| Welcome to The Daily 202 newsletter! Tell your friends to sign up here. On this day in 1964, the bodies of slain civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney were found buried in an earthen dam near Philadelphia, Miss. Former Health and Human Services secretary Alex Azar has written an opinion piece in the New York Times that has generated a little buzz, notably over an extremely mild rebuke of his old boss, former president Donald Trump, for not getting vaccinated in public against the coronavirus. "I'm glad former President Trump got vaccinated, but it would have been even better for him to have done so on national television so that his supporters could see how much trust and confidence he has in what is arguably one of his greatest accomplishments," Azar wrote. (I've written about that missed opportunity here.) But it's another claim from the former Cabinet secretary that got my attention.  Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar arrives at the White House in November 2020. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post) | After encouraging fellow conservatives to make the case for vaccination, Azar said President Biden's team "would also do well to continue to acknowledge the historic achievement of the Trump administration in expediting these vaccines." "I'm not naive about the partisan issues and the mistrust between parties at play — but a measure of political graciousness could go a long way to depoliticize the issue," he wrote. There are, I think, two ways of looking at Azar's advocacy for "political graciousness" from Democrats, neither one offering an especially convincing path to winning over more vaccine-resistant Republicans. First, there's the idea Biden could be more aggressively reminding conservatives, large numbers of whom have refused to get vaccinated, that the inoculation was developed under Trump, hoping to leverage their loyalty to the leader Biden once memorably dismissed as "the former guy." Azar isn't the first to make this argument: Former White House press secretary and current Arkansas gubernatorial candidate Sarah Huckabee Sanders delivered her version in July. Arkansas has vaccinated 55.8 percent of its eligible population (ages 12 and over) and saw a 5 percent increase last week in average doses administered per day, according to The Washington Post calculator. The national increase over the same period was 14 percent. But that approach seems doomed to failure without robust support from Trump, who has regularly demanded more credit for vaccine development but only sporadically appealed to Americans to get vaccinated. He has even jeered Biden's vaccination push, saying on July 18, "people are refusing to take the Vaccine because they don't trust his Administration, they don't trust the Election results, and they certainly don't trust the Fake News, which is refusing to tell the Truth." In that statement, he did not encourage Americans to get the shot. If Trump isn't out there reminding his supporters to get vaccinated, why would Biden's words reach them? The president has taken some tentative steps toward crediting his predecessor, notably in late July when he implored Americans to get inoculated. "The vaccine was developed and authorized under a Republican administration, and has been distributed and administered under a Democratic administration," Biden said. "The vaccines are safe, highly effective. There's nothing political about them." The thing is, officials in the current and previous administrations don't think politicians possess particularly great powers of persuasion when it comes to vaccines. That includes Moncef Slaoui, who ran Trump's Operation Warp Speed vaccine-development drive. Second, there's the possibility Azar was arguing some proportion of conservatives aren't getting a potentially lifesaving vaccine against a disease that has carried off more than 614,000 people in the United States because … Democrats haven't been nice enough to them. Leaving aside what this says about modern America's relationship to basic cost-benefit analysis, there's no sign whatsoever the base of Trump's party — and it is still very much Trump's party, despite the occasional setback — harbors any hunger whatsoever for gentler political discourse about vaccines. Over the past few weeks, some Republicans have cheered the Biden administration's failure to reach its vaccination goals and compared volunteers going door-to-door giving information about the shot(s) to Nazi storm troopers. Others have likened possible vaccine mandates to Nazi Germany's demand Jews wear a yellow Star of David — a prelude to the systemic massacre known as the Holocaust. One of the top contenders for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, has been scooping up dollars with the slogan "freedom over Faucism" which — ha-ha do you get it? — is a play on fascism and the last name of the nation's top infectious-disease expert, Anthony S. Fauci. A top Republican National Committee official in Florida has reportedly described vaccines as "the mark of the Beast" and a "false God." Fox News stars have waged their own campaign against vaccination. Some governors have signed laws to prevent