Biden faces a Chicago mayoral race pickle

CHICAGO — Chicagoans picked two mayoral candidates on the opposite ends of the Democratic Party’s divide over policing, and it’s complicating President Joe Biden’s political calculus about whether to pick a favorite.

The president wants to fund the police — and he’s meddled in local affairs to elevate candidates and causes that help him project that Democrats care about tackling crime. He backed Karen Bass for mayor in Los Angeles over fellow Democrat, Rick Caruso — well after she supported hiring more cops. Biden also aligned himself with New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ tougher-on-crime approach and leaned on him as a Democratic messenger for that cause.

But in the nation’s third-largest city, Biden doesn’t appear likely to endorse at all. And national heavy-weights are taking more time to jump in, if at all, as they try to weigh how it will play with Biden’s reelection plans.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) supported Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot in last week’s election but hasn’t announced anything about the April 4 runoff. Illinois Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker and Sen. Dick Durbin haven’t weighed in on the race at all.

Some in the party say neither option is particularly compelling.

“Most Democrats look at the two choices and in an extreme sense they are choices between a Republican and a socialist,” said Pete Giangreco, a Democratic strategist and veteran of Illinois politics. ”There’s not a Joe Biden mainstream Democrat running for mayor of Chicago.”

The race to oust Lightfoot focused almost entirely on the city’s crime. And out of a field of nine candidates, Chicagoans last week picked Paul Vallas, a police union-backed former Chicago Public Schools executive, and Brandon Johnson, a progressive Cook County commissioner who has praised the “defund the police” movement.

Vallas has also been dogged by his past statements opposing abortion rights and his basic credentials of declaring himself a Democrat while some voters are turned off by the support Johnson is getting from the Chicago Teachers Union.

“Paul Vallas will say he’s a lifelong Democrat and Brandon Johnson will say the same thing. But that’s not what their records would show,” Giangreco added, comparing the dilemma confronting politicians to one facing many Chicago voters who don’t yet identify with either option. “There’s nobody who meets their politics who made the runoff.”

Neither Duckworth nor Durbin’s teams would say who or even if their bosses will endorse. Democratic Rep. Mike Quigley, who represents a portion of Chicago, said he’s “not sure” who he’ll support. And Pritzker, like the others, wants to see the race further play out.

For Biden, Chicago’s mayoral contest could influence his own political future, beyond setting a message about the party’s larger approach to policing and big-city crime. Chicago is a finalist for the 2024 Democratic National Convention. Both Vallas and Johnson have said they would support the convention in Chicago. But as Biden nears a decision to run for reelection, he’ll have to factor how their records might prod divisions in the party and how easily Republicans can weaponize the politics.

There was a chance the president might’ve endorsed in the mayor’s race in Chicago, where Biden’s blessing would have been a bigger coup than in Los Angeles given it’s home to former President Barack Obama. The president’s advisers had been in contact with Lightfoot’s campaign as well as others leading up to last week’s election and her team specifically asked for his endorsement, according to a person familiar with the conversations.

Vallas has yet to face the kind of sustained attacks on his ideology that Bass’ opponent in the race — wealthy developer Caruso, a former longtime Republican — did.

And even the appearance of Biden wading in could help.

Johnson traveled to Selma, Ala., over the weekend for an event commemorating “Bloody Sunday.” Johnson didn’t secure an endorsement, but he had a “brief discussion,” according to a person close to the campaign. Johnson was introduced to him by Rep. Jonathan Jackson (D-Ill.).

A few national figures are stepping up. Reps. Jim Clyburn, who’s fundraising for Johnson, and Jan Schakowsky are expected to endorse Johnson, the person knowledgeable about the campaign said.

As the candidates prepare for their first debate Wednesday, Biden himself is taking steps to appear stronger on crime.

He has already called for tens of billions of dollars to bolster law enforcement and crime prevention and is expected to seek more in his budget blueprint this week. Last week, Biden said he would not veto a GOP-backed bill to repeal changes local Washington, D.C., lawmakers approved to lower certain criminal penalties.

Congressional Republicans need to “commit here and now to joining with President Biden — not obstructing him — in fighting the rising crime rate he inherited,” Biden spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement.

“They should forcefully condemn their colleagues who are calling for defunding the FBI and the ATF,” Bates said. “And they need to get with the program on gun crime by finally dropping their opposition to an assault weapons ban. ... This isn’t a game, it’s life and death.”

In Chicago, Vallas’ push for stronger policing resonated with voters even as he took criticism in the deep-blue city for his ties to conservative-leaning outfits like Chicago’s Fraternal Order of Police. He wants to see hundreds more police officers on the street, a view Lightfoot and other candidates swung to ahead of the first round of the election.

“Defund is an issue,” said Ron Holmes, a political strategist in Illinois who has worked on several statewide campaigns. “But palling around with certain members of the FOP is an issue too, and therein lies the problem: They are both going to paint each other as extremists. So for those of us that didn’t vote for either during the first round, it’s critical that we have a substantive campaign to see who will govern on behalf of the majority of Chicagoans.”

Johnson, who is Black, has said his policy platform does not support defunding the police and instead calls for training and promoting 200 detectives. But his previous comments — including that “defund” isn’t just “a slogan. It’s an actual real political goal” — has spooked some national figures.

“They’re going to have to articulate and direct their message,” Pritzker said of Johnson and Vallas last week. “What is their primary message? And [is it] going to be, you know, focused on what are they going to do about education? What are they going to do about health care? What are they going to do about public safety? What are they going to do about creating jobs? Those are all important things that I don’t think have been fully fleshed out by either one of those candidates.”

Outside of the debate about public safety, Vallas’ team has sought to highlight past support he’s earned from Democratic stalwart organizations, including groups that advocate for abortion rights and same-sex marriage.

Aides to Vallas, who is white, argue that his close associations and prior work with well-known Chicago Democrats will diffuse concerns about his political affiliation. And endorsements like the one he got last week from former Secretary of State Jesse White — who is Black, and long considered the most popular Democrat in Illinois — will do more to help him win than touting national figures, Biden included.

“What we are focused on is the local support that’s growing everyday and it's pretty diverse across the city,” said Joe Trippi, a Democratic strategist and adviser to Vallas.

Trippi added, the “defund” charges against Johnson should repel Democrats from closing ranks around him. “You do have someone who has talked about defunding and I just don’t know why any national people would get into that debate,” he said.

Jackson, who has also endorsed Johnson, acknowledged that Johnson needed to find a good answer to accusations from the right.

“He’ll have to make it clear, the spirit of it versus the actual words,” Jackson said in an interview. “Everyone knows we need safer streets. The spirit of it is to put more money into academic programs. In the short-term, we need to make sure we’re solving crimes. He stands for that.”

There are issues that extend beyond crime and personal loyalty, and race is playing out in the contest a well. And now, Vallas and Johnson are both trying to attract voters and endorsements from the establishment Black wards that supported Lightfoot.

Illinois Reps. Danny Davis and Delia Ramirez also have endorsed Johnson, but Trippi argued that the former secretary of state's backing is “far more important than any national figure.”

Dems want to cut Fox off after lawsuit revelations

The thunderclap of stories showing Fox News’ role in pushing 2020 election fraud conspiracies and aiding Donald Trump’s campaign has intensified calls among Democrats to black out the network.

