Politico

President Joe Biden will again skip a pregame Super Bowl interview embraced by recent presidents as an annual tradition.

Presidents have traditionally sought to leverage the marquee football event’s broad viewership, making Biden’s decision particularly notable in an election year.

Biden participated when NBC and CBS aired the game but sat out last year, when the Super Bowl was aired by Fox. CBS will broadcast the game this year on Feb. 11. The White House confirmed to POLITICO that Biden would be skipping an interview after Variety first reported the news.

“We hope viewers enjoy watching what they tuned in for — the game,” White House spokesperson Ben LaBolt told the entertainment outlet.

Former President Donald Trump skipped an interview with NBC during his presidency in 2018, after heavily criticizing both the network’s reporting and the NFL over player protests during the national anthem.

Former President Barack Obama began the tradition of sitting for a formal pregame broadcast interview.

The Super Bowl typically draws tens of millions of viewers, a far larger audience than the president can expect to attract in most media appearances. In 2023, the game set a new record of some 115 million viewers.

In the lead-up to this year’s Super Bowl, a conspiracy theory surrounding pop star Taylor Swift — who endorsed Biden in 2020 — gained traction on the right. Prominent conservative figures, including former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, have suggested that the game is fixed in favor of Swift’s beau, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, to give Swift a prime platform to deliver an endorsement.

The U.S. economy just keeps getting better. And it’s forcing Donald Trump and his allies to contort the talking points they thought would guide them back to the White House.

A remarkable run of good economic news has tripped up the Trump campaign’s initial plans to paint President Joe Biden as a disaster on the economy. Now, the GOP frontrunner is grasping for new ways to attack the administration’s increasingly robust record.

The labor market added 353,000 new jobs in January, blowing away expectations and marking the 36th straight month of job gains under Biden. The stock market has hit a series of record highs, and workers’ wages are once again beginning to outpace the rate of inflation.

It’s a clear upward turn for Biden following a grueling period of price spikes that soured voters’ mood and damaged the president’s approval ratings. Biden has consistently received low marks on his handling of the economy, with polls showing cost of living issues among Americans top concerns.

But now, with the risk of a recession seeming to recede, even Trump’s close allies acknowledge it’s getting tough to tell voters a bleak story about the economy. And though far from certain, it’s now possible that the nation’s economic health could become an electoral asset for Biden in an unexpected way.

“I think that is the question of the day,” said Stephen Moore, a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation and an economist with FreedomWorks who is close to the Trump campaign. “You can’t blame the president when policies go wrong, and then say he’s not responsible if things are going right.”

Moore, who said he met with Trump in December and discussed the economic outlook, added: “If this continues, where you see strong job growth and also if you see wages outpacing inflation, as has been for the last nine months or so, that certainly makes the argument less persuasive.”

Trump has responded by throwing out a series of counterarguments downplaying Biden’s role in the economic upswing, including suggesting that the stock markets’ gains are actually his doing.

On Monday, he claimed on Truth Social that voters were already enjoying a “TRUMP STOCK MARKET” because the economy was anticipating his eventual victory. For now, Trump said, “EVERYTHING ELSE IS TERRIBLE (WATCH THE MIDDLE EAST!)”

But economists quickly dismissed the claim, and the theory that Trump should get credit for an economy overseen by Biden has proved too far of a stretch for many Republicans as well.

“I wouldn’t make that my principal argument,” said Charlie Gerow, a Pennsylvania-based GOP strategist. “‘The economy is good because of some future occurrence’ is not typically the best argument.”

Former Trump White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow, who initially floated the idea that Trump deserved credit for the current stock gains, has also since walked back the idea. It was a remarkable concession given Kudlow’s record as one of the most reliably pro-Trump economic commentators.

“I’m an honest broker,” he said on Fox News following better-than-expected GDP numbers. “If I were [Biden], I would be bragging about it, too.”

“Voters will not forget or forgive all the misery and despair Crooked Joe Biden has cased in just four years,” said Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung. “Americans know that they were better off with President Trump in the White House. After almost four years of Biden’s disastrous presidency, we need a return to America First policies that successfully kept our country safe and supercharged the economy for all Americans.”

Biden officials say they recognize that the president faces an uphill battle selling his own agenda, even with the recent economic tailwinds. Most Americans remain skeptical about the economy’s overall trajectory, or say they struggle to point to specific policies that have affected them. Grocery prices, for example, have outpaced inflation and are up 25 percent from where they were four years ago.

A recent poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 65 percent of Americans overall view the economy as “poor.”

Biden in his own speeches has gone to lengths to acknowledge that there’s more the administration needs to do. But he’s also ramped up efforts to directly compare his accomplishments to Trump’s first-term record, portraying him as concerned solely with aiding the wealthy and corporations.

