| Welcome to The Daily 202! Tell your friends to sign up here. On this day in 1964, heavyweight boxing champion Cassius Clay changed his name to Muhammad Ali. | | |  | The big idea | | Biden pitches his reelection in Selma |  President Biden prepares to walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., on Sunday to commemorate the 58th anniversary of "Bloody Sunday," a landmark event of the civil rights movement. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky) | | | He banged up Republicans imposing new restrictions on history lessons. He listed ways in which he has tried to make Americans' lives — particularly Black lives — better. President Biden's remarks in Alabama on Sunday were less a voting-rights speech and more a reelection pitch. Not that Biden — who hardly broached the issue in his agenda-setting State of the Union address a month ago — didn't bring up the Democratic push to safeguard or expand the ability to cast a ballot in the face of a coast-to-coast GOP drive to impose new restrictions. As my colleague Matt Viser chronicled from Selma, a holy site for the civil rights movement, Biden declared "[t]he right to vote, to have your vote counted — is the threshold of democracy and liberty. With it, anything's possible. Without it, without that, right nothing is possible." | - "Standing near the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where on March 7, 1965, marchers advocating for voting rights were attacked by police in a day that has become known as 'Bloody Sunday' Biden said that the right to vote 'was under assault' by a conservative Supreme Court, a host of state legislatures and those who continue to deny the 2020 presidential election results."
| | (Biden declared the Supreme Court had "gutted" the Voting Rights Act, a reference to the 5-4 ruling that scrapped a provision requiring places with a history of discrimination, most of them in the South, to get the federal government's ok before changing voting laws.) "'We know that we must get the votes in Congress to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act,' he said. 'I made it clear I will not let a filibuster obstruct the sacred right to vote,'" Matt reported. | | (Biden came relatively late to the position that the filibuster needs to go in order to secure voting rights. He didn't include the idea in a July 2021 speech, leaving some liberals upset. He embraced the idea in October of that year. He doesn't have the 60 Senate votes required.) | | Over the past two years, Biden didn't sign sweeping legislation safeguarding or expanding voting rights. The Republican takeover of the House means he almost certainly won't do so in the next two years. Which mostly leaves his voting-rights message as part of a pitch to elect Democrats — and reelect him. And pitch he did. Without naming names, Biden seemed to take a shot at Republican governors in places like Arkansas, Florida, Texas and Virginia who have moved to restrict teaching about the history of slavery and modern race relations, among other topics. "The truth matters — notwithstanding what the other team is trying to hide," he said. "No matter how hard some people try, we can't just choose to learn what we want to know and not what we should know. We should learn everything — the good, the bad, the truth — of who we are as a nation." "And everyone should know the truth of Selma." | | Biden recited, at length and in some detail, the list of his considerable achievements during his first two years in office — he didn't say "vote for me in '24," and he didn't need to. It was the obvious implicit message. He pointed to: | - The confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and other Black judges
- Executive action to rein in federal law-enforcement practices after George Floyd's death
- The most expansive action on gun violence in a generation
- His economic policies, including the American Rescue Plan and bipartisan infrastructure law
- Federal disaster aid for Alabama after devastating storms
- Historically low Black Unemployment
- Federal money for historically Black colleges and universities
- Lowering prescription drug costs
| | That litany is all the more interesting given that my colleagues Toluse Olorunnipa and Danielle Douglas-Gabriel reported last week on what it would mean for the Supreme Court to strike down Biden's student loan relief program, which they called "one of the last remaining pillars of President Biden's effort to shrink the racial wealth gap." "The $400 billion program, which was consciously tailored to address the reality that Black Americans shoulder a disproportionate share of the nation's student debt, faced a frosty reception from several justices, who questioned whether Biden has the authority to enact such sweeping changes without Congress," they reported. "While the outcome will affect millions of Americans, it will be especially central to the fate of Biden's racial equity push, an effort marked so far by modest successes and major setbacks. From free community college to universal prekindergarten to a child tax credit to aid for students at historically Black colleges and universities, key building blocks of Biden's broad effort to shrink the age-old financial gap between Black and White Americans have fallen by the wayside." | | |  | Politics-but-not | | | Click through to submit ideas for potential inclusion in our weekly roundup of stories you might not find in other political newsletters. Read more » | | | | | |  | What's happening now | | D.C. Council chair says he's withdrawing crime bill before it goes to U.S. Senate |  D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D). (Craig Hudson for The Washington Post) | | | "D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) said he wrote to the U.S. Senate on Monday morning to withdraw the city's criminal code revision legislation, before the Senate votes on a Republican-led disapproval resolution that could overturn the bill," Michael Brice-Saddler reports. | U.S. firm's subsidiary sold electronics to Chinese defense firm linked to spy balloon program | - "AXT Inc. has extensive ties to China that go beyond its manufacturing facilities there. The company owns an 85% stake in a Chinese subsidiary that produces materials for semiconductors and has counted as one of its biggest customers a giant state-owned defense firm linked to Beijing's surveillance balloon program, according to AXT's filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission in August."
