Politico

A decade after he surprised the nation by publicly throwing his support behind same-sex marriage, President Joe Biden on Tuesday signed the Respect for Marriage Act into law at a White House ceremony — cementing his legacy as a champion of LGBTQ rights.

The celebration was a full-circle moment for the nation’s oldest sitting president, a fitting bookend to his decadeslong personal evolution on marriage equality. Several thousands of advocates and other attendees joined the president and congressional leaders for a sunny but chilly afternoon on the South Lawn to watch Biden sign legislation that codified same-sex and interracial marriage into law.

“Today is a good day. A day America takes a vital step toward equality. Toward liberty and justice, not just for some, but for everyone. Everyone,” Biden said. “Toward creating a nation where decency, dignity and love are recognized and honored and protected.”

With his signature, the president expanded his footprint on equality issues at a time when advocates fear the Supreme Court could revisit the ruling that made same-sex marriage a right nationwide more than seven years ago. The historic legislation was seen as a watershed moment in American society, the culmination of a political shift Biden, years ago, deemed inevitable.

“It’s one thing for the Supreme Court to rule on a case, but it’s another thing entirely for elected representatives of the people to take a vote on the floor of the United States Congress and say loudly and clearly, love is love. Right is right. Justice is justice,” Biden said.

Attendees held cell phones aloft, taking photos. Earlier, many danced to the pre-show soundtrack playing on the loudspeakers. Some front-row attendees waved small rainbow pride flags as the crowd cheered. Singer Sam Smith performed “Stay with Me,” and musician and activist Cyndi Lauper sang “True Colors” before the president’s appearance.

Biden was energetic as he walked up to the podium. He chuckled, telling the crowd that they might remember “on a certain TV show” 10 years ago when he declared his support for marriage equality. “I got in trouble,” he noted.

In 2012, Chad Griffin led the American Foundation for Equal Rights — and was about to become president of the Human Rights Campaign — when he spoke with the then-vice president at a Los Angeles fundraiser hosted by a same-sex couple, whose two young children were playing nearby. Griffin was the one who asked Biden about his views on same-sex unions — and Biden’s response at the event was one he echoed two weeks later on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Biden said it came down to one question: “Who do you love?”

“I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women, and heterosexual men and women marrying another are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties,” Biden said at the time, setting off a firestorm in the White House. President Barack Obama came out in support of the issue three days later.

That interview became a turning point for Biden, who almost 20 years earlier had voted for the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act that defined marriage as a union only between a man and a woman. It helped that Biden was known for being a practicing Catholic and very involved with his extended family. That made a difference when he spoke to his audiences — “voters at all levels — union workers, blue-collar workers, and folks across the political spectrum,” Griffin said.

He watched Biden’s arc, from that day at the fundraiser, to publicly declaring his support two weeks later on television, to standing with the president Tuesday at the bill signing.

“It is more than appropriate that President Biden is the one that signs the marriage bill into law because of the very early role that he played in getting marriage across the finish line in terms of public opinion, in terms of moving the needle in the country on support for marriage equality,” he said.

Biden’s equality push was also evident in his early days as president. He signed an executive order to combat discrimination across the federal government on day one. That same week, he rescinded his predecessor’s ban on transgender service members in the military. Fourteen percent of Biden’s appointees identify as LGBTQ, according to the White House.

The president used Tuesday’s celebration to acknowledge the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, and the resulting threats to other rights like access to contraception. He warned the crowd that more challenges lie ahead.

“When hospitals, libraries and community centers are threatened and intimidated because they support LGBTQ children and families, we have to speak out. We must stop the hate and violence,” Biden said, referencing the shooting at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colo., last month. “We need to challenge the hundreds of callous and cynical laws introduced in the states, targeting transgender children, terrifying families and criminalizing doctors who give children the care they need. We have to protect these children, so they know they are loved.”

Jonathan Lemire and Eli Stokols contributed to this report.

