Politico

Pete Buttigieg’s potentially legacy-making opportunity to help steer $550 billion in new infrastructure cash also offers Republicans their best opening yet to hobble his political future.

His agency’s newly filled coffers will give Buttigieg the chance to blitz the airwaves and crisscross the country handing out money for bridges and roads, further adding to his already robust media presence. But such huge dollar signs also mean Buttigieg will face aggressive oversight for how the Department of Transportation spends the funds, and any hint of waste or abuse — even outside his direct control — could endanger his prospects in a potential presidential run.

GOP critics of President Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda, which includes not just the infrastructure package signed into law on Monday but also a so-far-elusive $1.75 trillion package of social spending, will be watching closely for flaws to highlight to voters.

On the Republican side, the political rewards for finding fault with the program will be immense, especially given the administration’s plans to sell infrastructure to Americans as a high-water mark for Biden. In addition, many of Biden’s priorities — transit, walkable and bikeable streets, passenger rail — will shower money on big, blue coastal cities, inviting accusations of favoritism to Democratic strongholds.

“Most Republicans didn’t vote for this bill,” said Democratic strategist and pollster Mark Mellman, whose clients have included dozens of members of Congress. “Some of those Republicans are going to be claiming credit anyway. Others will be looking for opportunities to rub somebody’s nose in bad results. Some will be doing both. But a lot of people will be looking for problems with how this money is spent.”

Even in the best of circumstances, Buttigieg, whose previous political experience was running the city of South Bend, Ind., has his hands full. South Bend’s 2022 budget is $386 million. DOT’s annual budget is around $90 billion — and now that the infrastructure bill has been signed into law, it will swell to about $140 billion.

DOT had no comment about how Buttigieg might handle the challenge. But he nodded to it in a recent appearance on Meet the Press, saying he takes “very seriously the responsibilities that we have for everything that flows” through DOT, including all the new funding he will have to shepherd. “And can I tell you that everyone in my organization feels the same way. We know that we have a responsibility to be creative, to be smart, to be entrepreneurial, but also to be careful, cautious, and accountable of these dollars.”

With an eye on his future, Buttigieg could rain money on potential swing states like Florida, Wisconsin and Ohio as well as vote-rich Democratic strongholds like New York and California. He’ll get the chance to cozy up with the local political powerhouses and make the next few years a nonstop campaign tour through the country, listening to people’s problems — and helping fix them, all of which could improve his political fortunes immensely.

But that attention can be a double-edged sword, especially in a political atmosphere so toxic that support for helping communities make their roads safer can draw threats of violence.

There are already signs of eroding support among GOP voters that could create even more polarization from Republican politicians. According to the latest POLITICO/Morning Consult polling data, just 22 percent of Republicans polled say they support the infrastructure bill, down from 40 percent in April.

Buttigieg also has to navigate his own party, whose political future may rest on the way infrastructure cash gets doled out. On Sunday, Biden announced the appointment of Mitch Landrieu, the Democratic former mayor of New Orleans, to lead an effort to steer the law’s substantial funding for infrastructure, including the creation of an advisory panel — all of whose members can come to the table with their own big ideas and priorities.

In a press conference Monday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Landrieu as well as Biden himself, who she called “Sheriff Joe,” will be exercising diligence over the spending, noting that they’ll be “making sure we … prevent waste, fraud and abuse.”

But even careful planning can’t avoid all catastrophes.

“You have this massive amount of money, and investing a significant chunk of it in something that goes sideways could be very embarrassing and politically damaging,” said Geoff Burr, who served as chief of staff under Trump-era Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. “That’s the struggle and the tension of trying to do ambitious things and trying to be innovative. It comes with considerable risk.”

Plus, he said, tension will arise “between wanting to get the money out as quickly as possible and making sure that it reflects your priorities and goals, and those two things are at odds,” Burr said. “Getting this sort of funding out already goes slower than anybody wants it to. But this is an opportunity that you get, I don’t know, once in a decade? And you want to make sure that it reflects your goals.”

Beyond mismanagement, some risk exists that GOP strongholds could flat-out reject certain kinds of infrastructure funding, as three Republican governors did a decade ago when they turned up their nose at $2 billion in high-speed-rail money from the Obama administration.

Some parts of the infrastructure could play more favorably in Republican-led states, including bridge repair grants, a huge infusion of money for roads — and even federal grants for electric vehicle charging stations, which would disproportionately go to rural areas. But that last category also creates an opening for culture-war fights about whether the money just benefits people rich enough to afford a Tesla.

Over the five-year life of the bill, DOT will manage $211 billion in discretionary funds. Aside from charges of political or geographical bias, if one of those grants goes sour and creates a crisis, it could land on Buttigieg’s head.

Buttigieg may have one advantage: the generally slow pace of infrastructure projects, especially big ones. Consequential projects are often multiyear affairs, and that could mean that any problems that arise will emerge slowly.

