| Welcome to The Daily 202! Tell your friends to sign up here. On this day in 1995, the 104th Congress convened. It was the first entirely controlled by Republicans since the era of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Here at The Daily 202, we're voracious news consumers — primarily of politics and foreign policy, of course. But we love The Washington Post's coverage of everything: the climate crisis, how to secure your privacy online and what you may have missed about "Squid Game." Start 2022 with The Washington Post's balanced, nutritious news diet. A subscription is just $0.99 every four weeks for one year. Click here to subscribe — this deal ends soon. | | |  | The big idea | | Biden starts 2022 by reacting as much as leading |  President Joe Biden meets virtually with farmers and ranchers. (Chris Kleponis/POOL/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock) | | | President Biden enters 2022 aware that some of his biggest political liabilities in this midterm election year are surging inflation, the runaway omicron variant and progressive impatience with the federal response to GOP efforts in dozens of states to curtail voting practices. Or so one could conclude based on his public schedule for this first week in January. To be sure, it's not a comprehensive accounting of that most valuable of presidential resources – his time. Most of a commander in chief's activities don't appear on the White House-released sketch of his workday. But with Democrats nervously watching Biden's poll numbers, and their own, for signs of a rebound that might help them defy history and cling to their fragile congressional majorities, Biden's choices about which major challenges to tackle publicly, and how, take on huge political significance. They also illustrate how, after notching significant legislative victories in 2021 – the American Rescue Plan, the bipartisan infrastructure law, the Senate confirmation of record numbers of federal judges – Biden is still very much reacting to forces beyond his control at least as much as he is setting the agenda. The president didn't have to start his week by meeting virtually with farmers and ranchers to hammer home his point that consolidation in the meatpacking industry is partly to blame for rising grocery prices, sending a broader message about his efforts to tame inflation. | | His first public event could have been on any number of other topics and priorities: His stalled Build Back Better legislation, tensions with Russia over Ukraine, immigration, whether to forgive college debt. But it wasn't. It was about rising prices that have swamped growing wages and soured many Americans on what, in most respects, is a booming economy. "America is the only leading economy in the world where the economy as a whole is stronger than it was before the pandemic, even after accounting for price increases," he said as Monday's event got underway. "So now, we're in a strong position to address the challenge we face -- and we have challenges -- including the cost and prices that people have to pay," the president declared. | | It's far from the first time Biden has acknowledged the pain Americans feel from inflation. Sustained GOP attacks blaming him for higher prices mean it won't be the last, even as the White House hopes surging costs will drop to more manageable levels this year. Then there's the pandemic, which candidate Biden promised to smother. This afternoon, Biden and Vice President Harris will convene the White House covid response team to discuss the latest developments tied to the omicron variant, which has fueled soaring numbers of cases, hospitalizations and deaths half a year after the president suggested America could declare independence from the coronavirus. The United States is averaging more than 400,000 new cases each day, double the previous week's rate, according to Washington Post data. In state after state, hospitals are pleading for help – and for Americans to get vaccinated – as intensive care units overflow. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) said yesterday the number of people hospitalized in her state with covid infections stretched past 9,500, worse than last year's winter peak, my colleague Reis Thebault reported. "We're not in a good place, I'm going to be really honest with you," she said. On Thursday, Biden and Harris will make remarks on the anniversary of the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection that interrupted the certification of their election victory. They're expected to line up behind a fresh Democratic push to vote by Martin Luther King Jr. Day on a slate of federal measures that, supporters say, will safeguard access to voting. Biden frustrated progressives for much of 2021 by not taking action more aggressively to counter GOP efforts to curtail voting practices they blame for former president Donald Trump's defeat and to take over election certification processes. Last month, the president came out in favor of a filibuster carve-out to enable Democrats to act alone. | | Still, as 2021 ended, Biden had left many progressive priorities unmet, raising questions about how he will generate excitement from the Democratic base in this year's midterm elections. On Friday, the president will make remarks on the December jobs report. I noted back in early November that the Biden economy is defined by record jobs growth as much as by surging inflation – and the White House is eager to use the former as a shield from political damage from the latter. It is (of course) too soon to say exactly what the report will show. Past jobs assessments have brought Biden good news not just in their toplines but in the form of upward revisions to previous months (as I flagged here). But no matter what it says, politics effectively requires Biden to publicly respond to the report as he heads into an election shaping up as a referendum on his first two years in office. | | |  | What's happening now | | A record 4.5 million workers quit or changed jobs in November |  A "Now Hiring" sign is placed on the glass store front of a store in Montebello, California, amid a nationwide labour shortage. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images) | | | "The number of workers quitting in November is up from the 4.2 million who quit or changed jobs in October and surpassed the previous record of 4.4 million in September," Eli Rosenberg reports. | Less than half of GOP say Jan. 6 was very violent: AP-NORC poll | | "Nearly a year after the Jan. 6 siege only about 4 in 10 Republicans recall the attack by supporters of then-President Donald Trump as very violent or extremely violent, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. About 3 in 10 Republicans say the attack was not violent, and about another 3 in 10 say it was somewhat violent," the Associated Press's Farnoush Amiri reports. | Trump 'needs to be in prison' for Jan. 6 riot, says partner of fallen Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick | | "The partner of Capitol Police officer Brian D. Sicknick, who died after trying to protect the building on Jan. 6, said Monday that former president Donald Trump should serve prison time for his role in the insurrection. She said she holds Trump '100 percent responsible' for Sicknick's death," Timothy Bella reports. Sicknick, 42, suffered two strokes hours after rioters sprayed him with a chemical substance and died the next day of what a medical examiner said were natural causes. | Amazon and Google deploy their armies to thwart antitrust bills | | "Amazon and Google are mobilizing a powerful force to counter Congress' increasing appetite for corporate trust-busting — the throngs of business owners and ordinary users who have made the tech giants a part of their daily lives," Politico's Emily Birnbaum reports. | - "The campaign, carried out by petitions, email blasts and Zoom calls, seeks to reverse the usual David-vs.-Goliath portrayal of Washington's antitrust debates — pushing the narrative that two of the world's wealthiest corporations are on the sides of the underdogs."
| Fed weighs proposals for eventual reduction in bond holdings | | "At their policy meeting last month, officials agreed to wind down their bond-purchase stimulus program more quickly amid growing concerns about high inflation, setting it on track to end in March. Officials began discussing at that meeting what should happen to the bondholdings after that point, and some are pushing to start shrinking them sooner and faster than they did after an earlier asset-purchase program," the Wall Street Journal's Nick Timiraos reports. | | |  | Lunchtime reads from The Post | | Facebook groups topped 10,000 daily attacks on election before Jan. 6, analysis shows |  (Washington Post illustration; Facebook screenshots; iStock) | | | "The barrage — averaging at least 10,000 posts a day, a scale not reported previously — turned the groups into incubators for the baseless claims supporters of President Donald Trump voiced as they stormed the Capitol, demanding he get a second term. Many posts portrayed Biden's election as the result of widespread fraud that required extraordinary action — including the use of force — to prevent the nation from falling into the hands of traitors," Craig Silverman, Craig Timberg, Jeff Kao and Jeremy B. Merrill report. | - What Facebook says: "Facebook executives have played down the company's role in the Jan. 6 attack and have resisted calls, including from its own Oversight Board, for a comprehensive internal investigation. The company also has yet to turn over all the information requested by the congressional committee studying the Jan. 6 attack, though it says it is negotiating with the committee."
- What the documents show: "But the ProPublica-Post investigation, which analyzed millions of posts between Election Day and Jan. 6 and drew on internal company documents and interviews with former employees, provides the clearest evidence yet that Facebook played a critical role in the spread of false narratives that fomented the violence of Jan. 6."
| Is the Capitol any safer a year after Jan. 6? | From the Capitol to the city council: How extremism in the U.S. shifted after Jan. 6 | | "Domestic extremist groups ranging from the QAnon conspiracy movement and the Proud Boys to militia organizations and avowed white nationalists have re-emerged in recent months, frequently trying to effect change at the local level," NBC's Brandy Zadrozny and Ben Collins report. "But it's not just the strategy that has shifted. Most far-right domestic extremist movements have also adapted their infrastructure and messaging, according to a forthcoming report by the Digital Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council, a nonprofit international affairs think tank." | | Jared Holt, a resident fellow at the Digital Forensic Research Lab and author of the new report | "The domestic extremist landscape was battered by Jan. 6. But extremism is dynamic and fluid. It is always trying to adapt to fit the container that it's in." | | | | | | | The Capitol Police and the scars of Jan. 6 | | "It is widely known that about 150 officers from the Capitol and Metropolitan Police Departments and local agencies were injured during the violence, more than 80 from the Capitol Police alone. Less understood is how long-lasting the damage, physical and psychological, to the Capitol Police force has been, damage that informs many officers' outrage about what they perceive as a lack of accountability for those responsible," the New York Times's Susan Dominus and Luke Broadwater report. | - "Interviews over many months with more than two dozen officers and their families (some of whom requested not to use their full names to speak frankly without permission from the department or to protect future employment prospects in the federal government), as well as a review of internal documents, congressional testimony and medical records, reveal a department that is still hobbled and in many ways dysfunctional. Among those still on the force and those who have left, many significant injuries and psychological disorders remain, including serious traumatic brain injuries and neurological impairment, orthopedic injuries requiring surgery and rehabilitation, post-traumatic stress disorder and heightened anxiety."
