| Welcome to The Daily 202 newsletter! Tell your friends to sign up here. Big day for words: Bob Dylan turns 80, and on this day in 1844 Samuel Morse sends "What Hath God Wrought?" from the Capitol to Baltimore to inaugurate America's first telegraph line. President Biden has denounced a worrisome wave of attacks on Jews that has prompted calls for action by the White House, almost exactly one year after he told campaign donors it was vital to condemn criticism of Israel when it veers into antisemitism. From the presidential Twitter account, Biden declared "recent attacks on the Jewish community are despicable, and they must stop." White House officials say the administration is working with major Jewish groups that wrote Biden on Friday urging him to "speak out forcefully" after a series of incidents seemingly fed by 11 days of fighting between Israel and Hamas. "We received this letter on Friday, and have been taking a range of steps to coordinate with Jewish community groups to condemn and respond to the disturbing rise in antisemitic violence and speech," one official said on condition of anonymity. "Over the past week, we've been in touch with a multitude of stakeholders and national organizations on the recent reports of incidents of antisemitism, and will continue to be this week and beyond," the official said. The letter was signed by the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, the Jewish Federations of North America, the Orthodox Union and Hadassah, a pro-Israel Jewish womens' group, my colleague Michelle Boorstein reported Friday. On Friday, senior White House domestic policy adviser Susan Rice tweeted an initial response: Aides declined to describe what additional steps were under consideration and pointed to Biden's long record against antisemitism, including invoking the white supremacist and antisemitic August 2017 march in Charlottesville, in his announcement he would seek the White House in 2020. Biden recently signed legislation to combat hate crimes, notably violence against Asian Americans, that have increased during the pandemic. Some Democrats have tied such violence to remarks from Republicans, notably former president Donald Trump's invocation of the "China virus." Dozens of Republicans voted against the measure, some explicitly charging it was geared to attack Trump. But progressives have notably become more comfortable criticizing Israel's treatment of Palestinians, causing some on the right to accuse Democrats of betraying that American ally . In May 2020, Biden had told donors it was necessary to condemn criticism of Israel that veers into antisemitism including — perhaps especially — when it comes from the political left. At the New York Times, Shane Goldmacher described the remarks and their context: " 'Criticism of Israel's policy is not anti-Semitism,' Mr. Biden said. 'But too often that criticism from the left morphs into anti-Semitism.' Mr. Biden did not cite any specific examples of antisemitic comments on the left or specifically identify individuals or groups that he was concerned about. … The former vice president was speaking at a virtual fund-raiser hosted by Dan Shapiro, a former ambassador to Israel, and Deborah Lipstadt, a professor of Jewish history and Holocaust studies at Emory University. The Biden campaign said 550 people attended. Mr. Biden was asked directly by one of the hosts about how to respond to anti-Semitism on the left, according to a transcript provided by a person on the call. 'We have to condemn it, and I've gotten in trouble for doing that,' the former vice president replied. 'Whatever the source, right, left or center.' "  President Biden declared on Twitter that "recent attacks on the Jewish community are despicable, and they must stop." (Yuri Abaca/Bloomberg) | Antisemitic violence has risen in recent years. My colleagues Shane Harris and Brittany Shammas chronicled some of the more disturbing incidents over the past few days. " 'This does feel quite different,' Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, said in an interview Sunday. In 2019, he said, the group identified more than 2,100 antisemitic incidents, including assault, violence and harassment, which was more than any year since the group began tracking such episodes in 1979. And 2020, a year when many Americans stayed home because of the coronavirus pandemic, was still the third-highest on record, Greenblatt noted." During the 11 days of fighting between Israel and Hamas, which the U.S. labels a terrorist group, some prominent voices on the left urged Biden to reassess relations with Israel, notably arms sales. But in the conflict's aftermath, they have done what May-2020 Biden would have urged them to do. "Anti-Semitism is rising in America. It's rising all over the world. That is an outrage. And we have got to combat anti-Semitism," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said