That’s what happened to Boston’s infamous “Big Dig,” a multibillion-dollar tunnel project plagued by massive cost overruns, criminal charges and safety flaws that led to one death, noted one former senior Trump administration DOT official. The official also pointed to the 2018 collapse of a pedestrian bridge near Miami, in which poor engineering was implicated.

“Think about the big infrastructure debacles,” said the former official, who asked to remain anonymous to speak candidly. “Those only became known years after it happened. For instance, the Big Dig: It was after six or seven years of the funding that cost overruns were fully realized. Or the Florida [International] University Bridge collapse… It had been four years since that grant was made.”

Of course, Buttigieg will be backed up by the agency’s experienced career staff, and a phalanx of political appointees to help him navigate relations with Congress, the White House, governors and more. The former official suggested that with Biden in the White House, Buttigieg will have much less interference of the sort that could trip him up.

“I think the Trump administration would have misspent a lot of this,” said the former Trump DOT official. “If we had received this money, we would have received just incessant calls from the White House, asking us to give this project or that project money — whereas I feel like the Biden administration is going to have an [official request for proposals] drafted and they’re going to have a clear press roll-out strategy.”

President Joe Biden says he intends to run for reelection in 2024. But not all Democrats believe him. Nor are they convinced his No. 2 would be the clear heir if he did choose to opt out.

As Vice President Kamala Harris grapples with a portfolio of seemingly intractable issues and responsibilities that have drawn her away from the national spotlight — she Zoomed into the infrastructure Cabinet meeting from Paris on Friday — other Democrats have raised their own national profiles.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is the point person on implementing much of the popular bipartisan infrastructure deal. This fall, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) boosted the mayor of Manchester, N.H., during her recent reelection campaign and is keeping in touch with allies in the critical primary state, according to people familiar with the calls. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) is on a book tour and campaigned in Virginia for Terry McAuliffe. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) endorsed left-wing and progressive candidates outside of Massachusetts this past year.

The spokespeople for that quartet either declined to comment or stressed that the moves were unrelated to future electoral ambitions. But the context in which these moves took place has given them a dose of intrigue unusual for when an incumbent president is still in his first year in office. Biden has said publicly and privately that he wants to run, and allies expect that will be only more likely if former President Donald Trump decides to challenge him in 2024 since Biden is skeptical of other Democrats’ prospects.

A person familiar with Biden’s conversation about his 2024 plans says “he has told people he is running and that ‘we will be prepared.'”

But there has been persistent chatter in Democratic circles that he could decide not to. And talk of successorship has spilled into open view in recent days, with even a close Biden ally, former Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd, speculating about Harris’ positioning in a potential 2024 primary.

All of it adds a new level of electoral uncertainty that the Democratic Party and Harris in particular face as they remain dependent on Biden’s success and unclear about his future.

“Folks are definitely playing chess right now. They’re playing the long game and seeing how things develop and shift,” said Nina Smith, who has worked for Buttigieg and Stacey Abrams.

Though the expectation remains that Biden will mount a reelection bid, Democratic operatives are preparing for the possibility that it won’t materialize, noting Biden’s grim 2022 midterm prospects and his age — he’d be 86 years old at the end of any second term. Biden has also said he wants to be a bridge to the next generation, which has fed routine speculation that he could bow out to make way for a younger Democratic candidate.

Typically, the person at the other side of that bridge would be the vice president. But less than a year into her time in the executive branch, more than a dozen Democratic officials — some affiliated with potential candidates — say that Harris is currently not scaring any prospective opponents.

“She’s definitely not going to clear the f—ing field,” said one veteran New Hampshire operative.

Harris’ office is keenly aware of these sentiments and the landscape ahead of her. They continue to insist that she is only focused on being “Joe Biden’s Joe Biden” — a strategy that could endear her to both Biden and his political network and potentially pay off with a Biden endorsement, should the time come.

The vice president’s office declined to comment for this story. But, underscoring concerns about her future, her allies outside of the administration have argued she’s been set up for failure by the portfolio she’s been handed.

Harris’ two main agenda items are voting rights and migration stemming from the Northern Triangle countries in Central America. Both are thorny topics with few easy solutions. And because of the absence of clear progress on both, Harris has become the subject of criticism from both the right and the left. Indeed, there are other potential candidates who have been making national splashes on both those fronts.

Abrams, who has been deliberate in maintaining her relationships with national Democrats and their donors, is directly associated with voting rights as an issue. If she runs and wins the Governor’s Mansion in Georgia next year, Democratic operatives expect her to at least consider a White House bid. Other Democrats across the country have also recruited her to send out emails given her draw among the party’s base and her potency as an online fundraiser.

Meanwhile, Harris’ “do not come” warning to migrants earlier this year, while the official stance of the administration, has earned the ire of some Latino circles. Famed journalist Jorge Ramos penned a furious column after her remarks, with the question: “What would have happened if a U.S. politician had told Harris’ Indian mother or her Jamaican father not to come to the United States to study?”

