Politico

President Joe Biden intends to visit the southern U.S. border, he said Wednesday, following months of insistence from his political opponents that he make the trip.

“That’s my intention,” Biden said, responding to a question from reporters about whether he’d go to the border. “We’re working out the details now.”

The president is scheduled to visit Mexico City next week for a summit with other North American leaders. The news of Biden’s border visit was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

Republicans have long insisted that Biden see the border with Mexico firsthand — one of many criticisms they’ve maintained over the administration’s border policy. GOP leaders, including Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), have held press conferences criticizing Biden from the border itself, highlighting what they’ve labeled as an immigration crisis.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in November called McCarthy’s border visit a “political stunt.”

The Biden administration faced additional scrutiny for its immigration policies last month under the expected expiration of Title 42, a mechanism used by the Biden and Trump administrations to prevent the entry of millions of migrants under Covid-era rules. Critics have argued the federal government is not prepared for the influx of migrants expected when Title 42 is lifted, as authorities will no longer be able to turn migrants away without an asylum hearing.

The Supreme Court ruled in December that Title 42 can stay in place for now, with oral arguments in the case expected in February or March.

Staff throughout the West Wing wouldn’t cop to watching live coverage of Rep. Kevin McCarthy failing to get enough votes to become speaker of the House. But, to a person, they were more than aware of the fiasco that was unfolding on the House floor throughout the day, and on the TV sets in practically every office.

At Tuesday’s briefing, the first of the year, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre refused to comment on the speaker’s election, demurely batting away several questions about McCarthy’s humiliation and the new House GOP’s majority appearing to be every bit the chaos caucus many feared.

But make no mistake: this administration is about as distraught over all this as a flock of vultures happening upon a freshly killed gazelle. For whatever headaches a Republican-controlled House will create for President Joe Biden through investigations and its ability to control the floor, the disorder and rancor likely to characterize the new GOP majority, administration aides believe, will benefit the president politically.

Administration aides are confident that the president, by focusing on governing and working in a bipartisan manner, is delivering what the public wants — and that Republicans, as long as they’re continually bogged down by intra-party fights, are not.

“The Republican Party is almost non-functional right now,” said Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas). “They can’t even agree on who should lead them. It’s not just a matter for the Republicans in Congress. It affects the whole country, and we can’t even take a vote on anything else until they decide who the speaker is.”

Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wisc.), who contemplated a Snickers bar dinner if voting ran into the late evening, marveled at the absurdity of it all as McCarthy failed to pick up more votes. He quipped that Republicans “should probably nominate Bill Murray at this point.”

“I think we’re kind of enjoying watching this. There’s something about it. It’s interesting,” he said.

While countless House Democrats spent much of the day reveling in the disarray across the aisle, the White House presented more of a straight face, at least publicly. But the administration is wasting no time focusing the country’s attention on this contrast, even if Biden is presenting it implicitly — not by hammering Republicans as extreme but by demonstrating his own ability to deliver on bipartisan legislation.

“Based on what is going on today, their ability to govern and pass legislation on their own, I think is tenuous at best,” said Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.). “When you bend everything to an ideological position, as opposed to the work of Congress, this is what you end up with.”

Biden’s first big event of the year Wednesday, a trip to Kentucky to highlight a long-sought bridge repair alongside Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell, will typify his approach over the year ahead: focusing on the increasingly tangible benefits from the bipartisan 2021 infrastructure overhaul and last year’s bills to boost semiconductor manufacturing, lower drug costs and hasten the transition to electric vehicles and renewable energy. Two border-state governors, Kentucky Democrat Andy Beshear and Ohio Republican Mike DeWine, will also attend the event, allowing Biden to underline the bipartisan nature of the law responsible for fixing the Brent Spence Bridge.

And on Friday, the president will mark the two-year anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection with a speech at the White House. The occasion will provide another chance to articulate a view about the sanctity of American democracy — while reminding the country which party was responsible.

Jean-Pierre wouldn’t say whether this week’s presidential events were orchestrated with an eye on the anticipated messy floor vote in the House, but her emphasis on the bipartisan nature of the work Biden and McConnell planned to highlight was not subtle.

“We can do big profound things for the country when we work together,” she said.

But behind the bromides, there was some bubbling concern about the chaos unfolding on the House floor.

Staffers who spoke more candidly, on the condition of anonymity, acknowledged that bipartisan legislation will be more difficult with Republicans controlling the House, however narrow and fractious their majority. Debt ceiling fights become even trickier when there is no order at all.

That said, some aides remain cautiously optimistic that some GOP lawmakers from more competitive districts will be incentivized to work across the aisle. Deputy press secretary Andrew Bates wrote in a post-election bulletin to reporters that the House Republicans who voted for the president’s infrastructure law in 2021 all won reelection in November.

