For Biden, part of the issue is the president’s age and acuity. Twenty-six percent said Biden, who is 80, is too old for another term, and an additional 43 percent said both Biden and Trump, who is 76, are too old. Only 28 percent said that neither is too old for another four years in the White House.
When asked if Biden “has the mental sharpness it takes to serve effectively as president,” only 32 percent said they believe he does, while 63 percent said they do not. Of those who said he does not, 94 percent were Republicans, 69 percent were independents and 21 percent were Democrats.
Biden has repeatedly pushed back against criticism of his age. “I feel good,” he said at a Rose Garden press conference late last month. “And I feel excited about the prospects, and I think we’re on the verge of really turning the corner in a way we haven’t in a long time.”
The poll also showed Biden lagging behind Trump, the current front-runner to be the GOP nominee, in a head-to-head match-up. If Biden and Trump were the candidates, 38 percent said they would definitely or probably vote for the president, compared to 44 percent who would definitely or probably back Trump.
And Biden fell behind Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in a head-to-head matchup, nabbing 37 percent to DeSantis’ 42 percent. DeSantis has not yet entered the presidential race, though he is widely expected to.
One specific issue where voters prefer Trump to Biden: the economy. When pitted against his 2020 presidential rival on handling the economy, Trump boasted higher approval than Biden, with 54 percent saying they viewed his handling of the economy more favorably, and just 36 percent saying Biden has done the better job.
Trump came out on top when pitted against other Republican presidential hopefuls. But the poll also heralded some bad news for the former president, who is currently facing down felony charges and multiple on-going investigations.
Fifty-six percent said Trump should face criminal charges related to investigations into whether he tried to illegally overturn the results of the 2020 election, including 90 percent of Democrats, 59 percent of independents and 16 percent of Republicans.
Fifty-four percent said he should face charges over his handling of classified documents, including 86 percent of Democrats, 58 percent of independents and 17 percent of Republicans; and 54 percent said he should be charged for his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection, including 91 percent of Democrats, 55 percent of independents and 16 percent of Republicans.
The poll, which was conducted by phone from April 28 to May 3, included responses from 1,006 adults across the country, and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. Of those adults, 900 were registered voters, 396 said they leaned Democratic and 438 said they leaned Republican.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Brown, who POLITICO first reported is Biden’s choice to succeed Milley, is likely to survive his confirmation battle in the Democratic-led Senate.
But the process probably won’t go as smoothly as it did three years ago, with the four-star general potentially facing tough questions about China’s possible invasion of Taiwan, the future of Ukraine’s fight to repel Russia and diversity policies conservatives have derided as distracting the military from its main missions.
Previous hearing room exchanges offer clues about how Brown will perform at his confirmation. By all accounts, he’s a cool customer: even-tempered, serious, succinct and direct. But the questions he faced were about the Air Force, well within his comfort zone.
Here’s a breakdown of some of the issues you can expect senators to focus on, and how Brown might answer:
Diversity and other Biden policies
Brown could see harsh questions by conservative senators on a variety of Pentagon policies they regard as a distraction from the military’s mission of fighting the nation’s wars.
Republicans have largely opposed efforts by the Biden administration to promote diversity and root out extremism in the ranks as well as combat the effects of climate change. Milley and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin are routinely pressed on those and other personnel issues in their appearances on Capitol Hill. Milley made waves in the House for his defense against criticism that the military is distracted by those programs.
Brown, who is the highest-ranking Black military leader since Colin Powell chaired the Joint Chiefs in the early 1990s, spoke out about his own experience as one of the few Black pilots following the murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020. In an emotional video, Brown reflected on “my own experiences that didn’t always sing of liberty and equality.”
Brown could also face pressure from Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) or others over policies implemented by Austin to shore up troops’ access to abortion following the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade. Democrats have praised the move, but Republicans want it reversed, arguing it politicizes the military and undercuts laws that bar taxpayer funding for abortions.
After the ruling in 2022, Brown was asked in an interview at the Aspen Security Forum how it would affect the Air Force.
“We have a responsibility to comply with the law. But we also have an obligation to take care of our airmen and their families,” Brown said.
Russia and Ukraine
While Milley has weighed in extensively on the Ukraine war, Brown’s views have been aired far less frequently — and when they have, they’ve made headlines.
Brown has Europe experience: Just before Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, he was headquartered in Germany as the lead for strategic deterrence and nuclear integration at U.S. Air Forces in Europe.
At the Aspen Security Forum last summer, Milley said no decisions had been made to offer Ukraine Western fighter jets and pilot training, a hot-button issue rippling through Washington and the NATO alliance.
But Brown — who has a history in the cockpits of the F-16, B-1 and B-52 — offered some much-discussed speculation that such training was a possibility, and he riffed on what types of aircraft Ukraine might eventually receive.
“I can’t speculate what aircraft they may go to,” Brown said, but the U.S. has a “responsibility” to train its allies and, when it comes to Ukraine’s needs, “meet them where they are.”
