| Welcome to The Daily 202 newsletter! Tell your friends to sign up here. "The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." On this day in 1949, George Orwell's "1984" is published. President Biden embarks tomorrow on his first in-person foray on the global stage, an eight-day diplomatic blitz that comes as domestic headaches — like a slowing national vaccination rate — are multiplying for his young administration. Biden's trip will bring him face-to-face with dozens of mostly friendly world leaders — from the Group of Seven rich democracies, the European Union, and NATO — before culminating with a June 16 summit with Russia's Vladimir Putin. "There's no substitute for face-to-face engagement," White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Monday. "He will have the chance to look in the eyes of literally dozens of leaders over the course of his time, and all of that will be better than just operating on the telephone." But Biden leaves Washington with the fate of some of his domestic priorities in doubt, and some genuinely sputtering, as Democrats seem to be fissuring over which big goals to chase and over intraparty resistance to scrapping the Senate filibuster.  President Biden, shown here in March, is getting set to embark on the global stage. (Susan Walsh/AP) | To be sure, even globe-trotting presidents never truly leave domestic issues behind. Aides deliver regular briefings on developments at home, and Air Force One can patch the White House through at a moment's notice or convey a presidential decision to advisers back in Washington the instant he makes it. But for Biden, who prides himself on his in-person ability to build bridges across partisan chasms, the week-long trip means a pause in face-to-face deal-making and a focus on world affairs at a time when other troubles clamor for his attention. The president's goal that 70 percent of American adults will have received at least one coronavirus vaccine shot by the Fourth of July — seen as well within the realm of the possible when he announced it in May — seems to be slipping out of reach. My colleagues Dan Diamond, Dan Keating and Chris Moody reported on drooping vaccination rates this weekend: "The slowdown is national — with every state down at least two-thirds from its peak — and particularly felt across the South and Midwest. Twelve states, including Utah, Oklahoma, Montana, the Dakotas and West Virginia, have seen vaccinations fall below 15 daily shots per 10,000 residents; Alabama had just four people per 10,000 residents get vaccinated last week. … The steep decline began in mid-April, coinciding with federal officials' temporary suspension of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine while they probed rare blood-clotting reactions. That slowdown has continued, with only 2.4 million adults getting their first shot last week. Officials must get a first dose to 4.2 million adults per week to meet Biden's goal of ensuring that 70 percent of adults are at least partially vaccinated by Independence Day." The politics surrounding Biden's other top priority, restoring the economy, have become more complicated after an inconclusive jobs report last week. As my colleagues Jeff Stein and Tyler Pager reported: "The report showed economic progress as the nation rebounds from the coronavirus pandemic and the vaccination campaign accelerates across the country, with employers adding about 559,000 jobs in May. But it included some troubling signs as well, as roughly 8 million Americans remain out of work compared to before the pandemic. Initial hopes that the U.S. economy would rapidly recover all the lost ground from the pandemic have now all but fizzled, putting new pressure on policymakers to take further action." My colleague Amy B Wang reported Sunday on another tricky development on the eve of Biden's trip: "Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) on Sunday said he would not support federal voting rights legislation that his party has argued is critical for preserving democracy, in an announcement that effectively turned the path ahead for all other major items on President Biden's agenda into quicksand. … Manchin also defended the filibuster and said he would 'not vote to weaken or eliminate' the Senate rule that requires 60 votes for most legislation to pass, all but guaranteeing that any legislation opposed by even a small number of Senate Republicans will fail." It wasn't immediately clear what impact Manchin's statement would have on seemingly stalled negotiations between the White House and Republicans over Biden's infrastructure proposal, which lacks the necessary GOP support if the filibuster stands. The senator has said he won't support legislation that lacks bipartisan support. At the Hill, Brett Samuels reports: "The White House on Monday said it sees multiple paths forward to passing infrastructure legislation, even as talks have stalled between President Biden and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.), the top Republican negotiator in the Senate. Biden is expected to speak with Capito before leaving for Europe on Wednesday for a week, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said. The two last spoke on Friday, after which the administration said Biden was underwhelmed by the senator's latest proposal. 'The time is not unlimited here … nor is the president's willingness to compromise,' Psaki said at a briefing Monday. 'He made clear that the proposal the offer put on the table didn't meet his own bar. But we're very open to where the discussion goes from here.' " It looks like that discussion will go to Europe, at least for now. | | | What's happening now Colonial Pipeline CEO Joseph Blount addressed last month's ransomware attack this morning during a Senate hearing. "In prepared remarks obtained by The Post, Blount cast his company as a victim of forces beyond its control, noting that 'being extorted by criminals is not a position any company wants to be in.' He defended the decision to shut off pipeline access, as well as his controversial decision to pay the ransom," Aaron Gregg reports. - Context: "On May 8, a Russian criminal group known as DarkSide was paid 75 bitcoin, or roughly $4.3 million, according to an affidavit. On Monday, federal officials announced that more than $2 million of the ransom had been recovered. Blount also will apologize for the shutdown's effect on customers and called for the public and private sectors to 'develop even more robust tools and intelligence' to prevent future ransomware attacks... Blount said he recognized that there are discussions about what additional regulations may be appropriate in the wake of attack. He offered little insight on whether any federal rules could have prevented such an incident."
- See Blount's testimony here.
Capitol Police had intelligence indicating an armed invasion weeks before Jan. 6 riot, Senate probe finds, Karoun Demirjian reports. "A joint report, from the Senate Rules and Administration and the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committees, outlines the most detailed public timeline to date of the communications and intelligence failures that led the Capitol Police and partner agencies to prepare for the 'Stop the Steal' protest as though it were a routine Trump rally, instead of the organized assault that was planned in the open online. … The report shows how an intelligence arm of the Capitol Police disseminated security assessments labeling the threat of violence 'remote' to 'improbable,' even as authorities collected evidence showing that pro-Trump activists intended to bring weapons to the demonstration and 'storm the Capitol.'" A U.S. report found it plausible that the coronavirus leaked from a Wuhan lab. "The study was prepared in May 2020 by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and was drawn on by the State Department when it conducted an inquiry into the pandemic's origins during the final months of the Trump administration," the Wall Street Journal's Michael Gordon and Warren Strobel report. "People familiar with the study said that it was prepared by Lawrence Livermore's 'Z Division,' which is its intelligence arm. Lawrence Livermore has considerable expertise on biological issues. Its assessment drew on genomic analysis of the SARS-COV-2 virus, which causes Covid-19, they said. ... A spokeswoman for Lawrence Livermore declined to comment on the report, which remains secret. The assessment is said to have been among the first U.S. government efforts to seriously explore the hypothesis that the virus leaked from China's Wuhan Institute of Virology along with the dominant hypothesis that the virus spread naturally from animals to humans." To start your day with a full political briefing, sign up for our Power Up newsletter. | | | Lunchtime reads from The Post - "FBI-controlled AN0M app ensnares scores of alleged criminals in global police sting," by Rachel Pannett and Michael Birnbaum: "The audacious effort — led by the FBI, Australian police and a host of European law enforcement agencies — gave the officials a window into the conversations of criminal networks, as people planned illegal drug shipments, plotted robberies and put out contracts for killings. Law enforcement officials — some of whom on Tuesday could barely contain their glee — announced they had arrested more than 800 people and gained an unprecedented understanding into the functioning of modern criminal networks that would keep fueling investigations long past the coordinated international raids that took place in recent days."
| | | … and beyond - "Trove of never-before-seen records reveal how the wealthiest avoid income tax," by ProPublica's Jesse Eisinger, Jeff Ernsthausen and Paul Kiel: "IRS records show that the wealthiest can — perfectly legally — pay income taxes that are only a tiny fraction of the hundreds of millions, if not billions, their fortunes grow each year. ... We compared how much in taxes the 25 richest Americans paid each year to how much Forbes estimated their wealth grew in that same time period. We're going to call this their true tax rate. The results are stark. According to Forbes, those 25 people saw their worth rise a collective $401 billion from 2014 to 2018. They paid a total of $13.6 billion in federal income taxes in those five years, the IRS data shows."
- "Biden's capital-gains tax proposal puts estate planners to work," by the Wall Street Journal's Richard Rubin and Rachel Louise Ensign: "Estate planners for the wealthiest Americans are combing through the Biden administration's proposed tax increases, hunting for ways to sidestep the potential hit from higher taxes on investment income and new capital-gains taxes at death. The result, so far, is early strategizing about making gifts this year before some changes would take effect. That approach is mixed with acceptance that Congress will pass some significant tax increases and tempered by hope that it won't."
