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The United States and Ukraine have largely been in lockstep since President Joe Biden’s administration pledged support for “as long as it takes” in resisting Moscow’s relentless invasion.
But more than a year into the war, there are growing differences behind the scenes between Washington and Kyiv on war aims, and potential flashpoints loom on how, and when, the conflict will end.
“The administration doesn't have a clear policy objective and a clear goal. Is it to drag this thing out, which is precisely what Vladimir Putin wants?” said Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “Is it to just give them enough to survive and not to win? I don't see a policy for victory right now, and if we don't have that, then what are we doing?”
Publicly, there has been little separation between Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, an alliance on full display last month when the American president made his covert, dramatic visit to Kyiv. But based on conversations with 10 officials, lawmakers and experts, new points of tension are emerging: The sabotage of a natural gas pipeline on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean; the brutal, draining defense of a strategically unimportant Ukrainian city; and a plan to fight for a region where Russian forces have been entrenched for nearly a decade.
Senior administration officials maintain that unity between Washington and Kyiv is tight. But the fractures that have appeared are making it harder to credibly claim there's little daylight between the U.S. and Ukraine as sunbeams streak through the cracks.
For nine months, Russia has laid siege to Bakhmut, though capturing the southeastern Ukrainian city would do little to alter the trajectory of the war. It has become the focal point of the fight in recent weeks, with troops and prisoners from the mercenary Wagner Group leading the combat against Ukrainian forces. Both sides have suffered heavy losses and reduced the city to smoldering ruins.
Ukraine has dug in, refusing to abandon the ruined city even at tremendous cost.
“Each day of the city’s defense allows us to gain time to prepare reserves and prepare for future offensive operations," said Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, the commander of Ukraine's ground forces. "At the same time, in the battles for this fortress, the enemy loses the most prepared and combat-capable part of his army — Wagner’s assault troops.”
Multiple administration officials have begun worrying that Ukraine is expending so much manpower and ammunition in Bakhmut that it could sap their ability to mount a major counteroffensive in the spring.
“I certainly don't want to discount the tremendous work that the Ukrainians' soldiers and leaders have put into defending Bakhmut — but I think it's more of a symbolic value than it is a strategic and operational value,” said Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
Kyiv, for now, has ignored Washington’s input.
Meanwhile, an assessment by U.S. intelligence suggested that a “pro-Ukraine group” was responsible for the destruction of the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines last fall, shedding light on a great mystery. The new intelligence, first reported by The New York Times, was short on details but appeared to knock down a theory that Moscow was responsible for sabotaging the pipelines that delivered Russian gas to Europe.
Intelligence analysts do not believe Zelenskyy or his aides were involved in the sabotage, but the Biden administration has signaled to Kyiv — much like it did when a car bomb in Moscow killed the daughter of a prominent Russian nationalist last year — that certain acts of violence outside of Ukraine’s borders will not be tolerated.
There has also been, at times, frustration about Washington’s delivery of weapons to Ukraine. The United States has, by far, sent the most weapons and equipment to the front, but Kyiv has always looked ahead for the next set of supplies. Though most in the administration have been understanding about Kyiv’s desperation to defend itself, there have been grumblings about the constant requests and, at times, Zelenskyy not showing appropriate gratitude, according to two White House officials not authorized to speak publicly about private conversations.
“I do think the administration is split, the National Security Council split” on what weapons to send to Ukraine, said McCaul, who’s in constant touch with senior Biden officials. “I talk to a lot of top military brass and they are, in large part, supportive of giving them the ATACMS.”
The administration hasn’t provided those long-range missiles because there are few to spare in America’s own arsenal. There’s also fear that Ukraine might strike faraway Russian targets, potentially escalating the war.
A recent report that the Pentagon was blocking the Biden administration from sharing evidence of possible Russian war crimes with the International Criminal Court also put another dent in the unity narrative. White House officials were dismayed when the New York Times story came out, fearful it would damage the moral case the U.S. has made for supporting Ukraine against Russian war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The administration definitively declared the alliance between the United States — and its allies — and Kyiv remained strong, and that it would last as long as the war raged.
National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said the White House is “in constant communication with Ukraine as we support their defense of their sovereignty and territorial integrity.” She added that with Putin showing no signs of ceasing his war, “the best thing we can do is to continue to help Ukraine succeed on the battlefield so they can be in the strongest possible position at the negotiating table for when that time comes.”
But the growing disconnects may foreshadow a larger divide over the debate as to how the war will end.
Though Biden has pledged steadfast support, and the coffers remain open for now, the U.S. has been clear with Kyiv that it cannot fund Ukraine indefinitely at this level. Though backing Ukraine has largely been a bipartisan effort, a small but growing number of Republicans have begun to voice skepticism about the use of American treasure to support Kyiv without an end in sight to a distant war.
Among those who have expressed doubt about support for the long haul is House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who has said that the U.S. would not offer a “blank check” to Ukraine and rejected Zelenskyy’s invitation to travel to Kyiv and learn about the realities of war.
"There is always some friction built in,” said Kurt Volker, a special presidential envoy for Ukraine during the Trump administration. “Zelenskyy also stepped in it a bit with McCarthy — coming across as needing to 'educate' him, rather than work with him.”
But many observers credit remarkable transatlantic unity, praising the alliance holding firm despite the economic and political toll the war has taken.
“I see the little fissures, but those have existed with points of disagreement and varied views between the U.S. and Ukraine even before the big February invasion, and since then,” said Shelby Magid, deputy director of the Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center. “Zelenskyy has made pointed remarks before toward the U.S., and the White House has expressed disagreement with him — publicly and privately — on specific aspects, but that hasn’t shifted or eaten away at the overall U.S. support and partnership.”
Points of crisis still hover on the horizon. Zelenskyy’s insistence that all of Ukraine — including Crimea, which has been under Russian control since 2014 — be returned to Ukraine before any peace negotiations begin would only extend the war, U.S. officials believe. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has signaled to Kyiv that Ukraine’s potential recapture of Crimea would be a red line for Putin, possibly leading to a dramatic escalation from Moscow.
Moreover, the Pentagon has consistently expressed doubts whether Ukraine’s forces — despite being armed with sophisticated Western weapons — would be able to dislodge Russia from Crimea, where it has been entrenched for nearly a decade.
For now, Biden continued to stick to his refrain that the United States will leave all decisions about war and peace to Zelenskky. But whispers have begun across Washington as to how tenable that will be as the war grinds on — and another presidential election looms.
“There has never been a war in history without setbacks and challenges,” said Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.), an Army veteran and HFAC member. “The question is not whether Ukrainians have setbacks, but how they respond and overcome them. Ukraine will overcome, defeat Russia and remain free.”
Though President Joe Biden has pledged steadfast support, the U.S. has been clear with Kyiv that it cannot fund Ukraine indefinitely at this level.
Last week, President Joe Biden traveled to Kyiv as an act of defiance meant to mark the one-year anniversary of the war in Ukraine. This week, back in Washington, grimmer realities are setting in.
Biden will host German Chancellor Olaf Scholz at the White House on Friday in what will be, on the surface, another display of Western unity with Ukraine as it repels Russia’s punishing invasion. But the show of solidarity comes against a backdrop of growing strain as the trans-Atlantic alliance works to remain in lockstep while grappling with the fact that the war has no end in sight.
