s age and the vice president’s readiness.

The other concern is that there could be a significant economic downturn. Few incumbent presidents fare well in the face of stiff economic headwinds. And while Biden advisors aren’t predicting it, they do worry that a recession could drive some voters to decide to ignore the chaos surrounding Trump in favor of nostalgia for what he sold as a strong economy under his watch.

But while the White House was spooked by last month’s bank collapses and inflation that is still running too high, they believe that the fundamentals of the economy are strong. And they see no need to rush into a campaign announcement, with some aides believing that Biden’s decision — and he is still expected to run — could slip until the summer or beyond.

They believe that they can take their time because of a lack of serious intraparty challengers as well as a slow-developing GOP field. Trump’s likely top rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, is not expected to kick off his campaign until late May or June.

They may not be in a rush or exuding any sense of panic. But other Trump opponents are beginning to.

Rick Wilson, the anti-Trump strategist who co-founded the Lincoln Project, listed all the ways that 2024 is shaping up to be like 2016: The media covering Trump wall-to-wall despite promises not to, Trump’s GOP opponents planning scripted zingers about him that don’t land, and Democrats feeling suspiciously confident that Trump will sink himself.

“A lot of Democrats in 2016 were like, ‘Oh yes, Hillary will wipe the floor with Donald Trump.’ And I warned them at the time: Don’t you bite that apple,” he said. “I feel like we’re in a very, very twisted time loop where God is punishing us for our sins.”

A group of House Democrats is secretly crafting a fallback plan to avoid an economy-rattling debt default.

The White House wants no part of it.

The rogue band of moderate Democrats has spent weeks constructing a break-glass deal with centrist Republicans in case the country goes all the way to the brink on the debt ceiling. As the summertime deadline for action approaches, they’re worried a prolonged standoff could lead to fiscal disaster.

But Biden officials and party leaders, however, see it far differently and are bristling at the attempts at a compromise, according to four lawmakers familiar with the discussions. Their party’s message to those plotting centrists: Your efforts are unlikely to succeed and risk hurting our goal of a clean debt ceiling increase.

The intraparty friction is growing as Washington’s debt crisis gets less theoretical and more urgent with each passing week. And the freelancing Democratic centrists may not have helped their cause by getting involved just as party leaders began seeing a political advantage in the fiscal fight — as long as they can keep the onus on Speaker Kevin McCarthy to unveil a plan that might pass the GOP-controlled House, with unpopular spending cuts likely to be attached.

“We’re gaining ground because of [House Republicans’] inability to put together a plan,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a brief interview. “I’m certainly willing to entertain a mix of things on the budget. Not on the debt ceiling.”

A White House official said the administration has “not spoken to the Problem Solvers about this.” Centrist Democrats, however, say they’ve been made well aware the effort isn’t likely to win any endorsements from party leaders — and have decided to forge ahead anyway as the debt impasse sparks high anxiety, with Congress gone until April 17.

Biden and McCarthy have had zero recent contact on the debt other than jabs exchanged through the press, despite the jittery U.S. banking sector further rattling the situation. Democratic leaders say they’ll accept only a clean debt limit bill, but emboldened House Republicans insist that would never pass their chamber.

Complicating it all: Republican leaders won’t yet describe precisely what they want in exchange for their votes to raise the nation’s borrowing ceiling. Schumer, in response, has taken up the chant “show us your plan” for more than two months and counting.

Enter that group of moderate Democrats, who have privately met with GOP centrists since February, in defiance of their leadership. Their talks remain in the early stages, and two lawmakers familiar with the discussions said they have not honed specific details yet.

One centrist Democrat, who along with others addressed the talks on condition of anonymity, observed that “you’ve got party leaders in both houses that don’t want us to talk to one another.”

They’re not listening to those nudges to stop talking: “None of us work for the White House. We work for our constituents. And they should start talking and negotiating,” said Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine), who co-leads the centrist Blue Dog Coalition.

Centrist Republicans involved in the discussions call them a recognition of what Biden and most Hill Democrats have denied — McCarthy’s GOP simply won’t accept a clean debt hike. And as two months have passed since McCarthy’s last sitdown with Biden, moderate Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said he’s one of those working within the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus because “we’ve got to have a plan B.”

