| | | |  | BY ANDREW DESIDERIO | FIRST THE SENATE — Joe Biden this week unveiled a national security team that has vast experience in foreign policy and diplomacy — a group he says will be ready to hit the ground running on Day One. But first, they’ll have to charm skeptical Senate Republicans. As of today, the president-elect and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have still not spoken since Biden defeated President Donald Trump. McConnell has been (characteristically) mum about all of this. Despite his decades-long working relationship with Biden, McConnell has rarely broken with Trump and wants his help in the Georgia runoffs that will determine Senate control. But in recent days we’ve gotten some hints about how a Republican-controlled Senate would handle Biden’s Cabinet-level nominees if they hold onto the majority. The reality is that no matter who Biden picks, there will be a consistent cohort of 35 to 40 Republican senators who vote “no” on every nominee. Chief among them will be the several potential 2024 presidential candidates — just as the 2020 Democratic contenders played to their base with a hard line against Trump’s nominees. A few have already spoken out. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said Alejandro Mayorkas is “disqualified” from serving as Homeland Security secretary; Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) branded the entire group “corporatists and war enthusiasts.” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) was slightly more careful. Without naming names, Rubio said the nominees — which also include Antony Blinken for secretary of State, Avril Haines for director of national intelligence and Linda Thomas-Greenfield for ambassador to the United Nations — “will be polite & orderly caretakers of America’s decline.” Not a compliment, but also far from a “hell no,” which is notable because Rubio chairs the Intelligence Committee and will be responsible for shepherding some of Biden’s appointments through his panel. Indeed, these nominees are fairly mainstream choices and shouldn’t have a ton of trouble getting confirmed. Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) acknowledged as much, telling reporters at the Capitol on Tuesday: “I’m glad [Biden is] resisting the far left on most of the picks to date.” Of course, Republicans won’t shy away from hammering the nominees, particularly over their associations with what they see as the disastrous foreign policy of the Obama administration. But only a simple majority is needed for confirmation and a key handful of GOP senators — including Susan Collins, Mitt Romney and Lisa Murkowski — are already promising to cross party lines to give Biden a Cabinet. Importantly, both Rubio and Senate Foreign Relations Chair Jim Risch (R-Idaho) have acknowledged the presidential transition, a sign of potential cooperation as their committees prep for confirmation hearings for Biden’s national-security picks. What’s going on here? Yes, it’s a lot of politicking. But even as most Republicans are likely to vote against Biden’s nominees, they’ve also consistently said they value stability above all else at the top of agencies responsible for safeguarding Americans’ safety and the nation’s interests abroad. Someone needs to run the State Department, in other words. On top of that, Republicans have expressed rare public frustration with Trump’s outgoing impulsive moves on personnel and policy in the national-security realm. McConnell was blisteringly critical of Trump’s decision to reduce U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan; Republicans across the spectrum were livid that Trump fired the top cybersecurity official who was debunking his baseless voter fraud claims. Still, Republicans will have to balance their desire for stability with the political imperative of drawing a stark contrast with the Biden foreign policy doctrine — whatever that shapes up to be — in time for the 2022 and 2024 contests. Echoing many GOP lawmakers, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) signaled his sheer exasperation with the volatility of Trump’s staffing choices. “It’s the president’s prerogative, but I think it just adds to the confusion and chaos,” he said of the latest purge. “And I’m sure I’m not the only one that would like some return to a little bit more of a — I don’t even know what’s normal anymore.” Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. We are thankful for each and every one of our Nightly readers. We’ll be off Thursday and Friday but will be back and better than ever Monday. Reach out at adesiderio@politico.com and rrayasam@politico.com, or on Twitter at @andrewdesiderio and @renurayasam.
