POLITICO NIGHTLY: Biden’s 2020 opponents still can’t win … him over

 

BY ELANA SCHOR With help from Michael Grunwald LEFT BEHIND — One of Joe Biden’s opponents in the 2020 Democratic primary recently scored a major victory, getting a signature policy proposal embraced by the president’s team. And it wasn’t Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), who ended his Hail Mary of a White House bid on the night of the New Hampshire primary, has long championed the expanded child tax credit that Biden ended up including in his $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief law. While Sanders’ push for a $15 minimum wage fell to a parliamentarian’s ruling (on top of internal Democratic resistance) and Warren’s wealth tax got nixed outright by the White House, the senator whose presidential campaign was weakest ended up with the greatest success in influencing Biden’s early agenda. Supporters of then-Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) hold up signs outside of the Webster Elementary School during the presidential primary on Feb. 11, 2020, in Manchester, N.H. | Getty Images The fact that Bennet — and not better-known progressive senators with millions of Twitter followers — got such a big policy win tells us a lot about Biden’s relationship with the left. When it comes to cooperating with the GOP, the president has surprised liberals by seeming to veer closer to Sanders’ agenda than to Bennet’s quiet centrism. But Biden’s policies have yet to truly touch the sort of “big, structural change” that Warren built her presidential campaign on and that Sanders staked a claim to long before the Trump years. Medicare for All, once a rallying cry for progressives (and a policy that Biden explicitly ran against), is back to its pipe dream status. Sanders and others are pressing Biden just to back a much smaller-scale expansion of health care in the still-unreleased second half of his infrastructure plan. We’ve told you in Nightly before that progressives have yet to use their political leverage to extract concessions from Democratic leaders the way that conservatives often did during the GOP’s years in power. And to be sure, much of Sanders’ and Warren’s current version of pragmatism stems from a desire to pick their spots rather than try to willfully tank the priorities of a Democratic president. But with the exception of Bennet, not one of Biden’s 2020 challengers has used the platform they built during the campaign to coax the president on board for their most trademark agenda items. No, not even the opponent who became his vice president (hello, former Sen. Kamala Harris) or the one who became his transportation secretary (the Supreme Court reform pitch Pete Buttigieg once made is DOA with most Democrats). Sen. Cory Booker’s (D-N.J.) proposal to create “baby bonds” as a means to close the nation’s yawning racial wealth gap has support from Majority Leader Chuck Schumer but isn’t in the mix during the current infrastructure debate. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) staked her 2020 campaign on fighting sexual misconduct and pushing for paid family leave, and though the latter idea has gained traction under Biden, other lawmakers have largely laid effective claims to its success. Perhaps the biggest lesson, then, is that Biden didn’t just beat his opponents in 2020. He also has quietly sapped some of their influence over his party — with a smile, of course. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas for us at eschor@politico.com and rrayasam@politico.com, or on Twitter at @eschor and @renurayasam.   JOIN AN IMPORTANT CONVERSATION, SUBSCRIBE TO "THE RECAST": Power is shifting in Washington and across the country. More people are demanding a seat at the table, insisting that all politics is personal and not all policy is equitable. “The Recast” is a twice-weekly newsletter that explores the changing power dynamics in Washington and breaks down how race and identity are recasting politics and policy across America. Get fresh insights, scoops and dispatches on this crucial intersection from across the country and hear critical new voices that challenge business as usual. Don't miss out, SUBSCRIBE . Thank you to our sponsor, Intel.     FIRST IN NIGHTLY POLITICS, PA — Democrats sighed with relief when the state of Biden’s blue-collar birthplace slid back into their column in 2020. But his party now fears those slim gains could be easily erased here ahead of a perilous midterm, with the House majority at stake, Congress reporter Sarah Ferris writes. Pennsylvania will host several of the House’s toughest races in 2022, not to mention a critical open-seat Senate contest — none of them a guarantee in a perennial swing state where the party performed worse than expected down the ballot last fall. Those highly competitive House races, from the Pittsburgh suburbs to the Lehigh Valley to Scranton with its post-industrial revival, are drawing fistfuls of cash as Democrats attempt to defy the historical odds of losing seats after winning the White House. The state’s midterm races are shrouded in uncertainty, with its congressional maps set to be redrawn as both parties scramble to predict how voters will act without Donald Trump atop the ticket. Every House Democrat in Pennsylvania, even in the toughest districts, held onto their seat alongside Biden’s victory in the state last fall. But