on CBS News's "Face the Nation" yesterday. Asked whether Israel's critics on the left should describe America's closest Middle East ally as an "apartheid state," as some have, Sanders replied: "I think we should tone down the rhetoric." On Friday and Saturday, members of the so-called progressive "squad" in the House also tweeted repudiations of antisemitism. | | | What's happening now The Commerce Department security unit evolved into a counterintelligence-like operation, a Post examination found. "The Investigations and Threat Management Service (ITMS) covertly searched employees' offices at night, ran broad keyword searches of their emails trying to surface signs of foreign influence and scoured Americans' social media for critical comments about the census, according to documents and interviews with five former investigators," Shawn Boburg reports. "In one instance, the unit opened a case on a 68-year-old retiree in Florida who tweeted that the census, which is run by the Commerce Department, would be manipulated 'to benefit the Trump Party!' records show. In another example, the unit searched Commerce servers for particular Chinese words, documents show. The search resulted in the monitoring of many Asian American employees over benign correspondence, according to two former investigators. "The office 'has been allowed to operate far outside the bounds of federal law enforcement norms and has created an environment of paranoia and retaliation at the Department,' John Costello, a former deputy assistant secretary of intelligence and security at Commerce in the Trump administration, said in a statement for this story. ... Concerns have long simmered internally about the Commerce unit, which was led for more than a decade by career supervisor George D. Lee. The unit's tactics appear as if 'someone watched too many 'Mission Impossible' movies,' said Bruce Ridlen, a former supervisor. Investigators lodged complaints with supervisors, and the department's internal watchdog launched multiple inquiries, documents show. To start your day with a full political briefing, sign up for our Power Up newsletter. | | | Lunchtime reads from The Post - "A mobster's online confessions are shaking Erdogan's government. Turkey is enthralled," by Kareem Fahim: "The videos are set in a tidy hotel room, with props such as prayer beads and books arranged just so. The host Sedat Peker is garrulous, menacing and more than a little grandiose. His stories — about the nexus of organized crime and politics in Turkey — are earthquakes, rumbling dangerously these days under the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In videos released on his YouTube channel this month, Peker, a convicted crime boss who lives in exile, has implicated current and former Turkish officials, their relatives and other prominent figures in grave crimes, including murder plots, rape and drug trafficking. Turkey has been riveted by the allegations and the boldfaced names. The videos are a sensation, each one eagerly awaited, all earning millions of views."
- "Patients in India are desperate for care. This family turned to a doctor 7,700 miles away," by Fenit Nirappil: "Anup Katyal, an intensive care physician in Missouri, was finally getting a break from treating hundreds of covid-19 patients at the hospital where he works. Then, catastrophe descended on India, his homeland. Each day since, he has awakened to a flurry of messages from 20 relatives, friends and fellow doctors in India seeking medical advice. And then, before bed, he has hopped on Zoom with a family in New Delhi who contracted the virus and turned to a physician 7,700 miles away because local doctors turned off their phones and shuttered their offices."
- "How UFO sightings went from joke to national security worry in Washington," by Michael Rosenwald: " 'This used to be a career-ending kind of thing,' said John Podesta, who generally kept his interest in UFOs to himself when he was President Bill Clinton's chief of staff. 'You didn't want to get caught talking about it because you'd be accused of walking out of an 'X-Files' episode.' But now there isn't just talk."
| | | … and beyond - "Are U.S. officials under silent attack?" by the New Yorker's Adam Entous: "Top officials in both the Trump and the Biden Administrations privately suspect that Russia is responsible for the Havana Syndrome. Their working hypothesis is that agents of the G.R.U., the Russian military's intelligence service, have been aiming microwave-radiation devices at U.S. officials to collect intelligence from their computers and cell phones, and that these devices can cause serious harm to the people they target. Yet during the past four years U.S. intelligence agencies have been unable to find any evidence to back up this theory, let alone sufficient proof to publicly accuse Russia."
