Tax returns and related records turned over

Trump's tax returns and related records turned over to Manhattan district attorney

By Kara Scannell, Shimon Prokupecz and Devan Cole

Tax records that former President Donald Trump tried to keep secret for years are now in the hands of the New York district attorney.

Prosecutors obtained the records on Monday, just hours after the US Supreme Court denied Trump's last-ditch effort to keep the records private, a spokesperson for the district attorney said.

The millions of pages of documents, sources say, contain Trump's tax returns spanning from January 2011 to August 2019, as well as financial statements, engagement agreements, documents relating to the preparation and review of tax returns, and work papers and communications related to the tax returns.

Though the documents handed off from Trump's long-time accounting firm Mazars won't be released to the public because they're subject to grand jury secrecy rules, their delivery caps off an extraordinary 17-month quest by the former President and his lawyers to block investigators from obtaining the records.

New York District Attorney Cy Vance is investigating whether Trump and the Trump Organization engaged in tax fraud, insurance fraud and other schemes to defraud, including potentially providing false information to financial institutions or banks about the value of certain buildings and assets.

With the records now in hand, Vance and his fellow prosecutors will be able to dig deeper into investigative theories, pursue interviews with key witnesses, and determine whether they believe any state laws have been violated.

"Our office obtained the records on Monday," said Vance spokesman Danny Frost.

Mazars' spokesman didn't respond to a request for comment.

The records may be critical to the investigation because they are likely to contain documents that reflect the decision-making behind valuations and tax write-offs, which may be important to determine whether there was intent to commit a crime. The investigators have wanted to review the documents before calling key witnesses before the grand jury, people familiar with the inquiry said.

In addition to the records from Mazars, Vance's office has been seeking a slew of other documents. They subpoenaed records and interviewed employees at Deutsche Bank, one of Trump's creditors, about loans given to him, and insurance broker Aon, according to multiple sources familiar with the investigation. Deutsche Bank has loaned Trump more than $300 million.

Prosecutors have also subpoenaed Ladder Capital, which has loaned the Trump Organization over $100 million, and the Trump Organization for records relating to fees paid to consultants, including Ivanka Trump, these people said.

Calling bullshit on turds...

Democrats attack fake news, and Republicans cry foul

Years of Democratic complaints about falsehoods and conspiracy theories on social media are evolving into scrutiny of conservative news outlets. But GOP lawmakers say they're going too far.

By JOHN HENDEL

Democrats are morphing their scrutiny of online falsehoods into a broader campaign against misinformation on right-leaning television outlets — a development that Republicans and some media organizations are calling a government attack on the First Amendment.

The Democratic efforts include a House hearing Wednesday where lawmakers lambasted conservative-leaning broadcasters and cable channels as sources of dangerous conspiracy theories about the pandemic and the November election. Two House Democrats also sent letters to cable, satellite and streaming providers on Monday asking why they carry Fox News, Newsmax and One America News Network, all of which had spent months echoing President Donald Trump's baseless claims of election fraud.

Outside D.C., New York mayoral candidate Andrew Yang has called for the Federal Communications Commission to revive its long-discarded Fairness Doctrine, which he inaccurately suggested required balanced coverage on cable news.

Democrats, who have spent years pounding online companies like Facebook and Twitter for spreading misinformation, say it's just as important to scrutinize falsehoods by media outlets whose coverage reaches tens of millions of Americans. Their questions also reflect the blurring lines between the broadcasting and online realms, as more televisions are hooked to the internet and more video-streaming platforms begin to resemble traditional cable TV.

The Democratic lawmakers also cited the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol as a major reason for their inquiries.

“Freedom of speech encourages us to ask tough questions about what is going on in the media, what is motivating the tidal wave of disinformation that is putting the lives of so many Americans and ultimately our democracy at risk,” said Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.), who leads the House Energy and Commerce telecom subcommittee that held Wednesday's hearing.

But Republicans said Democrats are steering their misinformation crusade in a dangerous direction by wielding the government’s powers against the editorial decisions of news outlets and television providers.

"Condemning the Jan. 6 attack and upholding truth and facts is a shared, bipartisan goal. But that is not what this hearing is about," Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington state, the committee’s top Republican, said at Wednesday's hearing. "If the majority was interested in meaningful change, you would not schedule a hyperpartisan hearing to shame and blame. You certainly would not send letters pressuring companies to block conservative media outlets. I am not only disappointed in this hearing, I am deeply troubled by it."

Media organizations and Republicans had even sharper reactions to the letters that Reps. Anna Eshoo and Jerry McNerney, two California Democrats on the committee, sent Monday to a dozen TV carriers, ranging from cable and broadband giants like Comcast and AT&T to streaming services like Roku and Hulu. The letters asked what “moral or ethical” principles the companies apply when deciding what channels to host, and specifically asked if they are “planning to continue carrying Fox News, Newsmax, and OANN."

"This is a rank abuse of their political power," former Bush-era Federal Election Commission Chair Bradley Smith, who now heads a deregulatory nonprofit called the Institute for Free Speech, told reporters before Wednesday’s hearing. The Media Institute, a nonprofit with ties to some of the media companies that host the channels, condemned the letters as “an affront on the First Amendment." Republican FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr accused Democrats of trying “to censor newsrooms.”

Republicans on the committee even likened the letters to Chinese-style censorship, while Rep. Bob Latta (R-Ohio) said during Wednesday’s hearing that Democrats are “doubling down on the ‘cancel culture’ of the left.”

Democrats defended their inquiry as entirely appropriate, saying rampant misinformation contributed to the Jan. 6 assault and the United States’ 500,000-plus deaths from Covid-19.

“The spread of disinformation poses a grave threat to our democracy,” McNerney and Eshoo said in a joint statement to POLITICO. “As Members of Congress, we have a duty to examine how the perpetuation of these falsehoods impacts the American public — from the effect on the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, to undermining our elections and culminating in a violent insurrection on the United States Capitol.”

The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service saw no "First Amendment red flags" in the letter, Eshoo told her colleagues during the hearing.

Democrats also accused the Republicans of hypocrisy when it comes to government power and companies’ free-speech rights, given their efforts under Trump to impose legal repercussions for online platforms that allegedly discriminate against conservative viewpoints. At the time, critics likened the GOP proposals to a new Fairness Doctrine for social media.

Trump also threatened more than once to pull the licenses of TV networks he accused of covering him unfairly. And in 2016, as a member of House Energy and Commerce, now-Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) unsuccessfully pushed the panel to hold a hearing on media companies’ alleged left-leaning biases.

Questioning misinformation spread by television outlets is also no different in principle from scrutinizing Silicon Valley’s content practices, said Gigi Sohn, a former senior FCC official during the Obama years.

“Why is it OK to have a bunch of hearings and bring in [Twitter CEO] Jack Dorsey and [Facebook CEO] Mark Zuckerberg and whoever else to talk about disinformation or content moderation on online platforms, that’s OK, but it’s not OK to talk about it on cable and broadcast?” Sohn, who’s now a distinguished fellow at the Georgetown Law Institute for Technology Law & Policy, said in an interview. “I don’t think it’s beyond the pale for Congress to look at the spread of misinformation and disinformation on those [media] platforms.”

Democrats’ unhappiness with misinformation has also inspired interest among some progressives in the Fairness Doctrine, an FCC policy that for decades required television and radio broadcasters to grant balanced treatment to controversies. The commission killed it in 1987, a move that among other things fueled an explosion of right-wing talk radio.

“If there was ever a time to bring it back it’s now,” Yang tweeted about the doctrine on the day after the Capitol riots. He inaccurately suggested the doctrine could apply to cable news, when in fact it never did.

Now the issue is emerging as a potential headache for President Joe Biden’s appointees, even as left-leaning figures like Sohn dismiss fears of a Fairness Doctrine revival as a "bugaboo of the right" with limited prospects in Washington.

On Wednesday, 13 House Republicans led by McMorris Rodgers peppered FCC acting Chair Jessica Rosenworcel with questions about the Democrats’ misinformation efforts, pressing her to “publicly express your opposition to reinstating the Fairness Doctrine immediately.” They added, “We also request that you denounce the recent attacks on the First Amendment by House Democrats.”

Rosenworcel had been an outspoken critic of Trump’s quest to punish social media bias, accusing his administration of seeking to turn the FCC “into the President's speech police.” She didn’t immediately comment on the Republicans’ latest questions, but FCC staff are reviewing the letter, a commission spokesperson said.

"Lively exchange"

Stephen Miller tangles with Florida GOP freshman at House immigration meeting

The former White House adviser spoke before the Republican Study Committee alongside other former Trump administration immigration officials.

By OLIVIA BEAVERS and MELANIE ZANONA

Freshman GOP Rep. María Elvira Salazar got into a lively exchange over immigration with former Trump aide Stephen Miller during a meeting with House Republicans on Wednesday, according to multiple GOP sources.

The confrontation came during the end of Miller’s presentation before the Republican Study Committee, the largest conservative caucus within the House GOP. Miller, the architect of Donald Trump’s hard-line immigration policies, such as the separation of migrant families at the border, addressed the group alongside another former Trump administration immigration official.

Sources say the Floridian Salazar pushed for immigration policies that would broaden the GOP tent while challenging Miller on how Republicans can attract Latino voters given the ultraconservative policies he is advocating.

A few members chose not to attend the RSC event specifically because Miller was the guest, one source told POLITICO.

The gathering — which also included Mark Morgan, a top Trump immigration official — comes as Democrats are expected to soon take up legislation to overhaul the U.S. immigration system. Miller, one of the most polarizing figures during the Trump presidency, has called Biden’s immigration plan “the most radical immigration bill ever written, drafted, or submitted in the history of this country.”

The GOP made surprising gains among Latino voters in 2020, including in Florida and along the Texas-Mexico border, and Republicans are eager to build upon those successes in the next election, which will be crucial to protecting swing seats — including Salazar’s Miami-area district.

Salazar is a Cuban American, and immigration is among her top policy areas of interest. During her campaign for Florida’s 27th District, she highlighted U.S. policy toward Cuba and Latin America more broadly. And Salazar belongs to one of the House GOP’s most diverse freshman classes in history, though the party is still overwhelmingly white and male.

After Salazar confronted Miller on Wednesday, he responded calmly, according to sources inside the room. Salazar and Miller stayed afterward to talk for roughly 30 minutes, one source added.

The RSC also met with former Vice President Mike Pence on Tuesday, and earlier this year heard from other conservative figures, like Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson.

The hot-button topic of immigration has long created divisions in both parties, and progress on a comprehensive reform bill has long eluded Washington. The Salazar-Miller encounter comes as the GOP is hoping to rally its members around its opposition to the Biden agenda, including his immigration reform plan.

Biden’s bill would provide an eight-year pathway to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants, create an expedited path to citizenship for so-called Dreamers, and increase the number of available diversity visas, among other changes.

She did it well......

Neera Tanden Got Twitter Right—And That Was Her Problem

Being an attack dog on Twitter was part of her job, and she did it well. But Twitter has a way of turning on you.

By JOANNA WEISS

It shouldn’t be hard, one would think, to simply not tweet. That’s all it would have taken to spare Neera Tanden the situation she’s in: Had she kept her political outrage to herself, or shared it offline in the company of friends, she might be sailing to confirmation as director of the Office of Management and Budget, rather than watching the chances of her nomination slowly dwindle. And what would have been the loss? The internet is overflowing with snarky diatribes about Senators Susan Collins and Ted Cruz and Mitch McConnell. A veteran political player, who might someday need Cruz or Collins or McConnell for a vote, should have known it would do her no good to pile on. And, on some level, she did know: In 2016, she told an interviewer, “I’m willing to concede I should tweet less.”

Instead, Tanden did what a lot of us do: She went for the dopamine hit, again and again. Over the past few years, she tweeted that “a vampire has more heart than Ted Cruz,” compared McConnell to Voldemort, and called Collins “criminally ignorant.” It wasn’t just Republicans she angered; she was also known for tweaking left-wing rivals like Senator Bernie Sanders, suggesting in one tweet that Russia had helped Sanders in the 2016 election. Some have detected sexism in the sudden rush to scold her, but Tanden stands out among Biden’s Cabinet nominees for the edginess of her social media posts.

In hindsight, it looks like a repeated lapse of judgment. But to some extent, this was part of Tanden’s job. As a president of the liberal think tank Center for American Progress and a longtime aide to Hillary Clinton, she was frequently deployed as an attack dog, especially during campaigns and news crises. And Twitter was a natural ally in that work—like Washington, it was also a place where making all the right people mad could be an asset.

But Twitter has its own way of tempting you into provocative tweets, and then turning on you—especially when you make enough enemies from different points on the political spectrum, and they find a common moment for revenge.

A onetime Boston political boss named Martin Lomasney, who wielded power in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, had an oft-repeated rule for politicians: “Never write if you can speak, never speak if you can nod, never nod if you can wink.” Lomasney would surely have run in the other direction from Twitter, which isn’t just public but permanent. Yes, Donald Trump played the platform like a virtuoso; other politicians have used it savvily to bypass gatekeepers and build a base of loyalists. But for a political player, every tweet is fraught with peril: Even if you aren’t overtly insulting someone, there’s a chance some statement from your past will contradict a current political stance, or apply with poetic justice to a compromising situation.

Still, political types are also human beings, and the temptation to pour every thought onto Twitter, in search of a reaction, is ultimately biological. When you put out a tweet, anticipating a “like” or a “share,” your brain gets a hit of a pleasure neurochemical, says psychiatrist David Greenfield, founder and medical director of the Connecticut-based Center for Internet and Technology Addiction. At the same time, he says, the brain cuts off its pathways to the frontal cortex, the area that governs judgment. Once, this shutdown of higher-level thinking was a convenient evolutionary tool, Greenfield says: Prehistoric hunter-gatherers needed to shut out reason to serve the higher directives of mating and eating. Today, though, it has given us an internet that functions like “the world’s largest slot machine,” he says, as users embark on an endless hunt for validation. Tanden’s nakedly partisan tweets could derive her plenty of pleasure; one tweet during the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh—“Susan Collins’ terrible treatment of Dr. Ford should haunt Collins for the rest of her days”—drew 3,097 retweets and 8,295 likes.

In the age of the ideological bubble, political tweets pose a specific kind of risk. If you’re sharing like-minded partisan thoughts with like-minded people, you’re likely to forget that you risk a negative reaction, says Whitney Phillips, a communications professor at Syracuse University and co-author of the upcoming book You Are Here: A Field Guide For Navigating Polarized Speech, Conspiracy Theories, and Our Polluted Media Landscape. “You speak in a code that’s appropriate for the audience,” Phillips says. But once your statement lands in front of a less-friendly group, your intentions don’t matter. “It’s impossible to control any of our messages,” she says. “You can only focus on the consequences.”

Phillips cites an internet axiom known as “Poe’s Law”—coined in the early 2000s, on a message board for creationists, when a user who called himself Nathan Poe declared that it was hard to discern the true believers from people who were being sarcastic. On the internet, Poe’s Law holds, you can’t know anybody’s true intentions. A commenter could be sincere or mocking, a real human being or a fake account. Anger could be deeply-felt or cynically overblown. And it’s easy to weaponize the outrage machine. It was a right-wing provocateur—hoping to reveal what he saw as Hollywood hypocrisy—who unearthed incendiary old jokes about rape and pedophilia from “Guardians of the Galaxy” filmmaker James Gunn’s Twitter feed in 2018, Phillips notes. But it was left-wing outrage over those tweets that ultimately got Gunn fired.

Tanden’s tweets, it’s fair to say, weren’t as troublesome as Gunn’s. She was largely pumping out standard-issue political snark, the kind Trump used to post from the White House on nearly an hourly basis. Still, there are rules of political conduct, and—if you’re not Trump—consequences for breaking them. In 2008, Samantha Power, then an advisor to presidential candidate Barack Obama, resigned from the campaign after telling a Scottish reporter that Hillary Clinton was a “monster.” Power had violated a norm: voicing the kind of insult that’s usually shared, Lomasney-style, outside the public view. (Post-election, her career recovered quickly.) And, like Gunn, Tanden succeeded in getting both groups—those on the left and the right—on her bad side. If everything you tweet can be used as ammunition in the future, it’s particularly lethal when it’s coming at you from all sides.

Tanden clearly realized that old tweets could cause her trouble in this new career moment, when she had to emerge from her Clinton-Biden bubble and confront her onetime targets in the flesh. Soon after Biden named her to the budget post, she deleted at least 1,000 tweets. But the internet never forgets. And, in keeping with Poe’s Rule, it has been hard to tell who on Capitol Hill is truly horrified, and who merely senses a political opportunity. At her confirmation hearing before the Budget Committee, Sanders chided Tanden for her “vicious attacks made against progressives. People who I have worked with. Me personally.” But he also has a longer-standing beef with Tanden over the 2016 election and her ideological agenda. And he seems not the type to wither in front of an insult.

Tanden did her duty and apologized profusely, hinting that she wanted to distance herself from the cesspool Twitter had become. But the truth is, she was following the rules of her chosen medium all along. There’s no point in tweeting if you aren’t saying something that can rile people up. “Our networks have been designed for this exact outcome,” Phillips says. “The most rancorous stuff becomes the stuff that is most visible, that has the most purchase.”

In other words, the internet did everything in its power to make Tanden act the way she did, rewarded her with nearly 377,000 followers, then punished her in the end. And yet, with every tweet, she had free will. Greenfield counsels his patients who want to change their internet habits to never actually type out a tweet in the “compose” box, in Twitter or any other social media platform. Rather, he says, type your message in the Notes app, think about it for a minute, and cut and paste when you’re good and ready. Martin Lomasney would have considered that decent advice.

Groups to help save Tanden

Team Biden taps Asian American groups to help save Tanden

As Biden’s choice for budget chief flounders in the Senate, the White House has rallied her allies in the South Asian community to her defense.

By ANITA KUMAR

President Joe Biden’s aides are urging Asian American groups to mount a last-minute campaign to try to rescue his budget chief nominee, Neera Tanden, as her prospects for Senate confirmation dwindle.

Those groups are calling and sending letters to Senate offices and advocating for Tanden on social media to try to combat what they are calling “structural racism” and “institutional racism.”

Their efforts have been actively encouraged by the White House and presidential transition staff, which remains in place to help with Senate confirmations, along with the Democratic National Committee, according to two people familiar with the conversations.

“It is incredibly frustrating to watch because we are talking about individuals who are preeminently qualified, but also coming from communities that have been screaming at the top of their lungs to be visible and valued by this country,” said Gregg Orton, national director of the National Council of Asian Pacific Americans.

The daughter of Indian immigrants, Tanden has seen her nomination stall in recent days amid opposition from senators of both parties. Objecting lawmakers have cited her partisan, personal tweets, including those that have gone after them individually. But Democrats and interest groups say she is being unfairly targeted because of her gender and race.

Many of the groups being asked to help rescue Tanden’s nomination had been backing her since late last year. But they — as well as prominent Indian Americans across the country — began to redouble their efforts Friday after Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said he would oppose her confirmation, putting it in peril.

The groups are focused on three senators who have yet to declare their intentions: Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), a member of the Budget Committee; Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), a moderate who sometimes breaks with her party; and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), who sits on the Homeland Security Committee.

They are also reaching out to two long-shot senators, hoping to change their minds: Manchin and John Cornyn (R-Texas), who co-founded the Senate India Caucus, but this week called on Biden to withdraw Tanden’s nomination.

In addition to contacting Senate offices, groups have flooded social media using hashtags, such as #IStandWithNeera. A #YESNeera campaign that used the words “Yes to Progress Yes to Women Yes to AAPIs” reached more than 77.2 million people, according to the AAPI Victory Fund, a political action committee that works to mobilize Asian American and Pacific Islanders voters.

The push from the groups comes as a pair of Senate committees postponed votes on Tanden’s fate on Wednesday. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who chairs one of those committees, conceded that the support was not yet there to confirm Tanden.

Should Tanden make it through the committees, her nomination would still need to pass through the full Senate. And Manchin’s opposition means that she would need at least one Republican to support her in order for that to happen. But Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Mitt Romney of Utah, both moderate Republicans, also said they would oppose Tanden’s nomination.

“She is being held to a much higher standard, even though nobody disputes her background and qualifications to be OMB director,” said Shekar Narasimhan, AAPI Victory Fund chair. “It’s becoming apparent this higher standard applies primarily to nominees of color, and it particularly hurts with historic nominations like Neera’s.”

The White House has insisted that it still publicly supports Tanden, though some Democrats on Capitol Hill have already begun to support a possible replacement: Shalanda Young, the former clerk and staff director for the House Appropriations Committee.

But by Wednesday evening, even chief of staff Ron Klain, Tanden’s No. 1 champion within the White House, was acknowledging the reality of her plight.

"If Neera Tanden is not confirmed, she will not become the budget director, we will find some other place for her to serve in the administration that doesn't require Senate confirmation," Klain said on MSNBC.

The White House referred questions about the push by Asian Americans to the presidential transition. A transition official acknowledged the effort, saying it had been ongoing since December.

Asian Americans have been fuming for weeks that Biden failed to name a Cabinet secretary of Asian American or Pacific Islander descent, though he tapped two for Cabinet-level positions: Tanden, president of the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, and Katherine Tai to be U.S. trade representative. Asian Americans have served in presidential Cabinets, including Donald Trump’s, since 2000.

“We would like to see progress in having a seat at the table,” said Madalene Mielke, president and CEO of the Asian Pacific American Institute of Congressional Studies. “Cabinet-level appointments are important and at the same time, in the words of over 100 members of Congress, close to equal is not equal.”

Still, after Biden nominated Tanden, Asian Americans began to push for her confirmation and even urged Vice President Kamala Harris, herself the daughter of an Indian mother, to try to persuade her former colleagues in the Senate to support her.

Albert Shen, president of the Texas chapter of the Asian American Action Fund, called Tanden’s selection “a direct rebuke to the last four years of Trump’s Make America Great Again homogeneous policy agenda.”

A network of prominent Indian Americans with personal connections to Republican senators began to reach out to the lawmakers in December, urging them to meet with Tanden and give her a chance, according to a person familiar with the situation. “We’re trying to get her in the door,” the person said. “All we’re saying is taking a call, give her a fair hearing.”

A group of more than 50 Asian American businesses sent Cornyn a letter in early February urging him to support Tanden, citing the hate crimes toward Asian Americans following former President Donald Trumps’ demonization of China during the coronavirus pandemic.

Neil Makhija, executive director of IMPACT, an Indian American advocacy group, said his organization worked with the presidential transition to set up a meeting with Tanden after her nomination to ask how they could help. This week, IMPACT is drafting a letter to be sent to the leaders of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and Budget committees touting the possibility of Tanden serving as the first woman of color and first South Asian American budget chief.

“Even as she achieves historic milestones at the highest levels of our government, Ms. Tanden has never forgotten where she came from: a South Asian immigrant family that relied on this country’s social safety net to survive,” according to a copy of the draft letter. “Going from a childhood of food stamps and Section 8 housing to public service in President Joseph R. Biden’s Cabinet, Neera Tanden has lived the full arc of this country’s promise.”

Policy on special operations

Austin eyes rolling back Trump-era policy on special operations

The defense secretary is considering lowering the special operations job back into the Pentagon’s policy shop, effectively demoting the position.

By LARA SELIGMAN

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is considering undoing his predecessor’s last-minute decision to elevate the top civilian Pentagon official overseeing special operations matters, signaling his intent to continue rolling back the policies of the Trump administration.

Austin is weighing the move as he reassigns the senior official who most recently held that special operations role in the Trump administration, and looks to replace another official who served under Trump's former Pentagon chief.

The initial policy change on special operations, made in December by former acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller, put civilian oversight of America’s commandos on par with the civilian leaders of the military branches. The job had been lower down in the Pentagon’s bureaucracy.

The move was seen as a way to elevate the needs of America's elite special operations forces — Navy SEALs, Army Green Berets, Marine Raiders — which have borne the brunt of the fighting in the Middle East and Afghanistan over the past two decades. It was also designed to increase civilian oversight following the fatal ambush of U.S. special forces in Niger in 2017 and a series of scandals that have plagued the community. Miller is a former Green Beret.

But the move alarmed some experts, who were worried the outgoing defense secretary was tinkering with Pentagon bureaucracy on his way out the door.

Austin is considering lowering the special operations job back into the Pentagon’s policy shop, effectively demoting the position, according to two former Trump officials, one current defense official and a House aide familiar with the move. All of the people requested anonymity to discuss sensitive decisions.

The people expressed concern about the potential reversal, saying Austin was trying to undo Miller’s legacy at the expense of the Pentagon bureaucracy.

The move has the potential to “kneecap” civilian oversight of special operations, as policies would be made through the policy shop without input from the official overseeing the portfolio, one of the people said.

However, one former defense official argued that keeping the job where it is would mean that the civilian overseeing America’s commandos would have “little to no impact” on policy, the person said.

Austin has made no final decisions on the issue, another defense official said. Congress mandated the establishment of the direct reporting line in the 2017 defense policy bill signed by former President Barack Obama.

A Pentagon spokesperson declined to comment.

This would mark the latest Trump policy that President Joe Biden’s new administration has reviewed or undone at the Pentagon. Biden reversed Trump’s ban on transgender individuals serving in the military almost immediately after taking office, and froze Trump’s ordered troop drawdowns in Germany, Afghanistan and elsewhere. He also canceled funding for Trump’s border wall, which had been drawn from the military’s coffers.

Meanwhile, Austin is also reassigning the senior Pentagon official who most recently served as the acting Pentagon official overseeing special operations. Joe Tonon, who held that position from December until January, is being moved to a position within the Navy, according to one former official and one current official.

Tonon, a career Navy intelligence official and a civilian, was most recently detailed to the deputy defense secretary's office. He was slated to move temporarily to the Pentagon's defense intelligence office with the expectation that he would ultimately be tapped to lead a new initiative within the department established late in the Trump administration.

He had the job offer in hand, but the day before he was supposed to make the move last week he was informed that he would be reassigned, the people said.

Tonon lost his pay raise and will likely now be "buried" in the Navy, one of the people said.

He assumed the acting role soon after Miller elevated the special operations position. The permanent position is a political one, but the law permits the White House to install a career official in the role on a temporary basis.

"This is really about the new folks coming in and kind of erasing [Miller's] legacy," the person said.

Meanwhile, Austin is looking at replacing Miller's executive secretary, Navy Capt. David Soldow, with a civilian, the second defense official said. Although Soldow was not scheduled to rotate out until this summer, a potential assignment came up and Austin wants to “give him the freedom to pursue that,” the person said.

Others characterized the potential move to reassign the executive secretary ahead of schedule as highly unusual. Two former officials and one current official with knowledge of the move saw it as another sign of Austin's campaign to replace people perceived as loyal to Miller.

The position is typically held by a uniformed officer and is not political.

Soldow signed a memo laying out the Pentagon's response to the Jan. 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol last month; however, one of the former officials said his reassignment is not linked to the department's response to the insurrection.

Tonon declined to comment on the move. Soldow could not be reached for comment.

