Politico

The escalating teachers union dispute in the nation’s third-largest school district has put the Biden administration at odds with a key labor constituency over the safety of in-person learning amid a holiday-inflected Covid spike.

“Long story short we want schools to be open, the president wants them to be open and we’re going to continue to use every resource and work to ensure that’s the case,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Wednesday.

The Chicago Teachers Union on Wednesday voted to not report to schools — a move that prompted the city’s school officials to cancel both in-person and remote instruction. The union said that the city’s leaders “have yet to provide safety for the overwhelming majority of schools” and that its members intend to work remotely until they are satisfied their concerns are sufficiently addressed.

The White House said that all school districts can and should have the resources necessary to safely continuing operating for face-to-face instruction, pointing to the large pot of money allocated to schools as part of the American Rescue Plan passed early last year.

“We know they can be open safely, and we’re here to make that happen,” Psaki said.

The Biden administration has been steadfast in its belief that schools should stay open despite the mounting pressure from teachers unions and others. Psaki said Wednesday that teachers “selflessly serve their communities” but that the nation is “more than equipped to ensure schools are open” and to “ensure that children are not enduring the mental health impact of not being in school, that there are not gaps in learning. This includes schools everywhere, including in Chicago.”

A spokesperson for the Chicago Teachers Union did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on Psaki’s remarks.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, a Democrat, said Tuesday night that the city is continuing to work to resolve the dispute with the teachers union, while also pleading with teachers to return to their classrooms. Her office did not immediately return an email seeking comment on Psaki’s Wednesday comments.

“We are committed to remaining at the table with CTU leadership and negotiating a fair agreement,” Lightfoot wrote on Twitter. “But what we cannot accept is unilateral action to shut down the entire district, depriving hundreds of thousands of students of the safe, in-person schooling environment they need.”

She said that the administration is working with state and local officials to ensure that funding is being sent out to, and utilized by, school districts in order to meet their respective needs.

The press secretary added that unnecessary disruptions pose further risks to children’s mental health and learning — both of which have suffered during the pandemic that has entered its third calendar year.

While Chicago is on the forefront of the tension over keeping classrooms open, given the spread of the virus and its Omicron variant in the U.S., but similar tensions are percolating throughout the country. Many school districts face staffing shortages and issues such as testing availability that have exasperated parents and educators in recent weeks.

The standoff also poses political complications for the White House ahead of a challenging midterm election for Democrats and risks irking teachers unions, a long-standing ally. Biden in particular has made a point to regularly tout his pro-labor credentials, including his marriage to Jill Biden, a long-time community college professor and National Education Association member.

When President Joe Biden took office last January amid a winter Covid-19 surge, he vowed an all-out federal assault aimed at vanquishing the virus.

A year later, with the country facing unprecedented levels of disease once again, his administration is now hoping to fight it to a draw.

Besieged by the fast-spreading Omicron variant, the White House is racing to limit the fallout from record cases swamping the nation — an explosion that’s strained hospitals, snarled travel and raised the specter of widespread economic disruptions. The administration has fast-tracked Covid-19 treatments to hard-hit states and pledged emergency personnel to medical centers shorthanded by the waves of infection sweeping through their staffs. They’ve done it all while juggling immense political pressure from fellow Democrats to maintain some semblance of social normalcy lest the party be hit even further by pandemic fatigue among voters.

The new reality has further darkened the mood among White House aides already frustrated by the lack of progress toward ending a pandemic many initially believed could be dispatched within a year. It’s also accelerated the administration’s pivot toward preparing people to live with the virus indefinitely. In interviews, officials described the next few weeks as a triage operation focused on containing the reverberations of the surge well enough to avert breakdowns in essential services, mass school closures and overrun hospitals.

On Tuesday, Biden pleaded with Americans to get vaccinated and boosted to protect themselves against Omicron’s rise, arguing the U.S. is well-equipped to weather the crisis.

“We have the tools to protect people from severe illness from Omicron — if people choose to use the tools,” he said. “For God’s sake, please take advantage of what’s available.”

Yet even as the president sought to project calm, he conceded there was widespread confusion among Americans about the virus’s spread. And health officials inside and outside his administration privately acknowledge that there’s little new left for the federal government to do but hold on and hope the worst is over soon.

“We’re going to have another two-and-a-half, three weeks, maybe four weeks of this viral blizzard where we’ll see one challenge after another,” said Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota who advised the Biden transition. “There’s nothing at the federal level that’s going to change that.”

