| | | | | |  | | By Ryan Lizza and Rachael Bade | | | | | | |  | DRIVING THE DAY | | TODAY'S BIG EVENT: Senate Democrats will hold a virtual meeting at 12:45 p.m. It will be the first opportunity of the new year for all 50 caucus members to talk about where Build Back Better 2.0 stands and what they think of Majority Leader CHUCK SCHUMER's new voting rights push. On both issues — as usual — every utterance of JOE MANCHIN (W.Va.) and KYRSTEN SINEMA (Ariz.) will be examined like a haruspex inspecting a sheep liver. THE LATEST DEADLINE: As we previewed Monday, voting rights and election reform will dominate the debate in Washington over the next weeks. Meeting self-imposed deadlines has not exactly been the Democrats' forte over the last year, but Schumer said Monday he wants the Senate to consider rules changes by Jan. 17 if voting rights legislation is filibustered. This has been a Democrats-only debate. So far from Republicans we've mostly heard a lot of sniping at Schumer from the sidelines. "This is another Schumer-preservation strategy," one Senate GOP aide told us Monday night. "His approach as majority leader has been to isolate his moderate members (Manchin and Sinema) and make them withstand public scorn for not falling in line. It's designed to let him off the hook from any criticism." But one important dynamic to watch is whether Minority Leader MITCH MCCONNELL and his colleagues shift from simply attacking the Schumer move here to making a substantive counteroffer. There's a movement afoot on the intellectual right to get congressional Republicans to back some narrow but important reforms. And Schumer will have to make some tough decisions if McConnell embraces them over the next two weeks. First, a primer on the current proposals in play … The two top priorities for Schumer are the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. In 2017 House Democrats wrote the For the People Act, commonly known as H.R. 1, to implement a myriad of political reforms covering voting, election integrity, campaign finance, restoration of the Voting Rights Act, D.C. statehood, redistricting and ethics rules covering the president and Congress. Think of it as the political reform version of the original Build Back Better bill: Instead of containing every Democratic spending priority, it contained every Dem political reform idea. A lot of it was driven by the anti-corruption push spurred by DONALD TRUMP's actions in 2016 and 2017. In private, many Democrats admit it was a hastily drafted messaging bill for the 2018 midterms. When it got to the Senate last year, Democrats began refining it, especially to take into account what happened in 2020 and its aftermath. As the bill was refined and moved toward the Senate floor, Manchin announced that he wouldn't support it. The bill was scrapped. | | A message from Facebook: Why Facebook supports updated internet regulations, including Section 230
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Hear from Aaron on why Facebook supports updating regulations on the internet's most pressing challenges, including reforming Section 230 to set clear guidelines for all large tech companies. | | | Two things then happened: 1) Manchin declared his support for the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, a much narrower bill that would restore the Justice Department's authority to approve changes to voting laws and redistricting in a dozen or so states with a recent history of racially discriminatory voting laws. But Sen. LISA MURKOWSKI (Alaska) was the sole Republican to sign on, leaving it going nowhere fast. 2) A group of Democrats, including RAPHAEL WARNOCK (Ga.), TIM KAINE (Va.), AMY KLOBUCHAR (Minn.) and JEFF MERKLEY (Ore.), began meeting with Manchin to design a modified version of H.R. 1 that all 50 Democrats could back. The Freedom to Vote Act is the fruit of those negotiations. It's still a massive reform bill addressing voting rights, election integrity, campaign finance and gerrymandering. But it's more tailored to address problems of electoral subversion, like removing election officials without cause, that became apparent after 2020. It also includes more input from local election administrators to satisfy complaints about a federal takeover of state-run elections, as well as more Manchin-/GOP-friendly language on some issues, like voter ID laws. (The Brennan Center for Justice has this useful breakdown of the