The president and his aides, in ways public and private, will continue to brand the GOP by highlighting the behavior of its more extreme voices — the “MAGA Republicans,” as Biden has labeled them — while still reaching out to Republicans who might work more constructively with Democrats, White House staffers said. Part of that effort, they noted, will include reminding Republicans of the popularity of Biden’s policy achievements.

If House Republicans follow through on promises to roll-back elements of the Inflation Reduction Act and weaken remaining abortion protections, the White House is confident that those efforts will benefit Democrats politically, not to mention be blocked by a Democrat-controlled Senate.

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), one of the hard-liners refusing to back McCarthy, dismissed such actions as “messaging bills” during a press conference Tuesday. And, in a comment sure to be clipped and saved by the White House press shop, belittled the coming GOP investigations of Hunter Biden and other matters as “theater pretending to be oversight.”

And there is no immediate threat of a government shutdown after last month’s passage of a $1.7 trillion omnibus spending package, an achievement propelled in large part by Senate Republicans who foresaw the coming chaos of a GOP-controlled House. In fact, as McCarthy struggled to secure the speaker’s gavel Tuesday, some Senate Republicans expressed vindication about having passed the bipartisan legislation last year, spiking the football on House Republicans harder than anyone at the White House did.

“I’ve been told you shouldn’t vote for the $1.7 trillion spending bill because the House is Republican, they’ll make it better,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). “I don’t think that theory is holding up too well.”

President Joe Biden has pardoned six people who have served out sentences after convictions on a murder charge and drug- and alcohol-related crimes, including an 80-year-old woman convicted of killing her abusive husband about a half-century ago and a man who pleaded guilty to using a telephone for a cocaine transaction in the 1970s.

The pardons, announced Friday, mean the criminal record of the crimes is now purged. They come a few months after the Democratic president pardoned thousands of people convicted of “simple possession” of marijuana under federal law. He also pardoned three people earlier this year and has commuted the sentences of 75 others.

Biden’s stance on low-level crimes, particularly low-level drug possession, and how those crimes can impact families and communities for decades to come has evolved over his 50 years in public service. In the 1990s, he supported crime legislation that increased arrest and incarceration rates for drug crimes, particularly for Black and Latino people. Biden has said people are right to question his stance on the bill, but he also has encouraged them to look at what he’s doing now on crime.

The pardons were announced while the president was spending time with his family on St. Croix, in the U.S. Virgin Islands. The White House said those pardoned are people who went on to serve their communities. It said the pardons reflect Biden’s view people deserve a second chance.

Those granted pardons are:

— Beverly Ann Ibn-Tamas, 80, of Columbus, Ohio. At age 33, Ibn-Tamas was convicted of killing her husband. She testified that her husband beat her, verbally abused her and threatened her. She told jurors that she shot him moments after he had assaulted her, while she was pregnant. The judge refused to allow expert testimony on battered woman syndrome, a psychological condition that can develop among victims of domestic violence. Ibn-Tamas got one to five years of incarceration with credit for time served. Her appeal was among the first by someone with battered woman syndrome, and her case has been studied by academics.

— Charles Byrnes-Jackson, 77, of Swansea, South Carolina. Byrnes-Jackson pleaded guilty to possession and sale of spirits without tax stamps when he was 18, and it involved a single illegal whiskey transaction. He tried to enlist in the Marines but was rejected because of the conviction.

— John Dix Nock III, 72, of St. Augustine, Florida. Nock pleaded guilty to using his property as a grow-house for marijuana 27 years ago. He didn’t cultivate the plants, but he got six months of community confinement. He now operates a general contracting business.

— Gary Parks Davis, 66, of Yuma, Arizona. When Davis was 22, he admitted using a telephone for a cocaine transaction. He served a six-month sentence on nights and weekends in a county jail and completed probation in 1981. After the offense, the White House says, Davis earned a college degree and worked steadily, including owning a landscaping business and managing construction projects. He has volunteered at his children’s high school and in his community.

— Edward Lincoln De Coito III, 50, of Dublin, California. De Coito pleaded guilty at age 23 to being involved in a marijuana trafficking conspiracy. He was released from prison in December 2000 after serving nearly two years. Before the offense, De Coito had served honorably in the U.S. Army and the Army Reserves and had received numerous awards.

— Vincente Ray Flores, 37, of Winters, California. As a 19-year-old, Flores consumed ecstasy and alcohol while serving in the Air Force, later pleading guilty at a special court-martial. He was sentenced to four months of confinement, loss of $2,800 in pay and a reduction in rank. Flores participated in a six-month rehab program that gives select enlisted offenders a chance to return to duty after therapy and education. His reduction in rank was amended, and he remains on active duty, earning medals and other awards for his service.

