Playbook PM: Reading the debt limit tea leaves

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WHO’S AT DEFAULT — The debt limit meeting with President JOE BIDEN and the Big Four congressional leaders is tentatively scheduled for around 4 p.m. tomorrow, though the timing isn’t officially set yet, per Burgess Everett.

A breakthrough tomorrow looks unlikely, of course: Democrats and Republicans are so far apart that it’s surprising one room can even fit them all, as NYT’s Jim Tankersley previews. They haven’t even agreed on the need to negotiate itself, as Dems insist on a clean debt ceiling hike. “[E]ven small points of consensus could be hard to come by,” Tankersley writes.

On the contrary, everybody’s stepping up the fight. In an indicator that he won’t back down, Biden is taking it straight to vulnerable House Republicans the very next day: He’ll travel to the Hudson River Valley on Wednesday for an event in Rep. MIKE LAWLER’s (R-N.Y.) backyard, NBC’s Mike Memoli and Julie Tsirkin report. “[W]e are making sure their constituents are aware of the true nature of their priorities,” White House comms director BEN LaBOLT says of the front-line Republicans who voted for Speaker KEVIN McCARTHY’s spending cuts bill.

(Lawler doesn’t seem cowed: “My constituents agree that we cannot continue to sustain spending at these levels,” he says. “It’s part of the reason that I won.”)

And in a move shared first with Playbook, the White House is staffing up for this fight. ROB FRIEDLANDER has been detailed to the White House to serve as senior comms adviser for economic messaging, focusing on the debt limit. He’s most recently been comms director at OMB.

The conservative American Action Network is launching a new $250,000 ad campaign on D.C. cable TV this week blasting Biden for risking default and urging him to sit down at the negotiating table with congressional Republicans.

One hint of possible Democratic softening: A former administration official tells Semafor’s Jordan Weissmann that “Biden’s team might swallow a compromise if it only involved cuts to discretionary spending, which gets negotiated each year as part of the regular budget process. Among other things, that would take Biden’s climate programs off the chopping block.” (It’s unclear whether they’re speaking from actual knowledge of the White House mindset, though.)

On the flip side: NYT’s Margot Sanger-Katz and Alicia Parlapiano have a useful clicker laying out what the GOP’s proposed budget cuts could look like if they leave out defense, veterans’ health and border security, as many Republicans would like to do. All other agencies would have to lose the majority of their budgets — including cuts to popular programs ranging from air traffic control to cancer research.

Meanwhile, a government employees union is reaching for the break-glass option, suing Treasury Secretary JANET YELLEN today to get the Biden administration not to comply with the debt limit law, which they call unconstitutional, per AP’s Christopher Rugaber and Fatima Hussein.

CONTEMPT CONTRETEMPS — House Foreign Affairs Chair MICHAEL McCAUL (R-Texas) warned Secretary of State ANTONY BLINKEN that he may hold him in contempt of Congress if State doesn’t provide a key classified cable warning about the Afghanistan pullout, NBC’s Courtney Kube and Rose Horowitch report. They’ve been battling over the document for months, but now McCaul has imposed a deadline of Thursday at 6 p.m.

Meanwhile, House Judiciary Chair JIM JORDAN (R-Ohio) today threatened to hold Google in contempt for failing to provide all the documents he wants about its communications with the Biden administration, CNBC’s Lauren Feiner scoops. Other Big Tech companies have been more amenable to Judiciary’s demands as Jordan probes allegations of speech censorship. He set a new deadline for Alphabet (Google’s parent company) of May 22.

Good Monday afternoon. Thanks for reading Playbook PM. Drop me a line at [email protected].

ALL POLITICS

McCONNELL’S 2024 MAP — Senate Minority Leader MITCH McCONNELL gave CNN’s Manu Raju a detailed preview of his plans for flipping the chamber. Most notably, in addition to the three Democratic-held seats widely seen as most vulnerable (West Virginia, Montana, Ohio), McConnell adds Pennsylvania to his top tier of targets, as he roots for DAVID McCORMICK. Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona are a notch down, pending the outcome of primaries and candidate recruitment. Michigan’s open seat isn’t even mentioned on what sounds like a smaller map than some expected. And McConnell is firm that he’ll be playing hard in primaries to get electable nominees.

