Politico

The much-anticipated virtual summit between President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping is tentatively scheduled for the evening of Nov. 15, a U.S. official told POLITICO on Wednesday. A second non-administration source familiar with the summit’s planning also confirmed the date.

The two leaders telegraphed their intent Tuesday to establish a positive tone for the summit via letters of congratulations both leaders sent to the National Committee on United States-China Relations to mark its 55th anniversary. Xi’s letter, read by China’s ambassador to the U.S., Qin Gang, at Tuesday’s NCUSCR black-tie gala dinner, stated that “China stands ready to work with the United States to enhance exchanges and cooperation across the board … so as to bring China-U.S. relations back to the right track of sound and steady development.” The letter’s messaging intent was underscored by its wide reporting Wednesday in Chinese state media.

Biden’s letter, read by NCUSCR Chair Jacob Lew at the same event, underscored the “global significance” of the U.S.-China relationship in addressing challenges “from tackling the Covid-19 pandemic to addressing the existential threat of the climate crisis.”

The confirmation of the summit’s date follows days of White House refusals to provide details on the agenda or its timing besides “before the end of the year.” White House officials this week have sought to lower public expectations for the summit’s outcome.

“This is part of our ongoing efforts to responsibly manage the competition between our countries, not only … about seeking specific deliverables,” White House principal deputy press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, told reporters at Monday’s press briefing. Jean-Pierre added that “working-level discussions are underway to confirm details,” without elaborating.

The summit presents the biggest opportunity yet to reset the bilateral relationship. No major breakthroughs are expected on hot-button issues, including tensions over Taiwan, Xinjiang and Hong Kong. But the meeting is likely to produce initiatives on a range of issues, including easing of visa restrictions, the creation of a bilateral nuclear weapons dialogue and a possible framework to ease trade frictions to demonstrate bilateral resolve to move the relationship from confrontation to cooperation.

The summit will be virtual because Xi is declining invitations to attend all events outside China. National security adviser Jake Sullivan has described it as “the next best thing” to Biden’s preference of an in-person get-together.

Both sides want the summit to defuse tensions that China’s Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng warned in July had produced a bilateral “stalemate.”

Intractable positions — Xi’s focus on “sovereignty” and Biden’s on the “rules-based international order” — mean neither side will budge beyond reiterating standard talking points on Taiwan, Hong Kong and Xinjiang.

Biden and Xi’s overwhelming priority is to avoid the overt hostility that blighted Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s meetings with Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Anchorage in March as well as subsequent confabs with Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman in July and Biden’s climate envoy John Kerry in September. Both leaders must also avoid perceptions of weakness, an area where Biden is disadvantaged by partisan bickering over his domestic policy agenda.

President Joe Biden is set to hold face-to-face talks with his fellow North American leaders next week in Washington, reviving a tradition that had been shelved during the Trump administration.

The White House on Wednesday announced plans for the Nov. 18 summit with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, billing the return of the trilateral meeting as a chance for the countries to “revitalize our leadership.”

The meeting will be the first get-together for the North American leaders since 2016 in what had been near-annual summits between the North American neighbors. President Donald Trump, who had complicated relationships with the leaders of both countries, didn’t host such talks.

Biden held separate virtual meetings with Trudeau in February and López Obrador in March. The Mexican leader also hosted Vice President Kamala Harris in Mexico City in June.

The White House said the upcoming meeting will reaffirm the countries’ “strong ties and integration while also charting a new path for collaboration” on the coronavirus pandemic, climate change, immigration and economic growth.

Mexico Foreign Affairs Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said López Obrador would raise his concerns about the uneven distribution of vaccines and medical capacity in global fight against the coronavirus pandemic. He added the meeting also offered the leaders an opportunity to talk about a “common vision of the future.”

“Where are we going? What do we have to do together? How do we achieve our common objectives? Well, this is the space to do it,” Ebrard said.

Trudeau’s office said priorities would include “finishing the fight against COVID-19, getting the job done on vaccines, tackling the climate crisis, creating new middle class jobs, building an economic recovery that works for everyone, and migration.”

Biden has tried to stabilize relations with both nations after ties became frosty under Trump, who feuded with Trudeau on trade and other issues. Trump angered Mexican leaders with anti-immigrant taunts and his administration’s effort to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

In 2018, Trump took to Twitter to label Trudeau “dishonest and weak” after the prime minister voiced objections to Trump raising tariffs on steel and aluminum from Canada, Mexico and the European Union.

Trump blew up again at Trudeau in 2019, calling him “two-faced” after Trudeau was caught on video mocking the American president as he spoke to other world leaders on the sidelines of a NATO conference in England.

The Biden and Trudeau administrations worked closely to pave the way for the September release of Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, who were arrested in China in December 2018. The two businessman were taken into custody shortly after Canada arrested Meng Wanzhou, Huawei’s chief financial officer and the daughter of the company’s founder, on a U.S. extradition request.