“Trump won’t be honest about the economy for the same reason he’s been rooting for the market to crash before the next election,” Democratic National Committee rapid response director Andrew Floyd said in a Friday statement. “He only cares about himself, and he’ll leave working families out to dry if he thinks it’ll help him and his ultra-rich friends.”

Amid all the promising economic news, Trump allies say his best argument against Biden may now be the simplest one: That prices are still higher than they were under his administration. They say it hits at the feeling many Americans have about their pocketbooks, even if economic indicators are improving.

“Biden’s inflation disaster has crushed your household finances. What he’s done to your finances are incredible. He’s crushed your finances and his open borders policy. They’ve demolished your wages,” Trump said at a recent rally in Nevada.

And there are specific cost-of-living issues that Trump is especially eager to exploit. An ad released by the Trump campaign in early January attacked Biden for high gas prices and mortgage rates.

“That’s the one thing that correlates the most with how people are feeling is, how am I doing with respect to my paycheck?” Moore said. “Under Biden, through his first three years, the average median family income is down by about $2,000. And that’s something I’ve told him to keep hitting on.”

Moore added that he’s urged Trump to rely on such direct comparisons, showing him dozens of charts highlighting elements of the economy that he said had performed better under Trump than Biden.

Across the Republican Party, there’s still some hope that voters’ economic frustrations can propel Trump to a victory in November. Americans’ growing optimism about their own financial situation hasn’t yet translated into a more favorable view of Biden, and many remain scarred by the memory of 9 percent inflation.

It just may take more effort to deliver that argument than Trump and his allies anticipated.

“The inflation rate may have come down, but prices have not receded to where they were in 2019,” said Whit Ayres, a longtime Republican pollster. “And that’s what’s causing people so much angst.”

Still, advisers in both camps recognize that if the gap is narrowing between the two candidates, it’s primarily because the economy is booming — and undercutting Trump’s core electoral argument in the process.

David Siders contributed to this report.

President Joe Biden issued an executive order Thursday that aims to punish Israeli settlers who have been attacking Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

As part of the roll-out, the Biden administration announced it is imposing sanctions on four individuals who have engaged in such violence, which has killed or displaced many Palestinians from their lands, two senior administration officials told reporters.

“One individual initiated and led a riot which involved setting vehicles and buildings on fire, assaulting civilians, causing damage to property, which resulted, actually, in that incident and the death of a Palestinian civilian,” said one of the senior officials. Other people assaulted farmers and Israeli activists with stones and clubs that led to injuries. Some of the individuals have been prosecuted in the Israeli system, the official added.

The designated individuals’ property held in American financial institutions will be frozen and blocked, the officials stated, while foreign nationals will be prohibited from making payments or providing services to the designated individuals. The officials briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity to preview the order — which POLITICO first reported earlier Thursday.

The order comes as Biden is under growing pressure, including from Democrats, to be tougher on Israel as critics say its military campaign against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip is a disproportionate reaction to the Hamas attack of Oct. 7.

It also drops as Biden is due Thursday to visit Michigan, a battleground state this election year that is home to many Arab-Americans furious with his approach to the Israel-Hamas war.

Senior White House officials on Wednesday briefed Ron Dermer, a close confidant of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on the move during his visit to Washington, a congressional staffer said. The staffer was granted anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak to the press.

Far-right Israeli settlers in the West Bank have for years staged attacks on many of the roughly 3 million Palestinians in the territory, often aimed at seizing land that the Palestinians claim for a future state. Such attacks spiked after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, leading to the emptying of entire Palestinian villages.

At the same time, Biden has faced intense pressure to appear more even-handed in the conflict as Hamas-controlled agencies have reported more than 25,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s military campaign against the militant group.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Ben Cardin (D-Md.), a staunch Israel supporter, said he had urged the administration to take such an approach and said he was happy it is following through.

“There has to be a clear message from the United States in regards to settler violence, but more importantly Israel,” Cardin said in an interview. “People’s lives are being lost so action needs to be taken.”

“I want Israelis and Palestinians living together in peace,” he added. “In the West Bank, we have certain responsibilities about the settlers that are there. There have to be boundaries.”

While the executive order is significant, it is not necessarily the furthest an American president has gone to reprimand Israeli behavior.

The Clinton administration designated two extremist Jewish groups as foreign terrorist organizations — and they remained on the list until Biden removed them in 2022. George H.W. Bush tied a $10 billion loan guarantee for Israel to a settlement freeze and later Barack Obama called on Netanayhu to pause all settler construction in the West Bank, a request Netanyahu defied.

