With the help of Allie Bice
Welcome to POLITICO’s 2021 Transition Playbook, your guide for the first 100 days of the Biden administration.
JOE BIDEN want to make KAMALA HARRIS feel included.
During Oval Office meetings, signings of executive orders and policy speeches, she is almost always in the area – often inside the camera. For staff announcements during the transition, officials were told to include quotes from both Biden and Harris. And all administrative officials refer to the “Biden-Harris administration” instead of the easier to say “Biden administration.”
Current and former Biden officials say the moves are rooted in Biden’s own experience as a second banana.
“The guideline from above is pretty clear: if he gets it, she should get it,” says a senior administration official. Whether the topic is ‘meeting attendance or staff size, that was and is the guiding principle.’
Some assistants of his time as vice president say Biden is also trying to avoid early missteps he believes BARACK OBAMA made in their relationship.
“It’s just about how he was treated or wanted to be treated during the Obama years, especially in the beginning,” an assistant told Biden when he was vice president. “To the extent that the relationship was rocky, it was mostly in the beginning.”
At the beginning of the last democratic government and during the campaign in 2008, Biden felt that Obama and his assistants were sometimes condescending. They shudder at the “Uncle Joe” meme that has gained a foothold in Washington and feel that it pushes a buffoonish portrayal of the VP.
When Biden said during the campaign that US opponents would probably test Obama’s stamp in the first months of the presidency, Obama called Biden and told him he did not need such public education. “I do not need you to act like you are my Henry Higgins,” Obama snapped, Biden would later tell his assistants, according to his former assistant. JEFF CONNAUGHTON. (Higgins is the character in the musical “My Fair Lady” that Eliza Doolitte teaches about polite society – yes, we are big MFL fans.)
Biden’s private response, he told people, was: ‘Whoa. Where does it come from? This is clearly a man who can limit my role to attending state principles or can just put me in a closet for four years. According to Connaughton’s book ‘The Payoff’, Biden concluded: ‘I will have to earn his trust, but I will not take care of this man. My masculinity is non-negotiable. ”
Masculinity – both literally and as a patriarchal concept – is not an issue this time around. But Biden is still trying to avoid anything that can be seen or felt like a slight feeling.
It seems that the mission has reached other parts of the administration as well. At her first press conference on Monday in New York, the UN Ambassador LINDA THOMAS-GREENFIELD referred to herself as part of the “Biden-Harris administration.”
The Education Department referred to the “Biden-Harris Administration” on the website from Day 1, with the Treasury Department and the Office of Personnel Management on January 25th.
PETE BUTTIGIEG’s However, the Department of Transportation was not so consistent on the message. After Buttigieg’s oath, the department initially referred to it as the “Biden Administration”. On February 25, a department’s press release quoted Buttigieg the “Biden-Harris” administration’s commitment to clean transportation, but elsewhere the release simply refers to the “Biden administration.” Buttigieg’s office declined to comment.
However, even the White House has its limits to apply the more inclusive nomenclature. When they talk about their predecessors, Biden’s assistants refer to it as ‘the Trump administration’.
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In the Roosevelt Chamber, where he held a virtual bilateral meeting with the Mexican president ANDRÉS MANUAL LÓPEZ OBRADOR. He mentions the bust of CESAR CHAVEZ he installed in the Oval office after taking office.
Biden also met Sens earlier earlier today. TOM CARPER (D-Del.), DICK DURBIN (D-Ill.), MAGGIE HASSAN (DN.H.), JOHN HICKENLOOPER (D-Colo.), ANGUS KING (Maine), JOE MANCHIN (DW.Va.), JEANNE SHAHEEN (DN.H.), JON TESTER (D-Mont.) En BRAND WARNING (D-Va.). (Sens. KYRSTEN SINEMA (D-Ariz.) En MARK KELLY (D-Ariz.) Was invited, but was on flights back to Washington.)
No public events scheduled.
The Grammys are approaching – which former president is a three-time Grammy winner?
(The answer is at the bottom.)
STATES FIGHT AREA OVER STANDARDIZED TESTS – State educators and local leaders speak out frustration with the administration’s decision to resume standardized testing requirements after an interruption of one year due to the coronavirus pandemic, JUAN PEREZ JR. reports.
