Middleboro Review 2: POLITICO NIGHTLY: Jackson’s confirmation escalated quickly

Friday, March 18, 2022

POLITICO NIGHTLY: Jackson’s confirmation escalated quickly

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Supreme Court Nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson meets with Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) in his office on Capitol Hill. | Drew Angerer/Getty Images

LET’S HOPE NO ONE PLAYS JAZZ FLUTE — Confirmation hearings start next week for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman nominated to the Supreme Court. And the GOP is having a Ron Burgundy problem: Can it stay classy?

Yes, I mean Will Ferrell’s mustachioed and bumbling newscaster from 2004’s “Anchorman,” who signed off the evening news by telling his hometown of San Diego to “stay classy.” You could hear a similar message to GOP colleagues from Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, when he told POLITICO’s Marianne LeVine: “The best message I can give you at this point, but I think you’ve heard me say it before: It’s going to be a fair, thorough hearing, and we’re not going to get in the gutter like the Democrats did.”

Four days later, one of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s four most ambitious Republicans was openly tangling with the White House over his suggestion that Jackson was too friendly to sex offenders during her time on the U.S. Sentencing Commission and as a federal district judge. Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley tweeted that Jackson’s record “endangers children.”

The RNC followed Hawley’s tweets with a note to reporters that bluntly summed up his critique as well as conservative qualms with Jackson’s time defending Guantanamo Bay detainees. That RNC email’s subject line: “Sympathetic to terrorists AND pedophiles?”

Not quite the Burgundy-style class that some GOP senators were promising as a party that has been touting its electoral gains with minority voters prepares to greet a historic nominee.

Of course, it’s all in the delivery — in politics as well as comedy. Republicans would surely say that their concerns with Jackson’s sentencing of sex offenders reflects a legitimate soft-on-crime failing in her record.

But Hawley’s hard punch at Jackson days before her confirmation hearing robbed Republicans of the opportunity to roll out their criticism slowly and deliberately during next week’s hearings, with the gravity that the subject matter deserves.

Now the Missouri conservative, widely considered a possible presidential candidate in 2024 despite his on-the-record denials of such interest, has gotten out ahead of the rest of the Judiciary panel’s Republicans. Notably, Grassley has stayed publicly silent so far on Jackson’s sentencing record while his team seeks more documents from her time on the Sentencing Commission.

“I just want the documents,” Grassley told Marianne today. “We’ll go through those. And what questions I’m going to ask I’m not going to signal to anybody in the press.”

One reason that Senate Republicans started this week so determined to stay out of the gutter when it comes to Jackson: They’re still smarting, nearly four years later, from Democrats’ pursuit of a full airing of sexual misconduct claims against Justice Brett Kavanaugh — claims that the then-nominee strenuously denied. The bitter animosity that those allegations exposed among senators on the committee, at the height of the #MeToo movement’s national reckoning with pervasive sexual harassment, still hangs in the air at times. Republicans and Democrats alike in the chamber say they’ve gotten past it, but the GOP is intent on showing it can be more genteel toward a Supreme Court pick than the other side of the aisle was.

One aspect of the Kavanaugh flap that’s little-remembered, though: The allegations against him didn’t emerge until the very last lap of his confirmation hearings. Democrats called for a vetting of accuser Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations with striking speed once her story became public.

Jackson, by contrast, is getting an early warning of how emotionally and politically charged some senators’ questions are likely to be next week. She’ll have plenty of time to practice staying classy when asked about her sentencing decisions.

Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at eschor@politico.com, or on Twitter at @eschor.

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WHAT'D I MISS?

— Biden will talk to Xi: Biden will speak to China’s Xi Jinping Friday, the two leaders’ first call since Russia invaded Ukraine and one that could play an outsize role in determining the trajectory of the war . During the conflict’s early weeks, Russia has aligned itself with China, and Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin reinforced their nations’ ties during the Winter Olympics in Beijing just before Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. The White House, in its announcement of the call, said that Biden and Xi’s discussion will feature a discussion of “managing our countries as well as Russia’s war against Ukraine and other issues of mutual concern.”

— Report: Griner’s arrest extended to May 19: A Moscow court has extended the arrest of WNBA star Brittney Griner until May 19, according to the Russian state news agency Tass. Griner was detained at a Moscow airport in February after Russian authorities said a search of her luggage revealed vape cartridges. They were identified as containing oil derived from cannabis, which could carry a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.

President Joe Biden meets virtually with Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin in the Oval Office of the White House. | Win McNamee/Getty Images

— Europe’s Covid spike has Biden officials concerned, could lead to return of masks: The surge in Covid-19 cases in Europe, particularly in the United Kingdom, is prompting urgent conversations among senior Biden health aides about the potential of the U.S. experiencing another wave this spring, according to three senior officials familiar with the matter. While cases in the U.S. are at an eight-month low, the exponential growth in infections seen in several European countries is the latest evidence that Covid-19 remains a persistent threat that has the potential to upend the White House’s hopes of moving past the pandemic.

— Biden picks new Covid-19 czar: Biden announced that Ashish Jha will be the next White House Covid-19 response coordinator, installing a well-known public health commentator on the administration’s pandemic team . Jha, the dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health, has been a regular guest across cable and network news throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. He will replace Jeffrey Zients, who has headed the Biden administration’s coronavirus response since January 2021 and will return to private life in April.

— Pelosi apologizes to Biden admin officials for Covid aid stalemate: After two top Biden administration health officials pleaded with Democrats today to approve more coronavirus aid funding, Speaker Nancy Pelosi apologized to them in front of her caucus for having to ask at all. Pelosi told Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and top infectious disease adviser Anthony Fauci she was sorry they needed to come before House members from the president’s own party to call for $15 billion to continue the U.S. fight against Covid, domestically and abroad.