With debt limit talks stuck in a mud puddle, House Republicans have seemingly abandoned plans to introduce a budget this spring, which could springboard the talks. That’s because GOP leaders are struggling to coalesce around a viable blueprint thanks to their members’ ever-expanding wish list and the realization that, for some hardline conservatives, there may be no level of austerity that would cut deep enough.

McCarthy and his team still want to draft their own package of deficit-reducing proposals, which his advisers say would mix ideas such as social program cuts with policies to increase U.S. energy production or tighten border security. Even so, the House GOP may not be able to unify behind such a plan.

“They don’t have a working majority,” Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said.

Those dynamics have convinced Schumer and Biden administration officials that they’re winning the public messaging battle over the debt ceiling. And so they’re increasingly content to hold the line on their demand for a clean increase to the borrowing limit.

The White House has jumped at opportunities to hammer Republicans over their proposed spending cuts, terming one set of demands from the House Freedom Caucus a “five-alarm fire.”

While most lawmakers expect the standoff will drag into the summer, Biden allies have circulated recent remarks from centrist members like Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) expressing concern over the prospect of a debt ceiling crisis — hopeful that more Republicans are deciding it’s not worth the fight.

“There’s starting to be more appreciation that the full faith and credit of the United States is not a source of leverage,” a White House official said.

But Senate Republicans across the Capitol aren’t fleeing McCarthy’s foxhole yet. The most active deal-cutting senators are either sitting out or in the dark.

“The only hints of an idea I hear is an effort among [House] Republicans to come up with something they can vote for and send it over here,” said Romney. “I don’t know of any bipartisan [effort] here. Not with me.”

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) also said she’d heard nothing of the Problem Solvers’ work.

“I don’t think you can expect a lot of movement on an issue like that until you start getting a little bit closer,” Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) said, adding that Democrats “want to run out the clock” but the strategy might not work: “I don’t think that they have that option.”

The Biden administration insists it won’t shift course. In a sign of the White House’s growing confidence, aides quickly brushed off McCarthy’s demand for a second meeting, arguing that there’s little point in the two men sitting down until Republicans decide among themselves what they want.

While Biden has not completely ruled out talking with McCarthy before Republicans publish their own budget, there’s little desire among aides to do anything that might help the speaker unite his fractious conference.

“How does he win here?” one economic adviser to the White House said of McCarthy. “They don’t really have a strategic plan.”

The White House has yet to weigh in formally on the ongoing centrist discussions about a backup approach. But there’s little doubt that it’s at odds with Biden’s preferred strategy. If anything, one adviser suggested, the likelihood that the moderates’ effort implodes or fails to win over either party’s leadership may only end up illustrating how far apart the two sides are.

Back in the Capitol, several Democrats said it’s worthwhile to discuss alternatives and broadly urged Biden to restart talks with the GOP.

Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D-Texas), another member of the Problem Solvers, said it’s on both Biden and McCarthy to come up with a plan. ”Otherwise, it’s going to be a disaster. It already is, right?”

Jennifer Scholtes and Caitlin Emma contributed to this report.

The arrival of Taiwan’s president Tsai Ing-wen in the U.S. on Thursday is highlighting a divide between the White House and China hawks in Congress over how strongly to show support for the self-governing island that China claims as its own.

The Biden administration — loath to inflame already tense relations with China — is downplaying the visit, carefully noting that Tsai is making a private trip and stressing that she is not meeting with any administration officials. But an increasingly vocal group of lawmakers are arguing the U.S. needs to do more to support Taiwan and — by extension — Tsai.

Supporting Tsai’s visit is a way for the U.S. to “stand with Taiwan amid growing threats from [Chinese President] Xi Jinping, and we must ensure Taiwan has the weapons and training it needs to protect itself against growing CCP military aggression,” said House Foreign Affairs Committee chair Michael McCaul, using the acronym for the Chinese Communist Party.

Tsai is stopping in the U.S. on both ends of a Latin America trip. She’ll be in New York for one day Thursday to receive a leadership award from a conservative think tank and will meet with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in Los Angeles on April 5.

