| Welcome to The Daily 202! Tell your friends to sign up here. On this day in 2001, President George W. Bush announced the beginning of the war in Afghanistan. In his remarks from the White House Treaty Room, Bush made no mention of building a democracy there or of helping Afghan women and girls — only of targeting al-Qaeda and the Taliban. "Your mission is defined. Your objectives are clear. Your goal is just," he told the U.S. military. | | |  | The big idea | | Democrats' closed-door tensions are spilling over in public |  Washington Post illustration; Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post | | | Days, weeks and months of intra-Democratic Party negotiations on legislation to enact President Biden's sweeping agenda on infrastructure, climate and child care have failed so far to yield a breakthrough. But Wednesday, the negotiations became a public showdown between the party's progressive and conservative wings, as the dispute held up a deal. On one side was Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who for much of his political career described himself as a democratic socialist, and vied against Biden in the 2020 race. But as Senate Budget Committee chairman, he has been working to mold the president's ambitious priorities into legislation and get it to the Resolute Desk. On the other, Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), who with Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), has publicly resisted the progressive demands to spend $3.5 trillion over ten years to shore up and strengthen America's social safety net without offering much detail as to what he wants. | | The Bernie-Manchin divide broke into the open Wednesday with both senators publicly name-checking the other in heated words about the social-spending package. | | My colleague Seung Min Kim reported: "In particular, Sanders targeted Manchin's view on the role that the government should play when it comes to health care, child care and other programs, criticizing the senator's comments uttered hours earlier that he 'did not believe that we should turn our society into an entitlement society.' 'Is protecting working families and cutting childhood poverty an entitlement?' Sanders asked. After rattling off similar rhetorical questions, he concluded: 'Perhaps most importantly, does Senator Manchin not believe what the scientists are telling us, that we face an existential threat regarding climate change?'" Seung Min noted Sanders's particular focus on Manchin's elusive demands, quoting the Green Mountain State senator as saying "[t]he time is long overdue for him to tell us with specificity — not generalities, but beyond generalities, with specificity — what he wants and what he does not want, and to explain that to the people of West Virginia and America." Sanders was reflecting an overall frustration with Manchin among progressives, who are irritated the Senate's 50-50 margin gives the chamber's perhaps most conservative Democrat outsize clout. Even though Democrats are using a partisan process known as reconciliation to steer the social spending program, they still need Manchin's vote to pass it. | | Seung Min also took note of Manchin's response, in a written statement: "Respectfully, Senator Sanders and I share very different policy and political beliefs. As he and I have discussed, Senator Sanders believes America should be moving towards an entitlement society while I believe we should have a compassionate and rewarding society." Manchin — whose home state, like Vermont, gets more federal dollars than it pays in federal taxes — did not define the difference between the two societies. Last week, he declared "I've never been a liberal in any way, shape, or form." Manchin, who reportedly makes hundreds of thousands of dollars annually from a coal brokerage run by his son, has publicly objected to clean energy provisions in the $3.5 trillion bill. (One possible test to determine how many lawmakers actually oppose an "entitlement society" might be to introduce legislation banning annual subsidies for agriculture, fossil fuels and major manufacturers, while telling states they can only get as much federal spending as they pay in federal taxes. But I digress.) What seemed to touch off Sanders was Manchin telling reporters he wasn't budging from an overall price tag of $1.5 trillion over 10 years for the Build Back Better bill, which would be on top of a roughly $1 trillion project to shore up the nation's roads, bridges, rail, airports and other infrastructure. | | "I've been very clear," said Manchin, who told progressives last week that they need to "elect more liberals" if they want to get their way. | | The Sanders/Manchin back and forth isn't academic, nor is it a case of senatorial egos colliding. For Biden, resolving intra-Democratic rifts is a prerequisite for getting the legislation through Congress and to give the party something to sell to voters next year. The two bills remain popular. A recent Quinnipiac poll found 62 percent of Americans say they support the $1 trillion bill, while 57 percent support the $3.5 trillion bill. The same can't be said for Biden. A Quinnipiac poll released yesterday found 38 approve of the job he's doing while 53 disapprove — and the disapproval number rises to 60 percent among independents. On the two items Biden has described as his top priorities — taming the pandemic, reviving the economy — the president got more bad news. On coronavirus, the poll found 48 approve and 50 percent disapprove of how he's doing. On the economy, he got 39 percent approval and 55 percent disapproval. Political reporters tend to gravitate toward conflict because of the impression — accurate or not — that conflict clarifies who has the real power to get their way, and what that means for the outcome of current and future disputes. There's been no final clarity here; perhaps it's coming. | | |  | What's happening now | | Senate leaders announced a short-term debt ceiling deal |  Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer at the Capitol today. Photographer: Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg | | | The deal raises the debt ceiling $480 billion into December. "Lawmakers would still need to revisit the issue later this year, but it takes the risk of default off the table for now," Tony Romm reports. | - "Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced the truce during a brief statement on the Senate floor, noting the agreement would permit the country to continue borrowing unimpeded into early December. Schumer said that chamber leaders now 'hope we can get this done as soon as today.'"