“There’s U.S. [aircraft], there’s Gripen out of Sweden, there’s the Eurofighter, there’s [the French] Rafale. So there’s a number of different platforms that could go to Ukraine,” Brown said, adding with a smile: “Maybe not MiGs. It’ll be a lot tougher to get parts from the Russians in the future.”
Two Ukrainian pilots came to the U.S. in March for a fighter skills assessment at Tucson’s Morris Air National Guard Base.
Senate Armed Services members Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Tuberville, may push Brown for his views about sending F-16 jets to Ukraine, after they queried the Pentagon on the topic. And what about an Air Force plan to send uncrewed aircraft?
Top civilians have said fighters would take too long to deliver and that the emphasis should be on ground-based air defenses such as Ukraine’s S-300s, German IRIS-Ts or newly arrived Patriots.
Months earlier, Brown credited Russia’s lack of dominance over Ukraine’s skies to Kyiv’s use of those defenses, both donated and indigenous.
“Air superiority cannot be assumed, and one of the things that the Ukrainians have been able to do based on their air defense capability is actually threaten Russian air power,” he told Senate Armed Services member Joe Manchin at a hearing last year.
China and Taiwan
Brown will meet a Senate that’s grown more hawkish on China and he’ll face questions about what more the U.S. must do to deter Beijing from launching an invasion of Taiwan in the coming years.
Democrats and Republicans have pushed for more funding to better position the military in the Indo-Pacific region as well as to pump up arms sales to Taiwan. But lawmakers are also concerned the Pentagon isn’t moving fast enough to arm the self-governing island. Top Senate Armed Services Republican Roger Wicker of Mississippi has argued the window is closing for the U.S. to buy the weapons and equipment that might be needed if a conflict breaks out before the end of the decade.
Brown’s main competition for the top job, Marine Commandant Gen. David Berger, is hailed for retooling the Corps to focus on a Pacific fight. Brown, meanwhile, commanded Pacific Air Forces before taking over as the service’s top officer. He’ll likely draw on that experience in his pitch to senators.
“He is literally on the front lines in implementing the National Defense Strategy, which has a focus on great power competition, particularly China as the pacing threat to our nation for the next 50 to 100 years,” Sen. Dan Sullivan, (R-Alaska) who previously delayed a vote on Brown over a decision on basing aerial tankers, said before his confirmation as Air Force chief of staff in June 2020. “Gen. Brown is in that battle right now, front-lines every day.”
Arnold Punaro, a former staff director for the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Brown’s experience will give him “credibility” to spur the military to adapt to the Pacific.
“We have not yet made the needed adjustments to deal with the threat posed by China,” he said. “As chairman, General Brown will be in a position to drive the joint force and joint operations to deal with the threats posed not only by China, but also Russia, Iran, and North Korea.”
But will China invade?
Top leaders testifying before Congress have given a broad range of answers when asked if, and when, China might invade Taiwan.
But Brown’s response to one particularly fiery prediction offers clues as to how soon he thinks the threat may actually come.
Gen. Mike Minihan, Air Mobility Command head, made waves in January following news reports of a memo showing he predicted war with China in two years.
In the memo, he told the officers in his command that “I hope I am wrong. My gut tells me we will fight in 2025.” He added that his leaders should “aim for the head.”
Brown, when asked about the memo, told reporters there were “aspects” of the missive that disappointed him. “It detracted from the key message of the sense of urgency that is required,” he said.
Caught in a promotions logjam?
Regardless of how he does before the committee, Brown’s nomination will land in a Senate that’s mired in a partisan deadlock over confirming military promotions, which have typically been approved with little opposition.
Tuberville has blocked the speedy confirmation of all senior military officer picks over policies implemented by the Pentagon in February that allow troops to be reimbursed for travel expenses and take leave to obtain abortions or other reproductive care.
The resulting standoff has meant that no nominees for general or admiral ranks have been confirmed in months. It’s a stalemate that Pentagon leaders say will hurt military readiness as commanders leave their posts or retire and aren’t replaced by permanent leaders — even uniting nearly all living U.S. defense secretaries this week in opposition to the blockade.
The backlog is building and could ensnare Biden’s picks for the Joint Chiefs if it drags on.
There are ways to slip through the blockade and ensure there are no vacancies at the most senior military posts. Once Brown clears the Armed Services Committee, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer could hold a cloture vote on Brown’s nomination, a procedural tactic to escape holds in the Senate.
It’s a road Democrats may not want to wait to take until it’s absolutely necessary. Tuberville has argued that he isn’t preventing anyone’s confirmation, only forcing the Senate to take time to vote on nominees.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
But Cohen said Wednesday that there was no threat because Canada’s electric vehicle industry was just coming into existence.
The ambassador said his response to Canadians went something like this: “I’m struggling to understand how the inapplicability of a tax credit to a segment of your industry that currently produces no vehicles that are eligible to it is an existential threat to the entire Canadian economy.”
Freeland’s office responded to Cohen’s comment Wednesday night by pointing POLITICO to a quote from a speech she delivered in Washington last month. “You need us as much as we need you,” she said at the time of the EV dispute.
