The Morning Dispatch: Looking Back on One Year of the Biden Administration

Happy Thursday! You know Democrats’ abolish-the-filibuster-to-pass-election-reform gambit that everyone has known for weeks was going to fail in the Senate? It failed in the Senate. 

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• The Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected former President Donald Trump’s last-ditch efforts to block the release of White House records to the January 6 Select Committee, concluding the material in question—draft speeches and executive orders, handwritten notes, and call/visitor logs from the post-2020 election period—is not protected by executive privilege. The ruling could also affect former Trump aides, like Mark Meadows, who have referenced executive privilege in their refusal to cooperate with parts of the committee’s inquiry.

• Pfizer representatives said this week that multiple lab tests appear to confirm its oral COVID-19 antiviral, Paxlovid, remains effective against the Omicron variant. As a protease inhibitor, Paxlovid works by hindering the virus’ ability to replicate rather than attacking the virus head on—meaning it theoretically would not be affected by mutations to the virus’ spike protein.

• A Centers for Disease Control study released yesterday found that, prior to the emergence of the Delta variant, vaccinated individuals in New York and California were about half as likely as those with natural immunity alone to be reinfected with COVID-19. After Delta became the dominant strain, however, the unvaccinated with natural immunity were less likely to contract COVID-19 than those who were vaccinated and had no prior infection. The study does not take into account booster doses or Omicron, and one of its authors, Dr. Benjamin Silk, told reporters yesterday vaccination is “still the safest way to protect yourself against Covid.”

• The Biden administration announced Wednesday it will begin distributing 400 million N95 masks from the Strategic National Stockpile. The N95 masks—which the CDC formally acknowledged last week offer better protection than cloth masks—will theoretically be available for pickup at pharmacies and community health centers beginning next week, with each adult entitled to three.

• Starbucks on Wednesday became one of the largest companies to announce it is scrapping its proposed COVID-19 vaccine or testing requirement for employees in the wake of the Supreme Court blocking the Biden administration’s OSHA mandate. Chief Operating Officer John Culver said the company will continue to encourage vaccination and boosting, and thanked the “vast majority” of workers who are already fully vaccinated.

• Ravaged by scandal and facing a revolt from within his own party, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced yesterday most of the United Kingdom’s “Plan B” COVID-19 mitigation efforts—mask mandates, vaccine passports, work-from-home recommendations—will end next week as daily case counts in the country continue to fall. 

• Inflationary pressures are proving persistent worldwide, with both Canada and the United Kingdom reporting Wednesday that consumer prices rose last month at their fastest year-over-year rate (4.8 percent and 5.4 percent, respectively) in approximately three decades. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last week that prices in the United States rose 7 percent over that same period.

Biden Year One

One year ago today, Joe Biden took the oath of office and told Americans it was a “time for boldness, for there is much to do.”

“We will be judged, you and I, for how we resolve the cascading crises of our era,” he said, referencing one by one the pandemic, climate change, income inequality, systemic racism, geopolitical instability, and national divisions. “Will we rise to the occasion?”

Looking back now, there are two stories you can tell about the first year of the Biden administration. The first—and the one the White House was pushing yesterday—is a story of steady progress on the most important issues in the face of some unexpected headwinds and bad luck. Nearly 6.5 million more Americans are employed today than when Biden took office, wages are up nearly 5 percent, and the unemployment rate has fallen from 6.7 percent to under 4 percent. More than 209 million Americans are fully vaccinated—up from about 2 million last January—and just about anyone else who wants to lower their chances of dying from COVID-19 by a factor of 20 can easily get their shots at one of thousands of locations. Sure, inflation is outpacing those wage gains right now, and sure, the Omicron variant has rendered this winter more like the last one than we’d like, but neither of those phenomena are really Biden’s fault, and they’ll pass sooner rather than later.

“We have faced some of the biggest challenges that we’ve ever faced in this country these past few years—challenges to our public health, challenges to our economy,” Biden said yesterday at the outset of the second solo press conference of his presidency. “But we’re getting through it.”