the private sector from requiring vaccinations. This isn't to tar the entire Trump base with its most virulent elements. Vaccinations have ticked up over the past week, even as major GOP figures like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and state governors and health experts have sounded the alarm about the delta variant of the virus. There's just no evidence that any sort of political accommodation will overcome the GOP base's herd immunity to Biden. | | | What's happening now Lawyers for former president Donald Trump urged a judge this morning to block the Treasury Department and the IRS from handing his tax returns over to the House Ways and Means Committee. "The committee's stated reason for seeking the returns, to examine how the IRS audits presidents, is simply a pretext for wanting to look for something embarrassing, the lawyers said in a filing in federal court in Washington, adding that the legal authority invoked by Congress has never been used against a president, a former president or any elected official," NBC News's Pete Williams reports. "The committee chairman's request for Trump's tax returns 'bore little resemblance to an effort to investigate how the IRS audits presidents. It asked for the information of only one president, asked for open files for which audits have not been completed, and never asked the IRS for the most relevant information — namely, how it audits presidents,' they said." To start your day with a full political briefing, sign up for our Power Up newsletter. | | | Lunchtime reads from The Post - "When delta strikes: Latest coronavirus surges grow faster, hit record heights in Louisiana, Florida," by Fenit Nirappil and Ashley Cusick: "While much of the country wrestles with new masking guidance and new evidence of the dangers of the highly transmissible delta variant, public health authorities and doctors in the states hit hardest by the latest viral surge are confronting a new stage of the pandemic unlike anything they have seen. Infections are tearing through their communities faster than before, even with significant chunks of their population immunized through vaccinations or natural antibodies from infections. Hospitals are struggling to keep up as their beds rapidly fill up with young and middle-aged unvaccinated adults. ... Average daily new U.S. cases over the past month surged past 85,000 on Monday, surpassing last summer's peak and now the highest since Feb. 18. Hospitals are treating around 50,000 covid-19 patients, a census that more than doubled in two weeks but remains below last summer's levels. ... While much of the summer surge has been concentrated in several Southern states, experts fear other states with lower vaccination rates will see their upticks in cases abruptly soar."
- "Virtually all emperor penguins doomed for extinction by 2100 as climate change looms, study finds," by Rachel Pannett: "If climate change continues at its current rate, more than 98 percent of emperor penguin colonies are expected to become quasi-extinct by the turn of the century, a group of global researchers wrote in the journal Global Change Biology on Tuesday. The scientists' near-term predictions were equally grim: They estimated at least two-thirds of colonies would be quasi-extinct by 2050."
- "Obama scales back planned 60th birthday bash on Martha's Vineyard, citing spread of delta variant," by John Wagner and Lateshia Beachum: "The outdoor event was planned months ago in accordance with all public guidelines and covid safeguards in place," Hannah Hankins, a spokeswoman for the former president, said in a statement. "Due to the new spread of the Delta variant over the past week, the President and Mrs. Obama have decided to significantly scale back the event to include only family and close friends."
| | | … and beyond - "DOJ officials rejected colleague's request to intervene in Georgia's election certification: Emails," by ABC News's Katherine Faulders and Alexander Mallin: "The emails, dated Dec. 28, 2020, show the former acting head of DOJ's civil division, Jeffrey Clark, circulating a draft letter — which he wanted then-acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen and acting deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue to sign off on — urging Georgia's governor and other top officials to convene the state legislature into a special session so lawmakers could investigate claims of voter fraud. ... The emails were provided by the DOJ to the House Oversight Committee, which is investigating efforts to overturn the election results. ... Donoghue responded a little more than an hour later shooting down Clark's request to sign on to the draft letter."
- "The catastrophic U.S. exit from Afghanistan," by the Bulwark's Eric S. Edelman: "The judgment that the United States should draw down the roughly 3,500 troops still supporting Afghan forces after twenty years of effort, despite the relatively low casualties and the fact that Afghans were bearing the brunt of the combat, was an arguable proposition when Biden made the call. Reasonable people and experts could and did disagree. What is inexcusable is the failure to foresee and plan for the downstream consequences."