Meng reached an agreement with prosecutors that called for fraud charges against her to be dismissed next year and allowed for her to return to China immediately. As part of the deal, she accepted responsibility for misrepresenting the company’s business dealings in Iran. About an hour after Meng’s plane left Canada for China, Trudeau revealed that Kovrig and Spavor were also on their way home.

Trump’s signature campaign promise was building a wall across the length of the U.S.-Mexico border. Leaked conversations showed Trump hectoring López Obrador’s predecessor, Enrique Peña Nieto, against publicly saying that Mexico would never pay for such a barrier.

López Obrador appeared to reach a one-issue understanding with Trump: Mexico stopped the flow of Central American migrants trying to reach the U.S. border. In turn, Trump often ignored other issues in the complicated relationship.

Plans for the three leaders’ meeting were first reported by Reuters.

The Biden administration told a federal court Monday that a stay of its vaccinate-or-test requirement for private employers “would likely cost dozens or even hundreds of lives per day.”

Responding to a temporary stay imposed by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals on Saturday, the administration argued that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration was well within its authority to issue the requirements requiring employees at large businesses to be vaccinated against Covid-19 or tested weekly.

The states, businesses and religious groups that requested the stay aren’t likely to succeed given earlier court rulings, federal law and “the considerable evidence that OSHA analyzed and discussed when issuing” the requirement, attorneys for OSHA and the Labor Department told the court.

“Nor have petitioners shown that their claimed injuries outweigh the harm of staying a Standard that will save thousands of lives and prevent hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations,” the filing added.

The administration also argued there aren’t grounds for “emergency” relief because the effects of the mandate won’t be in place for another month.

The Labor Department released two new rules last week that will be enforced starting Jan. 4 — one requiring workers at businesses with more than 100 employees to be vaccinated or tested weekly for Covid-19, and another implementing a vaccine mandate for health care workers at facilities participating in Medicare and Medicaid. Together, the rules are expected to affect over 1 million workers.

At least a dozen legal challenges have been filed against the rule since it was announced last week, including the one led by the state of Texas in the Fifth Circuit.

A panel of judges on the court temporarily blocked the emergency vaccinate-or-test rule over the weekend after finding the “petitions give cause to believe there are grave statutory and constitutional issues with the Mandate.”

White House chief of staff Ron Klain on Sunday said that disappointing election results last week for Democrats were a wake-up call for lawmakers to act urgently to implement President Joe Biden’s agenda, including a bipartisan infrastructure bill that is now set to become law.

“I do think the voters sent a message on Tuesday. They wanted to see more action in Washington,” Klain said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “They wanted to see things move more quickly, and three days later, Congress responded, passing the president’s infrastructure bill.”

Democrats passed the $550 billion infrastructure bill on Friday night, three days after Democratic candidates lost the governor’s office in Virginia and New Jersey’s governor survived a close election.

Both came amid sagging approval ratings for Biden in his first year on the job. Pressed on the decline in the president’s approval, Klain acknowledged a difficult year, but touted the infrastructure package and an improving economy.

“In my opinion, it’s been a rough and tough year. And we knew it would be,” Klain said. “President Biden has said this all the time. We’re in a yearlong effort to dig out of the holes we were left in.”

“I understand that voters are tired, Americans are tired of how long it’s taken to get the economy moving, to get Covid under control,” Klain said. “They are in a ‘show me, don’t tell me’ mode. I think we are going to show them in the weeks and months ahead that we have made this progress on Covid. We have made this progress on the economy. We are past, now, the infrastructure bill.”

Democrats came up short at the polls last week in Virginia as Republican Glenn Youngkin edged out former Gov. Terry McAuliffe. In New Jersey, incumbent Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy was reelected in a surprisingly close contest.

The two states’ off-year elections are often seen as an indicator of political sentiment headed into the midterm congressional elections.

The House approved the bipartisan infrastructure bill Friday, sending it to Biden’s desk and delivering Democrats a win after months of haggling on Capitol Hill.

Klain argued the election alone didn’t “put it over the line,” instead touting months of work by Biden and congressional Democrats and Republicans.

Another major agenda item remains in a $1.75 trillion social spending package backed only by Democrats. The infrastructure bill was paired with the Democratic legislation, but that measure is on hold until later this month as House lawmakers await a full cost estimate for the package from the Congressional Budget Office.

Should the House pass that bill when it returns, it still faces an uncertain fate in the Senate, where centrist Democrats Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have objected to numerous provisions backed by progressive Democrats. But Klain expressed optimism that the measure will also eventually land on Biden’s desk.

“I think this bill will pass the House when the House comes back. I’m sure the Senate will make changes, that’s the way the legislative process works,” Klain said. “But we are going to get a very strong version of this bill through the House, through the Senate, to the president’s desk and into law.”

In a separate interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, a former Michigan governor, was pressed for her takeaway from the disappointing results for Democrats last week.

