The Daily 202: Biden just set rules for how he’ll work with Republicans

President Biden laid out informal rules for working with Republicans, saying yesterday he won’t go cap-in-hand for their support, predicting some of those publicly criticizing him now just need to “get it out of their system,” and saving his sharpest show of anger for GOP statehouses trying to make it harder to vote.

The president’s working relationship with Republicans matters because Democrats hold a razor-thin majority in the Congress, and White House aides know they cannot advance some of his major priorities absent GOP support.

Biden’s remarks, delivered at his first solo news conference, came as the Georgia state House passed legislation that would, among other things, make it illegal for third-party groups to give food and water to people in line to vote and imposes new conditions on voting by mail, which proved decisive in 2020. 

“What I’m worried about is how un-American this whole initiative is. It’s sick. It’s sick,” the president said of Republican-driven bills nationwide that voting rights advocates say would primarily disenfranchise voters of color.

My colleagues Amy Gardner and Amy B Wang note: “In 43 states across the country, GOP lawmakers have proposed at least 250 laws that would limit mail, early in-person and Election Day voting with such constraints as stricter ID requirements, limited hours or narrower eligibility to vote absentee, according to data compiled as of Feb. 19 by the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice. Even more proposals have been introduced since then.”

Biden declared “this makes Jim Crow look like Jim Eagle” (no, I don’t know, either) and vowed to do “everything in my power” to thwart those efforts. He signaled that this was one issue where he might favor significant changes to the filibuster, the parliamentary mechanism that lets a determined minority stymie a majority that is shy of 60 votes.

He added he would keep “an open mind” on doing so again when it comes to “things that are just elemental to the functioning of our democracy, like the right to vote.” 

He also predicted he could get help on the voting rights issue from across the aisle, just not in Washington: “The Republican voters I know find this despicable — Republican voters. … I’m not talking about the elected officials, I’m talking about voters.”

The president has taken this tack before, arguing that congressional Republicans opposed to his $1.9 trillion coronavirus response package were at odds with their voters, who welcome the law. (He mostly overstates his case.)

In passing the legislation, he said he would welcome Republican support but not delay or dilute the bill to get it. And in selling the plan, he has relied on state and local Republican leaders who have said they welcome the help.

On Thursday, he repeated his argument that he doesn’t need congressional Republican support to make good on his campaign promise to restore a semblance of national “unity.”

“I would like elected Republican support, but what I know I have now is that I have electoral support from Republican voters,” he said. “Republican voters agree with what I’m doing.”

With his handling of the situation at the border with Mexico under fire, Biden seemed to shrug off Senate Republicans’ criticisms of immigration legislation that recently passed the House and would provide certain classes of immigrants a path to permanent residency and even citizenship. 

“I know [Republicans] have to posture for a while. They sort of got to get it out of their system,” he said. “But I’m ready to work with any Republican who wants to help solve the problem and make the situation better.” 

On issue after issue, Biden said, “my Republican colleagues are going to have to determine whether or not we want to work together, or they decide that the way in which they want to proceed is to just decide to divide the country, continue the politics of division.”

“But I’m not going to do that,” he said. “I’m just going to move forward and take these things as they come.”

Dominion Voting Systems is suing Fox News for $1.6 billion over the network’s election fraud claims. “In the suit, filed in a Delaware court, Dominion argued that Fox and several of its on-air personalities elevated conspiracy theories about the voting company rigging the 2020 election and allowed falsehoods by their guests to go unchecked,” Elahe Izadi reports.

The Justice Department has charged 474 people over the last year with trying to steal more than $569 million in covid-related fraud schemes, Matt Zapotosky reports. “The department said it has seen fraud attempts connected to several government aid programs.” 

More than 60 former Asian American officials condemned anti-Asian attacks. “The signers served in the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump. They include Elaine Chao, labor secretary under George W. Bush and transportation secretary under Trump; Obama commerce secretary Gary Locke; and Norman Mineta, who was transportation secretary under George W. Bush and commerce secretary under Clinton.,” Seung Min Kim reports. 

“Taiwan reports largest ever incursion by Chinese air force,” Reuters reports. “Twenty Chinese military aircraft entered Taiwan’s air defence identification zone on Friday.” The move marks “a dramatic escalation of tension across the Taiwan Strait.”

