The Hill’s Morning Report — Congress, White House return to domestic worries

by Alexis Simendinger and Kristina Karisch - 02/27/23 6:20 AM ET

The U.S. Capitol dome on a cloudy day, Jan. 5, 2022, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)

Editor’s note: The Hill’s Morning Report is our daily newsletter that dives deep into Washington’s agenda. To subscribe, click here or fill out the box below.

Lawmakers and President Biden are back in Washington this week as 2024 election suspense escalates along with Republican eagerness to probe domestic spending and administration policies across the board.

Biden, following last week’s bold travel to Ukraine and Poland, will make stops in Virginia and Maryland this week to champion changes enacted on his watch, which he maintains help everyday Americans with basic pocketbook issues.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court will turn its attention to two cases that could determine the fate of Biden’s executive economic effort to forgive hundreds of billions of dollars in student loan indebtedness under existing law (The Hill).

U.S. spending for defense and international aid, health care and senior benefits, homeland security and immigration, the farm bill and trade are all ripe for debate, oversight and potentially some problem-solving.

Partisan maneuvering over the $31.4 trillion statutory debt limit remains unresolved. Both parties agree time’s a-wastin’, but how and when projected economic self-harm is averted remains a mystery. House Republicans want deep spending cuts to begin in the fiscal year that starts in October before they say they will consider votes to raise the nation’s borrowing authority. Biden counters that the two issues — past commitments by Congress and new spending — must be delinked before he’ll negotiate.

“We don’t need a manufactured crisis. That’s why I know the president and the administration are calling on Congress to lift the debt limit as quickly as possible.” Treasury Deputy Secretary Wally Adeyemo last week told CBS News.

He declined to comment on any Treasury revision to its projected June break-glass deadline for default.

▪ The Washington Post: If tax revenues come in strongly by spring, the debt ceiling deadline could be later than projected.

▪ Axios: What history says about debt standoffs.

▪ FiveThirtyEight: Which Republicans would vote to lift the limit.

▪ The Hill: Americans are split on whether the U.S. should raise the debt ceiling to avoid default, according to an NPR-PBS NewsHour-Marist poll released on Thursday.

Here’s what else we’re watching this week:

🌍 International issues are not receding in Washington and world capitals. Russia’s war with Ukraine has entered its second year, pulling China into the picture as an ally of the Kremlin and superpower that professes to seek the war’s end.

Biden will meet Friday at the White House with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz amid discussions about NATO’s pact to support Ukraine, while Secretary of State Antony Blinken is traveling to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and a Group of 20 meeting in India.

💉Food and Drug Administration advisers will review data this week during public hearings focused on vaccines created by prominent and competing drugmakers to tackle a tough respiratory virus that plagues older people. The FDA says trials of the drugs might lead to a worrisome side effect in some patients: Guillain-Barre Syndrome.

🐘 In politics, the Conservative Political Action Conference will offer its stage beginning on Wednesday to the two announced GOP presidential candidates and others who suggest they’d like to enter the race. Not scheduled to make an appearance: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

⚖ On Wednesday, Senate Judiciary Committee members, led by Democrats, want to hear from Attorney General Merrick Garland during an oversight hearing “about everything,” according to Fox News.

Related Articles

▪ The Hill: Nearly 10 percent of the current Congress would be subject to a hypothetical age-related mental acuity test promoted by presidential candidate Nikki Haley for politicians older than 75.

▪ The Washington Post: So far, former President Trump’s rollback of regulations can’t be blamed for the Ohio train wreck.

▪ The Hill: Recession or not, Americans feel like they’re poorer.

LEADING THE DAY

➤ ADMINISTRATION

A puzzle about the origination of COVID-19 led weekend headlines after The Wall Street Journal reported that an Energy Department classified report had switched gears and now cited U.S. intelligence that the coronavirus likely escaped a Chinese lab, and was unlikely to have resulted from natural animal-to-human transmission.

