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FIRST IN NIGHTLY — POLITICO’S Natasha Korecki, Theodoric Meyer and Tyler Pager just filed this report:
In the midst of his campaign for president, Joe Biden took his younger brother, Frank, aside to issue a warning.
“For Christ’s sake, watch yourself,” Biden said of his brother’s potential business dealings, according to a person with knowledge of the conversation. “Don’t get sucked into something that would, first of all, hurt you.”
Biden, whose tone was both “jocular and serious,” according to the person, seemed to know then what is becoming plainly obvious now: His family’s business ties would pose optics issues for an administration whose messaging is centered on restoring integrity in the White House.
Relatives’ money-making ventures, most prominently his son Hunter’s overseas dealings, have long dogged the president. But it’s taking on a new dimension now that he’s in the White House.
Only a week into his presidency, Biden has already had to answer for matters related to his family. A law firm ad promoting Frank Biden’s relationship with the president caused a stir when it ran on Inauguration Day. A federal investigation into Biden’s son, Hunter, is placing more scrutiny on the independence of the president’s Justice department. And one of the president’s brothers, James, has previously come under fire for his business dealings.
Florida super attorney and Democratic donor John Morgan said business sensitivities were coursing through Bidenworld this week after the report about Frank Biden’s law firm.
“What Frank told me is, ‘My brother loves me dearly, but if I lobbied, he would cut my legs from underneath me,” Morgan said Frank Biden told him this week. The intent of the conversation was to protect Frank from “being hurt and vilified” at a time when his big brother, “Joey,” was being sworn into the most powerful position in the world.
“Frank made it clear to me what the president made clear to him: The day he got elected, the long knives came out for all things Biden,” Morgan said. “There’s a target on all of them.”
One person interested in working with Frank Biden was Morgan himself, a fellow Floridian who is close to the younger Biden.
“Great guy,” Morgan said of Frank Biden. “I had my jet take him to the inauguration.”
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| THE GLOBAL FIGHT |
Protesters hold a banner reading “FREE NAVALNY” outside the Russian embassy in Berlin, as some 2,500 supporters of Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny march in protest Saturday to demand his release from prison in Moscow | Getty Images
GREAT POWERS, GREAT RESPONSIBILITY — Biden won’t admit it out loud, but his administration is shifting its foreign-policy focus to China and Russia. The Middle East team has been downsized while the team that coordinates policy in Asia has been staffed up. Biden took a tough tone during his call with Russian president Vladimir Putin on Tuesday.
But Biden’s confrontational stance could soon run into its own problems. Europe has been less inclined to take a hardline approach to Russia . German Chancellor Angela Merkel hasn’t halted work on an undersea gas pipeline that runs from St. Petersburg to Germany’s Baltic coast, even after Russia jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny. The U.S. and Eastern European countries worry that the pipeline gives Russia too much leverage in the region. Leaders in Italy and France are also backing away from taking a stand against Putin, who has pretty much led Russia since late in Bill Clinton’s second term.
We chatted with POLITICO’s new world and national security editor Ben Pauker over Slack today to help us make sense of the new Cold War. This conversation has been edited.
Is Biden shifting to a great power politics, worrying mostly about Russia and China?
In a way, I think we’ll see the Biden administration move away from Great Power politics, or at least the way in which it was approached in the Trump era: defined largely by bluster and bilateralism. On Iran, China and North Korea, Trump sanctioned and reached out unilaterally, extending olive branches to Kim Jong-un, pulling out of the Iran deal, and launching a trade war against Beijing — all without the support of allies and key partners. Biden’s team is going to be a lot more judicious and communicative when it comes to enlisting allies to align with U.S. foreign policy goals.
But I think his team rightly understands that the greatest and most persistent threats to national security emanate from China and Russia. On Russia, his early and widely reported call with Putin is a signal that he intends to be more open about the relationship between Washington and Moscow. Whether that relationship is more congenial or less, particularly given the massive Solarwinds cyber breach, remains to be seen.
Does Biden get modern Russia?
Wait, there’s a modern Russia? OK, that’s a joke, but I don’t think it’s necessarily wrong to say that Russian politics haven’t changed all that much in two decades, since Putin first came to power. I don’t believe that either Biden or his team view the Russian relationship as the ideological struggle of the Cold War.
Yes, it may still be a contest of great power politics — and yes, there are still proxy battles in Syria, Ukraine or over European gas and energy — but it’s not nearly as global in nature. Previous administrations have tried to work with Moscow and appeal to Putin’s better angels (or ego), but with limited success. And I imagine that Biden is somewhat chastened by the diplomatic missteps and the impotence of the Obama administration to stop the invasion of Ukraine and the Crimea seizure. But whether there’s a new and better toolkit now is an open question.
How could his approach backfire?
Um, have you changed your passwords recently? Russia still has a pretty annoying way of getting under the skin, and into the motherboards , of U.S. cyber assets. I think that Biden desperately wants to undo the Trump years and return the United States to a position of moral authority — that shining city on a hill — but supporting the Navalny protesters out in the freezing cold isn’t a recipe for sitting down and baking bread with Putin.