| | | At the table Today we're lunching with Andrew Aydin, former press secretary and adviser to the late Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.). Lewis and Aydin co-wrote "March," Lewis's memoir of the civil rights movement told in three graphic novels. Now, a little over a year after the congressman's passing, Aydin is shepherding "Run," the next series in their collaboration. As my colleague Michael Cavna writes, the sequel focuses "on how Black activists evolved into political leaders against the national backdrop of racist violence, voter suppression and the Vietnam War." This interview has been edited for length and clarity.  The cover of "Run: Book One," by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin, illustrated by Nate Powell and L. Fury. (Abrams ComicArts) | Alfaro: How did you convince Congressman Lewis to write this series of graphic novels? Aydin: It all started back in 2008, when I was working as the congressman's press secretary on his reelection campaign. The campaign was challenging in a lot of ways because it questioned what John Lewis had really done in his life, and so the question that we were faced with was, "How do we tell his story?" How do we help young people and people not-so-young understand the full depth of his contributions, both during the civil rights movement and as a public servant? At the end of the campaign, folks were talking about what they were going to do after. Some were going to the beach, others to their parents. I said I was going to the Dragon Con convention in Atlanta, a comic convention. Everybody laughed, except for one person. I heard this deep voice say that there was a comic book during the movement, and it was deeply influential to him. That was the first time I heard about "Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story," this incredible comic that sold for 10 cents, 16 pages cover-to-cover. It told the story of MLK and Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott, and it was an introduction to nonviolent civil disobedience for thousands of young people in the early days of the movement. So I thought, "Why isn't there a John Lewis comic book? One that tells the next chapter?" You know, about the Freedom Rides, the March on Washington, Selma. At work the next day, I said, "I think the congressman should write a comic book." There was a bit of an awkward silence. He said, "Okay, maybe." For those of us who are in politics, we know what that answer means. So we kind of moved on. But I kept asking, and then one day we were campaigning during a summer with really wicked thunderstorms. And there's really only two things John Lewis was ever afraid of: snakes and thunderstorms. There was a flash of lightning and a clap of thunder, and he just took off, full sprint, back to the car. We all dove into the car as the rain starts coming down, and one of the interns says, "Ask him again." I did, and I don't know what changed his mind exactly — in my heart, I think it was that he talked to his wife, Lillian, who was a librarian — but he said, "Okay, I'll do it, but only if you write it with me." And that sort of set us on this journey. I was going to grad school at night, and I was writing my thesis on the history of "MLK and the Montgomery Story." That's when we found out that the comic had actually been edited by Dr. King himself. It gave us the sense that we were on a righteous path. Alfaro: Can you talk a bit more about the nonviolence the book introduces readers to? Aydin: During my thesis, I found out that, after they created the comic, Rev. Jim Lawson and others went on a "reconciliation tour" — they went and gave nonviolence workshops all throughout the South and even into the Midwest. Some of the earliest acts of civil disobedience of the movement came out of these workshops. This became like a guide for us. We modeled our "book promotion tour" as more of a "spreading the gospel of nonviolence" tour. We were trying to use these graphic memoirs as a means of provoking the same sort of reaction that "MLK and the Montgomery Story" did to teach young people how to engage and use civil disobedience. We didn't know if it was going to work. But then we got a call from a reporter at the Wall Street Journal who gave a copy to his 9-year-old son. "I'm calling because I wanted you to know that he read it and then he went and put on a Sunday suit and now he's marching around my house demanding equality for everyone," he said. And that was it. If we could instill a social conscience in every 9-year-old in America, we could change the country in a generation. Alfaro: Now, with "Run," you'll be promoting the series for the first time without Rep. Lewis. How will it be different? Aydin: The two of us had so much fun being on the road together. One day, when we sold out all books at an event, I celebrated with a Coca-Cola and grenadine, a drink my mom used to make for me, and the congressman ordered one too. "This is so good, it's sinful," he said. And then the book got a good review from the Boston Globe, and he ordered another round. Thereafter, whenever we had something to celebrate, we would have a Coke with grenadine. Another story that might be interesting: The congressman loved to be on the New York Times bestseller list. The first time we found out "March" debuted at No. 1, he started crying and gave me a big bear hug, and he had just been on TV, so he had a full face of makeup on. I was wearing a white button-down, so I got this impression from his makeup on my shirt. He got so embarrassed and said he'd get me a new one. "Who cares about the shirt," I said, "you're No. 1 on the New York Times!" After that, he would call me every Friday because "March" was on the bestseller list for years. "Are we on the list?" "Yes, sir, number five." "Okay, well, I better get back to work." Because "March" came out of a small publisher, it never reached some of the places he always wanted to see it. Like Costco. He loved Costco. So, this time around, Costco bought a whole bunch of copies of "Run," it's going to be in every Costco in America. And I just keep thinking, "My, he would've loved that." In many ways, he trained me to do this when I first started working for him. He gave me opportunity after opportunity to learn from him. To follow him onstage is a heavy responsibility. I lost my mother, grandmother and the congressman in the last four years. In many ways, sharing this book is my gift to them. I'll never be able to fill Congressman Lewis's shoes, but I hope I can keep his memory alive and help another generation know what a good and kind person he was. | | | On the Hill Rep. Cori Bush slept outside the Capitol to protest evictions. Democrats credit her for the renewed protections. - "Wind whipped along the steps of the U.S. Capitol on Sunday night as rain pattered, slowly soaking Rep. Cori Bush's sleeping bag. She struggled to get warm — a familiar feeling, she said. Two decades earlier, the Missouri Democrat, who then lived in her car, spent sleepless nights shivering as she held her two young children in her arms," Jaclyn Peiser reports.