- "A year after George Floyd: Pressure to add police amid rising crime," by the New York Times's Tim Arango: "A year after streets echoed with calls to 'defund' law enforcement and city leaders embraced the message by agreeing to take $150 million away from the Los Angeles Police Department, or about 8 percent of the department's budget, the city last week agreed to increase the police budget to allow the department to hire about 250 officers. The increase essentially restores the cuts that followed the protests."
| | | The Biden agenda As hurricane season looms, Biden will announce today that he's doubling funding to prepare for extreme weather. - The administration will also launch a new effort at NASA to collect more sophisticated climate data, Juliet Eilperin and Brady Dennis scoop.
- "While the $1 billion in funding is a fraction of what taxpayers spend each year on disasters, it underscores a broader effort to account for the damage wrought by climate change, and curb it."
- "The Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program helps communities prepare in advance for hurricanes, wildfires and other natural disasters. The administration will target roughly 40 percent of the additional money to disadvantaged areas. In a phone interview Monday, White House National Climate Adviser Gina McCarthy said that Biden's actions will help convey to Americans how the climate has already changed and what the U.S. must do to respond to it."
Six months of big change hasn't changed the political environment — Biden's approval rate remains the same. - "A new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll finds Biden's approval rating stands at 53% with a disapproval rating of 41%. A Gallup poll puts the split at 54% approving and 40% disapproving," CNN's Harry Enten reports. "This is largely in-line with the average of all polls, which finds Biden has an approval rating of 53%."
- "A lot has happened since Biden took office." Enten notes. "All of this has happened — and the national political environment has remained stagnant. It's almost as if no event seems to really change public opinion. Biden's approval rating today is pretty much the same as it was a month ago (54%). It's the exact same as it was at the beginning of his presidency (53%). Any movements can be ascribed to statistical noise."
Conservatives have a new target: Biden's IRS plan. - "Conservative groups have launched a campaign of TV ads, social media messages and emails to supporters criticizing the proposal to hire nearly 87,000 new IRS workers over the next decade to collect money from tax cheats," Politico's Anita Kumar reports. "They accuse the Biden administration of pushing for the IRS expansion as a way to raise taxes, increase dues paid to left-leaning unions, and increase oversight on political organizations, as happened with the rise of Tea Party groups during the Obama presidency."
- "The campaign further dampens already remote prospects for bipartisan negotiations. Biden and fellow Democrats have held out hope that the $80 billion proposal to crack down on tax evasion by high-earners and large corporations could be an area of agreement between the two parties, even if the GOP is skeptical about the amount it could raise."
Biden's infrastructure plan calls for fixing the nation's existing roads. Some states, however, are still focused on expansion. - "The Federal Highway Administration estimates a $435 billion backlog of rehabilitation needs, while an analysis of agency data by The Washington Post shows a fifth of the nation's major roads, stretching almost 164,000 miles, were rated in poor condition in 2019. That figure has stayed mostly unchanged for a decade," Ian Duncan, Michael Laris and Kate Rabinowitz report. "Yet more than a third of states' capital spending on roads that year, $19 billion, went toward expanding the road network rather than chipping away at the backlog."
- "The hunger for new roads reflects a desire to connect growing communities and battle congestion at the local and state level in a nation where most people rely on cars. That appetite for expansion is clashing with new transportation priorities in Washington that seek to bolster existing highways while promoting other modes of travel."
 | Current and former advisers say Biden's typical day reveals a creature of habit with well-worn routines and favorite treats, from orange Gatorade to chocolate chip cookies. - That is according to Ashley Parker, who writes a detailed account of Biden's daily scheduled based on interviews with people familiar with the president's life.
- "Biden begins his mornings with a workout that often includes lifting weights, and he meets regularly in person with a trainer. During the 2020 campaign, he biked regularly on both a traditional bike and a Peloton. His current Peloton preferences are something of a state secret, however; West Wing aides would not even reveal if he had brought the interactive stationary bike with him to the White House," Parker writes.