It’s Tsai’s seventh such trip to the United States since she became president in 2016, but this one comes as tensions between Washington and Beijing have deteriorated over the spy balloon that recently transited the U.S. and China’s support for Russia in its war against Ukraine.

Her visit is making even starker the growing divide between lawmakers who argue for protecting Taiwan at all costs, and an administration that is trying to rein in China without completely derailing a relationship that is already at its frostiest level in decades.

Beijing is calling the visit an affront to U.S.-China relations and a provocation. “The trip is not so much a ‘transit,’… but the U.S. egregiously conniving at and supporting ‘Taiwan independence separatists,’” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said on Wednesday. The spokesperson for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, Zhu Fenglian, added that Beijing will “take measures to resolutely counter” any meeting between Tsai and McCarthy.

Asked Wednesday about McCarthy’s plan to meet with Tsai, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said: “We leave it to Speaker McCarthy to talk to his schedule, his agenda and what he intends to do or not do, particularly in relation to this transit.” Taipei is cooperating by not releasing any details of Tsai’s U.S. schedule.

McCarthy is one of a band of lawmakers who argue the Biden administration isn’t doing enough to show its support for Taiwan. And they’re demanding that the U.S. provide whatever military and diplomatic support necessary to prevent Beijing from attempting to annex the island. Over the past two years, they’ve drafted legislation proposing everything from establishing formal U.S. diplomatic relations with Taiwan to lending U.S. military equipment to Taipei in the event of “preemptive aggression” by China.

The Biden administration “isn’t being strong enough in its support of Taiwan,” said Rep. Ann Wagner (R-Mo.). “Prioritizing U.S.-Taiwan arms sales and training programs today is a prerequisite to deter a PRC attack on Taiwan in the near future.”

That sentiment is bipartisan. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), ranking member of the House Select Committee on China, said the administration needs to expand and strengthen U.S. defense and economic ties with Taiwan, and deliver long-promised weaponry.

The upcoming meeting between McCarthy and Tsai is a prime example of the dynamics. McCarthy had originally announced a plan to visit Taiwan, prompting Beijing to warn that such a trip “could undermine China-U.S. relations or peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.” It was a clear reminder that China responded to then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August with days of live-fire aerial and naval drills around the island.

McCarthy responded by saying “I don’t think China can tell me where I can go.” The Biden administration refrained from weighing in. “I’m not aware that the Speaker’s office has announced any planned travel. … They are going to make their own decisions,” State Department spokesperson Ned Price said in January.

It’s not clear what prompted McCarthy to compromise with the California meeting (and his office didn’t respond to a request for comment). But the White House is clearly worried that Beijing might respond to Tsai’s presence in the U.S. with another surge of threatening military activity around Taiwan. Beijing “should not use this transit as a pretext to step up any aggressive activity around the Taiwan Strait,” Kirby at the National Security Council said on Wednesday. The White House has had “multiple diplomatic discussions with Beijing” about Tsai’s visit to avoid that from happening, Kirby said.

Those discussions haven’t calmed Beijing’s bluster. Tsai’s visit “could lead to another serious, serious, serious confrontation in the China-U.S. relationship,” the chargés d’affaires in the Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C., Xu Xueyuan, told reporters on Wednesday. ”Those who play with fire will perish by it,” Xu warned.

Lawmakers do have lapsed promises from the Biden administration to point to in their arguments for more action on Taiwan. Deliveries to Taiwan of billions of dollars in U.S. arms are backlogged due to supply chain issues related to the pandemic and exacerbated by the Ukraine conflict.

“We are already within the window of maximum danger and we need all hands on deck to deter Xi Jinping’s malign designs on Taiwan,” said Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), chair of the House Select Committee on China, stressing the need to get weapons to Taiwan quickly.

The White House didn’t respond to requests to comment for this story. But Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said last week that a task force launched in September to untangle snarls in weaponry supply chains is making progress.

Another argument from the lawmakers: Biden’s messaging on Taiwan is confusing to the point where it may be increasing the risk that China invades Taiwan.