The revelations, made public as part of a $1.6 billion lawsuit brought against Fox by Dominion Voting Systems, showed that some network hosts and executives endorsed lies about Trump's loss, hosted conspiracy theorists whom they thought were unhinged, and overtly prioritized the company’s profit over truth. A related deposition of the media empire’s chair, Rupert Murdoch, revealed that he shared private intel about Joe Biden’s campaign TV ads and provided debate strategy with top Trump advisers.

For years, Democrats have been engaged in a debate over whether the party should shun the cable news giant or grudgingly use its airwaves to run counterprogramming. But in the midst of the latest saga, a newer type of reaction has emerged: that they should sever all ties, including any money spent advertising on the network.

“There is nothing in those documents to show they operate like a real news organization,” said Doug Gordon, a Democratic strategist. “If you are running a campaign in 2024, how do you in good faith hand your ads to Fox when you know they handed them over to Republicans? If there are any general election debates, how do you let Fox be a moderator?”

There is no indication, at this juncture, that major Democratic entities are ready to halt their ad buys on Fox News, let alone its many affiliates. But that is partially because few Democratic campaigns or causes are currently spending ad money. In the interim, the Dominion lawsuit revelations have led to louder calls for the party to make a firm break from any involvement with the cable channel, whom they view as functionally a campaign arm for Republicans. Democrats spanning the ideological spectrum have even started calling on the White House Correspondents’ Association — the group of news reporters advocating for press access — to boot Fox News reporters from the briefing room.

“They are arguably the most important entity of the American right and the Republican Party,” said Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg, suggesting that The Associated Press include in its stylebook that Fox News is not a news organization. “There needs to be a serious conversation now about whether Fox can continue to be a member of the White House Correspondents Association. Keeping them there seems not to be OK.”

Even with its reputation for airing reliably conservative content, Fox News remains a major player in Democratic politics. More self-identified Democrats consistently watch the network than any other cable channel, according to Nielsen MRI Fusion. And a faction of Democrats sees value in both reaching those voters and trying to persuade the independents and Republican-leaning ones who tune into the channel.

In the 2020 campaign cycle, the network hosted a presidential debate, accepted some $7.4 million in advertising from Joe Biden’s presidential campaign to Fox News, according to the tracking firm AdImpact, and held town halls with Democratic primary contenders. While Biden administration officials have selectively chosen to appear on Fox News for interviews, the president’s aides have also sought out opportunities to use the network as a cudgel against Republican lawmakers — whether on economic issues or matters of public safety.

White House officials, for their part, describe their relationship with Fox employees who cover them closely as combative but mostly cordial. But they also view the Dominion lawsuit revelations as a cover of sorts to treat Fox News with a bit more frostiness than other media outlets. Biden aides have privately bristled at news reporters who just weeks ago piled on criticism of the president for side stepping a customary Super Bowl interview with Fox.

“Regardless of any new revelations of media bias and hypocrisy during the 2020 campaign, Joe Biden won the most votes of any candidate in American history because of his vision for the middle class, his message, and his record,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement. “And anyone who is surprised by such revelations hasn’t been paying attention to — or watching — Fox News lately.”

Bates and others have been trolling Fox of late, including sending a statement to the network for inclusion in a story questioning whether viewers and readers should trust Fox News’ reporting on Biden, citing executives’ reported kid-glove treatment of Trump. The White House statement to Fox was reported by Semafor.

Fox, in turn, accused the White House of resorting to “junior varsity campaign style stunts.”

Other Democrats want the president and his party to react more aggressively. On the House floor, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) teed off on censorship legislation, arguing “it would still be strange to say that Fox News was censoring itself" when it knowingly amplified 2020 election lies. MoveOn, the liberal advocacy outfit, urged cable service chief executives to make Fox News optional. And the Progressive Change Campaign Committee called for the White House Correspondents’ Association to remove Fox from the press pool.

Congress’ top two Democrats also weighed in, writing to Murdoch to urge his network to stop spreading false election narratives and “admit on the air that they were wrong to engage in such negligent behavior.”

Fox News has resisted covering the Dominion lawsuit. But in a statement, a Fox representative said, “Dominion’s lawsuit has always been more about what will generate headlines than what can withstand legal and factual scrutiny, as illustrated by them now being forced to slash their fanciful damages demand by more than half a billion dollars after their own expert debunked its implausible claims.”

“Their summary judgment motion took an extreme, unsupported view of defamation law that would prevent journalists from basic reporting and their efforts to publicly smear FOX for covering and commenting on allegations by a sitting President of the United States should be recognized for what it is: a blatant violation of the First Amendment.”

A Dominion spokesperson said in a statement: “The evidence will show that Dominion was a valuable, rapidly growing business that was executing on its plan to expand prior to the time that Fox began endorsing baseless lies about Dominion voting machines. Following Fox’s defamatory statements, Dominion’s business suffered enormously.”

A spokesperson for Fox News said it not only tops competitors combined in the ratings, “but has the most politically diverse audience with more Democrats and Independents watching than either CNN and MSNBC. This is another predictable attack by left-wing groups desperate for attention and relevancy.”

Intermittent lashings of Fox News from the left are not a new occurrence. Democratic politicians from the White House to statehouses have long weighed whether trying to reach the network’s coveted audience is worth the cost of appearing to legitimize the network. Those who advocate for engagement say it’s folly to imagine the channel will have less impact if the party ignores it. Those who call for a boycott argue it makes no sense to push the party’s agenda on daytime airwaves only to find it demonized at night. And increasingly, they think that whatever editorial line existed between its dayside hosts and its bombastic prime time names has become blurrier and blurrier.

As the debate starts anew, several top strategists and communications aides said they believe the Dominion revelations will spur legitimate news organizations to stop treating Fox as one of their own.

“Democrats reached a verdict on Fox News many years ago. The only open question is does the rest of the political media ecosystem treat them as legitimate or not?” asked Eric Schultz, a deputy press secretary under former President Barack Obama. “The latest revelations mostly call into question everybody else’s long-standing defense of the network.”

But even those, like Schultz, who argue that Fox News’ reputation should be permanently tainted by the Dominion suit are reluctant to call for Democrats to completely shut out the network.

“It would be like unilaterally not engaging on Facebook — in many ways a toxic platform but where millions of people get their information,” he said.

James Carville, the veteran Democratic strategist, said there was no reason to approach the network differently now because of the Dominion lawsuit revelations.

“They get viewers only because they tell viewers what they want to hear or see,” he said. “They want to be brainwashed. They show up at the front door of the cleaners. They leave their brain there — ‘wash and fold and I’ll pick it up.’”

Instead, Carville offered that there was a utility to having the network as a foil, noting that Biden’s White House hasn’t suffered from having Fox News in the briefing room, led by network scion Peter Doocy.

“Sites on the left love when they smack Peter Doocy back,” he said. “And usually, for more than half the people who see it, it’s Fox that looks stupid.”

Biden may not run — and top Dems are quietly preparing

Joe Biden’s closest advisers have spent months preparing for him to formally announce his reelection campaign. But with the president still not ready to make the plunge, a sense of doubt is creeping into conversations around 2024: What if he decides not to?

