BREAKING — President JOE BIDEN will deliver an address on the "recent tragic mass shootings, and the need for Congress to act to pass commonsense laws to combat the epidemic of gun violence" at 7:30 p.m. at Cross Hall, the White House announced this afternoon. He will then depart for Rehoboth Beach, Del., at 8:10 p.m. — Some context, from our colleagues Chris Cadelago and Laura Barrón-López: "Biden has delivered relatively few prime time addresses to date. Absent his speeches before joint sessions of Congress, he spoke to the nation last March to mark the one-year anniversary of the country shutting down due to the Covid-19 pandemic. But the White House also is cognizant of leaving news vacuums over long weekends, with the president often appearing before the cameras on Fridays (especially those Fridays when jobs numbers are announced) or taking questions before he departs for weekend getaways." … BUT CAN HE BREAK THROUGH? — Speaking of Biden's media presence, the White House is growing more frustrated with its struggles to land messaging among the American public — as an old-school Washington creature tries to break through in a new era. After an NBC News story earlier this week describing a West Wing "adrift," CNN's Edward-Isaac Dovere has one up today, detailing the frustration over Biden's inability to break through in media coverage. Aides bluntly (albeit anonymously) ask: "Why are we doing this?" Here's the readout: "Biden and his inner circle get weekly readouts of the metrics on local newspaper coverage of his speeches, how long and for what he was covered on cable, but also videos that staff post on Twitter and other social media interactions. Those reports go on the piles with internal memos from pollsters saying Biden isn't breaking through in traditional news outlets and that the people who are engaged are mostly voters who've already made up their minds. "But beneath this struggle to break through is a deeper dysfunction calcified among aides who largely started working together only through Zoom screens and still struggle to get in rhythm. They're still finding it hard to grasp how much their political standing has changed over the last year, and there's a divide between most of the White House staff and the inner circle who have been around Biden for longer than most of the rest of that staff has been alive. … "The country is pulling itself apart , pandemic infections keep coming, inflation keeps rising, a new crisis on top of new crisis arrives daily and Biden can't see a way to address that while also being the looser, happier, more sympathetic, lovingly Onion-parody inspiring, aviator-wearing, vanilla chip cone-licking guy — an image that was the core of why he got elected in the first place. 'He has to speak to very serious things,' explained one White House aide, 'and you can't do that getting ice cream.'" The immediate concern: "Aides and allies worry that the West Wing is making the same mistakes as they tout the White House's big pivot to inflation -- which they know is a defining issue for the midterms -- using all the methods Biden and his top advisers keep going back to: A Wall Street Journal op-ed, a basic photo-op Oval Office meeting with the Federal Reserve chairman and Treasury secretary, dispatching Cabinet secretaries for short TV interviews. Biden himself, meanwhile, is staying barely visible, spending all of this week at the White House and his beach home in Delaware, removed from any interaction with anyone who's actually on edge about their bills going up." MORE NEWS FROM 1600 PENN — Two things for your radar: — This morning, the administration launched a webpage, www.whitehouse.gov/formula, which will track the administration's actions to address the infant formula crisis. — The White House also announced that it will begin paying interns — "lifting a longtime barrier of entry to many young Americans," writes CNN's Betsy Klein, who was first to report the news. The first session will start in the fall, with a 14-week program that will pay the selected interns $750 a week — roughly $21 an hour (the D.C. minimum wage is $15.20, FWIW). Read the White House FAQ sheet THE LATEST IN TULSA — "The assault-style weapon found on the scene of Wednesday's shooting at a Tulsa medical building was purchased the day of the shooting, according to three federal sources briefed on the investigation," per CNN's Shimon Prokupecz and Evan Perez. "The weapon was an AR-15 style firearm, a source said. A handgun, also found on the scene, was purchased on May 29, a source tells CNN." The full timeline, via CNN — "Tulsa City Councilor JAYME FOWLER said the gunman was targeting a specific doctor, and began shooting after not finding him," the Oklahoman's Nolan Clay reports. More live updates from the Oklahoman NEW JAN. 6 DETAILS EMERGE — "Republicans who texted Meadows with urgent pleas on January 6 say Trump could have stopped the violence," by CNN's Jamie Gangel, Jeremy Herb and Elizabeth Stuart Good Thursday afternoon.
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