A renewed and brutal Russian offensive is making incremental progress along the front, and Moscow may be poised to receive assistance from China. As Ukraine prepares for its own spring counteroffensive, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s pleas for help have grown more desperate, raising the stakes for Biden to keep the weapon supply flowing, while also managing ties to both Kyiv and the capitals of a suddenly, violently reshaped Europe.
“It may well be that 2023 is the best chance Ukraine has,” said Liana Fix, a fellow for Europe at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Biden can say the U.S. will support Ukraine ‘as long as it takes’ if he can keep getting Congress to approve funds, and the idea with that rhetoric is to send a clear message to Moscow. But there’s also a U.S. election in 2024, and a German election in 2025, which will make things far more complicated.”
Scholz’s meeting with Biden — scheduled to be just one hour — will largely highlight both the transformation of Europe and the challenges for the U.S. president to hold it together to resist Russia. Two days after Russia’s invasion, Scholz vowed in his “Zeitenwende” speech that Germany, long wary of militarization in the postwar WWII era, would take steps to boost defense spending. It was an immediate recognition of how Putin's invasion of Ukraine had shattered the existing security architecture of Europe.
Scholz quickly canceled the Nord Stream 2 Baltic gas pipeline project, and Germany has committed more than 6 billion euros in aid to Ukraine since the war began. But Wolfgang Schmidt, Scholz’s chief of staff, acknowledged this week that a budget crunch was likely to prevent Berlin from fulfilling last year’s promise of an increased defense spending.
“We must be honest about this,” he told the Wall Street Journal. “Ambition and reality are diverging.”
Zelenskyy has long called out Germany, by far Europe’s biggest economy, to do more in supplying weapons to the front, including Leopard II tanks. Reflecting the frustration some in the alliance have had with Scholz, national security adviser Jake Sullivan made the candid admission on a Sunday talk show that the U.S. only authorized sending its Abrams tanks — which could take up to a year to see the battlefield — to push Germany to send its own vehicles, which can be deployed much sooner.
“There’s no one strong leader that’s really holding the Europeans together. It’s Biden who’s doing it,” said Rachel Rizzo, senior fellow at Atlantic Council’s Europe Center. “And without the emergence of Germany as a strong leading actor, we are going to start to see more fissures within the alliance.”
Part of Biden’s task is managing the emerging divide in Europe over how to end the war. Some voices on the continent are urging peace talks now, to limit the human and economic toll. Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron have urged Zelenskyy to consider negotiations with Putin to bring the fighting to a close. And Macron last month said that it “has never been the position of France” to “crush Russia,” suggesting that it would be acceptable for Putin to remain in power and Russia to retain its military power if the fighting stopped.
Others in Europe hold a decidedly different view. After Biden’s triumphant secret visit to Kyiv last week, he traveled to Warsaw where he delivered a rousing speech about European unity. But the next day, in a closed-door meeting, Biden had to deliver a reminder to the Bucharest Nine — a group of Eastern European countries closest to Russia’s border — that the goal of the war was not to end Putin’s regime, according to officials not authorized to discuss private conversations. Biden himself once declared that Putin “cannot remain in power” but his administration has since backed away from the claim.
The Bucharest Nine, or B9, has most acutely felt Putin’s threat and has suggested that the only way to prevent an eventual Russian invasion of their own countries is to cripple Moscow for good. That has placed Biden in a delicate spot: a president who has sent an enormous military stockpile to Kyiv along with pledges to stand with Ukraine “for as long as it takes,” with disagreements over what offramps to take and amid growing Republican resistance for open-ended U.S. involvement in the conflict.
“We still need a strategy. Where are we going to be a year from now? I don’t think that Biden or anyone on his team has articulated that,” said Brett Bruen, a former State Department official in the Obama administration. “We’re past days of dancing around the sensitivities of one country or one political leader. We have got to either give Ukraine what it is going to take to win or we need to rethink the game plan.”
Faced with these political realities, Biden has leaned more on audacious set pieces to keep support for Ukraine intact. His trip to Kyiv — which aides believe helped inject momentum into the war effort — came after months of Biden wanting to travel there.
Very few White House officials, even senior ones, were read in on the plan, which involved him making a covert, 10-hour train trip ahead of his previously announced visit to Poland. Other means of travel were considered and dismissed, said aides not authorized to speak publicly about security measures. Driving might have been possible, but there were concerns about transporting enough escort vehicles to Poland as well as concerns about stops to refuel and dangers posed by the quality of Ukraine’s shelled roads.
Another option was to defiantly fly in on Air Force One. Proponents of that idea believed it would reflect a powerful show of resolve and signal that Russia was not to be feared, aides said. Ultimately, Moscow was given notice of the trip and U.S. officials believed that Putin and his military would not try anything against the presidential plane out of fear of retaliation. But the idea was tossed aside because the skies over Ukraine were not secure and there was no way to guarantee that a rogue actor on the ground might not try to down the instantly recognizable aircraft.
The centerpiece events of Biden’s trip to Eastern Europe went off spectacularly, aides believe. But what followed was Biden’s message to the Bucharest Nine, underscoring the challenges of holding the alliance together.
Kyiv, too, has not always been on the same page with the rest of the alliance. Zelenskyy has vowed not to negotiate until Russia has abandoned all of the Ukrainian territory it has seized — a declaration that includes Crimea, which Moscow forcibly annexed in 2014. But U.S. officials have sent signals to Kyiv that trying to retake Crimea would be difficult — and perhaps a mistake, potentially crossing a red line for Putin that would trigger an escalation.
U.S. officials are skeptical that Putin’s battered and humiliated military can conquer Kyiv but they do believe the Russian leader has no inclination to abandon his bloody quest. Possessing a massive manpower advantage and seemingly little consideration for the loss of life, Putin continues to throw waves of men into battle.
“Putin has not shown any interest in ending this war, so we will continue to help Ukraine succeed on the battlefield so they can be in the strongest possible position at the negotiating table for when that time comes,” said National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson. “That’s why we are working closely with our allies and partners, including Germany, to get Ukraine the weapons and equipment they need to defend itself against Russia’s invasion.”
Even a frozen conflict, one that weakens Ukraine and the West, would be perceived as a partial win for Putin, U.S. officials believe. Most intelligence analysts on both sides of the Atlantic believe the war, as currently fought, could stretch for years. While that would end up draining each nation’s military and economy, the Biden administration has begun to loudly sound the alarm that Moscow may soon have help on the way.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken this week declared that the U.S. believes China is considering sending lethal military aid to Russia, a development that could change the war’s trajectory. Much like it did on the eve of Russia’s invasion, the Biden administration broadcast its intelligence with the hope that the public threats may deter Beijing from acting. U.S. intelligence officials believe China has not yet decided on a course of action, a senior official said.
Though a move to help Moscow would bring severe economic repercussions from the West, China may consider propping up Putin enough to allow him to save face and wind the war down with some gains. That, in turn, would allow him to keep power and not bring instability to China’s borders. Additionally, U.S. analysts believe, China may be trying to ensnare the U.S. and its allies in a lengthy proxy conflict, draining their resources and potentially making it less of a threat if Beijing were to move on Taiwan.