Four times since August 2021 Biden has stated that the U.S. would deploy U.S. military forces to defend Taiwan in case of a Chinese invasion attempt. And in every case, aides have walked back comments that appear to reverse the longtime policy of “strategic ambiguity” regarding U.S. willingness to defend Taiwan. That has “managed both to provoke the Chinese and to leave Taiwan without any assurance of American support, a dangerous scenario,” said Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.).

A transition to an explicit U.S. policy of guaranteed military support for Taiwan to fend off a Chinese attack — what Cotton calls “strategic clarity” — has backers in Taiwan. “Dictators are prone to misjudge situations because they are biased,” said independent Taiwan legislator Freddy Lim. International support for Taiwan “must be clearer for China to understand at a glance,” Lim said.

Other Taiwanese observers have less charitable views of congressional interest in Taiwan. In the U.S. “Taiwan is already a political football,” said Andrew Nien-Dzu Yang, a former Taiwan defense minister and adjunct assistant professor at National Sun Yat-sen University. The intense U.S. focus on the island reflects how “Taiwan is a bargaining chip for the United States,” Yang said.

Joe Biden’s second “Summit for Democracy” has been billed as a chance for the president to champion democracy and call out the evils of autocracy around the world.

Unfortunately for Biden, Benjamin Netanyahu preempted his programming this week.

The Israeli prime minister’s now-paused plan to defang the judiciary of one of America’s staunchest democratic allies has injected an inconvenient set of circumstances into Biden’s democracy celebration. Biden and his aides opposed the judicial overhaul and said so as much in public (and just as forcefully in private). But they remain unsettled by Netanyahu’s actions even as he has put the idea on hold.

On Tuesday night, Biden said Israel had gotten itself into “a difficult spot” and that he hoped Netanyahu “walks away from it.”

Netanyahu, however, released a rather defiant statement indicating he would press ahead with some form of judicial change and that Israel “makes its decisions by the will of its people and not based on pressures from abroad, including from the best of friends.”

Underlying the fear inside the White House was a sense that the Netanyahu-led far-right coalition now governing the once-stable democracy in the Middle East has authoritarian leanings. Those concerns have deepened as Washington tries to hold together a democratic alliance against dictatorships in places including Russia, China and Iran, an archrival of Israel.

There are domestic considerations as well. The turmoil in Israel has given Biden a foreign policy headache right in the run-up to the 2024 presidential race. A longstanding public backer of Israel, Biden now heads a party in which a growing number of members are openly critical of the country.

Some of those Democrats say Biden needs to set aside his affection and go beyond rhetoric to pressure Israel on everything from safeguarding democracy to establishing a Palestinian state.

“Joe Biden has personally made clear repeatedly that there’s going to be no consequences, so why should Netanyahu change his behavior based on anything the United States says?” said Matt Duss, a leading progressive voice and Middle East analyst who has advised Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on foreign policy.

Despite Netanyahu’s push for the judicial overhaul, Israel was invited to participate in the summit, the second of which Biden has convened since taking office. But the Israeli leader was not expected to attend the leader-level meetings that Biden will helm on Wednesday, White House aides said. A person familiar with the issue said that Netanyahu was instead slated to speak on a panel during the week, but it was not clear if even that was finalized.

The White House tried to tamp down tensions with Israel on Tuesday. The U.S. ambassador to Israel, Tom Nides, said Netanyahu would at some point be invited to Washington, although a White House spokesperson said no meeting had been decided. Aides said that while they were encouraged Netanyahu paused his plan for the judiciary, they were still in “wait and see” mode about whether he would return to them in the next session of the Knesset. Allies do not expect Biden to be hurt politically by his handling of the matter.

“Where he has expressed differences with Israel — on West Bank settlements and on a judicial overhaul that could weaken Israel’s democratic foundations — he is on solid ground with the vast majority of Americans, and those in his party,” said Dan Shapiro, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel under then-President Barack Obama. “I suspect any rival, from any side, would find this issue to be hardly worth taking on.”

Even before the judicial overhaul plan was introduced, the Biden administration had grown alarmed by Netanyahu’s coalition government, which includes several figures with racist, homophobic, misogynist and religiously extreme ideologies.