Tim Wu, the tech expert and law professor who spent most of the last two years advising the White House on tech and competition policy, is stepping down from his role next week, a White House spokesperson said on Friday.

Wu will be returning to his professorship at Columbia Law School after serving since March 2021 on the National Economic Council as the special assistant to the president for technology and competition policy. Wu was the architect of President Joe Biden’s2021 executive order on competition policy that directed agencies across the federal government to boost competition throughout the economy.

Wu’s portfolio will be divvied up among current White House staffers. Hannah Garden-Monheit will handle competition policy, after working on the issue alongside Wu since joining the administration in February 2021. Elizabeth Kelly, who has led the NEC’s work on digital assets since early 2022, will take over tech policy issues. The White House said more people would be added to the team in the coming months.

“We had the rare opportunity in this Administration to try and steer the giant battleship of antitrust policy in a new direction,” Wu said in a statement provided by the White House. “We got more done over the last two years than I would have ever imagined, and it has been the opportunity of a lifetime to work on that project with an extraordinarily talented group of colleagues in the White House and the federal agencies.”

The New York Times previously reported Wu’s imminent departure. POLITICO and other news organizations previously reported this summer that Wu was planning to step down.

Biden’s executive order focused on increasing competition in industries including technology, health care, transportation and agriculture, and was designed to encourage agencies outside the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission to focus their attention on antitrust issues.

Additionally, Wu helped lead the White House push on a largely failed attempt to pass new antitrust legislation targeting the tech sector.

“In the last two years, the Federal government has moved to not only reverse decades of erosion in antitrust enforcement, but to reignite a great American tradition of Presidential leadership on competition policy, harkening to the era of Franklin and Teddy Roosevelt,” NEC Director Brian Deese said in a statement. “Over the next two years, we will continue to institutionalize bipartisan, pro-competition reforms across agencies to lock in this progress for decades to come.”

The Biden administration plans to reopen a partnership with the U.S. Postal Service to mail free at-home Covid-19 tests to households that request them, four people familiar with the matter told POLITICO.

The revival of one of the government’s most popular and widely used pandemic programs comes as the administration prepares for another potential winter surge.

Biden officials paused the USPS program in early September over concerns that the high demand for free tests had put the administration on pace to deplete its stockpile before winter. They warned at the time the government could not afford to purchase more tests absent new funding from Congress, and needed to preserve the “limited remaining supply” for future Covid-19 surges. More than 600 million at-home tests had gone out to households across the country by the time the program was halted.

After a lull throughout much of the summer and fall, Covid cases have risen notably in recent weeks, worrying health officials that the U.S. could be on the verge of another wave. The White House now plans to announce that it’s reopening access to its stockpile of tests for a limited time as part of a broader “winter preparedness plan” it will roll out on Thursday.

Households will be then able to request the tests from COVIDTests.gov starting next Tuesday.

A White House spokesperson declined to comment on the program’s status, or disclose how many tests are left in the stockpile.

But one person familiar with the plan told POLITICO that the Department of Health and Human Services used limited funding, leftover from the American Rescue Plan, to purchase more at-home tests that can be distributed.

Weekly recorded Covid-19 cases reached a low of 261,268 in mid-October, but case counts have nearly doubled over the past two months, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. And public health experts caution that many infections are no longer logged due to the proliferation of at-home testing for the virus. Covid-19 deaths are also rising; 2,981 fatalities were recorded the first week of December, the first weekly increase since August.

The U.S. suffered significant surges each of the last two winters, straining hospitals and driving labor disruptions across the country. And hospitals are already under heavy strain from an early severe flu season and a wave of respiratory syncytial virus infections.

Biden health officials have insisted that the government has the tools to keep Covid under control, pointing to the widespread availability of treatments and updated vaccines. But fewer than 14 percent of eligible Americans have sought out the latest booster shot so far, including just 34 percent of people over the age of 65. States and localities in the meantime have lifted nearly all Covid precautions, and the administration has struggled to convince pandemic-fatigued Americans to remain vigilant.

The federal response has also suffered from a lack of funding. Despite months of warnings that its Covid operation is running out of money, Congress has refused to allocate additional funding to help bolster stockpiles of tests, treatments and vaccines.

The White House has requested more than $9 billion in Covid funding as part of the year-end funding bill. But in the face of staunch Republican opposition, there’s little expectation so far that lawmakers will include any new money for the pandemic.

President Joe Biden delivered a simple message Wednesday to a group of African leaders gathered for a high-stakes Washington summit: the United States hasn’t forgotten about you.