- "Poor People's Campaign plans 'Moral March on Manchin,' " by Religion News Service's Jack Jenkins: "[Poor People's Campaign co-chair the Rev. William Barber ] said plans for the march came about at the request of activists in the state outraged by Manchin's recent policy positions, which the pastor argued 'hurt poor and low-wealth people.'"
- "German military to ship surplus beer back from Afghanistan," by the AP: "The German army said the 22,600 liters (almost 6,000 gallons) of alcohol — including almost 60,000 cans of beer — couldn't be sold in Afghanistan due to local religious restrictions, or destroyed for environmental reasons."
| | | The Biden agenda The president will once again speak on the phone with Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.), the GOP's point person on infrastructure. - Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, meanwhile, is out on the road, talking infrastructure with anyone who will listen, writes the Atlantic's Edward-Isaac Dovere. "Buttigieg is the public point man for the infrastructure bill. Sure, he's appearing on cable news and late-night talk shows repping the proposal, leveraging his status as the most recognizable member of Biden's Cabinet for (the administration hopes) public support. He's all over Capitol Hill too: Buttigieg has chatted with Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a key Democratic holdout, and with [Capito]."
- "He texts with Representative Adriano Espaillat of New York about the sins of Robert Moses, the man famous for bulldozing neighborhoods to make way for highways and bridges. He went out to Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chair Peter DeFazio's houseboat to hear about the history of infrastructure bills and the quirks that make it impossible to get nearly anything out of the Senate. ... Yet he's so new to Washington, D.C., that he thought he could persuade Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania to back the infrastructure measure — he made the mistake of thinking about the Republican as one of the votes to impeach Donald Trump rather than as the former president of the fiscally conservative Club for Growth."
Kamala Harris brushed off criticism that she hasn't visited the U.S.-Mexico border as vice president. - "Harris, during a television interview from Guatemala that aired Tuesday, brushed off criticism about not having visited the U.S.-Mexico border as vice president, telling NBC's Lester Holt that she hasn't been to Europe yet, either," John Wagner reports. " 'At some point, you know, we are going to the border,' Harris replied. 'We've been to the border. So this whole thing about the border. We've been to the border. We've been to the border.' It wasn't clear what trip Harris was referencing."
- "Holt noted that Republicans have repeatedly criticized Harris for not visiting the border herself and that even a Democratic congressman has suggested she would benefit from an on-the-ground perspective. 'I care about, listen, I care about what's happening at the border,' she said. 'I'm in Guatemala because my focus is dealing with the root causes of migration.'"
Biden will direct federal agencies to shore up production of pharmaceuticals, computer chips, advanced batteries and critical minerals. - The administration recently completed reviews of these four sectors' supply chains, Politico's Gavin Bade reports. In order to shore up production, the government will invest $60 million "in research for advanced pharmaceutical manufacturing through the Department of Health and Human Services, and new domestic manufacturing rules and funding for batteries at the Energy Department, a senior administration official said."
More than 2,100 children who were separated from their parents at the border have not yet been reunited. - A task for working to reunite the families made the revelation in a 22-page progress report submitted to Biden last week, NBC News's Jacob Soboroff reports. "Only seven children have rejoined their families since Biden took office earlier this year."
- "A senior DHS official, in a call with reporters, blamed 'numerous errors and misinformation' in data kept by the Trump administration for the cumbersome reunification process."
The Justice Department will require its law enforcement officers to use body cameras in certain circumstances. - According to a memo issued by Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco to the heads of the FBI, the U.S. Marshals Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, each of those agencies are required to develop specific body-worn camera policies within 30 days, Matt Zapotosky reports.
- "Monaco wrote that the new policies should require federal officers to wear and activate their cameras during preplanned attempts to make arrests or serve search warrants. Her memo did not detail how and under what circumstances the footage could be made public, but it said each agency's policy should include 'procedures for the expedited public release of recordings in cases involving serious bodily injury or death.' "
Senate Republicans held up Biden personnel nominee over "critical race theory" and abortion rights. - Republicans are pushing back on Kiran Ahuja's nomination to lead the federal personnel agency for her past emphasis on the concept of systemic racism known as "critical race theory" and her support for abortion rights, Lisa Rein and Seung Min Kim report.