their narrow margins in those down-ballot races tell another story: Pennsylvania’s most endangered House Democrats — Reps. Conor Lamb, Matt Cartwright and Susan Wild — each won by less than 4 percentage points. Meanwhile, one of the party’s top GOP targets, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, won by double digits. The future of Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s gavel may now depend on how the party fares in a cycle when neither Biden nor Trump is on the ballot. AROUND THE NATION DON’T CLOSE THE GRILL JUST YET — Senior writer Michael Grunwald emails Nightly: No, Biden is not confiscating your cheeseburgers. No matter what you’re hearing from Fox News or a Twitter swarm of Republican leaders, including Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Donald Trump Jr., Biden’s proposal to cut U.S. carbon emissions says absolutely nothing about banning beef or rationing meat or forcing you to eat Brussels sprouts on July 4. It’s malarkey. It’s a Whopper. It’s USDA Prime bull. Still, there are lessons to learn from this fake news cycle — about the potent politics of meat, the partisan politics of climate, and the challenges Biden will face in meeting his green goals. First, a quick story. Pollsters often include a “control question” to weed out trollish respondents who might just answer randomly or say yes to everything. Data for Progress founder Sean McElwee says he considered using the tactic of another pollster, who had included a control in surveys asking whether the government should erect statues of Adolf Hitler, but he worried that could get him in trouble. He instead, in a poll conducted last year, chose the next-most-unpopular policy he could think of: whether the government should ban meat. “Banning meat was the most unpopular idea we’ve ever tested,” McElwee said to Nightly. America is a carnivorous nation, dedicated to the proposition that ballpark hotdogs and juicy steaks and fast-food burgers and bacon-wrapped everything are our inalienable rights. That’s why Republicans routinely attack Democratic climate policies as assaults on America’s grilling freedoms; they even ate burgers at their first 2019 news conference blasting the Green New Deal. Yet while Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s office did once release a memo suggesting that the Green New Dealers hoped to phase out beef someday, Biden has never said or implied anything of the sort, or even supported the Green New Deal. The ferocious GOP denunciations of his nonexistent plan to limit Americans to one burger a month are a transparent effort to tie him to a radical caricature of the green agenda. In recent years, the GOP has edged away from full-throated denial of climate science, and quite a few Washington Republicans have supported modest forms of climate action, with some even calling for market-oriented taxes on carbon. But none have expressed support for Biden’s ambitious climate policies, and the right-wing aneurysm over his fictitious meat limits is a reminder that none of them will. Climate is literally red meat for their base, a culture-war issue of identity, and they want to stand with delicious all-American beef against the imaginary hordes of unkempt eco-leftists who would banish it from their barbecues. At the same time, it’s true that meat in general and beef in particular has a heavy carbon footprint, and that eating less would help the climate. The Biden administration has denied it has any intention of adjusting U.S. diets, which may be smart self-preservational politics. But the president’s long-term goal of a carbon-neutral nation probably would require us to stop shoving so many Big Macs into our bellies. The World Resources Institute has estimated that for the world to meet its 2050 goals under the Paris climate agreement, U.S. beef consumption, currently the equivalent of about three burgers a week per American, would have to decline 50 percent over three decades. That’s far from the 90 percent reduction by 2030 that’s all over Fox News, based on a distortion of a single University of Michigan study. And Americans already eat about one-third less beef than we did in 1970, a shift that has significantly reduced emissions even though we’re eating more meat (mostly chicken) overall. So that kind of shift is not unimaginable. But it’s definitely a stretch. A carbon tax could help accelerate a change to American eating habits by making beef more expensive, but Republican support for that kind of policy has largely been purely rhetorical. Government research into plant-based and cell-based alternatives to meat and dairy could also help, and Biden’s $2.5 trillion infrastructure plan does emphasize new climate-oriented research. But diets change only when individuals change, and the administration does not seem eager to launch a national conversation about the hidden costs of meat. If every American switched just one burger to a plant-based burger every week, it could save a land area the size of Massachusetts from deforestation every year. You probably won’t hear that from Biden, though. Some evolutionary biologists believe eating meat is a big part of what made us human. Our ancestors who started hunting animals 2 million years ago developed bigger brains for tracking down prey and smaller stomachs as they began consuming less roughage. We may need to ease up a bit to avoid grilling the