| | |  | BY SAM STEIN | Presented by |  |
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| With help from Renuka Rayasam MONEY, POWER, RESPECT — The most thought-provoking quote of the Biden era was uttered months before his presidency began. In the heat of Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) warned Republicans that the raw political power they were deploying would be reciprocated in due time. “Don’t think when you have established the rule of ‘because we can,’ that should the shoe be on the other foot, you will have any credibility to come to us and say: ‘yeah, I know you can do that, but you shouldn’t,’” Whitehouse said. Whitehouse’s warning was specific to issues of the courts. But he was also illuminating the fundamental question at the heart of most contemporary political debates: When should you flex your power simply because you can? This is the question vexing Joe Biden and fellow Democrats. The president has taken an historic number of executive actions. He’s all but dispensed with bipartisan negotiations around a Covid relief bill. And he’s signaled that, on judges, he’ll utilize his powers to put his imprint on the courts. The result has been affection from the left, not necessarily for the content of the acts — but for the manner of execution. “I think, yes,” Whitehouse told me, when I asked him if we are seeing the execution of the Because We Can™ doctrine. “There is a much stronger willingness than there was the last time we were in the majority to make sure the things Americans want and need are being addressed.” But Whitehouse also conceded that some of his fellow Democrats are uncomfortable with the political power they wield. “There are some things that just because we could do, we still won’t do because they’re wrong,” he said. He added another caveat: “There are some things, because we can do, we probably should do, but we may not be able to get the necessary votes to do.” Those “constraints,” as Whitehouse called them, have become more visible in recent days. Over the weekend, Democrats were given the chance to call witnesses for Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, only to quickly balk. They explained their reluctance as a matter of caution. They didn’t want the trial to derail Biden’s actual agenda. But it’s not actually clear that calling witnesses would have done that. And the cost of that caution was not just the illumination of the historical record (important!) but the potential to inflict political pain on the opposition. To borrow Whitehouse’s cliché, if the shoe were on the other foot, would Republicans have made Democrats sit through a national re-airing of a horror show sparked by their leader? Um. Yes. Gleefully. As for that Biden agenda, there too we are seeing circumspection. Biden has all but conceded he won’t get a $15-an-hour minimum wage hike in his Covid relief bill, citing a potential ruling from the Senate parliamentarian that it is non-germane to reconciliation rules. At least one House Democrat has called such acquiescence to an unelected bureaucrat absurd. “I’ve never heard us put everything on the balance of what the Senate parliamentarian says,” said Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.). But Biden’s team has shown no desire to overrule the parliamentarian, which hasn’t been done in four decades and would require a vote from the vice president and 50 Senate Democrats. Why not? Well, there’s a host of reasons: reputational considerations, institutional prerogatives, and those oft-maligned norms. Caution is a component of the Democratic Party’s DNA. Some of its lawmakers simply don’t support a $15-an-hour minimum wage as law. Biden could call their bluffs. He could work their votes. But in this case at least, “because we can,” appears to be “perhaps we shouldn’t.” For many Democrats, that’s fine. The president was elected in large part because he pledged not to be driven by Trumpian thirsts for power. Keeping that image intact matters. It’s why there currently is next to no momentum for eliminating the legislative filibuster. But for others, the question is not if the party should optimize the powers it has, but, rather, when its members will realize the need to do so. Raising the minimum wage may not be the triggering cause, but is a voting rights bill? How about climate change legislation? Immigration reform? “Someone unwilling to vote to get rid of the filibuster as an opening bid might very well change their mind if several good faith efforts on important issues are stymied by bad faith Republican obstruction,” said Whitehouse. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. A hopeful note: Major League Baseball pitchers and catchers report for work on Wednesday! See FanGraphs’ projections for your team’s chances of making the playoffs this season. (Renu’s Atlanta Braves seem in good position, and Sam’s Red Sox seem to have a shot. It might be a tough road for Myah Ward’s Nats, while Tyler Weyant’s Baltimore Orioles are making him check when football season begins.) Reach out with news and tips at sstein@politico.com and rrayasam@politico.com, or on Twitter at @samstein and @renurayasam.