In the early days after Mark Barden’s first grade son Daniel was gunned down at Sandy Hook Elementary School, his family hunkered down in their home, drowning in grief.

Relatives filled their house, offering comfort and trying to protect the Bardens from the media that swarmed Newtown, Conn., to cover the grizzly aftermath of a gunman killing 19 other first-graders and six adults. Barden was still trying to grasp the unthinkable loss of his 7-year-old when his landline rang. It was Vice President Joe Biden.

Barden carried the phone down to his music studio. The two men spoke for more than an hour, Barden recalled. They talked about the deaths of their children.

This week, Barden braces himself for yet another Dec. 14 anniversary — now a decade without his son. He will, once more, think about the advice Biden gave him at the time: Keep a notebook on his bedside table and, each night, grab a pen and rate the day on a scale of one to 10.

“He says, ‘You’re gonna have lots of ones for a long time. But you might get a two, then maybe you’ll get a three and then you’ll have more ones and then maybe you’ll get a four,’” said Barden, recalling one of the many long talks Biden — who he calls a friend — would have with him over the years.

“He said, ‘You won’t believe me now, but there will come a day when you’ll think about Daniel and a smile will come to your face before a tear comes to your eyes.’ I think about that a lot.”

The shooting at Sandy Hook was an unparalleled tragedy. President Barack Obama called it the darkest day of his presidency. Biden has said much the same.

But the weeks following the tragedy also were a challenge for Biden, both political and humanitarian in nature.

The then-vice president held dozens of calls with the victims’ family members. Obama would also tap him to lead the administration’s push on gun policy post-Sandy Hook. Biden and his staff were consumed by the work for months, motivated to turn a period of darkness into something tangible, people close to Biden at the time told POLITICO.

Their monthslong push ended in defeat, when Biden saw a bill to expand background checks die on the Senate floor. The vice president was devastated, former staff and people close to Biden said, and his inability to deliver for Sandy Hook families still weighs heavily on him 10 years later — playing an outsized role in fueling his continued push on curbing gun violence.

“He identifies with what these families are going through. There’s something in his gut that forces him to make this a front-burner issue,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), referencing the deaths of Biden’s infant daughter and first wife 50 years ago this month. “He’s viscerally connected to this issue of banning assault weapons, and I think that comes from this sort of place in his heart where he connects with the loss of the families in Uvalde and Sandy Hook and feels like he has a moral obligation.”

It was just days after the Newtown shooting, that Obama asked Biden and his team to deliver concrete proposals on gun policy. He wanted them by January. And Biden’s task force met 22 times over the subsequent weeks.

They spoke with the Sandy Hook families, gun violence survivors, business and faith leaders, and the National Rifle Association. One former aide in the vice president’s office, who asked to remain anonymous because of media restrictions in his current job, said some meetings were so gut wrenching, staff would gather in their offices afterward crying. People who witnessed those meetings likened Biden to a grief counselor, listening to each parent talk about their child as tears streamed down their cheeks.

Five weeks after the shooting, Obama and Biden announced 23 executive actions on guns. They also called on Congress to pass universal background checks, a new assault weapons ban, and a prohibition on high-capacity gun clips. Biden followed with a fiery plea that February to strengthen the nation’s gun laws, a speech he delivered in Danbury, Conn., 12 miles from Sandy Hook.

He spent hours with the Sandy Hook families after those remarks, taking his time with each person individually, Murphy said. Biden was already two hours late for his plane back to Washington when he moved to another conference room at Western Connecticut State University to meet with parents who lost their children to gun homicides in Bridgeport, New Haven and Hartford.

Those parents had earlier expressed anger to Murphy that their grief at the hands of gun violence never got the attention that Sandy Hook had. Biden sat for hours with those parents, too.