| | |  | The rise of omicron | | It might be time to retire your cloth masks, doctors say |  Mannequins wear masks. (Jorge Saenz/AP) | | | "With infections surging due to the fast-spreading Omicron variant, including among the vaccinated, physicians are now urging people to ditch cloth face masks, which they say may not provide enough protection against the virus. Instead, they recommend pairing cloth masks with surgical models or moving on to stronger respirator masks," the Wall Street Journal's Clare Ansberry and Nidhi Subbaraman report. | Hogan declares 30-day state of emergency as Md. enters its 'most challenging time' of the pandemic | | "Gov. Larry Hogan declared a 30-day state of emergency that mobilizes the National Guard to assist state and local health officers at testing and vaccine sites and authorizes the state Department of Health to take steps to increase staffing at overwhelmed hospitals," Ovetta Wiggins reports. | | |  | The Biden agenda | | Biden to address nation on omicron as U.S. reports 1 million cases in a day |  Biden arrives on Air Force One during the winter snowstorm on Monday. (Carolyn Kaster/AP) | | Biden plans to give Warren a win with Fed vice chair pick | | "Sarah Bloom Raskin has emerged as the leading candidate to be President Biden's choice for vice chair of supervision at the Federal Reserve, with an announcement as early as this week," Axios's Hans Nichols reports. | - "By settling on Raskin, a former deputy Treasury secretary, for the powerful bank regulator position, Biden is giving progressive senators like Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) a policy and personnel win on a position about which they care deeply."
| A Georgia solar factory shows the promise — and peril — of Biden's new industrial policy | | "Tucked in the back of a nondescript industrial park in north Georgia, a factory sits as a symbol of what the Biden administration hopes will come from America's new, bipartisan experiment with industrial policy," Politico's Gavin Bade reports. "If President Joe Biden has his way, the factory will also be a harbinger of America's economic future. The U.S. will need more than 100 assembly plants of Q Cells' size to produce enough panels to power Biden's energy goals, which envision solar providing 40 percent of the nation's electricity by 2035, or ten times its share today." | | |  | Biden's appointees to District and Court of Appeals judgeships, visualized | | | "As the one-year mark of the Biden presidency approaches, the Democratic-controlled Senate has confirmed 40 judicial nominees and has the opportunity to shift the balance on several regional appeals courts in part because of a wave of judges stepping back from active service," our colleagues Seung Min Kim and Ann E. Marimow report. | | |  | Hot on the left | | Democrats gain control of a key regulatory agency | | "Democrats will regain firm control of a key regulatory agency, the FDIC, thanks to the abrupt resignation of its Trump-appointed chair, Jelena McWilliams, on New Year's Eve. Her departure takes effect in early February," the American Prospect's Robert Kuttner reports. "Martin Gruenberg, a longtime progressive Democrat on the FDIC board and former FDIC chair, will become acting chair once again. The stakes are huge because several major bank regulatory issues will be decided this spring." | | |  | Hot on the right | | The radicalization of J.D. Vance |  Senate candidate J.D. Vance on the campaign trail in Ohio. | | | For the Washington Post Magazine, Simon van Zuylen-Wood profiles Vance's evolution — physical and otherwise — and what the rising popularity of his alienated worldview could mean for what he calls an "emergent populist-intellectual persuasion that tacks right on culture and left on economics." "As he runs for the Senate, the 'Hillbilly Elegy' author has gone from media darling to establishment pariah. Is his new, fiery, right-wing persona an act? Or is something more interesting going on?" | | |  | Today in Washington | | | At 2 p.m., Biden and Harris will meet with the White House Covid-19 Response Team to discuss the latest omicron developments. | | |  | In closing | | ICYMI: Secretary of State Antony Blinken dropped two end-of-year Spotify playlists | | Blinken's "At Home" playlist features everything from Olivia Rodrigo's "traitor" to "Thank You" by Diana Ross. | | Thanks for reading. See you tomorrow. | | |