The Omicron variant hit the U.S. faster than anticipated, further exposing the shortcomings in the administration’s Covid strategy to date. A vaccination campaign at the center of the pandemic response has yet to win over tens of millions of skeptical Americans.

And despite directing tens of millions of dollars in funding to address the problem, the government still lacks the testing and tracing capabilities needed to closely track the virus’s spread — leaving officials scrambling to catch up as infections soar beyond the 1 million-per-day mark.

Well past the point of averting Omicron’s surge, top officials have instead tried to publicly calm fears while ramping up efforts to vaccinate more people and limiting the potential for catastrophic health and economic damage.

“You can get through a couple weeks. It’s hard to get through a couple months,” Bob Wachter, chair of the University of California, San Francisco’s department of medicine, said of Omicron’s spread. “The key question is how long this all lasts.”

Privately, the administration has clung to data in foreign countries that suggest Omicron could burn itself out just as quickly as it arrived, meaning case counts could begin dropping off as early as February in early-hit parts of the country.

Health officials have also highlighted research showing the variant is less severe than its predecessors, making it less likely to drive a similarly astronomical spike in hospitalizations and deaths even as infections rise. In one particularly encouraging indication circulated within the administration, Covid-19 deaths in nursing homes have remained relatively level over the last several weeks.

Hoping those data points hold — and fearing that a return to unpopular lockdowns would be politically ruinous for Biden — the administration has shifted toward trying to blunt Omicron’s impact on everyday life and the economy rather than to completely contain it.

“The message is to get vaccinated, to get boosted and many of us have done so,” said one person familiar with the approach. “But folks who are not susceptible to that call, they’re going to remain resistant to it.”

The manage-not-contain approach has been visible across agencies. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in late December shortened its recommended isolation guidelines for Covid-positive people from 10 to five days provided the person leaving quarantine continues to mask. It was a move that two people with knowledge of the matter said they hoped would help avert the potential for staff shortages among fire, police and medical services.

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, meanwhile, has ramped up his messaging in recent days that schools should remain open, arguing that state officials should do whatever possible to keep kids in classrooms.

The White House itself has largely backed off of publicly pressuring governors to implement specific policies like mask requirements — a shift that comes as blue state leaders have splintered over how to manage the pandemic, with some like Colorado Gov. Jared Polis declaring that the availability of vaccines means “the emergency is over.”

The administration has remained in daily contact with governors, advising them to follow CDC guidelines and briefing them on latest developments, officials said. They’ve spent much of the past few weeks ramping up efforts to support state-level responses, including sending emergency response teams to dozens of states and expanding testing and vaccination capacity.

Biden and his top aides have simultaneously called for Americans to get booster shots and wear masks where required, emphasizing the far greater danger Omicron poses to the unvaccinated. And after acknowledging that the speed of the surge caught them off guard and unprepared to handle the spike in demand for tests, the White House has since taken steps to build out its testing system and bolster access to treatments, including a pledge to buy and distribute 500 million free Covid-19 rapid tests and a doubling of its order of Pfizer’s antiviral pill.

Still, Biden has struggled to escape a Covid malaise that’s dragged down his approval ratings since the fall — a period complicated by messaging hiccups that have caused confusion and fueled criticism.

In the most recent episode, the CDC faced swift backlash for shortening its isolation guidelines without requiring a negative test, after top health officials had difficulty demonstrating the scientific evidence behind it. Administration officials have since insisted that the change is grounded in science, though two people with knowledge of the matter said the turbulent rollout touched off a fresh round of finger-pointing over who was responsible for the garbled messaging.

Democrats privately acknowledge that those missteps — along with the canceled flights that stranded thousands over the holiday — mean that even absent harsh restrictions and school shutdowns, Omicron’s spread could continue to undercut a midterm strategy once predicated on a clean defeat of the virus.

Fearful of what that portends for November, other Democrats have pushed for Biden to take an even more prominent role in messaging through the crisis. Nearly two years into the pandemic, “there is an enormous opportunity for the administration to make the grit, resilience and strength of the American people the central story of the pandemic,” said Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic strategist who has written extensively on the White House and politics of the pandemic.