Biden’s past decisions around seeking the presidency have been protracted, painstaking affairs. This time, he has slipped past his most ambitious timetable, as previously outlined by advisers, to launch in February. Now they are coalescing around April.

But even that target is less than definitive. People in the president’s orbit say there is no hard deadline or formal process in place for arriving at a launch date decision. According to four people familiar with the president’s thinking, a final call has been pushed aside as real-world events intervene. His cloak-and-dagger trip to Kyiv over the holiday weekend took meticulous planning and the positive reaction to it was seen internally as providing him with more runway to turn back to domestic politics.

While the belief among nearly everyone in Biden’s orbit is that he’ll ultimately give the all-clear, his indecision has resulted in an awkward deep-freeze across the party — in which some potential presidential aspirants and scores of major donors are strategizing and even developing a Plan B while trying to remain respectful and publicly supportive of the 80-year-old president.

Democratic Govs. JB Pritzker of Illinois, Gavin Newsom of California and Phil Murphy of New Jersey have taken steps that could be seen as aimed at keeping the door cracked if Biden bows out — though with enough ambiguity to give them plausible deniability. Senators like Bernie Sanders and Amy Klobuchar have been making similar moves.

People directly in touch with the president described him as a kind of Hamlet on Delaware’s Christina River, warily biding his time as he ponders the particulars of his final campaign. In interviews, these people relayed an impression that the conventional wisdom in Washington, D.C. — that there’s simply no way he passes on 2024 — has crystallized too hard, too soon.

“An inertia has set in,” one Biden confidant said. “It’s not that he won’t run, and the assumption is that he will. But nothing is decided. And it won’t be decided until it is.”

'Doubts and problems if he waits'

The stasis wasn’t always so pronounced. After former President Donald Trump’s launch in November, there was a desire among Biden advisers to begin charting their own kickoff plans in earnest. That urgency no longer is evident. They feel no threat of a credible primary challenge, a dynamic owed to Democrats’ better-than-expected midterms and a new early state presidential nominating calendar, handpicked by Biden. Holding off on signing campaign paperwork also allows Biden to avoid having to report a less-than-robust fundraising total for a first quarter that’s almost over.

As the limbo continues, Biden’s advisers have been taking steps to staff a campaign and align with a top super PAC. Future Forward, which has been airing TV ads in support of the president’s agenda, would likely be Biden’s primary super PAC, though other groups would have a share in the campaign’s portfolio, a person familiar with the plans said.

But to the surprise of some Biden allies, they say he has talked only sparingly about a possible campaign, three people familiar with the conversations said. His daily focus remains the job itself. Except for the occasional phone call with an adviser to review polling, he spends little time discussing the election. While First Lady Jill Biden signaled long ago she was on board with another run, some in the president’s orbit now wonder if the impending investigations into Hunter Biden could cause the president to second-guess a bid. Others believe it will not.

A decision from Biden to forego another run would amount to a political earthquake not seen among Democrats in more than a half century, when Lyndon B. Johnson paired his partial halting of the U.S. bombing of Vietnam with his announcement to step aside, citing deepening “division in the American house now.”

It would unleash an avalanche of attention on his vice president, Kamala Harris, whose uneven performances have raised doubts among fellow Democrats about her ability to win — either the primary, the general election, or both. And it would dislodge the logjam Biden himself created in 2020 when he dispatched with the sprawling field of Democratic contenders, a field that included Harris.

“Obviously, it creates doubts and problems if he waits and waits and waits,” said Democratic strategist Mark Longabaugh, who continues to believe Biden will run — and that he won’t put off a decision for too long. “But if he were to somehow not declare ‘til June or something, I think some people would be stomping around.”

“There would be a lot of negative conversation … among Democratic elites, and I just think that would force them to ultimately have to make a decision,” Longabaugh added. “I just don’t think he can dance around until sometime in the summer.”

A campaign-in-waiting takes shape

Biden and much of his inner circle still insists he plans to run, with the only caveat being a catastrophic health event that renders him unable. Anita Dunn, Jen O'Malley Dillon and Mike Donilon have effectively overseen the campaign-in-waiting, with Donilon considering shifting over to a campaign proper while the others manage operations from the White House.

Other top advisers would also be heavily involved, including Steve Ricchetti and Bruce Reed, and former chief of staff Ron Klain may serve as an outside adviser for a 2024 bid.

“The president has publicly told the country that he intends to run and has not made a final decision,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement. “As you heard in the State of the Union, after the best midterm results for a new Democratic president in 60 years, his focus is on ‘finishing the job’ by delivering more results for American families and ensuring that our economy works from the bottom-up and the middle-out — not the top down.”

For now, most of the senior team sees no need to rush, and are identifying April as the soonest he would go. That was the same month Biden unveiled his primary campaign in 2019, and the month that Barack Obama restarted his campaign engines in 2011. Bill Clinton declared in April of the year before he was reelected, and George W. Bush in May, Bates added.

In addition to Biden’s unchallenged hold on the party, they note a belief that some of his legislative wins — like the infrastructure and CHIPS bills — will yield dividends in the months closer to Election Day and the need to pace the president. They point to the year ahead of heavy foreign travel, including his historic stops in Ukraine and Poland to rally European allies against Russia.

“We’re not going to have a campaign until we have to,” a Biden adviser said. “He’s the president. Why does he need to dive into an election early?”

But the delay in an announcement has allowed nervous chatter to seep in — or, in the case of Biden confidants, dribble out from his inner circle. It’s forced them to consider whether Biden’s waiting could leave the party in a difficult position should he opt against another run.

Some people around the president note he’s always been, as he likes to say, somebody who respects fate. And they pointed to the seemingly unguarded answer he gave recently to Telemundo, when asked what was stopping him from announcing his decision on a second term.

“I’m just not ready to make it,” Biden said. He continued to insist in the same interview that polls showing Democrats eager to move on from him are erroneous.

Famously indecisive

Biden is famously indecisive, a habit exacerbated by decades in the über-deliberative Senate. He publicly took his time mulling a decision not to run in 2016 and to launch his run in 2020. He missed two self-imposed deadlines before choosing Harris as a running-mate.

In the White House, he pushed back the timeline to withdraw from Afghanistan; skipped over his initial benchmark to vaccinate 70 percent of American adults against Covid-19 with at least one shot; and earlier in his presidency let lapse deadlines on climate, commissions, mask standards and promised sanctions on Russia for poisoning opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

His decision-making process is complete with extensive research, competing viewpoints and plenty of time to think. This time around, according to those close to him, he has made rounds of calls to longtime friends, all with an unspoken sense that he is running again — though without a firm commitment being made.

Meanwhile, aspiring Democrats have moved to keep their options open. They’ve done so with enough ambiguity to give them cover — actions that could be interpreted as politicians simply running for reelection to a separate office, selling books, or building their profiles for a presidential campaign further out in the future.

Among them is Pritzker, who was just elected to a second term. The Illinois Democrat — like everyone else — has offered his full support to Biden. But insiders note that senior advisers from his last two campaigns are still standing by just in case. Key among them is Quentin Fulks, who last year served as campaign manager to Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock. Pritzker’s last two campaign managers, Mike Ollen, and chief of staff Anne Caprara, remain ready to deploy, along with others.

