| Welcome to The Daily 202! Tell your friends to sign up here. Via the Associated Press: On this day in 1925, Democrat Nellie Tayloe Ross became America's first female governor after a special election in Wisconsin. She succeeded her late husband, William. | | |  | The big idea | | Biden's 'breathrough' problem |  President Biden removes his face mask as he arrives yesterday to meet with the White House COVID-19 Response Team on the latest developments related to the omicron variant. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) | | | Blame the pandemic for making "breakthrough" a dirty word in U.S. politics, turning a term evoking success after a difficult negotiation or complex experiments into a warning about the well-known limits of coronavirus vaccines, the best tool for fending off covid. "Breakthrough" is now also something of a messaging test for President Biden and his White House, which has faced stiff opposition from Republicans as the administration tries to convince Americans to endure the two-shots-and-a-booster sequence. Even as breakthrough cases rise, the GOP has assailed vaccine and mask mandates, cast doubts on the shots' effectiveness and even paid Americans for not getting vaccinated. At the same time, they're also attacking Biden for failing to keep his campaign promise to smother the virus, a potent liability in this midterm election year. Lately, Republicans have pointed to breakthrough infections to afflict the vaccinated and comfort the unvaccinated and generally spread unwarranted skepticism about getting the shot(s), undermining Biden's message that vaccines are the best weapon against the pandemic. "If the booster shots work, why don't they work?" House Judiciary Committee Republicans asked on their official Twitter account last week, as omicron cases soared. They later deleted that message with no explanation. | | "I've done whatever I did," said the GOP star, considered a potential contender for the presidency in 2024. "The normal shot, and that at the end of the day is people's individual decisions about what they want to do." "Unfortunately, the vaccines aren't as safe or effective as we hoped," Sen. Ron Johnson (Wis.), one of the more strident anti-vaccination voices in the GOP, declared on Twitter yesterday. "[T]he fully vaccinated and boosted can get infected and are transmitting the disease. Biden and the COVID gods don't want people to know that." While the identity of the "COVID gods" could not immediately be determined, Biden has publicly discussed the likelihood of vaccinated and boosted Americans getting infected since at least last July, and he has done so repeatedly since then. As for the vaccines, they're overwhelmingly safe and effective, at least based on a sample size of hundreds of millions of shots in American arms. And data show unvaccinated Americans who get the virus are vastly more likely to end up hospitalized or dead from the virus than their vaccinated compatriots. "There will be breakthrough cases, but, certainly, preventing hospitalization and preventing death is a significant value of these vaccines and the subsequent boosters that are now available across the public," White House press secretary Jen Psaki said at her Dec. 1 briefing. But the president hasn't tackled the "breakthrough" problem in a particularly serious and sustained way – not in proportion to the systematic and organized manner the GOP has weaponized the phenomenon. "I wish the White House would engage, and not just engage breakthrough as some level of failure we have to accept," Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, told The Daily 202 in a telephone interview yesterday. Biden and his team should "instead be very proactive in saying vaccines are remarkably effective at turning something that is deadly into something that is manageable," Jha said. To some degree, the president did that yesterday as he kicked off a meeting with his top pandemic advisers. Even after two shots and a booster, "you can still get covid," Biden said. "But it's highly unlikely, very unlikely that you'll become seriously ill. And we're seeing covid-19 cases among vaccinated in workplaces across America, including here at the White House. But if you're vaccinated and boosted, you are highly protected." | | For the unvaccinated, it's a different story. "Some will die – needlessly die," the president said. At the White House, talk of breakthrough cases generally comes in the context of urging Americans to get vaccinated to avoid the worst possible health outcomes from infection. (Aides note nearly 86 percent of adults have had at least one shot.) "We have been very transparent and consistent about the reality of breakthroughs, and also the difference of getting a case as a vaccinated [versus] unvaccinated person, from the President down," a Biden aide told The Daily 202 on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about ongoing discussions. It's not easy to