Politico

The White House is publicly arguing that the country has finally arrived at a promising new stage in the pandemic fight — one that a recent spike in Covid cases won’t spoil.

Infections may be rising across the Northeast, but top Biden officials note that vaccines and tests are widely available and new therapeutics are capable of staving off severe illness. After a year consumed by the public health crisis, the administration says this time it actually is okay to stay calm and carry on.

“If you think about where we are as a country, we are at a really good moment,” Ashish Jha, the White House’s new Covid-19 response coordinator, said during an appearance on NPR this week. “We’re in reasonably good shape.”

Underneath the displays of confidence, however, is simmering anxiety. Biden officials and others close to the federal response privately acknowledged that the next few weeks will determine whether the White House has truly entered a new era — or managed to misread the moment once again.

Despite increasing Covid caseloads in 31 states, the administration believes there’s little evidence that the uptick, driven by the more contagious BA.2 subvariant, will reach the heights of the Omicron and Delta waves that preceded it. More encouragingly, Covid hospitalizations have remained largely flat — a sign that vaccines and treatments are ensuring far fewer people suffer serious symptoms, and a boon to the theory that the U.S. can more safely live with the virus.

“The most important thing that the vaccines are doing is keeping people away from the hospital and the morgue,” said John Moore, a virologist at Cornell University’s Weill Cornell Medicine.

Still, the climbing case count has put some health officials on edge. They’ve spent recent days searching for hints that a bigger resurgence is on the way, unnerved by the steep increases that have already hit Europe and concerned that poor data collection is obscuring signs of a similar boom already underway here.

That’s because a significant proportion of new cases are going unreported due to the prevalence of at-home tests (individuals may test positive but not report it). It’s a reality that Jha has cited to bolster the administration’s case for refocusing attention on the still-low hospitalizations as a key metric, rather than infections.

But some experts working on the response believe the undercounting is more severe than has been publicly acknowledged, with one administration official estimating that the government is only recording one out of every six new cases. The data gap has fed internal concerns over how exactly the government should publicly message the seriousness of the situation.

“They’re like, ‘We don’t know if this is something to be worried about or not,’” said one person close to the White House. “But you can’t tell the public that.”

In one sign of the uncertainty within parts of the administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday announced it would keep mask mandates for public transportation in place for another two weeks. The decision represents a shift from a month ago, when the administration signaled plans for a new system determining masking based on Covid risk levels — a move aimed at bringing the transportation policy in line with the CDC’s separate, less strict framework for indoor masking.

In the days leading up to Wednesday’s announcement, some health officials argued that keeping the transportation mandate in place would be out of step with the administration’s broader policy approach and the nation’s overall mood, two people with knowledge of the matter said. Others countered that lifting mask requirements risked looking premature if case counts continued to accelerate and worried that, without a vaccine available yet for children under five, it could put young kids at particular risk.

In a statement, the CDC said that it delayed changes to its transportation mask policy to assess the impact of rising caseloads and the effect on hospital capacity.

White House officials, meanwhile, are grappling with their own personal tolerance for living with the virus. After the elite Gridiron dinner turned into a superspreader event earlier this month, some aides are re-evaluating plans to attend the even larger upcoming White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner. Biden has also yet to commit to attending the gathering, despite the White House’s insistence it’s not concerned about his potential exposure to the virus.

Anthony Fauci, Biden’s chief medical adviser, said in an interview that it wasn’t a surprise to see pockets of outbreaks following mass gatherings.

“We know that 50 to 60 percent of the infections are transmitted by people who have no symptoms, people who will never get symptoms or people who are in the pre-symptomatic stage,” said Fauci. “With coronaviruses, even though you’re protected generally from hospitalization, it’s not surprising that in a closed event like Gridiron, there was infection.”

But among those working in government, personal concern about infection is mounting alongside efforts to blunt the worst outcomes of it. Among the dozens infected in the administration and on Capitol Hill, Pfizer’s antiviral pill — which sharply cuts the risk of serious illness — has been in widespread demand, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.