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| | TRACK THE TRANSITION: President-elect Biden has started to form a Cabinet and announce his senior White House staff. The appointments and staffing decisions made in the coming days send clear-cut signals about Biden's priorities. Transition Playbook is the definitive guide to one of the most consequential transfers of power in American history. Written for political insiders, it tracks the appointments, people, and the emerging power centers of the new administration. Track the transition and the first 100 days of the incoming Biden administration. Subscribe today. | | | | | | | FLYNN PARDONED — After long hinting it was likely, Trump pardoned former national security adviser Michael Flynn today for lying to FBI agents investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election. “It is my Great Honor to announce that General Michael T. Flynn has been granted a Full Pardon,” the president tweeted. “Congratulations to @GenFlynn and his wonderful family, I know you will now have a truly fantastic Thanksgiving!” HOW BIDEN STACKS UP — Biden’s transition team received their first hastily scheduled Operation Warp Speed briefing today, one of the first steps in a monthslong transition process. Nightly’s Renuka Rayasam reached out to Stephen Hess, who literally wrote the book on organizing a presidency, about how this transition compares with previous ones. Hess, who worked in the White House under Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon and was an adviser to Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, said that he’s seen a lot of incoming presidents with Washington experience totally screw up the transition, with disastrous consequences. So far, he says, Biden seems to be avoiding that fate — though it’s early yet. This conversation has been edited. How is the Biden administration doing when it comes to transition planning? I’ve seen some awful mistakes in my time that presidents have made. It’s sort of a pleasure to look at this one which had so many obstacles, so many opportunities to slip and fall. And frankly, I think they’re doing a brilliant job. One of the first things you wanna do if you’re coming in is choose your key White House people first. That seems obvious. But Clinton didn’t do it. He finally picked his White House people the day before he took office. It was a mess. Biden has done that. The second rule was to pick your people in clusters. We certainly learned how he was putting together a national security cluster. The next rule would be state your number one priority, so you’re really ready to hit the ground running if you can. And certainly they’ve made it clear that the pandemic is their number one priority. What are some other mistakes incoming administrations have made during a transition? Look at Carter, who didn’t have a chief of staff in place. His office became sort of a central waiting room and people wandered in and out. Nixon was really a perfect example. He had a plan for how his administration was going to be organized, which was a sort of a semi-Cabinet-directed presidency. Exactly the day he took office he instead created a complex in which he had two competing advisors on domestic relations: Pat Moynihan and Arthur Burns. They were going at each other exactly the way experts should go after each other. But the result was that he didn’t have a domestic program until August. There was considerable confusion after Bush took over the presidency from Reagan, even though he had been vice president for eight years. There was a lot of conflict between people who had been in the Reagan administration who wanted their say, and the Bush people coming in who wanted their own people. What do you make of the fact that Biden has, so far, picked the type of people that Trump has for years maligned as part of the “deep state?” If you listen to the comments by the people who express their gratitude for being picked. Wow, if there was ever a pushback against the deep state. They were all talking about the fabulous civil servants they worked with in the past, the diplomats who knew their business and the national intelligence people. They’ve been very subtle, but they certainly have pushed back against, in their argumentation, the things that they don’t like about the way Trump has run the presidency. Do you see any issue with getting Senate confirmation? The confirmation of these appointments almost always forms a pattern. Somewhere along the line, the president is going to appoint someone who is going to be in trouble. So there’s almost always one Cabinet office that is going to be a real fight. You slip up and make some mistake. You get into the problem of nanny-gate. You count on that.
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Decorations for the Thanksgiving parade are installed outside of Macy’s in Herald Square in New York City. | Getty Images | | | YOU MISSED OUR ANNIVERSARY? Four hundred years ago this month, the Mayflower, carrying more than 100 passengers plus crew, dropped anchor near Cape Cod after a perilous, two-month voyage. Bound originally for Virginia, where they had been invited by local authorities to form their community, the “Pilgrims” experienced trouble navigating the rough currents of the Atlantic and instead made their way to nearby Plymouth, where they first set foot on Dec. 11. The rest is history. Given the central position the Plymouth landing long played in American public memory, it’s telling that the 400th anniversary has gone by largely unnoticed, POLITICO Magazine contributing editor Joshua Zeitz writes, unlike last year’s 400th anniversary of slavery’s roots in North America. In some ways, the quiet passing of this event right-sized the role of the Pilgrims. America’s romance with Puritan New England always had more to do with how Americans wanted to remember the nation’s founding than with its real importance to the country’s evolution. Read more as Joshua explains why it’s possible we’ve outgrown the need for this particular myth — and why it’s one of the things we have to be thankful for.