The ambassador’s comments come a day after Freeland traveled to Washington for the inaugural meeting of the Canada-U.S. Energy Transformation Task Force.
Cohen used his time on the Wilson Center stage to obliterate “some noise in Canada about alleged protectionist policies.”
Cohen said the real competition is against China and Russia and authoritarian regimes. The U.S. is also competing against Europe “to some extent,” he said. “I will argue any day of the week that that requires a close, collaborative relationship with Canada as a like-minded country.”
An international race to secure major clean energy investments has forced Washington and Ottawa to work closely to decarbonize and protect each country’s economies.
Tranches of U.S. government funding have been opened up to Canadian firms in order to get projects built. Under the Defense Protection Act, $250 million was made available by the Biden administration for American and Canadian companies that mine and process critical minerals. Awards will be announced “this spring or summer,” Cohen said.
International Trade Minister Mary Ng met with U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai on Tuesday in Washington and “expanded Buy America provisions” came up, according to a Canadian readout.
Cohen defended the Biden administration’s trade agenda, saying “any intonation that these programs and legislation are protectionist could not be further from the truth.”
Canadian concerns about protectionism are a common refrain, Cohen said. He referenced trade data, pointing out that of Canada’s top 25 exports to the U.S., only two — lumber and aluminum — are covered by Buy American federal procurement provisions.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
The resolution would use the Congressional Review Act to rescind Biden’s moratorium on new tariffs for solar cells and modules from Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. The rule was issued as the Commerce Department investigates whether companies are circumventing existing U.S. tariffs on China by funneling products through those four countries.
Commerce issued preliminary findings in December that said Chinese companies were indeed circumventing the tariffs, and its final determination is due later this year. But given the two-year pause, no new tariffs resulting from the probe can be levied until mid-2024.
The resolution resurfaced long-running tensions on the Commerce probe. Solar industry officials who oppose the resolution warn it carries a threat of retroactive duties that will cost jobs, shut down planned solar projects and undercut the Biden administration’s climate goals.
“It’s going to send a devastating message to the solar industry and particularly to our independent, small businesses,” Nevada Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen said in an interview.
Rosen led an open letter Wednesday with eight Democratic senators that argued Biden’s two-year pause on additional tariffs is necessary as the United States works to bolster its domestic manufacturing capabilities.
But supporters of the resolution — including several Senate Democrats — argue it’s necessary to enforce U.S. trade law and support domestic industry, while ensuring the U.S. clean energy transition is not built using Chinese products.
“If you vote no, that means you support slave labor,” said Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who sponsored the Senate resolution. “You don’t want more American jobs and you don’t believe our trade policies mean anything.”
The comment is a reference to the use of forced labor within China’s Xinjiang region — an area of bipartisan concern. The solar industry has vocally opposed the use of forced labor in its supply chain, and the resolution approved Wednesday does not directly mention the topic.
Rosen rejected Scott’s contention on Wednesday.
“We’re always going to be against forced labor. We’re always going to be for holding the Chinese Communist Party’s feet to the fire in everything we do,” she said.
The measure gathered support from nine Senate Democrats on Wednesday: Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Ron Wyden of Oregon, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Gary Peters and Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, Bob Casey and John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Jon Tester of Montana and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin.
Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky was the lone GOP senator to vote against the measure.
Sen. Brown, whose state is home to one of the largest U.S. solar manufacturing companies, said in a floor speech Tuesday he was defending U.S. manufacturing.
“You can’t say you want American manufacturing to lead the world and then allow Chinese companies, subsidized always by their government, to skirt the rules and dump solar panels into the U.S.,” he said.
Manchin, the chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, was the only Democrat to attach his name as a co-sponsor of the joint resolution of disapproval. He argued the U.S. cannot continue to let China “get away” with laundering solar energy components through other nations with “absolutely no consequences.”
“Let me be clear: America will never be energy secure or independent if we can’t provide the resources we need, and it would be foolish of us in Congress to allow these waivers to continue any longer,” Manchin said in a statement.
On the other hand, eight House Republicans voted against the resolution last week, with some arguing it would cost solar jobs in their districts.
George Hershman, CEO of utility solar company SOLV Energy, recently called Republican support for the resolution “disappointing,” given how many solar projects are cropping up in red congressional districts.
“The largest solar districts in the country are Republican. That’s where the job impacts are going to be,” he told POLITICO last month. “I mean, I’m as disappointed with Democrats that might sign on to [the resolution] as House Republicans that understand the job creation of solar in their districts.”
Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association, called on Biden to “quickly and decisively” veto the resolution.
“Energy workers across the country are looking to President Biden to protect their livelihoods,” she said in a statement.
The vote Wednesday is part of a wider trend of resolutions brought under the Congressional Review Act, which requires only a simple majority to pass the Senate, to undo parts of the Biden administration’s regulatory agenda.
The Senate also voted 50-48 on Wednesday to pass a resolution that would overturn the Biden administration’s protections under the Endangered Species Act for the lesser prairie-chicken, a wild bird found in five states. The White House said Wednesday that Biden will veto that resolution, as well.