planet, but it’s going to take a brave politician to say so. And as long as Americans will believe their political opponents are trying to steal their meat, we’re going to keep hearing a lot of baloney. WHAT'D I MISS? — DOJ opens policing probe over Breonna Taylor’s death: The Justice Department is opening a sweeping probe into policing in Louisville, Ky., over the March 2020 death of Breonna Taylor, who was shot to death by police during a raid at her home, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced today. It’s the second such sweeping probe into a law enforcement agency by the Biden administration in a week. — Biden will share millions of AstraZeneca vaccine doses worldwide: The Biden administration is preparing to send up to 60 million AstraZeneca doses to countries in need over the next several months, once a federal safety review is conducted, according to two senior Biden administration officials. — California recall backers have enough signatures: California election officials confirmed today that recall proponents collected enough valid signatures for a special gubernatorial contest this year, making it all but certain that voters will decide Gov. Gavin Newsom’s fate this fall. — Cuomo offers blanket denial of harassment allegations: New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo fiercely denied allegations of sexual harassment leveled at him over the past several months during his first in-person Q&A with press since late last year. — Biden advances emergency Covid-19 workplace safety rules after weeks of delay: The Biden administration is advancing emergency workplace safety rules to prevent the spread of the coronavirus after weeks of delay and growing pressure from Democrats and safety advocates. The Labor Department sent the safety standards to the Office of Management and Budget for review tonight, according to a DOL spokesperson, the first step before they are released publicly and go into effect. AROUND THE WORLD A SIDE OF CATCH-UP — European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is keen to help Americans with their holiday plans — but she’s playing catch-up with EU governments who are already doing their own thing. A number of EU countries are breaking away from jointly adopted guidelines on pandemic travel, as some capitals rush to reopen for summer tourists. In a sign that the Commission chief is again on the defensive, as she was at the start of the pandemic when some countries unilaterally slammed shut their borders, von der Leyen on Sunday told the New York Times that she hoped to reopen the EU to U.S. visitors who have been inoculated with vaccines approved by the European Medicines Agency. But Croatia and Greece, two EU countries whose economies rely heavily on tourism, have already announced that they are open to U.S. travelers, as has Iceland, which is part of the EU’s border-free Schengen zone. Some U.S. airlines have raced to add flights to those destinations, anticipating a rush of post-pandemic summer travel. MORE THAN WORDS — For more than a century the U.S. had not formally recognized the killing of more than a million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire during World War I as genocide. Over the weekend, that changed. In the latest POLITICO Dispatch, Charlie Mahtesian explains what it means for Armenian Americans. Listen to the latest POLITICO Dispatch podcast   DON'T MISS OUT ON OUR NEW PLAYBOOK DEEP DIVE PODCAST: Washington is full of whispers, colorful characters and little-known back stories that even D.C. insiders might not know. Playbook Deep Dive is a new, weekly podcast that pulls back the curtain on the stories behind the power. From Congress and the White House to bar stools and backrooms, POLITICO's top reporters and Playbook authors bring you the most compelling and confounding stories that explain what’s really going on in Washington. SUBSCRIBE NOW.     NIGHTLY NUMBER 7 The number of states losing a congressional seat in reapportionment, according to today’s announcement from the Census Bureau . California, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and New York lost a seat, while Oregon, Montana, Colorado, North Carolina and Florida gained a seat. Texas gained two. PARTING WORDS DIVING INTO 117 — It shouldn’t have come as a surprise that the 117th Congress would be the most diverse ever. The past six congresses have increasingly bested the last by including more and more non-white lawmakers. And this class is not only racially and ethnically diverse, there are more women and members of the LGBTQ community, too. With about one-quarter of voting members (23 percent) in the House of Representatives and Senate now belonging to a racial or ethnic minority, and with women accounting for slightly more than a quarter of seats, Congress is getting closer to being demographically reflective of the country. POLITICO’s new video interview series Red, Fresh and Blue introduces first-term lawmakers from both sides of the aisle and looks at what makes them tick. This season, Playbook co-author Eugene Daniels sat down with five freshman members for a free-wheeling conversation on everything from the insurrection to voting rights to Bitcoin. Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here.   Follow us on Twitter Renuka Rayasam @renurayasam Chris Suellentrop @suellentrop Tyler Weyant @tweyant Myah Ward @myahward   FOLLOW US