differences.) Manchin shopped the bill to Republicans, and, despite a few sops to the right that it included, he came up empty-handed. SO IT'S NUKE THE FILIBUSTER OR BUST, RIGHT? Maybe not. The conservative commentariat has suddenly rallied around another idea: reforming the Electoral Count Act. That's the 19th-century law that outlines a convoluted process to certify each state's electoral votes. Trump seized on the seeming ambiguities and weak points of the poorly written law to try to throw out or replace legitimate slates of JOE BIDEN electors. The attack on the Capitol happened when MIKE PENCE and others refused to go along. In recent weeks, Cato, National Review, the Washington Examiner and AEI's Yuval Levin have all editorialized in favor of reforming the Electoral Count Act. Liberals and academics have been on board for a while. If Senate Republicans united in favor of ECA reform as their main alternative to Schumer's legislation, it could complicate the majority leader's plan. If the Senate passed a narrow ECA reform bill, would it take the air out of the push for filibuster reform? We're told Schumer views ECA reform on its own as completely inadequate. It is a minor reform compared with the Freedom to Vote Act or the John Lewis bill and would have no impact on this year's midterm elections, which loom as the near-term contest spurring Democrats to action. But reforming the ECA is arguably the single most important tweak to America's creaky presidential election system that could prevent a future unscrupulous president from succeeding where Trump failed. Good Tuesday morning. Thanks for reading Playbook. Drop us a line and tell us which senator you think is most likely to talk while muted in their caucus Zoom: Rachael Bade, Eugene Daniels, Ryan Lizza, Tara Palmeri. | | | |   | | | BIDEN'S TUESDAY: — 10:10 a.m.: The president and VP KAMALA HARRIS will receive the President's Daily Brief. — 2 p.m.: Biden and Harris will meet with their Covid-19 response team on the latest Omicron developments. Press secretary JEN PSAKI will brief at 2:30 p.m. THE SENATE will meet at 10 a.m. to take up ANNE WITKOWSKY's State Department nomination. It will vote on GABRIEL SANCHEZ's judicial nomination at noon, followed by a recess until 2:15 p.m. for weekly party luncheons. THE HOUSE is out. | | | | POLITICO TECH AT CES 2022 - We are bringing a special edition of the POLITICO Tech newsletter to CES 2022. Written by Alexandra Levine and John Hendel, the newsletter will take you inside the most influential technology event on the planet, featuring every major and emerging industry in the technology ecosystem gathered together in one place. The newsletter runs from Jan. 5-7 and will focus on the public policy related aspects of the gathering. Sign up today to receive exclusive coverage of the Summit. | | | | | PHOTO OF THE DAY | 
People walk down the steps of the Lincoln Memorial with the reflecting pool barely visible in the background as snow falls on Monday, Jan. 3. | Alex Brandon/AP Photo | | | PLAYBOOK READS | | CONGRESS PELOSI STAFF TURNOVER SPIKES AMID RETIREMENT TALK — Speaker NANCY PELOSI has seen a big exodus from her office the past year as expectations grow that she will leave Congress after this term. On Monday, JORGE AGUILAR, who ran Pelosi's campaign arm and has been with the speaker for nearly a decade, landed a job at government relations firm theGROUP. His was the latest in a string of recent departures from Pelosi land that have pushed the speaker into the 90th percentile for highest House turnover, according to LegiStorm data. Pelosi's staff churn has been relatively stable over the years, tracking closely with the average among congressional offices. But according to LegiStorm, turnover in the speaker's office skyrocketed in 2021, a trend that tracked with anticipation that this will be her final term. Per LegiStorm's data, her office ranked 42nd out of 439 House offices for turnover, and her turnover index rate was .69, almost double the average .38 turnover for offices overall last year. (Check out the chart below.) | 