That spring, the White House schedule was filled with events on gun violence and meetings with lawmakers for both Obama and Biden. But all the time counseling and strategizing and meeting with stakeholders to craft the right legislative language had a damaging side effect. The momentum to act on guns — so acute in the days after the tragedy — began to fade away.

On April 17, 2013, the Obama White House watched the bill to expand background checks fail to beat back the Senate filibuster. Earlier, amendments to introduce the assault weapons ban and the ban on high capacity magazines had failed, too.

“I will never forget the image of the president and vice president standing on the Rose Garden steps with maybe six or seven representatives of the Sandy Hook families, right after the Manchin-Toomey vote failed,” a current White House official said. “It is impossible to explain to someone who just lost their mother or just lost their child why Congress couldn’t do anything.”

Biden called Barden again in 2015, on his way to Obama’s State of the Union address, nearly two years after the legislation failed. He told him how sorry he was that the administration hadn’t been able to do anything after Daniel’s death.

“It just breaks my heart that we can’t,” Biden told him.

Now president, Biden still carries “a tremendous amount of guilt — it’s the kind of guilt that your therapist tells you is not your fault,” the former Biden aide said. “It’s very painful to have not been able to follow through on that promise … I think it lives in him that this is unfinished business.”

Almost 10 years after Sandy Hook, a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. There was deliberation inside the White House about whether the president should address the nation that night, Murphy said. Biden pushed for the speech. The president poured over the script, calling the Connecticut senator to make sure he had the right words.

“I had hoped, when I became president, I would not have to do this again,” Biden said in that May 24 address. “Why are we willing to live with this carnage? Why do we keep letting this happen? Where in God’s name is our backbone to have the courage to deal with it and stand up to the lobbies?”

A month after the Uvalde shooting, Biden signed the first major gun legislation passed by Congress in nearly 30 years. It did not go as far as the bill he put together 10 years ago. But it was celebrated by gun violence advocates nonetheless, and all 26 Sandy Hook families were invited to the Rose Garden for the bill signing.

It’s “still not enough,” Biden told the crowd last week at the National Vigil for All Victims of Gun Violence, where he was the first president to speak at the annual event. He then bowed his head and joined the packed church in a moment of silence.

President Joe Biden has a tough task ahead of him when he convenes African leaders in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday: woo them away from China.

The 49 leaders invited to the second-ever U.S.-Africa Leaders’ Summit have gotten years of infrastructure investment and sweetheart trade deals from China, while U.S. policy toward Africa has been far less ambitious and akin to what some critics call benign neglect.

Biden’s challenge will be to convince African leaders that his administration is ready to deliver robust diplomatic and economic engagement on the continent. And that he’ll commit the necessary resources to rival China as Africa’s superpower of choice.

Many African leaders feel like they’ve already been fooled once — when President Barack Obama used the first such summit in 2014 to signal growing commitment to the continent. Instead, Obama cut funding to combat AIDs in Africa and reduced foreign aid to the region.

China, meanwhile, has become sub-Saharan Africa’s No. 1 trading partner through imports of everything from textiles to smartphones while purchasing massive volumes of African agricultural products and commodities including copper and oil. And Beijing has built roads and ports across Africa over the past two decades, while regularly increasing its foreign aid to the continent.

And Chinese foreign ministers have made Africa their first foreign destination of each new calendar year since 1991.

On top of that, China has more potential friends in Africa than the U.S. because its diplomatic outreach has embraced countries regardless of their respect for democracy or human rights.

“Africa has always been at the bottom of the U.S. foreign policy priority list … [and] this is equally true for the Biden administration,” said David Shinn, former ambassador to Ethiopia with extensive diplomatic experience across Africa. The U.S. will “pound on the table and say ‘You’ve got to clean up your act and engage in free and fair elections,’ while the Chinese just hold their nose and basically deal with the government in charge.”