“The president can use his powerful ability to connect with struggle and trauma to acknowledge our struggle with the virus and praise the American people’s can-do spirit in helping get to the other side of this thing,” Rosenberg said. “The story of the pandemic here in the U.S. is not about scientists, vaccines, the government — it is about all the courageous steps we’ve all taken every day to get ourselves and our families through an extraordinary collective trauma and disruptions.”

After days of criticism over new isolation and quarantine guidelines, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday doubled down on its policy, pointing to data that it says supports its guidance that Americans who contract Covid-19 or have not been boosted and are exposed to the virus can return to normal life after five days if they wear a mask.

The recent guidance, updated Dec. 29, said individuals who test positive for Covid-19 and whose symptoms are resolving need only isolate for five days as long as they continue to wear masks for an additional five days. And for individuals exposed to the virus who are unvaccinated or are not yet boosted, the CDC recommended that they quarantine for five days and wear masks for another five days. The CDC also said boosted Americans could return to work after exposure but that they should wear a mask for 10 days.

Public health officials and scientists criticized the agency’s decision not to recommend Americans receive a negative test before emerging from isolation and quarantine, saying testing could limit transmission post infection. Since then, top Biden administration health officials, including Anthony Fauci, the president’s chief medical officer, have hinted that the CDC was considering adding a testing recommendation to the guidelines.

But the CDC ultimately decided against it, with scientists pointing to data that shows individuals are less likely to transmit the virus after five days. The agency updated its isolation and quarantine instruction webpage Tuesday with language that clarifies the science behind its decision.

“Accumulating evidence demonstrates the majority of transmission occurs during the early periods of infection,” the CDC said, adding that the agency also took into consideration “societal impact” when deciding to shorten the time period for isolation and quarantine. “Spread of the Omicron variant has the potential to worsen staffing shortages and increase supply chain challenges, which jeopardize industry, education and other systems that are essential to maintain a functioning society and economy.”

The CDC also noted that studies suggest that only 25 to 30 percent of people isolated for the full 10 days previously recommended by the agency.

Tuesday’s move comes after weeks of deliberations inside the CDC and among White House Covid-19 officials about how to handle the recent surge in Omicron and Delta cases, and hospitalizations, according to two senior Biden health officials. As the winter surge has intensified, officials have debated whether to invoke stricter public health guidelines to keep case counts down and whether it is safe for Americans who tested positive to return to normal life more quickly than in previous surges, those officials said.

In meetings about whether to add a testing recommendation to the CDC guidelines, agency officials said they discussed the practicality of recommending individuals obtain a negative test before breaking isolation and quarantine. Americans across the country are still struggling to get a hold of Covid-19 tests, some waiting hours in lines for swabs. With limited supply, public health officials worried about the ability of Americans finding a test to take before returning back to normal life on day six.

In its updated language, the CDC mentioned testing only to say that if people want a test and have access to one, they should use an antigen test toward the end of the five-day isolation or quarantine period but cautioned that “a negative antigen test does not necessarily indicate the absence of transmissible virus.” If Americans receive a positive test, the CDC recommends individuals isolate until the end of the 10-day period.

“Tests for [Covid-19] … are not authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to evaluate duration of infectiousness,” the CDC added. “Some people may remain positive … long beyond the period of expected infectiousness.”

The White House on Monday announced it will not hold its daily press briefing due to the closure of federal offices prompted by snowy weather across the Washington, D.C., area.

The National Weather Service on Monday morning issued a winter storm warning for the District of Columbia and adjacent counties in Maryland and Virginia. The warning, which will remain in effect until 4 p.m., cautioned that snow accumulations across the District, the Washington metropolitan area and parts of Northern Virginia could total 5 to 10 inches.

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management on Sunday night announced that federal offices in the nation’s capital would be closed on Monday because of the snow storm. As a result, “there will be no press briefing today,” the White House said in a statement circulated by a pool reporter on Monday morning.

Although the White House Covid-⁠19 Response Team and federal public officials have conducted briefings in recent days, White House press secretary Jen Psaki has not faced the press since Dec. 23, when she took questions from reporters ahead of the holidays.

The federal closures on Monday are hardly the first time official Washington has ground to a halt on account of inclement weather. Then-President Barack Obama memorably scolded the city’s snow-related school day cancellations in 2009, remarking that classrooms would have remained open in his hometown of Chicago.

“Are you saying these guys are wimps?” one reporter asked the president. Obama responded: “I’m saying that when it comes to the weather, folks in Washington don’t seem to be able to handle things.”