The complexities of the moment have presented an immediate test for Jha, the new Covid czar renowned for his ability to translate pandemic uncertainties into easy-to-understand public messaging. The 51-year-old used his first days on the job to attempt to do just that, in a bid to assure Americans that the administration has the pandemic under control – and to shift the focus away from rising case counts.

“This is why it’s really essential to look at hospitalizations because, at the end of the day, that’s what we care about most,” Jha said on CNN on Monday, during one of nearly a half-dozen television and radio appearances that day.

Inside the administration, Jha has won initial praise for his geniality and measured optimism. But officials also acknowledged that it’s still early, and he’s yet to personally face much tough criticism.

That’s likely to change soon, especially as Covid cases continue to mount. The White House’s insistence the crisis has entered a manageable phase puts it at odds with a faction of the public health community that contends Biden is increasingly prioritizing political calculations over efforts to more fully stamp out the virus.

In particular, health experts have recently questioned the administration’s masking recommendations, arguing that tying mask-wearing to rising hospitalizations is far too lax an approach to head off a future surge.

“The hospitalization threshold that CDC came up with is too high,” said Jeffrey Duchin, a health officer for Seattle and King County, Washington. “To wait for that high level to implement a measure … defeats the purpose of early action.”

Perhaps more important, administration officials and health experts said that despite the White House’s emphasis on keeping calm, its pandemic fate will hinge on creating enough urgency to convince Congress to fund its response efforts — and persuade Americans to keep getting vaccinated.

The administration has yet to secure tens of billions of dollars needed to stockpile the vaccines and treatments key to blunting the virus’ impact. And after spending the first year of Biden’s presidency on an all-out mission to vaccinate the country, the campaign has lost some traction. More than half of all adults still haven’t gotten even their first booster, CDC data show — and at least for now, the administration appears all out of new ideas.

“There is a narrative that this is under control,” the person close to the White House said. “But I don’t know how you spin that message without having an incredibly aggressive public stance on boosters. And we’re not getting it done.”

Erin Banco and Sarah Owermohle contributed to this report. 

The White House on Monday unveiled a new slate of measures aimed at curbing an increase in gun violence and announced the nomination of Steve Dettelbach to serve as director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

President Joe Biden previously announced David Chipman, an official at the gun control group Giffords, to serve as ATF director last April. But Biden withdrew the nomination last September amid resistance from centrist Democrats and Republicans in the Senate.

POLITICO reported last week that Biden was expected to announce a new nominee as early as this month and that Dettelbach, a former U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, was under serious consideration for the post. The ATF has not had a permanent director since 2015.

On Monday, the White House said in a statement that Dettelbach “has a proven track record of working with federal, state, and local law enforcement to fight violent crime and combat domestic violent extremism and religious violence — including through partnerships with the ATF to prosecute complex cases and take down violent criminal gangs.”

In addition to Dettelbach’s nomination, the White House announced that the Justice Department has issued a final rule to help stop the spread of so-called “ghost guns” — homemade or makeshift firearms that lack serial numbers.

The final rule “bans the business of manufacturing the most accessible ghost guns” and “clarifies that these kits qualify as ‘firearms’ under the Gun Control Act,” according to the White House. It also will “help turn some ghost guns already in circulation into serialized firearms.”

Furthermore, the White House said the final rule requires firearms dealers “to retain key records until they shut down their business or licensed activity,” and it “ensures that firearms with split receivers are subject to regulations requiring serial numbers and background checks.”

Biden and Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco are scheduled to address the administration’s new measures later Monday in the White House Rose Garden.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Sunday that she suspects student loan borrowers will have to start paying their debt at some point during the Biden administration.

“I suspect that sometime you will, but again, we are going to continue to assess every month, every few months on where things stand, both looking of course at Covid, but also economic data and where we need to continue to help give the American people some breathing room,” Psaki said on “Fox News Sunday.”