Africa is important to the U.S. as a growing market for American products as well as a source of commodities including cobalt and lithium essential to the U.S.’ rapidly expanding electric vehicle industry. The U.S. also sees Africa as essential to its national security due to Islamic terrorist groups in the region, including Boko Haram in West Africa and Al-Shabaab in Horn of Africa.

Ahead of the summit, the Biden administration announced that the president will throw his support behind getting the African Union a permanent G-20 seat. National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said the move reflects the administration’s recognition of the need for “more African voices [in] international conversations” about the world’s most pressing issues.

That kind of recognition could also help the U.S. in international forums. At a time when America is seeking to counter growing Chinese influence in multilateral organizations, the administration has noted that Africa boasts “one of the largest regional voting groups in the United Nations.”

But Beijing may be ahead in the soft power arena, too. In September, African countries constituted almost half of the 28 states that supported a Chinese resolution to reject allegations of crimes against humanity in Xinjiang as “disinformation.”

China-Africa relations are “the bedrock of China’s foreign policy,” the Chinese ambassador to the U.S., Qin Gang, said at the Semafor Africa Summit on Monday.

One difficulty for Biden: He’ll have to convince African leaders to choose the U.S. over China … without mentioning China.

African leaders don’t want their countries to become “a playground for world powers using the continent for their Cold War initiatives against each other,” said Zeenat Adam, former director of the Horn of Africa section of South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation.

Perhaps to that end, summit organizers insist the event has nothing to do with Beijing. The meeting is “not about other countries and their engagement” with Africa, a senior administration official said on the condition of anonymity in a press briefing on Thursday.

Not so, says Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who serves on the Africa subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The summit will show that the U.S. “offers a better, more sustainable economic model that treats our partners more fairly than Beijing treats theirs,” Van Hollen said. That model’s strength is its contrast with “China’s coercive brand of debt trap diplomacy,” he said. Beijing moved to silence such accusations by forgiving loans of 17 African country borrowers in August.

Still, there are a number of relationships to repair.

For many African leaders, the last U.S. president who delivered for Africa was George. W. Bush, whose PEPFAR program has saved millions of lives by distributing affordable drugs to treat HIV-AIDS. They were disappointed that Obama’s personal ties to the continent — his father was born in Kenya — didn’t translate into more attention. And the Trump administration alternately ignored and insulted Africa.

Biden’s negligible one-to-one diplomatic outreach with African leaders hasn’t encouraged a sense that things are changing. He’s held few calls with African leaders and instead of confirming formal bilateral sessions during the summit, organizers have instead “curated a number of substantive little moments” between Biden and visiting African leaders, the senior administration official said.

That puts pressure on Biden to deliver on his pledge in July that the summit will offer “new economic engagement” to African leaders skeptical of U.S. commitment to the region.

“If it’s just symbolic, it’s going to be a disaster because nobody can do symbolism better than the Chinese,” said Tibor Nagy, former assistant secretary of State for African Affairs. That won’t happen, say organizers. “There are going to be major deliverables and initiatives,” the senior administration official said, without elaborating.

The U.S. rivalry with China in Africa mirrors their geostrategic competition in other parts of the world. It’s a race for diplomatic influence and access to markets and resources. But unlike in Asia or the Middle East, the U.S. has a significant disadvantage in Africa because Washington has done less to keep up with Beijing’s efforts in Africa than it has in other regions.

The Biden administration’s agenda for the summit includes initiatives to advance peace and security on the continent, improve food security and help African countries cope with the climate crisis.

Biden’s summit goal of advancing “peace and security” in Africa reflects U.S. geostrategic concerns about China’s growing military footprint in the region. The People’s Liberation Army established a military base in Djibouti in 2017, sparking U.S. Africa Command’s security concerns about its base just a few miles away. Then-Africom chief Gen. Stephen Townsend warned in March that China was eyeing Equatorial Guinea as the site of its second regional base. “We have to talk to our African partners about what we see as dangers of having that type of influence on their soil,” a senior Defense Department official told reporters Thursday. The official required anonymity as a condition of the briefing.

