 |  | | Washington, Fast. | | | | | | | Good Monday morning. Tips, comments, recipes? Reach out and sign up for the Power Up newsletter. Thanks for waking up with us 😊 | | | In the agencies THE PANDEMIC WORK-FROM-HOME EXPERIMENT CONTINUES: "As the Biden administration contemplates how to return the massive federal workforce to the office, government officials are moving to make a pandemic experiment permanent by allowing more employees than ever to work from home — a sweeping cultural change that would have been unthinkable a year ago," our colleague Lisa Rein scoops this Monday morning. - "The shift across the government comes after the risk-averse federal bureaucracy had fallen behind private companies when it came to embracing telework — a posture driven by a perception that employees would slack off unless they were tethered to their office cubicles. That position hardened during the Trump administration, which dialed back work-from-home programs that had slowly expanded during the Obama era."
- "But the coronavirus crisis — and a new president eager to rebuild the trust of federal workers who had been attacked by former president Donald Trump as 'the swamp' — has convinced the country's largest employer that in many departments, federal employees can serve the public just as well from home."
Coming soon: "Notice of the change is expected in June, when the administration is set to release long-awaited guidance to agencies about when and how many federal employees can return to the office — likely in hybrid workplaces that combine in-person and at-home options," Lisa reports.  Birds fly by the Washington Monument this past weekend as Biden returned from Camp David. (Photo by Oliver Contreras/For The Washington Post) | - "We anticipate this guidance will leave room for decision-making at departments and agencies, to provide maximum flexibility for defining work requirements to meet mission and workforce needs," said a White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because plans have not yet been finalized.
- "How much federal employees across the government will be able to work from home will be up to individual agencies and will likely vary widely depending on employee needs, manager preferences and the department's mission, officials said. Many jobs such as screening air travelers, building sorties for bombers and serving veterans in hospitals — do not lend themselves to remote work."
By the numbers: "Still, a broader endorsement of a work-from-home culture by the Biden administration would have far-reaching implications for the 2.1 million federal employees around the country, as well as the vast federal contracting workforce, which could follow suit," Lisa writes. - "The share of the workforce teleworking every day rose from 3 percent before the pandemic to 59 percent at its peak last year, according to a recently released survey of federal workers."
There has been some pressure to see federal employees back in the office — especially from some members of Congress "who say the public still faces indefensible delays to face-to-face service at the Internal Revenue Service, the Social Security Administration and other agencies." - "Some federal workers who have been asked to work remotely cannot fully perform their duties, some lawmakers have complained — saying their constituents still can't get through to a live IRS representative on the phone because a limited number of employees are reporting to the office and the volume of calls has exploded."
- "'My offices are open so they can serve our constituents," said Rep. Michael Waltz, (R-Fla.), 'but my constituents are calling the IRS and they can't get anyone on the phone in the name of the pandemic.' He has asked the Biden administration to explain why federal offices in states with low transmission rates remain closed."
- "There's also bipartisan concern about thin in-person staffing levels at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, an arm of the National Archives that provides veterans with vital paper records they need to obtain benefits, access to health care and burials at veterans cemeteries. Pandemic staff absences have created a backlog of close to half a million service requests that must be processed by hand."
- "John Valceanu, an Archives spokesman, said the records center is following current federal guidelines on in-person work and has already recalled more than half its staff to the office. The center is now processing more than 10,000 requests a week from the public and another 7,000 from the Department of Veterans Affairs and other agencies within two or three work days, he said."
| | | At the White House HOPE FOR BIPARTISAN BREAKTHROUGHS DIM: "Negotiations in Congress over some of President Biden's key priorities are facing new head winds, dimming Democrats's hopes that they might be able to overcome the partisan gridlock that has come to define Washington and quickly broker deals with Republicans to push through their ambitious agenda," the New York Times's Catie Edmondson reports. - "The Biden administration and Republicans are sparring over the size of his infrastructure bill, remaining in a deadlock on a revived drive to overhaul the nation's policing system, and lawmakers are waging a partisan fight over an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol."
- "Any sustained impasse — especially on issues as straightforward as the Jan. 6 commission — will almost certainly ratchet up pressure on moderate Senate Democrats who have insisted that their party must work across the aisle to broker bipartisan compromises."
- "But the deadlocks also threaten to eat up more time on the legislative calendar, as the administration presses to notch wins on a packed queue of even thornier political issues, including voting rights and immigration."
"The reaction on Sunday by one of the Republicans most willing to cross party lines, Sen. Susan Collins (Maine), illustrated the depth of the impasse on infrastructure, even after offers and counteroffers on both sides. - "While she said that 'negotiations should continue' on a $1.7 trillion infrastructure counterproposal Biden made on Friday, her position had not moved: The White House bill was simply too big."
CHENEY'S LIMITS: Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) told Axios's Jonathan Swan on "Axios on HBO" last night that she's not against the GOP's push for restrictive voting laws. - "Ten days after losing her House Republican post, Cheney is trying to put former President Trump's Big Lie about the election in a silo. She doesn't accept the larger context: Republicans spent years fertilizing the soil for voters to believe that voter fraud is rampant… Cheney disputed any linkage between Trump's false claims about 2020 and the current flurry of GOP efforts at the state level to pass new restrictions."