The Biden administration formally unveiled a fourth extension on the monthly loan payments and interest last week, pushing the date to Aug. 31. The White House also announced plans to expunge the defaults of millions of student loan borrowers who fell behind before the pandemic, to allow these payers to have a “fresh start.”

President Joe Biden’s latest extension fell short of a range of Democrats’ calls for the administration to continue the pandemic relief for borrowers through at least the end of the year — after the November midterm elections. Beyond the pause, there’s growing pressure on Biden to use executive authority to eliminate at least $10,000 in student debt for every borrower.

The White House has repeatedly tossed this proposition to Congress, noting Biden would sign a bill if lawmakers send it to his desk.

The State Department says it is unable to compile a complete and accurate accounting of gifts presented to former President Donald Trump and other U.S. officials by foreign governments during Trump’s final year in office, citing missing data from the White House.

In a report to be published in the Federal Register next week, the department says the Executive Office of the President did not submit information about gifts received by Trump and his family from foreign leaders in 2020. It also says the General Services Administration didn’t submit information about gifts given to former Vice President Mike Pence and White House staffers that year.

The State Department said it sought the missing information from National Archives and Records Administration and the General Services Administration, but was told that “potentially relevant records” are not available because of access restrictions related to retired records.

The State Department’s Office of Protocol reported the situation in footnotes to a partial list of gifts received by U.S. officials in 2020. The office publishes such lists annually in part to guard against potential conflicts of interest. A preview of the 2020 report was posted on the Federal Register website on Friday ahead of its formal publication on Monday.

The report notes that the lack of gift information could be related to internal oversights as the protocol office neglected to “submit the request for data to all reporting agencies prior to January 20, 2021,” when the Trump administration ended and the Biden administration began. However, it also noted that there had been a “lack of adequate recordkeeping pertaining to diplomatic gifts” between Jan. 20, 2017, when Trump took office, and his departure from the White House four years later.

The State Department report comes as House lawmakers have opened an investigation into reports that Trump had taken boxes of classified materials with him to his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida after leaving office last year. The National Archives and Records Administration has asked the Justice Department to look into the matter.

The House panel investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, meanwhile, has identified an almost 8-hour gap in official White House records of Trump’s phone calls as the violence unfolded and his supporters stormed the building, according to two people familiar with the probe.

Regarding the 2020 gifts, the department said it had “made attempts to collect the required data from the current authoritative sources … but it has confirmed that potentially relevant records are not available to the State Department’s Office of the Chief of Protocol under applicable access rules for retired records of the Executive Office of the President and the Office of the Vice President.”

“As a result, the data required to fully compile a complete listing for 2020 is unavailable,” it said.

Gift records for Trump administration officials such as former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former Defense Secretary Mark Esper and former Central Intelligence Agency chief Gina Haspel are included in the limited 2020 report, as are records for other senior diplomats, Pentagon and CIA officials.

The White House has begun to harbor fears that Vladimir Putin could soon notch his biggest victory of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — in Paris.

There is growing concern within President Joe Biden’s administration about the narrowing polls in the French presidential election that show a tight race between incumbent Emmanuel Macron and far-right challenger Marine Le Pen.

A possible victory by Le Pen, a Putin sympathizer, could destabilize the Western coalition against Moscow, upending France’s role as a leading European power and potentially giving other NATO leaders cold feet about staying in the alliance, according to three senior administration officials not authorized to publicly discuss private conversations.

Senior U.S. officials have warily watched across the Atlantic for any signs of possible Russian interference in the first round of the elections, which will take place Sunday. Polls suggest that Macron and Le Pen would likely then advance to a showdown on April 24 — and that the potential two-person race would be close.

Le Pen, in her third attempt at the presidency, has surged over the past couple of weeks, as she has toned down some of her notoriously incendiary rhetoric to focus on cost-of-living issues. Millions in France are struggling to make ends meet after a 35 percent surge in gas prices over the past year.