The second story—and the one accepted by most Americans, if public polling is to be believed—is a story of overpromising and under delivering, of arrogance and stubbornness, of naivete and being caught flat-footed. The Build Back Better Act and voting reform push have both predictably stalled due to intra-party divisions, despite the White House’s repeated assurances that progress was being made. Signs of out-of-control inflation began popping up last spring, and it took top officials until late in the fall to publicly come around to the severity of the situation. The Afghanistan withdrawal was an unmitigated disaster, and the geopolitical ramifications are already becoming clear in Ukraine, North Korea, and Taiwan. Nearly 2,000 people are still dying from COVID-19 every day due to a highly predictable winter surge, and the administration is just now, this week, sending Americans a couple of at-home tests and N95 masks. Two of the administration’s key public health initiatives were deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court and struck down. Illegal border crossings reached all-time highs, as did the murder rate in several cities across the country. Partisan rancor isn’t much better than it was under Donald Trump—if it’s even improved at all.

As much as the White House wanted to use Wednesday’s presser to project that first story, the second one easily supplanted it as White House reporters pummeled Biden with question after question about his administration’s various failures.

“Do you need to be more realistic and scale down these priorities in order to get something passed?”

“If the U.S. and NATO aren’t willing to put troops on the line to defend Ukraine and American allies can’t agree on a sanctions package, hasn’t the U.S. and the West lost nearly all of its leverage over Vladimir Putin?”

“How long should Americans expect to face higher prices when they’re at the grocery store or when they’re at the gas pump? Is this something that they’re going to see into the summer, into next fall?”

“What do you say to these black voters who say that you do not have their backs, as you promised on the campaign trail?”

“What have you done to restore Americans’ faith in the competence of government? And are you satisfied by the view of the competence of your government?”

“How do you plan to win back moderates and independents who cast a ballot for you in 2020 but, polls indicate, aren’t happy with the way you’re doing your job now?”

To Biden’s credit, he stuck around for nearly two hours, answering at least one question from just about every reporter in the room. He committed to Vice President Kamala Harris being his running mate if he runs again in 2024, made it clear to the Federal Reserve he believes it’s time to pivot to combating inflation, and conceded the Build Back Better Act may end up being broken into “chunks” to satisfy his party’s various coalitions. But Biden sometimes struggled to respond to questions in a coherent manner and many of the answers he gave were defiant, specious, and, in some instances, incredibly irresponsible.

“Russia will be held accountable if it invades,” Biden said at one point, adding it’s his “guess” that Putin will make the move. “And it depends on what it does. It’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion and then we end up having a fight about what to do and not do, etc. But if they actually do what they’re capable of doing with the forces amassed on the border, it is going to be a disaster for Russia if they further invade Ukraine.”

A Reuters reporter followed up a few minutes later asking if Biden understood the gravity of what he had just admitted. “Are you saying that a minor incursion by Russia into Ukrainian territory would not lead to the sanctions that you have threatened?” she asked. “Or are you effectively giving Putin permission to make a small incursion into the country?”

“Good question,” Biden said with a laugh. “That’s how it did sound like, didn’t it?” He went on to detail the internal divisions within NATO on how to respond to a Russian provocation, and let slip that many potential sanctions on Russia would have a “negative impact” on the U.S. and EU economies as well. The remarks led both White House press secretary Jen Psaki and National Security Council spokeswoman Emily Horne to issue statements clarifying that any Russian aggression towards Ukraine—be it military, paramilitary, or cyber—will be met with a “reciprocal response.”

Democrats’ election reform proposals were a recurring topic of discussion—the doomed vote on the legislation was set to take place in a few hours—and Biden grew increasingly agitated with reporters reminding him that, in Georgia last week, he had compared those opposing the measures to segregationists and Confederates. “I did not say that they were going to be a George Wallace or a Bull Connor,” he protested. “I said we’re going to have a decision in history that is going to be marked just like it was then.”

But perhaps the most ominous moments of the afternoon came when Biden was asked if he believes the 2022 elections will be legitimate without his voting reform legislation being passed. Like Trump in the lead-up to the 2020 election, Biden refused to say—twice.

“I’m not going to say it’s going to be legit,” he declared. “The prospect of being illegitimate is in direct proportion to us not being able to get these reforms passed.”