“Their economy is based on globalization and they have to know that helping Russia will lead to sanctions and endanger that so we have to ask ourselves, ‘What do they have to gain?’” said Hagar Chemali, a former National Security Council and Treasury Department official under Obama. “Helping Russia would make things more difficult for Ukraine and more expensive for the U.S.”
“And this we know: Xi is not rash,” Chemali said. “He always plays the long game.”
President Joe Biden (left) will host German Chancellor Olaf Scholz at the White House on Friday.
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.”
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.”
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.
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.”
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.
President Joe Biden is famously indecisive, a habit exacerbated by decades in the über-deliberative Senate.
WARSAW — Eleven months ago, President Joe Biden came to Poland to denounce a war he’d hoped to avoid. On Tuesday, he returned having fully embraced the mantle of wartime leader, boasting of a U.S.-led Western response that blunted Vladimir Putin’s invasion and slowed the march of global authoritarianism.
Having stood in sunny and free Kyiv the day before — nearly a year after the war began — Biden in Warsaw was steeled for a fight he intends to see through while in the Oval Office. He may not be commanding troops in this battle, but he is acting like democracy’s civilian general, commanding an alliance strung together by geography, fear and necessity.
“NATO is more united and more unified than ever before,” Biden said. “The democracies of the world have grown stronger, not weaker. The autocrats of the world have grown weaker, not stronger.”
The feeling behind those words reflected the long-held views of a devout transatlanticist, a man who was 3 years old when World War II ended. Biden grew up in an era of American military and economic domination bolstered by partners across the Atlantic. The mission to safeguard Europe from tyranny since the 1940s has expanded worldwide, leading the United States to defend the “rules-based international order” it created against those opposed to free markets and free societies.
A fortification of that order, maintained through the sanctity of alliances, is central to the president’s entire foreign policy. And the war in Ukraine for Biden is a test of whether the U.S. is, in some respects, the nation of yesteryear. Can it stand for something, inspire and lead? Can it still be a force for good? Can it prolong global democracy’s flickering flame?
The president held that the answers to those questions were yes, yes and yes.
“When Russia invaded, it wasn’t just Ukraine being tested. The whole world faced a test for the ages,” Biden said. “Europe was being tested. America was being tested. NATO was being tested. All democracies were being tested. And the questions we face are as simple as they are profound: Would we respond, or would we look the other way?”
“One year later, we know the answer: We did respond. We would be strong, we would be united, and the world would not look the other way.”
To celebrate the 75th anniversary of the alliance, Biden also announced the United States will host the NATO summit next year.
Hours before the speech, national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters Biden wanted to stand in Europe to affirm “what is at stake here is more than just the success and survival of the nation of Ukraine, but the rules-based international order, the fundamental principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity and the fundamental values of independence, democracy, freedom that matter so much to everyday American people.”
“The president has believed passionately in the themes … for decades,” Sullivan said, applying them now at what Biden terms “an inflection point in history.”
Biden’s allies say he struck the right notes both in Ukraine and Poland. “The president’s address makes clear to Russia and other aggressors watching how steep the price will be for those who threaten freedom and democracy,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), who chairs the Foreign Relations Committee’s Europe panel.
Despite the somber reason for his visit to Kyiv — the one-year anniversary of Russian troops, tanks, warplanes and missiles crossing into Ukraine — Biden displayed a joyous bounce as he wandered through the city. He stood alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy even as air-raid sirens blared throughout the capital, a reminder that Russia still holds 20 percent of Ukraine and threatens nearly all of it with its weapons, terrorizing civilians daily. It was the first time a modern-day president traveled to a warzone the U.S. military didn’t control.
Biden’s lifted spirit drew from the symbolism of his lengthy and clandestine journey on “Rail Force One.” He was there as a physical representation of America’s continued commitment to Ukraine — “as long as it takes,” is his mantra — and rebuke to Putin. The Kremlin boss has unleashed war criminals, mercenaries and conscripts to unseat Zekenskyy, the same man with whom Biden was coordinating, congratulating and consoling.
The images beamed around the world were meant to deliver one message: These were two presidents on America’s Presidents’ Day showing a thug what true leadership looked like. It was, after all, only a year ago when Biden, also standing outside Warsaw’s Royal Palace, said that Putin “cannot remain in power.”
This year, with the palace garden surroundings lit up in blue and yellow and in front of a roaring crowd waving American, Polish and Ukrainian flags, Biden reported that “Kyiv stands strong, it stands proud and it stands free.”
But with the pageantry ending, and the drama receding, what remains are questions about how Biden can repeat his performance in the year ahead. The fear from within and outside the administration is that a weakened Russia could still deal Biden a setback as the brutal war of attrition drags on.
Putin, for all his struggles, hit similar notes of confidence, including during his State of the Union speech Tuesday which he moved up to pre-rebut Biden’s Warsaw address. "Step by step, we will accomplish all our tasks carefully and consistently," he said before falsely accusing the West of starting the war. "We are using force to stop it." He spiked tensions further by suspending the last-remaining nuclear treaty between the U.S. and Russia, the same one he and Biden extended for five years in 2021.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken called Putin’s decision “deeply unfortunate and irresponsible.”
With no end in sight, and no peace deal Ukraine could likely accept, Biden needs European allies to hold strong for months, maybe years. Officials from this continent say they were lucky the winter season was relatively mild, allowing Europeans to withstand high energy prices and cold snaps. But another 365 days of shivers and thinning wallets could see continental voters turn against their governments.
One of Biden’s audiences was back home: the bipartisan congressional coalition supporting Kyiv has largely held, though isolationist voices in the GOP have grown louder. And, as Biden’s likely reelection bid approaches, polls suggest Americans are cooling on sending money to Kyiv. Biden also aimed, subtly, at Beijing. He suggested China should not increase its aid to Moscow, again framing the generational struggle between democracies and autocracies.
But it is unclear if the West’s arsenal of democracy can keep up with demand. At the Munich Security Conference, held days before Biden’s trip, European leaders like German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron echoed that their weapons-production lines weren’t humming along as desired for Ukraine’s and their own security. Macron implored Europe “to invest more in defense. If we want peace, we need the means to achieve it.”
Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.), part of the U.S. congressional delegation to the conference, worried about America’s ability to fill at least part of that gap. “The burn rate is very unsustainable,” he said in an interview there, as Ukrainian troops “are firing more munitions than we can produce. We can't create, in the short term, a larger pipeline. The industrial base cannot do it.”
“The way we fix that is we actually train them on fire and maneuver and advanced tactics that use substantially less ammunition to achieve the same or greater result,” the House Armed Services Committee member and veteran said.
This week also featured some slight cracks in American and European rhetoric regarding Russia. The Biden administration repeats that it seeks Moscow’s “strategic defeat,” depleting it of the resources to sustain a modern economy, an equipped military and system of kleptocracy that keeps Putin in control. But in an interview with a French newspaper this week, Macron called on the West to help Ukraine win the war but not “crush” Russia. That followed his comments last year that Moscow should not be “humiliated over its invasion.”
Tending to America’s vast and varied allies is paramount for Biden, though there have been missteps along the way. Some allies raged then, and still do now, about his withdrawal from Afghanistan, and France was irate after being cut out of a nuclear submarine deal with Australia.