It’s an unresolved scientific debate examined by the Biden administration and the World Health Organization without conclusive findings or cooperation from China. The National Institutes of Health last year reported that evidence “suggests” that COVID-19 originated in bats.

House Republicans, united in public opposition against Beijing, have planned oversight hearings about China’s suspected involvement in the release or escape of a respiratory virus that to date has killed nearly 7 million people worldwide.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan on Sunday countered the Journal’s report, telling CNN the U.S. intelligence community has “no definitive answer” about the origination of the COVID-19 virus (The Hill).

CNN: U.S. Energy Department assesses that COVID-19 likely resulted from a lab leak, furthering the U.S. intelligence divide over the virus’s origin.

“I think we need to have public hearings on this and really dig into it,” Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“It would once again show that the Chinese Communist Party is not only a menace but the nature of these regimes is to lie to the world, and we need to make that clear to people,” added the senator, a member of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation panel.

U.S. Department of Agriculture: Food stamp assistance to families approved in the wake of the pandemic is set to run out in 32 states on March 1 (NBC News):

Transportation Department: Biden has not nominated anyone to lead the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, created in 2004, which is an important agency in the context of the Ohio toxic spill. It develops and enforces regulations for the country’s 2.6-million-mile pipeline transportation system and the nearly 1 million daily shipments of hazardous materials by land, sea and air. Along with the Federal Railroad Administration, it is supporting the National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation into the derailment that caused havoc in East Palestine, Ohio (Government Executive).

The Biden administration is barreling towards a legal fight with immigration groups after rolling out a new asylum policy similar to a Trump-era directive, write The Hill’s Rebecca Beitsch and Rafael Bernal. Tension between the administration and its would-be allies on immigration has been brewing for years, but it hit a head Tuesday, when the administration unveiled a proposed rule taking two big hits at the asylum system — geographically containing asylum-seekers by pushing them to pursue protection in another country along their journey, and restricting where they can make these claims.

“We do not think that this proposed rule is lawful. The changes that were made are largely cosmetic,” Lee Gelernt, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union who led arguments in a case that toppled similar Trump administration policies, told The Hill. “The additional requirements suggested by the proposed rule would not be consistent with our domestic or international asylum laws. So if this rule is enacted, we will be back in court.”

Immigration will also be a hot topic for Biden in March, when he’s set to visit Canada and meet with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to renegotiate the Safe Third Country Agreement, which states that asylum seekers who enter the U.S. or Canada must make their claims in the first country they arrive in (CBC and Reuters).

Meanwhile, in Silicon Valley, Apple is gearing up for a lengthy legal battle after the Biden administration declined to veto an International Trade Commission (ITC) import ban on the Apple Watch, writes The Hill’s Karl Evers-Hillstrom. The tech giant is appealing the ITC ruling, which found that Apple infringed on wearable heart monitoring technology patented by California startup AliveCor.

The Hill: Ben Labolt is back in the West Wing to communicate.

➤ POLITICS

Biden said during an interview last week that he has “other things to finish” before starting a “full-blown” 2024 presidential campaign. The president has long said he intends to run for another four years in the White House, and first lady Jill Biden gave a strong indication last week that he’ll do so. “He says he’s not done,” she said during a trip to Kenya (The Hill).

“Well, apparently, someone interviewed my wife today, I heard. I gotta call her and find out,” Biden told ABC News’s David Muir on Friday when asked if he’s running again. “No, all kidding aside, my intention … has been from the beginning to run, but there’s too many other things I have to finish in the near-term before I start a campaign.”

The president’s comments come as the White House and some of its allies are brushing off angst surrounding his lack of a formal announcement about 2024 with a collective shrug, write The Hill’s Alex Gangitano and Brett Samuels. Aides are unfazed by attempts, filtered through media reports suggesting Biden is hedging on a reelection bid, to put pressure on Biden to announce a decision.

Lori Lightfoot, who defied expectations four years ago to win the Chicago mayoral race as a political outsider, finds herself once again the underdog as she seeks to fend off multiple challengers in a tough reelection bid, The Hill’s Caroline Vakil reports, as the city’s top executive is facing a crowded field of eight other candidates.