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FROM THE HEALTH DESK

THE COMMISH — Dave Chokshi stepped down this week after serving as New York City’s health commissioner since August 2020. He spoke to Nightly’s Joanne Kenen during his last days in office, reflecting on what it takes to defeat Covid, particularly when public health is politicized and trust is fragile.

Chokshi played a central role in New York’s vaccine mandates as well as the vaccination campaign tha t prevented an estimated 1.9 million Covid cases — and 48,000 deaths, according to a city-backed study done by Yale researchers.

One task of public health officials “is to engage with the political process,” Chokshi said. But he wasn’t expecting this much politicization, this much polarization, during the pandemic. “It constrained rational discourse about the very real tradeoffs that we had to confront in all our policy decisions,” he said. No matter what policy the city put forth, about masks or vaccines or testing, people tended to interpret it using a political lens. That made it harder, he said, to do his job, to “save lives and prevent suffering.”

The uproar over masking was challenging, Chokshi said, and looking back he wonders if he took it for granted that people understood the basics of how a respiratory virus works, and of how a mask can slow transmission. He learned that vague talk about “community,” or jargony conversations about the “immune-compromised,” didn’t resonate as much as about talking about someone’s grandma.

Chokshi kept treating patients at least two days a month, at a Bellevue clinic for people experiencing homelessness. It helped him stay focused on how the pandemic was affecting people — and helped him hone his messaging, on vaccines in particular, to his city. It reminded him to listen to people’s fears, not guess at them. He came to understand that people worried about “side effects” weren’t focused on sore arms or a transient fever. They were worried about long-term unknowns, including the shots’ impact on fertility. That in turn led him to tailor messages aimed at easing those concerns.

But that’s easier to do one-on-one in a clinic than it is in a city of more than 8 million. So New York opened an ambitious misinformation surveillance program, watching for what was bubbling up or being amplified on social media, and then trying to counter them. Sometimes that meant amplifying pro-vax messages, for instance about why vaccines are recommended during pregnancy. Sometimes it was a more direct rebuttal of falsehoods — like a flood of inaccurate messages that the shots cause infertility. Sometimes it meant going directly to the tech platforms to try to get misinformation taken down.

After four waves — and uncertainty about when or if a fifth wave might hit and how hard — Chokshi said he understands that public health officials must communicate uncertainty without confusing people, or ending up having them hate you so much that they just tune you out. As New York lifts restrictions, it has used color-coded alert levels to try to help prepare people for what could lie ahead – what they might have to do, what New York government might do.

One thing he’s proud of: stepping up vaccination efforts and requirements early in the Delta wave, so that by the time Omicron showed up, the city had significant protection. His biggest regret: that two years into the pandemic, during Omicron, Black New Yorkers were twice as likely to be hospitalized as white New Yorkers “despite a huge focus and investment and intention on equity in our Covid 19 response.”

“The outcomes are the outcomes. This happened on my watch,” he said. “That’s something that should be very chastening and humbling.”

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NIGHTLY NUMBER

12.5 percent

The proportion of the population who were active smokers in the 2020 National Health Interview Study . That’s down from 14 percent in 2019, and is the lowest recorded rate since at least 1965, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (h/t Katherine Ellen Foley)

PUNCHLINES

WAR HITS THE FUNNY PAGES — Political cartoonists and satirists continue to try and find the lighter edges of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Brooke Minters takes us through the latest in a new Weekend Wrap , including the U.S. providing defensive weapons, Elon Musk’s messages to Putin, and Tucker Carlson’s appearances on Russian TV.

DON’T MISS POLITICO’S INAUGURAL HEALTH CARE SUMMIT ON 3/31: Join POLITICO for a discussion with health care providers, policymakers, federal regulators, patient representatives, and industry leaders to better understand the latest policy and industry solutions in place as we enter year three of the pandemic. Panelists will discuss the latest proposals to overcome long-standing health care challenges in the U.S., such as expanding access to care, affordability, and prescription drug prices. REGISTER HERE.

PARTING WORDS

‘I HAVE A LOT OF OPTIONS OPEN’ — Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo continued his attempt at a comeback tour today, laying out his state budget priorities even though he’s out of office and denouncing what he continues to call a cancel culture that led him to resign in August amid sexual harassment allegations, Deanna Garcia writes.

Cuomo gave an address and answered questions from the crowd for an hour at the Bronx church run by former Sen. Ruben Diaz Sr., a conservative Democrat whom the former governor often sparred with over same-sex marriage and abortion rights.

But with Cuomo looking for opportunities to tout his accomplishments and try to remake his scandal-scarred image, he accepted Diaz’s invite last week, often joking during the appearance about their differences but also their friendship.

And Cuomo continued to stoke speculation about a potential comeback, telling reporters who swarmed him after the speech that he hasn’t ruled out a return to office — or a potential run for governor. “I have a lot of options open, and I’m considering them,” Cuomo told reporters after the event.

If he were to run for office — and he had $16 million in his campaign coffers in January and is already running ads to promote himself and his 11-year record in office — he would have to make a move quickly. Petitions for statewide office are due in early April to get on the June primary ballot.

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The American Innovation and Choice Online Act (S. 2992) and the Open App Markets Act (S. 2710) would prohibit the app stores’ privacy controls that prevent Facebook from tracking you across apps without your express consent. The proposals would open up treasure troves of consumers' most sensitive data, and yet we still lack a strong federal privacy law that sets rules of the road for protecting, processing, and providing transparency about personal information. Congress should ditch these ill-conceived antitrust bills and focus on what consumers and small businesses really want - comprehensive national privacy legislation. The last thing small developers want is for Congress to undermine them so that Facebook can squirm free of software platform-imposed restrictions on its vast data collection enterprise.