Trump Finds Little Support for Ousting McConnell

To the extent that there is a GOP civil war, it’s typically been framed over the past year as a battle for the soul of the party, with former President Donald Trump on one side and Rep. Liz Cheney on the other. While most Republicans have either eagerly re-embraced or reluctantly accepted Trump as the party’s leader following his attempt to overturn the 2020 election results and remain in office, Cheney has been waging a (mostly) lonely fight to, in her words, make sure he never gets “anywhere near the Oval Office ever again.” ​​

Trump has shot back plenty, helping to orchestrate Cheney’s ouster from House GOP leadership in May and elevating a primary challenger in Wyoming that, according to one poll last month, is leading the incumbent by nearly 20 percentage points. But the former president—perhaps viewing Cheney as an already vanquished foe—has in recent weeks turned his fire on another Republican leader.

“Mitch McConnell is giving the Democrats victory on everything. What is wrong with this Broken Old Crow?” Trump said last month, days after McConnell and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer brokered a deal to raise the debt ceiling and stave off a government default. “He’s hurting the Republican Senators and the Republican Party. When will they vote him out of Leadership?”

“GET RID OF MITCH!” he concluded, removing any doubt as to what he wants lawmakers to do. (Coincidentally, this is the same thing Declan yelled at his TV every NFL Sunday from 2017 through 2020.)

McConnell, 80 next month, has been Senate Republican leader since 2007—the longest such tenure in GOP history—and if he sticks it out through at least 2023, he’ll surpass the late-Democratic Sen. Mike Mansfield as the longest-serving Senate leader of either party. He announced last week he’ll run for another two-year term later this year, and none of his potential successors—Sens. John Thune, John Cornyn, or John Barrasso—made any move to stand in his way.

But days after that announcement, Sen. Lindsey Graham—who declared in dramatic fashion after the violence on January 6, 2021, that he was done trying to help Trump only to volunteer weeks later to lead a “draft Trump” movement —joined Sean Hannity’s program to make some news. “Can Senator McConnell effectively work with the leader of the Republican Party, Donald Trump?” he asked. “I’m not going to vote for anybody for leader of the Senate as a Republican unless they can prove to me that they can advocate an American first agenda and have a working relationship with President Trump. Because if you can’t do that, you will fail.”

Graham acknowledged that many of Trump’s accomplishments while in office—confirming three Supreme Court justices and hundreds of federal judges, passing tax reform—were driven, in large part, by McConnell. But if Trump is elected once again in 2024—as Graham appears to think he will be—that transactional relationship may not prove as successful a second time around.

While not as vocal about it as Cheney, McConnell has lit into Trump on several occasions for his lies about the 2020 election and role in the January 6 attack on the Capitol. In a withering speech delivered after he voted to acquit Trump in February, McConnell made very clear he believed Trump was “practically and morally responsible” for the riot, and suggested the former president could face criminal prosecution for his role. He’s expressed support for the January 6 Select Committee (despite eventually voting against its formation last year), and just last week, he stood squarely behind GOP Sen. Mike Rounds, who was taking heat from Trump for describing Joe Biden’s victory as legitimate.

Some in Trump’s orbit—Steve Bannon in particular—have been trying (and failing) to oust McConnell as leader for half a decade, but the Minority Leader’s comments this past year—as well as his support for Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure deal—have made it personal for Trump himself. “This is going to be a litmus test for him,” one adviser told CNN recently, referring to 2022 candidates’ support of McConnell and the likelihood of receiving a Trump endorsement.

But as of now, it looks like McConnell has the upper hand. Just two aspiring GOP senators—Eric Greitens in Missouri and Kelly Tshibaka in Alaska—have pledged to oppose the longtime leader, with even the Trumpiest candidates—Mo Brooks in Alabama, Josh Mandel and JD Vance in Ohio, Ted Budd in North Carolina, Blake Masters in Arizona—refusing to rule out supporting him. 

Among Republicans already in the Senate, McConnell’s position is even stronger. “Oh, he’s overwhelmingly supported for leadership,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia told The Dispatch. “He takes a lot of slings and arrows for a lot of us, and he has a masterful way of being strategic in the long term. And I think we all have a great appreciation for that.”

Sen. Rick Scott of Florida—chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee this cycle—told The Dispatch he would “absolutely” support McConnell for leader again, and retiring Sen. Pat Toomey said he doesn’t think McConnell has anything to worry about.

“I haven’t heard anything other than solid support for his continued leadership,” Sen. Mitt Romney said on Meet the Press. “People are always trying to placate Donald Trump. … I wouldn’t attribute [Graham’s statement] as a comment about Mitch McConnell as much as a comment about Donald Trump.”