Though Lightfoot campaigned as a reformer in 2019, voters are signaling they might be ready for another fresh start, as she’s fallen to second or third place in many polls. Should Lightfoot fail to become one of the top two vote-getters in Tuesday’s primary, she could become the first incumbent Chicago mayor in over three decades to lose reelection.

▪ Politico: The 9-person stage drama in Chicago that won’t end on Election Day.

▪ Chicago Sun-Times: Where the money’s come from in Chicago’s mayoral race.

▪ The Chicago Tribune: Lightfoot defends her record against challengers.

▪ NBC News: Nevada Democrats implode over battle for party control. The Democratic establishment accuses state chair Judith Whitmer of dividing the party. The democratic socialist leader says it’s a “smear campaign.”

Trump and Haley are set to give dueling addresses at CPAC, putting a sharp focus on the ongoing tug-of-war within the GOP. As The Hill’s Max Greenwood writes, it’ll be the first time since Haley launched her presidential bid last week that the two declared major Republican 2024 contenders will pitch their candidacies at the same event. And while few Republicans expect Trump and Haley to go after each other directly, they say that it could offer one of the clearest examples yet of the simmering tensions within the party.

To note: DeSantis, a conservative favorite and likely 2024 candidate who has a new book out tomorrow, won’t be at the annual gathering of conservatives.

▪ The Guardian: What to expect from this year’s CPAC: Biden bashing, 2024 Republican primary chatter and lawsuit gossip.

▪ ABC News: Former Vice President Mike Pence declined an invitation to CPAC as the event’s leader comes under fire.

▪ Vox: Texas asks a Trump-appointed judge to declare most of the federal government unconstitutional.

IN FOCUS/SHARP TAKES

➤ INTERNATIONAL

CIA Director William Burns said he communicated in a meeting with Russia’s spy chief the “serious consequences” that would follow if Moscow ever used a nuclear weapon, a warning that he said his Russian counterpart “understood” (The Hill).

“What [President Biden] asked me to do, which was to make clear to [Sergey] Naryshkin, and through him to President [Vladimir] Putin, the serious consequences should Russia ever choose to use a nuclear weapon of any kind,” Burns said in an interview with CBS’s “Face The Nation.” “I think Naryshkin understood the seriousness of that issue and I think President Putin has understood it as well.”

Burns also said Putin is being “too confident” in his military’s ability to grind Ukraine into submission. He said Narshylin had displayed in their November meeting “a sense of cockiness and hubris” that reflected Putin’s own beliefs “that he can make time work for him, that he believes he can grind down the Ukrainians that he can wear down our European allies, that political fatigue will eventually set in” (ABC News).

▪ Politico: Donbas: Ground zero of Russia’s war in Ukraine, in photos.

▪ CNN: The extraordinary train lifeline behind Ukraine’s Rail Force One.

▪ Vox: Here’s what arming Ukraine could look like in the future.

▪ The New York Times: The war in Ukraine has changed Europe forever.

▪ The Hill: Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko to visit China as the U.S. worries about Beijing assisting Russia.

A wooden sailing boat carrying migrants to Europe crashed against rocks near the coast of southern Italy early Sunday, authorities said. At least 59 people died, including 12 children. The vessel, which sailed from Turkey and was carrying people from Afghanistan, Iran and several other countries, sank in rough seas before dawn.

The incident reopened a debate on migration in Europe and Italy, where the recently-elected right-wing government’s tough new laws for migrant rescue charities have drawn criticism from the United Nations and others (Reuters).

▪ Reuters: Italy approves clampdown on migrant rescue ships.

▪ Al Jazeera: What you need to know about Tunisia’s anti-racism protests.

Saturday marked Nigeria’s presidential elections — one of the country’s most consequential in the 23 years since the last dictatorship ended and democracy took hold. The race to lead their young democracy and its legions of youthful citizens seemed wide open, but soon, reports of violence at polling stations trickled in, and others spent hours waiting in line.