At the same time, former presidential candidate Julián Castro has frequently appeared on television to critique the administration on its immigration platform and stake out a more humane border enforcement policy.

Other Democratic officials note that some other new faces could be in the mix, like Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer if she wins reelection in 2022 and enjoys a good relationship with Biden.

Charles Burson, who served as Vice President Al Gore’s White House chief of staff during his presidential run, says Harris still has time to take on a big portfolio item that isn’t “impossible” and could allow her to “[elevate her] profile where the party and the nation looks to you as the leader.”

For now, Harris is operating in a media environment where “there’s this assumption that a vice president’s going to clear the field,” said Joel K. Goldstein, author of “The White House Vice Presidency: The Path to Significance, Mondale to Biden.” Goldstein added that the ability to use the vice presidency as a springboard to the nomination and eventually the White House is an advantage almost every potential candidate would take over being a senator or even Cabinet secretary.

“The trade-off is you get the chance to sit in the situation room and to be the last person in the room and to go off to France and meet with [Emmanuel] Macron,” Goldstein said. But on the other hand, vice presidents inherit the popularity or unpopularity of the administration, and arguably the biggest challenge is “emerging from the president’s shadow [and] preserving the idea that you’re a leader and not just a follower,” he says.

While others can operate on their own — or in Buttigieg’s case, end up leading one of the administration’s most popular bipartisan laws — Harris’ vice presidency is more of a senior adviser role. It has given her proximity to the president but also placed her political future in the backseat as she toes the administration line. Allies note that voters don’t see Harris in many of her roles or hear the advice she provides to Biden in the Oval Office — putting her at the whims of public perception and media coverage of the role she’s playing. And with a 50-50 Senate, Harris has been forced to stay near D.C. to potentially cast tie-breaking votes on Biden nominees. That’s limited her capacity to do public outreach although she has traveled to New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada in her first year — critical early states in a presidential primary.

Those in Harris’ larger orbit point to the dozens of meetings she’s had with different important Democratic constituencies as an advantage for any future campaign. The meetings can serve two purposes: strengthening relationships with groups now while silently building a political network in waiting.

Smith says a solution for Harris is to take those meetings on the road.

“That could be a very good place for her to be. Since 2020 and the primary, I think everybody’s kind of found their place, and it feels like she’s still looking for that place,” Smith said. “I feel like she needs to come home, meaning you need to be talking to Black folks. She needs to be talking to the base as much as possible and not just meetings that’s at the residence or in the White House. But I’m talking community.”

Zach Montellaro contributed to this report.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki returned to the White House briefing room podium on Friday, 12 days after testing positive for Covid-19.

“While I have not had close contact in person with the President or senior members of the White House staff since Wednesday — and tested negative for four days after that last contact — I am disclosing today’s positive test out of an abundance of transparency,” she said in an Oct. 31 statement announcing her positive test.

Psaki was scheduled to travel with President Joe Biden two weeks ago on his trip to Europe for G-20 meetings and a United Nations climate change summit but at the last minute backed out due to a “family emergency.” Deputy Press Secretary Karine Jean Pierre traveled in her place. Psaki later disclosed in her statement that she did not go because several members of her family had tested positive for Covid.

“I had intended to go on the trip with the president about two weeks ago. I did not go on the trip because I had members of my household who tested positive for Covid. So out of an abundance of caution, I stayed home,” she said in a White House press briefing Friday.

Psaki said she had not seen the president for five days when she tested positive and that they “wore masks and we were sitting outside.” Biden received his booster shot at the end of September.

Psaki experienced mild Covid-19 symptoms, “primarily fatigue,” she said. She said she “fortunately” does not have any lingering symptoms and was able to continue working remotely.

Psaki’s quarantine period started Nov. 1 and ended Wednesday. She received a negative Covid-19 rapid test result Thursday in accordance with White House policy, and was then cleared to return to work.

“I remain incredibly grateful for the vaccine for keeping me safe and other people in my house safe as well,” she said.

New emails and documents released by a congressional committee investigating the Trump administration’s handling of the pandemic show the extent to which top White House officials interfered in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s efforts to warn Americans about Covid-19.

The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis has conducted interviews over the last several months about how former President Donald Trump and his closest confidantes, including former White House adviser Scott Atlas and son-in-law Jared Kushner, tried to steer the course of the federal response, sidestepping the interagency process.

On Friday, the committee released emails and transcripts with former senior CDC officials about the White House’s attempts to sideline the agency at critical moments at the beginning of the U.S. outbreak.

The emails and transcripts detail how in the early days of 2020 Trump and his allies in the White House blocked media briefings and interviews with CDC officials, attempted to alter public safety guidance normally cleared by the agency and instructed agency officials to destroy evidence that might be construed as political interference.