Alex Guillén contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
The two surveys underscored an inside-the-crosstabs phenomenon that’s appeared in many — though not all — recent public surveys: Voters in older age groups approve of Biden’s job performance in greater numbers than those in younger clusters.
Over the past few decades, that’s been unusual for presidents from Biden’s party. The splits look more like polling from Biden’s predecessor, former President Donald Trump, who retained stronger numbers with seniors and voters just shy of retirement age than among the younger half of the electorate.
Enduring popularity with older voters could be a major asset for Biden in his just-announced reelection campaign. Though no Democratic presidential candidate has carried seniors — those 65 and older — since Al Gore in 2000, Biden limited his losses among that cohort, losing them by a mid-single-digit margin in 2020, according to exit polls. (By contrast, Republicans carried the senior vote by roughly twice that margin — 10 or 12 points, depending on the voter survey, in the 2022 midterm elections.)
Biden, 80, is the oldest person to serve as president. And there’s debate about whether attacks on him from some Republicans — recall Trump’s “Sleepy Joe” nickname during the last campaign — backfire among voters at or fast approaching the same age.
Seniors have become the most reliable voters in every presidential election since 1996, according to data from the Census Bureau. Seventy-two percent of voters 65 and older turned out in the 2020 presidential election, a higher rate than voters aged 45 to 64 (66 percent), 25 to 44 (55 percent) and those under 25 (48 percent).
Most public surveys show older voters are more likely to approve of Biden’s job performance than younger voters. In the Fox News poll, Biden’s approval rating was right-side-up with seniors, 49 percent approve versus 47 percent disapprove — but 8 points underwater among voters under 45.
An NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist College poll released Tuesday similarly showed Biden’s approval lowest among Americans aged 18 to 29 (27 percent) and highest among those 60 and older (49 percent). And though a large-sample Pew Research Center poll from late March and early April showed a smaller disparity across ages, the trend was the same: Biden’s net-approval rating was lowest among Americans aged 18 to 29 (-32) and highest among seniors 65 and older (-20).
Not all polls show the same pattern. An Economist/YouGov poll this week showed Biden with a much higher approval rating among Americans aged 18 to 29: 61 percent. Biden’s approval rating with seniors was only 38 percent.
That’s much closer to what one would expect for a Democratic president, but it also represents an uptick in approval among young voters in their polling, as The Economist’s G. Elliott Morris wrote on Twitter this week.
Whether that’s an outlier, a more accurate reflection of public opinion or the start of a new trend could have significant implications for the next election. Whether the 80-year-old Biden is mostly unpopular among young voters, or equaling his best-ever approval rating with them could reshape his 2024 coalition.
Democratic presidential candidates have carried the under-30 vote in each of the past eight presidential elections. But dating back to 1976, only three Democratic presidential candidates have carried the senior vote, according to exit polls: Bill Clinton in his decisive victories in 1992 and 1996, and Gore in 2000.
In 2020, Trump edged Biden among older voters by a narrow margin: The traditional network exit poll gave the then-president a 7-point edge among voters 65 and older, while AP VoteCast, another survey of actual voters, had Trump only ahead by 3 points. Biden, meanwhile, won voters under 30 by a more-than-20-point margin.
As Americans live longer, seniors are also growing as a share of the electorate. Americans 65 and older made up 17 percent of all U.S. residents in the 2020 census — up from 13 percent only 10 years prior. And those numbers understate their share of the electorate, given that older Americans are more likely to be citizens, more likely to be registered to vote and more likely to turn out than younger ones.
Older voters outpunch their weight even more in Republican primaries — which might be why both Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis are sparring over the future of Medicare and Social Security in recent weeks.
Biden is also highlighting the issue. About 35 seconds into the announcement video his campaign produced to announce he’s running for a second term, Biden begins decrying “MAGA extremists” who are “lining up to take away” Americans’ “bedrock freedoms.”
His first example? “Cutting Social Security you’ve paid for your entire life.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
The early focus on book banning is part of the campaign’s attempt to reinforce a broader message, said one Democratic adviser involved in the effort: Biden is the only one standing between the American people and a Republican Party determined to roll back rights and limit freedoms.
“People just don’t understand why we should ban books from libraries,” said the adviser, who spoke with candor about the campaign’s strategy on the condition of anonymity. “So it’s a measure of extremism and another thing [Republicans] are trying to take away.”
Biden’s message is based on mounds of research by Democratic pollsters over the last several months, as the president’s advisers and the Democratic National Committee have expanded the constellation of pollsters and data analysts tracking voter attitudes and the effectiveness of certain messages.
The potency of book bans, along with issues like abortion and gun safety, is quite clear, according to multiple people familiar with the campaign’s data.
“Book banning tests off the charts,” said Celinda Lake, one of the Democratic pollsters who tested the issue for Democrats. “People are adamantly opposed to it and, unlike some other issues that are newer, voters already have an adopted schema around book banning. They associate it with really authoritarian regimes, Nazi Germany.”