For Netanyahu, a veteran Israeli pol, it was a means of getting back into the prime minister’s office as he tries to evade corruption charges in Israel’s courts. But inside Biden world, it appeared to be more than just an alliance of convenience. Some of Netanyahu’s allies back legislation making it harder to remove him from office, and his statement Tuesday suggested he was worried that his coalition might fracture if he is seen as kowtowing to Washington.

Biden and Netanyahu have known each other for decades and share a personal warmth and familiarity. “Hey man, what’s going on?” is Biden’s standard greeting to Netanyahu, aides said.

But they also have had sharp differences.

Their ties were strained by Netanyahu’s 2015 speech to Congress in which he castigated the Iran nuclear deal worked on by the Obama administration, when Biden was vice president. And Biden has expressed private dismay that Netanyahu became such a fawning acolyte of ex-President Donald Trump and that Israel has largely stayed on the sidelines during Russia’s war on Ukraine.

White House aides arranged a call between the two men earlier this month with the hopes that Biden could nudge the prime minister toward abandoning his judicial overhaul.

Despite firm words from Biden, Netanyahu proceeded with the plan, rattling many American Jews concerned about Israel’s future. Administration officials, keenly aware of the importance of America’s security relationship with Israel, proceeded carefully, both publicly and privately warning Netanyahu that he should seek a compromise with those who oppose the overhaul.

Over the weekend, Netanyahu fired his defense minister for criticizing the judicial plan. The White House released a statement that echoed its past ones, reminding Netanyahu that “democratic societies are strengthened by checks and balances, and fundamental changes to a democratic system should be pursued with the broadest possible base of popular support.”

Yet the huge protests were what appeared to have forced Netanyahu to back down, at least temporarily.

Ahead of the Summit for Democracy, White House aides say that Netanyahu’s decision to relent on the judicial reform push was proof that Israel’s democracy was responsive and worked.

But the push itself still raises questions about the future of Israeli politics and injects more uncertainty into an already unstable region.

Israel is hardly the only country invited to the summit facing internal strife. India, for example, has seen serious democratic backsliding under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Poland, too, is facing questions about its democratic strength, as are countries such as Mexico and Brazil. The United States’ own democracy has been tested in the wake of the Trump presidency.

But the tension with Israel is the one with the most direct ties to Biden’s own political future as he eyes a re-election decision and possible rematch with Trump.

Biden has long been a traditionalist on U.S.-Israel relations. He has remained close to reflexively pro-Israel advocacy organizations such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. He has declined to return the U.S. Embassy to Tel Aviv after Trump relocated it to Jerusalem. And he has refused to impose conditions on the billions of dollars in U.S. security assistance the United States provides to Israel.

Those moves by the president — who has also received the backing of the more progressive pro-Israel advocacy group J Street — has run counter to the budding sentiment within the Democratic Party.

A growing number of liberal voices are critical of the Israeli government’s treatment of the Palestinians. And a Gallup poll released this month showed that Democrats’ sympathies in the Middle East now lie more with the Palestinians than the Israelis, 49 percent versus 38 percent

These are shifts that could prove an annoyance to Biden on the campaign trail.

“At the end of the day, this issue is not a voting issue for 99.999 percent of people, right?” said Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of J Street. “But I don’t think the majority of the Democratic Party is going to be okay if Israel takes steps that provoke tremendous outbreaks of violence and lots of people are getting hurt. I don’t think they’ll be okay as Israel undoes its judicial independence and the underpinnings of its democracy.”

A federal judge presiding over the special counsel investigation into Donald Trump’s attempt to subvert the 2020 election has largely rejected an effort by the ex-president to assert executive privilege over the testimony of his former vice president, Mike Pence, according to a person familiar with the ruling.

However, Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg agreed that Pence does enjoy a degree of immunity from testifying due to his role as president of the Senate on Jan. 6. It was not immediately clear whether that ruling is broad enough to satisfy Pence’s resistance to the subpoena — issued by special counsel Jack Smith — or whether he intends to appeal.

Pence has indicated he’s open to answering certain categories of questions related to Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election despite losing the race to Joe Biden. But he argued that the vice president’s unusual role — both a top member of the Executive Branch and President of the Senate — entitles him to immunity typically afforded to members of Congress.