President Joe Biden will speak on Thursday with Russian President Vladimir Putin amid ongoing tensions along the Russia-Ukraine border, the White House announced on Wednesday.

The two leaders will “discuss a range of topics” during their phone call, “including upcoming diplomatic engagements with Russia,” National Security Council spokesperson Emily Horne said in a statement.

But the main point of conversation is certain to be Russian military build-up on Ukraine’s eastern frontier, which has prompted concern among the U.S. and its NATO countries for several months.

Biden and Putin’s call on Thursday will be their second this month, after the American president warned his Russian counterpart three weeks ago that the U.S. and European allies would impose “strong” economic penalties and other punitive actions on Russia should it mount an invasion of Ukraine.

Horne on Wednesday said the administration “continues to engage in extensive diplomacy with our European Allies and partners, consulting and coordinating on a common approach in response to” the Russian military build-up.

“President Biden has spoken with leaders across Europe, and Biden Administration officials have engaged multilaterally with NATO, the EU, and the OSCE,” Horne continued. “Officials have also held numerous consultations with their counterparts, including those from eastern flank countries bilaterally and in the B9 format as well as Ukraine.”

When his contract renewal was in doubt four years ago, Lawrence O’Donnell begged his viewers to help keep him on the air at MSNBC.

Now, as the left-leaning network’s prime-time lineup is at its most unstable point in a decade, the 70-year-old anchor has inadvertently become MSNBC’s most valuable star; or, at least, it’s most dependable one, owing to the rare, direct line he enjoys into the Biden White House.

O’Donnell is, unlike virtually anyone else in cable these days, riding high.

As other programs have struggled to break out of the post-Trump slump that has tanked ratings and left some shows struggling to find the urgency that drove programming during the previous administration, he has found a unique role as the Biden team’s go-to anchor on MSNBC. O’Donnell’s decades-long relationship with President Joe Biden and his chief of staff, Ron Klain, has paid off handsomely, making the MSNBC hosts one of the White House’s only go-to news anchors and granting him rare on-camera access. That hasn’t saved him from the ratings doldrums plaguing nearly all news programs. But with Rachel Maddow’s decision to take a step back from her daily hosting duties at 9 p.m. and Brian Williams’ departure from the network this year, O’Donnell has become a surprising point of continuity.

To a degree, O’Donnell’s success in the age of Biden makes complete sense. O’Donnell has been one of Biden’s most unreserved cheerleaders over the past year, repeatedly defending his White House against criticism in the media and making sweeping declarations about the greatness of the administration. He said Biden’s discussion of his own immigrant history was historic, that the president’s Aug. 31 speech on the U.S. military departure from Afghanistan was the smartest and most honest address by a president on the subject, uncritically praised the state of the economy under Biden, and declared that the president’s first 100 days were the most consequential since FDR’s presidency.

But beyond the adulation, few, if any, cable hosts have mirrored the president’s professional arc as closely as he has.

Both are white male septuagenarians (O’Donnell hitting 70 and Biden at 79) with institutional ties to the U.S. Senate. O’Donnell first met Biden in the 1990s, when he was a legislative aide for Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.), one of the then-Delaware senator’s confidantes. After burnishing his institutionalist credentials as a writer and actor on Aaron Sorkin’s 90s drama the West Wing, O’Donnell continued to mine his Biden connections as he rose through the ranks as a guest and later host on MSNBC. When he became a full-time host on MSNBC in 2010, the main guest during his first show was, naturally, Biden.

“Lawrence is a student of the Senate and Biden is a professor,” Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Cali.), a frequent guest on O’Donnell’s show, told POLITICO. “The value that’s come through in the last year is now you have this shepherd who can take his audience through what it means to have a president like Biden who knows the Senate.”

The connection wasn’t lost on the then-former vice president’s team when he launched his third bid for president in 2019.

While candidates vied for prime territory on Maddow’s highly-rated MSNBC show — prompting some media outlets (including this one) to dub her the kingmaker of the 2020 Democratic primary — Biden repeatedly rebuffed interview requests by her team. He was the only candidate to never appear on her show or that of her lead-in anchor, Chris Hayes. One former campaign official told POLITICO the absence from those programs was due to the fear that they could get hammered from the left and that friendlier treatment was available from other anchors at the network.