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New York Democratic establishment vs. Justice Democrats

 

The Democratic establishment in New York is very nervous.

As soon as the newest Justice Democrat, Rana Abdelhamid, announced she was running for Congress in New York, the New York Democratic Party started scrambling. The New York Democratic Party Chair issued an unhinged statement about Rana’s run that sounded like a Republican smear campaign. THEN, the Party sent out a fundraising email freaking out about the primary.

The Democratic Party in New York and Washington D.C. are worried about losing power. They’re worried they’ll be challenged to pass progressive priorities by an even larger group of Justice Democrats in Congress. And they should be worried.

We’re ready to elect even more working-class progressives to Congress. Chip in right now to help us elect Rana and a wave of Justice Democrats to upend the status quo in this country.

Andrew Cuomo’s New York Democratic Party is so worried about defending 28-year, corporate-backed incumbent Carolyn Maloney. The political establishment has seen the leftward shift in parts of NYC with the elections of Justice Democrats Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman.

The establishment is so worried about losing more of their allies that they’re resorting to Republican tactics of trying to smear socialism and Defund the Police. Meanwhile, NY’s 12th District has been represented by someone taking millions of $$ from Wall Street, health insurance companies, real estate developers, and other corporate PACs. It’s been represented by someone NOT leading on the progressive change we need. NY-12 is ready for a progressive leader.

We have a lot of work to do to defeat entrenched corporate incumbents and all of their corporate PAC money. We rely entirely on grassroots support to elect progressives like AOC and Rana. Can you make a contribution today to help us elect Rana and defeat another corporate incumbent?

In solidarity,

Justice Democrats

Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.
JusticeDemocrats.com
10629 Hardin Valley Rd, #226, Knoxville, TN 37932

RSN: FOCUS: Bess Levin | Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump Are Already Working on Their Next Grift

 

 

15 April 21

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15 April 21

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RSN AS PAY-PER-VIEW. REALLY? — People write in all the time suggesting/asserting that we should/must go to a subscription based format, basically pay-per-view. That entirely misses the point of what Reader Supported News is all about and why you should support it. RSN is dedicated to the community. Our mission is to effect positive social and political change. That does not happen behind closed doors. This is not proprietary entertainment. To effect meaningful change you must necessarily build a broad coalition. Exclusivity defeats that. It’s a revolution, not a country club. / Marc Ash, Founder Reader Supported News

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FOCUS: Bess Levin | Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump Are Already Working on Their Next Grift

Bess Levin, Vanity Fair
Levin writes: "Oh, sure, Kushner penned an op-ed in which he offered Joe Biden some unsolicited foreign policy advice, and Trump has made herself readily available for the paparazzi to catch her jogging with Kushner, eating ice cream with her kids, and pointing at things with her assistant. But otherwise, it’s been unusually quiet on the Javanka front."

The duo is advising a new group with “the mission of perpetuating former president Trump’s populist policies.”

ince departing Washington for Miami back in January, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner have maintained relatively low profiles. Oh, sure, Kushner penned an op-ed in which he offered Joe Biden some unsolicited foreign policy advice, and Trump has made herself readily available for the paparazzi to catch her jogging with Kushner, eating ice cream with her kids, and pointing at things with her assistant. But otherwise, it’s been unusually quiet on the Javanka front. And that’s probably by design as the couple attempts to rehab their image and shake off the taint of the last four years in general and the January 6 insurrection specifically, not to mention the unfortunate press that comes after forcing one’s Secret Service detail to go to extreme lengths to “find a bathroom.”

Of course, as a couple of people who see themselves returning to the White House in a presidential capacity—they’ve already determined Trump will be the first woman POTUS—the duo are no doubt planning their next moves behind the scenes, and on Tuesday, one of the projects they’ve been working on was revealed.

Per Axios:

A constellation of [Donald] Trump administration stars today will launch the America First Policy Institute, a 35-person nonprofit group with a first-year budget of $20 million and the mission of perpetuating former president Trump’s populist policies…. Two top Trump alumni tell me AFPI is by far the largest pro-Trump outside group, besides Trump’s own Florida–based machine. In the coming months, the group plans to take a large office space near the U.S. Capitol as a symbol that it’ll fight to be a muscular, well-heeled center of the future of conservatism…. Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump are informal advisers.

The president and CEO is Brooke Rollins, a Texan who was head of Trump’s Domestic Policy Council. Rollins, who met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago last week to update him on plans for the group, told me the group wants to be “dreamers and…risk-takers.” The board chair is Linda McMahon, who was a member of Trump’s Cabinet as the administrator of the Small Business Administration, after winning fame as a pro-wrestling entrepreneur. The vice chair is Larry Kudlow, Trump’s economic adviser, a longtime CNBC personality who's now a Fox Business host. AFPI—now based in the Crystal City area of Arlington, Virginia—has been in the planning stages since December. The group will also have offices in Fort Worth, where Rollins remains based, Miami, and New York. Rollins plans to move the group to Washington to be closer to the action.