• “China hits British lawmakers with new sanctions as spat with U.S. allies intensifies,” by Gerry Shih: “[China is] targeting British members of parliament including Tom Tugendhat, the foreign affairs committee head; Iain Duncan Smith, who co-chairs an international alliance of democratically elected lawmakers critical of China; as well as the Newcastle University anthropologist Joanne Smith Finley. The sanctions list also included Essex Court Chambers. The high-profile London law firm was hired by activist groups including the World Uyghur Congress and published a legal opinion concluding there is a credible case that China’s Xinjiang policies amounted to genocide.”
• “As massive ship remains stuck in the Suez Canal, signs of global economic toll emerge,” by Sudarsan Raghavan: “At least seven tankers carrying liquefied natural gas were diverted. … At least four long-range oil tankers with the capacity to haul 75,000 tons of oil were also possibly headed around the Cape of Good Hope. … Shipping rates have nearly doubled this week. … With more ships potentially being diverted to the Cape of Good Hope, piracy could increase.”
• “Block by block, he aims to fight injustice and save the planet,” writes Sarah Kaplan in the first profile of The Post’s series on climate visionaries: “Solar panels and clean heat shouldn’t be limited to the wealthy, says Donnel Baird, who’s bringing green power to low-income neighborhoods.”

• “The presidential press conference in the Biden era is as awful as ever,” writes the New Yorker’s Susan Glasser: “There was not a single question … about the ongoing pandemic that for the past year has convulsed life as we know it and continues to claim an average of a thousand lives a day. How is this even possible during a once-in-a-century public-health crisis, the combating of which was the central theme of Biden’s campaign and remains the central promise of his Presidency? It’s hard not to see it as anything other than an epic and utterly avoidable press fail.”
• “Down and out in the Magic Kingdom: When Pooh got fired,” by Bloomberg’s Anders Melin: “On one level, the scene is a familiar tableau of broken dreams and hard financial realities in the time of Covid-19 — of jobs lost, of savings exhausted, of hopes deferred — wrapped up in a Disney-esque bow. On another level, it is a microcosm of today’s split-screen economy — of steely corporate decisions, record stock prices and mind-boggling executive riches. In the last three months of 2020, as Disney laid off thousands, its shares surged 46%.”

• “Utility protections enacted in the early months of the pandemic are slated to expire in some states — including Hawaii, New York, Pennsylvania and Vermont — over the next few weeks,” Tony Romm, Jeff Stein and Alyssa Fowers report. “The looming lapses have registered new urgent alarm among congressional lawmakers and community activists nationwide, who say the Biden administration should have acted faster, and sooner, to distribute federal aid to households at risk.”
• “None of the roughly $1 billion in new stimulus funds allocated for water assistance has reached Americans in need, nearly three months after Congress authorized the first tranche of money. In the meantime, the Biden administration has resisted calls on Capitol Hill to instate a national moratorium on water and electricity shut-offs, a policy that might have covered people until federal assistance arrives,” our colleagues write.
• Michigan is particularly at risk. Residents who are behind on their water bills could see their taps start to run dry in five days. In the state, “lawmakers so far not extended the utility protections, rankling those who remember all too well the water hazards that have plagued cities like Flint.”
• “U.S. Reps. Debbie Dingell and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan said they requested a meeting with the Department of Health and Human Services about the fact that water assistance hasn’t been released. The two Democrats have also raised the matter with White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain and are working to set up a meeting on the matter.”

• Texas’s two Republican senators, Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, will lead a delegation of their colleagues on a tour of the Rio Grande Valley, John Wagner reports.
• “Meanwhile, Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Tex.) plans to lead a delegation of lawmakers on a tour of a migrant shelter in Carrizo Springs, Tex., for the growing number of unaccompanied children in federal custody.”

There’s a Manchin in the news — no, not West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, but his wife, Gayle Manchin, whom the White House just announced will be nominated for federal co-chair of the Appalachian Regional Commission. Manchin, an educator, has served as president of the West Virginia State Board of Education and as the state’s secretary of education and the arts, the White House said. Currently, she chairs the Board for Reconnecting McDowell, Inc., an initiative serving rural West Virginia. 

“I think Biden is of the school of thought that a president can get one or two big things done at a time,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian, about Biden’s news conference. “When you say ‘No Drama Obama’ — he’s trying to be ‘One Step At a Time Biden,’ ”

• “The contenders — former state Treasurer Josh Mandel, former state GOP Chair Jane Timken, technology company executive Bernie Moreno and investment banker Mike Gibbons — had flown down to attend the fundraiser to benefit a Trump-endorsed Ohio candidate looking to oust one of the 10 House Republicans who backed his impeachment,” Politico reports. “As the candidates mingled during a pre-dinner cocktail reception, one of the president’s aides signaled to them that Trump wanted to huddle with them in a room just off the lobby. What ensued was a 15-minute backroom backbiting session reminiscent of Trump’s reality TV show.”
• This is what the Republican Party looks like now. “In virtually every Republican primary, candidates are jockeying, auditioning and fighting for the former president’s backing. Trump has received overtures from a multitude of candidates desperate for his endorsement, something that top Republicans say gives him all-encompassing power to make-or-break the outcome of primaries.”