He’ll have to tread carefully as to the extent he’s willing to call out the anti-democratic nature of the Russian regime. Putin is, after all, widely popular among the vast majority of Russians. Going after corruption may be the best scalpel here, but Biden is still going to have to find ways to work with Moscow on arms deals, non-proliferation and in encouraging better behavior from Russian allies in the Middle East or in places like Venezuela. That said, Russia has an extremely well-honed ability to make life difficult for U.S. foreign policy — if only to show Washington that it’s not the only global power.
Do you think Biden can count on the transatlantic relationship to help him out?
I expect European states will be thrilled with less badgering over NATO budgets and fewer White House surprises, but most will continue to walk a fine line in calling out Russian aggression and bullying along European borders. That said, they aren’t about to go to war when Russian submarines are quietly slipping into Stockholm’s harbors just for fun.
Do you think these protests will have an impact on Putin's future or standing? Are they different?
I wish I could say that it will be different this time. And there’s certainly much to commend in the brave men and women who’ve weathered minus 50 degrees temperatures and baton-wielding security service goons to protest the imprisonment and poisoning of Alexei Navalny. But Putin and other autocrats have learned much from the revolutions across the Middle East a decade ago, and in Ukraine more recently: Give an inch, they’ll take a mile. I’d expect the heavy-handed tactics to continue and for the Biden administration to have to walk a tightrope — calling out Putin for human rights abuses, corruption and anti-democratic behavior, while backchanneling important conversations on defense, global cooperation and arms deals.
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE — National security adviser Jake Sullivan has dramatically restructured the National Security staff — downsizing the team devoted to the Middle East and bulking up the unit that coordinates U.S. policy toward the vast region of the world stretching from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific, write Natasha Bertrand and Tyler.
AND FROM POLITICO EU — Given the opportunity in recent weeks to show the Biden administration it was serious about geostrategic collaboration, Europe opted instead to show Washington the finger, writes Matt Karnitschnig.
TRACK THE FIRST 100 DAYS OF THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION: A new president occupies the White House and he is already making changes. What are some of the key moments from Biden's first week in office? Find out in Transition Playbook, our scoop-filled newsletter tracking the appointments, people, and emerging power centers of the first 100 days of the new administration. Subscribe today.
| TALKING TO THE EXPERTS |
GAMESTOPPED — Although a couple of experts gave Nightly a few suggestions Wednesday on how Congress and regulators could intervene in the GameStop stock meltup, there wasn’t much Washington could do about the so-called Reddit rally — until today.
The decision by the investing app Robinhood to stop retail investors from buying GameStop and other stocks gave lawmakers an opening to investigate the market mayhem. It also created a brief bipartisan moment as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and other lawmakers excoriated Robinhood. (It ended when Ocasio-Cortez told Cruz, “You almost had me murdered,” though she did express a willingness to work with Republicans not named Ted Cruz on the issue.)
So Nightly reached out to another securities expert for a recommendation on Washington’s next step:
“There are two rationales for governments to intervene in markets, and both might become issues in the GameStop phenom. The first is investor protection. This does not mean protecting investors from bad decisions. If people want to trade based on subreddits rather than fundamentals, or take short positions opposite those subreddit buyers, so be it. Both the individual investors inflating the GameStop bubble and the institutional investors trying to pop that bubble should be prepared to bear whatever losses come their way.
“It does mean ensuring that investors have the time, information and other resources they need to make good decisions. When a middleman like Robinhood starts making a lot of money facilitating risky trading by small-time investors, this is a sign that investors may not understand the risks that they are taking. More evidence of this came today when many investors seemed surprised to learn that Robinhood’s decision to prevent users from buying additional shares of GameStop was clearly allowed under its terms of service. Retail investors cannot be expected to read a lot of fine print. The SEC should consider whether new modes of trading require a new approach to investor protection.
“The government also has a duty to promote market functioning and resilience. So far, this is not an issue. In contrast to a house that can be bought with a mere 10 or 20 percent down, buying stock requires a 50 percent down payment. This rule, known as Regulation T, ensures there is real money — not just borrowed money — at stake when stocks rise. This reduces the systemic ripple effects of stock market bubbles, and helps to explain why the real economy didn’t suffer more when the dot-com bubble burst in 2000.
“The GameStop phenomenon is not limited to GameStop. If GameStop, AMC, Blackberry and other wild gyrations evolve from the exception to the rule, ordinary investors could get scared away and capital formation could suffer. That point is a long way off, but it is another reason for the SEC and other regulators to play close attention to GameStop and its kin.” — Kathryn Judge, professor at Columbia Law School and editor of the Journal of Financial Regulation
| ON THE HILL |
PELOSI WANTS GREENE OFF EDUCATION — Speaker Nancy Pelosi unloaded on House GOP leaders today for elevating freshman Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to the House Education Committee , escalating pressure on Republicans to punish her for a long record of extremist comments.