The reassignments come just weeks after Austin undertook a sweeping effort to oust last-minute Trump appointments to the defense advisory boards. This month, Austin fired all members serving on 31 panels, including the Defense Policy Board, the Defense Business Board and the Defense Innovation Board, and directed a “zero-based review" of the department's boards and commissions.

The move affects a number of controversial Trump allies, including Anthony Tata, the Pentagon acting policy chief until January who came under fire last year for Islamophobic and offensive tweets, and Scott O’Grady, a former Air Force pilot who spread false claims about election fraud on social media, from the policy board.

Austin also halted the in-processing of new members to the panels, effectively preventing a number of Trump acolytes, who were still completing paperwork and undergoing security checks, from actually serving on the boards. That included Trump's 2016 campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and deputy campaign manager David Bossie. Also out is Kash Patel, who was Miller's chief of staff.

Bipartisanship

‘It was like the old days’: Biden praises meeting with Republican and Democratic lawmakers

The Wednesday gathering in the Oval Office to discuss supply chain issues provided a rare glimpse of the bipartisanship the president has been calling for.

By BENJAMIN DIN

President Joe Biden had high praise for what he called a “very productive” Oval Office meeting with Republican and Democratic lawmakers on Wednesday, offering a rare glimpse of the bipartisanship he has been calling for since taking office.

“It was one of the best meetings, best meetings we’ve had,” Biden said in remarks shortly before signing an executive order to secure critical supply chains. “It was like the old days. People were on the same page.”

The meeting was a small show of the cooperation Biden has sought, in an attempt to unite the nation after the bitter partisanship that defined the last four years. However, it has largely eluded the president in the opening weeks of his presidency, which has instead been consumed with the second impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump and fierce Republican opposition to his proposed coronavirus relief plan.

Another point of contention has been opposition to some of his Cabinet nominations, which has been at times bipartisan. However, Biden on Wednesday made it clear that he didn’t blame the Senate for the delayed confirmations.

“I blame it on the failure to have a transition that was rational,” Biden told reporters after his remarks. “As you know, previous administrations had a significant number of their Cabinet confirmed before they even were sworn in. That’s the tradition.”

The president and Vice President Kamala Harris had met with eight senators and three House members earlier in the day. The group discussed supply chain issues that have caused problems, such as shortages in semiconductor chips and personal protective equipment needed by health professionals working at the front lines of the pandemic.

Sen. John Cornyn and Rep. Michael McCaul, both Texas Republicans, echoed Biden’s comments, describing the meeting to reporters outside the West Wing as “very good” and “very positive.”

“The president was very receptive, as was the vice president,” Cornyn said. “He said, ‘We’re all in.’ We all understand this is important, not only to our economy, but to our national security, because these cutting-edge, high-end semiconductors — they operate on everything from the F-35 fifth-generation stealth fighter to our cellphones. So it was very positive.”

Cornyn added that the group did not address the Covid-19 relief package during the meeting.

McCaul said he was pleased that the president considered the issue “a high priority” and praised Biden for raising the matter “within the first four weeks of his presidency.”

Other Republicans in attendance were Sens. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, Mike Braun of Indiana and Rob Portman of Ohio, as well as Rep. John Joyce of Pennsylvania. Of the Democrats, Sens. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, Tammy Duckworth of Illinois and Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, as well as Rep. Doris Matsui of California, were also present.

A stupid idea from stupid is dumped...

Biden tosses Trump's classical architecture order

The former president’s action on “ugly” modernist federal buildings received condemnation from architects as aesthetically myopic.

By MATTHEW CHOI

Brutalists, rejoice!

Former President Donald Trump’s attempt to favor classical architecture got the ax on Wednesday as part of a sweeping scrapping of Trump-era executive orders by President Joe Biden.

Trump’s executive order in December, titled “Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture,” disparaged the modernist architectural styles of some federal buildings as “ugly” and a jarring contrast with local architectural styles. The Trump administration hailed Greco-Roman-inspired buildings as an important homage to democracy in antiquity.

The executive order, signed in the final moments of the Trump presidency, promptly met condemnation from architects as aesthetically myopic, though it had relatively weak enforcement. The order only placed a preference for classical styles in future buildings and did not outright ban brutalism.

“Though we are appalled with the administration’s decision to move forward with the design mandate, we are happy the order isn’t as far reaching as previously thought,” Robert Ivy, CEO of the American Institute of Architects, said in a statement at the time.

It was one of a number of Trump-era executive orders the Biden White House declared null on Wednesday. Biden also rescinded an order threatening financing for cities that the Trump administration felt curtailed support for local police amid the summer’s anti-racism protests. Biden also tossed an executive action that halted new visas amid the coronavirus economic crisis.

They love Kool-aid so much..

The GOP’s choice in 2024: Trump Ultra, Trump Lite or Trump Zero

The former president’s grip on the party base is so total that top Republicans say the path to the nomination is best defined by the degree of loyalty to him.

By MARC CAPUTO

At least eight 2024 hopefuls will speak at CPAC, the conservative movement’s premier conference this weekend in Florida, giving Republicans their clearest look yet at who’s competing in the traditional GOP presidential lanes.

But there’s only one lane that really matters: the one currently occupied by former President Donald Trump.

Trump, the keynote speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference, is the party's undisputed leader at the moment, and for the foreseeable future. And whether he chooses to run again in 2024 or not, his outsized presence is likely to determine the shape of the primary.

“There isn’t a Trump lane. There’s a Trump Turnpike with multiple lanes and multiple people,” said Chris LaCivita, a veteran GOP strategist who most recently headed the anti-Biden super PAC Preserve America.