But what the president showcased in Poland was lockstep support for the transatlantic bond that undergirds his defense of Ukrainian and global democracy from behind the Resolute Desk.
“The stakes are eternal,” said Biden. “The choice between chaos and stability, between building and destroying, between hope and fear, between democracy that lifts up the human spirit and the brutal hand of the dictator that crushes it.”
Biden reaffirms support for Ukraine in Poland remarks
WARSAW — President Joe Biden renewed an American commitment to support Ukraine in the face of Russia’s invasion, marking a second year of war by declaring Tuesday in Eastern Europe that the West “will not waver” in its defense of democracy.
Biden’s appearance became the second part of a two-act display of U.S. solidarity with Ukraine, delivering a forceful speech just a day after his surprise visit to Kyiv to embrace Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He declared that Ukraine and allies had met the moment and have proven they would not bow to Vladimir Putin.
“Putin met the iron will of America and nations everywhere that refuse to accept a world governed by fear and force,” Biden said. “The democracies of the world have grown stronger, not weaker.”
The moment reflected just how much had changed since Biden last spoke in that same palace complex in Poland, almost exactly 12 months ago and just days after Putin ordered his forces to cross the Ukrainian border and plunge Europe into war. Though the war shows no signs of abating, Biden stressed that Putin has already failed in his objective to seize Ukraine.
“One year ago, the world was bracing for the fall of Kyiv,” Biden said, “and I can report that Kyiv stands strong, it stands proud and it stands free.”
Nearly a year ago, Biden used his speech to convince European allies that helping Kyiv was not a futile exercise, imploring democracies to rally together and stand up to Putin’s militant authoritarianism. His message then was somber and grim, reflecting the uncertainty about Ukraine’s ability to repel a much larger foe. Though Putin’s initial lunge at Kyiv failed, there was a sense among military experts that Russia would, soon enough, overwhelm Ukraine.
That is no longer the case. Ukraine has held, having pushed the front back to the eastern and southern edges of the country. Led by Washington, the West has stayed in lockstep and funneled weapons and money to Kyiv, dealing one humiliating military setback after another to Moscow.
“When Russia invaded, it wasn’t just Ukraine being tested. The whole world faced a test for the ages,” Biden said. “Europe was being tested. America was being tested. NATO is being tested. All democracies are being tested. And the questions we face are as simple as they are profound: Would we respond, or would we look the other way?"
“One year later, we know the answer,” he said. “We did respond. We would be strong, we would be united, and the world would not look the other way.”
The atmosphere in Kubicki Arcades, part of Warsaw’s Royal Castle complex, reflected the change. In a moment that would have been unthinkable a year ago, the speech environment felt like a NATO pep rally. Flags from Ukraine, Poland and the U.S. lined the venue. Blue and yellow lights projected on the surroundings and an upbeat soundtrack — including Bruce Springsteen and Twisted Sister — blared in the hours before Biden addressed the crowd.
A year ago, Biden spoke at the palace in an almost-funereal atmosphere shortly after he held a somber meeting with Ukrainian refugees. This time, Biden arrived on the heels of his surprise visit to Kyiv. There, the president — wearing his trademark aviators — defiantly strutted with his Ukrainian counterpart in broad daylight, underscoring Putin’s inability to reach the capital.
On Tuesday, Putin offered the world a split screen — delivering a major speech in Moscow just hours before Biden spoke in Poland. The Russian leader provided his usual bluster about his war and again falsely claimed that NATO had been the aggressor, but his power seemed diminished, his threats hollow.
Putin spoke in front of a bored-looking audience of Russian elites, while Biden spoke in front of thousands, a crowd that cheered loudly at mentions of NATO. Though Putin was widely expected to use the one-year mark of the war later this week to announce a major escalation of the fight, all he did Tuesday was announce that Russia would suspend its participation in a nuclear treaty that it largely already ignored.
Biden returned to Poland, a nation that knows all too well the fight for democracy against larger oppressors, to declare that the conflict’s “principles and the stakes are eternal.” He thanked Poland for supporting the war effort and opening their arms to scores of Ukrainian refugees who streamed across the border seeking shelter and safety.
But Biden also warned that “hard days were ahead,” a nod to the fact that the war shows no signs of abating.
The fighting has become a fierce slog, with each side racking up heavy casualties. As the fighting continues to rage, both sides of the Atlantic fear that Russia is finding its footing, Ukraine may be overmatched in certain parts of the east and south, and the West’s pipeline of weapons will slow to a trickle.
Neither side had shown a willingness to bring a negotiated end to the fight. Putin has not abandoned his goal of toppling Kyiv, while Zelenskyy has indicated he will not bargain until Russia has left every inch of Ukraine — including Crimea, which Moscow has controlled since 2014.
Though the Russians have suffered heavy losses, they still have far more troops than Ukraine to send into combat, including ex-prisoners pushed into battle by the mercenary Wagner Group.
In recent weeks, Kyiv has relentlessly called for equipment it believes it needs to contend with a larger war. It has received a pledge of Western tanks, though most will not reach the battlefield for months or even years. But, to this point, Ukraine has been rebuffed in its ask for fighter jets. And as Russia renews its onslaught, fears have grown that Ukrainian forces could soon run dangerously low on ammunition.
In the best estimation of U.S. intelligence, Putin still believes that despite the setbacks his military has faced, he can wait for an inevitable break in Western resistance. But to this point, the transatlantic alliance — reinvigorated under Biden — has held.
"President Putin's craven lust for land and power will fail, and the Ukrainian people's love for their country will prevail,” Biden said. “Democracies of the world will stand guard of our freedoms today, tomorrow, and forever. That's what's at stake here — freedom."
Biden speaks from Warsaw as war in Ukraine nears one year mark
MUNICH — President Joe Biden heads to Europe this week in a trip meant to be a show of defiance.
He will mark a second year of war by denouncing Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and publicly declare that the United States will support Kyiv until the final moments of the conflict.
But the backdrop to Biden’s trip is also complicated, dangerous and uncertain.
As the fighting continues to rage, both sides of the Atlantic fear that Russia is finding its footing, Ukraine may be overmatched in certain parts of the east and south and the West’s pipeline of weapons will slow to a trickle.
Biden leaves Monday for Poland to meet with President Andrzej Duda and other key NATO leaders. U.S. officials believe that Ukraine’s defense is about to hit a critical phase with Russia launching its much-telegraphed offensive. The Biden administration has urgently pressed President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s administration to consolidate its gains — and perhaps launch its own counterstrike.
The White House has also told Zelenskyy’s team, per multiple officials, to prepare for the offensive now, as weapons and aid from Washington and Europe flow freely, for fear that backing from Ukraine’s European neighbors could be finite.
In Washington, support for Ukraine has remained largely bipartisan, though some in the administration fear that it may be harder to send additional aid to Kyiv amid mounting resistance from the new Republican-controlled House. For now, though, even some of Biden’s fiercest critics salute the work he has done.
“He’s been good about connecting our national interests to the fight and that it’s good for the world for Russia not to be successful,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said in an interview. “It’s going to be one of the decisive moments of his presidency.”
Biden’s trip to Poland comes just days ahead of the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion, a date which many military analysts believe Putin, fond of symbolism, may mark with a show of force. Aides have explored attempting to covertly get Biden across the border in Ukraine but a trip has been all but ruled out. The president is one of the last Western leaders who has not made the journey, which would require a 10-hour train ride or a daring flight. But most aides believe the security risk to Biden or Ukraine would not be worth it.
Biden will underscore the need for the West — and voters back home — to stay the course with Ukraine and he will tout the need for both alliances and American leadership on the world stage, aides previewed. But his speech will also reflect the duality of the moment.
On one hand, it will celebrate Ukraine’s remarkable resistance. But it will also acknowledge the continued vulnerabilities. Despite Kyiv’s successes, Russia still controls nearly 20 percent of Ukraine and the conflict has slowed to a brutal war of attrition. Moreover, Putin shows no signs of wavering in his vow to control all of Ukraine, according to American officials. In the best estimation of U.S. intelligence, Putin believes that despite the setbacks his military has faced, Russia still has two decisive advantages: manpower and time. European intelligence officials further assess Putin feels confident he can wait for an inevitable break in Western resistance.
Though the Russians have suffered heavy losses, they still have far more troops than Ukraine to send into combat, including ex-prisoners being pushed into battle by the mercenary Wagner Group. That group has shown surprising success at the front, per U.S. officials, while displaying little regard for the casualties suffered.
Facing little domestic pressure to end the war, Putin is operating as if he can outlast the Western alliance. Some in the Biden administration believe Putin will continue the onslaught — and could launch another massive mobilization of men — until at least the U.S. 2024 presidential election, hoping a candidate less convinced of the Ukrainian cause proves victorious. Former President Donald Trump has openly called for the war to immediately end to prevent it from escalating, even though that would allow Russia to keep its gains. And recent polling suggests that American voters’ willingness to send arms and weapons to Kyiv has slipped.
“I think the jury is still out on whether [Biden] can keep NATO unified,” said retired Brig. Gen. David Hicks, who commanded all U.S. and NATO forces tasked with training and advising the Afghan Air Force. “It’s only going to get more difficult going forward. Ukraine will have to show results with the aid they have received."
To this point, the capitals of Europe have largely remained in lockstep supporting Kyiv despite the economic and energy challenges stemming from the war. In Washington, the Biden administration believes the funding Congress passed at the end of last year should carry Ukraine for much of 2023 and has been encouraged so far that the GOP leadership on Capitol Hill has continued to publicly support Kyiv.
At the Munich Security Conference, arguably the world’s premier defense-focused forum, Zelenskyy on Friday rallied the West to help Ukraine’s “David” defeat Russia’s “Goliath.” “Speed is crucial,” he said, alluding to a quick tempo of weapons handovers, because Putin “wants the world to slow down.”
But there is a small, yet growing, faction within House Republicans questioning the need to fund Ukraine.
“There’s never been a blank check with respect to supporting Ukraine,” acknowledged National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, who stressed in a briefing Wednesday that the administration would stand with Kyiv for “as long as it takes” to repel Russia. “We’re proving every single day that this isn’t just about some moral or philosophical effort."
Still, lawmakers supportive of Ukraine’s cause expressed confidence that both chambers will continue to back the effort.
“The overwhelming majority of Congress –– both Democrats and Republicans –– continues to be in lockstep on the need to provide assistance to Ukraine because we know what happens if Ukraine falls,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Europe panel. “Bipartisanship in Congress and continued coordination with our allies is essential as we move forward to support Ukraine because this is about more than Putin –– this is about sending a message to any dictator who threatens democracies that they will pay a severe price.”
In recent weeks, Kyiv has relentlessly called for equipment it believes it needs to contend with a larger war. It has received a pledge of Western tanks, though most will not reach the battlefield for months or even years. But, to this point, Ukraine has been rebuffed in its ask for fighter jets. A more pressing need has arisen as Russia intensifies its onslaught: ammunition.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg recently warned that the Russian offensive has already begun and there are signs that the fighting has increased. There is real concern inside the White House about Europe’s ability to provide artillery ammunition and other aid to Ukraine. The continent’s defense-industrial base is stretched and some countries already say their stockpiles are tapped.
On stage in Munich, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz addressed the issue, calling for “a permanent production of the most important weapons we are using.” French President Emmanuel Macron followed right after arguing Europe must “invest more in defense. If we want peace, we need the means to achieve it.”
The comments made clear alarm bells are going off in Europe’s power centers. “The war has exposed profound deficiencies in European countries’ capabilities and weapons stocks,” said Alina Polyakova, head of the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington, D.C. “The concern is that they already don’t have enough to supply Ukraine and restock at the same time. And whether the U.S. defense industry can pivot fast enough — many think that it can’t.”
While European capitals are looking at Washington to fill the gap, the administration has pushed back at allies to do more, noting that the war could stretch well into 2024 and beyond. Administration officials insist that they will not pressure Ukraine to negotiate, even as some diplomats have speculated that a deal could be put forth to restore the borders at the start of the war: Ukraine would regain its territory in the east and south but Russia would keep Crimea.
In a private Zoom meeting Wednesday with outside experts, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Ukraine’s recapture of Crimea is a red line for Putin. That’s one reason why the U.S. is encouraging Kyiv to focus on where the majority of the fighting is, even if Washington still says any and all decisions on countering Russia are Ukraine’s decision alone.
But the reality Biden will confront in Poland is that Zelenskyy has made clear that he will not negotiate until all of Ukraine’s territory is restored — all but ensuring that the war will stretch into the distant horizon.
“We’re in this for the long-haul and it’s going to grind on for quite some time,” said Rachel Rizzo, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center. If Western support starts to fade away, “there’s no denying that it will have an effect on both the outcome and the length of the war.”
Biden leaves Monday for Poland to meet with key NATO leaders. The trip comes just days ahead of the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion, a date which many military analysts believe Putin may mark with a show of force.
MADISON, Wisc. — A jubilant President Joe Biden kicked off his post-State of the Union blitz on Wednesday, buoyed after a night of touting his wins from the past two years and challenging Republicans.
“Folks, I hate to disappoint them, but the Biden economic plan is working,” the president told a crowd gathered inside a union training center. “It’s working.”
The president used his stop in the battleground state to drive home the themes from his national address, primarily his optimism about his economic plan. Biden also will continue hitting the road as he prepares to launch an expected reelection bid in the coming months.
After running through his usual economic talking points, Biden capitalized on his handling of a tense exchange the previous night with Republicans for wanting “Medicare and Social Security to sunset.” While Biden didn’t name Sen. Rick Scott during his State of the Union speech, he did so on Wednesday, pulling out the Florida Republican’s “Rescue America” pamphlet that calls for all federal legislation to include such a provision.
Then the president quoted Sen. Ron Johnson’s (R-Wis.) stance on the issue, prompting the crowd to boo.
“They sure didn’t like me calling them on it,” Biden said, noting that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green (R-Ga.) stood up and called him a “liar” during Tuesday night’s speech. “Look, a lot of Republicans — their dream is to cut Social Security and Medicare. Well, let me just say this. It’s your dream, but I’m going to use my veto pen and make it a nightmare.”
A post-State of the Union barnstorming swing has become a traditional part of the calendar for modern presidents, with great thought put into the location for a visit inherently bound to receive more media attention than an average trip.