Her resume deeply worries the White House.

Though Le Pen styles herself a benign populist, her campaign platform on immigration and Islam are still radical, with plans to ban the veil from all public places and stop foreigners from enjoying the same rights as French citizens. Her surname, in certain circles, is synonymous with racism and xenophobia — she now fronts the far-right, anti-immigration party her father founded. And she has been an unabashed admirer of Putin, whom she met in Moscow in 2017. Though she has somewhat distanced herself from the Russian president since the invasion of Ukraine, she has spoken sympathetically of Putin’s rationale for war and rejected some of the Western coalition’s hard-line measures against Russia.

“Do we want to die? Economically, we would die!” she asked in a recent television debate, when asked if France should cut off oil and gas imports from Russia. “We have to think of our people.”

A Le Pen victory, once unthinkable, would present the European Union with its biggest crisis since Brexit, potentially triggering a slow death rattle for the constellation of countries and completely upending a continent. And in the short term, it would deeply shake the pro-Ukraine coalition that extends from Warsaw to Washington.

The worst-case scenario, according to White House officials, would be that Le Pen could win and then pull France from the coalition currently standing alongside Kyiv against Moscow. Macron’s government has already walked a fine line with Moscow, with the French president attempting to play the role of mediator in the days before Putin’s invasion. Since then, France has supported the Ukrainians with weapons and assistance, but they’ve been quiet about it, refusing to release details on what and how much they’re sending.

Washington fears that a Le Pen in the Élysée would upset this delicate balance. Her victory could then prompt other European leaders — some of whom were already nervous about getting tough on Russia — to bail on the alliance as well.

Some Biden aides believe that even if Macron manages a narrow reelection, it could still have a chilling effect on European leaders who may worry about their own eventual political future against populists less toxic than Le Pen. That fear may only be exacerbated if the war between Russia and Ukraine becomes a protracted conflict that lasts months and months, resulting in higher energy prices across Europe, a continent dependent on Moscow for energy.

“Her election would be a disaster for Europe and the trans-Atlantic front to support Ukraine,” said Benjamin Haddad, senior director of the Europe Center at the Atlantic Council. “She’s against sanctions and arms delivery, has always aligned on Kremlin talking points on Ukraine or NATO. Her platform includes leaving NATO military command and a series of anti-EU blocking measures that would de facto amount to a Frexit down the road, though she has taken Frexit off her program this time so as not to spook voters.”

Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel was once viewed as Europe’s emissary to Putin, a mantle that has now fallen to Macron upon her exit. On the eve of war, Macron sat across Putin’s famous long table in an effort to avert invasion; the two leaders have spoken several times on the phone since. Macron has been criticized for engaging Putin, particularly from the president and prime minister of Poland.

Back in France, some resentment has grown that Macron — who trounced Le Pen in 2017 — has been far more focused on international diplomacy than domestic concerns and pocketbook issues for a country weary after grappling with a pandemic for two years. Macron tussled with the so-called “yellow vest” protesters, sparked at first by a gas tax and then became a wider movement in 2018-19. He’s also never managed to shed the stigma of being a leader “of Paris” — not France — who has failed to empathize with everyday problems.

That he jumped into the presidential campaign late, confident that acting as an international statesman would guarantee a second term, is case in point for some voters.

A Le Pen win, most analysts believe, remains unlikely. In her run five years ago, polls were tight for a time before the race turned into a substantial Macron win. And when the field is narrowed to just two, she may simply become unpalatable to many voters.

But if Macron were defeated by Le Pen this time, it could put a huge crack in the trans-Atlantic wall built by Biden and his European counterparts. After four tumultuous years of Donald Trump that badly strained traditional alliances, Biden has made a central mission to reassure Europe that it could count on the United States again. He has made three trips to Europe in his presidency — including last month to Brussels and Poland — to affirm those ties, and he recommitted the U.S. to the NATO alliance designed as a bulwark to Moscow’s aggression. The Paris-Washington dust-up over the AUKUS deal, which robbed France of a lucrative submarine deal with Australia, seems to be largely behind Biden and Macron now.

