Magnificent News: Power Up: Pence diverges from Trump on Jan. 6 but still pushes "election integrity"

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Washington, Fast.

By Jacqueline Alemany
with Tobi Raji

Okay, now it's ackshually Friday, and national 🍩 donut 🍩 day (which go great with vaccines, beer, and just about everything). Have a lovely weekend & see you on Monday.

The campaign

🚨 2024 WATCH 🚨: Former vice president Mike Pence appeared in the "first in the nation" state last night where he made news for saying that he still disagrees with former president Trump over the Jan. 6 insurrection. But Pence carefully infused his establishment bona fides with cornerstones of Trump's MAGA agenda that in part fueled the storming of the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.

At the Hillsborough County Republican Committee's annual Lincoln-Reagan Awards Dinner in Manchester, N.H, Pence decried Democrats' efforts to "codify many of the practices that create the greatest opportunity for fraud," and called the GOP a party that "makes it clear that election integrity is a national imperative and responsibility."

The former vice president did not explicitly peddle the ex-president's false claims that the November election was stolen from him but issued clear support for the GOP's campaign against voter fraud despite no evidence of significant irregularities and very few instances of voter fraud in the 2020 election.

Former Vice President Mike Pence addresses the GOP Lincoln-Reagan Dinner last night in Manchester, New Hampshire. (Photo by Scott Eisen/Getty Images)

Pence did create some distance from former president Trump who pressured Pence to reject the results of the electoral college on Jan. 6:

"And that same day, we reconvened the Congress and did our duty under the Constitution and the laws of the United States…You know, President Trump and I have spoken many times since we left office. And I don't know if we'll ever see eye to eye on that day, but I will always be proud of what we accomplished for the American people over the last four years."

But he accused Democrats of using the insurrection as a political ploy to "distract" voters from the Biden administration's agenda: "We must move forward," he told the room.

"The speech was also a tacit signal to other Republicans who may feel conflicted about supporting Trump after Jan. 6 that it could be okay to do so," our colleague Amy Wang reports. "Pence, at least, seemed comfortable straddling that line as he spent nearly 40 minutes Thursday lauding Trump and their administration's accomplishments and criticizing President Biden's first several months in office."

"I learned a lot serving alongside President Donald Trump. Some people think we're a little bit different," Pence said. "But I think what President Trump showed us was what Republicans can accomplish when our leaders stand firm on conservative principles and don't back down … It was four years of consequence, four years of results. It was four years of promises made and promises kept."

Reminder: "Seven months after Election Day, former President Donald Trump's supporters are still auditing ballots in Arizona's largest county and may revive legislation that would make it easier for judges in Texas to overturn election results," the Associated Press's Nicholas Riccardi reports.

"In Georgia, meanwhile, the Republican-controlled state legislature passed a bill allowing it to appoint a board that can replace election officials. Trump loyalists who falsely insist he won the 2020 election are running for top election offices in several swing states. And after a pro-Trump mob staged a violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol to halt the certification of Democrat Joe Biden's election victory, Republicans banded together to block an independent investigation of the riot, shielding Trump from additional scrutiny of one of the darkest days of his administration."
"To democracy advocates, Democrats and others, the persistence of the GOP's election denial shows how the Republican Party is increasingly open to bucking democratic norms, particularly the bipartisan respect traditionally afforded to election results even after a bitter campaign. That's raising the prospect that if the GOP gains power in next year's midterms, the party may take the extraordinary step of refusing to certify future elections," per Riccardi.

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On the Hill

THE GREAT CONCESSION: "President Biden offered to scrap his proposed corporate tax hike during negotiations with Republicans, in what would be a major concession by the Democratic president as he works to hammer out an infrastructure deal," Reuters's Jarrett Renshaw and David Shepardson report.

The numbers: "Biden offered to drop plans to raise corporate tax rates as high as 28% and instead set a minimum 15% tax rate aimed at ensuring all companies pay taxes. In return, Republicans would have to agree to at least $1 trillion in new infrastructure spending. And Biden has not given up on seeking as much as $1.7 trillion."
"Biden's emphasis on these elements of his tax plan marked an attempt by the White House to thread a delicate political needle. It aimed to preserve the president's 2020 campaign pledge not to raise taxes on Americans making under $400,000 a year, while steering clear of the 'red line' set down by Republicans who see the 2017 tax cuts as their crowning economic achievement," our colleagues Seung Min Kim and Tony Romm report.

But how much compromise is too much? "As the negotiations drag on, both Biden and Senate Republicans are weighing how much they can compromise without angering members of their own party, and the reception to the latest proposals could determine whether any deal is possible," the Wall Street Journal's Kristina Peterson, Andrew Restuccia and Richard Rubin report.