- "I will never understand the resistance, for example, to voter ID," she told Swan. "There's a big difference between that and a president of the United States who loses an election after he tried to steal the election and refuses to concede."
| | | The campaign DEMOCRATIC LAWMAKERS RAISE SAFETY CONCERNS BACK HOME: "As House members head out of Washington for three weeks, anger at each other is turning into fear of what could await them back home," our colleagues Marianna Sotomayor and Paul Kane report. - "Tensions among lawmakers have been running high since the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob and have only increased in recent weeks. The two parties are clashing over how to investigate what transpired that day and whether, or how, to ease precautions put in place to keep members and staff safe during the pandemic."
- "The tenor of the debate has been highly personal, with Democrats expressing a sense of distrust toward their Republican colleagues with regard to their personal safety and health, while many GOP members are accusing Democrats of using the tragedies of the attack and the pandemic to score political points."
- "Now, several Democrats said they are concerned that the toxic political culture on Capitol Hill could greet them back home as their communities open up, with the pandemic waning and vaccination rates rising, and there is pressure to hold more in-person events."
| | | The policies INSIDE D.C.'S FIRST WEEKEND WITH FEW CORONAVIRUS RESTRICTIONS: "A woman with her mask dangling off her chin rushed past a waitress, who was sanitizing a menu, to take a call. A restaurant owner sat barefaced on his couch, but his tables remained spaced six feet apart. A vaccinated barber gave his vaccinated neighbor a haircut. One wore a mask. The other smiled without one," our colleague Emily Davies writes. "It was the first weekend in over a year with almost no coronavirus restrictions, and D.C.'s businesses were reckoning with how to keep their employees and customers safe." - "A new order from D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D), which went into effect early Friday, lifted most capacity restrictions and removed masking requirements for patrons fully vaccinated against the coronavirus."
- "The sudden reversion to the Before Times has provided relief for owners eager to break even after a long year in the red, but it has also proved complicated for those trying to find the line between freedom and safety — especially in areas where vaccine uptake has sputtered."
 David Branch, owner of Street Cutts in Washington, cuts Wayne Monk's hair on May 22. (Astrid Riecken/The Washington Post) | | | | Global power WORLD LEADERS CONDEMN BELARUS FOR FORCING DOWN PASSENGER PLANE TO ARREST JOURNALIST: "Belarusian authorities on Sunday forced a civilian jetliner that was traveling over the country to land in Minsk and arrested an opposition journalist on board — an act that some European leaders compared to a hijacking," our colleagues Isabelle Khurshudyan and Michael Birnbaum report. European leaders and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have condemned the move. - "The United States strongly condemns the forced diversion of a flight between two [European Union] member states and the subsequent removal and arrest of journalist Raman Pratasevich in Minsk," Blinken said in a statement. "We demand his immediate release."
- "We are closely coordinating our response with our partners, including the E.U. and Lithuanian and Greek officials … Independent media are an essential pillar supporting the rule of law and a vital component of a democratic society. The United States condemns the regime's ongoing harassment and arbitrary detention of journalists."
"A decision by authorities in Belarus to force a Ryanair jet to land in Minsk on Sunday and detain a dissident journalist was a 'state-sponsored hijacking', Ryanair Chief Executive Michael O'Leary said," Reuters's Conor Humphries reports. - "This was a case of state-sponsored hijacking ... state-sponsored piracy," O'Leary told Irish Newstalk radio, per Reuters. "It appears the intent of the authorities was to remove a journalist and his travelling companion ... we believe there were some KGB agents offloaded at the airport as well," he said.
| A statement from Ryanair press office: |  | | | INTELLIGENCE ON WUHAN LAB FUELS DEBATE ON COVID-19 ORIGIN: "Three researchers from China's Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care, according to a previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report that could add weight to growing calls for a fuller probe of whether the covid-19 virus may have escaped from the laboratory," the Wall Street Journal's Michael R. Gordon, Warren P. Strobel and Drew Hinshaw report. - "The disclosure of the number of researchers, the timing of their illnesses and their hospital visits come on the eve of a meeting of the World Health Organization's decision-making body, which is expected to discuss the next phase of an investigation into covid-19's origins."
- "Long characterized by skeptics as a conspiracy theory, the hypothesis that the pandemic could have begun with a lab accident has attracted more interest from scientists who have complained about the lack of transparency by Chinese authorities or conclusive proof for the alternate hypothesis: that the virus was contracted by humans from a bat or other infected animal outside a lab."
- "While the lab hypothesis is being taken more seriously, including by Biden administration officials, the debate is still colored by political tensions, including over how much evidence is needed to sustain the hypothesis."
| | | Viral 👂 LISTEN: "Inside the Failures of the Secret Service." - Post Reports anchor Martine Powers gives us an immersive, narrative take on some of the most shocking episodes of Carol Leonnig's new book, "Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service."
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