“That we — thank God, and I think that the Democrats in the House got this message very loud and clear — pass the bill, right?” Granholm said .”And pass the second part too, because these contain things that everyday people care about.”

Surgeon General Vivek Murthy on Sunday defended the Biden administration’s workplace rules on vaccine mandates after a federal court blocked a new Occupational Safety and Health Administration policy.

Citing historical precedents dating back to George Washington during the American Revolution, Murthy said President Joe Biden had faith in both the legality of the mandate and the effectiveness of such requirements.

“The president and the administration wouldn’t have put these requirements in place if they didn’t think they were appropriate and necessary,” Murthy told host Martha Raddatz on ABC’s “This Week.” “And the administration is certainly prepared to defend them.”

He added: “Throughout our history, we have seen that we have used vaccine requirements to protect the population. It started back with George Washington, in fact, when he required troops be inoculated for smallpox.“ Murthy also referenced mandates, past and present, for vaccines within schools, hospitals and the military.

The OSHA mandate, which would compel businesses with at least 100 employees to require the Covid vaccine for those workers or test those employees on a weekly basis, has drawn legal challenges from more than half the states.

The New Orleans-based 5th Circuit Court of Appeals on Saturday temporarily blocked the mandate, saying: “The petitions give cause to believe there are grave statutory and constitutional issues with the Mandate.“ The court gave the U.S. government until 5 p.m. Monday to respond to the plaintiffs’ request for a permanent injunction.

Noting that the United States still has “75,000 cases a day,” Murthy said that the mandate ultimately will have great benefits for the economy and for society as a whole.

“There are times where we recognize that our decisions have a broader effect on people around us. Covid has reminded us of that. And that’s why having these types of requirements in workplaces will be not only helpful — it’s a necessary step to accelerate our pathway out of the pandemic, ” he said.

The OSHA mandate is expected to affect more than 80 million private-sector workers across the country — other national and local mandates affect government employees — though many of them have already been vaccinated against Covid-19. Critics have claimed the mandate will be disruptive to the economy and that it violates the constitutional rights of individuals.

President Joe Biden on Saturday hailed Congress’ passage of his $1 trillion infrastructure package as a “monumental step forward for the nation” after fractious fellow Democrats resolved a monthslong standoff in their ranks to finally seal the deal.

“Finally, infrastructure week,” a beaming Biden told reporters. “I’m so happy to say that: infrastructure week.”

The House passed the measure 228-206 late Friday, prompting prolonged cheers from the relieved Democratic side of the chamber. Thirteen Republicans, mostly moderates, supported the legislation while six of Democrats’ furthest left members — including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Cori Bush of Missouri — opposed it.

Approval of the bill, which promises to create legions of jobs and improve broadband, water supplies and other public works, sends it to the desk of a president whose approval ratings have dropped and whose nervous party got a cold shoulder from voters in this past week’s off-year elections.

Democratic candidates for governor were defeated in Virginia and squeaked through in New Jersey, two blue-leaning states. Those setbacks made party leaders — and moderates and liberals alike — impatient to produce impactful legislation and demonstrate they know how to govern. Democrats can ill afford to seem in disarray a year before midterm elections that could result in Republicans regaining congressional control.

The infrastructure package is a historic investment by any measure, one that Biden compares in its breadth to the building of the interstate highway system in the last century or the transcontinental railroad the century before.

“This is a blue collar blueprint to rebuilding America,” he said in his White House remarks.

His reference to infrastructure week was a jab at his predecessor, Donald Trump, whose White House declared several times that “infrastructure week” had arrived, only for nothing to happen.

Simply freeing up the infrastructure measure for final congressional approval was like a burst of adrenaline for Democrats. Yet despite the win, Democrats endured a setback when they postponed a vote on a second, even larger bill until later this month.

That 10-year, $1.85 trillion measure bolstering health, family and climate change programs was sidetracked after moderates demanded a cost estimate on the sprawling measure from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The postponement dashed hopes that the day would produce a double-barreled win for Biden with passage of both bills.

But in an evening breakthrough brokered by Biden and House leaders, five moderates later agreed to back that bill if the budget office’s estimates are consistent with preliminary numbers that White House and congressional tax analysts have provided. The agreement, in which lawmakers promised to vote on the social and environment bill by the week of Nov. 15, stood as a significant step toward a House vote that could ultimately ship it to the Senate.

“Generations from now, people will look back and know this is when America won the economic competition for the 21st Century,” Biden said in a written statement early Saturday.

President Joe Biden’s pledge to limit the role of nuclear weapons is facing growing resistance from Pentagon officials and their hawkish allies, who are arguing to keep the status quo in the face of Chinese and Russian arms buildups.

Biden’s top national security advisers will soon review the conditions under which the United States might resort to using nuclear weapons. Among the options are adopting a “no first use” policy, or declaring that the “sole purpose” of the arsenal is to deter a nuclear conflict and not use them in response to a conventional war or other strategic assault like a cyber attack.