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NEW FACES – Democratic activities NATALIE MONTELONGO and DEIRDRE SCHIFELING is in talks to join the White House’s political shop EMMY RUIZsay officials familiar with the discussions for Alex and LAURA BARRÓN LÓPEZ. The White House declined to comment.
Surprisingly, this does not include a SEAMUS HEANEY OFFER: The presidency has countless benefits, and for Biden, one of the benefits is March ‘Irish-American Heritage Month’. Although Biden is not the first president to issue such a proclamation, he is president. GEORGE HW BUSH, who did so in 1991 after Congress passed a law designating the month to celebrate Irish Americans – Biden seems to enjoy it more than his predecessors.
Biden’s proclamation refers to his own Irish ancestors: “The Blewitts of County Mayo and the Finnegans of County Louth.”
‘By 1909 my grandparents were AMBROSE FINNEGAN and GERALDINE BLEWITT in Scranton, Pennsylvania, met and married, and passed on to my mother, CATHERINE EUGENIA FINNEGAN BIDEN“A pride and a passion that runs through the bloodstream of all Irish Americans,” he wrote.
Biden has long leaned in its Irish Catholic roots as part of his Scranton Joe, working persona. When a BBC reporter asked him a question about the route years ago, Biden kwel, “The BBC? I’m Irish. ”
FIRST IN TRANSITIONAL PLAYBOOK – The ACLU launches tomorrow a six-digit digital and print ad purchase that Biden undertakes to sign an executive order giving transgender, intersex and non-binary people the option to mark their gender as ‘X’ on federal IDs to draw, rather than “M” or “F.”
This is the ACLU’s largest advertising buy aimed at the White House according to the group, or the federal government on any LGBTQ issue and the largest ever for a lawsuit issue. The ads will be targeted at DC, with digital ads in Washington media spaces, search ads and a few print ads in local LGBTQ stores.
“With a single pin, President Biden can provide much-needed clarity on government agencies and send a message to transgender, intersex and non-binary people across the country: we see you and we recognize you for who you are,” he said. ARLI CHRISTEN, campaign strategist at the ACLU’s National Political Advocacy Department.
The ACLU will send a letter to the White House on Tuesday “urges the administration to take this simple but necessary step swiftly to ensure fairness, prevent discrimination and alleviate unnecessary administrative burdens across the federal government.”
DO NOT ASK BOTH: Reuters reported on Sunday that Mexican President López Obrador – or AMLO as he is known – is expected to ask the Biden government for a share of the US vaccine supply during the bilateral meeting of the leaders.
Monday, the white house shut down that idea. “The president has made it clear that he is focusing on ensuring that vaccines are accessible to every American. That is our focus, ”said the press secretary. JEN PSAKI said.
DIVORCED FAMILIES CAN STAY: The task force of the Biden administration to reunite families separated under the border under President DONALD TRUMP shall allow those families to reunite and settle down in the United States, Secretary of Homeland Security ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS said today. “We hope to reunite the families here or in the country of origin,” Mayorkas said at the White House press release, per SABRINA RODRIGUEZ.
More than 5,500 families were separated under the Trump administration, and Biden took office with the parents of more than 600 children still unaccounted for. According to Mayorkas, about 105 families were recently reunited.
Some of Biden’s economic advisers have looked at ways to weaken the dollar (The New York Times)
Cannabis lobby does not want the former Rep. Patrick Kennedy Biden’s drug tsar should not be (Bloomberg News)
Biden will allow the Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois to continue (The Chicago Tribune)
MIGUEL CARDONA became a prominent national figure after being appointed Biden’s secretary of education, but his father, HECTOR CARDONA SR., is something of a famous person, at least a local one in Meriden, Connecticut.
Cardona’s father served in the local police force for three decades and, according to the Meriden Record Journal, was regularly recognized in the city for his rough mustache.
In fact, his mustache won a worldwide Facebook contest for best police officer mustache in 2013, the same year he stepped down from power. See the ‘stache for yourself’ here.
With his neatly trimmed goatee, Miguel has maintained the family tradition in facial hair, but he has a bit of work to do if he wants to fit his dad on style points.
What do you think, Miguel, maybe next Movember?
JIMMY CARTER won three Grammies – one for his autobiography “Faith: A Journey For All” in 2018; another for “A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety” in 2015; and another for “Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis” in 2006.
All three awards were in the Best Spoken Word album category. He has been nominated nine times for a Grammy in the category.