For the Biden White House, it was always going to be Wisconsin. White House aides suggested that a lot of the year ahead will look just like this day. They believe that a message of blue collar populism works for the president, saying he is the first Democratic standard bearer in decades to successfully chase a demographic drifting steadily toward Republicans.
A labor hall filled with union workers was considered a perfect backdrop for this particular president. Biden aides said they hoped to fill his schedule with events like this one — and like last week’s twin infrastructure events in Maryland and New York — to showcase the president’s record in creating jobs and tangible, real-world projects.
Wisconsin, in many ways, has become the preeminent swing state. It was one of the trio of Great Lakes states — along with Michigan and Pennsylvania — that Biden won back from Donald Trump in 2020. And while the president may still be a month or more from announcing his reelection plans, most paths for a Biden second term run right through the same three states.
Michigan and Pennsylvania trended more toward the Democrats in the 2022 midterms than did Wisconsin, which reelected a Democratic governor but also a Republican senator in Johnson. Biden’s margin of victory in Wisconsin in 2020 was fewer than 21,000 votes — his smallest advantage of the three former “Blue Wall” states — but his advisers believe that his pro-union and manufacturing message will continue to play well in the state.
Moreover, Biden advisers are looking at the electoral map and see limited options. Many in the party believe that Florida — which has dramatically trended rightward in recent years and is home to the GOP’s two top leading 2024 candidates — is a lost cause. Still, Biden will make a stop there Thursday. But even the most bullish Biden advisers concede Florida is an uphill climb, and a loss there, if combined with defeats in Georgia and Arizona — two states Biden barely captured two years ago — would make his path to victory very narrow. It also would make Wisconsin essential.
Biden has been to Michigan and Pennsylvania more often to this point in his term, and aides said to expect travel to Wisconsin to ramp up. It’s been decided by less than a percentage point in four of the last six presidential races, including in 2016 and 2020.
President Joe Biden speaks about his economic agenda at LIUNA Training Center, Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2023, in DeForest, Wis.
President Joe Biden is planning to use his second State of the Union address to paint the broad strokes of a likely campaign ahead, contrasting his notion of steady leadership with the newly elected, likely chaotic Republican House.
Privately, aides are hoping the GOP lawmakers in attendance will help him achieve the contrast.
The president will command his biggest audience of the year for Tuesday night’s address to Congress when, aides said, he will extend his hand across the aisle while also warning that extremist voices on the right pose a threat to liberties both in Europe and at home.
Though Biden won’t mention them by name, aides believe the presence of newly prominent House Republicans in the chamber will underscore his arguments. A year ago, Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) heckled Biden during his speech, and photographs of their shouting went viral. White House aides privately admit that they wouldn't mind that happening again this time, creating a contrast between rabble-rousing in the crowd and steady leadership on the dais.
“The theme of a State of the Union is always ‘Who are we, who do want to be? What do we stand for, what do we want to believe?’” said Jen Psaki, Biden’s former press secretary. “That is not to ignore or deny huge problems in the country but to say ‘I will work with people to take them on.’”
But the subtext of the address will not be the lawmakers in the seats but the campaign ahead. Biden has not yet declared his candidacy but the State of the Union could very well double as a soft launch for a 2024 bid. The president has said he intends to stand for re-election, though some of his closest advisers caution that a final decision has not yet been made. In somewhat classic Biden fashion, the timeline for an announcement has shifted, according to four people familiar with the decision.
Originally pegged to March or April, in part for fundraising purposes, there had been talk of moving an announcement up to late February. That now may have slipped again as the White House grapples with the appointment of a special counsel to investigate the discovery of mishandled classified documents at Biden’s Delaware home and former office.
Biden advisers have downplayed the impact of the discovery — pointing to his unchanged approval rating in the face of the controversy. They believe the Democrats’ triumphs in November squelched any talk of an intra-party challenger and bought the 80-year-old president time to make his decision.
Still, Biden faces challenges heading into Tuesday’s address.
A divided Washington and a growing array of challenges could define his presidency in the months ahead. House Republicans are ramping up their investigations. The battle for Ukraine continues to rage. And in just the last fortnight, the nation has been left reeling by video of a brutal deadly assault of a Black man at the hands of police.
Biden is expected to rally Americans on Tuesday with the notion that the nation is at an inflection point as it emerges from the COVID pandemic and the trials put forth by Donald Trump’s time in office.
A year ago, Biden delivered his first State of the Union just days after Vladimir Putin sent his Russian forces over the Ukrainian border. The fate of Kyiv hung in the balance and Biden used a sweeping portion of his speech to argue that the defense of Ukraine was a defense of democracies around the globe.
Now, the case will be different. Ukraine has shown remarkable resilience, repelling much of Russia’s aggression, but the war has settled into a grinding slog with Kyiv clamoring for more weapons to defend itself for months if not years. Biden, aides said, will outline to the public why continued, sustained American involvement is needed. He will urge Republicans to ignore the voices in their own party who want to curtail funding to Ukraine.
Another standoff with Republicans will also be central to Biden’s pitch: the need to lift the nation’s debt ceiling. He will make clear that he will not negotiate on the country's fiscal future, connecting it to his stewardship of the economy. Though inflation remains high, it has begun to cool, and the president is expected to point to historically low unemployment, strong jobs numbers and a growing feeling among economists that the nation could avoid a recession.
“There should be a focus on tone: be firm without [being] combative,” said Kevin Madden, a Republican strategist who was a senior adviser on Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign. “And there has to be an acknowledgment of the pain inflation has caused. It can’t just be ‘happy talk’ about what they’ve done on the economy. You run the risk of looking out of touch.”
Any State of the Union is of the moment, and reflective of the challenges facing the country when it is delivered. In recent days, Biden aides have inserted sections into the speech on the collective traumas suffered by the nation last month.
In the wake of several mass shootings, including two in California just days apart, Biden will again call for a ban on assault weapons, an idea that has little chance of receiving Republican support. And he will likely mourn with the nation over Tyre Nichols, a Black man who died at the hands of Memphis police officers last month, trying to thread the needle of showing support for law enforcement while also advocating for police reform.
Even if some legislation — like the George Floyd Policing Bill and the assault weapons ban — have little chance of becoming law, there is still value in the president proposing something that polls show is popular with most Americans, aides said.
Some of Biden’s speech will be backward-looking, reflecting the political reality of a divided Congress unlikely to pass meaningful legislation against a backdrop of GOP probes into the president’s administration and family. But White House aides believe that could be to their advantage, allowing the president to blame the GOP for gridlock while he can extoll the accomplishments of the last two years.
One example will be infrastructure. Aides plan for Biden to highlight the projects underway thanks to the $1 trillion in federal funding and point to last week’s schedule — the president visited one project in Baltimore and another in New York City — as a preview of the year ahead. Biden will start criss-crossing the country to tout work funded by his administration, beginning with a post-speech barnstorming tour across the Midwest later this week.
The president, always deliberative, will consider his political future by making more rounds of calls to his longtime allies, talking through themes and timing, pushed by a belief that he remains the one Democrat who could defeat Trump. Most close to Biden believe that, soon enough, an official campaign will begin in earnest.