Both would mark major departures from the current posture, which has been purposely ambiguous throughout the nuclear age about whether the United States might strike first, and holds that atomic weapons are for “deterrence of nuclear and non-nuclear attack.”

Biden’s National Security Council plans to convene a high-level meeting on nuclear declaratory policy this month, according to a White House official who spoke to POLITICO on the condition of anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity.

But China’s surprising nuclear expansion in recent months alongside Russia’s modernization of its arsenal has strengthened the hand of military leaders who oppose any policy changes or significant cuts to a new generation of missiles, bombers and other atomic weapons, according to a half a dozen current and former government officials privy to the discussions.

Multiple administration officials maintain that Biden, drawing on his decades of experience, will ultimately put his own stamp on the nuclear strategy. But what he chooses will also depend on what’s presented to him.

As of now, it doesn’t appear the Pentagon wants to give him much of a choice. “It’s not likely that sole purpose or no first use will be presented as options,” a DoD official familiar with the nuclear review told POLITICO.

John Kirby, the top Pentagon spokesperson, responded to the assertion: “That account offered to you by the official is inaccurate,” he said. DoD is participating in “an inclusive, comprehensive process.”

“Ultimately, of course, this policy is a presidential-level decision,” Kirby added.

But others agreed with the unnamed DoD official. “This thing is lost,” said a former government official who is in direct contact with officials undertaking a Nuclear Posture Review and supports considering both a no first use and a sole purpose policy.

“There’s no points of debate,” said the former official, contending that officials who support considering such alternatives, particularly at the State Department, have struggled to get traction in meetings steered by the Pentagon.

“Who in the White House would make this thing happen?” complained the former official. “The document is being generated by DoD.”

The review is slated to be completed in January.

Biden’s ambitions

Biden made clear early in his presidency that he wanted to follow through on his long-held view that it is possible to limit the role of nuclear weapons and the chances of a conflict.

“We will take steps to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy, while ensuring our strategic deterrent remains safe, secure, and effective and that our extended deterrence commitments to our allies remain strong and credible,” Biden stated in his Interim National Security Strategic Guidance in March.

His internal guidance setting the parameters for the nuclear review also said he wanted to be presented with a range of options, including those that were not the consensus of national security agencies, said the former government official, who requested anonymity to share private conversations.

Biden has argued publicly in the past for considering a no first use policy. “Given our non-nuclear capabilities and the nature of today’s threats — it’s hard to envision a plausible scenario in which the first use of nuclear weapons by the United States would be necessary,” he said in 2017. “Or make sense.”

Proponents contend that declaring the United States would never strike first would reduce nuclear tensions and perhaps dial down an arms race, arguing that the current ambiguity could sow confusion in the event of a false warning and spark an accidental nuclear war.

Opponents counter that removing the ambiguity would severely undermine America’s ability to deter nuclear adversaries and that there is no evidence Russia or China would change their own destabilizing behavior. They make a similar argument against outlining the specific threats that might require a nuclear response.

‘Lack of answers’

Biden’s allies in Congress are also beginning to complain about the lack of details from the administration on the nuclear review process, who is advising it, and what it might mean for the president’s goals.

“The Nuclear Posture Review must reflect the President’s guidance to ‘reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our national strategy,’” Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), a member of the Foreign Relations Committee and co-chair of the Nuclear Weapons Working Group, told POLITICO.

Markey penned a letter to Biden in September seeking further explanation on why the Pentagon removed Leonor Tomero from her position running the nuclear review. Tomero, a longtime nuclear policy official, previously worked for Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), chair of the House Armed Services Committee, who has promised legislation to adopt a no first use policy.

The Pentagon-led review, which also includes input from the State and Energy Departments, is now headed by Richard Johnson, a specialist in weapons of mass destruction who helped negotiate the nuclear pact with Iran but is not widely considered an expert on nuclear deterrence or weapons strategy.

He is relying on a host of career military and civilian nuclear experts, many of whom were involved in the 2018 review during the Trump administration, which also recommended the development of several new types of nuclear weapons, several current and former officials said.

“He’s a brilliant guy. And if you want to know something about the Iran deal, or if you want to know something about talking to North Koreans about their program, Richard is one thousand percent your guy,” the ex-official said. “But he’s just not a U.S. nuclear forces guy.”

Markey also asked Biden “how will you ensure that your guidance is reflected in the options the Department of Defense puts forth?”

His letter came after dozens of other congressional Democrats, concerned that the Pentagon budget was funding all the nuclear programs backed by the Trump administration, appealed to the president to follow through on his pledge to reduce the role of nuclear arms.

Markey’s office has not yet received a response. And he is concerned that it spells trouble for the president’s agenda.