The campaign’s private research aligns with public polling on the issue. A CBS News/YouGov poll in February found that more than 8 in 10 Americans opposed GOP efforts to ban books that focus on slavery, the civil rights movement and an unsanitized version of American history. And a Fox News survey this week found that 60 percent of Americans — including 48 percent of Republicans — find book bans problematic.
Republicans led by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who appears likely to run for president, have leaned into the culture wars by leading efforts to bar those books, and others about LGBTQ topics. They’ve framed the push as an effort to protect social indoctrination via school curriculum. Lake sees it as a political gift to Biden.
“You’ll see Democrats up and down the ticket running on this,” she said.
But book bans don’t just rankle parents of children under 18, who account for just less than 30 percent of the electorate. Some of the strongest responses in focus groups to GOP book bans came from Baby Boomers.
The Biden campaign has leaned hard into the contrast of “more freedom or less freedom,” as the president put it in his announcement video, co-opting a quintessentially American idea and a political theme more traditionally emphasized by Republicans.
In the TV spot pushed out Wednesday, Biden pointed to GOP restrictions in many areas — abortion rights, voting rights — election denialism and the party’s inaction on gun safety all under the umbrella of freedom. But polling and focus group research found that the messaging around book bans appealed in particular to moderates and swing voters who may have nuanced views on gender and identity but are far more clear-eyed about being told what books they can or can’t read.
Those voters — which include moderate Republicans, suburban voters and college-educated white people — are among the demographics that Biden’s team believes will be critical to win. They are also more likely to live in areas where conservatives have sought to impose restrictions on libraries and school boards.
“Americans have a libertarian streak about them, and this is an absolute affront to that tendency,” the adviser said. “This is much more about reassembling the coalition from 2020.”
Sarah Longwell, a Republican strategist prominent within her party’s more outspoken cadre of Never Trump activists, said that book bans have occasionally come up in her focus groups with voters.
“When we talk about them, usually in the context of DeSantis, these are the things that play very poorly with educated suburban voters,” she said, surmising that the campaign’s emphasis on book bans is at least partly about laying the groundwork for a general election match-up with DeSantis.
“They are positioning themselves to take on any candidate and to fight for those swing voters who put them over the top in 2020 and who are uncomfortable with some of the more extreme positions DeSantis and others are embracing,” Longwell said.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
And fresh risks loom for Biden’s reelection campaign economy, including a potentially market-shaking fight over raising the debt limit and the risk of a banking industry meltdown that’s causing lenders to tighten up on credit.
“The U.S. economy is unwell, and it’s starting to show,” Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY-Parthenon, tweeted Thursday morning.
The government’s latest GDP report Thursday underlined those concerns. The Commerce Department reported the economy expanded by just 1.1 percent in the first three months of the year, well below expectations of 2 percent growth and down from 2.6 percent in the fourth quarter of last year.
Biden’s bullish comments echoed President Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America” reelection theme from 1984. Yet unlike then, the economy is clearly slowing now, presenting Biden with a potential hurdle to his securing a second term.
Still, the GDP report included some bright spots, including continued strong consumer spending, which drives about two-thirds of economic growth. And the economy has remained remarkably resilient, adding over 300,000 jobs per month in the first quarter, something Biden noted in comments on the growth figures on Thursday.
“Today, we learned that the American economy remains strong, as it transitions to steady and stable growth,” the president said in a prepared statement. “This past quarter, real personal disposable income increased and American consumers continued to spend, even as the overall pace of growth moderated.”
Yet most Wall Street banks and many economists — even left-leaning allies of Biden — predict a downshift once the impact of all the Fed rate hikes works through the system along with the fallout from tighter credit standards.
“We continue to expect economic growth to slow, and we are preparing for a range of scenarios,” Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf said on the bank’s recent first-quarter earnings call.
Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan said on a call last week: “We see and our experts see a mild recession coming.”
Similar comments are peppering earnings calls across the finance industry. Few executives are predicting a major decline in the economy, but many believe the long run of modest or better growth will finally come to a close with the jobless rate starting to rise again from record lows.
And even some Biden allies like former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers are warning that the economy will have to decline significantly to finally break the back of inflation.
“I think we’re going to have difficulty getting near a 2 percent inflation target until and unless the economy slows down substantially,” Summers said at an investment conference this week.
The latest reading on the economy was driven by a declining housing industry slammed by higher interest rates. Consumer spending remained resilient but is also likely to come under more pressure as Covid-era savings run out and inflation continues to pinch wallets. And the report showed inflation rising, not falling as the Fed expects, meaning another rate hike is likely when central bank policymakers meet next week.
“This morning’s data was the worst of both worlds, with growth down and inflation up,” Chris Zaccarelli, chief investment officer for Independent Advisor Alliance, said in a client note.
And even Biden, in his reelection announcement, acknowledged that while he envisions greater prosperity ahead, he is aware of the risks, including prices that remain too high.