Accordingly, Biden opted for interviews with some of the lesser-rated daytime shows, including Stephanie Ruhle’s 9 a.m. show and Morning Joe. And when he wanted to appear on MSNBC’s more highly-rated prime-time programming, he opted for O’Donnell, whom multiple former Biden campaign staffers said he favored because of their personal relationship and belief that their mutually-shared time in Congress made for a less potentially contentious interview.

“He and the president have established a good rapport, driven in part by Lawrence’s deep knowledge and appreciation of policy as a former Senate aide,” one former campaign official said.

Unlike President Donald Trump’s symbiotic relationship with Fox News — which became the main mouthpiece for the former administration and farm system for some of its staffing needs — the Biden White House hasn’t granted MSNBC the same kind of access or attention. But when dolling out one of the rare interviews to mark his 100 days in office, the White House agreed to a nearly 20-minute long sit-down with O’Donnell, the only interview the president has given on MSNBC while in office.

O’Donnell also has the ear of one of the president’s top advisers.

Following the emergence of Covid-19 in 2020, Klain became a ubiquitous presence across MSNBC, offering insights and commentary drawn from his time as former president Barack Obama’s “Ebola czar.”

The anchor who benefited most was O’Donnell, who got to know Klain when they both served as Senate aides in the ‘90s — O’Donnell for Moynihan and Klain for Biden. O’Donnell regularly invited him on his show as a guest years before the Covid pandemic made him a hot cable news commodity. Klain often appeared on O’Donnell’s program multiple times a week.

After the election, the relationship paid off with access.

Klain’s first interview after being named White House chief of staff during the transition was with O’Donnell. He also granted his first interview as chief of staff to O’Donnell. On the 100-day anniversary of the administration, he reflected on the White House’s accomplishments with O’Donnell. And after Biden signed the infrastructure bill earlier this year, the first media appearance he participated in was, once again, with O’Donnell.

“This is going to be an important time for him, but I thought about him as a very important player at MSNBC for a long time,” said Laurence Tribe, the famed Harvard law professor and regular Last Word guest. “He knows more about the Senate than almost anyone else on television.”

O’Donnell, Klain and the White House all declined to comment.

Despite his Biden connections, O’Donnell still suffers from the ratings woes plaguing cable news networks. He consistently trails Fox News’ Laura Ingraham, and the Last Word’s ratings have mirrored the declines across much of the post-Trump cable news landscape. Even on his own network, O’Donnell was outperformed by Maddow.

O’Donnell has long been seen as one of the second string players at the network. Though he cut his teeth in the TV business after his time in the Senate — helping write the hit show West Wing and even taking on a role in some flashback episodes of the program—he’s regarded internally as a solid broadcaster but not one of MSNBC’s most recognizable stars. On the day-side lineup, network brass has been enamored with Nicole Wallace, who finished off the year with the highest number of total daytime viewers in cable news (as measured between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m.).

O’Donnell doesn’t go viral online like Hayes and never developed a cultish audience like Maddow. His show isn’t on in the Senate gym like Morning Joe, and it never caught fire (or flamed out) quite as spectacularly as the one hosted by his predecessor, Keith Olbermann.

His current, secure, status represents a fascinating turnaround for a network personality who just a few years ago seemed days away from losing his job.

In 2017, the Huffington Post reported that O’Donnell had just weeks left on his contract and few clear signs of interest from the network. O’Donnell was personally liked by company higher-ups including then-NBC News Chair Andy Lack, and had posted solid ratings following Maddow’s 9 p.m. viewership juggernaut. But questions lingered in executives’ minds about whether he was truly responsible for his own success, or simply drafting off Maddow’s strong ratings. The network initially balked at his salary demand and suggested moving his program to an earlier time slot, a proposal that reportedly upset O’Donnell. But the news of his potential departure, as well as his public pleas for his viewers to tune in, seemed to work in his favor during negotiations, and he signed a multi-year deal in 2017.

When there was a change in MSNBC leadership in 2021, they became aware of possible major changes to the prime-time lineup. Hoping for some continuity, they took a less adversarial approach this year when O’Donnell was up for a new contract. Sources familiar with the details of the negotiations said that while Williams’ departure took some network executives by surprise, NBCUniversal Chair Cesar Conde and MSNBC network President Rashida Jones were aware of the looming Maddow contract negotiations, and seemed intent on re-signing O’Donnell amid the other potential major changes to the prime-time lineup.