The “Pentagon’s lack of answers to date about the Nuclear Posture Review leave me concerned the policy review will prioritize the old assumptions of the military industrial complex at the expense of diverse voices seeking to reduce nuclear risks,” Markey told POLITICO in a statement.

Pentagon spokesperson Lt. Col. Uriah Orland responded that the department is “committed to keeping Congress fully informed of our ongoing reviews and will provide briefings as the reviews move toward completion.” And the Pentagon has insisted in recent months that it is conducting an inclusive process that is relying on a variety of viewpoints.

The State Department, in a statement, also expressed confidence that “the President will be provided with options informed by allied and partner views and supported by a rigorous and dynamic interagency analytical process.”

“We have and will continue to consult with our allies and partners throughout the review process,” the statement added.

But the Defense Department official familiar with the review believes advocates for the status quo are in the driver’s seat.

The official said adopting no first use or sole purpose is “not good policy and takes teeth out of our nuclear deterrent, and our allies don’t want us to take either of those stands. Almost everyone [at DoD] thinks both are bad ideas and not good for the U.S.”

The China and Russia factors

China’s dramatic nuclear advances might also complicate arguments to change America’s nuclear posture. The Pentagon warned in a new report on Wednesday that China is on a path to increase the size of its nuclear arsenal five-fold over the next decade to as many as 1,000 warheads.

The report cited the development of a triad similar to the U.S. and Russia that can deliver nuclear weapons launched from land, sea and air.

The Pentagon maintains that Beijing’s nuclear doctrine also appears to be going in the opposite direction by adopting a more aggressive “launch on warning” posture that would place their forces on heightened alert.

Another enduring concern has been Russia’s ambitious nuclear modernization and a more aggressive public stance in recent years on the centrality of Moscow’s nuclear arsenal in its war planning.

In January, Biden agreed with Russian President Vladimir Putin to a five-year extension of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which limits both sides’ arsenals to 1,550 deployed strategic warheads. But initial talks to seek new limits on other classes — such as lower yield weapons designed for battlefield use — have made little progress.

Moscow also inserted itself into the U.S. nuclear debate this week, calling on the U.S. to be less ambiguous about when it might use strategic weapons.

But nuclear policy veterans see a tough road for Biden if he wants to raise the threshold.

For example, Robert Einhorn, a former State Department official who was involved in preparing the Nuclear Posture Review in the Obama administration, said that adopting a no first use policy is much harder now.

“This year, conditions really have deteriorated, and it was difficult for supporters of no first use to prevail in 2010. It’s even more difficult for them to prevail in 2022,” said Einhorn, who is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who says Biden can take steps toward an eventual no first use policy.

He noted that Biden decided to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan despite misgivings from top military leaders. But “I think in this situation, to change U.S. policy, Biden really would have to overrule some key advisers in the Pentagon, at the Strategic Command and even overcome reservations within the State Department.”

More hawkish Democrats in Congress are also likely to be an obstacle. Asked about Biden’s desire to reduce the role of nuclear weapons, Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.), who chairs the House Armed Services subcommittee overseeing strategic forces, said “everyone would like that.”

“The question is whether you look weak doing it, and we can’t afford to,” he said.

‘A wild card’

However, some hawks who would like to maintain the nuclear status quo — and even increase the U.S. arsenal — aren’t so sure Biden won’t still go his own way.

A former Trump National Security Council official predicted that “they’ll reject no first use” but “they’ll come out with sole purpose.”

In the end, his advisers maintain, the president alone will decide. “This is going to be the president’s posture review and the president’s policy,” Jon Finer, principal deputy national security adviser, said in a podcast interview with Emma Belcher, president of Ploughshares Fund, a disarmament group.

“So nothing that is presented and disseminated by this administration, nothing that is adopted by this administration will be inconsistent with the president’s policy desires, preferences and direction,” Finer added.

Another person with knowledge of the ongoing review said the team is “a long way from making any decisions.

“Biden himself has made it clear he will be the final decision maker on the key issues in the NPR, and he wants to be presented with options,” the person added. “It’s hard for me to imagine that sole purpose wouldn’t be an option, given that he said as much during the campaign. But my sense is the recommendation will not be for sole purpose.”

The former Trump aide also said “the real question” is whether Biden decides to override the recommendations. “This is where POTUS is a wild card,” the person speculated.

But leading arms control advocates don’t sound hopeful that Biden will get the full menu to choose from. “We want to make sure that the president is presented with a full range of options even those that particular agencies — NSC, the Pentagon — may not prefer or recommend,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association. “And it would be a disservice to the president’s Nuclear Posture Review if the nuclear weapons blob at the Pentagon were to give him a limited range of options.”

Connor O’Brien contributed to this report.

After a multi-day whipping bonanza, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her leadership team dramatically altered course on Friday to satisfy a handful of recalcitrant moderates who refused to back President Joe Biden’s $1.75 trillion social spending bill.