PRIMARY COLORS — Prince George’s County, Md., Executive ANGELA ALSOBROOKS is jumping into the Maryland Senate race this week, Time’s Eric Cortellessa scoops. She’s expected to line up several big early endorsements. The race is probably Alsobrooks vs. Rep. DAVID TRONE … vs. Rep. JAMIE RASKIN if he decides to run.

DARK MONEY MAKES THE WORLD GO ’ROUND — AP’s Trenton Daniel has a deep dive into how progressive GIGI SOHN’s FCC nomination was shot down — and in particular the influence of ad campaigns attacking her from unfettered dark-money groups like the American Accountability Foundation. The failure of Sohn’s nomination at the hands of Republicans and moderate Democrats “is the latest example of how organizations with political and financial agendas have been able to sway public opinion by deploying donations that are impossible to trace. It is also emblematic of how nominees’ missteps — even on matters wholly unrelated to their prospective jobs — can become fodder for attacks.”

DEMOCRACY WATCH — Almost all of the highest-profile proponents of false election fraud conspiracy theories lost their elections last fall — but six months out, many of them are regrouping, WaPo’s Matthew Brown reports in a rundown of 11 notable names. Some, like KARI LAKE and DOUG MASTRIANO, are weighing new bids for office. Others have found influence in non-elected roles, like KAROLINE LEAVITT at MAGA Inc. and LEE ZELDIN with a new PAC.

BEYOND THE BELTWAY

SEA CHANGE IN NEW JERSEY — Old-school South Jersey Democratic machine boss GEORGE NORCROSS, one of the most powerful people in the state, tells Dustin Racioppi that he’s mostly bowing out of the political game following major losses in the 2021 elections. “It is a ground-shifting moment in New Jersey politics — one that could reshape the state’s Democratic Party and change the way things get done in Trenton,” Dustin writes. Norcross now spends most of his time in Florida — though a STEVE SWEENEY gubernatorial run in 2025 could pull him off the sidelines.

LATEST IN BROWNSVILLE — 34-year-old GEORGE ALVAREZ was charged with manslaughter today after crashing his SUV into a crowd of mostly Venezuelan migrants in Brownsville, Texas, killing eight. The Brownsville resident “lost control after running a red light” and unsuccessfully tried to flee the scene, police say, but they don’t know yet whether it was intentional, per the AP.

CLIMATE FILES — “‘Over My Dead Body’: Backlash Builds Against $3 Trillion Clean-Energy Push,” by WSJ’s Jennifer Hiller in Lawrence, Kan.: “County-by-county battles are raging as wind and solar projects balloon in size, edge closer to cities and encounter mounting pushback in communities from Niagara Falls to the Great Plains and beyond. Projects have slowed. Even in states with a long history of building renewables, developers don’t know if they can get local permits or how long it might take.”

SCHOOL TIES — Happy national Teacher Appreciation Week: Teacher shortages have compelled the majority of states this year to propose wage increases for teachers, AP’s Marc Levy reports from Harrisburg, Pa. Both red and blue states are trying to improve pay and perks. “It’s not clear how far pay raises will go toward relieving the shortages, though, and some teachers say it is too little, too late to fix problems that are years in the making.”

AFTERNOON READ — “A police chief got rid of a neo-Nazi. Then came the hard part,” by WaPo’s Hannah Allam in Springfield, Ill.: “An Illinois police department’s year of reckoning shows the difficulties of fighting far-right extremism in law enforcement.”

AMERICA AND THE WORLD

DANCE OF THE SUPERPOWERS — After months of frosty silence, the U.S. and China marked their highest-level diplomatic engagement of late today when U.S. Ambassador to China NICHOLAS BURNS met with Chinese Foreign Minister QIN GANG in Beijing, NYT’s David Pierson reports. The meeting was full of tense conversation, per the Chinese readout: Qin told Burns that while China wants to stabilize relations, the U.S. is to blame for undermining them, and the Biden administration needs to “reflect deeply.”