It’s also an about-face from O’Donnell’s relationship with the previous occupant of the White House, who fostered a years-long grudge against the MSNBC host. After he called for NBC to cut ties with the then-reality television star, Trump repeatedly lobbied former MSNBC head Phil Griffin to fire O’Donnell, telling him that O’Donnell was a “third-rate anchor.”

Griffin declined to do so, Biden won office, and O’Donnell is now the steady ship in a network — and industry — experiencing its fair bit of turbulence.

The Biden administration will lift the travel ban for eight African countries that were among the first to report the highly contagious and rapidly spreading the Omicron variant.

White House spokesperson Kevin Munoz on Friday confirmed the restrictions will ease Dec. 31.

“This decision was recommended by [the CDC],” Munoz said on Twitter. “The restrictions gave us time to understand Omicron and we know our existing vaccines work against Omicron, esp[ecially] boosted.”

Last month, the Biden administration banned travel from South Africa, which first detected the virus, as well as nearby Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Eswatini, Malawi and Mozambique.

Administration officials at the time said the ban wouldn’t permanently keep the variant out of the U.S., but instead would buy time for health officials to learn more about Omicron.

“We put the travel ban on to see how much time we had before it hit here so we could begin to decide what we needed by looking at what’s happening in other countries,” Biden told reporters Tuesday. “But we’re past that now.”

The administration additionally imposed a tighter testing window last month for travelers inbound to the U.S., requiring a negative Covid test just one day prior to travel instead of three.

The CDC still recommends U.S. travelers avoid high-risk countries with surging Omicron cases.

Meanwhile, the holiday travel season has not experienced a downturn despite surging Omicron variant cases across the country. TSA said its screeners saw nearly 2.2 million travelers Thursday. But Omicron has begun to take its toll on the airlines.

United Airlines and Delta Air Lines have all reported hundreds of cancellations ahead of the Christmas holiday, citing staff shortages amid Omicron. On Thursday, Airlines for America, which represents major U.S.-based carriers like American Airlines, JetBlue, United, among others, requested the CDC reconsider its isolation period for fully vaccinated individuals who experience a breakthrough Covid-19 infection stating the prolonged period to remain home will “exacerbate personnel shortages and create significant disruptions to our workforce and operations.”

“To address the potential impact of the current isolation policy effectively, we propose an isolation period of no more than 5 days from symptom onset for those who experience a breakthrough infection,” A4A president and CEO Nicholas Calio said.

The Biden administration plans to extend the pause on federal student loan payments through May 1 amid a surge in Covid cases fueled by the Omicron variant, according to three people familiar with the decision.

A White House official confirmed the decision.

The pandemic relief bill passed in the spring of 2020 initially suspended interest and payments for roughly 40 million federal student loan borrowers. That relief was extended multiple times through executive action by the Trump and Biden administrations, but it had been set to expire at the end of January. A wide range of congressional Democrats urged the White House to avoid sending student loan bills to millions of Americans in the coming weeks in the midst of another wave of Covid cases.

Some progressives had warned that restarting student loan payments early next year would spell political disaster for Democrats in the 2022 midterm elections.

Biden administration officials for weeks had insisted that the Education Department would resume collecting student loans on Feb. 1. The department had been sending notices to borrowers that their loans would soon come due after nearly two years of pandemic relief.

But in recent days, the White House said they were reassessing the matter.

“They were pretty adamant about not doing it. I think us saying it’s ok to change course based on changing circumstances is completely ok and maybe shows real leadership (and pointing to change of course re testing kits) helped prove the point,” one of the sources said, who received a phone call from a White House staffer before the announcement.

This is a developing story.

The Biden administration is considering extending the freeze on federal student loan payments amid the surge of
Covid cases and pushback from Democrats who objected to sending student loan bills to tens of millions of Americans in the coming weeks.

Education Department officials have for months publicly insisted that student loan payments would begin on Feb. 1 when the existing pandemic relief — which was extended several times by both the Trump and Biden administrations — is set to expire.

But on Tuesday, an Education Department official indicated that the restart of student loan payments could again be postponed.

“Later this week, we will be announcing whether to extend the pause further,” an Education Department spokesperson said in a statement to POLITICO.

The shift in the administration’s thinking on the fast-approaching Feb. 1 deadline for restarting payments comes as the White House faced a torrent of pressure from Democrats seeking another extension of relief.

The White House had previously said it was evaluating the impact of the Omicron variant but said it was still preparing to restart the collection of monthly payments on Feb. 1.