Instead, Democrats are set to again delay a vote on that party-line measure and turn their sights to just the $550 billion Senate-passed infrastructure bill — bending to the demands of their most vocal centrists in a last-ditch attempt to deliver at least one legislative win for Biden.

Democrats do still plan to advance the broader $1.75 trillion climate and social safety net bill, but it would only be a procedural move — some momentum, but not enough for many progressives. Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) issued a firm statement on Friday afternoon rejecting the move to vote on infrastructure without the broader spending plan.

“If our six colleagues still want to wait” to vote on a party-line social spending bill in order to give time for a budget score, Jayapal said, “we would agree to give them that time — after which point we can vote on both bills together.”

The dizzying maneuver, pushed by senior members of the Congressional Black Caucus, is a huge risk for Democratic leaders that reverses a promise to their left wing to move both of Biden’s priorities in tandem. While that move is certain to cost them at least a handful of liberal votes for the bipartisan infrastructure bill, senior Democrats believe they can make up most of those from the GOP side of the aisle.

“We’re going to move both bills forward because we need both of them,” said Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), chair of the Congressional Black Caucus.

“We’re going to go and vote on the bipartisan infrastructure [bill], and we’re going to vote then” on the rule for debating for the social spending bill, Beatty added. “And then we’re going to continue to work together as an entire caucus.”

Pelosi and her team had hoped to muscle through both the infrastructure bill and the separate, more progressive proposal — delivering Biden a major victory after the party’s bruising Election Day showing earlier this week.

Instead, Democratic leaders had to partially abandon those plans Friday as a group of roughly a half-dozen moderates dug in and refused to relent on their demands for an official report from Congress’ nonpartisan scorekeeper, a process that is expected to take weeks. That prompted Democratic leaders to delay passage of the larger spending package and decide instead to only take up rules for an unspecified future debate on that bill.

As announced by Pelosi in a Friday afternoon letter to her caucus, that approach would clear the infrastructure bill, sending it to Biden’s desk.

Democrats are still in talks about exactly when they would vote on passage of the social spending bill, though it would likely be around Thanksgiving, after they get an official budgetary analysis on potential costs.

The decision to send the House into recess without holding a vote on the massive domestic policy bill for the third time since September is an embarrassment for Democratic leaders, including Biden, who on Friday urged recalcitrant members to vote in favor of his two domestic priorities. Until now, Biden had only broadly encouraged Democrats to support the two bills and had not firmly requested a vote at a specific time — a strategy that caused a host of issues for Democratic leaders in recent weeks.

Democrats entered the Capitol Friday morning prepared for what could have been among the biggest days in Biden’s entire first term. And Pelosi and her leadership team refused to give up easily, holding a procedural vote open on the floor for most of the day as she shuffled centrist holdouts in and out of her office Friday morning.

“The plan is still being worked out,” said House Democratic Caucus Chair Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), leaving a meeting in Pelosi’s office earlier Friday with other top leaders. He said things were “moving in the right direction” but would not disclose whether there were plans to vote.

Later, Pelosi and her lieutenants hauled in senior member of the Congressional Black Caucus, including House Financial Services Chair Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and Education and Labor Chair Bobby Scott (D-Va.) — many of whom are furious at their centrist colleagues’ persistent refusal to vote.

“I think there is a need for more information on the bill, but we think it’s important for us to show our support for what the president is bringing forward,” Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said. “The best way to do it is to support the rule.”The mobilizing of the CBC, one of the most powerful blocs in the Democratic caucus, could be key to unlocking progressive votes for the new strategy, according to senior party members.

Many in the caucus were baffled by the moderates’ resistance to pass the massive social spending bill. They argued it wasn’t the final version anyway, since the Senate was all but sure to make changes.

But for most centrist holdouts, that was exactly the problem: Democrats such as Reps. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.), Jared Golden (D-Maine) and Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.) have been beating the drum for weeks that they won’t vote for any legislation that can’t pass the Senate.

Doing so, they warned, would amount to a politically toxic vote on a sprawling bill packed with new spending and tax changes, only to see it be shredded by Senate centrists or be plucked from the bill by the chamber’s budget rulekeeper.

It’s unclear if a sufficient number of progressives would support putting the infrastructure bill on the House floor without the social spending package still riding alongside it. They have insisted for months that the social spending bill move together with the infrastructure proposal, and opposition from the left helped scuttle previous attempts to move the infrastructure bill forward over the last two months.

When Pastor Michael McBride visited the White House in January 2013 for one of Vice President Joe Biden’s gun violence task force meetings, he said he was one of just two Black people in the room.

McBride, the national director of Faith in Action’s LIVE FREE gun violence prevention campaign, recalls the heavy anguish that day as faith leaders proposed ideas for preventing yet another mass shooting in America after the Sandy Hook massacre left 20 children and six adults dead the month prior. When it was McBride’s turn to have the floor, he spoke about the gun deaths of Black and brown Americans — killings largely ignored in the national conversation about gun violence.

McBride called on Biden to unite the country around the “shared pain of gun violence.” He told the vice president he had the opportunity to create a winning political coalition by addressing gun violence in urban communities across the country.

But Biden’s response was one McBride had heard many times before — one he calls deeply painful.

“While there was a compassionate acknowledgment of the issue, there was not the political will to place this work front and center in the gun violence conversation. And I think that too often … there was always a lot of calculus around, is this politically viable?” McBride said. “And so for someone like myself and so many others who were burying Black children and Black family members regularly, that has never been a good answer.”

The response from Biden that day stands in contrast to how he talks about gun violence now. As president, Biden has promised billions of dollars in funding for community violence intervention, or CVI, programs that have been shown to break cycles of violence by connecting high-risk individuals to wraparound social services. His White House has proposed a multi-pronged response to a recent spike in violent crime in cities across the country.

This summer, the White House announced a 15-jurisdiction CVI collaborative, a group of mayors, law enforcement, CVI experts and philanthropic leaders, who are working over the next 18 months to improve their jurisdictions’ CVI infrastructure and add to the body of evidence supporting these programs.

The Departments of Treasury and Education announced this summer that two buckets of American Rescue Plan funding — $350 billion in flexible state and local funding and $122 billion in school funding — could be used for CVI initiatives. States and localities have committed at least $1 billion of the funding toward CVI so far, according to an estimate from Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. The number continues to grow.

Biden proposed an additional $5 billion in CVI funding this spring in his Build Back Better agenda — an amount of money that was unattainable years ago as activists like McBride failed to secure figures closer to $600 million.

McBride credits it not necessarily with some epiphany Biden has had, but with the grunt work of activists and government officials. In particular, he pointed to the Fund Peace coalition, a group of organizations looking to solve violence, which has worked closely with the White House’s Domestic Policy Council to construct the CVI investment in the president’s social spending plan. The White House has stayed in frequent contact with members of the coalition, McBride said, often holding meetings led by DPC Director Susan Rice, Cedric Richmond, director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, and sometimes even Biden.

But beyond committed personnel, there was a policy concept that McBride and others say could very well change the course of gun violence in a nation plagued by it.

Breaking the cycle of violence

Community violence intervention is about breaking the cycle of violence. The term, now widely used in the gun violence prevention world, was coined by activists on the ground who saw their work as a community-driven effort. The universal term gained popularity in the last few years, with Giffords changing phrases like urban gun violence prevention to community violence intervention in 2019.

These programs provide individuals with trauma-informed care and connect people to social services like counseling, education programs and employment opportunities.

When Erica Ford, the founder of LIFE Camp, Inc., one of the nation’s top community violence intervention programs, talks about the impact she’s seen CVI have in her own community, she tells the story of a current staff member. The young man lost three friends to gun violence in one day. She remembers his pained voice on the other end of the phone line, telling her he wanted to “kill the world.”

Ford and other team members pulled up to his house in their 35-foot recreational vehicle they call the “peace mobile,” and she told him and his mother they wouldn’t leave until he came outside.

“And we didn’t. And we were able to bring him in and begin the process of healing for him, transformation for him, and developing the leadership skills to impact his friends,” said Ford, another member of Biden’s 2013 task force. “So transforming his life was able to save at least 300 lives between the last two years that he’s been part of our organization.”

From Ford’s perspective, the idea of tackling the root causes of gun violence in urban communities wasn’t on Biden’s radar eight years ago. It wasn’t on Washington’s radar.

“Their intentionality wasn’t to address the killings of Black and brown children, because that wasn’t something that could get you votes. That wasn’t something that could get you campaign dollars. That wasn’t something that can electrify your constituents,” said Ford, who has played a major role in the Fund Peace coalition’s push for CVI funding in Biden’s infrastructure package.

After Sandy Hook, the vice president was tapped by President Barack Obama to run point on gun policy overhauls. It was the centerpiece of the administration’s response to the shooting, and it came after Obama had left the issue of gun control nearly untouched from the start of his presidency.

Biden’s gun control task force met 22 times in the early days after Sandy Hook. Most of the meetings were held in the same week, spanning multiple hours, as Biden jotted down ideas in his notebook he would present to Obama in mid-January, according to a 2013 report from The Washington Post. The task force was about bringing together multiple interest groups to build a diverse coalition to lobby Congress, with Biden meeting with faith leaders, gun violence survivors and even the National Rifle Association.

Obama accepted all 19 executive action recommendations from Biden, and four more were added before the president presented them publicly. The executive actions included moves like improving the federal background check system, active shooter training for law enforcement and school officials, asking the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to research causes and prevention of gun violence, and nominating a director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

But the vice president was also criticized for moving too slowly on putting together his legislative proposals. When Congress finally got around to considering bills to expand background checks, ban certain assault rifles and limit the size of magazines, momentum to act had faded. None of the measures cleared the 60 votes needed to beat back a filibuster in the Senate.