POWER PLAY — USAID Administrator SAMANTHA POWER is traveling to the Balkans this week to try to calm tensions between Serbia and Kosovo, AP’s Ellen Knickmeyer reports.

POLICY CORNER

STEPHEN MILLER’S LONG VICTORY — “Biden’s New Immigration Policy Cements End of Liberal Asylum Rules,” by WSJ’s Michelle Hackman: “Mr. Biden’s reversal reflects a broader political shift. In the three years that the U.S. employed Title 42, the pandemic-era measure that made it possible to turn away people seeking asylum at the southern border, lawmakers in both parties have grown increasingly comfortable with a future in which the decadeslong right to cross America’s border to seek refuge from persecution is no longer sacrosanct.”

At the Texas border, ahead of the end of Title 42 this week, a surge of migrants has already begun: Brownsville and El Paso have seen tens of thousands in the past month, largely from Venezuela, AP’s Rebecca Santana and Valerie Gonzalez report.

STAT OF THE DAY — Biden’s major expansion of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program has erased student debt for nearly 610,000 borrowers, with another 6,000 on the way, CNN’s Katie Lobosco scoops. The Education Department tallies the debt forgiven at about $42 billion in total.

DO AS I SAY, NOT AS I DO — “GOP states trying to stop Biden’s student loan forgiveness push their own relief programs,” by NBC’s Adam Edelman

2024 WATCH

INCOMING — CHRIS CHRISTIE is “just days away” from deciding whether to jump into the presidential race, he tells The Dispatch. And his campaign would take on the frontrunner way more than anyone else has: It “would look like a direct, frontal challenge to DONALD TRUMP,” he says.

THE AGE-OLD QUESTION — “‘My career of 280 years’: Biden jokes off 2024 age concerns,” by AP’s Seung Min Kim: “As Biden, the oldest president in U.S. history, embarks on his reelection campaign, he is increasingly musing aloud about his advanced age, cracking self-deprecating jokes and framing his decades in public life as a plus, hoping to convince voters his age is an asset rather than a vulnerability. In short, he’s trying to own it.”

CONGRESS

DEPT. OF WISHFUL THINKING — In the wake of another Texas massacre, Senate Majority Leader CHUCK SCHUMER is calling a special caucus meeting for Senate Dems on Thursday to discuss gun control legislation.

KNOWING TONY GONZALES — The Texas Tribune’s Matthew Choi profiles the maverick Republican, who aspires to be a pragmatist but has also made plenty of enemies within his own party. Gonzales, who plays “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” on loop in his office, isn’t backing down: He says he’s focused on accomplishing things in Congress and doesn’t mind punching back at enemies.

As for a primary challenge, “I’m going to kick their ass no doubt, but it’s going to cost me time, money, energy, effort,” Gonzales says. “Instead of fending off against the Democrats here, I have to go drown crazy Republicans.”

THE WHITE HOUSE

EATING HIS CAKE AND HAVING IT TOO — First lady JILL BIDEN is trying to get the president to eat more fish and vegetables as part of a healthier diet ahead of a grueling reelection campaign, Axios’ Alex Thompson reports. Biden, whose tastes run more to ice cream, pasta and orange Gatorade, is resistant.

PLAYBOOKERS

FIRST IN PLAYBOOK — Brandt Anderson is now a senior policy adviser at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck. He most recently was a national security adviser for Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.), and is a Ted Cruz, Jim Banks and Jackie Walorski alum.

TRANSITIONS — Phoebe Ferraiolo is now deputy comms director for the Senate Appropriations Committee under Vice Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine). She previously was VP at Cogent Strategies. … Sonal Majmudar is now a partner with Mayer Brown. She previously was international tax counsel at the IRS. …

… Ken Lisaius will be SVP of comms at the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. He previously has been VP of public affairs and comms at CLEAR. … Brandon Audap is now a principal at Monument Advocacy. He previously was director of policy and government affairs at JinkoSolar.

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