The presidential vote is expected to be the closest in Nigeria’s history, with candidates from two parties that have alternated power since the end of army rule in 1999 facing an unusually strong challenge from a minor party nominee popular among young voters. The country’s electoral commission began announcing state-by-state results from national elections on Sunday, though it is not expected to name a victor in the race to succeed President Muhammadu Buhari for several days (Reuters and The Washington Post).

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said he is “giving it everything” this weekend to secure a new Brexit deal for Northern Ireland, and he wants “to get the job done,” but the prime minister said no agreement had yet been reached with the European Union. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will travel to Britain today to work out the final details with Sunak.

The deal, if successful, could resolve one of the most bedeviling legacies of Brexit: the so-called Northern Ireland Protocol, a complex agreement between Britain and the European Union that governs trade in the country. It sets out rules to handle Northern Ireland’s status as a part of the U.K. that also has an open border with Ireland, which is a member of the European Union and part of its single market (BBC and The New York Times).

▪ The Washington Post: Young doctors are leaving Egypt in droves for better jobs abroad.

▪ The New York Times: Women in Iran flaunt their locks as defiant resistance to the mandatory hijab law has exploded across the country after nationwide protests that erupted last year.

▪ Business Insider: A city in China is offering couples almost $2,900 to have a third child and some others are giving newlyweds paid marriage leave to help boost the birth rate.

OPINION

■ CPAC reflects the decline of the GOP from Reagan to Trump, by Frank Donatelli, opinion contributor, The Hill. https://bit.ly/3kuZvkR

■ Why Pete Buttigieg isn’t the villain in the East Palestine, Ohio, crash, by Hayes Brown, MSNBC opinion writer/editor. https://on.msnbc.com/3m6NliG

■ Why Fox News lied to the viewers it “respects,” by David French, columnist, The New York Times. https://nyti.ms/3Y5WtkN

WHERE AND WHEN

📲 Ask The Hill: Share a news query tied to an expert journalist’s insights: The Hill launched something new and (we hope) engaging via text with Editor-in-Chief Bob Cusack. Learn more and sign up HERE.

The House will meet at noon.

The Senate meets at 3 p.m. for a reading of George Washington’s Farewell Address before proceeding to executive session to consider the nomination of Jamar Walker to be a U.S. district judge for the Eastern District of Virginia.

The president departs Delaware and arrives at the White House at 8:55 a.m.Biden will receive the President’s Daily Brief at 11:15 a.m.He and Vice President Harris will deliver remarks in the East Room at 5 p.m. during a reception celebrating Black History Month.

The vice president also will fly to Columbia, S.C., to deliver a speech at 12:45 p.m. announcing more than $175 million in federal grants to 61 institutions nationwide that serve minority youth for affordable, high-speed internet connectivity. The grants are funded through the Department of Commerce’s Connecting Minority Communities Pilot Program (WLTX). She will return to the White House in the afternoon.

Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra will be in Portland, Ore., to visit the Urban League Multicultural Senior Center at 11:30 a.m. PT for a roundtable discussion about lowering health care costs through the Inflation Reduction Act. Later, the secretary and Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek and first lady Aimee Wilson will be at the Faubion School to discuss mental health among children and teens at 2:30 p.m. PT.

The White House daily press briefing is scheduled at 2:30 p.m.

ELSEWHERE

➤ TECH

The introduction of artificial intelligence could one day be integrated into all school subjects, not just computer science, experts say, and familiarity with the technology itself could soon become essential for students. The Hill’s Lexi Lonas reports that the education industry is having to grapple with where AI can fit into schools, from lesson plans to teacher training. The chatbot ChatGPT caused shockwaves through the education industry over concerns about cheating and how students will learn, but the importance of AI in technological education is still part of the debate.