The documents further underscore how Trump appointees tried to undermine the work of scientists and career staff at the CDC to control the administration’s messaging on the spread of the virus and the dangers of transmission and infection.

The CDC did not respond to a request for comment.

Several top former Trump officials, including Deborah Birx, the former White House Covid-19 task force coordinator, have answered committee questions. Former National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases Director Nancy Messonnier and former CDC Principal Deputy Director Anne Schuchat also appeared for questioning. Both stepped down from their posts at the CDC in the spring.

The documents released by the committee — and the corresponding interviews with witnesses — lay out a timeline for how the Trump White House began to downplay the dangers posed by Covid-19. Several former high-level Trump officials who worked on the administration’s response have said publicly after the fact that they did not want to panic the American public.

But scientists at the CDC, well aware that the virus was transmitting at a high rate and could infect easily, stepped in early to speak to the American people directly in an attempt to warn the public about what was coming.

In a press conference in February 2020, Messonnier told reporters that she expected community spread within the U.S. and that the disruptions to everyday life could be “severe.” It was one of the first blunt assessments from a high-level CDC official about what was in store for the U.S.

That warning frustrated Trump, according to documents released by the congressional committee Friday.

“I believed that my remarks were accurate based on the information we had at the time,” Messonnier told the committee in her interview. “I heard that the President was unhappy with the telebriefing.”

Following Messonnier’s comments in the Feb. 25 briefing, the leadership at the Department of Health and Human Services called yet another press conference.

“The impression that I was given was that the reaction to the morning briefing was quite volatile and having another briefing — you know, later I think I got the impression that having another briefing might get — you know, there was nothing new to report, but get additional voices out there talking about that situation,” Schuchat told the committee in her testimony.

From that point, the White House took the lead on the federal response and controlling all communications and messaging about the virus, denying CDC requests to hold its own briefings.

“We would submit a request to the others to do a briefing and it was declined, and then — or we didn’t get approval to be able to do one,” Schuchat said, referring to specific requests she received from the media for an interview. Schuchat said the White House also denied several agency telebriefings in the spring of 2020 that would have allowed CDC scientists to explain emerging evidence about how the virus moved and infected different populations.

As CDC scientists continued to try and push out their field reporting on Covid-19, White House officials attempted to morph messaging and at times downplay the significance of the spread of the virus.

POLITICO was the first to report in 2020 that communication officials at the Department of Health and Human Services sought to seek changes in the CDC’s weekly Covid-19 reports to align the summaries more closely with the president’s talking points.

Christine Casey, one of the leaders of the CDC team that publishes weekly scientific reports, also known as Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports, told the House committee that at one point in April 2020 she received instructions to delete an email reflecting political interference.

Casey said Paul Alexander, the former temporary senior policy adviser to the assistant secretary for public affairs at HHS, instructed her to stop publishing the weekly reports, insinuating her team was trying to make Trump look bad in public.

After conversations with leadership at the CDC, including then-Director Robert Redfield, Michael Iademarco, one of the CDC’s leaders overseeing epidemiology and laboratory services, told Casey to delete the email.

“I believe he said that the director [Redfield] said to delete the email and that anyone else who had received it, you know, should do as well,” Casey said in her testimony.

Schuchat told the committee that the interference in the CDC’s scientific process went even further and affected the agency’s public health guidance from the beginning of the pandemic.

In one instance, Schuchat said there was a directive in March 2020 to the White House to suspend the introduction of certain persons from countries where a communicable disease exists. Martin Cetron, the director for the Division of Global Migration and Quarantine at the CDC, refused to sign the order.

“His view was that the facts on the ground didn’t call for this from a public health reason and that the decision wasn’t being made based on criteria for quarantine. It may have been initiated for other purposes,” Schuchat said. “ I don’t think he was comfortable using his authority to do that because it didn’t meet his careful review of what the criteria are.”

Redfield eventually signed the order despite Cetron’s opposition.

On several instances, Schuchat said Alexander tried to change the wording of the MMWR, adding that it took “active effort” from career CDC staff to preserve the integrity of the scientific reports.

“There’s a long-standing practice that the MMWRs are scientific products of CDC and that there’s a firewall between the editorial production and political levels,” Schuchat said.

In an April 2020 email released by the committee Friday, Redfield emailed the Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, raising questions about why Vought’s team was not planning to send public health guidance on meatpacking plants through the interagency channel. At the time, the White House was at odds with CDC about what steps meatpacking plants should take to protect workers from contracting Covid-19. The virus had infected several plants in the Midwest, causing disruptions to workflow.

“Bob-Your team (Kyle McGowan) is saying that they are not going to send the meat packing guidance through the normal OIRA channel in order to serve Taskforce. We need to make sure it comes in as normal to run our clearance process,” Redfield wrote. At the urging of top White House officials, including Marc Short, former chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, Redfield softened the language of the guidance.