“We’ve got a lot more work to do, though,” he told union workers. “I know folks are struggling with inflation,” he said, but added that “it’s a global problem.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
His Morning Routine: Exercise With a Side of Morning Joe!
Aides say the president isn’t a religious viewer of any particular cable news show. But if there’s one he watches with regularity, it’s Morning Joe. Unlike Trump, who started tweeting before most of Washington awoke, Biden typically isn’t watching that first 6 a.m. hour — or rage-tweeting about Mika — but he will often tune in while riding his exercise bike around 7 a.m. And we’re told he’s occasionally in touch with some of the hosts and has, at times, conveyed positive feedback about what they’ve said. For instance, he let Joe Scarborough know that he enjoyed his description of Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) as “having rocks in his head.”
There’s a Tiny TV in the Oval Office
When people step into the Oval Office, they might notice the five presidential portraits hung over the fireplace or the grandeur of the historic Resolute Desk — but not the little television. That’s the point. The TV monitor sits behind Biden on another desk topped with picture frames, encased in a golden frame itself so as to be inconspicuous. But when there aren’t press cameras or dignitaries in there, the 10 or 12” screen is often turned on — and tuned to CNN. While Biden isn’t spending hours in his private dining room glued to a big screen as his predecessor was, several current and former White House officials told me that the president will keep an eye on his secret screen behind his desk and react to coverage during less formal meetings with staff. Televisions outside the Oval and aboard Air Force One are also almost always on CNN during the day, not “the quad,” the four-box available in the building to staffers who want to keep an eye on all of the main cable networks simultaneously.
He Calls People He Sees on TV
The way to ingratiate yourself with Trump was simple: just say nice things about him on TV. Biden is not as insecure — and easily won over — as his predecessor, but he has been known at times to pick up the phone to personally thank people articulating helpful messages on television, be they hosts (Al Sharpton has gotten such calls) or panelists. Last summer, as Democrats’ big spending package was languishing in Congress, Biden called Jim Messina after seeing him on MSNBC defending the administration’s agenda. According to people familiar with these calls, Biden will often solicit feedback or advice from the journalists and politicos he dials up.
And He Has His Favorites
It’s safe to say Biden isn’t up late in the Lincoln bedroom chatting with Sean Hannity after his show. The president’s closest relationships with members of the media are with his contemporaries, the reporters and commentators he’s been reading and interacting with since his years in the Senate. The group includes Times columnists David Brooks and Thomas L. Friedman, both of whom have had audiences with Biden at times, and Mike Barnicle, the Morning Joe regular and longtime columnist. He has also maintained a relationship with the New Yorker’s Evan Osnos, who turned a lengthy interview with Biden during his campaign’s early, quarantined basement days into a book. He has occasionally talked foreign policy with Friedman, who got to know Biden when he was a senator on a 10-day trip to the Middle East. Earlier this year, Friedman even succeeded in getting Biden to issue him a short statement — on a Saturday! — about pro-democracy demonstrations in Israel, which he used in a column. “This is the first time I can recall a U.S. president has ever weighed in on an internal Israeli debate about the very character of the country’s democracy,” he wrote.
He Is a Print Guy
Biden has the same push alerts on his cell phone we all do, but he is a traditionalist when it comes to newspapers. When he took office in 2021, he asked aides to make sure the print editions of the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal were available to him in the White House residence and the West Wing, according to several administration officials. The papers are delivered very early in the morning to the executive residence staff and the West Wing, the officials said. No one has yet seen him autographing news clippings with a Sharpie and sending them to pals.
He Reads His Own Clips (Like Everyone Else in Washington)
Every White House compiles daily clips for the president and top aides. But we’re told Biden is particularly interested in the localnews people across the country are reading. When he flies home after an event, staffers aboard Air Force One print out stories by local outlets that covered his appearances for him to read on the plane. And every day inside the West Wing, the staff secretary’s office puts together a binder of national and local news clips and front pages, including from Black, Latino and AAPI-focused outlets. Aides who have spent time around the president also said that he’ll often note an article referenced during a cable news segment and ask a staffer to print it out for him. When he was vice president, his clips also included news stories from Delaware, and we’re told he still keeps tabs on local happenings.
But He Doesn’t Love the Coverage
In his occasional comments to reporters, Biden has betrayed a frustration with the media’s coverage of him writ large, complaining that “you guys” probably won’t cover what cause or topic he’s eager to talk about at that moment. (In several instances, he has refused to respond to shouted questions on topics unrelated to the event at which he’s speaking.) Aides, concerned in part about the president’s ability to hear shouted questions beneath the whir of Marine One’s rotor blades, have tried to limit situations where the president is confronted — and perhaps enticed to engage — by a horde of shouting reporters. Unlike many of his predecessors, Biden has cultivated few relationships with reporters through off the record meetings and conversations. And the only time he has visited the press cabin aboard Air Force One, something Trump did with regularity, his off-the-record comments included complaints about his coverage. He has rarely griped publicly about any specific report, but some have gotten under his skin — including a story last summer by the New York Times’ Peter Baker about his age becoming “an uncomfortable issue,” multiple people around the president confirmed.
