Tag: Adviser

Susan Rice to step down as domestic policy adviser

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Rice’s departure leaves a major hole within the top ranks of the White House right as it gears up for a likely re-election campaign and as it faces a stare down with congressional Republicans over raising the debt limit. Among those being eyed as a replacement for her include Neera Tanden, Biden’s staff secretary and a senior adviser, four people with knowledge of the deliberations told POLITICO. Separately, a top White House official said no replacement had been identified yet.
One former administration official said White House aides were talking openly about Tanden’s consideration for Rice’s job over the weekend, calling her potential appointment “pretty damn firm.”
Rice served as U.N. ambassador at the beginning of the Obama administration and later became President Barack Obama’s national security adviser during Obama’s second term. Rice has led the White House Domestic Policy Council since the start of the Biden administration.
“I surprised a lot of people when I named Ambassador Susan Rice as my Domestic Policy Advisor,” Biden said. “Susan was synonymous with foreign policy, having previously served as National Security Advisor and UN Ambassador. But what I knew then and what we all know now — after more than two years of her steady leadership of the Domestic Policy Council — it’s clear: there is no one more capable, and more determined to get important things done for the American people than Susan Rice.”
Rice, whose background had been almost entirely in foreign policy, oversaw a historic two-year period of legislative activity with the passage of a major Covid-19 relief bill, a bipartisan infrastructure overhaul and last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, which included $369 billion to combat climate change and lowered the cost of prescription drugs for seniors.
Her tenure also saw Biden sign numerous executive orders related to climate change, health care, gun safety and student loans. But the administration’s approach to the U.S.-Mexico border and its inability to stem a surge of migrants seeking asylum who have overwhelmed border agents has left the president vulnerable to continued Republican attacks on the issue.
The White House next month is poised to end Title 42, lifting a strict Trump-era border policy decried by many Democrats — but that, officials including Rice argued, at times, was necessary to prevent another influx of migrants at the southern border.
Rice has been central to crafting a strategy for replacing Title 42, which the administration plans to unveil later this week.

She also faced heat in recent days over a New York Times report that painted her and other senior officials as dismissive of concerns that child migrants were being exploited amid the administration’s rush to process record numbers of unaccompanied children at the southern border in early 2021. The White House has disputed that portrayal.
Rice’s departure represents the latest high-level shuffle within the White House’s policy apparatus, following the exits of National Economic Council Director Brian Deese and Council of Economic Advisers chief Cecilia Rouse earlier this year.
Chief of staff Jeff Zients is also early into his tenure, after taking over for Ron Klain in early February.
The White House moved quickly to replace all three, and the people with knowledge of the deliberations said that elevating Tanden would similarly allow them to quickly plug the vacancy atop the Domestic Policy Council.
Tanden also has experience running a large policy operation, having previously led the influential progressive think tank Center for American Progress, and worked extensively on health care and other domestic priorities both at CAP and as a senior health official in the Obama administration.
Biden initially picked Tanden to run his Office of Management and Budget in late 2020. But her nomination stalled in the face of opposition from Republicans and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) over her history of combative tweets aimed at GOP politicians and policies.
But Tanden has kept a lower public profile since then, and the top domestic policy job would not require Senate confirmation.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

April 24, 2023
Former legal adviser to Michael Cohen tries to discredit him in grand jury testimony

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“Today, after giving all those materials to the Manhattan district attorney’s office, out of 321 e-mails they cherry-picked six e-mails to ask me about,” Costello said in a news conference following his testimony on Monday afternoon. “And of course they took them out of context. When they took them out of context, I told the grand jurors — I don’t know whether this will ultimately come to fruition or not — I told them to ask for the entire packet.”
Cohen rebutted most of Costello’s claims during an interview on MSNBC on Monday evening, denying that Costello had ever been his lawyer, that he had ever waived attorney-client privilege and that he was scheduled to appear again before the grand jury Wednesday.
“It’s a typical Donald J. Trump play out of the playbook,” Cohen said of Costello’s comments. “Figure out how you’re going to muddy the water as best as you possibly can, denigrate the person, disparage them.”
Costello also asserted that Cohen appeared distraught during a meeting they had, and was willing to do “whatever it takes” to avoid jail time.
“Well, he went to jail,” Costello said. “And now he’s on the revenge tour.”
On Monday, Costello said Cohen previously said he had not used Trump’s money to make the payment.
“The heart of it is that Michael Cohen told us that he was approached by Stormy Daniels’ lawyer and Stormy Daniels had negative information that she wanted to put in a lawsuit against Trump,” Costello said. “So Michael Cohen decided on his own — that’s what he told us, on his own — to see if he could take care of this.”
Cohen then took out a home equity loan for $130,000 to make the payment to Daniels, Costello said. But Cohen denied that contention.