Washington has been watching the elections and sharing information on possible Russia-based intervention, from bots to fake accounts, though most of Moscow’s cyber efforts right now are focused on sharing propaganda to support the war effort in Ukraine, the officials said.

The Western allies have worked largely in lockstep in putting vise-like economic sanctions on Moscow and supplying Ukraine with needed military equipment. Russia’s invasion has badly struggled in recent days, and Putin has already been forced to dramatically curtail his war aims.

But he would get a major boost by a Le Pen win. This time, she has focused relentlessly on economic issues, promising to reduce gas and electricity prices, and tax the hiring of foreign employees to favor nationals. But while she has toned down her rhetoric, and benefited from the presence of a candidate even further to her right, she has changed little of her platform, including measures like removing benefits from many immigrants, repudiating the primacy of EU law and closing the door on most asylum seekers.

“Le Pen represents a historic threat to one of the most important democracies in Europe,” Lauren Speranza, director of the Transatlantic Defense and Security program at the Center for European Policy Analysis. “She has praised Putin, who is a war criminal, and depends on Russian money.

“If she leads France, it will be incredibly difficult to maintain the relative unity the trans-Atlantic community has shown so far in the war in Ukraine,” continued Speranza. “Her election would play directly into Putin’s goal of exacerbating cracks in the NATO alliance.”

And she cannot dodge her previous praise of Putin. Macron has repeatedly pressed that point, telling reporters this week that he was not the candidate in the race who has shown “complacency towards Vladimir Putin.”

In 2017, she voiced her support for Putin’s invasion of Crimea and her opposition to EU sanctions in response to the annexation. If she had won that time, she pledged to lift the sanctions. Just two weeks ago, she told French TV that Putin “could become an ally of France again” when the war ends.

“Russia’s not going anywhere,” she explained to the French public broadcaster France 2. “I’ve always said that a great power can be an ally in a number of situations.”

Alex Ward contributed to this report.

President Joe Biden is expected to announce a new nominee to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives as early as this month, according to multiple people familiar with the White House’s planning.

Deliberations are ongoing but Steve Dettelbach, a former federal attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, is seriously being considered by the White House for the post, two of those people and one official within the Senate Democratic Caucus, told POLITICO.

After withdrawing the president’s first ATF nominee, David Chipman, in September, the White House is expected to pick someone who could have a smoother path to Senate confirmation. If Biden’s next nominee is able to secure 50 votes, it would be the first time the ATF has had a permanent director since 2015.

During an unsuccessful run for attorney general of Ohio in 2018, Dettelbach called for reinstating the assault weapons ban and universal background checks on gun purchases—two positions that have sparked GOP opposition to past nominees. A U.S. attorney from 2009 to 2016, he sought a return to that post last year. He has supporters in high places. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) has been pushing him as a nominee for ATF director, according to four people familiar with the conversations.

Brown’s office said the senator frequently advocates for qualified candidates for all positions, noting his support for Biden’s Supreme Court pick and federal reserve candidates. Brown’s office added that the senator is especially happy when those qualified nominees are Ohioans.

The current acting head of the bureau, Marvin Richardson, has also been raised as a possibility to be a formal nominee in discussions with the White House. But a person familiar with the process said Richardson is not under consideration for the permanent director job.

The person stressed that no decision has been made.

Dettelbach and Richardson’s names were the two most frequently mentioned by people in contact with the White House about the ATF post. Multiple people said that there are other candidates in addition to Dettelbach that are under consideration but no other names were given.

Multiple people said the White House was also eyeing National Police Week in mid May as a potential time to announce the new nominee. The White House declined to comment.