‘Sometimes the stars align’

McBride’s pitch for CVI didn’t make the cut in 2013, nor had the work drawn national attention in the years before as activists saw these programs benefit their communities. Even top gun violence prevention groups weren’t yet promoting CVI, McBride said, further fueling the education gap in Washington.

That began to change after the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence’s Robyn Thomas met McBride at a training seminar in 2012.

Coming from two different sides of the fight — Thomas, a policy expert and constitutional lawyer, and McBride, an activist who had seen this work in action — McBride talked about how important it was for these programs to have money behind them, giving people a tangible alternative to picking up a gun.

After meeting with McBride, Thomas spent the next few years creating a team at the law center to learn and write about why CVI works. The group, which later merged with Giffords, used its platform to educate legislators at the local, state and federal level.

“These programs work, they bring the sort of really thoughtful, intentional resources to the right people,” said Thomas, the executive director of Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

This was the kind of educational transformation activists and leaders in Black communities wanted to see in Washington. It just took about eight years for it to happen.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who has made gun control one of his top priorities, has been witness to Biden’s breakthroughs and failures on gun control. He was there when the Senate defeated those post-Sandy Hook legislative efforts. Murphy is there now as Biden’s current gun control priorities drag.

Murphy told POLITICO in June that he doesn’t blame Biden for the gun control stalemate. Though the senator is holding out hope that he can get some Republicans on board with his current push for background check legislation, he knows getting anything done will be a challenge with what he calls the “Byzantine Senate rules” — aka the filibuster.

As Murphy continues his own gun control fight in Congress, he’s been a top supporter of the Biden administration’s focus on CVI. In August, when urging the passage of the Build Back Better budget resolution, Murphy argued the need for more federal dollars to fund community violence intervention programs.

“If you take a look at what drives violence and exposure to violence in this country, the number one correlative factor is income,” he said. “The poorer you are, the more likely you are to be the victim of violence. By investing in communities that have high rates of violence and not coincidentally, high rates of poverty, you are reducing violence in this nation.”

Another advocate, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), has seen CVI at work in his own state. He praised the White House’s “expansion” of its gun control response.

“Gun violence, we need to address it from every angle and keep pushing. We will push on all fronts … but this focus on community-based interventions has to be part of the overall strategy,” Van Hollen told POLITICO.

Even some Republicans in Congress have been open to the idea of CVI, as long as it was kept out of the traditional infrastructure bill and not framed as anti-gun, according to a report from Bloomberg Law.

This transformation is the result of years of advocacy work, but it’s also about who’s at the table, said Anthony Smith, executive director of Cities United, a national network focused on eliminating violence in cities related to African American men and boys. Biden has advisers like Rice and Richmond, two leaders who have been advocates for CVI, in his ear. His Cabinet has former mayors like Marty Walsh and Pete Buttigieg, who have seen CVI at work in their communities.

“They all had to be educated by their community members too and pushed,” Smith said. “And sometimes the stars align.”

This work is a silver lining in the Biden administration’s gun control agenda. But the possibility of turbo-charging it with a $5 billion infusion remains in limbo without a finalized deal on Biden’s social spending framework. The framework released last week mentions an investment in community violence interventions, and House Democrats released new text Tuesday for the Build Back Better bill, which included the full $5 billion in CVI funding. Even if the House votes on the bill this week, the text will once again be up for negotiation in the Senate, potentially facing more changes and cuts.

A White House official told POLITICO last week that the president is committed to supporting this work, though the official wouldn’t say whether the $5 billion will be cut down or nixed all together, with negotiations still in flux. The official emphasized that the administration has funded CVI through other means like the American Rescue Plan.

The official added that while CVI is key to the White House’s approach, the administration has addressed community violence in other ways, like when the Justice Department announced its zero-tolerance policy to revoke federal licenses from firearms dealers who willfully violate gun laws.

Still, activists see this CVI-specific pot of money as a big deal in advancing their mission. And it appears the White House does as well.

Cities and states haven’t always been successful in distributing funds from the American Rescue Plan for other domestic programs. POLITICO reported on Thursday that Richmond spent part of his day promoting the $5 billion, and he pointed out a key difference in the Build Back Better framework.

“With the ARP money, mayors will oversee those programs and they’ll choose the investment. But this is important to us so we’re going to run it out of our shop in terms of the federal government making sure that people get access to the funding,” Richmond, who seemed assured CVI would be funded in the social spending legislation, said on a call Thursday.

Ford is holding on to hope that Democrats will make the $5 billion a priority when it comes to pushing a deal across the finish line. If it doesn’t happen now while the party has control of both chambers and the White House, she said, there may not be another chance any time soon.

“Those who know what this means to so many people, they have to win,” Ford said. “Because I don’t know when this could happen again. Then what happens to a whole generation of people?”