In another similar scenario, CDC scientists pushed back on comments received on guidance for faith groups — institutions which were seeing rising case numbers because of their large indoor gatherings. Jennie Lichter, then-deputy director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, wrote that it was “unacceptable” that CDC had “accepted virtually none of the comments or edits submitted by me, DOJ, or anyone else on this very sensitive section,” according to documents released by the committee Friday.

In response, Joe Grogan, the former director of the U.S. Domestic Policy Council and assistant to Trump, wrote: “I am not sure these should go back to cdc. I think we should make the edits and then a small group of principals finalize.”

Later that summer, in August, the CDC was in the process of renewing its testing guidance in anticipation of the new school year. Cases were surging across the country, particularly in the Southwest and West. CDC scientists were in agreement that the country needed to maintain strict testing guidelines to quickly detect community transmission to fend off future surges.

Birx, then the White House Covid-19 task force coordinator, told the House committee in her testimony that Atlas, a radiologist and White House adviser who frequently disagreed with the CDC, attempted to alter the agency’s testing guidance.

He pressed the agency to rewrite its guidelines to underscore that only symptomatic individuals needed to get tested. His argument, at the time, was that the U.S. only needed to worry about those individuals who had Covid-19 and were experiencing symptoms such as fever and coughing because those were the people who could more easily spread the virus. But scientists through the administration argued that asymptomatic individuals could still spread Covid-19 even if they did not exhibit symptoms and it was important to track both categories.

The wording in the testing guidelines was eventually tweaked to say: “You do not necessarily need a test unless you are a vulnerable individual or your healthcare provider or state or local public health officials recommend you take one.”

“This document resulted in less testing and less — less aggressive testing of those without symptoms that I believed were the primary reason for the early community spread,” Birx said, adding that the change in the guidance was not based on science.

Leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum on Friday failed to agree on President Joe Biden’s offer to host the regional forum in 2023 after concerns raised by one member nation.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern downplayed the impasse, telling reporters that she expected a decision on the issue in the coming weeks.

“It’s not an issue that is substantively discussed at the leader level as you can imagine, but it is something that I have every confidence that we’ll see resolved very shortly,” Ardern said at a press conference after hosting this year’s leaders summit virtually.

Neither Ardern nor the White House identified which APEC member was blocking the U.S. bid to host the meeting, but one former U.S. official said indications point to Russia as the likely suspect.

“APEC hosting requires the consensus of all 21 economies, and we thank members for their strong support so far,” a White House spokesperson said, adding that one economy has “not yet joined consensus.”

“We hope this impasse is resolved quickly to ensure we can continue the positive momentum on economic cooperation through APEC,” the spokesperson added.

Failure to agree on Biden’s offer to host risks jeopardizing U.S. support for the organization, which brings the United States, China and 19 other economies in the fast-growing Asia-Pacific region to discuss trade and other concerns.

The setback also comes as both U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo are set to make their first trips to Asia next week. Tai is visiting Japan, South Korea and India, while Raimondo is headed to Japan, Singapore and Malaysia.

President Joe Biden is expected to nominate former Commissioner Robert Califf to lead the Food and Drug Administration Friday, in a move that would bring the Obama-era official back for a second tour atop the agency, two sources familiar with the announcement told POLITICO.

The selection would end the administration’s lengthy search for a permanent FDA commissioner and comes as the agency weighs a series of decisions that will determine the direction of Biden’s Covid-19 vaccination campaign.

If confirmed by the Senate, Califf would also play a key role in charting the government’s wider pharmaceutical and tobacco policy ambitions — as well as managing growing scrutiny of the FDA’s drug approval process.

The White House has not responded to multiple requests for comment. Attempts to reach Califf were unsuccessful.

Califf, a cardiologist by training, previously served as FDA commissioner for nearly a year at the tail end of the Obama administration. He also spent two years as deputy commissioner of the FDA’s medical products and tobacco office and worked closely with Biden on the then-vice president’s Cancer Moonshot Initiative.

He emerged in recent weeks as the White House’s top candidate to run the FDA, driven in large part by his preexisting knowledge of the agency’s inner workings and bipartisan appeal.

Califf garnered broad support during his first stint as FDA commissioner, winning confirmation by an 89-4 margin. This time around, he’s likely to be buoyed by endorsements from a bipartisan group of fellow former FDA commissioners — as well as public health experts who have urged Biden for months to settle on a nominee.

Cytokinetics CEO Robert Blum told POLITICO that Califf personality and track record is well suited to the moment, describing him as someone who “commands a lot of respect” despite an often low-key demeanor. Califf joined Cytokinetics’ board of directors in February 2018, a position he will likely step down from.

“He is somebody who is deeply interested in clinical evidence and basically built his career around it,” Blum said. “Rob understands the appropriate proper interplay between the private sector and the public sector, both in terms of science, industry and regulatory matters. He’s certainly not a shill for any one stakeholder. He demonstrated that when he was already at FDA.”