While the president has affirmed the importance of the press’ independence and its role in a democracy — (you’ll hear no “enemies of the people” rants from him) — he often grumbles privately that news coverage is too focused on his predecessor and other fleeting controversies and believes that the media has failed to focus on the historic nature and real world impact of his legislative accomplishments. He also complains to staffers, especially those who oversee communications, not enough people defend him on cable television, something those plotting his likely reelection campaign are hoping to remedy with a more robust surrogate operation.
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Climate advocates say the gains from Biden’s gambit could be as big as the risks. The electric power sector is the nation’s second-largest source of greenhouse gases, so cleaning it up is essential to meeting Biden’s goal of having U.S. carbon pollution reach net zero by 2050. Environmentalists hope EPA will go bold by targeting not just coal, the dirtiest fuel in the power mix, but also natural gas — the reigning champ in the U.S. energy economy.
The EPA and the White House have declined to confirm any details about the rule, which is still undergoing review and could be released as early as next week.
“[W]e have been clear from the start that we will use all of our legally-upheld tools, grounded in decades-old bipartisan laws, to address dangerous air pollution and protect the air our children breathe today and for generations to come,” EPA said in a statement.
‘Considerable risk here’
The Biden administration is already trying to take on the nation’s No. 1 carbon source — transportation — with an EPA auto-pollution rule released just two weeks ago that’s designed to spur a huge increase in sales of electric cars and trucks.
That rule is also at risk of political and legal attacks from Republicans, who accuse the president of endangering the economy by pushing green technologies before they’re ready.
But electric vehicles are already traveling the highways. In contrast, carbon-capturing technology is not yet in place in any active commercial power plant in the U.S., and industry groups argue it’s not ready for wide deployment.
That could make the EPA proposal especially vulnerable in the courts, because the Clean Air Act requires the agency to show that the technologies it proposes are “adequately demonstrated” — not something that might work in the future.
“I think there’s considerable risk here,” said Justin Schwab, founder of the firm CGCN Law and a former EPA deputy general counsel during the Trump administration.
EPA’s rule is expected to set emissions limits for power plants that would in some fashion rely on achieving reductions in line with what carbon capture could achieve, according to people familiar with the proposal. States would then craft compliance plans and could choose other methods that achieve the same reductions, although what those options are remain unclear. The people were granted anonymity to discuss the proposal because the draft rule is not final.
The rule could also require operators of natural-gas-fired plants to reduce their carbon pollution by adding hydrogen to their fuel mix.
“Carbon capture and hydrogen are simply not well established technologies in the way that historical, traditional pollution control technologies have been when they’ve been adopted by EPA on a broad scale,” Schwab said.
Utilities and fossil fuel advocates have long argued that carbon capture and hydrogen could be important technologies for reducing sector emissions — but not for some time, even with recent unprecedented federal investments and incentives.
Climate advocates say the industry needs to put up or shut up.
“The fossil fuel industry says this [technology] is how they stay competitive in a carbon-constrained world. Well, we’re in that carbon-constrained world now,” said Jim Murphy, director of legal advocacy for the National Wildlife Federation. “I think it’s time for the fossil fuel industry to put their money where their mouth is.”
Tom Pyle, president of the pro-fossil fuel American Energy Alliance, accused the administration of issuing an overly aggressive rule that could compel utilities to shutter their coal plants as a political message to environmentalists ahead of Biden’s reelection.
“I think that the end goal is, they’re really just trying to game the system for renewables,” Pyle said.
A 2024 message for both parties
Republicans are eager to tie the upcoming rule and every other Biden climate and energy policy to one of their major themes — the inflation that’s irking Americans and weighing down the president’s approval ratings.
Rules limiting fossil fuels would also align with the GOP’s narrative that Biden is out to shut down traditional home-grown energy, messages they’ve also sounded on gas stoves, oil drilling and cars.
Even if courts nix the upcoming EPA rules, their mere existence could prod utilities to shutter existing natural gas power plants depending on how the agency designs the regulations, said Todd Snitchler, president of the Electric Power Supply Association, a trade group that represents power generators. That would probably feed into Republicans’ broader criticisms of the Biden administration, he said.
“If we are in effect turning off natural gas,” Snitchler said, “I think they’re likely to lean into this to say the administration is raising your prices and jeopardizing power reliability.”
And after delaying action to await the Supreme Court’s ruling last summer, the EPA also has little time to defend the rules in court should Biden lose his reelection bid.
“These things are about the campaign,” said Republican energy lobbyist Mike McKenna. “That’s why they waited until year three.”
But going small would also carry risks by causing the U.S. to miss its climate goals, and it would turn off supporters Biden needs in 2024.
“The whole Biden coalition is built around this commitment” on climate change, said Dallas Burtraw, a senior fellow with the think tank Resources for the Future. He noted that the administration got Congress to pass a climate law last year that offers big incentives for clean power as well as hydrogen and carbon capture.