| | Welcome to Bidenology, Nightly’s look at the president-elect and what to expect in his administration. Tonight, an excerpt from Biden’s Thanksgiving address on Covid-19. Speaking from Wilmington, the president-elect reemphasized his commitment to fighting the pandemic and urged Americans to stay safe during the holiday.
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| | | Nightly asked you: What are your plans for Thanksgiving this year during the spike in Covid-19 cases? Below are some of your lightly edited responses. “To quote Nicole Wallace, ‘I’m cooking a ridiculous amount of food for two other human beings and it just is what it is.’” — Michelle Manning, senior clinical research assistant, Olathe, Kan. “Staying home; we will not travel to see family in a different state. Short-term sacrifice for a long-term goal. We are in the high-risk category due to age, so we’ll see family virtually. We don’t want this to be our last holiday season.” — Judy Day, retired, Silverthorne, Colo. “I’m going to follow the experts’ advice, and the woman I’m dating and I will make dinner for two with no guests at my Cape Cod house, where we’ve been avoiding the virus since Saint Patrick’s Day.” — Rick Ahearn, political consultant, Alexandria, Va. “Cross-country ski in the morning, pick up to-go dinner sides from a friend (she will have everything packaged, no going into her home), and have a festive dinner for two at home.” — Julie Hudson, retired, Bend, Ore. “Outdoors on our heater-assisted screened porch with two neighbors in northern Wisconsin on the shore of Lake Superior. Really. Forecast is for 40 or so. Let’s hope so.” — Dennis McCann, writer, Bayfield, Wis. “Since we can’t be with our son and grandkids, we rented a small condo at the beach right on the water, about an hour from our home, for four nights. We are going to sous vide our turkey breast, cook a few new side dishes, read a couple good books and walk on the beach.” — SuAnn Stone, retired, Anacortes, Wash.
| | AROUND THE OTHER ATLAS — Trump’s win in 2016 sent American allies and adversaries to a panic, not knowing what to expect when dealing with the U.S. over the next four years. But was his term at the White House as messy as world leaders expected? In the latest POLITICO Dispatch, foreign affairs reporter Nahal Toosi analyzes Trump’s policy with China, Russia and North Korea.
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| | DON'T MISS THE MILKEN INSTITUTE FUTURE OF HEALTH SUMMIT 2020: POLITICO will feature a special edition Future Pulse newsletter at the Milken Institute Future of Health Summit. The newsletter takes readers inside one of the most influential gatherings of global health industry leaders and innovators determined to confront and conquer the most significant health challenges. Covid-19 has exposed weaknesses across our health systems, particularly in the treatment of our most vulnerable communities, driving the focus of the 2020 conference on the converging crises of public health, economic insecurity, and social justice. Sign up today to receive exclusive coverage from December 7–9. | | | | | | | | |
778,000 The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits last week , according to the Labor Department’s report today. Jobless claims climbed from 748,000 the week before. Before the virus struck hard in mid-March, weekly claims typically amounted to roughly 225,000. |
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Holiday travelers pass through Los Angeles International Airport on Thanksgiving eve. | Getty Images | | | WISTFUL WEDNESDAY — As a special Thanksgiving Eve parting from Nightly, today we bring you a double helping of essays on Thanksgivings past and present. First Joanne Kenen, our newly minted health care editor-at-large, tells us about her holiday plans. Ever since I was a little girl, I loved Thanksgiving. It used to be a huge extended family affair, at my Great Aunt Lily’s, so many of us crammed into her New York apartment that we didn’t even try to fit around a table. My Great Uncle Herman played the mandolin. My Great Uncle Sam would amuse the children — lots of us — by rolling his eyelids inside out. Not sure why that’s such a vivid memory, but there you have it. My own Thanksgivings are more sedate. We sit