POLITICO reported over the weekend of a tense meeting between White House officials and student debt activists who want Biden to extend the relief and use executive action to cancel large swaths of outstanding student loan debt. White House officials weren’t persuaded at that time to extend the relief, POLITICO reported, citing people familiar with the meeting.

Democrats on Capitol Hill had been pressuring the Biden administration to extend the relief.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) earlier this month said that the moratorium on student loan payments and interest should be extended until the economy reaches pre-pandemic levels of employment.

Some progressives have been more blunt about the political consequences they fear next year unless the Biden administration takes more aggressive action to help student loan borrowers — especially after the collapse of negotiations over Build Back Better.

“With BBB delayed, Child Tax Credits will expire and student loans will restart within a matter of weeks. Working families could lose thousands of $/mo just as prices are rising,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said on Twitter on Monday. “That alone is reason for @POTUS to act on student loans ASAP – w/ either moratorium or cancellation.”

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said on Twitter that the Biden administration’s plans to restart student loan payments “makes no sense.” He added: “Awful on the substance and awful politics. We need to do better to deserve victory in 2022.”

A slew of other Democrats have also urged the Biden administration to extend the relief.

“We need to address student debt in general, but in the meantime an extension would be a step in the right direction,” said Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), who is up for reelection in 2022. He said that the relief would help both “struggling families in the midst of a pandemic” and the economy overall.

Warnock led a letter with 13 other Senate Democrats to Biden earlier this month calling on the administration to at least continue to keep interest rates at 0 percent on federal student loans even if monthly payments resume. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who signed onto that letter, said that he thought the administration was considering an extension of relief. “I don’t know what the chances are right now, but we are pushing them pretty hard,” he said on Friday.

Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), the chair of the House education committee, also supports continuing the pause on student loan interest, a committee aide confirmed to POLITICO on Tuesday.

A coalition of labor and student and consumer advocacy groups have also called for an extension of the relief — as have several think tanks aligned with the Biden Education Department.

Republicans, meanwhile, have previously called for the Education Department to restart student loan payments, citing the growing cost to taxpayers of waiving interest and deferring payments. The department has estimated that the pandemic relief for student loans in fiscal year 2020 added nearly $42 billion to the cost of the student loan program; in fiscal year 2021, it cost an additional $53 billion.

More than 40 million Americans have benefited from the federal government’s emergency relief program for student loans, which began as the pandemic took off in March 2020. Congress paused interest and monthly payments for federal student loan borrowers in the CARES Act — which the Trump and Biden administrations subsequently extended through executive action several times.

Most recently, in August, the Biden administration enacted what it called a “final” extension of the relief, which is set to expire at the end of January.

“Since Day One of the Biden Administration, we’ve been hard at work delivering meaningful relief to student loan borrowers,” the Education Department spokesperson said in a statement on Tuesday. “That started with an extension of the pause on federal student loan repayment until January 31, 2022. To date, the pause has saved 41 million borrowers tens of billions of dollars.”

Department officials have been sending notices to borrowers about the restart of payments and had been also planning ways to soften the blow of the restart of payments next year. Officials were looking at providing an initial 90-day grace period for missed payments as well as a sweeping plan to expunge the defaults of borrowers who were struggling even before the pandemic. Those plans have been discussed internally within the administration but not yet publicly announced.

Last week, Education Department officials announced that they would allow borrowers to more easily participate in income-based repayment plans by accepting self-certification of their income, rather than requiring them to submit tax documents.

Department officials urged outside groups to help them get the message out about the looming restart of payments on Feb. 1 during a webinar last week.

Rich Cordray, the head of the Office of Federal Student Aid, who is overseeing the restart of student loan payments, said during the webinar that a smooth transition for borrowers was his “top priority” in the coming weeks.

“It has many moving parts we’re carefully thinking through, and there are new developments almost every day, so please stay tuned.” Cordray said.

Joe Manchin struck a decisive blow to President Joe Biden’s sweeping social and climate spending bill, igniting a bitter clash with his own party’s White House.

Biden left negotiations with Manchin this week thinking the two men could cut a deal next year on his sweeping agenda. Then the West Virginia Democrat bluntly said he is a “no” on the $1.7 trillion in an interview on “Fox News Sunday.”

“If I can’t go home and explain to the people of West Virginia, I can’t vote for it. And I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation. I just can’t. I’ve tried everything humanly possible. I can’t get there,” Manchin said. “This is a no on this piece of legislation. I have tried everything I know to do.”