Rollins told Axios she hopes the group’s budget will double to $40 million in 2022. It’s not clear how AFPI plans to fundraise, though if it‘s anything like how Trump’s campaign did it, it’ll be wildly underhanded and deceitful. Earlier this month, The New York Times reported that over the course of the 2020 election, Team Trump ripped off unwitting supporters for tens of millions of dollars through a simple yet extremely shady scheme in which the default option for donations authorized the campaign to transfer the pledged amount from people’s bank accounts not once, but every single week. Later, the campaign introduced a second prechecked box that doubled a person’s contribution and was known internally as a “money bomb.” In order for people to have noticed this before it was too late, they would have had to wade through “lines of text in bold and capital letters that overwhelmed the opt-out language,” the Times wrote. Few people did, and in the final two and half months of 2020, the Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee, and their shared accounts were forced to issue a staggering 530,000 refunds worth $64.3 million to online donors. Days later, the Times reported that the political arm of the House Republicans had upped the ante re: bilking supporters, with a truly psychotic prechecked box that warned “If you UNCHECK this box, we will have to tell Trump you’re a DEFECTOR.”

In other Trump fundraising ploys, a significant portion of the money the ex-president’s legal defense fund raised—ostensibly for 2020 election suits—went to his Save America super PAC, which he can tap to pay for all kinds of personal expenses. But we’re sure this group will be entirely above board and legit. Ivanka and Jared would never be involved with something that wasn’t.

According to expert called by Derek Chauvin’s defense, George Floyd was resisting arrest by attempting to breathe

Incidentally, Barry Brodd, the Chauvin team’s expert witness, is being paid for his testimony.

And speaking of some of the worst people in the world...

Meet Elvis Harold Reyes. Per The Washington Post:

In early 2018, a woman postponed cancer treatments so she could pay Elvis Harold Reyes more than $4,000 to sort out her immigration status and let her legally stay in Florida. She was just one of hundreds of immigrants who turned to Reyes for driver’s licenses and work permits. He represented himself as a philanthropist lawyer and pastor who had learned immigration law as a former FBI agent and who gave back to the immigrant community through his nonprofit ministry.

Instead, according to prosecutors for the Middle District of Florida, he was leading “a life of frauds and swindles,” that led his victims to financial ruin—and even caused some to be deported. Reyes, 56, was sentenced to more than 20 years in federal prison on Monday after pleading guilty to dozens of charges connected to a sophisticated scheme to con immigrants by filing fraudulent immigration documents and intercepting communications from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to conceal the fraud, all while stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars.

According to the Post, when immigrants would contact Reyes for help, he would promise to obtain driver’s licenses and work permits for them for roughly $5,000. Then, he would ask his victims to sign blank forms and would create fraudulent asylum claims without telling clients what he had told immigration officials. The forms would automatically initiate hearings and interviews, but Reyes listed inaccurate contact information so he could personally receive all the communications. When his clients didn’t show up for the required court dates, removal proceedings were automatically triggered.

According to prosecutors, Reyes filed at least 225 fraudulent forms, stole a minimum of $411,868, and caused at least six of his clients to be deported. “Some client-victims have already lost their life savings and there is no way to estimate the likely thousands of dollars that each victim will have to spend to try to undo the harm that Reyes inflicted on their immigration status,” prosecutors wrote in a memo.

Report: Andrew Cuomo thinks highly of, has bragged about his sexual prowess

So much so that, according to The New York Times, he mentioned it to his staff:

During his first term, Cuomo was leading a strategy session about Occupy Wall Street at the mansion, fearing that such gate-storming populism would imperil his agenda, when he interrupted himself, according to a person present. “If I have one gift,” he told his team—besides, he said, being told he was excellent at oral sex—“it’s being able to see around the corners of politics.”

A spokesman for the governor, who has denied accusations of sexual misconduct from a number of women, called the Times’ account “a disgusting and defamatory lie.” The Times also reported that Cuomo previously compared himself to Sonny Corleone, the violent, impulsive son in The Godfather, which the same spokesperson insisted never happened, writing that Cuomo “never uses Godfather references,” and adding, “This is an anti-Italian, bigoted, false, defamatory statement.”