Courtesy of LegiStorm | LegiStorm's "turnover index" captures the rate of churn while accounting for salary. So the departure of a chief of staff would carry more than a scheduler. "Turnover of 0.0 indicates no turnover during a time period, while a 0.5 turnover index indicates that half of the office, weighted by salary, has turned over per year," the website reads. Pelosi's office downplayed the stats. Different factors always come into play when it comes to turnover, a spokesman said. Last year, the pandemic combined with Jan. 6 led to many staffers departing Congress. But the spike in Pelosi's office was exceptional. TRUMP CARDS FIRST IN PLAYBOOK — Per Alex Isenstadt: The principal pro-Trump super PAC, Make America Great Again, Again!, is planning a Feb. 23 fundraiser featuring the former president and a "select group" of 2022 candidates he's endorsed, according to an email the group is circulating to donors. Organizers are asking donors to give as much as $125,000 to attend the event at Mar-a-Lago. NO BOUNDARIES TO TRUMP ENDORSEMENTS — Trump on Monday endorsed Hungary's far-right PM VIKTOR ORBAN, saying in a statement that he gives Obran his "complete support." NYT's Shane Goldmacher notes that "Orban and his party have steadily consolidated power in Hungary by weakening the country's independent and democratic institutions — rewriting election laws to favor his Fidesz party, changing school textbooks, curbing press freedoms, overhauling the Constitution and changing the composition of the judiciary. "The actions have caused consternation in the European Union, to which Hungary belongs, but also made Mr. Orban something of a cause célèbre in conservative American political circles, following years of an aggressive influence operation to bolster his image in the U.S." ALSO SEEKING CHALLENGERS — In a statement Monday, Trump called on someone to challenge Rep. DON BACON (R-Neb.). His offense was not voting for impeachment — Bacon did not — but supporting the bipartisan infrastructure bill. (Despite the fact that Trump once pushed for infrastructure legislation himself.) The district is competitive, so a primary won't likely help the GOP. The Hill's Max Greenwood has more. ALL POLITICS RUSH TO RETIRE (BUT DON'T CALL IT THAT) — Rep. BOBBY RUSH (D-Ill.), who was first elected to Congress in 1992 and later beat back a challenge from BARACK OBAMA, announced he won't seek reelection. Shia Kapos and Brakkton Booker write that Rush, "a legend in Chicago politics dating back to the 1960s when he co-founded the Illinois Black Panther Party, joins a wave of House lawmakers leaving public office. Just don't call it a retirement. "'First of all, I'm not retiring man, alright?' he said in an interview. 'I am not ready to go off to some spot in the sun, sit on nobody's beach drinking tequila.' His plan: to focus on his work as a pastor, where he hopes to maintain sway over voters who sent him to Congress 30 years ago. 'I'm coming home to my church located in the heart of South Side of the city of Chicago,' Rush said, referring to the Beloved Community Church of God in Christ, where he serves as pastor." AND THE LATEST REDISTRICTING SHAKEUP — Former Rep. HARLEY ROUDA (D-Calif.), who ousted a Republican in 2018 to win the state's 48th Congressional District, announced he won't run for a newly drawn district this year. He would have had to take on Rep. KATIE PORTER (D-Calif.). More from LAT's Melanie Mason END OF AN ERA — Longtime New Hampshire Secretary of State BILL GARDNER, who's steered the first-in-the-nation primary for almost half a century, is retiring. Read Fox News' Paul Steinhauser, a New Hampshire veteran himself, on the "battle he's never lost" to retain New Hampshire's place on the presidential nominating calendar. | | | |   | | | JAN. 6 AND ITS AFTERMATH TRACKING THE RIOTERS — A year after the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, POLITICO is up with a new "database that will be updated weekly with new sentencing information, analysis and data" for the perpetrators. "There are more than 700 people who have been arrested for crimes tied to the assault on the Capitol and investigations are still ongoing, and roughly one-tenth of those — 71 — have been sentenced as of Jan. 1," Nick Niedzwiadek writes. "While these numbers represent just a fraction of the criminal cases to date, they have already become a template for future sentences — a foundation that is likely to solidify further as more and more cases reach their conclusion." PULLING BACK — Despite universal agreement from the White House, FBI and DOJ that the events of Jan. 6 were an act of domestic terrorism, "prosecutors have yet to ask judges to impose the harsher sentences federal law recommends for defendants motivated by politics," Josh