get the full "breakthrough" picture in part because, as my colleague Dan Diamond noted last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention "in May began reporting only breakthrough cases that result in hospitalization or death," not cases overall. "'Breakthrough,' it's a terrible term, first of all because it implies that something went wrong, it broke through a wall," Jha said. "It terrifies the vaccinated and undermines the value of the vaccines among the unvaccinated." Most vaccines work by reducing the severity of illness, priming the body's immune system to fend off an infection – and that's what the covid shots do. But Americans – including public health officials – saw "those original magical numbers" showing vaccines with effectiveness near 100 percent, coloring expectations about the protection they bestow, Jha said. "Vaccines can wane, viruses evolve," he said. "For the vaccinated people, the breakthroughs are not that big a deal because most people don't end up in the hospital, or dying. The unvaccinated people, they're the ones at risk." | | Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wouldn't say whether he got a booster shot | "I've done whatever I did. The normal shot, and that at the end of the day is people's individual decisions about what they want to do." | | | | | | | | |  | What's happening now | | 13 people, including 7 children, killed in Philadelphia rowhouse blaze, fire officials say |  An unidentified woman reacts at the scene of a deadly row house fire, Wednesday, Jan. 5, 2022, in the Fairmount neighborhood of Philadelphia. (Monica Herndon/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP) | | | "Eight people escaped the fire in the city's Fairmount district, and first responders brought an adult and a child to hospitals, First Deputy Fire Commissioner Craig Murphy told reporters," Marisa Iati and Timothy Bella report. | Lawmakers begin early talks about another round of coronavirus relief targeting businesses | | "The early efforts have focused primarily on authorizing billions of dollars to help an array of businesses — including restaurants, performance venues, gyms and even minor league sports teams — that face another potential blow to their already-battered balance sheets as a result of the evolving pandemic," Tony Romm reports. | Kazakhstan shuts off Internet as government offices burn in protests | | "Protesters stormed government buildings and captured police vehicles despite a strict state of emergency and government attempts to concede to their demands, including by dismissing the cabinet and announcing the possible dissolution of Parliament, which would result in new elections. Kazakhtelecom, the country's largest telecommunications company, shut off internet access throughout the country on Wednesday afternoon," the New York Times's Valerie Hopkins and Ivan Nechepurenko report. | Phone-bill fees to fund suicide hotline spark statehouse debates | | "State officials are weighing whether to impose new fees on consumers' phone bills to pay for 988 and expand mental-health crisis services. Government data show the coronavirus pandemic has exacted a toll on Americans' mental health. In 2020, a record 2.39 million calls were placed to the national suicide hotline," the Wall Street Journal's Ryan Tracy reports. | Chicago Public Schools cancels classes after union votes to go virtual | | "More than 340,000 students are shut out of school Wednesday after a deadlock between the Chicago Teachers Union and the school district over Covid-19 safety -- the most dramatic example yet of tension in US schools amid the spread of the Omicron variant," CNN's Theresa Waldrop, Omar Jimenez and Holly Yan report. | | |  | Lunchtime reads from The Post | | With simulations and more information-sharing, Biden administration tries to prevent another Jan. 6 |  Fencing that was erected after the Jan. 6 insurrection is seen surrounding the Capitol building. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post) | | | "Senior Biden administration officials have concluded that the government's Jan. 6 preparations were hampered by a lack of high-level information-sharing and a failure to anticipate how bad the day could be — lessons they say they are applying today in an effort to prevent another such attack," Devlin Barrett, Ashley Parker and Aaron C. Davis report. | - Weekly reviews: "In an effort to keep senior officials on top of security threats in Washington, Biden's National Security Council oversees weekly discussions among federal law enforcement agencies to discuss planned events such as protests and any related information that points to possible violence."
- Prep simulations: "Biden administration officials said they conducted tabletop exercises and simulations — one in May and another in late September — designed to stress-test the ability of federal, state and local law enforcement to respond effectively to crises in the capital region."