“It’s the Boy Scout motto. ‘Be prepared,’” Democratic strategist David Axelrod said, referring to any appearance by Pritzker or other Democrats to be putting their ducks in a row for a potential presidential campaign.

Newsom’s circle of top advisers and close aides have a similar understanding should he need to call on them — after easily winning reelection last year, surviving a recall attempt the year before and building one of the largest digital operations in Democratic politics. Murphy, who’s chairing the Democratic Governors Association, is in the same boat as the others, having vowed to back Biden while indicating an interest in a campaign should a lane open for him.

Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who plans to seek reelection to her Senate seat in 2024, has been keeping up relations with donors far outside of Minnesota, holding a fundraiser in Philadelphia late last month. At the event, Klobuchar was asked if she planned on running for president in 2024, according to a person in the room. “She said she expects the president to run for reelection,” the person said.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) also is running for reelection, a dynamic that allows her to pledge support for Biden, bank her own cash, communicate with party leaders on her own behalf — and change direction should she need to. One source close to the senator, however, said another presidential bid is highly unlikely regardless of what Biden decides.

Sanders, who ran for the White House in 2020 and 2016, released a new book, “It's OK to Be Angry About Capitalism,” this month. He is making media appearances and going on tour with stops in New York, Washington, D.C., Virginia, Arizona and California, the delegate-rich, Super Tuesday state that he won in his second presidential campaign.

Sanders, who himself is 81, has said that he would not challenge Biden in a primary. But he had not ruled out a run in 2024 in the event there was an open presidential primary. Sanders’ former campaign co-chair, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif), told POLITICO that Sanders “is preparing to run if Biden doesn’t,” adding he’d support Sanders in such a scenario.

Khanna has made his own moves as well, retaining consultants in early-primary states and drawing contrasts with other ambitious Democrats such as former presidential candidate and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, another 2024 possibility. Khanna has said he will back Biden if he runs again and that he would not run for president next year if Biden declined to do so. But he has kept his options open to a campaign in 2028, or years beyond.

“Without being overly aggressive, everyone’s still keeping the motor running just in case and they’re not being bashful about it,” said one Democratic donor, describing a call with the staff of a candidate who ran against Biden in 2020. “On the phone, everyone is very clear and has the same sentence up front: ‘If Joe Biden is running, no one will work harder than me, but if he’s not, for whatever reason, we just want to make sure we’re prepared for the good of the party.”

The specter of Trump

What’s driving the talk isn’t just Biden and his age, the donor added, but the possibility that Trump could return. “Most donors view the alternative as an existential threat to the country,” said the donor. “So is some of this impolite? Maybe. But no one seems to be taking issue with it.”

As White House officials, advisers and operatives await word from Biden for 2024, many have received little clarity about where they may fit into an eventual campaign. Several decisions related to staffing remain up in the air — a dynamic some attribute to aides trying to best determine where all the moving pieces would fit together.

Meanwhile, a plan to work in tandem with a constellation of Democratic super PACs is already starting to take shape.

Dunn met in recent weeks with donors and officials at American Bridge, another major Democratic super PAC, one person familiar said. Top Biden aides have ties to both Future Forward and Priorities USA, two other super PACs.

While Future Forward is likely to play the biggest role outside the possible campaign, aides stressed the others would be highly active, too. And it’s likely a campaign would designate an operative from outside its ranks itself to serve as an unofficial go-between to better coordinate with the outside groups.

Several of the candidates for the campaign manager position represent a next generation of Democratic talent: Jennifer Ridder, Julie Chávez Rodriguez, Sam Cornale, Emma Brown and Preston Elliott. Christie Roberts, executive director of the Democratic Senate campaign arm and another sought-after operative, appears likely to remain in that job for 2024 following the party expanding its narrow Senate majority.

Addisu Demissie, a longtime operative who ran Sen. Cory Booker’s 2020 campaign and worked closely with Bidenworld to produce the DNC, has been approached and courted for top posts on a campaign or super PAC. And Fulks, coming off the Warnock victory, also is viewed as a possible player on Biden’s campaign.

Yet there are concerns about how much autonomy the role would provide given Biden’s tight-knit circle of old hands that’s famously suspicious of outsiders.

There’s another complicating factor to sort out on staffing, according to the people familiar with the situation: Biden's personal desire for a prominent campaign surrogate to blanket the cable airwaves.

One person who could fit the bill of a more public-facing (less operationally involved) campaign manager is Kate Bedingfield, the Biden insider who just left her post as the White House communications director. Bedingfield’s name has come up more over the last week in conversations among Biden aides, the two people familiar with the talks said.

The campaign pieces are being lined up. And several top financiers say they have been in touch with the president’s team to plan events. The president had a physical examination last week, in which his doctor gave him a nearly clean bill of health.

All that is missing is the official go-ahead.

Biden’s Super Bowl interview appears off — for good

America will have to settle for the Puppy Bowl.

Joe Biden’s planned interview ahead of the Super Bowl appears scuttled after Fox Corp. aggressively volleyed with the White House over an agreement to have the president sit down with Fox Soul, an obscure streaming service operated by a subsidiary.

Fox News originally appeared in line to land an interview with Biden out of a tradition between presidents and the network hosting the Super Bowl.

But brinkmanship between the president’s team and the media giant stretched for days and then hours heading into the weekend of the big game. It started Friday morning when the White House announced that an interview with Fox Soul — which came as a surprise to many — had been scrapped for good.

“The President was looking forward to an interview with Fox Soul to discuss the Super Bowl, the State of the Union, and critical issues impacting the everyday lives of Black Americans,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a tweet. “We’ve been informed that Fox Corp. has asked for the interview to be cancelled.”

Hours later, Fox Corp. issued a statement citing “some initial confusion” the night before, but concluding that Fox Soul still looked forward to hosting the interview.

But by Friday evening — a point by which presidents and TV networks traditionally record Super Bowl interviews ahead of the Sunday program — a White House official informed POLITICO that nothing had changed since providing the earlier comments.

“FOX has since put out a statement indicating the interview was rescheduled, which is inaccurate,” the White House official said. While the person did not elaborate, Biden was not expected to conduct a Super Bowl interview of any kind.

The saga comes after initial talks fell apart between the White House and Fox News, the company’s highly-rated network. Earlier this week, a Fox anchor said the White House had ghosted the network. In the days that followed, Fox representatives confirmed that productive discussions were effectively over.

White House officials declined to provide specifics on why their outreach to Fox stopped. Fox’s Bret Baier was viewed as the most likely anchor from the news and conservative opinion network to land the president. Biden sat down in previous years with news anchors from NBC and CBS.

The decision not to have Biden tangle with one of Fox News’ top anchors means the White House was willing to sacrifice a massive pre-game audience on Sunday to which the president could share his message. But it also suggests the White House was unwilling to reward a network that houses prime-time hosts who mercilessly assail the administration and Democrats.

Instead, Biden’s team worked on landing an agreement with Fox Soul, a streaming outfit part of Fox’s TV stations division and geared toward a Black audience. White House officials had arranged for the interview to be conducted by Fox Sports host Mike Hill and actress Vivica A. Fox. Fox Soul general manager James DuBose had planned to produce the interview. All three flew Friday from Los Angeles to Washington for the interview.