Sen. Mike Rounds predicted Graham may end up walking back his trial balloon. “I would suspect that, while that may be a comment that he would make today, he gave himself lots of latitude to be able to change and offer support for Mitch,” he told The Dispatch.

Even among the conference’s Trumpier wing, the appetite to send McConnell packing is limited. Sen. Ted Cruz told The Dispatch he’s had “significant disagreements” with McConnell, but that they’ve also worked together closely on a number of issues. “I don’t agree with everything Mitch does,” he said. “But then again, I don’t agree with everything most people do.”

Would Sen. Josh Hawley vote for McConnell again? “Let me put it this way,” he said. “I don’t have any present plans not to.”

Worth Your Time

• As highlighted in a Presented Without Comment yesterday, top Democrats are warming to the idea of supporting primary challengers to Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. Good luck with that, Henry Olsen writes in his latest Washington Post column. “The fact that [Manchin] and Sinema prioritize the views of their constituents over the views of progressive activists isn’t heresy; it’s democracy,” Olsen writes. “Both senators know they live in precincts where the majority of people don’t sing progressive hymns. The attempt to inspire fear, then, will inspire only hatred and contempt. This is the fatal flaw in progressive strategy. Progressives might be able to enforce their ideology in the ivory towers of Silicon Valley or academia, but it will not work in West Virginia or Arizona. Worse, it will likely alienate those non-progressives whose votes created the Democratic majority to begin with.”

• Matt Yglesias’ latest Slow Boring post details how, contrary to President Biden’s gripes, congressional Republicans have actually been willing to play ball with Democrats at several points over the past year—and argues an acknowledgement of these bipartisan efforts would serve the White House well going forward. “‘Republicans will obstruct everything’ is a good talking point, but it’s not actually true,” he writes, referencing the infrastructure deal, the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, the lack of a government shutdown, and more. “And sitting United States senators are aware that it’s not true, so while you can try to trick your audience on Twitter, you can’t actually trick Manchin and Sinema. Not only is [Electoral Count Act] reform a live possibility, but I think that if Democrats are willing to admit defeat on their Freedom to Vote package, there might be a long-term path toward bipartisanship on some of that stuff, too.”

Presented Without Comment

Also Presented Without Comment

Also Also Presented Without Comment

Toeing the Company Line

• It’s impossible to know what Martin Luther King, Jr. would have to say about today’s political debates—but that won’t stop partisans from making their best guesses. “The only thing I know for sure is that if Martin Luther King Jr. were alive today, he’d be 93,” Jonah writes in his latest G-File (🔒). “Everything else is an argument.”

• In Wednesday’s Capitolism (🔒), Scott Lincicome goes after progressives’ “absurd” claims that American grocery stores are even partially at fault for the inflationary pressures we’re all experiencing. “These consistently low profit margins are a good indication that, far from being hyper-concentrated and ruled by greedy, price-gouging fat cats, the grocery business is one of the more competitive and consumer-friendly industries in the country,” he writes.

• Michael Shellenberger made his Remnant debut on Wednesday, joining Jonah for a discussion of his latest book, San Fransicko, on the connection between cities’ progressive governance and rising addiction and mental health crises. What can conservatives do to reverse these trends?

• On this week’s Dispatch Podcast, Sarah, Steve, David, and Jonah discuss the Biden administration’s first year, shifting party preferences in a Gallup survey, and whether or not we’re on the precipice of World War III with Russia and Ukraine.

• Up on the site today: Kevin Carroll on how terrorists facilitate attacks from behind bars, Brian Riedl on Biden’s year of big spending, and Matthew Kroenig and Jeffrey Cimmino on Biden’s record on dealing with dictators.

Let Us Know

Are President Biden’s comments yesterday about the 2022 elections—pegging their legitimacy to the passage of Democrats’ election reforms—the most reckless words he’s uttered since being sworn into office?

Reporting by Declan Garvey (@declanpgarvey), Andrew Egger (@EggerDC), Charlotte Lawson (@lawsonreports), Audrey Fahlberg (@AudreyFahlberg), Ryan Brown (@RyanP_Brown), Harvest Prude (@HarvestPrude), and Steve Hayes (@stephenfhayes).