- "Unlike Trump — an avid TV watcher, Fox News enthusiast and self-proclaimed master of TiVo — Biden is not a voracious consumer of TV, but he does watch the morning shows when he's working out, usually CNN's 'New Day' or MSNBC's 'Morning Joe.' While still in the White House residence, he's delivered a hard copy of 'The Bulletin,' a compilation of the morning's news clips."
- "On many days, Biden then summons his brain trust, including [chief of staff Ron] Klain and top advisers Mike Donilon, Anita Dunn, Bruce Reed, Steve Ricchetti and Cedric L. Richmond. These sessions rarely have a formal agenda; Biden simply declares, 'Here's what I want to talk about,' or the aides raise subjects they have discussed in advance for Biden's consideration."
| | | The new world order The E.U. promised swift retaliation after Belarus forced an airliner to land and detained a dissident. - "European leaders on Monday were considering a plan to sever Belarus from the rest of the continent's airspace, a day after Belarusian authorities forced a commercial airliner to land and arrested a dissident journalist who had been flying from Athens to Lithuania," Michael Birnbaum and Isabelle Khurshudyan report. "Airlines rerouted their flights around Belarus, European Union leaders discussed punishing measures, and investigators were seeking more details about an audacious effort by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko to snag the founder of a prominent opposition outlet. The leader sent up a MiG-29 fighter jet to escort a Ryanair flight down to the ground in Minsk, a power play that set a fearsome precedent for journalists and political opponents, who now must fear flying through the airspace of repressive regimes, even if they are moving from one free capital to another."
- "The Ryanair plane was nearing Vilnius, Lithuania, on Sunday before Belarusian authorities turned it around, made it land in their capital, Minsk, and arrested journalist Roman Protasevich, the founder of an opposition media outlet. He faces at least 12 years in prison."
Samoa's first female leader was locked out of her own swearing-in ceremony. - "The first woman elected prime minister of Samoa showed up for her swearing-in ceremony on Monday to find her opponents had locked the doors to prevent her from taking office," Michael Miller reports. "Fiame Naomi Mata'afa and her followers pitched a tent on the statehouse lawn, where she took the oath of office instead."
- "The drama in the Pacific nation of 200,000 could have broader geopolitical ramifications. Mata'afa has pledged to stop a $100 million port development backed by China, which has been expanding its regional influence."
 Samoa's Prime Minister-elect Fiame Naomi Mata'afa with her supporters. (Australian Broadcasting Corporation via AP) | | | | The future of the GOP Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) refuses to link Trump's false election claims to the GOP's push for new voting restrictions. - "When pressed on Sunday about whether Trump's falsehoods were the cause of Republican moves to pass restrictive new voting laws in dozens of states, Cheney disputed the suggestion," Tim Elfrink reports. "'I think you have to look at the specifics of each one of those efforts,' Cheney said on 'Axios on HBO,' arguing that some of the bills had been misrepresented. 'If you look at the Georgia laws, for example, there's been a lot that's been said nationally about the Georgia voter laws that turns out not to be true,' she said, referring to the new restrictions that led to widespread backlash, including Major League Baseball pulling its All-Star Game from Atlanta."
- "Cheney's exchange, which went viral on Twitter with more than 800,000 views, suggests the limits of her increasingly lonesome stance in the Republican Party in acknowledging Biden won fairly and in demanding accountability for Trump's role in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol."
 House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy after electing Rep. Elise Stefanik as chair of the House GOP Republican Conference. (Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post) | Arkansas is a test case for a post-Trump Republican Party. - "There are Trump devotees fully behind his false claims of a stolen election and his brand of grievance-oriented politics. That faction is now led by the former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the daughter of Mike Huckabee, the state's onetime governor. More ideological, and less Trump-centric, conservatives include Senator Tom Cotton," the Times's Jonathan Martin reports. "And then there are pre-Trump Republicans, like Gov. Asa Hutchinson, hoping against hope the moment will pass and they can return the party to its Reaganite roots. Finally, some Republicans are so appalled by Trumpism, they have left or are considering leaving the party."