While the climate effort may drive enthusiasm among Biden’s green supporters, Senate Democrats’ hopes of keeping their slim majority depend on defending their turf in moderate states. Some, such as West Virginia, Michigan, Montana and Ohio, are home to big workforces in the automobile, coal and natural gas sectors.
Biden found a balance in the 2020 campaign, winning the blue-collar-heavy swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin while promising to eliminate carbon pollution from the power grid by 2035. At the time, he said carbon capture and hydrogen technology could give a lifeline to power industry workers. Few of Biden’s Democratic primary rivals shared that vision.
“The public fully understands that fossil fuels are creating pollution that is harming communities across the country,” said Matthew Davis, senior director of government affairs with the League of Conservation Voters, addressing questions about the upcoming EPA rules. “There is also a need to emphasize how important it is that we transition in a way that helps workers that are in those sectors.”
Some energy experts say electricity generation doesn’t offer Republicans the same potent weapon that Biden’s other green energy moves do.
“It doesn’t hit home to a driver or a homeowner as much as a gas stove or an electric car does,” said Frank Maisano, who represents energy clients at the law firm Bracewell. “I suspect most people don’t know they’re already getting a lot of renewable power because the sector has transitioned much faster than expected.”
But will it work?
For utilities, forthcoming investments and incentives from the federal government mean carbon capture could one day be an effective way to reduce power plants’ impact on warming the planet.
But the big question is whether it can do that now.
Only two commercial-scale coal-fired power plants in North America have installed carbon capture technologies: Petra Nova in Texas and Boundary Dam in Saskatchewan, Canada. Both projects experienced cost overruns and performance issues that caused them to miss their targets, and Petra Nova shut down after a few years in operation.
That means the technology flunks the Clean Air Act’s “adequately demonstrated” test, Bracewell attorney Scott Segal argued.
On the other hand, EPA has previously set standards that require industries to invest in new types of pollution controls, said Dena Adler, an attorney with New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity.
“The history of the Clean Air Act is filled with regulations where technologies were projected to be very expensive,” she said. “And after the regulations came down, industry figured out how to install these control technologies better and cheaper.”
But installing the technology isn’t the only hurdle. Requiring large amounts of carbon capture will also raise questions about what to do with all the CO2.
Oil producers can use carbon dioxide in “enhanced oil recovery” wells in which CO2 is pumped underground to push out difficult-to-reach oil — although those are mostly clustered in Texas, California and a few other states. It can also be pumped underground into geological formations.
Either option would probably require many new pipelines to be built to carry the gas to its destination — at a time when permitting is taking longer and the public increasingly opposes them.
Running carbon capture technologies also requires a significant amount of power, as much as 20 percent of a plant’s electricity output, the Congressional Research Service said last fall. Petra Nova powered its carbon capture equipment by building a 75-megawatt natural gas unit onsite, the emissions from which dampened the carbon reductions achieved by the coal-fired unit.
“If EPA wants its rule to survive, it needs a substantial basis in the record that its assumptions about the feasibility of the adoption of this technology have a real basis and that it’s not just pie in the sky,” said Schwab.
Similarly knotty questions surround the possibility of utilities burning hydrogen alongside natural gas — another promising but unproven technology that they could use to comply with the upcoming rule.
SCOTUS’ shadow hangs over the rule
The courts may have the final say on EPA’s rule — as they did in knocking down both Obama’s power plant regulation and the Trump administration’s attempt to replace it.
The Supreme Court last summer split along ideological lines in striking down the Obama-era Clean Power Plan — while embracing a legal doctrine that forbids agencies from deciding “major questions” that legally rest with Congress. That doctrine doomed the Obama rule, which had pushed for a broad shift by utilities away from coal.
Biden’s foes could argue that his rule similarly runs afoul of the same legal standard if it effectively prompts utilities to shutter their coal plants.
But some legal experts see a bright spot for Biden in last year’s EPA ruling.
For one thing, NYU’s Adler said, an EPA standard based on carbon capture would be “entirely different” from the Obama regulation’s demand that utilities switch to cleaner fuel sources. Capturing pollution at the source “is really the bread and butter of the Clean Air Act and the type of regulation that EPA has been issuing for decades,” she said.
In addition, while Congress hasn’t explicitly changed EPA’s regulatory authority, Democrats have passed major investments as part of the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. Those laws provided billions of dollars in research grants for carbon capture and hydrogen, plus expanded tax credits to encourage adoption of those technologies.
But EPA can’t rely on those federal dollars to justify a more stringent regulation, said Schwab, the Trump-era agency veteran. He said it’s not clear the Clean Air Act even allows EPA to consider the availability of the money, and much of the funding may never materialize if a future Congress and administration undo the Biden-era laws It’s unlikely that all of Biden’s many climate rules will survive Supreme Court scrutiny, environmental and energy lawyer Michael Buschbacher said in an email this week to POLITICO’s E&E News.
“The Biden administration appears to just want something to stick, essentially scaring industry into self-regulating,” wrote Buschbacher, a partner at Boyden Gray & Associates. He added, “This approach could backfire spectacularly.”
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