The Biden administration has been laying the groundwork for the executive order for months. In November, Biden directed top U.S. officials to develop options for punishing violent Israeli settlers. The memo sent to Cabinet officials like Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen broadly defined who could be a target.

They included people or entities that “have directly or indirectly engaged in actions or policies that threaten the security or stability of the West Bank,” take “actions that intimidate civilians in the West Bank with the purpose or effect of forcing displacement actions in the West Bank,” or make moves “that constitute human rights abuses or violations and actions that significantly obstruct, disrupt or prevent efforts to achieve a two-state solution.”

In December, Blinken announced U.S. visa restrictions on a number of extremist Israeli settlers.

Hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers live in the West Bank, and their presence comes with a large amount of Israeli security, which means even less space for Palestinians to live. Many Israeli settlers do not believe in permitting a Palestinian state to exist. Such sentiments are more widespread among Israelis since the Hamas attack on their country, which killed 1,200 people.

But other than rhetorical pleas, top officials in the Biden administration had resisted pressuring Israel to rein in the settlers before the Oct. 7 attack. Such inaction was in line with Biden’s preference of trying to persuade Israeli leaders through carrots instead of sticks, as well as worries about seeming to interfere with internal Israeli politics.

If past patterns hold, the new sanctions are likely to be more punishing in that they will likely include freezes on financial assets the settlers may hold in the United States, among other penalties.

The State and Treasury Departments are expected to issue details Thursday on the sanctions and how financial institutions should approach the issue, according to the documents.

The Biden administration has stepped up support for Palestinians after staunchly backing Israel’s retaliation against Hamas in Gaza, most notably by pushing for more humanitarian aid to enter the enclave.

In recent weeks, as Netanyahu’s government has stiff-armed American attempts to wind down the war and the U.S. develops “day after” scenarios, Washington has shifted its approach to weigh Palestinian concerns more.

Joe Gould contributed to this report.

President Joe Biden is expected to imminently issue an executive order aimed at punishing Israeli settlers in the West Bank who have been attacking Palestinians in the occupied territory, according to documents seen by POLITICO, a U.S. official and a congressional aide.

The executive order is set to be released later Thursday, according to the documents and the U.S. official. It is expected to include sanctions against the settlers.

The National Security Council declined to comment.

President Joe Biden will travel next month to East Palestine, Ohio, to mark the one-year anniversary of the disastrous train derailment and toxic chemical spill in the area.

The visit fulfills a long-held vow to visit the small eastern Ohio town, where a Norfolk Southern train hauling hazardous materials ran off the tracks on Feb. 3, 2023, igniting a dayslong fire that released poisonous fumes and forced residents out of their homes.

Biden last year ordered his Federal Emergency Management Agency to appoint a coordinator to oversee East Palestine’s long-term recovery efforts. He’s also tasked the Environmental Protection Agency with evaluating whether Norfolk Southern has followed through on its commitment to address any lingering threats to the town generated by the derailment. And the Transportation Department has pumped millions into rail safety grants and additional inspections.

The White House faced criticism over Biden’s decision not to immediately visit East Palestine in the aftermath of the derailment. The president has traveled to other disaster sites across the country in the intervening months. When pressed on the delay in September, he said he didn’t have “the occasion to go to East Palestine.” He has since been drawn into numerous foreign crises, particularly after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel. and, more recently, the death of the service members in Jordan adds to the rising Middle East tensions.

Former President Donald Trump visited a firehouse about a half-mile from the derailment site in late February, 19 days after the incident, calling it a “betrayal” of the residents. His visit, though, came one day before Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s arrival, and weeks after the administration dispatched EPA Administrator Michael Regan to the site.

At the time, Trump’s visit cast a light on Trump’s DOT, which oversaw mothballing two rules that sought to shore up the safety of train brakes and crews.

President Joe Biden is expected to travel to Michigan on Thursday as he tries to rally support among voters in a battleground state viewed as central to his reelection chances, three people familiar with the matter told POLITICO.

The trip would be his first to Michigan this year. It would aim to capitalize on Biden’s momentum among the state’s blue-collar workers, after winning a full-throated endorsement from the United Auto Workers just six days ago.

The White House has yet to make a final decision, and the people familiar with the matter cautioned that planning was still ongoing and the trip could still be scrapped.

Principal deputy press secretary Olivia Dalton on Tuesday said the White House has not confirmed additional travel this week.

But should Biden decide to go to Michigan, the event would center on his UAW endorsement, said the three people familiar with the matter, who were granted anonymity to discuss internal planning.

The visit would also give the president a platform to tout his support for labor in a state that boasts a heavy concentration of union members, while drawing a contrast with GOP frontrunner Donald Trump’s recent criticism of the UAW.

Trump earlier this week derided UAW president Shawn Fain as a “dope” for endorsing Biden and called for his removal as head of the union.

Biden joined the picket line with UAW members during their six-week strike against Detroit automakers last year. His campaign is now counting on the union’s organizational influence to bolster his chances in November, amid polling that’s shown Biden trailing Trump in Michigan by several points.

Yet the trip would assuredly carry a measure of peril for the president, amid simmering outrage within the state over Biden’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza. Biden’s approach has prompted rebukes from the state’s Arab-American community and opened fissures within the broader Democratic Party, spurring warnings from local officials that he’s at risk of losing Michigan without a sharp change in policy.

Several Arab-American and Muslim leaders shunned Biden campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodríguez when she visited the state last week, refusing invitations to meet with her.

Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud predicted in a recent interview that a Biden visit to southeast Michigan would draw protests over the war.

“There’s not going to be such a warm welcome given the current circumstances unfolding overseas, and the lack of empathy coming out of the White House, and actually the enabling of a genocide,” he said.

Chávez Rodríguez still met last Friday with other elected officials and representatives from various minority communities, including Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who has openly criticized Biden’s approach toward Israel and refusal to entertain a full ceasefire in Gaza.

But the visit offered a preview of what Biden could face once on the ground in Michigan.

“The elephant in the room is Gaza,” said Alysa Diebolt, chair of Democratic Party in Macomb County, which encompasses blue-collar suburbs outside of Detroit. “There are a lot of people in southeast Michigan that are really unhappy right now.”

Others in the state have downplayed the frustration over the White House’s support for Israel, warning that the greater concern is Biden’s broader polling weakness.

Michigan Rep. Dan Kildee told POLITICO earlier this month that he believes Democrats can still convince many voters to set aside their unhappiness over the U.S.’s role in Gaza and support Biden, based on the argument that Trump poses a unique danger to democracy.

But he warned that the Biden campaign needs to pour more resources into its efforts to boost voters’ awareness of the administration’s economic accomplishments and their benefits for Michigan — a concern he’s relayed privately to the Biden camp as well.

“We have to actually connect the dots for them, and we have to do it with repetition, and it’s a challenge,” he said. “We’ve been pushing for more, literally, boots on the ground in Michigan.”

President Joe Biden said Tuesday that he’s decided how the U.S. will retaliate after a drone strike in Jordan killed three American soldiers.

Biden did not detail how the administration plans to respond, or when those actions would be taken. But, during a brief back-and-forth with reporters outside the White House, he said he’s not seeking a war with Iran, even though he held the nation somewhat responsible for the attack.

“I do hold them responsible in the sense that they’re supplying the weapons to the people who did it,” Biden said as he left for campaign events in Florida. “I don’t think we need a wider war in the Middle East. That’s not what I’m looking for.”

The remarks were Biden’s first since the weekend drone strike launched by Iranian proxies on a U.S. base in Jordan, which killed three troops and wounded dozens more. Biden spent much of Monday huddling with his national security team, weighing options for a response.

The White House has refused to specify what choices were presented to Biden, vowing only to respond forcefully on its own schedule. Yet among the possibilities, officials told POLITICO, were striking Iranian personnel in Syria or Iraq or Iranian naval assets in the Persian Gulf.

White House officials have also stressed that, even as the U.S. is obligated to retaliate, there’s little appetite for escalating the already tense situation across the region.

“We do not seek another war. We do not seek to escalate,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said Monday. “But we will absolutely do what is required.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland will be out of commission this weekend due to back surgery and is going out of his way to make sure that there are no doubts about who will be in charge during his absence.

The unusual, early announcement by the Biden administration’s top law enforcement officer is intended to avoid the storm of criticism Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin faced recently after failing to tell colleagues and the White House when he was hospitalized for prostate cancer surgery and was readmitted for complications.

Justice Department spokesperson Xochitl Hinojosa said in a statement Monday that Garland is scheduled to have a “minimally invasive back procedure” Saturday to treat spinal stenosis — a narrowing of spaces in vertebrae.

“The procedure requires general anesthesia and will last about 90 minutes. The Attorney General is likely to go home the same day,” Hinojosa said.

The statement detailed the affected vertebrae and the planned operation, but did not say where the surgery would take place or how long Garland had been suffering with the condition.

Garland, 71, will turn over his duties to the Justice Department’s No. 2 official — Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco — during the surgery and while he recovers from the anesthesia, Hinojosa said. He’s expected to return to work the following week, she said.

The advance notice from Garland appears aimed at complying with guidelines the White House issued earlier this month, directing that Cabinet officials notify the White House chief of staff and Cabinet affairs offices and arrange a delegation of authority before medical procedures requiring general anesthesia or hospitalization, traveling to areas that lack good communications or other circumstances where they may be unreachable.