“The way that we integrate AI education to the classroom is really an approach to connect artificial intelligence with core subjects like English, science, math, social studies, in addition to computer science and career technology education,” Alex Kotran, co-founder and CEO of the AI Education Project, told The Hill.

▪ TechCrunch: AI’s hype isn’t going to be simply star-studded.

▪ The Wall Street Journal: For chat-based AI, we are all once again tech companies’ guinea pigs.

▪ Business Insider: Not even Google’s cleaning robots are safe from the tech industry’s layoffs and cost-cutting efforts.

➤ ENTERTAINMENT

🎥 Movie fans: Check out Sunday night’s Screen Actors Guild award winners to gauge where Oscar statuettes may land on March 12. Spoiler alert: “Everything Everywhere All at Once” has momentum. A list of SAG winners is HERE. Coverage of the award night’s takeaways, courtesy of ABC News/AP, is HERE.

“The clearest result of the SAG Awards was the overwhelming success of Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s madcap multiverse tale, which has now used its hotdog fingers to snag top honors from the acting, directing and producing guilds. Only one film (“Apollo 13”) had won all three and not gone on to win best picture at the Oscars,” film journalist Jake Coyle notes.

➤ HEALTH & PANDEMIC

The Drug Enforcement Administration announced on Friday that it is proposing rules to make many flexibilities for telemedicine that were established amid the COVID-19 pandemic permanent, with certain safeguards. The agency said in a release that the rule will give patients access to virtual therapies beyond the end of the public health emergency, which is scheduled to conclude in May (The Hill).

“DEA is committed to ensuring that all Americans can access needed medications,” Administrator Anne Milgram said. “The permanent expansion of telemedicine flexibilities would continue greater access to care for patients across the country, while ensuring the safety of patients.”

▪ The Hill: Democratic attorneys general sue FDA over “burdensome” restrictions on abortion pills.

▪ The Hill: FDA approves first over-the-counter at-home test for COVID-19, the flu.

🤧 After three years of largely being punted out of the limelight, a glut of airway pathogens — including the common cold — are becoming very common again. And, as The Atlantic reports, they’re really laying some people out. The good news is that there’s no evidence that colds are worse now than they were before the pandemic started.

The less-good news is that after years of respite from a bunch of viral nuisances, a lot of us have forgotten that colds can be a real drag.

Information about the availability of COVID-19 vaccine and booster shots can be found at Vaccines.gov.

Total U.S. coronavirus deaths reported as of this morning, according to Johns Hopkins University (trackers all vary slightly): 1,119,560. Current U.S. COVID-19 deaths are 2,407 for the week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (The CDC shifted its tally of available data from daily to weekly, now reported on Fridays.)

THE CLOSER

And finally … 🦕 The next Jurassic Park movie could feature far less roaring, and more bird-like sounds, as scientists discover more about what dinosaurs might have sounded like all those millennia ago.

Very little is understood about dinosaur vocals, but a research team has drawn clues about sounds they could have made from what might be the first known fossilized larynx of a dinosaur. It comes from an ankylosaur, a group of armored plant-eaters that were not close relatives of birds; this short, spiky dinosaur was dug up in 2005 in Mongolia. To try to understand what sounds a dinosaur might have uttered, the team also looked to the creatures’ evolutionary relatives, including birds and the Cretaceous creatures’ closest cousins — crocodiles.

“They kind of bracket the range of sounds we might expect,” Victoria Arbour, a paleontologist at the Royal BC Museum in Victoria, Canada, who was not involved in the new study, told The New York Times. “Assuming that dinosaurs make some crocodile-like sounds is pretty safe. That’s the base anatomy they’d be working with. And then birds evolved these additional ways of producing sounds where they can modify the sounds coming out of their throat in a more nuanced way.”

▪ Nature: An ankylosaur larynx provides insights for bird-like vocalization in non-avian dinosaurs.

▪ Natural History Museum of Utah (four-minute video): Paleontologists working in Utah discovered a type of ankylosaur in 2018 they named Akainacephalus johnsoni, now on exhibit at the Natural History Museum in Utah.

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