The ATF has only ever had one permanent director since the position became Senate confirmable in 2006 — a sign of the controversy surrounding the bureau. But Biden is poised to again wade into another congressional fight over a new ATF nominee, which could elevate gun policy as the midterms near. People in the gun control advocacy community say that they would welcome just that, along with additional executive actions on gun policy too.

“Biden campaigned on a promise to restructure the ATF and to focus on taking on rogue dealers and other dangerous sources of crime guns,” said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety. “In order to deliver on that there’s going to need to be strong ATF leadership.”

With gun homicides on the rise, the White House is facing renewed pressure to act. On Sunday, six people were killed and 12 others injured in a mass shooting in Sacramento, Calif. Biden has stressed the need for legislative responses and cited his push for more money for community violence prevention programs and community policing. But he put the onus on Congress to move legislative solutions.

Gun control groups are pressing Biden to consider additional executive orders, including gun restrictions and to declare gun violence a national emergency. Many of those groups have also urged the White House to appoint a gun violence prevention czar. Such actions, advocates argue, could help boost Biden’s standing with the party’s base. As the midterms near, Democrats are confronting a new set of warnings, including public and private polls showing them trailing or running even with Republicans on which party Americans most trust on gun policy.

Chipman, a former senior policy adviser for the gun-control group Giffords Law Center, had gained high praise and support from gun safety advocates and the majority of Democrats during his confirmation battle. But after three senators who caucus with Democrats voiced concerns, his nomination was withdrawn last September.

It was a setback for Biden and it drove a wedge between the White House and gun safety advocates, some of whom are still smarting over what they viewed as the administration’s lack of urgency to promote its nominee and lack of commitment to see him through the process.

Richardson, who has worked for the bureau for more than 30 years, is well known and liked by the agency’s rank-and-file. If picked, he would have faced criticism from gun control advocacy groups who view him as too friendly with the gun industry.

Some gun control groups preemptively critiqued Richardson for his time in the acting role, pointing to his joint appearance on stage at a Las Vegas convention with Larry Keane, general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, who helped lead the charge against Chipman.

Po Murray, chair of the Newtown Action Alliance, which was founded after 26 people, including 20 children, were killed in a mass shooting in Connecticut, urged the White House to seek input from diverse crop of gun safety organizations as it narrows its list for ATF director.

“They don’t engage with us to see what it is exactly that we would like with the ATF director. They haven’t engaged us at all,” said Murray. “We believe that we need a new ATF director immediately, given that reducing crime is one of their priorities for the administration.”

After taking office promising sweeping legislation and transformed government, Joe Biden is poised to fight the midterms the same way his two immediate Democratic predecessors did: trumpeting moderation and a center-left agenda.

Underscored by his budget last week, Biden’s emerging election-year blueprint is to emphasize police and defense spending, accentuate federal deficit reduction and propose higher taxes on the ultra-rich. It’s the early centerpiece of a platform that Biden’s defenders note he’s deployed consistently over his long career. But gone is his early-presidency emphasis on bold deficit spending and revamping the social safety net to achieve long-sought Democratic priorities. In its place is an increased focus on domestic and international security and stability.

Biden’s approach, which has been evident in recent speeches and described in further detail by advisers and close allies, is the clearest sign yet that the White House is trying to reestablish his broader competency ratings, which have taken sustained hits going back to the fall. And it follows months of calls from within the party for the White House to more aggressively chart a path for what promises to be a bruising fall election cycle.

House Democrats’ own internal polling shows the party is vulnerable to Republican attacks on crime and police funding as well as high inflation. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, meanwhile, has compelled the White House to reinforce their desire to achieve global security through strong national defense.

But the administration is also attempting to play the hand it has dealt itself. While the White House continues to pursue scaled back climate and social spending initiatives with just Democratic votes, one of Biden’s biggest policy victories — a sweeping infrastructure bill — was passed with Republican help. Another legislative package to boost competitiveness through innovation also is bipartisan.