“It’s absolutely not true. I don’t know what conversations he’s referring to,” Cohen said, when asked whether he had taken out a loan to make the payment. Cohen also said that Daniels intended not to sue, but to go public with the details of the alleged affair.
The expectation was that an indictment against the former president could drop as early as Monday evening. But Costello’s testimony could throw a wrench in that timeline.
“If they want to go after Donald Trump and they have solid evidence, so be it,” Costello said. “But Michael Cohen is far from solid evidence.”
Trump’s legal woes extend beyond Manhattan, however. The former president and 2024 presidential candidate is also facing criminal probes in Atlanta and Washington.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article misstated the source of the payment to Daniels.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 21, 2023
Judge: Trump trade adviser Navarro must surrender White House-related emails

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“Dr. Navarro contends that he has no statutory duties under the PRA. … This position would defeat the entire purpose of the statute, i.e., to ensure that Presidential records, as defined, are collected, maintained and made available to the public,” wrote Kollar-Kotelly, an appointee of President Bill Clinton. “The PRA makes plain that Presidential advisors such as Dr. Navarro are part and parcel of the statutory scheme in that they are required to preserve Presidential records during their tenure so that they can be transferred to [the National Archives and Records Administration] at the end of an administration.”
Navarro argued that the personal-account provision didn’t apply to messages he received, only to those he sent, but the judge dismissed that contention.
“All the emails in Dr. Navarro’s personal email account, whether created or received, are therefore subject to being assessed as potential Presidential records if they arose out of his employment in the administration,” she wrote.
An attorney for Navarro did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The tone of Kollar-Kotelly’s 22-page opinion was brutal, but the lawsuit is far from Navarro’s biggest legal worry. He is facing a trial in the coming months on two criminal, misdemeanor charges of contempt of Congress for defying subpoenas from the special House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and Trump’s role in fomenting doubt about the 2020 presidential election results.
Despite his role as a trade adviser, Navarro drew the attention of congressional investigators because in his final weeks in the White House, he shifted his focus toward efforts to help Trump overturn the 2020 election results. He prepared a report based on discredited claims of fraud and worked with longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon and GOP lawmakers to strategize ways to object to the results on Jan. 6, 2021.
Navarro argued in the lawsuit that he should not have to turn over the disputed emails because the government might seek to use them against him in the criminal case, but the judge also saw no merit in that position.
“Producing these pre-existing records in no way implicates a compelled testimonial communication that is incriminating,” Kollar-Kotelly wrote. She ordered Navarro to turn over “forthwith” about 200 to 250 messages his lawyers have already deemed likely presidential records. She gave the two sides 30 days to sort out a protocol to find other official records in Navarro’s personal account.

The Justice Department is set to make a key filing in Navarro’s criminal case next week, explaining why the department concluded that Navarro is not immune from a congressional subpoena even though he was serving as a top adviser to Trump in the White House in the weeks before and after Jan. 6, 2021.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 10, 2023
Sending F-16s ‘a question for a later time,’ national security adviser says

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Sullivan elaborated on the president’s comments Sunday, saying the United States is “taking a very hard look at what it is that Ukraine needs for the immediate phase of the war that we’re in.” Right now, those needs include “tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, armored personnel carriers, artillery, tactical air defense systems” Sullivan said — but not the advanced warplanes Ukraine has requested.
“F-16s are a question for a later time,” Sullivan said during an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “And that’s why President Biden said that, for now, he’s not moving forward with those.”
When pressed by CNN’s Dana Bash about whether that means the U.S. ruling out sending F-16s later on, Sullivan reiterated Biden’s Friday comments.
“What President Biden said is what goes across the administration. And he was very clear. He said: ‘I’m ruling them out for now.’”
Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) argued Sunday that the Biden administration shouldn’t wait, since Ukraine has “a window of time” to launch a successful counteroffensive that could soon close.
“When we slow-walk and slow-pace this thing, it drags it out,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.”
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#Sending #F16s #question #time #national #security #adviser
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 26, 2023
Biden taps Fed’s Brainard as top economic adviser

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She will be leaving the Fed at a crucial juncture when it’s deciding how long to keep interest rates at punishingly high levels to kill inflation. If central bank officials press too hard, they could trigger a recession that pushes millions of people out of work.
Still, the job market has remained resilient even as price spikes have cooled, raising the prospect that the Fed — and Biden — might be able to avoid widespread economic pain.
POLITICO previously reported that Brainard and Bernstein were both poised to take these positions. Bloomberg earlier reported Biden’s decision.
At the White House, Brainard will face lingering skepticism from the left over her time working as an adviser in Bill Clinton’s administration, where she was involved in implementing the North American Free Trade Agreement and negotiating China’s entry to the World Trade Organization. Many progressives viewed both moves as detrimental to the interests of American workers.
Brainard, a Ph.D. economist, also served at Treasury under President Barack Obama, where she was the department’s top diplomat from 2010 to 2013, dealing with the euro crisis and working to pressure China to allow the value of its currency to be more influenced by market forces.
She arose as a top contender for Treasury secretary when Hillary Clinton was running for president in 2016 — and faced criticism for donating to Clinton’s campaign. That was an unusual move for an official at the Fed, which is given extensive policy freedom in part because it’s expected to stay above the political fray.
But she then built credibility with progressive Democrats by dissenting more than 20 times on moves by President Donald Trump’s appointees at the central bank. These included proposed rollbacks of regulations placed on big banks after the 2008 financial crisis.
She also earned support from Fed Chair Jerome Powell for her resistance to efforts by another bank regulator to ease rules designed to combat discrimination against poor and minority borrowers, a historic practice known as redlining.