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POLITICO NIGHTLY: Say it ain’t so, Amtrak Joe

 

BY MICHAEL GRUNWALD Presented by With help from Joanne Kenen TWITTER TO ARCHIVES: NO @REALDONALDTRUMP FOR YOU — Twitter will not allow the National Archives to make former President Donald Trump’s past tweets from his @realDonaldTrump account available on the social media platform, the company told POLITICO today, in the latest display of Silicon Valley’s power over communications channels used by the U.S. government. Read Quint Forgey’s full report. TRAINWRECK — Amtrak’s most prominent passenger is now the most powerful man on earth, and he just unveiled a massive infrastructure plan with a whopping $80 billion for rail. No wonder Amtrak just unveiled a huge expansion plan that would serve 160 new cities. Amtrak But in the words of the president known as Amtrak Joe, the commuter-in-chief whose name graces the Joseph R. Biden Jr. Railroad Station in Wilmington: C’mon, man. With all the chronic problems facing Amtrak’s existing network of slow and sporadic trains that struggle to attract riders and revenues, why should it be a national priority to extend the network to sleepy communities like Christianburg, Va. (population 22,163) or Rockland, Me. (population 7,178)? Is North Carolina really clamoring for service from Asheville to Salisbury? Is there any reason for Amtrak executives to propose a new route from New York City to President Biden’s beloved birthplace of Scranton, Pa., other than the obvious reason? Politics is the reason Amtrak already operates in 46 of the lower 48 states, even though few of them have the population densities that make inter-city rail work so well in much of Asia and Europe. Scattering trains across the country helps bring lawmakers on board, the infrastructure equivalent of the Pentagon distributing contracts for a single jet to hundreds of congressional districts. Amtrak’s new 2035 Vision reveals a desire to keep spreading rail money around like peanut butter — to plausible destinations like Las Vegas and Phoenix but also to head-scratching destinations like Allentown and Cheyenne, which would make Wyoming the 47th state with a station. “There’s always a political tax on the geography of infrastructure investment,” says Adie Tomer, an infrastructure expert at the Brookings Institution. “You just don’t want the tax to get too big.” So before Amtrak fantasizes about new lines to Pueblo, Colo., and Eau Claire, Wis., it ought to focus on upgrading its most important and successful line, the Northeast Corridor between Boston and Washington, D.C. It’s the only Amtrak route that runs an operating profit. It’s the only Amtrak route that runs primarily on tracks that Amtrak owns. And it includes four of Amtrak’s five busiest stations as well as the one named for the president. With top speeds of 150 miles per hour, it’s as close as Amtrak gets to high-speed rail. Its average speeds are less than 90 miles per hour, but if you ignore the frequent delays, spotty Wi-Fi and lousy food, it at least vaguely resembles the train service you might find in Germany or Japan. The Northeast Corridor desperately needs new investment to repair the bottlenecks that keep it so far below its top speeds, especially its decrepit tunnels under the Hudson River. Amtrak already shuttles three times as many passengers between Washington and New York as the airlines do. Upgrading its aging infrastructure could reduce trip times and improve reliability enough to draw even more travelers out of planes or cars. Amtrak seems to recognize the urgency of this problem, noting in its vision statement that the Northeast Corridor has “dozens of bridges, stations and tunnels … in need of immediate replacement or rehabilitation.” But by some estimates, just bringing the Northeast Corridor up to a state of good repair could vacuum up more than half the American Jobs Plan’s $80 billion rail budget. Upgrading the corridor to approach true high-speed rail could vacuum up all of it. Then-Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden boards a campaign train after a stop at Pittsburgh Union Station on Sept. 30, 2020, in Pittsburgh. | Getty Images Amtrak’s plan was not vetted by the White House; in fact, POLITICO Pro’s Tanya Snyder reported today that the Biden Administration does hope to spend half its rail money upgrading the Northeast Corridor, reserving most of the rest for Amtrak lines and other “intercity passenger rail.” The administration has suggested a sensible fix-it-first approach to the nation’s roads and bridges, proposing to finance long-overdue repairs rather than build new roads to nowhere. Transportation experts believe that approach makes even more sense for rail. Americans rarely even contemplate taking a long-distance train unless it’s faster than driving and departs frequently enough that it doesn’t require much trip planning. And while experts do see potential for a few new high-speed routes between big cities — like Los Angeles to Las Vegas, or Houston to Dallas — those wouldn’t necessarily need to involve Amtrak. Amtrak seems to want to have it all — long-overdue repairs, new high-speed lines and also new slow-speed trains to Rockford, Ill., and Reading, Pa. Jeff Davis, a senior fellow at the Eno Center for Transportation think tank, was surprised to see the 2035 Vision included a Minneapolis-Duluth line that former Minnesota congressman Jim Oberstar used to push when he chaired the House Transportation Committee. “You know, Mr. Oberstar passed away — and Duluth is a long way off,” Davis said. The politics of Amtrak is a lot like the politics of the U.S. Postal Service. Politicians attack both as money pits, but they also insist on propping up little-used money-losing train routes and