- "This time, Bush chose to brave the elements. For three nights, she slept outside the Capitol, joining activists and fellow Democratic lawmakers protesting the lapse in the federal eviction moratorium, which had protected renters during the pandemic. The move drew national attention, forcing the White House to respond to Bush's demands to temporarily halt evictions after Congress went on recess without addressing the issue. On Tuesday, Bush's campaign succeeded."
- "The Biden administration announced a 60-day eviction ban for U.S. counties with 'substantial and high levels of community transmission,' according to a news release from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. With the virus's delta variant quickly spreading throughout the United States, renters in about 90 percent of the country qualify for the new moratorium, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a statement."
- "Democrats and civil rights activists are praising Bush for leading the five-day protest... Bush, who was elected in 2020 after she gained national attention for her work as a Black Lives Matter organizer in and around Ferguson, Mo., began camping outside the Capitol on Friday after the House adjourned. She invited Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) to join her. Activists and other Democrats also gathered on the steps, including Reps. Ayanna Pressley (Mass.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.) and Jimmy Gomez (Calif.)."
| | | Quote of the day "You did this," Schumer said as he embraced Bush and Ocasio-Cortez outside the Capitol. "You guys are fabulous." The last-minute ban extension fueled confusion and is too late for some. - "When the nationwide moratorium lapsed on Saturday, some states and cities had allowed courts to process legal filings on behalf of landlords wanting to evict nonpaying tenants. The lapse in the moratorium jump-started that eviction process on Monday when sheriff's offices and courts opened. Indeed, some renters have already been evicted or could still be evicted in the next few days if they don't live in a county covered by the new eviction ban," Hamza Shaban, Abha Bhattarai and Marissa Lang report.
The administration's 180 on evictions may keep progressive angst at bay. - "Biden aides had claimed that it was powerless to act, citing the likelihood that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would be rebuked by the courts," Politico's Laura Barrón-López and Christopher Cadelago report. "It was a symbolic reversal, too. Biden's retreat calmed a potentially combustible intraparty rift, the latest sign of the lengths to which he has been willing to go to keep restive Democrats unified amid the push to pass his agenda."
- "Despite vocal criticisms about the White House's handling of the moratorium, the administration has privately expressed confidence that the party's left wing will stick with the president as he advances his bipartisan infrastructure deal — which some liberals have decried as too modest in scope — and a Democratic-only spending package on social programs."
- "The president's need to keep the peace inside the Democratic tent has grown more pronounced in the last few weeks, as liberals took direct aim at Biden on multiple fronts. There has been criticism over what they see as an unwillingness to pressure Senate Democrats on voting rights legislation, anger over the use of a provision of public health law to continue expelling migrants at the border, and frustration over the lapsed eviction moratorium."
Democratic lawmakers rallied in D.C. to demand the passage of voting rights legislation. - "Democratic lawmakers, including more than 100 state legislators, rallied Tuesday outside the U.S. Capitol to urge the Senate to delay its summer recess until passing the For the People Act," Ellie Silverman reports. "The state lawmakers at Tuesday's rally traveled from across the country, some from Republican-led legislatures that have passed or are considering new voting measures, and are joining Texas Democrats who fled to D.C. last month to block Republicans from passing voting restrictions."