The White House seeking out Fox Soul was seen as a way to have the president avoid appearing with a Fox News personality while still going through with an interview. Biden has yet to sit for an interview with Fox News, making a different calculation than his former boss, Barack Obama. While the Obama White House is remembered for icing Fox News journalists — leading other networks to offer their solidarity — Obama did sit for a pair of pre-game interviews with former Fox host Bill O’Reilly.

Jeffrey Katzenberg’s escape to L.A.

Early last year, the Hollywood mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg sat for lunch with Rick Caruso, a billionaire mall tycoon who was preparing his run for Los Angeles mayor.

Katzenberg told Caruso he understood why he was running. He made clear his support for Congresswoman Karen Bass in the race.

And then came the warning: If Caruso took the high road, Katzenberg said that he would, too. But, “If you take the low road,” a person familiar with the conversation recounted, “I’m going lower.”

The threat was a quintessential demonstration of political power from Katzenberg — one of the country’s premier Democratic donors, and for decades a kingmaker for aspiring politicians. But it also illustrates the nuance with which the former Walt Disney Studios chairman and DreamWorks co-founder was now using his influence.

In interviews with POLITICO, Katzenberg’s friends, associates and operatives involved in Los Angeles’ elections described a deeply personal reorientation of his priorities. It’s one that saw him veer sharply to provincial interests, culminating in him boosting Bass and bludgeoning Caruso in their marquee race to run America’s second-largest city.

Motivated by rising homelessness in the L.A. region and across California, Katzenberg has expressed to people that he views the crisis in humanitarian terms, favoring a compassionate approach as opposed to one dominated by law enforcement. He has shown specific interest in local government addressing peoples’ immediate medical and mental health needs. Last year, L.A. County had 70,000 people experiencing homelessness, including 40,000 living on the streets of L.A. The region, which already had some of the most densely populated neighborhoods, outpaced New York and now has the nation’s largest unsheltered population.

Before dining with Caruso, Katzenberg’s team had spent months mapping out what the mayoral race might look like; He was among the first people to approach Bass to run for mayor — well before she had seriously considered it. He established and, along with Hollywood allies and labor unions, funded an outside committee, Communities United for Bass, to back her. He leaned on the party’s biggest figures, including former President Barack Obama, to throw their support behind her bid at a critical juncture.

Bass, in turn, immediately delivered on Katzenberg’s highest priority. Her first act as mayor was to declare a state of emergency on homelessness. She’s since helped secure tens of millions of federal dollars to fight homelessness.

“She is doing everything he hoped she would do,” a political operative in close touch with Katzenberg told POLITICO. “She’s come out of the box swinging: fearless, determined and focused on solving homelessness — the seemingly impossible challenge that was the inciting piece of his involvement in this.”

Katzenberg declined to comment.

His support for Bass and other local candidates has prompted a question among the political class in L.A. — and as far away as Washington, D.C.: Is he positioning himself to become a shadow mayor of the city?

Katzenberg’s confidantes insist he has no interest in meddling in day-to-day affairs at City Hall. Indeed, he is already in talks to again help raise money for President Joe Biden’s anticipated 2024 reelection campaign. But Katzenberg has made clear to Bass and those in her orbit that he’s there to help her, whether by pitching in on homelessness initiatives or placing calls to state and federal officials to clear bureaucratic red tape.

Katzenberg is now more invested in shaping his region’s public safety. In addition to the mayor’s race, he spent heavily in the election for L.A. County sheriff, bolstering retired Long Beach Police Chief Robert Luna over the embattled incumbent Alex Villanueva, whom Katzenberg viewed as a scoundrel that cruelly weaponized vulnerable homeless people for his political gain. Luna won easily.

Now, there’s hope among people in town that Katzenberg’s big splash into local affairs could have a longer tail. For all its blinding stars, Los Angeles relies heavily on a small constellation of benefactors that impact civic life there, in contrast to cities like San Francisco, New York and Seattle. It’s not uncommon for L.A. transplants — even longtime residents of the Southland — to be more deeply involved in raising money for charities and political causes in their hometowns than to be engaged in the adopted city that nurtured their careers.

"There are so many people who make their fortunes here but don’t turn around and invest their time, treasure and energy in L.A.,” said Sarah Dusseault, who co-chaired the county’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Homelessness. Dusseault helped Bass develop her strategy on the issue and has known Katzenberg for years. She called him “one of the gems.”

For most of his life in politics, however, that was outside L.A.

Katzenberg personally poured more than $21 million into national political candidates and causes and helped raise exponentially more since 2007. He was a major contributor to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and held big-ticket Hollywood events for Biden ahead of 2020.

Yet before last year, Katzenberg had contributed only about $250,000 to political candidates and causes in L.A.. That changed in 2022, when his own donations to back candidates in the county approached $3 million. Others in his donor network, including his wife, Marilyn, Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw, Ellen Bronfman Hauptman and Andrew Hauptman and Katie McGrath and J.J. Abrams, channeled hundreds of thousands more into local races last year.

The money had an unmistakable impact. While many donors waited until the fall runoff, Katzenberg identified Luna as the strongest challenger to Villanueva, and put $500,000 behind him in the primary. “A lot of people were outraged by the previous sheriff,” Luna strategist Jeff Millman said. “Katzenberg actually did something about it.”

He later came in with another $500,000 closer to the election. His funds alone accounted for roughly a quarter of all money to groups supporting Luna or campaigning against Villanueva.

Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who endorsed and helped advise Bass’ campaign, noted that while Katzenberg did have some interest in past city races, “there’s no question given the challenges of homelessness and crime facing our town, that I saw him redouble his efforts.”

Katzenberg’s full imprint on the mayor’s race wouldn’t be felt until closer to the contest’s end. Several donors contended that it went beyond the checks he personally wrote. As one donor-adviser put it: “knowing that [Katzenberg] was behind Karen brought some people in and more importantly it kept others from getting in for Rick.”

United Talent Agency Vice Chair Jay Sures, an avid supporter of Caruso and close friend of Katzenberg, said he and Katzenberg had numerous conversations along the way — many disagreements about the candidates and whose policies would be better.

“But I give him credit because he put everything into getting her elected. And it is undeniable he was the single-most influential reason she got elected,” Sures said. “There is almost nobody like him that does it: When he gets behind somebody, he calls 1,000 people a day and makes it personal with them.”

Katzenberg’s interest in homelessness as an issue was driven by factors beyond the macro trends in L.A. Confidantes say he had a personal encounter with people struggling and unhoused that left him deeply affected. The details of that encounter have been fiercely guarded, so much so that even some of his friends say they are in the dark, save to know that something happened roughly three years ago to alter his perspective. Another person Katzenberg spoke with said he mentioned it when he explained he had to try to do something.

Katzenberg spent the subsequent months cold-calling and meeting with local leaders and researching the issue. In one of his early calls, an official on the other end said Katzenberg acknowledged that he didn’t have a solution, let alone a firm understanding of the depth and complexity of the issue.

“This was exactly the kind of issue and the kind of moment you would expect him to get involved in,” said Bob Shrum, the veteran Democratic strategist who first met Katzenberg when they worked for former New York City Mayor John Lindsay.