Gerstein reports. "Instead, even as some judges have publicly debated whether the charges against Jan. 6 defendants qualify as 'crimes of terrorism,' prosecutors have repeatedly pulled back on tougher sentences, citing unspecified 'facts and circumstances.'" A WORD FROM THE AG — A.G. MERRICK GARLAND is set to deliver a speech Wednesday on the DOJ's "efforts to investigate and prosecute those responsible for the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, stressing the department's 'unwavering commitment to defend Americans and American democracy from violence and threats of violence,'" a source tells WaPo's Matt Zapotosky. — Related reading: Bloomberg's Chris Strohm writes that Garland is in a tough spot as he "faces critical decisions about whether to indict [Trump] or his top advisers as the Justice Department continues to fend off charges of politicization." INSIDE THE COMMITTEE — NYT's Luke Broadwater and Alan Feuer peel back the curtain on Congress' Jan. 6 select committee's attempt to ramp up and redouble its efforts as it looks "to make as much progress as possible before January 2023," when a potentially Republican-controlled Congress could dissolve the panel. "Working in color-coded teams, investigators have interviewed more than 300 witnesses, from White House officials close to Mr. Trump to the rioters themselves, and are sorting through more than 35,000 documents. During its first three months, from July through September, the committee had fewer than 30 staff members and spent about $418,000, according to the latest documents filed with the House. Since then, the panel has increased its staff to about 40 and is looking to hire more investigators." CONGRESS' JAN. 6 TRUST ISSUE — WaPo's Paul Kane, Marianna Sotomayor and Jacqueline Alemany detail how the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol changed Congress — with a striking lede setting a scene no one would have predicted just 13 months ago: "A year later, the House of Representatives can still look like a crime scene some days. Five metal detectors ring the outer doors to prevent weapons from getting onto the chamber floor, including one that stands just a few feet from where a Capitol Police officer shot and killed a Jan. 6 rioter trying to crawl through a door just off the House floor. "But the detectors aren't there to deter armed insurrectionists," the trio writes. "Instead, those detectors are there to prevent lawmakers or their staff from trying to commit violence against each other." FIRST IN PLAYBOOK — Teen Vogue's Fortesa Latifi has a gripping piece about families torn apart over the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. "A week before his dad joined the crowd that stormed the U.S. Capitol, JACKSON REFFITT called the FBI," the piece begins. "His dad had been talking about doing 'something big' and Jackson was worried about what that meant. Either way, the 19-year-old wanted the weight off his shoulders. A few days after alerting the FBI to his father's statements, Jackson checked his family group chat and found out his dad was at the Capitol insurrection." POLICY CORNER WAITING FOR 5G — Verizon and AT&T "agreed to a two-week delay in deploying C-Band wireless spectrum, averting an aviation safety standoff that threatened to disrupt flights starting this week," Reuters' David Shepardson reports. "The carriers had faced pressure from the White House, airlines and aviation unions to delay the deployment amid concerns about potential interference of 5G with sensitive aircraft electronics like radio altimeters that could disrupt flights." | | | | STEP INSIDE THE WEST WING: What's really happening in West Wing offices? Find out who's up, who's down, and who really has the president's ear in our West Wing Playbook newsletter, the insider's guide to the Biden White House and Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details that you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today. | | | | | | | PLAYBOOKERS | | Michael Steele, the former lieutenant governor of Maryland and RNC chair, opted against running for governor. Donald Trump Jr. and Kimberly Guilfoyle are reportedly engaged — and have kept it under wraps for a long time. RIP: Blackberry is officially hanging up its classic smartphone. (cc: Josh Gerstein) Sherrod Brown apparently has a lot to say about "Succession." Amy Klobuchar — whose obsession with snow earned meme status after her 