The Pentagon is also concerned about Chinese telecom giant Huawei’s dominance of the continent’s 4G networks. The FCC declared Huawei a “national security threat” in 2020.

Use of Huawei technology “may limit us information-sharing with certain African countries,” said the senior Defense Department official. But former U.S. diplomats blame Huawei’s popularity in Africa on a U.S. failure to provide affordable alternatives. “We were telling people not to buy Huawei, but then they would say, ‘OK, so what should we buy instead?’ And there was no way to match Huawei’s price or the financing terms,” said Nagy, the former assistant secretary of State for African Affairs.

African leaders will look to Biden to deliver on a promise to channel funds from a G7 infrastructure investment program to projects in Africa. That could include an extension of an Obama-era program expiring in 2025 that gave tariff-free status to certain African imports. Biden can also take steps to address Africa’s concerns about the regional impact of the climate crisis by honoring his pledge that the summit will advance U.S.-Africa climate cooperation.

African leaders would also welcome any U.S. move to expand educational scholarships for the continent’s youth. More than 60 percent of Africans are under the age of 25 and one-third of African youth face chronic unemployment. An expansion of Obama-era scholarship programs would counter Xi Jinping’s pledge in 2018 to provide “50,000 scholarships and 50,000 training opportunities” for young Africans.

Another challenge for Biden: adhering to his wider foreign policy objectives of “defending freedom … [and] upholding universal rights” without driving autocratic summit attendees deeper into China’s orbit. Biden is asking African leaders “to choose engagement with a country that asks no questions, versus a country that’s constantly scolding, and threatening to withdraw aid or withdrawing aid or sanctioning,” said Louis Mazel, former director of the State Department’s Africa Bureau’s Office of Regional and Security Affairs.

That framing won’t pass the giggle test among many summit attendees. “Americans are still seen as neocolonialist powers,” said Adam, the former South African diplomat. “Not all countries believe that the Americans and Europeans should be the watchdogs of democracy and human rights.”

Alexander Ward and Lara Seligman contributed to this story.

The White House on Friday downplayed Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s decision to leave the Democratic Party as unlikely to affect the Biden administration’s relationship with the Arizona centrist.

In a statement, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre emphasized that Sinema’s move to become an independent would not impact the Democratic Senate majority and praised her for her work with the Biden administration, especially on infrastructure, same-sex marriage and gun safety.

“Sen. Sinema has been a key partner on some of the historic legislation President Biden has championed over the last 20 months,” Jean-Pierre said in a statement. “We have every reason to expect that we will continue to work successfully with her.”

In an interview with POLITICO published Friday morning, Sinema explained that she changed her affiliation because she “never really fit into a box of any political party.” The Arizona independent said she doesn’t anticipate her decision would change the Senate structure and indicated she expects to keep her committee assignments from Democrats. Sinema informed Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) of her decision late Thursday.

Sinema said she has a “good relationship” with Biden. When asked if she wants Biden to run for reelection in 2024, Sinema declined to address it, calling it “a question for someone else.”

Sinema also declined to discuss her own plans for 2024, when she is up for reelection. Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) previously made it clear that he was exploring a Democratic primary challenge. And Friday morning, a PAC that had been organizing as “Primary Sinema” vowed to go after her in the general election instead.

“Kyrsten Sinema told us what we’ve already known for years: she’s not a Democrat, and she’s simply out for herself,” the PAC said in a statement. “In one way, Sinema just made our jobs easier by bowing out of a Democratic primary she knew she couldn’t win. Now, we’ll beat her in the general election with a real Democrat.”

Sinema has played a central role in several significant bipartisan accomplishments in the past two years. She was the lead Democratic negotiator on last year’s bipartisan infrastructure package, teamed up with Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) to negotiate a gun safety package this year, and most recently worked with Republicans to pass legislation to protect same-sex marriage.