Over time, Katzenberg’s interests grew. He weighed in on proposed anti-camping rules. In other conversations, Katzenberg talked about a community program he and his wife were building out in partnership with UCLA, which provides medical care and this year is expected to reach 35,000 people living on the streets.

He remained frustrated that much of the combined focus of governments and nonprofits was still on treating homelessness rather than solving it. And he came to understand that the region’s complex rules for governing — between the mayor, City Council and county Board of Supervisors — don’t confer L.A. mayors much authority to act on their own. It convinced Katzenberg that the city needed someone who could bring various government factions together.

And he reasoned that Bass had played such a role having worked as a physician’s assistant and served as a community organizer; the state Assembly speaker opposite then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and later in Washington as chair of the Congressional Black Caucus.

There were other factors at play. Katzenberg thought it was time for a Black woman to lead a city that was majority Latino and Black. And he believed Bass could form a sisterhood with the powerful county board overseeing healthcare spending and whose members all are women.

While he favored Bass, he came to view Caruso — who saturated the race with more than $100 million in spending — as her opposite: a successful businessman with strong attributes — just none that suited him to be mayor. He didn’t think Caruso’s plans to house tens of thousands of people in short order and hire scores more police officers were feasible. Katzenberg privately chafed at Caruso’s politics, his philanthropy and suggested to people Caruso’s campaign was driven by ego, a command-and-control leader in a job he viewed as decidedly not that.

As Caruso’s supporters, led by the allied police union, openly targeted Bass, criticizing her missed votes in Congress and accusing her of being soft on crime with a more than $2.7 million TV ad campaign last May, Katzenberg responded. His group ran ads portraying Caruso (a former longtime registered Republican) as a “phony,” a past bankroller of GOP campaigns and an “anti-choice Republican.”

Katzenberg and his Communities United for Bass committee continued to chip away, working to ensure that every media report on the mayor’s race included mentions of Caruso’s past party affiliation and history around donations and abortion.

“That was the best attack on him. His problem was he never answered it in full until it was too late,” a committee aide said. “The race [became] Democrat versus Republican — and people wanted the Democrat. They wanted someone who shared their values. And they didn’t think Caruso shared their values.”

Caruso declined to comment.

Still, into the fall stretch, Bass and her camp remained nervous as public and private polls showed a tight race. One Bass strategist said the understanding in her campaign was that Katzenberg would raise and spend far more money. “For too long there, we were basically naked on TV,” the strategist said.

“That said, they were our only air cover. And every mortar that landed was necessary.”

People close to Katzenberg pushed back on the notion that he was going to keep up with Caruso’s self-funding.

“His intention was not to try to seek parity on spending,” Dusseault said. “It was to be strategic to provide counter messaging and have Karen’s back when she was attacked.”

Others around him argued that dollar figures were, ultimately, not the only tool he felt he had at his disposal. While Bass’ campaign and Democratic allies had been in touch with Obama’s team about an endorsement, Katzenberg reached out and made it clear to the former president’s orbit that there was nothing more important to him in 2022. He also dialed up other party luminaries and their advisers, though he was rebuffed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has a relationship with Caruso and opted not to endorse in the mayor’s race.

Katzenberg was displeased. He’d helped Newsom by donating $500,000 to fight off a recall attempt in 2021 and contributed another $32,400 to him that year. But he also wasn’t too worried about Bass, either. His own internal polling, according to a person familiar with it, never showed her lead over Caruso falling under 6 percentage points.

But with leadership over the issue of homelessness potentially going to Caruso, he wanted Bass to run through the tape, Katzenberg told associates at the time. And he wanted concerned Democrats and other L.A. voters to feel mounting anxiety down the fall stretch, too.

As another person in touch with him put it, “It felt existential.”

Jessica Piper contributed reporting.

Biden, the balloon, and the age of anti-China one-upmanship

As a Chinese spy balloon drifted across the U.S., Joe Biden kept quiet for four agonizing days while the rest of Washington rushed to weigh in on the diplomatic crisis.

But on Saturday, after a fighter jet finally downed the orb over the Atlantic Ocean, Biden sought to make one thing clear: He was itching to pull the trigger.

“I ordered the Pentagon to shoot it down on Wednesday, as soon as possible,” Biden said, delaying only after others raised safety concerns. “I told them to shoot it down.”

The single missile fired by an F-22 Raptor brought a swift end to an international incident that captured the country’s attention, and underscored the growing bipartisan consensus that when it comes to politics, it pays to be tough on China.

Republicans spent days assailing the White House over the balloon, filling the vacuum created by its deliberations with accusations that the administration had gone soft on a geopolitical foe. Democrats, alarmed by China’s brazenness and under pressure to stake out their own hardline stance, had begun to join in on the calls for aggressive action.

And when Biden got the go-ahead on Saturday, he dispatched the balloon in an overwhelming show of force, sending several fighter jets after the spy craft as it floated out to sea.

The White House has since gone out of its way to emphasize that Biden had planned a violent end to the incursion from the beginning. Senior officials said the president ordered it shot down as early as Tuesday, shortly after learning it had entered American airspace. They noted that Secretary of State Antony Blinken canceled a scheduled trip to China. But even supportive voices wanted more.

Brett Bruen, director of global engagement under former President Barack Obama, said Biden should recall his ambassador to China Nicholas Burns for consultations and throw out the head of Chinese intelligence at their embassy in Washington. He added that he believes individual sanctions need to be imposed on those involved.

“I would recommend Biden get Xi [Jinping] on the line and read him the riot act,” Bruen said. “He should threaten that the next time an incident of this nature takes place we will release sensitive secrets that Beijing's leaders would rather not be exposed."

The hostile one-upmanship aimed at China over the intelligence-gathering balloon served as just the latest example that lawmakers across the political spectrum see a clear benefit in taking a hawkish stance toward the global power. Even as China remains a crucial trading and economic partner, Republicans and an increasing number of Democrats are positioning the country as a key political concern — and thus a domestic and geopolitical battering ram.

Over just the last couple of years, lawmakers have blamed Beijing for worsening the spread of Covid and exacerbating supply chain shortages. Senior officials in the Biden administration and on Capitol Hill have raised national security concerns tied to Chinese apps like TikTok, and hardened their rhetoric over the independence of Taiwan.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) made her final international pilgrimage as speaker to the island nation and current Speaker Kevin McCarthy has signaled that he too will visit there as a sign of solidarity against China.

The president himself has swept up competition with China into his broader rhetoric about an epic clash unfolding globally between democracies and autocracies.

And while the administration waited days before shooting down the balloon, it notably chose to publicize its existence and bring it down rather than keep the matter out of public view. A senior Defense Department official noted on Saturday that several similar balloons had been spotted during Donald Trump’s administration with no public outcry.

Chinese officials condemned Biden’s reaction to the surveillance balloon as “excessive,” and asserted that they retain the right to “respond further.” But domestically, Biden faced pushback for not moving more aggressively.

GOP leaders, including Trump, fanned fears over the potential intelligence risks while taking political shots at Biden.

"Biden is letting China walk all over us," tweeted former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who is on the verge announcing her 2024 presidential bid. "It's time to make America strong again."

Former Trump Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is also eyeing a presidential run, tweeted a video portraying him aiming his own gun at the balloon and boasting that he "took many shots at the CCP" during the Trump era.