The prospect of massive economic packages has unleashed a lobbying bonanza in Washington. - "Nearly 2,000 companies and organizations have lobbied Congress and the administration this year in an attempt to influence the contours of major new infrastructure spending, an effort that is sure to intensify now that the Senate is hoping to vote within days on their version of the $1 trillion public-works package," Tony Romm and Yeganeh Torbati report.
| | | Hot on the left Everyone is calling on New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D) to resign. Hours after New York state Attorney General Letitia James announced that an investigation found that Cuomo sexually harassed current and former employees, "Biden said he believed Cuomo should step down, echoing a chorus of similar calls by other party leaders," Josh Dawsey and Michael Scherer report. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and New York House Democrats Reps. Hakeem Jeffries, Thomas Suozzi and Gregory W. Meeks also called on him to step down. Sens. Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand (D) reiterated their calls for his resignation. "In a rare move, the Democratic governors of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Rhode Island put out a joint statement saying they were 'appalled' by the report's findings and that Cuomo must step down." "New York Assembly Speaker Carl E. Heastie (D) also said Cuomo could no longer remain in office, adding that state lawmakers will move forward 'expeditiously' with an ongoing impeachment investigation." "After months of asking New Yorkers to withhold judgment until the attorney general's report was released, [Cuomo's] office released an extensive rebuttal document, calling the probe 'an utterly biased investigation' that 'willfully ignored evidence,'" our colleagues write. "The document included eight pages of photographs of Cuomo kissing and hugging other officials in public, and a second exhibit filled with photographs of other prominent Democratic officials, including Biden, Vice President Harris, Pelosi and former president Barack Obama doing the same." Read more on the Cuomo investigation: - "The most abominable allegation against Andrew Cuomo centers on a New York state trooper," from Philip Bump.
- "State prosecutors shed new light on CNN anchor Chris Cuomo's involvement in managing the response to the sexual harassment scandal surrounding his brother," from NBC News's David K. Li. "Chris Cuomo was in the governor's inner circle as they developed talking points and strategies in late February as accusations threatened the three-term governor."
- Chris Cuomo "completely ignored" his brother's scandal on his first show after the report dropped, Mediaite's Josh Feldman points out.
- "You should resign, Governor Cuomo," writes the NYT's Editorial Board. Our paper's editorial board deems Cuomo "unfit" for office.
| | | Hot on the right Missouri Gov. Mike Parson (R) pardoned the St. Louis couple who gained national notoriety for brandishing guns at peaceful protesters last year. "Sticking to a promise he made before the pair pleaded guilty, the Republican governor announced Tuesday that Mark and Patricia McCloskey were among 12 people granted pardons on Friday. In June, Mark McCloskey pleaded guilty to misdemeanor fourth-degree assault and was fined $750, and Patricia McCloskey pleaded guilty to misdemeanor harassment and was fined $2,000. Both agreed to give up the guns they had brandished in the confrontation," Meryl Kornfield reports. | | | Police shootings, visualized The Washington Post began tracking fatal shootings by on-duty police officers in 2015, the year after a White officer in Ferguson, Mo., shot and killed a Black 18-year old. Over the past six years, officers have fatally shot more than 6,400 people, an average of nearly a thousand a year, or almost three each day. | | | Today in Washington Biden is meeting with Eric Lander, his science adviser and director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. They're discussing preparation for future pandemics. | | | In closing Here are some Olympic updates: - "Andre De Grasse of Canada bested a deep field in the men's 200 meters at the Tokyo Olympics on Wednesday to win one of his sport's marquee races. Noah Lyles, a 24-year-old from Alexandria, Va., had long been considered a favorite to win the event, but he failed to rise to the occasion on track and field's biggest stage," our team reports.
- "Sydney McLaughlin won a gold medal in the women's 400-meter hurdles in world record time, beating U.S. teammate and reigning Olympic champion Dalilah Muhammad, who also broke the existing record to earn silver."
- "The U.S. women's volleyball team is two wins away from a gold medal after beating the Dominican Republic."
The United States now leads the medal count: | | | |
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