Pelosi said Greene should not be seated on the committee after peddling a false conspiracy theory that the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012 was a hoax — remarks that Democrats say are among Greene’s most horrific in a broader trend of incendiary and at times threatening rhetoric.
“What could they be thinking? Or is thinking too generous of a word for what they might be doing?” Pelosi said today of the GOP’s decision to seat her on the committee. “It’s absolutely appalling, and I think the focus has to be on the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives for the disregard they have for the deaths of those children.”
| AROUND THE NATION |
STATE RIVALRY — Marc Caputo emails us:
As we noted in May, there’s been a disconnect in the way that the national New York-based news media approaches reporting on coronavirus in Florida and New York (in short: the homestate guys get more homestate love). But it has since become increasingly difficult for New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to escape critical coverage, especially after a bombshell report today from the state attorney general’s office: It found that Cuomo’s administration may have officially undercounted the state’s official tally of 8,500 nursing home deaths by as much as 50 percent. Hours after the report, the state released its new tally of 12,743, up from 8,711 earlier in the day.
“Government guidance requiring admission of Covid-19 patients into nursing homes may have put residents at increased risk of harm,” POLITICO New York’s Shannon Young reported. “The issue has dogged Cuomo, seen as a national star for his public messaging during the early days of the pandemic, since last summer. His administration has gone to great lengths to claim it did nothing wrong.”
In contrast, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis went to greater lengths early on to shield nursing home residents from exposure to coronavirus. Still, the state has a huge elderly population and, according to Florida data, about 9,000 have died in the state’s nursing homes. In the overall death toll, New York reports 34,579 to Florida’s 26,429.
It’s nothing to brag about for either governor, but DeSantis was in a decidedly different position than Cuomo during a budget-presentation press conference today, where he bragged that he was one of the first governors to open schools (which has subsequently been declared to be relatively safe during the pandemic) and how he refused to lockdown the state, something that even Cuomo is now embracing.
GET THE SCOOP ON CONGRESS IN 2021 : Get the inside scoop on the Schumer/McConnell dynamic, the new Senate Bipartisan Group, and what is really happening inside the House Democratic Caucus and Republican Conference. From Schumer to Pelosi, McConnell to McCarthy and everyone in between, our new Huddle author Olivia Beavers brings the latest from Capitol Hill with assists from POLITICO's deeply sourced Congress team. Subscribe to Huddle, the indispensable guide to Congress.
| FROM THE HEALTH DESK |
CHINA’S VAX TROLLING IS WORKING — The Chinese Communist Party’s new brand of aggressively online diplomatic defenders, known as “Wolf Warriors” after a popular nationalistic film franchise, have added vaccine conspiracy theories to their trolling repertoire after promoting alternative theories about the coronavirus’ origins, Carmen Paun writes in POLITICO’s Global Pulse newsletter of China’s vaccine misinformation campaign.
While China observers said the exact purpose of the vaccine smear campaign isn’t clear, that’s almost beside the point. In just a few weeks, it’s already seeding doubts about the safety of shots from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna, providing talking points for vaccine skeptics in the United States and giving countries rhetorical cover to purchase Chinese-made vaccines that appear to be less effective than the two leading Western ones.
“It feels like the propagandists have gone all in on Russian-style nihilistic disinformation, without understanding or just not caring about the damage it is doing,” said Bill Bishop, a close China watcher and author of the Sinocism newsletter.
FOR SALE: YOUR HEALTH INFO — There’s an app for everything, and there’s also data on everyone. In the latest POLITICO Dispatch, Mohana Ravindranath breaks down how companies are slyly buying and selling the information we share with health apps — and explains why that data isn’t protected like medical records.
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| ASK THE AUDIENCE |
DEAR NIGHTLY — Curious about safer ways to shake up your pandemic routine? Or how to navigate daily life before you can get a vaccine? Do you have a question about the pandemic or the virus that hasn’t been answered? We’ll try to answer it. Send your thoughts to nightly@politico.com , and we’ll publish answers to select ones later this week.
| NIGHTLY NUMBER |
89 percent The rate of effectiveness in protecting against Covid-19 of the Novavax vaccine, announced today based on preliminary data from a large late-stage trial in the United Kingdom. |
| PARTING WORDS |
NOT THE BUTT OF A JOKE — The European Commission will follow the science when it comes to potentially recommending coronavirus tests that are administered anally, a spokesperson said today.
At the regular midday briefing for the press, Austrian journalist Oliver Grimm asked whether the Commission could say if it was planning to include anal swabs in its recommendations for EU-wide Covid testing. Several Chinese cities are already using samples taken from the anus to detect potential Covid-19 infections, Hans von der Burchard writes.
To laughter from the Commission spokespeople and journalists, chief spokesperson Eric Mamer said, “I think we all have a personal interest in this subject,” before passing the question on to his colleague Stefan De Keersmaecker.
De Keersmaecker replied that “we will go where the science takes us. So if science takes us to the butt, we will consider this. But of course I don’t think I can add a lot on this.”
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