Between a rock and a bipartisan place. "Biden is caught between progressive Democrats who have encouraged him to spend more and moderates who want him to find common ground with the GOP. Capito and her colleagues, meanwhile, want to avoid being accused by conservatives of capitulating to Biden and greenlighting too much new spending."
"The rising anger over infrastructure talks is feeding calls in the progressive political ecosystem to ramp up the pressure on Biden to put an end to the negotiations and move ahead with efforts to pass a spending bill through budget reconciliation," Politico's Laura Barrón-López, Christopher Cadelago and Sam Stein report.
"Progressives are done waiting" but Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) isn't. Both sides will meet again today.

At the White House

BIDEN'S BUDGET BOOSTS FEDS: "Biden's fiscal 2022 budget proposal outlines a far more positive image of the federal workforce than one pushed by his predecessor," our colleague Joe Davidson writes. "The 'Strengthening the Federal Workforce' section of the spending plan released last week sets the stage for Biden's approach by quoting from his pre-inaugural message to federal employees: 'I'm thinking of you and I have the utmost trust in your capabilities.'"

"That's a far more affirmative attitude than the tone set by former president Donald Trump, who turned his campaign promise to 'drain the swamp' into an attack on the federal bureaucracy."

Biden's initiatives include:

Proposing a 2.7 percent federal pay raise.
Issuing an executive order two days after Inauguration Day that declared that career civil servants "are the backbone of the Federal workforce" and rescinded several Trump directives.
Dumping three 2018 Trump orders that severely impaired the ability of unions to represent staffers.
Advocating a $15 minimum wage for federal employees.

In the agencies

IT'S A BIRD, IT'S A PLANE, IT'S … TBD: "American intelligence officials have found no evidence that aerial phenomena witnessed by Navy pilots in recent years are alien spacecraft, but they still cannot explain the unusual movements that have mystified scientists and the military," the New York Times's Julian E. Barnes and Helene Cooper first reported.

"The report determines that a vast majority of more than 120 incidents over the past two decades did not originate from any American military or other advanced U.S. government technology. That determination would appear to eliminate the possibility that Navy pilots who reported seeing unexplained aircraft might have encountered programs the government meant to keep secret."
"But that is about the only conclusive finding in the classified intelligence report. And while a forthcoming unclassified version, expected to be released to Congress by June 25, will present few other firm conclusions, senior officials briefed on the intelligence conceded that the very ambiguity of the findings meant the government could not definitively rule out theories that the phenomena observed by military pilots might be alien spacecraft."

The investigations

DEJOY IN THE HOT SEAT: "The FBI is investigating Postmaster General Louis DeJoy in connection with campaign fundraising activity involving his former business," our colleagues Matt Zapotosky and Jacob Bogage report.

The issue: "In early September, The Washington Post published an extensive examination of how employees at DeJoy's former company, North Carolina-based New Breed Logistics, alleged they were pressured by DeJoy or his aides to attend political fundraisers or make contributions to Republican candidates, and then were paid back through bonuses."
"The inquiries could signal impending legal peril for the controversial head of the nation's mail service — though DeJoy has not been charged with any crimes and has previously asserted that he and his company followed the law in their campaign fundraising activity."
"Such reimbursements could run afoul of state or federal laws, which prohibit 'straw-donor' schemes meant to allow wealthy donors to evade individual contribution limits and obscure the source of a candidate's money."

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy listens during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing in August 2020 (Tom Williams/Bloomberg).

The policies

THE LETHAL SUMMER AHEAD FOR MIGRANTS: "A sharp increase in the number of people crossing into the United States through remote desert areas along the U.S.-Mexico border has officials and rights advocates worried that this summer will be especially lethal, with the potential for a spike in migrant deaths," our colleague Nick Miroff reports.

"Adult migrants continue to be the largest share of border crossers and smuggling guides often send them through rugged desert and mountain areas where deaths from exposure rise with extreme heat."
"It's going to be a brutal summer," Don White, a sheriff's deputy in rural Brooks County, Tex., told our colleague. "White said [his] county has recovered 34 bodies and human remains this year on the vast cattle ranches where migrants often become lost and dehydrated in 100-degree heat and harsh terrain."

Dig deeper: "The key factor appears to be that since the onset of the pandemic, the U.S. has virtually sealed off the Southern border, enforcing a public health code that allows the government to deny noncitizens entry into the country in response to a threat of communicable disease from abroad," the Marshall Project's Andrew R. Calderón and Isabela Dias report.

"In March 2020, Trump invoked this rarely used provision, known as Title 42, through the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, despite pushback from the agency's own scientists."
"The policy, which Biden has so far upheld, has resulted in hundreds of thousands of immediate expulsions. Because these expulsions don't trigger prosecution for illegal reentry, migrants are attempting multiple crossings, seeking out more remote and perilous sections of the border."
"Humanitarian groups say these efforts to avoid detection and near-certain expulsion increase migrants's chances of needing to be rescued — or of dying."