| DHS has a program gathering domestic intelligence — and virtually no one knows about it | | "For years, the Department of Homeland Security has run a virtually unknown program gathering domestic intelligence, one of many revelations in a wide-ranging tranche of internal documents reviewed by POLITICO," Politico's Betsy Woodruff Swan reports. | - "Those documents also reveal that a significant number of employees in DHS's intelligence office have raised concerns that the work they are doing could be illegal."
| | |  | Lunchtime reads from The Post | | Election deniers take aim at group that helps states maintain voter rolls |  Shadows of voters waiting in line to vote are seen on a carpet on the first day of early voting in Cobb County on Nov. 26, 2022, in Marietta, Ga. (Elijah Nouvelage for The Washington Post) | | | "[The Electronic Registration Information Center's (ERIC)] survival is in jeopardy, with Republican-led states withdrawing, others threatening to do so and heated disputes breaking out among members over how to save the organization. Should ERIC collapse, its boosters say the country would lose one of its most powerful tools for keeping ballot fraud at bay just as states are beginning to prepare for the 2024 election calendar," Amy Gardner reports. | The Kevin McCarthy aide tasked with defusing the GOP's debt limit bomb | | "Despite more than three decades working in the upper echelons of Republican politics, [Dan Meyer, McCarthy's chief of staff,] is not a household name. And yet no other person — save McCarthy — is expected to play a more pivotal role this year in trying to steer House Republicans through a series of potentially explosive conflicts with the White House and each other over the nation's spending and debt, with the fate of the global economy hanging in the balance," Jeff Stein, Leigh Ann Caldwell and Theodoric Meyer report. | Daines walks Trump tightrope as he tries to win back Senate for Republicans | | "As he takes the helm of the party's Senate political apparatus, [National Republican Senatorial Committee chair Sen. Steve Daines's (R-Mont.)] personal connection to MAGA figures like Trump Jr. has lent him credibility with the base. Meanwhile, more establishment Republicans — still upset over a crop of inexperienced and deeply flawed Trump-backed candidates losing swing-state races in 2022 — are relieved to see him taking an active approach in recruiting and supporting candidates they believe can win a general election," Liz Goodwin reports. | Thousands of pro-Trump bots are attacking DeSantis, Haley |  A keyboard is placed in front of a displayed Twitter logo in this illustration. (Dado Ruvic/Reuters) | | | "Over the past 11 months, someone created thousands of fake, automated Twitter accounts — perhaps hundreds of thousands of them — to offer a stream of praise for Donald Trump," the Associated Press's David Klepper reports. "As Republican voters size up their candidates for 2024, whoever created the bot network is seeking to put a thumb on the scale, using online manipulation techniques pioneered by the Kremlin to sway the digital platform conversation about candidates while exploiting Twitter's algorithms to maximize their reach." | Closing critical gun background check loophole gains bipartisan support in Texas | | "Texas lawmakers are working to plug a gap in a 2009 law that was meant to keep people with a history of serious mental health issues from legally acquiring firearms," Jeremy Schwartz and Kiah Collier report for ProPublica and the Texas Tribune. "Bipartisan legislation has been filed in the state House and Senate that would explicitly require courts to report information on involuntary mental health hospitalizations of juveniles age 16 and older after a ProPublica and Texas Tribune investigation revealed that they were being excluded from the national firearms background check system." | | |  | The Biden agenda | | Biden scraps reliance on market for faith in broader government role |  President Biden, shown in the Oval Office on Friday, has used the power of the federal government to push private businesses to reshape major industries and cut prices for consumers. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post) | | | "President Biden has embarked upon the most ambitious use of federal economic power in several decades as he seeks to reshape major U.S. industries for long-term prosperity while pressing businesses to deliver immediate benefits for consumers by lowering prices today," David J. Lynch and Tony Romm report. | - "Biden's twin-barreled economic offensive faces numerous hurdles but has sparked billions of dollars of private-sector investment and changed entrenched corporate practices."