2020 presidential campaign kickoff — was psyched that it snowed in D.C. Marty Walsh, meanwhile, was thankful he was in Boston."They're not the best prepared … to handle snow down there," the Labor sec told a local reporter. #Truth. Josh Dawsey thinks Zoom has ruined snow days. Marjorie Taylor Greene was suspended by Facebook for one day for posting Covid-19 misinformation, after being banned from Twitter over the weekend. Also, Dan Crenshaw called her an "idiot." Glenn Youngkin tapped Richmond insider Richard Cullen for a key Cabinet post. The National Press Foundation announced the new class of its Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellowship for young journalists in D.C., including our colleague Ximena Bustillo and several POLITICO alums/friends of Playbook, among them Candice Norwood, Victoria Knight and Matthew Brown. FIRST IN PLAYBOOK — Alex Byers is joining AT&T as director of comms and PR. He previously was VP of strategic comms at Finsbury Glover Hering, and is a POLITICO alum. — Rachel Racoosin is now an SVP at Edelman on their financial comms team. She most recently was senior director of client partnerships at Axios, and is a Levick and Ketchum alum. HILL MOVES — Renzo Olivari is joining Sen. Jacky Rosen's (D-Nev.) office as comms director in her Senate office. He previously was press secretary for Terry McAuliffe's Virginia gubernatorial campaign, and is an alum of several Virginia and Nevada campaigns/offices. … Daniela Campos is now press secretary for Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.). She previously was press secretary for Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-Texas). … Maya Krishna-Rogers is joining Sen. Cory Booker's (D-N.J.) team as press secretary. She most recently was at Emily's List, and is a Carnegie Endowment and John Delaney alum. TRANSITIONS — American Bridge 21st Century is adding Drew Godinich as senior director of comms (previously on Shontel Brown's campaign), Kait Demchuk as digital director (previously on New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy's reelect), Alexandra De Luca as gubernatorial and state comms director (previously at 314 Action), and Grace Hagerty as deputy press secretary (previously at the New Hampshire Democratic Party). … … Roy Herrera and Daniel Arellano are launching Herrera Arellano LLP, a boutique firm with D.C. and Phoenix offices focused on election, campaign finance and nonprofit law. The two Democratic attorneys in Arizona were previously at Ballard Spahr. … Cora Mandy is joining Plus Communications as a director in public affairs. She most recently was comms manager at Heritage's Institute for Economic Freedom, and is an America First Action alum. … Lauren Cohen is now associate director of government relations at the National Trust for Historic Preservation. She previously was government affairs manager at Americans for the Arts. ENGAGED — Gaby Hurt, press secretary for Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), and Ryan Marks of the Secret Service got engaged on New Year's Eve in her hometown of Charlotte, N.C. They met in 2020 at the White House when she was working in the press office. Pic WELCOME TO THE WORLD — Lucy Hatcher, an associate producer at CBS News' "60 Minutes," and Ben Hatcher, a principal at J.F. Lehman and Co., welcomed Ann Whelan Hatcher on Wednesday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Doris Kearns Goodwin … NBC's Ben Mayer … Rob Gifford of CBSN … Indiana GOP Chair Kyle Hupfer … Jeremy Funk … Jim Warren of NewsGuard … POLITICO's David Kihara, Caitlin Emma, Adriel Bettelheim and Tamara Mukulu … E&E News' Jill Martin … Joshua Zeitz … Alex Campau of Cozen O'Connor Public Strategies … Nan Aron … Courtney Piron of Novartis … Doug Campbell … Erin Moffet … Patrick Purtill … Marie Sanderson … Chip Kahn of the Federation of American Hospitals … Marc Brumer of the Herald Group … Eric Cortellessa … Megan Kaiser of Blueprint Interactive … Emily Samsel of the League of Conservation Voters … C-SPAN's Michele Remillard … Anthony Terrell … AARP's Belén Mendoza … Gabby Birenbaum … Hilary Brandenburg … WSJ's Qianwei Zhang … Adam Goldman of Mercury Public Affairs … Jennifer Sullivan … Maggie Abboud … Greg Smith of American Global Strategies … Samantha Slosberg … Audrey (Hickenlooper) White … Andy Borowitz … Peter Schorsch Did someone forward this email to you? 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