- "In a sign of the fight to come, though, [Senate Minority Leader Mitch] McConnell took to the floor Thursday to herald their deal as a way to 'spare the American people any near-term crisis.' But he repeated they must use reconciliation, unleashing renewed attacks on Democrats for their 'reckless taxing and spending spree' in the process."
| A Senate report offers new details of Trump's efforts to use the DOJ to overturn the election | - "The interim report by the Senate Judiciary Committee was issued Thursday. While Republicans on the panel offered their counter-findings, arguing that Trump did not subvert the justice system to remain in power, the majority report by the Democrats offers the most detailed account to date of the struggle inside the administration's final, desperate days," Devlin Barrett reports.
- "On Jan. 3, then-acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen, his deputy Richard Donoghue, and a few other administration officials met in the Oval Office for what all expected to be a final confrontation on Trump's plan to replace Rosen with Jeffrey Clark, a little-known Justice Department official who had indicated he would publicly pursue Trump's false claims of mass voter fraud."
- "Trump opened the meeting by saying, 'One thing we know is you, Rosen, aren't going to do anything to overturn the election.'"
- "For three hours, the officials then debated Trump's plan, and the insistence by Rosen and others that they would resign rather than go along with it. The Senate report says that the top White House lawyer, Pat Cipollone, and his deputy also said they would quit if Trump went through with his plan."
- "A key issue in the meeting was a letter that Clark and Trump wanted the Justice Department to send to Georgia officials warning of 'irregularities' in voting and suggesting the state legislature get involved. Clark thought the letter should also be sent to officials in other states where Trump supporters were contesting winning Biden vote totals, the report said."
| | |  | Lunchtime reads from The Post | |  Historically, Wyoming has not been welcoming to refugees. (Rachel Woolf/The Washington Post) | | | Wyoming has never taken in refugees. Will it welcome Afghans? "And this summer, amid a deluge of support for Afghan evacuees spanning political and faith spectra, the leaders of just two states, Wyoming and South Dakota, said they did not want to take in refugees. Wyoming is the only state that has no refugee resettlement program, nor has it ever had one," Karin Brulliard reports. | - "It is unclear why Wyoming never established a resettlement program, experts say, but it is fairly clear why it is not doing so now: There is negligible overt support in a state where in 2020, 70 percent of voters cast their ballots for Trump, who slashed refugee admissions and banned travel from several Muslim-majority nations."
| | Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) has stepped forward as an unlikely — and foul-mouthed — Biden backer in a deep-red state. "As for whether Tester's alignment with Biden and relatively liberal voting record is a clue about whether he'll retire rather than run again … well, throw another quarter in the swear jar: 'Oh, no, f--k that. That's not my style,'" Politico's Burgess Everett reports. "He believes that his brand of folksy, profane authenticity can appeal to Montana's red electorate — even in a presidential election-year as splitting tickets gets more and more rare." | - "'I'm thinking positively of running again. But I haven't made a final, final decision,' Tester said, citing the advantages to his chairmanship of the Veterans Affairs Committee and senior role on the Appropriations Committee. 'I still think there's folks that appreciate good, moderate perspective.'"
| | |  | The Biden agenda | | The president is promoting his vaccine requirements |  Biden speaks during a meeting with business leaders and CEOs on the need to address the debt limit. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP) | | | Biden is in Chicago today to make the economic case for shots | - "Forcing people to do something they don't want to do is rarely a winning political strategy. But with the majority of the country already vaccinated and with industry on his side, Biden has emerged as an unlikely advocate of browbeating tactics to drive vaccinations," the AP's Zeke Miller reports.
