| Welcome to The Daily 202! Tell your friends to sign up here. You know how some people breezily predict Official Washington will find a way out of the government-shutdown and debt-limit standoffs because "they always do?" On this day in 2008, the House failed to pass emergency legislation to save the banking system, leading to an eight-percent drop on the markets, what was then the largest in history. They eventually passed it, but nothing in Washington, D.C., should be taken for granted. | | |  | The big idea | | Democrats face a defining test of their governing power in the Biden era |  (Washington Post illustration; iStock) | | | President Biden captured the anxiety and uncertainty of this pivotal moment for his agenda and the Democratic Party's future when he said Monday he wanted to get a lot of major legislation done this week "as long as we're still alive." Even in the pandemic era, that's a little … dramatic. But what Biden and Democrats want to do — or, in the case of keeping government open past Thursday, have to do — would define his legacy and redefine the relationship between Americans and their government. And they can't count on GOP help. There are four things on Democrats' docket: Avert a government shutdown; raise the ceiling on how much money the country can borrow to pay its bills and avoid a catastrophic default sometime after Oct. 18; and pass a pair of bills that, together, hold the heart of Biden's domestic agenda. "If we do that, the country is going to be in great shape," the president said Monday. "It may not be by the end of the week. I hope it's by the end of the week." | | Things aren't in great shape. Biden canceled a visit to Chicago on Wednesday to stick around and try to bridge an intraparty rift that now threatens what White House aides have described as the defining legislation of his presidency. | | One piece of that is a $1 trillion plan to upgrade the nation's roads, bridges, ports and other infrastructure. It has already cleared the Senate with bipartisan support, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has set a Thursday vote in the House. That's likely to slip: Pelosi has said she won't bring a measure to the floor that doesn't have the votes to pass, and it's not clear she can overcome opposition from progressives. Their resistance stems from her decision to back off an agreement, reached in June with Biden's backing, under which that bill would have been taken up in tandem with a spending package of $3.5 trillion over 10 years, still the subject of back-room negotiations. The arrangement was designed to win support from progressives, who view the larger package as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to expand education, patch the nation's social safety net, and tackle the climate crisis, paid for by raising taxes on corporations and the richest Americans. But the president now finds himself at the mercy of his razor-thin majorities in Congress, which leaves him with virtually no margin to maneuver. On one end, Sens. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) have rejected the price tag, and resisted publicly giving one of their own, stalling the project. Manchin has also made clear he dislikes how much the legislation goes after fossil fuels. On the other end, progressives are incensed Pelosi has decoupled the bills and now threaten to tank the bipartisan package if it alone comes up for a vote. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who voted for the smaller proposal, urged House progressives to vote against it to preserve "leverage" to get the safety-net bill through Congress. The stare-down imperiling Biden's agenda comes as some party insiders are murmuring the party risks a drubbing in the midterm elections, after which Biden will get nothing through Congress. "We're obviously at a very sensitive time right now in these discussions, a pivotal time in these discussions," White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday. "The president is just looking to unite the party to get across the finish line." | | White House press secretary Jen Psaki | "We're obviously at a very sensitive time right now in these discussions, a pivotal time in these discussions. The president is just looking to unite the party to get across the finish line." | | | | | | | Keeping government open may be the easy part | | Remarkably, keeping government open may be the easiest job, perhaps addressed with a short-term funding bill to give lawmakers room to work out a compromise with a longer horizon, likely stretching to the 2022 midterms. But Republicans on Monday blocked legislation that would address that and raise the debt limit, so it won't be a vehicle for the latter. Republicans say they won't support raising the debt limit, which would avert what economists warn would be catastrophic damage to the economy — the reason Democrats have cited in the past for supporting lifting that ceiling under Republican presidents, most recently Donald Trump. Instead, the GOP has demanded Democrats go it alone, using a parliamentary tactic called reconciliation that requires just 51 votes. On Tuesday, they blocked a formal Democratic request to be able to go it alone by making it possible to raise the ceiling with 51 votes, but outside reconciliation. As my colleagues Tony Romm, Marianna Sotomayor, and Seung Min Kim pointed out last night: "Such a tactic