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| | A message from The ACLU: The ACLU launches new Systemic Equality agenda: Since its founding, the fabric of American society has been woven with unjust, racist policies that harm Black and Indigenous people of color. We must address America’s legacy of racism and systemic discrimination. The ACLU is calling on the Biden administration and Congress to advance societal equity, close the racial wealth gap, and seek reconciliation for our past. Learn more. | | | | | | 
The Texas Capitol is surrounded by snow in Austin. Historic cold weather in Texas has caused traffic delays and power outages, and storms have swept across 26 states with a mix of freezing temperatures and precipitation. | Getty Images | WINTER PUMMELS THE TEXAS GRID — A massive power outage is reviving scrutiny of Texas’s independent power grid. Millions across the state were left without electricity after a winter storm dumped inches of snow and plunged temperatures to below freezing. This evening, about 3 million Texans were still without power as demand spiked and the cold and ice affected different energy sources. In Texas, the grid’s failure is causing major political fallout. Some Republicans, especially those who ridiculed California’s rolling blackouts last summer, are falsely blaming renewables, saying frozen wind turbines were solely to blame for the energy shortfall. The reality is icy conditions also probably knocked natural gas plants offline and froze coal stores. State lawmakers are now planning to call a series of hearings to figure out what exactly went wrong. Did operators of the grid underestimate demand, artificially constrain supply to boost prices or fail to invest in maintenance? Today Republican Gov. Greg Abbott declared reform of the state’s independent energy grid an emergency item during this year’s legislative session. Another winter storm is expected to hit much of the state on Wednesday, and the grid’s operator said it could be days before power is restored. Listen to an Austin resident who lost power on Sunday night, and energy reporters Anthony Adragna and Eric Wolff discussing the latest. And be sure to check out the full Morning Energy podcast Wednesday.
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| | A MUST-READ ON CAPITOL HILL: Looking for the latest insight on the power dynamic in House GOP Leadership? Want to listen in on the whispers coming out of the Speaker's Lobby? Trying to understand what is really going on inside the cloakrooms? Olivia Beavers delivers the scoop in Huddle, our morning Capitol Hill must-read, with assists from POLITICO's deeply sourced Congress team that reveal the state of play in the House and Senate. Subscribe to Huddle today. | | | | | | | CALL ME (BACK) MAYBE — IRS phones are ringing off the hook even more than usual as tax filing season gets underway, but odds are slim — about 11-to-1 — that anyone’s answering, a frustration for taxpayers that’s sure to continue all year long, writes tax reporter Aaron Lorenzo. The problem is that the IRS is still swamped with questions about last year’s tax returns, tax refunds, economic relief payments, tax credits and more, and none of the load is lightening. Added responsibilities from Congress, likely including a third round of direct coronavirus-relief payments to households and bigger and more frequent Child Tax Credit payments, are sure to generate even more calls to IRS phone lines, which are well known for notoriously long waits for callers even during normal times. The IRS received 7.5 million more calls last month than in January 2020, a more than 300 percent increase in phone demand coming from individual taxpayers and tax professionals. Separately, National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins, the IRS’s in-house watchdog, said that only about one out of 11 calls to the IRS was being answered.
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| | | | | — Trump hits McConnell: The former president issued a caustic and highly personal statement against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, effectively declaring war on the Kentucky Republican for failing to back his attempts to undermine the 2020 election. “Mitch is a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack, and if Republican Senators are going to stay with him, they will not win again,” Trump said in a statement released by his PAC. — Foreclosure moratorium extended through June: The Biden administration announced it would extend the foreclosure moratorium and mortgage forbearance through the end of June. The actions would block home foreclosures and offer delayed mortgage payments until July, as well as offer six months of additional mortgage forbearance for those who enroll on or before June 30. — Perdue “leaning heavily” toward 2022 run in Ga.: David Perdue, the former Republican senator from Georgia who lost in the state runoffs last month, filed paperwork to run again in 2022 but has not yet made a final decision on whether to launch another campaign, according to two advisers. (Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock’s term is up in 2022.) — White House backs independent riot panel: Press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden would back efforts to establish a review of the January insurrection akin to the 9/11 Commission. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Monday said that she would move quickly to set up such a panel in order for Congress to “get to the truth” of the deadly, chaotic events. Today Psaki indicated Biden would sign legislation to that effect. — Hoyer previews “bipartisan” earmarks comeback: House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer privately told Democrats today that earmarks will be revived this Congress and that he can “guarantee” the effort “will be bipartisan,” according to two people on the call. — 2024 moon goal in jeopardy: NASA is reviewing the Trump administration’s plan to return American astronauts to the moon by 2024 and will decide in the next few months whether the first three missions scheduled for the Artemis program will be delayed.