Conversations with more than a dozen Republican consultants, strategists and officials depict a party over which Trump exerts an irresistible gravitational pull, pointing to his continued strength in polls and the megawatt energy he generates among the GOP grassroots.

Trump’s grip on the Republican base and his effect on the minds of White House hopefuls is so total, they say, that the path to the GOP nomination is best defined by the degree of loyalty to Trump — to the point where party operatives reach for elaborate metaphors to best convey the extent of his influence.

“Trump remains the 800-pound gorilla in the room, he just happens to be sitting in the corner right now,” former Michigan state chair Saul Anuzis said, joking that the social media de-platforming of the former president is “more like an electronic dog fence. … You can definitely still hear the bark.”

Already, potential prospects and party leaders are making pilgrimages to Trump’s Palm Beach club for an audience with the former president. It’s a reflection, top Republicans say, of a nomination contest that will break down along fault lines that trace back to Trump.

“The winner of our primary [in 2024] will be someone from the Full Trump lane who embraces Trump and is embraced by him,” said Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, a confidant of the former president who met with him last week at Mar-a-Lago and has taken on the role of party enforcer.

Gaetz, who’s also scheduled to speak at CPAC, said few will challenge Trump if he decides to run again. And he predicted that candidates who fail to embrace Trump’s legacy in full will only have a “mirage” of support “because their base is essentially Washington-based media who give them more appearances on the Sunday shows than their percentage point support in polling of Republican voters.”

On the eve of CPAC, here is a breakdown of the 2024 GOP presidential lanes that are taking shape.

Trump Ultra

There’s a saying by some in Trump’s orbit that “if you’re with him 99 percent of the time, you’re a damn traitor” — a testament to the absolute, unwavering loyalty he demands. Those purity and loyalty tests make the Trump Ultra lane one of the toughest to run in.

A key metric for senators and representatives who expect to occupy this lane: opposition to the Jan. 6 certification of the Electoral College results that officially made him the loser and that led to the storming of the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob. That puts Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley and Florida Sen. Rick Scott — all CPAC speakers — squarely in the Trump Ultra camp.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose stock is rising rapidly in the national party, will open the conference with welcoming remarks. He sports sterling MAGA credential for his Trumpist handling of Covid and status as governor of Trump’s newly adopted home state — which the former president won twice. To this day, DeSantis refuses to publicly acknowledge that President Joe Biden was legitimately elected.

DeSantis isn’t the only governor in this category: South Dakota’s Kristi Noem, another CPAC speaker, is a dark horse candidate. Noem, who is holding a fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago on March 5, is a Fox News regular who once gave Trump a miniature Mt. Rushmore featuring his own face.

Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state known within the previous administration for his unwillingness to criticize Trump even in private, is also in this crowded group and is scheduled to speak at CPAC.

Trump Lite

The Trump Lite lane is populated by candidates who have put any daylight — however little — between themselves and the former president.

In the case of former Vice President Mike Pence, who was unceasingly loyal to Trump for more than four years, it was his refusal to reject the Electoral College certification when he presided over the vote. That apostasy costs him among many Trump supporters. He declined an invitation to speak at CPAC.

Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, a leading voice in criticizing China — one of Trump’s signature issues — is in the same situation after voting to accept the Electoral College results. So is Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. Although Rubio carved out a niche for himself as a consistent anti-anti-Trump Republican who frequently attacks the former president’s critics, he committed the sin of mildly criticizing Trump after his two impeachments and blasted him as a primary rival in 2016. Both are scheduled to speak at CPAC.

Trump’s former United Nations ambassador, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, recently stepped out of the full Trump lane by making critical comments about her onetime boss and was promptly snubbed by the former president when she requested an audience with him at Mar-a-Lago.

In an interview prior to Haley’s criticisms of Trump, South Carolina GOP strategist Wesley Donehue predicted she would win her home state but noted that support of the former president is of utmost importance, according to a poll of Republican primary voters he took in the state in early February.

“About 75 percent of Republican primary voters said supporting Donald Trump is a requirement for office. Again: a requirement. It’s absolutely astonishing,” Donehue said. “So she was seen in this state as being 100 percent with Donald Trump, but now over the last two weeks, we're starting to hear a lot of rumblings. People still love Nikki Haley here, but she's got to figure out a way to deal with this. I don’t know how she does, though. Because Donald Trump doesn’t seem to be someone with a short memory.”

Haley’s standing in her home state’s primary looms large because the lanes the candidates will run in have both an ideological and geographical dimension. Since South Carolina is traditionally the third state to vote in a primary — and the first to go in the South — it exerts an extra gravitational pull.

In New Hampshire, sandwiched between the Iowa and South Carolina contests, Republican strategist Jim Merrill said that Trump Lite could be “potentially the broadest lane ... a hybrid that is able to point out Trump's shortcomings while also working to build on his gains with working class Americans.”

Trump Zero

Jeff Roe, who advised Cruz on his 2016 presidential bid, has polled Republican primary voters extensively in recent years on what type of candidate they would support. He’s determined that the party has three distinctive lanes: a Full Trump lane, a Most Conservative lane (composed of fiscal and social conservatives) and a Most Electable lane that reflects a preference for whomever can beat the Democrats.

“If you don’t pick a lane, you will get run over,” Roe said. “Candidates who try to hold a mirror up to the electorate and say, ‘Look at me, I’m just like you,’ instead of saying, ‘This is who I am, vote for me,’ will lose. Voters want authenticity. They want leaders.”