would require the support of every Democrat in the chamber — while still allowing Republicans to oppose it — in order for the country to avoid a default. But the maneuver could be time consuming and politically costly, a reality [Senate Minority Leader Chuck] Schumer [D-N.Y.] acknowledged as he rejected it as 'risky' — resulting in a stalemate that now leaves Washington two days from shutdown and just under three weeks from default." Tony, Marianna and Seung Min also noted some quiet compromises behind the scenes on the safety-net bill: "In private meetings and public comments, Democratic leaders across the party's ideological spectrum already have come to acknowledge they cannot adopt a measure as large as they initially had hoped. But they still have a significant gap to bridge, since some liberal Democrats believe Sinema has told Biden she supports less than $2 trillion in total spending, according to three Democrats familiar with the matter who requested anonymity to describe the talks. Manchin similarly has called for sweeping cuts to the initial plan that House Democrats produced earlier in September." | | |  | What's happening now | | Military brass heads to the House Thursday |  Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley and Marine Corps Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie, commander of U.S. Central Command, will be on the hot seat Thursday in the House. (Olivier Douliery/Pool/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock) | | | After a contentious Senate hearing Tuesday, the Pentagon will face more questions in the House over the Afghanistan exit. Appearing Wednesday before the House Armed Services Committee, Gen. Mark A. Milley, Gen. Kenneth McKenzie and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin "are likely to encounter further partisan fighting as Republicans seek to pin the messy exit on Biden and Democrats defend the administration's choice to end the war, arguing that 20 years of failed strategy enabled the Taliban's takeover," Alex Horton and Karoun Demirjian report. | | Matthew Dowd, chief strategist for George W. Bush's reelection campaign, is launching a bid for Texas lieutenant governor — as a Democrat. "In an announcement video, Dowd... takes aim at the Republican incumbent, Dan Patrick, detailing a lengthy list of purported shortcomings, both on policy and character," John Wagner reports. "Although he is best known for helping steer a Republican president to reelection, Dowd's biography on his new campaign website highlights his work for Texas Democrats earlier in his career before he switched parties in 1999... In his bio, Dowd also highlights his break with Bush in 2007 over his handling of the Iraq War and his identification as an independent afterward." Fumio Kishida, Japan's former foreign minister, is set to become the country's new prime minister after winning his party's leadership vote, Michelle Ye Hee Lee and Julia Mio Inuma report. | | |  | Lunchtime reads from The Post | | Federal workers are bracing for a possible government shutdown after a long pandemic |  A visitor glances upward at the Washington Monument along the National Mall at dawn. (Tom Brenner/Reuters) | | | Federal agencies are still dealing with pandemic backlogs. A shutdown could make delays worse. | - "The Internal Revenue Service is struggling to serve taxpayers 18 months after the pandemic sidelined thousands of employees. Close to a half-million immigrants are on a State Department list to schedule interviews for their visa applications — and the wait for a passport is now as long as 16 weeks. Thousands of documents for Social Security benefits lay unprocessed this summer in field offices where in-person service has been suspended since March 2020, the agency's watchdog recently found," Lisa Rein reports.
- "The Biden administration says it would ensure that if government funding expires at midnight Thursday, federal employees involved in the pandemic response would stay on the job."
- "But a shutdown would furlough hundreds of thousands of workers — potentially far more than during the record-setting but partial 35-day shutdown during the Trump administration in late 2018 and 2019. And some day-to-day services would be crippled at agencies already struggling to stay afloat."
- "It's unclear how a shutdown might affect President Biden's vaccine mandate for federal workers, which has a deadline of Nov. 22. Managers and union officials across the government aren't yet sure whether furloughed employees would get the four hours of leave they're entitled to when they get shots."
| | South Dakota's attorney general is "actively reviewing" Gov. Kristi Noem's (R) controversial family meeting. The investigation revolves around the meeting Noem organized "for her daughter and the state employee charged with leading the agency that moved to deny her application to become a certified real estate appraiser, which prompted allegations of abuse of power among some state lawmakers," Annabelle Timsit reports. | - "Human trafficking has long haunted agriculture. Experts fear it flourished during the pandemic," the Counter's Amanda Pérez Pintado reports. "At times, the H-2A visa program that brings non-citizen farmworkers to the U.S. has been used to facilitate human trafficking, experts and activists said. But the number of people trafficked through the program appears to have increased."