Despite the agency’s prominent role in the Covid-19 response, it has been without a permanent leader since Biden took office. The White House had originally considered nominating longtime regulator and acting Commissioner Janet Woodcock to the role. But her candidacy stalled in the face of Democratic opposition over her track record on opioids and a more recent decision to green-light a controversial Alzheimer’s drug.

“It’s a very unorthodox thing that he would be himself asked to go back, but he’s a quite uncommon person,” Blum said. “I don’t know if that’s the case for a lot of other people where they would choose to go back like that. I think he’s got a real call to duty right now, given the politicization of what’s happening around Covid and other things.”

Several other candidates — including Biotechnology Innovation Organization CEO Michelle McMurry-Heath and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute President Laurie Glimcher — were also considered and eventually ruled out during the wide-ranging, nine-month search process.

Still, Califf could face questions of his own. In addition to working at the Duke Clinical Research Institute, he has helped lead health policy at Google parent company Alphabet since 2019 — a role that may draw scrutiny from the Senate’s left flank.

Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) also voiced concerns about Califf during his confirmation process in 2016, with both questioning his ties to the drug industry. Califf at the time had written papers with pharmaceutical industry executives and consulted for drug and device makers.

Yet in the run-up to Califf’s official nomination, several outside health experts hailed his selection as one that would bring long-sought stability to an agency that’s spent the last two years under intense pressure.

“From the perspective of fulfilling FDA’s tobacco mission, Dr. Califf would be a superb choice,” Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids President Matthew Myers told POLITICO, saying the former commissioner has a record of encouraging the agency to take “strong action to reduce tobacco use.”

After months of deference to Congress, President Joe Biden moved more assertively last week to shepherd half his domestic agenda into law. With the other half still in limbo, Democrats want some of that Biden punch again.

Outside groups fear that congressional Democrats could come up short on Biden’s social spending package. They are concerned that moderates in the House may end up buckling if the budget scores on the bill come back worse than anticipated. And there is residual anxiety that one of the two wavering Senate Democrats — Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona — could vote “no” over concerns about inflation and long-term debt.

The clearest solution to avoiding this, they argue, is more Biden.

“All eyes are on the president, all expectations are on the president,” said Lorella Praeli, co-president of the progressive Community Change Action. “We are playing our role. We are mobilizing. We’re reminding people everyday what this is about.”

Praeli added that Biden must ensure there aren’t future cuts to the package, which dropped from $3.5 trillion to $1.75 trillion to accommodate centrist Democrats in the House and Senate. “This is what he campaigned on. Only the president can deliver it in the end.”

Until last week, Biden’s involvement in negotiations had been more deferential than managerial. That befuddled lawmakers, who were waiting for him to draw red lines about which priorities he wants in and out of the deal or to even demand votes. To date, Biden has publicly refrained from drawing a red line around including paid leave in the final version of the legislation, leaving the leadership in the House at odds with centrists in the Senate.

But Biden did ramp up his involvement in the negotiations last week. And Democrats viewed that as key to getting an agreement in the House on their infrastructure bill, as well as on a rule to move forward with their social spending package, which funds universal pre-k, expands Medicare access, cuts taxes for families with children 18-years-old and under, and combats climate change.

Now they want more. Expectations are high for Biden to keep the House to its promise of a vote on that social spending plan the week of Nov. 15.

“They basically made a promise,” said Rahna Epting, executive director of the progressive advocacy group MoveOn. “And Biden was able to get enough progressives to vote for the bipartisan infrastructure bill, on that promise. We are expecting Biden and the Democratic Caucus will make good on their word and pass the Build Back Better Act no later than Nov 15th as stated.”

White House officials contend that Biden and his team remain in close touch with the Hill, and their legislative affairs staff continues to push the social spending bill toward a vote. The White House said it is communicating regularly with a range of lawmakers including Manchin, but did not answer when asked whether Biden has spoken to the West Virginia senator or other moderates in recent days.

“There has been no kind of slow down when it comes to our Hill outreach,” a White House official said.

The growing demands for Biden to stay heavily involved reflect a fear in the party that the window to act on the agenda is quickly closing, especially as concerns mount about lingering inflation and the midterms near. If the House meets its deadline next week and passes the social spending bill, some Democrats want Biden to issue a deadline for the Senate to act. Others noted that the end-of-year legislative calendar is short and brutal.

The “dynamic has totally changed,” said a Democratic strategist. “The president secured this agreement with the five holdouts for House passage of BBB next week and it’s on him to enforce it.”

A top climate operative echoed that assessment telling POLITICO that Biden “will have failed” on tackling climate change if the second piece of the agenda doesn’t pass.

But the operative also expressed a newfound fear that Biden’s current effort to sell the benefits of the infrastructure bill could distract or complicate Democrats’ attempt to keep public interested in the social spending plan.

“They need to sell [physical infrastructure] but also act like it’s not enough,” said the activist.