post offices in their states. Congress will ultimately decide the details of the American Jobs Act, and some Democrats might like Amtrak’s plan for dubious new lines in swing states like Georgia, Arizona and Pennsylvania. Yes, but as a certain passenger who logged more than 2 million miles on the Northeast Corridor likes to say: “Show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value.” The value of Amtrak isn’t to extend passenger rail everywhere. It’s to provide efficient and convenient passenger rail in some places that improves American mobility while reducing carbon emissions from cars and planes. Amtrak had a record 32 million riders in 2019, but that crashed to 17 million in 2020 because of the pandemic. Spending money to upgrade the lines Americans actually use could help reverse that trend. Spending money to build a new line from Oklahoma City to Newton, Kan., would be typical Washington malarkey. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas for us at mgrunwald@politico.com and rrayasam@politico.com, or on Twitter at @mikegrunwald and @renurayasam. A message from UnitedHealth Group: Greater diversity among health care professionals can improve patient care, leading to better health outcomes. That’s why UnitedHealth Group is investing in a 21st century health workforce that ensures all communities have access to high-quality care. Learn more.   FIRST IN NIGHTLY FOOD FIGHT — Seven months into the school year, millions of low-income families are still waiting for billions of dollars in federal food aid that was supposed to compensate them for school meals that were missed during remote learning, Helena Bottemiller Evich writes. The Biden administration recently accelerated the rollout, but the program remains mired in bureaucracy. Nearly half of states still haven’t sent any of the money out, even as child hunger rates remain near record highs. Congress first created the $2 billion-a-month program, called Pandemic-EBT, or P-EBT, last spring during the early days of the pandemic when schools were shuttered to give households a debit card to buy groceries. Lawmakers extended it for the whole school year in September as families continued to grapple with school disruption. The slow rollout shows the pitfalls of standing up new bureaucratic channels during an emergency. It also could be exacerbating alarmingly high rates of child hunger. One in six households with children is reporting they do not have enough to eat, a rate much higher than even in the depths of the Great Recession. Researchers found the first round of the aid that went out last year alleviated hunger for millions of children. It’s a sharp contrast to other forms of federal aid that have made their way to consumers and businesses rapidly during the crisis. Last year, the federal government was able to begin the Paycheck Protection Program and get hundreds of billions in loans out to businesses in a matter of weeks. Stimulus checks, which can be directly deposited into accounts, have also gone out quickly to millions.   JOIN AN IMPORTANT CONVERSATION, SUBSCRIBE TO "THE RECAST" NEWSLETTER: Power dynamics are shifting in Washington and across the country, and more people are demanding a seat at the table, insisting that all politics is personal and not all policy is equitable. "The Recast" is our twice-weekly newsletter that breaks down how race and identity are recasting politics, policy and power in America. Get fresh insights, scoops and dispatches on this crucial intersection from across the country and hear from important new voices that challenge business as usual. Don't miss out, SUBSCRIBE . Thank you to our sponsor, Intel.     WHAT'D I MISS? — Report: Accuser says Cuomo groomed her, urged her to stay silent: The female staff member who alleges New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo groped her inside the governor’s mansion in November told the Albany Times Union that he had groomed her over time and later urged her to stay silent about their interactions. — Trump claims Gaetz ‘never asked me for a pardon’: In a two-sentence statement today , Trump stressed that Gaetz “has totally denied the accusations against him.” Trump’s brief statement broke silence from Trump and his allies on the allegations against Gaetz, one of the former president’s strongest supporters in Congress. — Biden to unveil long-awaited executive actions on guns: The announcement comes nearly three months into Biden’s term in office, a delay that had frustrated activists who wanted the president to fulfill a campaign pledge to take action on gun violence on his first day in office. That frustration grew after a slate of mass shootings in Colorado, Georgia and California.       FROM THE HEALTH DESK VACCINATION AND LONG COVID — You’ve probably heard, and in fact Nightly’s Myah Ward has told you , about the intriguing signs that Covid vaccines are relieving symptoms in some, though not all, long Covid sufferers. Whether that’s a permanent fix, or just a respite, and why it helps some but not others isn’t yet clear. But will vaccination help prevent new cases of long Covid? POLITICO’s health care editor at large Joanne Kenen began asking scientists about that after she heard some older people on a Zoom call — at risk because of their age — say they didn’t see any point to getting the vaccine because they could still get a mild or asymptomatic case of Covid and then get the chronic, long form. (Joanne bit her tongue, but let’s get back on task.) Not many people are studying this aspect of vaccination apparently — or the data is still so thin at this early stage that they weren’t willing to be quoted yet. The CDC findings that the Pfizer and Moderna shots were 90 percent effective in preventing infection, including mild or asymptomatic infection, are good news. People who don’t get infected with the virus, even asymptomatically, won’t get long Covid. But we still have a lot to learn. “We just don’t know,” is the response Joanne kept hearing. Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale, is the exception. Her research is preliminary, but she is fairly optimistic that vaccinations will lessen the risk. Iwasaki outlined three possible mechanisms that might be causing long Covid in a Medium post. One is “a persistent viral reservoir” in the patient’s tissue. Two is a “viral ghost,” fragments of the virus’s genetic material or proteins that stick around after the virus is cleared but can still stimulate the immune system. Three is an autoimmune response. “I suspect that people with long Covid have varying degrees of all three mechanisms taking place,” Iwasaki wrote. “Thus, long Covid consists of multiple types of diseases.” Vaccination, she told Joanne later in an email, should “significantly reduce the risk of getting long Covid.” “The vaccine will induce robust antibodies and T cell responses to the virus,” Iwasaki said. “Even if you were to then get infected, the symptoms will be mild and short. To establish long covid, as I discussed in that piece, there needs to be either establishment of viral reservoir, or autoimmunity. Preexisting antibodies and T cells will quickly control the virus, preventing persistent viral reservoir. Preexisting antibodies and T cells will quickly control the virus, preventing persistent viral reservoir. Preexisting immunity will also prevent significant replication and spread of the virus, which is likely required to induce autoimmune responses.” In short — we don’t know yet. But there’s good reason to hope. ASK THE AUDIENCE Nightly asks you: As people begin to plan travel for the spring and summer, tell us what podcasts we should listen to when we finally hit the road? Use the form to give us your answer, and we’ll use select responses in Friday’s edition. THE GLOBAL FIGHT BREXIT, BUT FOR ASTRAZENECA — The perplexing headlines regarding the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine continued today in Europe, where the EU and U.K. made dueling announcements about the vaccine’s use. — EU: The European Medicines Agency today backed continued use of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine in all adults, in a statement confirming a “possible link” to “very rare” cases of blood clotting. The statement, following a fresh review by the regulator’s safety committee, said the overall benefits of the vaccine in protecting against the coronavirus still outweigh the risks. The vaccine remains approved in the EU for anyone over the age of 18. — U.K.: The U.K. concluded that adults under 30 should be offered an alternative to the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, after reviewing cases of rare blood clots. Jonathan Van-Tam, deputy chief medical officer for England described the move as “a course correction” for the U.K. vaccination program, meaning that younger adults will be offered alternative vaccines instead.   STEP INSIDE THE WEST WING: It actually is infrastructure week ... and it will be for a while. What is the administration’s plan to get its top legislative priority through Congress? Add Transition Playbook to your daily reads for details you won't find anywhere else about the state of play of the administration's top priorities and biggest challenges. Track the people, policies and power centers of the Biden administration. Subscribe today.     NIGHTLY NUMBER $85 million The amount of money Trump’s political action committee, Save America PAC, currently has in the bank, according to a Trump adviser. The former president is reigniting his small-dollar fundraising operation for the first time since leaving the White House, part of his ramp-up to the 2022 midterm elections and a potential 2024 comeback bid. PARTING WORDS A GIULIANI IN ALBANY? Andrew Giuliani, the son of Trump lawyer and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, said in an interview today that he is “seriously considering” a run for governor in 2022 and spoke with Trump earlier this week about his political ambitions, Gabby Orr and Meridith McGraw write. “I did speak with President Trump on Monday and it was a great conversation,” Giuliani said. “We talked about New York politics and went through the numbers on this and I explained to him where I think I would be able to make inroads that no other potential candidate would be able to.” A blessing from Trump would go a long way for any Republican candidate running in a GOP primary. That may be particularly true in New York, where the former president built his real estate empire and made his name before decamping to Florida in his post-presidency. But for Giuliani, a former White House official and frequent golf partner of the 45th president, getting Trump’s backing is no slam dunk. The former president is said to be partial to Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.), a longtime GOP congressman and friend of the Trump family, who has been floated as a possible candidate himself. A message from UnitedHealth Group: United Health Foundation’s Diverse Scholars Initiative is building a 21st century health workforce that ensures all communities have access to high-quality care. We’re proud to have supported nearly 3,000 scholars who will become part of the health workforce and increase access to care, address health disparities and improve health outcomes. Learn more.   Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here.   Follow us on Twitter Renuka Rayasam @renurayasam Chris Suellentrop @suellentrop Tyler Weyant @tweyant Myah Ward @myahward   FOLLOW US

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