Addressing the heads of state from nearly 50 African nations gathered for the three-day summit, Biden took steps to begin repairing the trust with a continent that has felt abandoned by the United States — with Russia and, in particular, China stepping in to fill the void.

Biden did not call out China by name, but much of his speech was squarely aimed at starting a continental competition with that other global superpower, which has invested billions upon billions in Africa. But Biden also tried to prove a U.S. commitment to help create sustainable success on a continent home to 1.3 billion people.

“We’re all in on Africa’s future,” Biden told the crowd of officials and business leaders gathered at Washington’s sprawling convention center. “African success and prosperity is essential for a better future for all of us, not just for Africa.”

In one of many veiled nods toward China, Biden argued that for economic prosperity to take hold in Africa, democracy had to as well.

“In a year that has seen elections across Africa, we have worked together with the African Union to strengthen democracy and the core values that unite our people,” Biden said. “Freedom, opportunity, transparency, good government.”

White House aides have stressed that the U.S.-Africa summit, only the second ever held, acts as both evidence of the Biden administration’s commitment to Africa, and the capstone to a year dedicated to foreign policy that also had the president host Western Hemisphere allies in Los Angeles and travel to Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

But as the 49 African leaders and their delegations descended on Washington this week, there was a sense of American opportunity lost.

The first such summit was in 2014. Then-President Barack Obama pledged a new era of relations between the United States and the continent. But while Obama made efforts to improve ties, he also cut funding to combat AIDS in Africa and reduced foreign aid to the region.

Then for four years, the Trump administration actively neglected Africa, with the former president declaring its nations as “s—thole countries.” A presidential visit has long been viewed as a symbol of a commitment to a bilateral relationship and Trump, accordingly, never traveled to Africa. The last trip by an American president was Obama’s July 2015 journey to Kenya and Ethiopia.

Biden plans to change that. The president — as well as Vice President Kamala Harris and other top officials — intend to travel to Africa in 2023, according to officials familiar with the plans but not authorized to discuss them ahead of an official statement.

The itinerary for the president’s trip was not immediately announced, but it is sure to set off a wave of jockeying for potential host nations. The White House did not comment on the trip; the president is expected to announce it later in the week.

This week, the Biden team also offered several other deliverables, including $55 billion in assistance over the next three years and a pledge to recommend the African Union receive a permanent invitation to the influential G-20 group of nations.

In addition to his address, Biden will return to the summit Thursday. Over the two days, he will hold small group meetings with leaders, host a leaders’ dinner at the White House, and take part in other sessions with leaders during the summit. On the agenda: the impact of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has strained food supplies on Africa, as well as the Covid pandemic, climate change and trade.

In total, Biden announced more than $15 billion in two-way trade and investment commitments, deals and partnerships from dozens of American companies in fields like clean energy, internet access, gender equality and agriculture.

But there is a sense among the international community that the U.S. has lost ground to China on the African continent.

China’s Belt and Road program has pumped billions into African energy, infrastructure and other projects, allowing Beijing to wield growing influence in the region. The U.S. has looked to expand its own geopolitical influence in the region, and U.S.-based businesses view Africa as important as a growing market for American products as well as a source of commodities, including cobalt and lithium, essential to the quickly expanding electric vehicle industry.

“The U.S. needs to signal it is on the playing field,” said Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations. “This will require resources, attention, and an openness to trade, sharing technology and promoting investment.”

Chinese foreign ministers have made Africa their first foreign destination of each new calendar year since 1991. Moreover, China’s diplomatic outreach has embraced countries regardless of their respect for democracy or human rights; the United States on the other hand, has been sharply critical of the human rights violations committed on the continent, and five African nations were not invited to the summit. According to the White House, four of them — Guinea, Sudan, Mali and Burkina Faso — have changed their governments unconstitutionally and were suspended from the African Union. The fifth, Eritrea, does not have formal ties with the U.S.

Russia poses another rivalry on the continent. It has become the leading arms dealer in Africa, and the White House believes Moscow treats the continent as a friendly environment for Kremlin-connected oligarchs and private military companies to profit off regional instability and violence.

The White House has been frustrated that much of the continent has failed to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but national security adviser Jake Sullivan said earlier this week it would not threaten any economic consequences. Africa has been disproportionately impacted by the global rise in food prices that has been caused in part by the drop in shipments from major grain exporter Ukraine.

The summit returned an air of normalcy to Washington. It was the first gathering of its size to be held in the capitol since the start of the pandemic, closing roads and snarling traffic.

Biden made sure to link the gathering to the day’s other global African headline: Morocco’s World Cup semifinals game, in which it became the first African nation to appear in the tournament’s final four. The president joked that he’d wrap up before the match began, but by the time he was done, France had already grabbed a 1-0 lead.

Phelim Kine contributed to this report.