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| | GET TRANSITION PLAYBOOK TO 100K: In three months, our scoop-filled Transition Playbook newsletter has grown from zero to more than 90,000 subscribers. Find out what’s really happening inside the West Wing, who really has the ear of the president, and what’s about to happen, before it occurs. Transition Playbook chronicles the people, policies, and emerging power centers of the Biden administration. Don’t miss out, subscribe today. And once you do, we’d be grateful if you could spread the word to your friends and colleagues, or, even better, post about Transition Playbook on Facebook or Twitter using this link: politico.com/newsletters/transition-playbook | | | | | | | STRIVING TOWARD THE PROMISE LAND — Biden promised to “follow the science” throughout his campaign. In the latest POLITICO Dispatch, health care reporter and Pulse author Adam Cancryn reports that a month into his presidency, Biden is learning the hard way that — from school reopenings to wearing masks — politics and science don’t always mesh.
| | | | TO SPEAK OR NOT TO SPEAK — Biden is expected to speak in the coming days with 85-year-old King Salman, the official ruler of Saudi Arabia. That begs the question: Will Biden ever talk to the guy who actually runs the country? Whether and how to engage that powerful figure, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is among the thorniest diplomatic dilemmas facing Biden and his aides, one that exemplifies how hard it will be to keep their promises to promote both human rights and America’s national interest on the world stage, foreign affairs correspondent Nahal Toosi writes. The de facto Saudi leader, whose titles include defense minister, is scorned in much of Washington due to his role in the Yemen war, his crackdowns on perceived political enemies — and his alleged ordering of the killing of Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi. Many human rights activists want the U.S. to impose economic sanctions on him, a movement that may gain steam if the Biden team keeps its promise to release a long-secret report on the Khashoggi killing. Crown Prince Mohammed’s central role was a reality accepted by Trump, who, citing U.S. arms sales to the Saudis, embraced the crown prince even after Khashoggi murder, shielding him from sanctions and other punishment. Given that the crown prince is only in his mid-30s, he’s arguably the very future of Saudi Arabia itself.
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56 percent The share of state respondents in a Feb. 7-11 Siena College poll who viewed New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo favorably. The poll was conducted after the Jan. 28 release of Attorney General Tish James’ report but before a New York Post story detailing Cuomo’s refusal to release nursing home death numbers. The poll also found 39 percent view him unfavorably. That’s basically the same as the 57-39 he received in January and 56-39 he received in November. |
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| COMING TO A COUCH NEAR YOU — Cathy Yan got her big break at the Sundance Film Festival in 2018. Her indie feature, “Dead Pigs,” caught the eye of executives at Warner Bros. who picked her to direct “Birds of Prey,” a superhero movie about DC Comics’ character Harley Quinn in the aftermath of her break up with the Joker. With “Birds of Prey,” Yan became the second woman and first Asian American woman to ever direct a superhero movie. The $82 million, boisterous, glitter-filled film was 2020’s highest grossing movie directed by a female. But, Yan told Nightly, the pandemic has shut off those kinds of opportunities for emerging filmmakers. It’s harder to get discovered at a virtual film festival. Plus most indie films don’t have the budgets to test every one on set and comply with other Covid safety protocols. “My impression is that there just hasn’t been a lot of indie features getting made,” Yan said. The pandemic has scrambled movie making in other ways too. Writers have to gauge viewers’ appetites to see people social distancing and wearing masks. Directors have to figure out how to connect with actors behind face shields. Then, of course, because fewer people are going to theaters, distributors have to reevaluate their plans for streaming. But for Yan, there’s been one bright spot to the pandemic: “Dead Pigs" finally found a home for global release. It was released on Friday on streaming platform MUBI. Not having to worry about a theatrical release gave Yan a lot more options for the film. Inspired by a real life incident where more than 16,000 dead pigs were found in the Huangpu River, the film weaves together the stories of several characters in Shanghai. Yan told Nightly that while it was made four years ago, it foreshadows today’s pandemic world. “My fascination was with this idea of a network effect,” Yan said. “It really hit home during the pandemic how much we are really interconnected — that a phenomenon in China can affect us and our lives so much and for so long.” Watch Yan talk about how the pandemic has affected movie making and female directors and whether Hollywood accurately represents the country.
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| | A message from The ACLU: Systemic Equality = Freedom and justice for all
The ACLU is calling on the Biden administration and Congress to advance societal equity, close the racial wealth gap, and seek reconciliation for our nation’s racist past.
People of color, especially Black people, continue to endure systemic exclusion and discrimination – over 150 years after the abolition of slavery.
Systems of oppression have been codified on the federal and state level, leaving generations of Black communities underrepresented in the policy decisions and legislation that has a direct impact on their communities – housing, voting, hiring, education, banking, technology and more.
The long-standing damage caused by systemic injustice is unmistakable, as Black Americans endure violence and death at the hands of the state, while disproportionately bearing the economic, financial, and community burdens of COVID-19. It’s time for a new racial justice agenda.
Learn about the ACLU's Systemic Equality agenda here. | | | Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here. | |
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