“How are they also creating the urgency for BBB to get done, for it to stay on the timeline of getting it done by Thanksgiving? It’s a balancing act.”

Matt Bennett, co-founder of the moderate group Third Way, agreed that the dynamics were “tricky” in trying to sell one just-passed bill as historic while simultaneously making the case that another ambitious bill is needed. Biden will travel to New Hampshire and Michigan next week to highlight the money the infrastructure bill will direct towards new roads, bridges and transit projects across the country.

“This moment that we’re in is hard,” said Bennett. “It will be much, much easier when both bills are completed. There is a very profound political imperative for Democrats to get this finished, to end the infighting and sausage making and shift to creating a narrative about what Democrats have just done for Americans because they’ve been utterly unable to do that.”

A number of groups plan to amp up pressure next week as Congress returns. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and the White House have repeated their desire to have a vote on the social spending plan by the end of next week. The Service Employees International Union will descend on Capitol Hill with some 500 union members, said Mary Kay Henry, the union’s president.

“We are escalating phone calls, text messages,” said Henry. “We’re bringing members into Washington next Tuesday, we have the president’s back, to get Congress to act quickly and get the full back package.”

Democratic outside groups have spent more than $150 million on TV and digital ads promoting the president’s social spending plan, known as “Build Back Better.” The League of Conservation Voters and Climate Power launched new digital ads calling on the five moderates who reached an agreement with the White House and House leadership last week to follow through on their commitment to pass the second piece of Biden’s economic agenda “next week.”

The longer it takes to pass the social spending plan, the harder it becomes to keep the party unified, Democrats warn, especially amid up-and-down economic news. A new report Wednesday revealed inflation hit 6.2 percent in October, its highest point in 31 years, contributing to high gas, car and food prices. It forced Biden to quickly issue a statement addressing the issue and ever-so-slightly shift his messaging, arguing that passage of the social spending plan would combat inflation.

“Inflation hurts Americans’ pocketbooks, and reversing this trend is a top priority for me,” Biden said in a statement. “It is important that Congress pass my Build Back Better plan, which is fully paid for and does not add to the debt, and will get more Americans working by reducing the cost of child care and elder care, and help directly lower costs for American families.”

The State Department is mulling the sale of armed drones to Indonesia, but concerns over human rights abuses and the country’s past purchases of Russian equipment have set off a debate inside the Biden administration over approving the move, according to government and defense industry officials.

The Indonesian government wants a new package of armed drones as it modernizes its fleet of aging fighter planes, though the country has cast a wide and tangled net as it claims to be considering new planes from Russia, South Korea, France and the United States.

Jakarta’s request to purchase armed MQ-1C Gray Eagle drones, which was confirmed by three people both in government and with ties to the defense industry, comes as Washington is also considering selling Qatar four MQ-9B Predator drones. The proposed sale to Qatar was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, but the debate over selling armed drones to Indonesia has not previously been reported.

The State Department and White House have been working for months on a new arms transfer policy that promises to place a renewed emphasis on human rights and protecting civilians, a review that could complicate some pending deals with countries that have a history of abuses.

That review and the Qatar and Indonesia requests have contributed to a larger debate within the Biden administration over the export of armed drones, and which countries should be able to acquire that capability with U.S. help, said a defense industry official familiar with the discussions. Both Indonesia and Qatar have histories of human rights abuses, and some U.S. diplomats are hesitant to transfer weaponry that could be turned on civilians.

A State Department official confirmed that the review of arms control policies is considering “the connection between human rights and arms transfers as well as highlighting the importance of promoting transfers when they are in the U.S. national interest.”

There is also uncertainty over whether Indonesia has the appropriate regulatory processes in place to protect U.S.-made technology, and whether the government could support high-end technology over the long-term. The Indonesian Embassy did not respond to a request for comment, and a State Department spokesperson said the agency does not discuss internal deliberations over potential arms sales.

The question of selling Gray Eagle drones to Indonesia has been percolating since the last year of the Trump administration, when it determined that the country’s defense capabilities “as part of the broader Indo-Pacific strategy require drone capabilities to support naval and coast guard maritime security,” R. Clarke Cooper, former assistant secretary for political-military affairs at the State Department under Trump, told POLITICO.

That need was partly met by the American donation of a dozen ScanEagle drones for maritime surveillance in 2020, after repeated Chinese incursions and illegal fishing around the Natuna Islands — which sit within Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone, but also fall within China’s disputed claims — frustrated Jakarta and threatened to spark a wider conflict.

The larger MQ-1C armed drones would represent a major upgrade from the unarmed ScanEagles, which can fly for about 18 hours at 19,000 feet. The MQ-1 can stay in the air for up to 25 hours at 29,000 feet, and can carry more weight for surveillance packages or four Hellfire missiles.