Several Democrats took a similarly hard line against the violation of U.S. airspace, demanding decisive action even as most defended the White House for its prudence in waiting to down the balloon so that the falling debris did not hurt people on the ground.

"We have a real problem with China on a number of issues, from their human rights violations to their violations of international business law, to even the challenges we've had with them on overt spying," Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) said Sunday on CBS' "Face the Nation." "I'm grateful that the military took decisive action when they did and how they did, but we obviously have issues here."

Biden, meanwhile, has appeared to relish the opportunity to talk tough on China, casting himself as a fighter for America’s global dominance and bulwark against Chinese efforts to expand its sphere of influence.

“As I point out to our friends in the [European Union], don’t get angry we’re going to be [at] the beginning of the supply chain,” he said during a fundraiser on Friday, referring to foreign criticism over his economic policies. “Because that’s the only guarantee you’ll have access.”

That confrontational attitude represents a significant departure from Democrats’ stance toward China just a few decades ago. During Bill Clinton’s administration, the party’s predominant thread of concern about China was centered on humanitarian grounds.

The White House itself sought to pursue a policy of “constructive engagement” with the Chinese government, eager to see the economic spoils of a more open relationship. They were cheered on by Wall Street Republicans and self-described foreign policy realists who felt that engagement with the communist nation was a strategically smarter way to defang it.

But the relationship grew strained as China’s ambitions widened throughout the Obama and Trump eras. And lawmakers and voters became more critical about jobs being lost and national security being compromised.

Bruen said taking a harder line on China has become broadly popular because the world has witnessed so many egregious acts over the last several years — whether it’s genocide against the Uyghurs, the violent repression of peaceful protesters in Hong Kong or the lack of transparency on Covid.

“But unlike our response to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s aggression, we need to act faster and put in place more deterrents, whether from launching balloons or invasions,” Bruen told POLITICO. “This moment should refocus leaders not only on strong statements and symbolic acts, but to develop a real strategy for countering Chinese aggression.”

Biden himself has yet to weigh in on how the incident will shape his own approach toward China. But hours before shooting the balloon down, the president couldn’t help but let slip his enthusiasm for the chance to send a strong message to his critics at home and rivals in Beijing.

“We’re gonna take care of it,” he said.

FBI searches ​​Biden's beach home in Delaware

Federal investigators conducted a search Wednesday of President Joe Biden’s vacation home in Rehoboth, Del., as part of their ongoing probe into his handling of classified documents, officials said.

Bob Bauer, Biden’s personal lawyer, said in a statement that the president’s team did not seek to provide advance notice of the operation. But he confirmed the search by the Department of Justice was taking place after it was reported by CBS News, which, along with other television outlets stationed outside of the president’s home, observed black vehicles arriving mid-morning.

Federal agents searched the home from 8:30 am to noon, Bauer said.

“No documents with classified markings were found,” he said in a statement. But, as with a similar search at Biden’s other Delaware home, “the DOJ took for further review some materials and handwritten notes that appear to relate to his time as Vice President.”

The search is part of a special counsel investigation into Biden’s handling of the classified materials found in November at his office in Washington and in December and January at his home in Wilmington. In late January, a 13-hour search of Biden’s home recovered additional classified items.

"We have been pretty transparent from the beginning with providing information as it occurs throughout this process," Ian Sams, a spokesperson for the White House counsel's office, told reporters outside the White House on Wednesday afternoon. "We have released probably thousands of words of statements from the president's personal attorney and the White House counsel’s office about the process that has been undertaken."

He added that Biden has been fully cooperative with investigators. "He believes in giving them the space to conduct a thorough review, and to conduct that review efficiently. That’s why he's moving quickly to give them the access to his home in Wilmington, to give them access to his home in Rehoboth so they can do a full search, so they are able to get access to the information to move ahead in their review.”

The drip of new information has widened the scope of the probe into Biden and raised fresh frustration among some Democrats over why the searches weren’t conducted sooner and more thoroughly. Late last month, however, former Vice President Mike Pence revealed a search of his home in Indiana also had resulted in the finding of some classified information.

There is also a separate special counsel investigation into former President Donald’s storage of a far larger cache of classified documents at his private Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.

The Bidens bought the beach house after his time as vice president, and his family visits the property occasionally on weekends. Biden’s lawyers said previously that they had searched the Rehoboth home and turned up no classified materials.

The latest search comes as the special counsel in the investigation, Robert Hur, formally begins his work on the case.

DOJ search of Biden's Delaware home results in more seized documents

Officials from the Justice Department recovered additional classified items Friday after searching the Wilmington, Del., home of President Joe Biden for nearly 13 hours, the president’s personal lawyer said Saturday.

The items recovered include six batches of records that contained an unspecified number of documents with classified markings.

The search began around 9:45 a.m. and concluded at 10:30 p.m. and covered all working, living and storage spaces in the home, said Bob Bauer, Biden’s personal attorney. Representatives of both Biden’s personal legal team and the White House Counsel’s Office were present for the search.

Bauer said the paperwork was from Biden’s time in the Senate and as vice president. Justice Department officials also took handwritten notes from the vice presidential years, he said.

“DOJ had full access to the president’s home, including personally handwritten notes, files, papers, binders, memorabilia, to-do lists, schedules, and reminders going back decades,” he said.

Bauer added that Justice Department officials requested that the search not be made public in advance, in accordance with its standard procedures, and that the president’s legal team agreed to cooperate.

“The President’s lawyers and White House Counsel’s Office will continue to cooperate with DOJ and the Special Counsel to help ensure this process is conducted swiftly and efficiently,” Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president, said in a separate statement Saturday evening.

Joseph Fitzpatrick, a spokesperson for the U.S attorney originally tapped to oversee matters connected to the records, said “the FBI executed a planned, consensual search of the President’s residence in Wilmington, Delaware."

In an interview on MSNBC Saturday evening, Ian Sams, a spokesperson for the White House counsel's office, confirmed the search was “consensual and cooperative” and said no warrant was involved.

Sams said Biden told aides to “offer up DOJ access to the house,” leading to Friday's search. “He [has] proactively offered access to these homes to the Department of Justice to conduct a thorough search,” he said.

Sams said he could not speak “to the underlying content” of any of the documents taken from Biden’s home.

The search was part of a special counsel investigation into the president’s handling of classified materials found in November at his office in Washington and in December and January at his home in Wilmington. The sporadic revelations about the documents over the past several weeks have helped keep the story in the headlines.

And that steady drip of additional information that has widened the scope of the probe into Biden’s handling of classified material from his time as vice president has raised fresh frustration among some Democrats.

Specifically, they’ve questioned why the search wasn’t conducted sooner and more thoroughly, especially after Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, became enmeshed in a similar inquiry about documents kept at his private Mar-a-Lago club and residence in Florida. The White House’s communications strategy around the matter has also come under harsh scrutiny.

The president and first lady Jill Biden were not present for the search. Both are spending the weekend at their home in Rehoboth Beach, Del.

Asked Friday whether their travel was related to the probe into classified material, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said she would “continue to be prudent and consistent and respect the Department of Justice process.”

“As it relates to his travel, as you know, he often travels to Delaware on the weekends. I just don't have anything else to share," Jean-Pierre said.