- "There are just 9 female governors. Both parties want change," Politico's Liz Crampton reports. "The nation could be left with fewer female governors if vulnerable Democratic women don't hang onto their seats and Republicans fail to pick up power in multiple states where women are expected to be on the ballot. Whatever happens hinges on whether both parties follow through on their pledges to recruit more women to run for statewide office — and whether that whisper network can give the final nudge."
| | |  | The Biden agenda | |  The ivory-billed woodpecker was last sighted in the 1980s in Louisiana. (Auscape/Universal Images Group via Getty Images) | | | The ivory-billed woodpecker has been officially declared extinct, along with 22 other species. | - "The Fish and Wildlife Service proposal Wednesday to take 23 animals and plants off the endangered species list — because none can be found in the wild — exposes what scientists say is an accelerating rate of extinction worldwide. A million plants and animals are in danger of disappearing, many within decades. The newly extinct species are the casualties of climate change and habitat destruction, dying out sooner than any new protections can save them," Dino Grandoni reports.
| | Biden's ATF pick says the White House left him open to attack | - David Chipman, the "brash gun control activist whose nomination to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives imploded this month," said the White House often left him feeling alone when pro-gun groups attacked him during the confirmation process, the Times's Glenn Thrush reports.
- "[Chipman] praised the White House for what he jokingly called the 'gangster move' of nominating someone like him in the first place. But he questioned the administration's willingness to execute a coordinated strategy to get him through the Senate and expressed concern about its next moves. He said he found it 'unusual' that he spoke to no one at the White House from the moment he was nominated."
| | |  | Coronavirus | | YouTube steps up fight against coronavirus misinformation |  Robert Kennedy Jr. speaks at a 2019 rally in Olympia, Wash., in opposition of a bill that would remove parents' ability to claim a philosophical exemption to opt their school-age children out of the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine. (Ted S. Warren/AP) | | | YouTube is banning prominent anti-vaccine activists and blocking all anti-vaccine content | - This includes Joseph Mercola and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., "who experts say are partially responsible for helping seed the skepticism that's contributed to slowing vaccination rates across the country," Gerrit De Vynck reports.
- "YouTube will ban any videos that claim that commonly used vaccines approved by health authorities are ineffective or dangerous. The company previously blocked videos that made those claims about coronavirus vaccines, but not ones for other vaccines like those for measles or chickenpox."
- "YouTube didn't act sooner because it was focusing on misinformation specifically about coronavirus vaccines, said Matt Halprin, YouTube's vice president of global trust and safety. When it noticed that incorrect claims about other vaccines were contributing to fears about the coronavirus vaccines, it expanded the ban."
| | The third coronavirus vaccine shot's side effects echo those from second dose, the CDC says | - "Data from nearly 12,600 people who received a third dose of a coronavirus vaccine by Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna showed that side effects — which were described as mostly mild to moderate, and occurring the day after vaccination — were prevalent at similar rates to those from a second vaccine dose during the regular course," Bryan Pietsch and Adela Suliman report.
| | Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) defended her plans to use covid relief funds to build new prisons | - "The plan to build three new prisons and renovate others will involve using up to $400 million from the state's share of American Rescue Plan funds," Suliman reports.
- "The move prompted a letter Monday to Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen from House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), where he petitioned the Treasury Department to 'prevent the misuse of [American Rescue Plan] funding by any state, including Alabama.'"
| | |  | Plateau of covid cases in the DMV, visualized | | | "Coronavirus cases appear to be stabilizing in D.C., Maryland and Virginia, with early signs of decline in the D.C. metro region — giving health officials hope that the area's vigorous vaccination campaign has paid off," our colleague Rebecca Tan reports. | | |  | Hot on the left | | | Republican Rep, Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Fox News's Tucker Carlson are promoting a racist conspiracy theory known as "replacement theory." This is idea, popular among white supremacist circles, posits that "immigrants are being brought in to replace native-born (read: White) Americans," as our colleague Aaron Blake explained. "While some of the most prominent members of the conservative movement have increasingly espoused a version of replacement theory without calling it that … they're now just straight-up embracing the label." MSNBC's Mehdi Hasan explained why making this racist theory mainstream is dangerous: | | |  | Hot on the right | | | Republican governors continue attacking Biden over the border. In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott offered to hire any border agents on horseback if Biden fires them, per Fox News. According to a Quinnipiac University poll, 43 percent of Texas voters approved of Abbott's handling of the situation at the border, while only 20 percent approved of Biden's. Still, the same poll found that 51 percent of Texans say Abbott doesn't deserve to be reelected. | | |  | Today in Washington | | | Biden will attend the memorial of former Indiana first lady Susan Bayh at 12 p.m. Harris will meet with small business leaders to talk about the Biden agenda at 2 p.m. | | |  | In closing | | | Trevor Noah explained how China is taking tech regulations to an unprecedented level:  | | | | | Thanks for reading. See you tomorrow. | | |