But the Arizonan has also ignited anger from the left, especially over her opposition to scrapping the legislative filibuster to pass Democrats’ election reform legislation and over her resistance to higher tax rates.

And her decision to become an independent drew praise from one prominent GOP-aligned voice: Jack McCain, son of the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) — whom Sinema has long called her “personal hero” — tweeted that her move “makes a ton of sense” and is “very Arizona: bold, independent, outsized in influence and risky.”

Burgess Everett contributed.

Former President Donald Trump’s quest for outside supervision of the Justice Department’s investigation into sensitive White House records seized at his Mar-a-Lago estate came to an end Thursday, after he failed to challenge an appeals court ruling rejecting such oversight.

Trump had a week to contest the issue before the full bench of the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit Court of Appeals or at the Supreme Court, but he did not. The appeals court formalized its ruling Thursday afternoon ending the so-called “special master” process a lower judge established in September.

The appeals court’s order means the DOJ probe into potentially illegal retention of national security secrets, theft of government records and obstruction of justice can move forward without any external restrictions on prosecutors’ and investigators’ use of nearly 3,000 records the FBI seized from Trump’s Florida home in August, pursuant to a search warrant.

Paul Whelan’s brother, David Whelan, expressed support for WNBA star Brittney Griner and her family upon her release from Russian prison, but said he does “worry about what’s in Paul’s future.”

“It’s great news. Any time an American comes home, it’s wonderful news. I’m so glad for Brittney and Cherelle. It’s a wonderful day,” Whelan said during an interview on CNN Thursday morning following the news of Griner’s release.

However, the one-for-one prisoner swap means Paul Whelan, a former Marine who was arrested in Russia in 2018 on espionage charges, will for now remain there serving out a 16-year-prison sentence. The U.S. released arms trafficker Viktor Bout to Russia in exchange for Griner’s release.

“I think it’s become clear that the U.S. doesn’t have any concessions that the Russian government wants for Paul, so I’m not really sure what the future holds,” David Whelan said.

The White House informed Whelan’s family of Griner’s release on Wednesday, David Whelan said, a day before Biden made the announcement to the public. In his remarks, Biden said his administration has “not forgotten about Paul Whelan,” and that it “was not a choice of which American we’re going to bring home.”

“Sadly, for totally illegitimate reasons, Russia is treating Paul’s case differently than Brittney’s,” Biden added. “And while we have not yet succeeded in securing Paul’s release, we are not giving up. We will never give up.”

David Whelan says “it’s not clear” what those reasons are, but it likely has to do with parity: “If they labeled Paul as a spy maybe they’re waiting until the U.S. government captures a spy and offer that as a trade,” he said.

Griner’s wife, Cherelle, also spoke about Whelan Thursday, saying his family was “in our hearts,” and that both she and Griner would “remain committed” to helping him — and all Americans — return home.

For now, David Whelan is focused on ensuring his brother’s safety.

“But really it’s a matter of helping Paul to survive until — and if — the U.S. government is able to find a concession that the Russian government wants,” he said. “It’s not magic. It’s just a ton of work.”

The White House has secured the release of American basketball star Brittney Griner, according to a U.S. official. The release was in exchange for Russian arms trafficker Viktor Bout, nicknamed the “Merchant of Death,” according to a source familiar with the deal.

The swap, which marks a major diplomatic achievement for President Joe Biden, brings an end to an ordeal that began when Griner was arrested in Russia on Feb. 17 for possession of vape cartridges containing hash oil.

Griner had recently been moved to a Russian penal colony nearly 300 miles from Moscow to serve her nine year sentence.

Second gentleman Doug Emhoff on Wednesday convened a group of Jewish leaders to discuss ways to combat the surge in antisemitism across the country.

“There’s an epidemic of hate facing our country,” Emhoff said at the discussion. “Let me be clear. Words matter. People are no longer saying the quiet parts out loud. They are literally screaming them.”