Attorney General Merrick Garland recently appointed former federal prosecutor Robert Hur as a special counsel to investigate any potential wrongdoing surrounding the Biden documents. Garland previously assigned John Lausch, the U.S. Attorney for Chicago, to lead the probe.

Jonathan Lemire, Eugene Daniels and Kyle Cheney contributed to this report.

Biden world giddy at MTG, Gosar, and Boebert being placed on Oversight

House Republicans’ installation of some of their most incendiary conservatives on the Oversight Committee is sparking an unexpected feeling inside the White House: unbridled glee.

The panel tasked with probing Biden policies and actions, as well as the president’s own family, will be stocked with some of the chamber’s biggest firebrands and die-hard Trumpists — including Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) and Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) — ideal figureheads for a White House eager to deride the opposition party as unhinged.

No administration wants to feel the heat of congressional investigations, and Biden’s team is no different. But privately, the president’s aides sent texts to one another with digital high fives and likened their apparent luck to drawing an inside straight. One White House ally called it a “political gift.”

The jubilation was tempered, somewhat, by Democrats on the Hill who expressed more apprehension about the posting.

“The English language runs out of adjectives to describe the debasement, cynical debasement of the whole process these appointments represent,” Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), a senior Oversight panel member, said in an interview. “And it is, I think, a huge black mark on Kevin McCarthy.”

Another longtime Oversight panel member, Rep. Robin Kelly (D-Ill.), warned that the GOP appointments were “frightening,” adding: “As someone who has been on this committee the entire time I’ve been in Congress, I am very concerned.”

But underlying Democrats' worry was the same sense of schadenfreude about the committee’s GOP makeup that they showed as now-Speaker Kevin McCarthy struggled through 15 ballots to win his post. With House GOP leaders set to go on offense over Biden world’s handling of classified documents, the Oversight seats handed to some of their biggest ongoing headaches gave Biden world a clear confidence boost.

“[W]ith these members joining the Oversight Committee,” White House oversight spokesperson Ian Sams said in a statement, “it appears that House Republicans may be setting the stage for divorced-from-reality political stunts, instead of engaging in bipartisan work on behalf of the American people.”

The Oversight panel is where many of the most explosive political battles engulfing an opposition White House are waged. They are tasked with probing an administration, exposing potential malfeasance — and may well end up setting the campaign agenda for the rest of the party to follow.

They can knock a White House off its bearings: from the Obama administration’s Solyndra headaches to the Trump administration’s ongoing struggle over the former president’s financial documents.

GOP lawmakers insist they have ample fodder to do the same with Biden, pointing to the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan to Biden family-linked business entanglements and name-trading involving the president’s son Hunter.

Indeed, Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) offered no hint of worry about his members, telling POLITICO that he is “excited about” the roster. “I think it’s full of quality members, who are passionate about rooting out waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government.”

Yet Greene and Gosar, booted by Democrats from previous committee assignments because of violent rhetoric aimed at colleagues, were also among the lawmakers most closely associated with Donald Trump’s challenges to the 2020 election. Both also spoke at a conference hosted by white nationalist Nick Fuentes’ America First PAC.

Another incoming Oversight panel member, House Freedom Caucus Chair Scott Perry (R-Pa.), was a central figure in Trump’s push to contest his loss to Biden. Perry's phone was seized by the FBI last year, and he refused to comply with a subpoena from the Jan. 6 select committee.

Democrats haven’t yet named their members to the top House investigative committees, but they’re already confident the Republican-led panels will self-destruct.

“The Republicans have brought the QAnon caucus to the Oversight Committee, and you can expect them to run with the most ludicrous conspiracy theories one can ever imagine,” said Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.). “And I think our job is very simple, which is to make sure that we ground our work and any of these investigations in reality.”

Goldman, who played a prominent role in the House’s first impeachment inquiry against Trump, predicted Republicans would pay a political price for empowering the fringe of their conference: “I don't think that any moderate Republican is going to win reelection because of an investigation into Hunter Biden's laptop.”

A spokesperson for Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the top Democrat on the panel, declined to comment.

One Biden administration official involved in planning for possible investigations cautioned that the members were “extreme and crazy, yes, and easy to dunk on in the media,” but said “they’re also dangerous.”

“We are clear eyed about the kind of scorched earth tactics and mud fighting they want to engage in,” the official said. “We are going to follow the law and the rules of the game, and we won’t shy away from calling them out for flagrantly assaulting norms, order and facts themselves.”

Both the Oversight and Judiciary committees have long contained some of the House’s fiercest partisans on both sides of the aisle, many of whom hail from safe congressional districts. The committees have sweeping investigative authority but often take on polarizing topics that members from swing districts tend to eschew.

Notably, McCarthy, under pressure from other conference conservatives, established a new investigative body — a “select subcommittee” housed within the Judiciary Committee that’s expected to gobble up some of the most politically potent future GOP probes.

This new panel — ostensibly to investigate “weaponization” of the government will mostly be guided by Judiciary chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a Freedom Caucus co-founder who has become a trusted McCarthy ally. Democrats are privately betting that the select subcommittee’s broad scope — the coronavirus, the Justice Department, the Department of Education and the FBI are all among the GOP’s stated areas of interest — will ultimately spark “blowback” in a conference where some moderates still feel burned by a lackluster midterm election.

And while Jordan is respected within the GOP conference, sitting at the center of every Trump-related congressional probe since 2017, he brings his own political baggage; like Perry, he refused to comply with a Jan. 6 committee subpoena. One House Democratic aide, speaking candidly on condition of anonymity, said the Ohio Republican’s leadership of the panel would only help Democratic efforts to “discredit” it.

Meanwhile, some GOP members privately acknowledged the pitfalls of putting controversy-baiting members on investigative panels. But they said Jordan and Comer are respected enough within the conference to keep wayward members in line. And they also remarked on the entertainment value of the committees, noting that it’d be interesting to see members of the progressive “Squad” — who are expected to rejoin the Oversight Committee — go toe-to-toe with members like Boebert and Greene.

Some GOP members also brushed off Democrats’ cries of “extremism” by noting that they sounded similar alarms during House GOP-led probes in 2018 into the FBI’s launch of the investigation into links between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia. While many of rank-and-file Republicans’ most extreme claims fell apart, the party still felt vindicated by an inspector general’s scathing report that found the FBI misused its surveillance powers to spy on a former Trump campaign adviser.

Still, the presence of Greene, Gosar, Boebert and Perry, on the oversight panel has already allowed the White House and its allies to go on the attack.

David Brock, a Democratic activist behind the Facts First group that is helping lead a counteroffensive to the House GOP investigations, called the Oversight appointments “the clear culmination of the corrupt bargain” McCarthy struck with the conservative members that he went on to describe as “the core group behind every conspiracy theory and lie.”

“This collective group has the credibility of a sentient My Pillow commercial,” Brock said.

Eric Schultz, a top White House spokesman under former President Barack Obama, said they found over the course of the administration that the most effective and challenging Oversight members to deal with “were the ones who take their jobs seriously and don’t look for attention.”

“The more unserious people performing congressional oversight the easier this is going to be for the [Biden] administration. And in that regard I think the White House hit the jackpot. This is a crowd that will make [former House Oversight chair] Darrell Issa look intellectual.”

Olivia Beavers and Kyle Cheney contributed to this report.