- "The delay on Ahuja's nomination is being led by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), although several Republicans objected to a quick confirmation vote for her, according to senior Democratic and GOP officials. The move will force Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) to go through procedural hurdles on the Senate floor, rather than move quickly with a pro forma vote that is more common for nominees to lower-profile posts."
Red states are overriding their blue cities. - "Republican-controlled states have escalated their offensive against Democratic-controlled cities and counties this year to unprecedented heights, further deepening the trench between red and blue America," CNN's Ronald Brownstein writes. "'The level of preemption is only growing,' says Brooks Rainwater, director of the Center for City Solutions at the National League of Cities. 'We are just seeing this happen all throughout the country.'"
- "In all the states most aggressively overriding local decisions, Republicans who have gained control of state government largely through their dominance of smaller places are using that leverage to countermand the decisions of larger metro areas that are trending away from them politically, even as they grow more dominant in driving their states' economic growth and innovation."
| | | Quote of the day "We have more economic stratification and segregation. You combine that with racial stratification and the siloing of the media, so you don't have just Walter Cronkite delivering the news, but you have 1,000 different venues," former president Barack Obama said about the root causes of the deep divisions in the country in an interview with CNN. "All that has contributed to that sense that we don't have anything in common." | | | The pandemic The WHO called on coronavirus vaccine manufacturers to give half their doses to Covax, the initiative to distribute vaccines equitably. - "Sharing vaccines now is essential for ending the acute phase of the pandemic," WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. "But it's also clear that in an emergency, low-income countries cannot rely solely on imports of vaccines from wealthier nations."
- While death rates have plunged in rich countries, they rose last week in Africa, the Americas and the Western Pacific, Tedros said, Katerina Ang reports.
Biden will likely miss his July 4 vaccination goal due to states that didn't vote for him. - "Using a slightly different metric than the one selected by Biden — fully or partially vaccinated individuals as a percentage of a state's adult population — we see a clear partisan split between states," Philip Bump writes. "The 22 states with the highest ratios voted for Biden. Sixteen of the 17 states with the lowest densities backed Trump. The outlier is Georgia, which was essentially a toss-up."
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said Texas businesses are forbidden from requiring proof of vaccination. - "Abbott — who has fiercely pushed for opening businesses during the pandemic — signed legislation prohibiting businesses in the state from requiring COVID-19 vaccine 'passports' or any other information," KXAN reports. "According to the new law, businesses that violate the new rules become ineligible for state grants or contracts and could be denied licenses or permits."
| | | Hot on the left Federal prosecutors subpoenaed material related to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's (D) memoir as part of their probe into coronavirus deaths in state nursing homes, the WSJ's Jimmy Vielkind and Corinne Ramsey report. "Prosecutors working for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn asked for communications related to Mr. Cuomo's October 2020 book, 'American Crisis,' including contracts and materials used to pitch the book to publishers, the people said. They said the subpoenas indicated prosecutors are interested in nursing-home issues in the book, which more broadly recounted the governor's response to the pandemic. The demands were included in subpoenas sent last month to individuals who were involved in editing early versions of the book, the people said, including state officials. The subpoenas show the criminal probe is continuing to widen beyond its initial request for data on when and where nursing-home residents died during the pandemic." | | | Hot on the right Conservative outlet Newsmax rejected Rep. Matt Gaetz's (R-Fla.) request for a job. "Gaetz contacted Newsmax early this year, a source at the outlet said. That was around the time that news broke Gaetz was the subject of a federal investigation into possible sex trafficking of a minor," Reuters reports. "A source familiar with Newsmax's policies said: 'Earlier this year, (Gaetz) reached out and said he might leave Congress early and was interested in TV work.'" | | | Jeff Bezos spaceflight, visualized Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000. The goal of the company is to build the infrastructure to give humanity access to space more routinely and reliably. The billionaire says he and his brother will be aboard the New Shepard when it takes flight July 20. (Bezos owns the Washington Post). | | | Today in Washington Harris is in Mexico today. She met President Andrés Manuel López-Obrador this morning. At 1:40 p.m., she will meet with women entrepreneurs, before meeting with labor leaders at 3 p.m. She will deliver remarks and take questions at 4:35 p.m. At 5:30 p.m., she will meet with U.S. Embassy personnel. She will fly back to D.C. tonight. | | | In closing | French President Emmanuel Macron was slapped by a man apparently shouting "Down with Macronism!": |  | | | | | | |
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