| 2022 House overview: Still a GOP advantage, but redistricting looks like a wash |  A proposed Pennsylvania Senate district map is displayed during a meeting of the Pennsylvania Legislative Reapportionment Commission at the Capitol in Harrisburg, Pa., on Dec. 16. (Matt Rourke/AP) | | | "The surprising good news for Democrats: on the current trajectory, there will be a few more Biden-won districts after redistricting than there are now — producing a congressional map slightly less biased in the GOP's favor than the last decade's," David Wasserman writes for the Cook Political Report "The bad news for Democrats: if President Biden's approval ratings are still mired in the low-to-mid 40s in November, that won't be enough to save their razor-thin House majority (currently 221 to 212 seats)." | | |  | The rise of omicron | | Walmart, Kroger raise prices of covid-19 test kits |  Abbott BinaxNOW Covid-19 antigen self test kits are seen on a counter. (CJ Gunther/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock) | | | "Walmart Inc. and Kroger Co. are raising their prices for BinaxNOW at-home rapid tests, after the expiration of a deal with the White House to sell the test kits at cost for $14," the WSJ's Sharon Terlep reports. "Walmart said this week that it is raising the kits' price to $19.98 a box. Kroger now sells them for $23.99." | | |  | The Biden agenda | | Biden faces highly charged legal fight with migrants whose children were taken away under Trump | | Biden removes his mask as he arrives to meet with the White House Covid-19 Response Team on Tuesday. (Andrew Harnik/AP) | | | At least 19 lawsuits and hundreds of administrative complaints have been filed against the federal government by "migrants who say their children were separated from them by the Trump administration. The plaintiffs, who use pseudonyms in their legal filings to protect their privacy, are seeking financial compensation after enduring what was widely regarded as one of President Donald Trump's harshest policies," Sean Sullivan and Maria Sacchetti report. "But now, much of the anger surrounding the issue has been redirected toward President Biden, threatening to escalate into a bigger furor as he embarks on his second year in office. Negotiations between the administration and the families' attorneys over a monetary settlement broke down in December, and the lawsuits are starting to resume in court, some this week." | Biden administration to increase supply of 'game changer' Pfizer pill | | "The United States government doubled its order for Pfizer's Covid pills on Tuesday, a move that will modestly increase the nation's very limited supply of the treatment in the short term amid a record-setting surge in coronavirus cases," the New York Times's Noah Weiland and Rebecca Robbins report. | White House embraces a manage-not-contain omicron game plan | | "The new reality [of the fast-spreading Omicron variant] has further darkened the mood among White House aides already frustrated by the lack of progress toward ending a pandemic many initially believed could be dispatched within a year. It's also accelerated the administration's pivot toward preparing people to live with the virus indefinitely. In interviews, officials described the next few weeks as a triage operation focused on containing the reverberations of the surge well enough to avert breakdowns in essential services, mass school closures and overrun hospitals," Politico's Adam Cancryn and Christopher Cadelago report. | ACA health insurance plans need more protections for LGBTQ people, White House says | | "Health insurance plans offered through the Affordable Care Act that exclude coverage of gender-affirming treatment for transgender people are discriminatory, the Department of Health and Human Services said in an annual policy report scheduled for release this week," the 19th's Orion Rummler reports. | | |  | Facebook political groups, visualized | | | |  | Hot on the left | | The real tragedy of Jan. 6 is that it's still not over |  An explosion caused by a police munition is seen while supporters of President Donald Trump gather in front of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (Leah Millis/Reuters) | | | "I wish I could tell you that, 364 days after one of our darkest days as a nation, we are in a much better place. We are not," the Daily Beast's Matt Fuller writes. "No, lawmakers aren't delusional enough to believe in some QAnon plot about how Trump is secretly running the government. But he's still the leader of their party. If you turn on Fox News, you'll hear more Republicans referring to Trump as 'the President' than those correctly noting that it's actually the former president—a twice-impeached former president at that." "Continuing to speak with reverence about 'President Trump'—or 'President Donald J. Trump' if they really want to show their devotion—is a small nod they make to the craziest wing of their party, to the type of people who show up at the Capitol on a warm January day to disrupt one of the perfunctory traditions of our republic." "And it's those nods, those winks, those little deals elected Republicans make with themselves and the most deranged elements of their party that will likely sweep them back into the majority—probably in the House, maybe in the Senate, potentially even in both." | | |  | Hot on the right | | Sen. Ted Cruz says Republicans are likely to impeach Biden if they retake House | | During an episode of the podcast the "Verdict With Ted Cruz," the Texas Republican was asked whether he thinks there is any chance a Republican House would impeach Biden, given that Democrats had twice impeached President Donald Trump, Felicia Sonmez reports. "Yeah, I do think there's a chance of that," Cruz said. "And whether it's justified or not, as we talked about when 'Verdict' launched, the Democrats weaponized impeachment. They used it for partisan purposes to go after Trump because they disagreed with him. And one of the real disadvantages of doing that . . . is the more you weaponize it and turn it into a partisan cudgel, you know, what's good for the goose is good for the gander." | | |  | Today in Washington | | | The president has no public events scheduled. | | |  | In closing | | | Thanks for reading. See you tomorrow. | | |