There is concern, however, that selling Indonesia a drone capable of carrying missiles, even if Washington doesn’t arm it, could lead to Indonesia buying missiles from China or Russia in an attempt to fit them onto the American aircraft. In April, reports indicated that Jakarta had purchased air-to-surface AR-2 missiles from China to arm its Chinese-made CH-4 drones.

While Jakarta and Beijing have a tense relationship around fishing rights, their small defense sales ties are still a concern for Washington, as is Jakarta’s continued reliance on Russia for weapons, including the potential to buy Su-35 fighters.

Despite the risks, a drone sale would have a geostrategic upside for the U.S., proponents argue. As Washington shifts its focus from the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific region, Indonesia has emerged as a strategic ally in the competition with China. The sale of armed drones with significant surveillance capabilities would help build that military relationship and potentially head off Indonesian purchases of similar drones from China, Russia or Turkey, all of which produce advanced unmanned aircraft.

Indonesia has about 70 aircraft in its inventory, a mix of older Russian fighters and U.S-made F-16s. In February, the government signaled it was interested in buying new F-15EX fighters from the U.S., a new addition to the country’s wishlist that for several years has included French Rafale and Russian Su-35 fighter planes.

“They like shopping, but buying is another story,” said Richard Aboulafia, vice president of analysis at the Teal Group. “The new fighter requirement has been around for a great many years; they’ve never actually purchased a new Western combat aircraft,” he added, suggesting that the government’s inability to follow through might give the Biden administration pause about trying to move forward.

“The very fact that they’re shopping all over the world, including for Russian equipment, that in itself is a red flag,” he said. Indonesia has been negotiating with Russia since 2018 over the Sukhoi deal, talks that have included Jakarta bartering goods such as palm oil and other natural resources to offset the cost of the planes.

Still, the Biden administration has shown its interest in bolstering the air wings among allies in the region, and has already approved deals with the Philippines for 10 F-16C fighter planes along with a dozen MQ-9 Reaper drones to Australia.

Some deals, however, will likely run against the administration’s desire to emphasize human rights and democratic governance as the Biden administration looks to build up fledgling allies around the globe.

Bilal Saab, a former Pentagon official and now director of the defense and security program at the Middle East Institute, said the new Biden review is unlikely to radically alter how or what Washington sells overseas.

“Every single president has tried in one way or another to emphasize rule of law and human rights, and make sure that our partners use the weapons responsibly,” Saab said. “But not a single one of them really has committed to that, and we are far less attentive to the institutional capacity of those partners, and their ability to effectively use and sustain those arms.”

The State Department has highlighted human rights abuses by Indonesia’s security forces, including ”unlawful or arbitrary killings; reports of torture by police; arbitrary arrest or detention,” and politically-motivated arrests.

President Joe Biden met with Indonesian President Joko Widodo on Nov. 1 on the sidelines of the U.N. Climate Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, where they “discussed ways to strengthen” the relationship between the two countries, according to a White House readout. No mention was made of weapons deals or promoting human rights.

Alexander Ward contributed to this report.

For the third time in two days, a federal judge has shot down former President Donald Trump’s effort to block Jan. 6 investigators from accessing his White House records.

U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan said in a ruling late Wednesday that she would refuse to stay her own decision — just one day earlier — denying Trump’s request for an injunction that would block the House’s Jan. 6 select committee from gaining access to some of his White House papers.

Chutkan, an appointee of President Barack Obama, sharply rejected Trump’s attempt to assert executive privilege over the documents, contending that the decision by the sitting president, Joe Biden, to release them carried greater weight under existing legal precedents.

In her latest decision, the judge said her earlier rationale dictated that she should turn down Trump’s request for a temporary order preventing disclosure of the records pending further legal action.

“This court will not effectively ignore its own reasoning in denying injunctive relief in the first place to grant injunctive relief now,” Chutkan wrote.

The National Archives, which houses Trump’s records, intends to provide a small initial tranche to congressional investigators on Friday afternoon. But whether that transfer occurs appears to now rest with the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

Trump’s lawyers have already appealed Chutkan’s ruling denying a preliminary injunction in the case. They’re expected to file a motion later Wednesday for temporary relief that would block the Archives from turning over the records while the appeals court and perhaps the Supreme Court consider Trump’s privilege claims.

The first tranche of records Trump is seeking to block includes files from his former chief of staff Mark Meadows, as well as call and visitor logs. An additional set is due to be provided to the committee on Nov. 26.

Chutkan last week heard oral arguments in Trump’s emergency effort to block the committee. On Monday night, before Chutkan ruled on the matter, Trump urged the judge to preemptively block the effect of her ruling in order to give him time to appeal before Friday’s deadline. But Chutkan quickly rejected that request, calling it legally deficient, since she couldn’t block a ruling that hadn’t been issued.

In her 39-page ruling on Tuesday, Chutkan again denied Trump’s effort to delay the committee’s access to his documents, saying his role as a former president gave him no power to overrule the sitting president on matters of executive privilege — particularly on a matter of grave national significance.

“Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President,” she wrote.