“Political reality just didn’t support the expansive view of progressive possibilities,” said Bill Galston, the former Clinton administration official now at the Brookings Institution. “If you put an ideological template on it, you have to say the correction is to the center.”

The recalibrated approach has not been received well by the entirety of the party. Progressive lawmakers and strategists have taken early aim at the proposed increases in defense spending. Operatives argue that the White House’s focus on deficit reduction is merely an effort to appease moderate Democratic senators to unlock their votes on Biden’s domestic agenda. They view the billionaires tax talk as a fig leaf to the left and stress that the midterm pitch cannot simply center on attempts to stifle GOP criticism for frontline members.

“I worry that if the focus is correcting the record on things like policing, and not hammering Republicans on everything from Clarence Thomas to the investigation into January 6, or passing popular things like a Billionaires Tax, that it could result in an enthusiasm drain that we desperately need heading into the midterm year,” said Sawyer Hackett, a Democratic strategist and senior adviser to the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a liberal advocacy group.

“I understand that President Biden has a vested interest in bringing the parties together and showing that he’s reaching across the aisle to get bipartisan support on any number of legislative priorities that he has,” he added. “But at the same time, when the Republican Party is increasingly anti-democracy … if we keep on letting these pitches go by, we’re missing a huge opportunity to brand Republicans as the party that they are.”

Biden and Democrats have yet to settle on how prominently they will feature Republican “extremism” and fears of turning over Congress to a party effectively still run by Donald Trump. And threats to American democracy, which House Democrats were keen to elevate earlier last year, don’t appear as prevalent in battleground district communications, with strategists currently of the belief that the topic isn’t as salient as voters’ pocketbook concerns.

There are risks, however, to moving to the middle. Barack Obama and Bill Clinton respectively tried to stress fiscal restraint and project tough-on-crime stances ahead of their first midterms, and it did little to prevent the electoral bleeding.

As Biden and the rest of the party grapple with finding a unified midterm message, they’re haunted by the inability to make prior ones stick. Beginning last April, and again in October, November and March, the White House publicly said it was embarking on ambitious sales jobs for various components of the president’s agenda, only to succumb to the strong gravitational pull of immediate news cycles and the challenges of historic inflation. Russia’s war has, likewise, taken the focus off of domestic politics at a time when Democrats are trying not only to push forward with spending plans but also get credit for the passage of the infrastructure bill.

Biden advisers and allied Democrats do view their progressive tax plan on the wealthiest Americans as a rare chance to corner Republicans. Inside the White House, advisers say they have sought out contrasts with Republicans over taxes, gleefully responding to the likes of anti-tax crusaders like Grover Norquist to argue that conservatives don’t believe billionaires pay their fair share.

And over the coming weeks, Democrats plan to try and draw Republicans into skirmishes where they are forced to defend the tax prerogatives of the wealthy at the expense of spending priorities for climate and social welfare. In recent weeks, the administration and party operatives have keyed in on a plan from Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) to impose income taxes on a large share of people who don’t pay them (predominantly the poor), and potentially sunset safety net programs like Medicare and Social Security.

For Democrats fearful of being blamed for the persistently gloomy outlook of Americans and an unpopular Congress they barely control, Scott’s plan offers a welcome policy contrast.

“We’ve had problems getting [Build Back Better] passed, but the fact is Scott reinforced what we’ve been saying all the time in terms of what their priorities are. So, we’re gonna let people know about that,” said John Anzalone, the longtime pollster for Biden.

“Biden has laid out what he believes is tax fairness and then Scott comes along and apparently lays out what he believes is tax fairness, which is taxing low- and middle-income people,” he added. ”It doesn’t take a pollster or brain surgeon to understand where real people will be on that.”

Republicans will be back home for April recess as Americans are filing their taxes and the Democratic National Committee plans to use that time to highlight the Scott plan, party officials said. While GOP leaders, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, have sought to distance themselves from the Scott proposal, the DNC is planning to run digital ads and hold local events in battleground states to ensure voters see what a potential tax bill would look like if Scott, who chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee, had his way.