“He should focus attention on … big legislative achievements, the national pandemic emergency ending, the economy stabilizing and still growing, and how the midterms went very well for his party,” said Julian Zelizer, a presidential historian at Princeton University. “If this was any other president, without the age issues or concerns about what the Republican campaign might look like, this would be a message to launch 2024.”
President Joe Biden poses for photographs with attendees at the Democratic National Committee winter meeting, Friday, Feb. 3, 2023, in Philadelphia.
President Joe Biden’s decision to send tanks to Ukraine marked a new chapter in the United States’ commitment to Kyiv, one reflecting a growing belief that the war could stretch years and require extraordinary measures to hold an alliance together to repel Russia.
The 31 Abrams tanks that Biden pledged Wednesday underscore where the conflict stands as it approaches its one-year mark. It also gives hints as to where the administration sees it going.
The American vehicles may not be usable on the frontlines for nearly a year, but they helped push a reluctant Germany to send its own tanks that could arrive sooner to help counter an expected Russian spring offensive.
Maintaining diplomatic ties with European allies, American officials have realized, will take on paramount importance as Russian president Vladimir Putin shows no signs of relenting despite repeated setbacks. The punishing conflict appears poised to last long into the foreseeable future — shadowing Biden’s likely reelection campaign and testing Europe’s resolve in the face of compounding economic woes.
“Putin expected Europe and the United States to weaken our resolve. He expected our support for Ukraine to crumble with time. He was wrong,” Biden said Wednesday. “We are united. America is united and so is the world.”
Yet, with Biden potentially weeks from announcing his reelection bid, a war with no end in sight threatens to loom over him on the trail.
Biden’s national security team — including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and national security adviser Jake Sullivan – are all remaining in their posts, for now. His incoming chief of staff, Jeff Zients, is preparing to take over his new job shortly after the State of the Union early next month.
Biden aides see the war as a winning 2024 issue for the president, who has framed the conflict as a battle for democracy.
Though Biden aides don’t expect the war to be one of the top issues heading into the next election, polling suggests that the public backs the president. A new Ipsos poll released this week shows that a majority of Americans favor keeping the weapons supply line to Ukraine open — while keeping the U.S. military off the battlefield.
In last year’s congressional lame duck session, the White House secured funding for Ukraine that should last for several months. Although the new GOP House majority has threatened to cut off or curtail future aid, the West Wing is already plotting to lobby mainstream Republicans to vote for future assistance.
“Opposing aid to Ukraine may help you win some votes in a Republican primary. But it’s still a terrible way to win votes in a general election,” said former Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.). “To this day, there are a heck of a lot more Ukraine flags flying in my New Jersey district than Trump flags, even in the more conservative areas.”
Still, some senior congressional Democrats fear that conditions on the ground in Ukraine could eventually hurt Biden's narrative.
They worry that if Russia makes gains, or if Ukraine simply fails to advance further by the fall, voters will wonder why the administration expended so much money, weapons and time propping Ukraine up at all. All the talk of standing up for democracy, they fear, will mean little if Kyiv is on the back foot while Moscow gains strength.
The tanks, therefore, represent the war’s short and long-term realities colliding.
Deploying the Abrams pried Leopard tanks from Germany, beginning their journey to Ukraine. The decision to send tanks comes as Russia is mobilizing more troops, safeguarding supply lines and refining their tactics. A new victory in Soledar on Wednesday put Moscow one step closer to seizing the strategic eastern city of Bakhmut.
Biden will have to, at once, manage a long-haul war and a two-year campaign. Senior administration officials aren’t too worried about the politics part. “Opponents are saying we’re doing too much or not enough. That suggests our approach is just right. We’re confident in our approach, and this is a debate we’re ready to have,” one of them said.
But the military components will be far more tricky to manage. American officials estimate that it could be many months, and potentially a year, to fully get Ukrainian troops to use the Abrams, signifying the expanding belief that the war will still be raging at that time. The German-made Leopards, however, could be in Ukraine within three months.
The more powerful vehicles may also, U.S. officials believe, help Ukraine to tilt the fighting in the east and mount its own counteroffensive.
But Russia still controls about 20 percent of Ukraine, and the officials believe the Ukrainian goal of retaking Crimea, which Russia took by force in 2014, remains unlikely and may deter Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy from sitting across the table from Russian negotiators.
A prolonged war and a lack of clear progress could threaten to tear European unity apart and cause public support for Ukraine to fall on both sides of the Atlantic, administration aides fear.
For now, Biden’s decision to tie the Abrams transfer to Germany’s Leopards decision has kept the allies in lockstep.
German chancellor Olaf Scholz had been reluctant to unilaterally send the tanks, which can be deployed much more quickly than the Abrams.
For weeks, Washington and Berlin held secret talks, trying to push Scholz to send the tanks, which would also allow other European nations to deploy Leopards from their own arsenals. Poland, along with the Baltic States, stands closer to the fighting. They had said they would send their own tanks if Scholz approved, throwing a normally technical dispute into an open, bitter diplomatic melee.
Biden, meanwhile, moved on two tracks, according to two U.S. officials. He knew Ukraine needed Leopards on the battlefield immediately, but no one would see them on Ukraine’s muddy terrain unless he gave Scholz the political cover he needed. So after a final recommendation from Austin — whose Defense Department had previously called sending Abrams to Ukraine a bad idea — Biden moved to approve the tanks and linked the announcement with Scholz’s own declaration.
Scholz agreed to send his tanks Wednesday morning in Berlin. Hours later at the White House, Biden did the same.
“The Abrams tanks are not going to be in Ukraine in time for a spring offensive. So it seems we're ready to commit to Ukraine for the long haul,” said Rachel Rizzo, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Europe Center. “But you can see the importance, too, of the U.S. role in managing the relationship with Germany and also Germany's relationships with its European allies.”
Biden, who entered office determined to rebuild trust with transatlantic allies and was scarred by four years of Donald Trump’s treatment of Europe, has long backed Scholz.
When the new chancellor visited Washington last February, just ahead of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Biden defended Scholz from sharp questioning during a White House press conference over the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline project that was nearly complete. And since the war began, he has made it a point of incrementally escalating the West’s involvement in the war, hand-in-hand with NATO allies.
“Scholz is afraid of escalation by Russia, and if it's clear these German tanks are being sent with the U.S., then the U.S shares that risk,” said Thorsten Benner, director of the Global Public Policy Institute, a think tank in Berlin, who warned that the next American election may change the support from across the Atlantic.
“Europeans should remember that the Biden administration will probably be seen as the last truly transatlantic minded administration. We'll never have it as good as we have it with Grandfather Biden taking care of our needs, and that has to sink in in Europe.”
With President Joe Biden potentially weeks from announcing his reelection bid, a war with no end in sight threatens to loom over him on the trail.
A gauntlet awaits Jeff Zients.
President Joe Biden’s incoming chief of staff, set to assume the White House’s top job following the State of the Union early next month, will immediately confront a confluence of challenges that could set the course for Biden’s next two years — and possibly beyond.
The tests — some foreign, some domestic, and many out of the White House’s control — will loom as the president soon decides his own political future. And while Biden rode a wave of good legislative fortune amid a surprisingly strong midterm election for his party, there is a sense among Democrats that a precarious political moment awaits.