- "Perhaps most significant, each of these factions are bunched together in a state powered by a handful of corporations that are increasingly uneasy with the culture-war politics that define Trump Republicanism. In a meeting of Walmart's Arkansas-based executives last month, a number of officials cited state measures limiting transgender rights to express concern about how such bills could hamper their ability to recruit a diverse work force, according to a business leader familiar with the discussion."
Some Trump supporters who tried to overturn the 2020 election are now running to become the top election officials in key states. - "The candidates include Rep. Jody Hice of Georgia, a leader of the congressional Republicans who voted against certifying the 2020 Electoral College results; Arizona state Rep. Mark Finchem, one of the top proponents of the conspiracy-tinged vote audit in Arizona's largest county; Nevada's Jim Marchant, who sued to have his 5-point congressional loss last year overturned; and Michigan's Kristina Karamo, who made dozens of appearances in conservative media to claim fraud in the election," Politico's Zach Montellaro reports. "Now, they are running for secretary of state in key battlegrounds that could decide control of Congress in 2022 — and who wins the White House in 2024. ... The campaigns set up the possibility that politicians who have taken steps to undermine faith in the American democratic system could soon be the ones running it."
| | | Quote of the day "It's very uncivilized behavior and I think it does put an extra target on the members that Marjorie, whatever her name is, going after somebody then her followers will, I think, continue to target AOC or the Squad, so it's really unfortunate and I think it's dangerous," said Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) about how Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's (R-Ga.) decision to aggressively confront Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) at the Capitol earlier this month sparked a fresh round of concerns not only about safety on the Hill but whether it would inspire or prove to be a preview of similar behavior by people back home. | | | Hot on the left "Key impeachment witness Gordon Sondland sues Mike Pompeo and U.S. for $1.8 million in legal fees," John Hudson reports. "The suit, filed Monday in federal court in the District of Columbia, alleges that Pompeo reneged on his promise that the State Department would cover the fees after Sondland delivered bombshell testimony accusing Trump and his aides of pressuring the government of Ukraine to investigate then presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter in exchange for military aid." | | | Hot on the right Michigan Gov. Whitmer apologized for a dinner party that broke pandemic rules. "As new daily coronavirus cases continued to decline in Michigan, 13 diners congregated at the Landshark Bar and Grill, near Michigan State University in East Lansing on Saturday. ... Among the rule-shirking diners? Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D), who has long been at odds with conservatives in the state battling her over covid restrictions," Katie Shepherd reports. "On Sunday, the governor issued an apology for participating in the outing, explaining that she arrived at the restaurant with a smaller group of friends. 'Because we were all vaccinated, we didn't stop to think about it,' Whitmer said in a statement Sunday. 'In retrospect, I should have thought about it. I am human. I made a mistake, and I apologize.'" | | | Trump's online presence decline, visualized Social engagement around Trump — a measure of likes, reactions, comments or shares on content about him across Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and Pinterest — has nosedived 95 percent since January, to its lowest level since 2016, Drew Harwell and Josh Dawsey report. | | | Today in Washington Biden will receive a briefing on the Atlantic Hurricane Outlook and preparedness efforts today at 1:30 p.m. Vice President Harris will host a listening session to discuss how investments in the administration's infrastructure and jobs plan will expand access to affordable, high-speed internet. | | | In closing | John Oliver talked about how sponsored content is damaging the integrity of local news:  | | | | "Saturday Night Live" cast members talked about their year working the show amid the pandemic:  | | | Stern. Exacting. Infallible. The reputation of the U.S. Secret Service is all about perfection. But behind the scenes, the agency is far from perfect. In this episode of Post Reports, Martine Powers dives into Carol Leonnig's new book on the scandals and close calls that have come to define the agency. Read more » | | | | | | |
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