Those comments prompted an immediate war with the White House, who took personal aim at Manchin for what officials saw as a breach of trust. White House press secretary Jen Psaki released an unusually blunt statement saying that Manchin’s comments “are at odds with his discussions this week with the President, with White House staff, and with his own public utterances.”

In announcing his opposition, Manchin raised the same concerns about the bill that he’s had all along: inflation, rising debt and a mismatch between the package’s 10-year funding and its shorter-term programs. But until Sunday, Manchin had never taken a hard line on the legislation. In the past week, he’s spoken directly to Biden several times, with the president and other Democrats furiously lobbying him to support the bill.

With an evenly split Senate, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer needs every Democrat to go along with the legislation, which only requires a simple majority vote. That dynamic gives Manchin enormous leverage over Biden’s agenda, allowing him to single-handedly sink a priority that Democrats have spent much of the year working on.

Manchin’s rollout on Fox News infuriated Democrats Sunday morning. Psaki said that the senator had brought Biden an outline of a bill similar in size and scope that “could lead to a compromise acceptable to all.”

“If his comments on FOX and written statement indicate an end to that effort, they represent a sudden and inexplicable reversal in his position, and a breach of his commitments to the president and the senator’s colleagues in the House and Senate,” Psaki said. “Just as Senator Manchin reversed his position on Build Back Better this morning, we will continue to press him to see if he will reverse his position yet again, to honor his prior commitments and be true to his word.”

And while the centrist senator’s staff informed White House and Democratic aides about his forthcoming blow to Biden’s agenda, some Democrats were steamed that Manchin himself hadn’t called Biden or Schumer.

“Manchin didn’t have the courage to call the White House or Democratic leadership himself ahead of time,” fumed one Democrat familiar with internal conversations.

While tempers flared on Sunday, privately, the White House began hastily exploring ways to keep the legislative initiative alive. A White House official told POLITICO that there remain critical elements of Build Back Better that they feel must get done and that they will continue talking with Manchin and urge him to honor his previous commitments. The official added that now may be an opportunity to revisit a concept of the bill that included fewer programs but was paid for over more years — an option that moderate House Democrats and Democratic leaders like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had been pushing for previously.

Still, Manchin’s clear pronouncement that he opposes the legislation is a huge setback for Democrats, who tried to separate out Biden’s agenda into two bills to pass his jobs and families plan. Now, Manchin’s bipartisan infrastructure bill is law but the party-line effort to pour money into education, health care, climate change and tax reform is dead in its current form.

Manchin had few defenders in his own party on Sunday. The only people praising him were Republicans, who have tried to get him to switch parties and hand them the majority. Manchin has refused repeatedly.

The White House’s frustration level with Manchin grew dramatically in recent days after Manchin and Biden’s telephone negotiations went nowhere. Biden has always gotten along personally with the senator and has long believed he should not push his former colleagues. Plus, White House aides were comfortable — if not delighted — with the party-line bill slipping into early 2022.

The West Wing saw Manchin’s Sunday comments as a shocking about-face — White House officials believed he had been sending signals that a deal could eventually be struck. It comes as Biden ends 2021 facing a confluence of crises: Covid cases are surging throughout the nation, inflation remains high heading into the holidays, a renewed push on voting rights already seems stalled and now the signature piece of Biden’s agenda is in grave danger.

It also undermines Biden’s central political arguments to the American people: that he could make government work again, that it’s possible to deliver huge, significant changes to societal norms that impact Americans of middle and lower incomes. But now, even though his own party holds all branches of government, his agenda is in jeopardy.

Manchin’s position is a validation of progressive fears — they believed passing that infrastructure bill was a mistake without an explicit guarantee from all 50 Democratic senators to support the rest of Biden’s agenda. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said Sunday he “absolutely” wants to see a vote on the legislation.

“We’ve been dealing with Mr. Manchin for month after month after month,” Sanders said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “Let him vote no in front of the whole world.”

In his TV appearance, Manchin said he would be fine voting on the bill.

If the bill ever comes to the floor, it won’t be for a few weeks. The Senate left town on Saturday morning for the holidays and won’t return until early January.

That means the Democrats’ expanded child tax credit will expire at the end of this month. Manchin disliked that the credit would only be extended by a year in the House-passed spending bill, even though most Democrats assume the party will keep trying to extend it permanently.

Laura Barrón-López contributed to this report.