Chris Hartline, Scott’s spokesperson, reiterated the senator’s point that he released the proposal in his personal capacity because he believes voters want to see a policy plan from Republicans to run on. Like Scott, Hartline contended that the tax plank would encourage people who are able-bodied to seek work. He argued that sunsetting programs and requiring reauthorization by Congress is “common sense” policy, but that “Medicare and Social Security” — safety net programs Democrats have zeroed in on as vulnerable — “should and would be reauthorized.”

Democrats, Hartline said, are trying to move focus away from Biden’s record by both going after his boss and pivoting to the center.

“It’s clear from the president’s budget and what you have started to hear from Democrats on the ballot that their 2022 strategy is to campaign against their 2021 agenda,” he said. “It’s too late for that. Biden’s numbers have tanked everywhere and as we get closer to the election the incumbent Democrats that are polling slightly ahead of Biden will come into parity with him. Voters are hurting, they are feeling the pain and they are blaming Democrats.”

Looming over the entirety of the debate around Scott’s plan and Biden’s pivot is lingering inflation, which threatens to define the midterms in ways that are deeply unfavorable to the White House.

“Many political consultants and many White Houses have an exaggerated view of the extent to which messaging can counteract reality,” Galston said. “But if you look at what’s dominating people’s minds right now, it’s inflation. Survey after survey confirms that. And inflation is very much a product of direct experience and especially repeated direct experience.”

Biden has rolled out a host of initiatives to fix supply chain issues, including in the transportation, agriculture, meat processing and semiconductor sectors. Last week, he announced a plan to release millions of barrels of oil from a strategic reserve to help bring down gas prices.

And although the White House has contended that their domestic agenda is fully paid for — by raising taxes on those making $400,000 or more and big corporations — opening the spigot on early spending for Covid relief allowed opponents to paint them as out of step with the concerns of price-shocked voters.

“Democrats can’t afford to get caught focusing on anything that isn’t front of voters’ minds. Right now that’s the rising cost of living and concerns about crime,” said Tyler Law, a Democratic consultant and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee alum who is working on midterm campaigns.

Law said Biden’s budget proposal “reflects that reality,” and called it “an important guide for Democrats running up and down the ballot.”

President Joe Biden on Monday said scenes of a massacre in Bucha, Ukraine, is further evidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin is a war criminal.

Biden, speaking to reporters in Washington, D.C., after spending the weekend in Delaware, emphasized the need to collect evidence with which to try Putin as a war criminal.

“What is happening in Bucha is outrageous and everyone sees it,” Biden told reporters on Monday. “It is a war crime.”

The president’s remarks came as he arrived back in Washington from a weekend in Delaware, where he played golf on Sunday with with his brother-in-law, his grandson and his grandson’s friend.

The Associated Press reported on Sunday from Bucha, a Kyiv suburb, detailing bodies strewn across the ground, many with “bound hands, close-range gunshot wounds and signs of torture.” A Ukrainian resident said Russian troops went building to building, removed civilians from hiding, checked phones for anti-Russian activity, and took them away or shot them. Russian troops withdrew from the city on March 30, leaving behind “a scene from a horror movie,” Ukrainian officials said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the killings a genocide. Asked if he agrees with that characterization, Biden said, “No, I think it is a war crime.”

But instead of blaming Russian troops, Biden placed the blame squarely at the feet of Russian President Vladimir Putin. “You may remember I got criticized for calling Putin a war criminal,” Biden said Monday. “Well, the truth of the matter, you saw what happened in Bucha. He is a war criminal.”

Biden said the U.S. will continue to provide Ukraine with weapons to continue fighting and will impose new sanctions on Russia, though he declined to elaborate on what those sanctions might target.

“This guy is brutal,” Biden said of Putin.