• “Trump, who encouraged his supporters to fight against the confirmation of Biden’s victory by Congress and to march to the Capitol, told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham on Thursday night that the rioters posed ‘zero threat,’” Colby Itkowitz reports. ““Look, they went in — they shouldn’t have done it — some of them went in, and they’re hugging and kissing the police and the guards, you know? They had great relationships. A lot of the people were waved in, and then they walked in, and they walked out.”
• One officer died after being assaulted during the attack, two others died by suicide days later, and many more were injured, some permanently.

• “In letters to 16 agencies across the Executive Branch and Congress, the panels asked for all communications sent between agency officials regarding Congress’ Jan. 6 session, when lawmakers certified Biden’s Electoral College victory. The requests demand all relevant documents and messages from Dec. 1, 2020, to Jan. 20, 2021,” Politico reports. “The unusually broad committee review comes as Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been unable to secure bipartisan cooperation to launch an independent commission to review the federal government’s handling of the attack.”

• “Bashing of the safety and efficacy of vaccines is occurring in chat rooms frequented by all manner of right-wing groups including the Proud Boys; the Boogaloo movement, a loose affiliation known for wanting to spark a second Civil War; and various paramilitary organizations,” the New York Times’s Neil MacFarquhar reports. “These groups tend to portray vaccines as a symbol of excessive government control. … The marked focus on vaccines is particularly striking on discussion channels populated by followers of QAnon, who had falsely prophesied that Trump would continue as president while his political opponents were marched off to jail.”

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) will receive this year’s John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award for his vote to convict Trump during his first impeachment trial “and his consistent and courageous defense of democracy,” NBC News reports. “He was willing to risk his career and his popularity within his own party to do what’s right for our country and to follow his conscience and Constitution and his impeachment votes,” former ambassador Caroline Kennedy told NBC News’s Peter Alexander this morning. 

“Trump appointees are sabotaging Biden’s stimulus checks,” by the American Prospect’s Alexander Sammon: “On Wednesday, March 24, House Democrats Bill Pascrell Jr. (D-NJ), Richard Neal (D-MA), John Larson (D-CT), and Danny Davis (D-IL), members of the Ways and Means Committee, sent a letter to Social Security Administration commissioner Andrew Saul, complete with an ultimatum. According to the letter, nearly 30 million Social Security and Supplemental Security Income recipients, some of the country’s poorest and neediest people, were being prevented from receiving their $1,400 stimulus checks from the American Rescue Plan, because Saul was refusing to send the necessary payment files to the IRS.” 

A drug company president that has ties to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) got special access to virus testing. The Times revealed that the president of pharmaceutical company Regeneron, George Yancopoulos, was among those who received preferential testing thanks to Cuomo. The list also includes, as previously reported, members of the governor’s family. The company requested tests from the states for Yancopoulos and his family after a “member of his household became infected,” the company said.

“Revelations that the governor’s family and other influential people were given special access to state-run coronavirus tests early in the pandemic have drawn the interest of investigators in the New York State Assembly,” the Times reports. “On Thursday, the chair of the committee, Assemblyman Charles D. Lavine, said the preferential access for Mr. Cuomo’s family in the beginning of the pandemic would also become part of the inquiry” looking into “several allegations of sexual harassment made in recent weeks against Mr. Cuomo, as well as the manipulation by his senior staff of data related to nursing home deaths.”

At least 237 ships are waiting to cross the Suez Canal, which is still facing delays because of the blockage caused by the MV Ever Given, a cargo tanker the size of a skyscraper. This morning, the Suez Canal’s service provider, Leth Agencies, tweeted that the Ever Given “remains grounded in the same position” with tugboats and dredgers working to “refloat” the vessel.

Biden will hold his first political fundraiser as president today at a virtual event from the White House to benefit the reelection campaign of Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms (D). After the fundraiser, the president will go home to Wilmington, Del., where he’ll spend the weekend. 

Vice President Harris is scheduled to travel to Connecticut with Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to highlight provisions of the $1.9 trillion relief package related to child poverty and education. She will hold a “listening session” at the Boys & Girls Club of New Haven. Connecticut Democratic Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy are also expected to attend. 

Earlier today, Harris swore in two new senior administration officials: Xavier Becerra to lead the Department of Health and Human Services and Shalanda Young to serve as deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget.

Seth Meyers broke down Fox News’s breakdown of the Biden news conference: