| Welcome to The Daily 202 newsletter! Tell your friends to sign up here. On this day in 1974, Richard Nixon's presidency ends, effective at noon Eastern time under the terms of his resignation letter. As Congress soon heads home for the August recess, it looks like neither party is especially eager to talk to voters about the pandemic. Their reluctance comes even as cases and hospitalizations soar and the delta variant is now central to high-profile skirmishes between the White House and Republicans. President Biden promised voters two main things in 2020: To smother the pandemic and revive the economy. But the viral summer surge — just weeks after he invited Americans to celebrate a "summer of freedom" from the coronavirus — has greatly complicated his political messaging. Among Republicans, meanwhile, some nationally prominent governors who rode resistance to expert health advice about the pandemic, like Ron DeSantis of Florida, suddenly find themselves overseeing record hospitalizations, making their past triumphalism at best an uncertain bet for the future. The midterms are an eternity away in political terms. The two sides of America's partisan divide are sure to reject and adopt slogans and strategies over the course of the next 15 months. And Biden, unlike the average member of Congress, will have no choice but to run on his handling of the pandemic. But for now, it's striking that one of the main features of life — a pandemic that has killed more than 616,000 people in America — seems to be receding from the congressional political messaging. Again: For now.  A health-care worker administers a swab test at a coronavirus testing site at Tropical Park in Miami on Aug. 6. | My colleague Paul Kane reported on Saturday: "On Tuesday, three Democratic political committees unveiled a plan for how to sell President Biden's agenda to their constituents, with just three bullet points: middle-class tax cuts; an infrastructure plan to create jobs; and lower health-care costs. Democratic pollsters tested 150 different messages near the end of July with voters in six battleground states, finding that one theme stood out as the overwhelming winner with voters: 'Cutting taxes for middle class families, creating jobs by investing in infrastructure like roads, bridges and high speed Internet, and cutting your health care costs. No one making under $400,000 will pay more taxes.' " In the original Democratic Senate Campaign Committee document, the pitch concludes: "… but Republicans are standing in the way of these proposals because they are looking out for wealthy special interests." (Wait, 150 different messages?!?) Paul went on to note House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has told Democrats to hold home-state events promoting the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package passed this Spring, "with a heavy focus on a new child tax credit that gives families up to $300 a month per child." What about Republicans? At Axios, Stef W. Kight and Alayna Treene consider "Inflation, rising crime and the border surge are positioning Republicans for even bigger midterm gains than they'd imagined just months ago." They quote Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), the chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, as saying: "This administration has mismanaged the economy, mismanaged the border, mismanaged crime in the cities, and people are noticing and are very disturbed by it. Take a look at any of the poll numbers." We will in a second, but note what's not in those talking points: The pandemic. Paul, of course, did look at the polls. "According to a CNBC poll released Tuesday, just 42 percent of voters approve of the president's handling of the economy, down from 46 percent earlier this year, and his handling of the pandemic has had a corresponding drop: 53 percent of voters support his coronavirus work, down from 62 percent. In late July, the Gallup poll showed Biden's overall job performance falling slightly among Democrats, but down seven percentage points among independents, to 48 percent." Where falling case numbers and hospitalizations seemed like an edge for Democrats just a few months ago, my colleagues Sean Sullivan and Marianna Sotomayor reported this weekend on increasing unease inside the party. "Democrats had hoped to pivot from Biden's success on the pandemic to pitch the party's economic agenda, including sweeping proposals on infrastructure and social programs. But the rise in covid-19 cases is suddenly complicating that strategy. … Democrats have also begun saying more directly that it's Republicans who are prolonging the pandemic, while they are urgently trying to end it. President Biden and his aides are criticizing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, for example, for opposing mask mandates in schools, a switch from their previous reluctance to stoke fights with Republicans over the coronavirus. The House Democrats' campaign arm is encouraging candidates to call out Republicans for making false or misleading statements about vaccines and masking. Meanwhile, Republicans, after largely avoiding the subject of the pandemic for much of this year, have begun going after Biden's handling of it, saying he 'spiked the football' prematurely and asserting, with little evidence, that a surge of migrants at the border is fueling the spread of the virus." In both cases, party politics are complicated by the way unvaccinated Americans have made it possible for the Delta variant to rip through parts of the country. Historically, the president's party loses seats in its first midterms. Democrats hope to hold on to the swing voters — notably women, notably in America's suburbs — that gave them their narrow congressional majority. Republicans see opportunity in a political map showing the GOP did well in 2020 at every level — except the presidential race. And neither, at least in August 2021, seems eager to talk about the pandemic. | | | What's happening now Democrats released a $3.5 trillion budget blueprint as the Senate prepares to finish the bipartisan infrastructure debate. - "Senate Democrats released a sweeping $3.5 trillion budget blueprint [this morning] that proposes to expand Medicare, boost federal child care and education programs, and invest new sums to combat climate change, as party lawmakers prepare to take the next step toward advancing central elements of President Biden's economic agenda," Tony Romm reports.
- "Democrats view the wide array of proposed spending as historic, and they hope to rely on their narrow but potent majorities in Congress to grow government to a level not seen in decades. The measure also proposes universal pre-kindergarten, reform of federal immigration laws and fresh efforts to lower prescription drug prices, marking fresh attempts on Capitol Hill to adopt long-stalled priorities and campaign promises from the 2020 presidential election."
- "In releasing the document, Democratic leaders pledged their package would be financed in full, chiefly through tax increases targeting corporations and wealthy families — all the while leaving untouched Americans making less than $400,000 annually in keeping with Biden's pledge. Like much of the budget, however, it ultimately leaves the work to draft those provisions to other lawmakers and committees."
- "Once the package is complete, Democrats plan to shepherd the new spending through Congress using a process known as reconciliation."
- "The new budget outline complements the roughly $1.2 trillion infrastructure proposal that the chamber is on track to pass by Tuesday morning."
- "The Senate's outline — chiefly drafted by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the chairman of the Budget Committee — essentially opens the door for Democrats to seek many of the proposals Biden put forward this past spring as part of his families and jobs plans. Republicans had derided many of these initiatives as social spending, which they argued at the time did not belong in an emerging deal over new investments in the country's roads, bridges and pipes."
To start your day with a full political briefing, sign up for our Power Up newsletter. | | | Lunchtime reads from The Post - "Mississippi's history of lynching haunts," by DeNeen L. Brown: "Around midnight on Feb. 8, 2018, a 21-year-old Black man was found hanging from a pecan tree in the front yard of his White girlfriend's home on a dirt road in Scott County, Miss. Willie Andrew Jones Jr. was dangling from a twisted, yellow nylon rope attached to a low tree branch. ... The 10 adults who were inside the house that night told inconsistent stories of what happened before and after Jones was found hanging, according to police statements and court records. Documents show that 40 minutes after Scott County Sheriff's Department investigators arrived at the house, they declared Jones's death a suicide. But Jones's mother, Tammy Townsend, 45, disputes the department's quick conclusion. She believes her son was lynched. The stories didn't add up, she said. Jones and his girlfriend, Alexis Leann Rankin, had a 4-month-old boy, who was inside the house that night. Minutes before Jones was found, he had argued with his girlfriend and her White stepfather, who disapproved of interracial relationships and had threatened him with a gun ... Since 2000, according to police records, at least eight Black men have been found hanging from trees in Mississippi — plus Craig Anderson, who was fatally beaten in a racial terrorist attack that a federal judge called a lynching. Although authorities have ruled the deaths suicides, many relatives believe their family members were slain."
- "Pace of Taliban advance quickens as militants overrun three major cities in a single day," by Susannah George: "Taliban fighters overran three major cities in the north of Afghanistan on Sunday, the most significant territorial gains the militants have netted in a single day since the withdrawal of U.S. forces entered its final phase this year. In nearly simultaneous operations, the Taliban pushed into the center of Kunduz city and the capitals of Sar-e Pol and Takhar provinces. Afghan officials said clashes were continuing in Kunduz, and a major military operation was planned to retake the strategically important city that the militants had besieged for months. The developments marked a sharp escalation in the pace of Taliban gains across Afghanistan."
| | | … and beyond - Rise of cash buyers across Nevada's housing market leaves conventional homebuyers locked out," by the Nevada Independent's Tabitha Mueller: "Across the state, an increasing number of cash purchasers — including investors, investment pools, larger corporations and wealthy buyers from out of state — are driving up the pressure and squeezing out would-be purchasers reliant on loans and mortgages."
- "Three more House reps have broken the law by failing to properly disclose their financial trades," by Business Insider's Dave Levinthal and Warren Rojas: "Rep. August Pfluger, a Republican from Texas, was several months late disclosing several stock purchases or sales made in January or March either by himself or by his wife. The total value of the trades fell between $10,007 and $150,000 ... and include transactions involving shares of Bank of America Corp., Liberty Media Corporation [and] Wells Fargo ... Rep. Cheri Bustos, a Democrat of Illinois, sold up to $150,000 worth of stocks last March. That liquidation included dumping up to $50,000 worth of stock in the online retailer Amazon [among others] ... Rep. Steve Chabot's (R-Ohio) latest financial disclosures show he exchanged up to $30,000 worth of stock in the pharmaceutical companies Allergan PLC and AbbVie Inc. last spring."
| | | The environment Humans have pushed the climate into an "unprecedented" territory, warns a landmark U.N. report. - "More than three decades ago, a collection of scientists sanctioned by the United Nations first warned that humans were fueling a dangerous greenhouse effect and that if the world didn't act collectively and deliberately to slow Earth's warming, there could be 'profound consequences' for people and nature alike. The scientists were right," Brady Dennis and Sarah Kaplan report. "On Monday, that same body — the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — issued its latest and most dire assessment about the state of the planet, detailing how humans have altered the environment at an 'unprecedented' pace and cautioning that the world risks increasingly catastrophic impacts in the absence of rapid greenhouse gas reductions."
- "The landmark report, compiled by 234 authors relying on more than 14,000 studies from around the globe, bluntly lays out for policymakers and the public the most up-to-date understanding of the physical science on climate change. ... Monday's sprawling assessment states that there is no remaining scientific doubt that humans are fueling climate change. That much is 'unequivocal.' The only real uncertainty that remains, its authors say, is whether the world can muster the will to stave off a darker future than the one it already has carved in stone."
- "Humans can unleash less than 500 additional gigatons of carbon dioxide — the equivalent of about 10 years of current global emissions — to have an even chance of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels. But hopes for remaining below that threshold — the most ambitious goal outlined in the Paris agreement — are undeniably slipping away."
- "Each of the past four decades has been successively warmer than any that preceded it, dating to 1850. Humans have warmed the climate at a rate unparalleled since before the fall of the Roman Empire. To find a time when the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere changed this much this fast, you'd need to rewind 66 million years to the meteor that killed the dinosaurs."
The Dixie Fire has mushroomed in the second-largest wildfire in California history. - The fire has reached more than 489,200 acres, Hannah Knowles reports. "The fire razed most of Greenville late Wednesday and continues to threaten nearly 14,000 buildings, firefighters said, underscoring the danger of climate change-fueled disasters. Most of California's biggest wildfires on record have erupted in the past year, as dry conditions and high temperatures lead to destruction, mass evacuations and smoke disrupting life in the West. On Sunday, authorities said they were trying to keep Dixie's flames from reaching homes in the tiny community of Crescent Mills, just a few miles south of Greenville."
- "As evacuation orders expand, they have been warning of unusually fast-spreading flames and 'historically' low moisture levels leaving land primed to burn."
Thousands fled the Greek island of Evia by boat as "horror-movie" wildfires rage. - "More than 2,000 people on the Greek island of Evia were force to evacuate by boat over the weekend as raging wildfires continued to spread, wiping out homes, reducing once-picturesque landscapes to ashes and destroying entire villages. Photos showed devastated residents standing under amber skies amid searing heat as they waited to be rescued from the island, which is Greece's largest by area and population after Crete. Elderly members of the community were carried to safety, as other locals walked along the roadside to find help," Jennifer Hassan reports.
- "Greek officials said that at least 570 firefighters were working to bring the fires under control, which were triggered by the country's worst heat in 30 years — a consequence of a warming planet."
 An elderly resident reacts as a wildfire approaches her house in the village of Gouves, on the Greek island of Evia, on Aug. 8. (Konstantinos Tsakalidis/Bloomberg) | | | | The pandemic DeSantis's battle against mask and vaccine mandates approaches a boiling point in Florida. - "His ban on vaccine passports was temporarily blocked by a federal judge late Sunday: Norwegian Cruise Line was cleared to require coronavirus vaccines for guests and crew members after U.S. District Court Judge Kathleen Williams granted the company a preliminary injunction, blocking a Florida law championed by DeSantis that would have fined the cruise company for requiring vaccines," Bryan Pietsch, Adela Suliman and Hannah Knowles report.
- "DeSantis has rejected coronavirus restrictions or mandates as a greater threat than rising infections fueled by the highly transmissible delta variant. Florida is the epicenter of a summer coronavirus spike in the United States, recently reporting a fifth of all new U.S. infections and current hospitalizations. ... The pressure from courts, schools and companies leaves an uncertain path forward for how coronavirus policies could play out in Florida."
The variant battle in the United States is over. Delta won. - "Since late last year, the country has been overrun by a succession of coronavirus variants, each with its own suite of mutations conferring slightly different viral traits. For much of this year, the alpha variant — officially known as B.1.1.7 and first seen in the United Kingdom — looked like the clear winner, accounting for the majority of cases by April. In second place was iota, B.1.526, first seen in New York City. A few others made the rogue's gallery of variants: gamma, beta, epsilon," Joel Achenbach, Carolyn Johnson, Lena Sun and Brittany Shammas report. "Then came delta — B.1.617.2. It had spread rapidly in India, but in the United States, it sat there for months, doing little as the alpha advanced. As recently as May 8, delta caused only about 1 percent of new infections nationally. Today, it has nearly wiped out all of its rivals."
- "Epidemiologists had hoped getting 70 or 80 percent of the population vaccinated, in combination with immunity from natural infections, would bring the virus under control. But a more contagious virus means the vaccination target has to be much higher, perhaps in the range of 90 percent. Globally, that could take years. In the United States, the target may be impossible to reach anytime soon given the hardened vaccine resistance in a sizable fraction of the country, the fact that children under 12 remain ineligible and the persistent circulation of disinformation about vaccines and the pandemic."
Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) rallied behind parents resisting a mask mandate. Then some tried to depose their school board. - "Coronavirus cases are on the rise among children in North Carolina, where Cawthorn slammed a county's new school mask mandate, calling the measure 'psychological child abuse,'" Jonathan Edwards reports. "The board had voted earlier that day to require unvaccinated students and teachers to wear masks while inside or on buses when school starts later this month. The conservative firebrand's comments were met with applause."