Emhoff, who is Jewish, was joined at the roundtable by domestic policy adviser Susan Rice and senior adviser to the president for public engagement Keisha Lance Bottoms, as well as special envoy to combat antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt. Leaders and experts from 13 different Jewish groups, including the Anti-Defamation League and Jewish on Campus, participated in the discussion.

Emhoff’s roundtable had already been in the works a few weeks ago as an avenue for the second gentleman to address the rise in antisemitic incidents across the country — but now it comes at a specifically poignant moment as rapper Ye, better known as Kanye West, has recently amplified antisemitic remarks, praising both Adolf Hitler and Nazism. The roundtable’s significance is also elevated by former President Donald Trump’s dinner with Ye and white nationalist Nick Fuentes at his Mar-a-Lago estate last month.

President Joe Biden was not expected to make an appearance at the roundtable, though he has been vocal in condemning the recent rise in antisemitism, tweeting last week that “political leaders should be calling out and rejecting antisemitism wherever it hides.”

“President Biden, Vice President [Kamala] Harris have met holocaust survivors,” Emhoff said on Wednesday. “I’ve kept in touch with the survivors. I’ve shared messages of hope and strength. For me today, this is not the end of the conversation; it’s just the beginning of the conversation.”

Though Emhoff, who is the first Jewish person in his role, did not grow up particularly religious, he’s largely embraced his Jewish identity since he’s assumed the role of second gentleman — hosting a virtual Seder, lighting the menorah at a Jewish school in D.C. and attending Rosh Hashanah services this past September. More recently, he’s expressed an interest in finding ways to help combat antisemitism across the country amid what he’s called an “epidemic of hate.”

He said at the roundtable on Wednesday that he’s “proud to be Jewish” and “will not remain silent” in speaking out about rampant antisemitism.

“It’s who we are. It’s our identity. It’s my identity. I’m in pain right now,” Emhoff said at the roundtable. “Our community is in pain. It hurts me to see what we’re going through right now. We cannot normalize this. There’s no both side-isms on this one.”

A few months ago, second gentleman Doug Emhoff asked his team about what more he could do about the rise of antisemitic incidents across the country.

The issue had long concerned him. And in private conversations with other Jewish figures, he’d conveyed a desire to do something more forceful about it. His team decided that a roundtable with top officials would be appropriate. A few weeks ago, they started planning for it.

But things took a turn around the Thanksgiving break, when news emerged that former President Donald Trump had dined with two notable antisemitic figures: white nationalist Nick Fuentes and Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West. Overnight, the roundtable that Emhoff had been planning became the most pointed administration response to a brewing national controversy. Come Wednesday, when top White House officials and Jewish leaders convene for it, it will further cement a status he never set out to have: one of America’s foremost Jewish political figures.

“I’ve had enough conversations with him and see him often enough to know the severity suddenly hit him like a ton of bricks,” Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt, the U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, told POLITICO. “And he said, ‘You know, I’m in this position. I’ve got to do something.’ He really in his gut felt that it would be derelict on his part not to somehow try to move the needle or to move things forward.”

Emhoff is not terribly religious — and admits as much. He grew up in Old Bridge, N.J., a community with a fair number of Jews. He attended a temple there and was bar mitzvahed. But he was largely secular, exhibiting the type of faith common among his generation: spiritually connected but observant mainly on the high holidays.

That changed when his wife, Kamala Harris, assumed the vice presidency. Emhoff was not just the first male to occupy his role, he was the first Jew among the four White House principals (the president, vice president, and their respective spouses). He explained to POLITICO last year that he became infused by a sense of purpose and, to a degree, burden.

“It’s really impacted him. He has always lived openly and proudly as a Jew,” said Liza Acevedo, Emhoff’s communications director. “Everything that he is saying publicly on this issue is what he’s saying behind the scenes. He has been outspoken on combating antisemitism and he’s turning his pain into action.”