That focus on electability is at the heart of the Trump Zero lane. It is essentially the vehicle of the anti-Trump wing, the province of those who have called out the president frequently for his rhetoric and post-election behavior, yet can single out some positive aspects of Trump’s four-year reign.

The problem is the lane might be so small that it’s not much of a path at all, said David Kochel, a longtime GOP strategist from first-in-the-nation Iowa who counts Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan and Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse among this group.

“It’s probably not even a lane,” Kochel said. “It’s more like a gravelly shoulder on the side of the mountain that’s about to crumble into the ocean.”

Potential for widespread fraud.

Fraud fears and messy data stall FEMA program for Covid victims

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is set to dole out cash to families of Americans who died of Covid-19, but there is potential for widespread fraud.

By ERIN BANCO

The federal government wants to help Americans pay for their families’ Covid-19-related funerals — if it can figure out how to keep the scam artists at bay.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is planning a $2 billion pandemic funeral assistance program, using money set aside in the $2.3 trillion spending package that former President Donald Trump signed in December. But progress has stalled over concerns within the agency that the program is vulnerable to widespread fraud, according to two senior officials with direct knowledge of the situation.

FEMA has for decades helped Americans cover unexpected and uninsured expenses incurred when their family members die as a result of major disasters like hurricanes or earthquakes, or in other emergency settings. But with more than 500,000 people dead so far, the pandemic funeral program is poised to be the largest the agency has ever mounted. It may also be the messiest.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which collect mortality data on the pandemic, has advised FEMA that — for logistical and regulatory reasons — CDC cannot verify whether individual deaths are Covid-related. Instead, the disaster agency will need to lean on overburdened state health agencies and medical institutions to cross-reference federal data with death certificates.

Now FEMA is scrambling to find safeguards that would prevent fraudsters from forging death certificates in an attempt to collect thousands of dollars for funerals that either never happened or were for people who died from another cause.

“There’s more room for error here because more people have died with Covid,” said one of the senior officials, who requested anonymity to speak freely about the agency’s concerns. “At the same time, it takes a lot of effort to fake these documents. I don’t know if people are going to want to do all that for a potentially small payout.”

The official said FEMA will also likely run into situations where multiple family members submit for reimbursement for the same death.

The agency is still working on defining who will be able to apply for reimbursement, but officials said the program will be similar to the one implemented after Hurricane Katrina. FEMA plans to allocate anywhere from $3,000 to $7,000 to people whose family members died as a direct result of Covid-19 in 2020. Eligible funeral expenses will include the purchase of caskets, mortuary services, transportation of the dead, burial plots and cremation.The funding does not cover costs of funerals incurred during 2021, a spokesperson said.

Normally, state and federal officials at FEMA field offices review applicants’ documentation before they approve the payout. Those documents include death certificates, proof that the applicant is the dead person’s next of kin, and confirmation that funeral expenses were not paid for through other resources such as Veterans Affairs benefits. FEMA is considering implementing additional measures to authenticate the documents they receive from families participating in the Covid program.

Over the past several weeks, FEMA officials have met with senior officials at the CDC who track coronavirus-related deaths in an attempt to find a better way to ensure that those applying for reimbursement are presenting original documentation. FEMA officials asked the CDC for guidance on whether it could help match death certificates with mortality data collected by the federal government.

CDC officials said the state health agencies would have to take on the task in part because they have the most accurate and comprehensive data on deaths in their jurisdiction. In addition, state medical examiners’ offices and coroners already help FEMA in disaster-related funeral reimbursement situations by identifying whether someone died as a result of a given disaster or for some other, unrelated reason.

“The biggest challenge for FEMA is that all 50 states have different ways for accounting for deaths,” said Craig Fugate, the FEMA administrator during the Obama administration. “States have to certify that the death is disaster-specific. It could be an indirect impact like with the Texas winter storm disaster and the carbon monoxide poisoning. As long as the medical examiner notes it was related to the event, then everything is OK. The bigger challenge with Covid is identifying if Covid was the cause of death even if you had a preexisting condition.”

Counting the dead is complicated and the surge in deaths from the virus has muddied the process. While states have the most up-to-date death counts, they are still experiencing significant delays in tallying who has died from the virus. They are even further behind in reporting that information to the CDC. Agency officials say they are still waiting on states to submit Covid-19 death reports from the 2020 holiday season.

FEMA also will likely face issues when families submit for reimbursement but present death certificates, or other medical information, that do not support the claim that a person died as a result of contracting the virus.

States submit death data to the CDC through two parallel tracking systems. One relies on codes used on death certificates. The program scans for words like “Covid-19” to determine the cause of death for each individual. Physicians are required to list Covid-19 on the death certificate in order for someone to be counted in the state and federal tracking systems as having died of the virus. But not every Covid-19 death has been documented — particularly those that happened during the early days of the pandemic.

When the virus first emerged in the U.S., testing was limited and doctors were unclear exactly why their patients were dying. As the virus spread more rapidly, physicians learned to better identify symptoms of Covid-19 but did not always list the virus on the death certificate. In other situations, hospitals used the term “coronavirus” rather than “Covid-19” on the certificates and the CDC did not count those people as having died of the virus. Since then, the CDC has worked with states to investigate those deaths and recount them properly.

A senior FEMA official said the agency will be working with a contractor and training staff to help administer the funeral reimbursement program. A federal contract reviewed by POLITICO shows FEMA’s Community Survivor Assistance Section awarded $202 million to General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT), a major contractor for the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon, to set up a contact center to provide funeral services assistance to family members of those who died from Covid-19 in 2020. The contract, awarded last week, is for two years of work.