Taking the job in a newly divided Washington, Zients will inherit a series of trials:
- Fallout from the discovery of mishandled classified documents at Biden’s residence and former office, which has led to the appointment of a Department of Justice special counsel;
- A slim House Republican majority eagerto use the power of the subpoena to launch a series of investigations into the president’s policies, conduct and the lives of those closest to him;
- The likelihood that the newly empowered hard right within the GOP will follow through on threats to play politics with the debt ceiling, endangering the nation’s fiscal health;
- Continued concerns that the economy, which has showed remarkable resilience to this point, could slide into a slowdown or recession;
- Fear that the war in Ukraine, which shows no signs of abating, will turn into a years-long conflict that could further strain U.S. resources and alliances.
All of those challenges will come against the backdrop of Biden’s expected announcement in the coming weeks that he will seek a second term, launching a campaign at the age of 80 that could set him up on a collision course, once more, with Donald Trump.
Zients, who was Biden’s first Covid coordinator, is expected within the White House to largely leave the politics to other senior aides. Though outgoing chief of staff Ron Klain had his hands in the legislative outreach as well, Zients will likely defer to top Biden aides Anita Dunn, Jen O’Malley Dillon, Steve Ricchetti and others to handle that while he focuses on the West Wing’s operations and processes.
“He may not be the expert on every one of the 10 or 15 things that work its way into the Oval Office. But I guarantee you that, from what I've seen, there's nobody better than Jeff to manage that,” said Anthony Fauci, Biden’s former top medical adviser who worked closely with Zients. "He knows who to call, who to trust, who to get involved with to see that it gets done."
Zients' first task will be to respond to GOP investigations into the classified documents and other matters. The slim Republican majority has previewed a robust slate of probes, including into the Biden administration’s Afghanistan withdrawal and border policies as well as the business dealings of the president’s son, Hunter.
The White House has expressed a quiet confidence about the tests that lie ahead, comforted by the knowledge, aides said, that they have been there before.
Last week, the West Wing celebrated the president’s second anniversary in office and, in a series of social media posts, reflected on what the White House faced in January 2021. When Klain entered the building as Biden’s first chief of staff, the nation was only two weeks removed from the Jan. 6 insurrection and still at the height of the pandemic.
Biden aides think their strategy of ignoring Beltway chatter and focusing on governing led to a sweeping legislative track record, plaudits for Biden’s leadership in defending Ukraine and a surprisingly strong showing for Democrats in the midterms. The administration entered 2023 with real momentum, aides felt, and they don’t believe the document imbroglio will change that.
Still the task facing Zients won’t be easy, or familiar.
The last two times a president has brought him on board to handle a job it was to solve massive problems: Barack Obama enlisted him to solve the troubled healthcare.gov website and then Biden tapped him to run the pandemic response. This time, Zients has been given the task of keeping the White House out of trouble, not rescuing it from it.
Aides believe the strategy of staying the course will work again, even in the face of steady, potentially damaging revelations about classified documents. The steady drip, drip, drip of information led to the appointment of a special counsel and the matter has already become a political problem if not a legal one.
House Republicans have also begun rattling sabers over what will soon be Zients’ priorities. Speaker Kevin McCarthy, in order to obtain enough votes to secure the gavel, has empowered a number of Republicans — including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) — who have demanded that the United States cease or curtail aid to Ukraine, even as Kyiv has been warning about another major Russian offensive.
Moreover, those same extremist forces in the GOP have suggested not voting to raise the debt ceiling if the administration does not enact severe spending cuts. Economists have warned that even approaching a calamity — the debt limit will likely be reached in June — would severely wound the nation’s economy.
Though the House GOP seems certain to be a thorn in Zients’ side, the two years of Democratic control of Washington left Biden with a legislative record that has evoked comparisons to those put forth by Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. And White House aides believe that for many voters, the year ahead will be defined not by Republican probes, but by the implementation of Biden’s accomplishments, including the infrastructure bill and the health care and climate change provisions that were part of 2022’s reconciliation package. Polls suggest that while voters disapprove of Biden’s handling of the documents, his overall approval rating has changed little.
“President Biden is on the side of working families in standing against House Republicans’ unprecedented middle class tax increase, inflation-worsening tax giveaways for the rich, and legislation to raise gas prices,” said White House spokesman Andrew Bates.
Looming over all of the challenges in Zients’ new inbox will be Biden’s announcement about 2024. Though some people close to the president say he has not fully made up his mind to run again, most in the White House expect Biden will announce his candidacy soon, potentially even next month, giving Zients the task of running a White House while coordinating a sprawling re-election campaign.
“Klain faced this unbelievably daunting menu of challenges during the first two years but now comes the hard part,” said Chris Whipple, who wrote the book “The Gatekeepers” about White House chiefs of staff. “Zients has got to manage the current classified documents furor but also put the right time in place and make sure the president is ready for the marathon to come.”
Adam Cancryn contributed to this report.
Jeff Zients, who was Biden’s first Covid coordinator, is expected within the White House to largely leave the politics to other senior aides.
Ron Klain, President Joe Biden’s chief of staff, plans to leave his post at the White House after a record run in the role, according to a person familiar with the move.
The longest-serving first chief of staff for any Democratic president, Klain oversaw an up-and-down two years for the administration. Last year’s difficult Afghanistan withdrawal and stubborn inflation also weakened Biden’s standing with the public. Biden, with his party holding narrow congressional majorities, piled up a number of major legislative wins and returned the U.S. to an alliance-first foreign policy, most notably in rallying the West in defense of Ukraine. It culminated with Democrats scoring better than expected results in the midterms.
After Democrats held the Senate, Klain and several other top staffers expected to step away after the midterms opted to stick around a bit longer, buoyed by the electorate’s validation.
Klain is expected to depart in the coming weeks. He finalized his decision to leave to coincide with the administration’s two-year anniversary, which he and other staffers marked Friday with a hearty celebration of their accomplishments.
It comes as the administration enters a new phase of Biden’s presidency, pivoting from legislating to fending off investigations by the new House GOP majority and preparing for the president’s likely reelection campaign.
News of Klain’s impending departure was first reported by the New York Times.
A prolific tweeter and emailer known for working 16-hour days, Klain largely succeeded in making the West Wing a cohesive workplace — although detractors both inside and outside the building criticized his tendency to micromanage and at times questioned his political instincts. Despite Biden’s low approval numbers and persistent inflation, Democrats did far better than expected in November’s midterm election, validating Biden’s tenure and Klain’s approach.
Biden, who relied heavily on Klain and a small group of senior aides who’ve been with him for years, had urged him to remain in the job. But many White House staffers acknowledged the physical grind of the high-pressure position and wondered how long he could keep up his pace.
Some of those senior aides, including presidential counselor Steve Ricchetti and senior adviser Anita Dunn, are among the most discussed names of Klain’s potential successor. Jeff Zients, who served as Biden’s first coronavirus coordinator and who Klain tasked with managing the expected staff and Cabinet turnover following the midterms, is also mentioned frequently as a potential next chief of staff.
White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain speaks during a TV interview on the driveway of the White House on March 1, 2022, in Washington, D.C.
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.
White House aides were pleased to see GOP Reps. Lauren Boebert (left) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (right), seen here with Rep. Matt Gaetz, selected to the Oversight Committee.
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