Emhoff has responded to his role as second gentleman by embracing his Jewish identity. He hosted a virtual Seder, lit the menorah and made matzah at a Jewish school in the district. He’s visited the Holocaust museum in Paris during an official visit and attends his childhood temple when back in Old Bride. When he affixed a mezuzah to the entryway of the vice president’s residence, he began to tear up, according to Rabbi Peter Berg, who led that ceremony with Emhoff.

Quite quickly, he came to symbolize every Jewish mother’s eternal dream: the Jewish boy who grew up doing good.

“There’s just a lot of love between the Jewish community and the second gentleman,” said Sheila Katz, the CEO of the National Council of Jewish Women. Emhoff, she added, always knew that being the first husband of a vice president would be a big deal, “but I don’t think going in he expected or really the Jewish community expected for it to feel as significant for him being Jew in that role as well.”

Over time, however, Emhoff has found himself drawn further away from the ceremonial elements of his role and more toward the political ones. He put in place what he called a “Jewish kitchen cabinet” on his staff to help address the community’s issues.

This past January, at a meeting on the White House grounds with then-Rep. Ted Deutch, he expressed a desire to find the right notes and role in responding to the rise of antisemitism.

“We talked about the importance of doing something in a very, very public way, and he committed to finding a way to get that done,” Deutch said in an interview with POLITICO.

In September, Emhoff met with the National Council of Jewish Women board at the White House. And for Rosh Hashanah, he penned an op-ed in USA Today promising to combat antisemitism. During the last week of October and the first week of November, his office put out three separate tweets, each addressing antisemitism to a varying degree. The third post marked a visit he had made to a kosher deli in Des Moines, Iowa, where he and the proprietor, a rabbi, discussed the imperative to live proudly and openly as Jews.

“I take the responsibility very seriously, and I’ve really spoken out and leaned into this more than I thought I would coming into this role,” Emhoff explained in his interview with POLITICO last year.

Jewish American leaders have largely praised the Biden administration’s record on antisemitism, noting the pretense for the president’s 2020 campaign was combatting the threat of white nationalism. But as incidents rise and more prominent political figures have associated with antisemites, they increasingly feel more needs to be done.

While Lipstadt serves as Biden’s special envoy for addressing the global rise of antisemitism, there is eagerness to see someone have that same portfolio domestically. A bipartisan group of 125 lawmakers have called for Biden to set up an antisemitism task force. There is a fear among some in the Jewish advocacy community that the Department of Homeland Security’s Faith-Based Security Advisory Council — launched by the Biden administration in July — is too broad in scope .

The administration is feeling the pressure to do more, officials say. Lipstadt said the rise in antisemitism has created a “need for a coordinated knowledge of who was doing what” among the different agencies. She added that “there was increasingly a feeling in the administration and in the broader Jewish community asking, ‘Is one hand talking to the other, how are we approaching this in a holistic way?’”

Emhoff’s role in future initiatives will not involve crafting policy but uplifting any administration announcements and continuing to speak out.

Those familiar with his approach describe him as a mix of ambassador to the Jewish community and public face for the administration’s efforts. He backchannels, promotes dialogue, does relationship maintenance and champions initiatives.

He recently spoke privately with survivors of the 2018 shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue, discussing the actions the administration is taking to combat antisemitism and gun violence. And, spurred by Ye’s statements, he discussed similar topics during a recent chat with local progressive elected officials.

For many in the Jewish community, that is more than enough.

“He can speak about this in deeply personal terms that American Jews can relate to. He is one of us. And he can speak for us. But he can also speak for the administration and about what they are doing to support our community at this time,” said Halie Soifer, who heads the Jewish Democratic Council of America and previously served as national security adviser for then-Sen. Harris. “He has expressed not just the policies of the administration with regard to antisemitism, but he has personalized them as a Jew.”