at the table, at my home or at my mom’s. At either house, I miss my Dad. I do all the cooking myself, all the traditional foods, everything from scratch, including both cranberry sauce and cranberry relish. (On particularly busy news years, I have occasionally succumbed to pre-made pie crust.) Me and my husband. Our two sons. My son’s husband. My older son’s sister, her husband and their nine-year-old boy. (We are beyond blended — long story.) Sometimes a few family friends join. Not a big gathering. But one of my favorite days of the year. Last week, I told my older son not to come home. They had already rented a car; the whole family has gathered only once (safely, this past summer) since pre-pandemic. My younger son, whose college is wholly virtual, is about to fly overseas, Zooming in to his university while resuming a study abroad program truncated by the pandemic in March. But the older one just started a new job, and it’s required him to be out and about, bursting his bubble. He protested that they would get tested before coming home, that it would be fine. Not good enough, I said. Testing shows you didn’t have the virus the day you tested. If you haven’t been isolated, it doesn’t tell you that you don’t have it today, or that you won’t get it tomorrow. My mom is 86. She’s already had one Covid scare — plus an encounter with a rabid bat this year. They’ll stay in New York. She’ll stay in New Jersey. Three of us will be here. Zoom, Zoom, Zoom. For someone as fiercely maternal as I am, it’s difficult. For someone as immersed in the reality of this virus as I am, it’s inevitable. When my son’s job permits, we will all isolate again, and I’ll see him, here in D.C. or at my mom’s. It saddens me, though, that we won’t all be together until at least next spring. And if my kids think I’m making a second turkey then with all the trimmings — nope. I’m not even roasting a whole turkey this year, none of the crispy skin and tender meat that I’ve perfected over the years. When I finish writing this, I’ll start looking through recipes for a three-pound turkey breast. Then I’ll start on the cranberry sauce, the relish, the maple squash and some pie. I’ll have the food we love. But not the people. And a lightly edited staff note sent to the POLITICO newsroom today from editor-in-chief Matt Kaminski: I’ve been thinking back to my first Thanksgiving in 1980. Partly because it’s a formidably round number (40 years) and partly because of the year we’ve just had. My parents and I were recent arrivals in America, a couple months out of what at the time was the wrong side of Europe and adjusting to life in small-town Ohio. Any move, much less exile from home and family, is disorienting. Coming here at 8, I felt both lost and excited to be in a new culture and language. We also, by the way, were often physically lost; as so many immigrants I know, we found maps and American highways hard to navigate, which brought a different kind of excitement. The dean at the university where my father taught — his name was Hal Williams — invited us over for Thanksgiving. It was formal, suits and ties all around the table. Three or four other families were there. As well as the brother of a semi-notable Hollywood actor, name since forgotten, and a daughter’s boyfriend who clearly wouldn’t have Hal’s blessing. Dinner opened with a prayer, a novelty for me. Then everyone around the table was asked what they were thankful for. “For leaving the People’s Republic,” my dad tells me he said. We came as spectators and left feeling — well, sure, welcomed. But that wasn’t really new; we were warmly embraced by this Midwestern community from the moment we arrived. What I remember more was the feeling that we had made it safely home, for that evening at least, to a blazing fire and dry turkey after our own recent odyssey. Thanksgiving is of course about leaving and coming home (and gluttony, too). There’s no more American story than that. Nor, I think, a more quintessentially American holiday. So, after the journey we’ve all been on together in 2020, wherever or whomever with you settle down to a meal this Thursday, I wish you a wonderful Thanksgiving. Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here. | |
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