Brainard has charted her own vision for reform of that law, the Community Reinvestment Act, that fellow Democrats are hopeful will be more responsive to the needs of lower-income communities. That regulation has not yet been finalized and is now facing legal threats from banks.
She chairs four of the Fed’s internal committees, leading policy in key areas like whether the Fed should issue a central bank digital currency. It’s unclear who will take up those portfolios after she departs.
She is married to Kurt Campbell, who served in the State Department under Obama and now is a top adviser to Biden on Asia.
Bernstein, currently a member of the Council of Economic Advisers, will likely be nominated as its head, a Senate-confirmed position, unlike NEC director. He would replace Cecilia Rouse at the helm of the White House’s in-house economic research office. Rouse is returning to Princeton.
Deese, 45, is leaving the NEC — which is housed inside the West Wing and is the more powerful of the two offices — to be closer to his family.
He joined the White House from Wall Street investment giant BlackRock, which created some blowback from progressives wary of anyone with a history in the banking industry.
Deese joined BlackRock as Global Head of Sustainable Investing after serving in senior roles in the Obama White House. During his time in the Biden administration, he played major roles in the president’s economic plans including the CHIPS Act and the Inflation Reduction Act.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 14, 2023
Biden’s Top Covid Adviser Wishes He Had Tangled With Tucker Carlson

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Kessler: A lot of things contributed to people’s feelings about the virus and the vaccines. I don’t think we should underestimate the effect that the last several years has had on all of us. It was a major upheaval for society and there’s not a family that’s not been affected. Anything that is that traumatic, it’s going to produce very strong feelings.
The fact is that 226 million people received their primary series, and 94 percent of people over 65 got vaccinated. When’s the last time 226 million people agreed on anything, did anything?
We have to be realistic on what people are going to do. There are a lot of things in public health we wish people would do that they don’t. Taken as a piece, we did pretty well, considering the extent of the upheaval caused by this pandemic.
Cancryn: What about these politicians, lawmakers and pundits who have made it their brand to question that progress, to question the vaccines and the need for there to be a continued response?
Kessler: Here’s the hard part. Questioning is an inherent part of science. Questioning is always important to learn and improve what we do.
But there’s a difference between questioning and undermining the basic facts. Creating enough doubt so people go, well, maybe I don’t need to do this.
I’ve lived this before. In 1952, with the first data that smoking caused cancer. The mantra of the industry was, “not proven, not proven, not proven.” It created enough doubt that it gave people a crutch who didn’t want to quit. It gave them a reason to continue to smoke.
These vaccines are not perfect. But certainly, if you’re over 50, if you have any risk factors, the benefit/risk [ratio] is just overwhelming. So yes, ask questions. But please make sure that people who need this, whose lives are really at risk, take advantage of a very important potentially lifesaving tool.

Cancryn: That’s interesting that you’re seeing parallels to the playbook from tobacco.
Kessler: I don’t think that’s intentional. I just think that one has to be careful when one injects doubt in people’s minds. If you inject that doubt, it just makes the job that much harder to get people to do stuff when it’s already hard to get people to do things that are in their health interest.
Cancryn: The difference this time around is that a lot of those injecting that doubt are now the leaders of one of the two main political parties.
Kessler: There are certainly those who are using it for whatever rhetoric, but I think a majority of the country will push that aside. The fact is, 226 million people got the primary series. Push comes to shove, many of those who are being critical of vaccines, I think quietly they’ve gotten the vaccine.
Cancryn: So you feel some level of optimism that when it comes to public health and science, most of us are still operating with the same set of shared facts.
Kessler: The last three years have been so intense, the stakes have been so high, we’ve learned so much. We made mistakes. I just think, give it time. But no doubt we have to do a better job on disinformation, because this virus is not done with us yet.
Cancryn: Do you feel like there’s an identifiable solution to that disinformation? Take Tucker Carlson, for example, who has a big audience and has proven willing to question and inject doubt into just about anything. It doesn’t worry you that he has a platform to take things that should be scientifically settled, bring them up and question them again?
Kessler: I saw my job as making sure if you wanted a vaccine, if you wanted an antiviral, it was there, it worked, you didn’t have to live in fear that you were going to die from this disease. I did very few public appearances; others did that.
But very early on I said to someone I’m close with that I really wished I could go on Tucker Carlson and have that conversation.
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#Bidens #Top #Covid #Adviser #Wishes #Tangled #Tucker #Carlson
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 6, 2023