- "Biden on Thursday takes that message to Chicago, where he will visit a suburban construction site run by Clayco, a large building firm that is set to announce a new vaccinate-or-test requirement for its workforce."
- "In conjunction with the president's trip to Chicago, the White House was releasing a report outlining the early successes of vaccine mandates at driving up vaccination rates and the economic case for businesses and local governments to implement them."
| Biden's approval rates have fallen | | Americans are giving Biden the lowest marks | - Biden received a 38 percent job approval rating, the lowest scored he's received since taking office, per a new Quinnipiac University poll.
- Fifty percent disapprove of his response to the pandemic, while 55 percent disapprove of his work on the economy.
| The CIA unveils a new center focused on gathering intelligence on China | | The agency's new "mission center" to counter China signals that officials are preparing for a years-long struggle with Beijing | - "In remarks to agency personnel on Wednesday, CIA Director William J. Burns characterized the new China Mission Center as an effort to 'further strengthen our collective work on the most important geopolitical threat we face in the 21st century, an increasingly adversarial Chinese government,'" Shane Harris reports.
- "Describing an effort that will enlist every corner of the spy agency, a senior CIA official drew comparisons to the Cold War fight against the Soviet Union, but said China was a more formidable and complicated rival given the size of its economy, which is completely entwined with that of the United States, and its own global reach."
- "Just as it did against the Soviets, the CIA will deploy more officers, linguists, technicians and specialists in countries around the world to gather intelligence and counter China's interests, said the senior official … The agency will also recruit and train more Mandarin speakers."
| | |  | Coronavirus | | Pfizer and BioNTech asked the FDA to authorize their coronavirus vaccine for children 5 to 11 | - "An estimated 28 million children in the United States would be eligible for the shots if regulators give the green light — a process expected to take several weeks. The coronavirus vaccine would be the first made available in this country for children younger than 12 years old," Ben Guarino reports. "An FDA advisory committee is scheduled to meet Oct. 26 to discuss Pfizer-BioNTech's pediatric vaccine. Officials have said its authorization could occur between Halloween and Thanksgiving."
| | |  | A little-spoken of effect of the pandemic on children, visualized | | | Tens of thousands of children are being affected by the pandemic-related deaths of their parents. "A new study published Thursday in the journal Pediatrics attempts to quantify the vast hole left by these deaths, estimating that roughly 140,000 children under 18 may have lost parents or caregivers from March 2020 to June 2021 due to covid or other causes classified as pandemic-related," Ariana Eunjung Cha reports. | | |  | Hot on the left | | | New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio misused his security detail, and the NYPD covered it up, the city's inspector general says. "The 47-page investigation landed nearly two years after allegations arose the mayor used his detail to bring his son back to college in Connecticut, among other purported infractions. It also comes just one day after the New York Times reported that de Blasio has told associates he will run for governor next year," NBC New York reports. | | |  | Hot on the right | | | Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) bedeviled fellow Republicans again with the holdup of Israel aid. "After spending much of the summer portraying Democrats as anti-Israel, Republicans are now in the awkward position of an intraparty feud that's holding up military assistance to the U.S. ally," Politico's Andrew Desiderio reports. "A small group of progressives nearly derailed the Iron Dome effort in the House, but a lone GOP senator is blocking swift approval of the missile defense funding. And Sen. Rand Paul's unwavering position is rankling his fellow Republicans, who want to see the bill signed into law immediately." | | |  | Today in Washington | | | Biden is flying to Chicago, where he will visit a Clayco construction site and deliver remarks on the importance of vaccine requirements at 2:45 p.m. | | |  | In closing | | | Seth Meyers broke down Facebook's nightmarish week:  | | | | | Thanks for reading. See you tomorrow. | | |