- "Stephanie Parsons later told the board she would not leave the meeting until its members reversed its mask mandate. Board members did not meet her demand. Parsons was part of a group that forced the school board into recess by disrupting the regularly scheduled meeting. She and others then 'overthrew' the board and instated themselves as the new leaders of the county's public education system."
| | | Quote of the day "I think we're closer to the beginning than we are to the end [of the pandemic], and that's not because the variant that we're looking at right now is going to last that long," said Larry Brilliant, an epidemiologist who was part of the World Health Organization's team that helped eradicate smallpox. "Unless we vaccinate everyone in 200 plus countries, there will still be new variants," he added, saying the coronavirus will eventually become a "forever virus" like influenza. | | | Hot on the left The New York attorney general's report concluding Gov. Andrew Cuomo sexually harassed 11 women has led to fallout at Time's Up and the Human Rights Campaign. "The boards of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay-rights group, have launched an independent investigation of the group's president [Alphonso David] for his role advising Cuomo's staff during their efforts to undermine the credibility of a woman who had accused him of sexual harassment," Michael Scherer and Josh Dawsey report. "Separately, the chairwoman of the Time's Up, Roberta Kaplan, stepped down from the organization, which advocates for survivors of sexual harassment and abuse, amid a growing backlash about the role she played consulting with Cuomo staff on the same effort. ... "The developments come after the abrupt resignation Sunday night of Cuomo's top aide, Melissa DeRosa. A person close to DeRosa, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe her thinking, said the longtime Cuomo adviser did not believe the governor could survive politically, and that she had reached a 'breaking point.' The person said that Cuomo remained defiant and did not plan on resigning, and that DeRosa's resignation should not be seen as a harbinger of his thinking." More on the Cuomo investigation: - Cuomo's executive assistant described escalating misconduct that was "certainly not consensual." The assistant, Brittany Commisso, told "CBS This Morning" and the Albany Times Union that she remained silent about a series of unwelcome sexual advances because she was scared of getting fired, John Wagner reports. "These were not hugs that he would give his mother or, you know, his brother," Commisso said of Cuomo. Commisso was previously identified only as "Executive Assistant #1" in the report. Last week, Commisso filed a criminal complaint against Cuomo with the Albany County Sheriff's Office, alleging that Cuomo groped her breast in the governor's mansion in Albany. Cuomo has denied the allegations.
- Kathy Hochul, New York's lieutenant governor, is quietly preparing to step into the limelight, writes the New York Times's Dana Rubinstein. "If the governor steps down or is forced out, Ms. Hochul, 62, will take his place, becoming the first woman to lead New York State — a remarkable rise for someone who has largely toiled in obscurity since joining the governor's team in 2014. ... [Hochul] has established deep reservoirs of political good will, spending much of her tenure on the road, highlighting the administration's agenda and engaging in extensive on-the-ground politicking. She has taken pride in visiting each of New York's 62 counties each year and has friends across the state."
| | | Hot on the right "In western New York, the far right tries to make inroads with vaccine skeptics," Razzan Nakhlawi writes: "Far-right groups across the nation have aligned themselves with those opposed to masks and vaccines, seeking new allies around the issue of 'medical freedom' while appearing to downplay their traditional focus on guns, belief in the tyranny of the federal government and calls by some for violent resistance. Public health mandates and the push to vaccinate as many people as possible against covid-19 have become animating issues for patriot groups, which have long held conspiratorial views of the federal government. ... At a moment when domestic extremism has been identified by the FBI as the major violent threat in the United States and lawmakers are focused on the fallout from the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, researchers and health experts are increasingly concerned about the alliance forming nationwide between the radical right and vaccine-hesitant populations." | | | A bigger, bluer Northern Virginia, visualized The populous northern suburbs of Fairfax, Loudoun and Prince William counties — crucial to a statewide win —backed Bob McDonnell in 2009. But in the dozen years since, Northern Virginia has become much bigger and bluer, posing a daunting challenge to any Republican running statewide. | | | Today in Washington Biden doesn't have anything on his public schedule for the rest of the day. | | | In closing | John Oliver revisited the Sackler family's handling of lawsuits against them related to the opioid crisis:  | | | | | | |
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