| Biden and Scholz meet amid debates over Ukraine aid | | "President Biden and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz met at the White House on Friday, part of their ongoing effort to bolster the global coalition that is seeking to ensure a steady flow of assistance to war-battered Ukraine," Matt Viser reports. | Student loan case could be another blow to Biden's racial equity push | | "Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar did not mention race in Tuesday's appearance at the Supreme Court, but her impassioned defense of President Biden's student loan relief program had a second, unmistakable purpose: It marked a last-ditch bid to protect one of the last remaining pillars of President Biden's effort to shrink the racial wealth gap," Toluse Olorunnipa and Danielle Douglas-Gabriel report. | | |  | How the national debt grew to $31 trillion, visualized | | | "The United States owes $31 trillion. Washington now spends about $1 trillion more each year than it collects in revenue, forcing the Treasury Department to borrow to make up the difference. Which means the national debt is still growing," Jeff Stein reports. | | |  | Hot on the left | | Florida bills would ban gender studies, limit trans pronouns, erode tenure |  Signs are seen on the campus of New College of Florida in Sarasota, Fla., on Jan. 25. (Thomas Simonetti for The Washington Post) | | | "Florida legislators have proposed a spate of new laws that would reshape K-12 and higher education in the state, from requiring teachers to use pronouns matching children's sex as assigned at birth to establishing a universal school choice voucher program," Hannah Natanson, Lori Rozsa and Susan Svrluga report. "Other proposals in the mix include eliminating college majors in gender studies, nixing diversity efforts at universities and job protections for tenured faculty, strengthening parents' ability to veto K-12 class materials and extending a ban on teaching about gender and sexuality — from third grade up to eighth grade." | | |  | Hot on the right | | Trump takes victory lap at conservative conference |  Trump hats are seen for sale on the third and final day of the Conservative Political Action Conference CPAC held at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center on Saturday in Fort Washington, Md. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post) | | | "Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday, Trump reveled in his strong showing in the annual confab's 2024 presidential straw poll, winning 62 percent of the vote among the attendees, a slight increase from last year. The result was widely predicted as the conservative event that had once represented a varied slate of young Republicans has become a Trump affair. The former president spent his wide-ranging, nearly two-hour remarks rehashing the 'America First' agenda that has played well with his base," Meryl Kornfield reports. | | |  | Today in Washington | | | At 12:15 p.m., Biden will speak to the 2023 International Association of Fire Fighters Legislative Conference at the Hyatt Regency. He is expected back at the White House at 1:10 p.m. | | |  | In closing | | This was not on our 2023 bingo card | Utah wants people to eat invasive bullfrogs. Here's how to catch them. |  Utah's conservation department is encouraging residents to capture and eat bullfrogs, like this one photographed in Texas. The amphibians are an invasive species in Utah. (Tom Pennington/Getty Images) | | | "The state of Utah wants residents to catch — and eat — more bullfrogs. Bullfrogs are an invasive species there, meaning they interfere with local ecosystems by feasting on native animals and introducing new pathogens. The Utah Department of Natural Resources tweeted a reminder last month that people can catch as many bullfrogs as they want," Marisa Iati reports. "And bonus," the agency wrote: "they're tasty." | | Thanks for reading. See you tomorrow. | | |
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