Biden brought down a Chinese spy balloon. But he hasn’t tanked bilateral ties

President Joe Biden’s decision to shoot down a Chinese surveillance balloon on Saturday is a blow to a U.S.-China relationship that has been spiraling downward for years.

But it is not necessarily a death blow.

U.S.-China ties have already weathered years of Beijing’s saber-rattling across the Taiwan Strait, its military installations on disputed islands in the South China Sea and high-tech espionage. Beijing has in turn accused the U.S. of a Cold War mentality and of seeking to suppress China economically and militarily.

This latest incident hits home in the U.S. — literally — because the nonstop coverage of the balloon’s presence in American airspace and its destruction captured on live video made the China threat real for many.

“This was a pretty big hit for the [public] trust factor in U.S.-China relations — Chinese spying has never been so front and center in the American public consciousness,” said Lyle Morris, former country director for China at the Office of the Secretary of Defense. “If there were any people still on the fence about a China threat or not, that's pretty much been foreclosed.”

In the short term, GOP lawmakers are arguing that President Joe Biden needs to get tougher on China. A senior State Department official sounded a similar stern line on Beijing by calling the balloon’s incursion “a clear violation of our sovereignty” and declaring that it was “unacceptable”in a press briefing on Friday.

But the incident will likely only further bruise, rather than break, the bilateral relationship.

Regardless of rampant political rhetoric about economic decoupling, the two countries are too interdependent to opt for a drastic downgrade in bilateral ties. Both the Biden administration and senior Chinese officials, including paramount leader Xi Jinping, have recently emphasized the need to improve the tenor in the U.S.-China relationship. And historically, other U.S.-Chinese incidents that have roiled the relationship eventually faded in favor of resumed, if strained, ties.

In recent weeks, Xi and his aides have launched a charm offensive aimed at easing tensions with Washington as they struggle with a Covid outbreak and an economic downturn. The Chinese government was even preparing to welcome Secretary of State Antony Blinken for a now-postponed visit in which he would potentially have met with Xi.

And because the discovery of the airship is an untimely embarrassment for Xi, he may keep China’s response to the downing limited. In fact, Beijing signaled its desire to prevent the balloon incursion from rupturing ties by issuing a rare expression of “regrets,” although it also claimed the object was a weather balloon that went off course.

In comments Saturday to reporters, Biden said he ordered on Wednesday that the balloon be shot down “as soon as possible.” Ultimately, authorities decided to wait until the object was over water to avoid “doing damage to anyone on the ground,” the president said.

Biden did not answer a question about how the decision would affect U.S. relations with China. Foreign affairs observers, however, predicted that both Beijing and Washington would try to minimize the fallout.

“The Biden administration has already signaled that it will seek to reschedule the Blinken visit when conditions allow,” noted Daniel Russel, a former senior Asia hand in the Obama administration who has close ties to Biden aides. “If this closes the book on the incident, the two sides can get back to work. If, instead, the Chinese elect to play the aggrieved victim or to retaliate, we may find ourselves back climbing the escalation ladder.”

Should the United States recover the remnants of the balloon and prove that it is a spy contraption and not a weather tracker, that could further embarrass Xi and lead him to back down. Biden could use that wreckage “to humiliate China or as a bargaining chip in private discussions,” said Yun Sun, China program director at the Stimson Center.

The Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C., didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The United States and China have a history of recovering from relation-disrupting incidents that initially outraged the other.

On May 7, 1999, for instance, a U.S.-led NATO air campaign bombed China’s embassy in Belgrade, killing three Chinese journalists and wounding 20 other Chinese citizens. Though the United States insisted the bombing was a mistake, to this day it is a source of sore feelings in China, where one state media account in 2021 called it “barbaric.” Still, the incident hasn’t prevented efforts to improve relations.

In 2001, a U.S. spy plane collided with a Chinese fighter jet over the South China Sea and landed in China’s Hainan island. China detained the U.S. plane’s 24-member crew for 11 days, during which the fighter jet pilot was said to have died. After several days of tense negotiations, the two countries brokered a deal hinged on a U.S. expression of regret for the incident.

Even years of rising tensions over Taiwan, the self-governing democratic island that Beijing claims as its own, have not severed ties. In 2013, when Biden was vice president, Beijing declared the launch of an “air defense identification zone” in the East China Sea. Biden went to China with the message that Washington would not recognize the zone; U.S. military planes were already flying through it without Chinese permission.

Biden has also repeatedly said the administration will send U.S. troops to help Taiwan if China attacks, although official U.S. policy is more ambiguous.

And when then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August, the Chinese government reacted furiously, conducting days of live fire military drills around the island. Beijing also suspended bilateral military dialogues and joint efforts in China’s role in the U.S. opioid crisis.

But three months later, Biden met with Xi on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Indonesia, and both pledged to try to ease tensions in order to “manage this competition responsibly.” The Chinese government has also recently shifted to a softer diplomatic tone — an effort by Beijing to reduce U.S.-China tensions while it grapples with a disastrous Covid outbreak and an economic downturn.

The balloon incident is likely to reverberate strongly on Capitol Hill, where there is a bipartisan consensus that China poses a long-term threat to U.S. power.

“Congress will almost certainly hold hearings about the administration’s response, which will extend this story’s shelf life and raise important questions about the efficacy of the Biden administration’s China policy,” said Craig Singleton, senior China fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

The possibility of Blinken going ahead with the trip to China was considered before it was ultimately postponed after administration officials realized the visit would be overshadowed by questions about a balloon that could still be hovering over U.S. soil.

“The objective of the trip was to seek a ‘floor’ in relationship and explore potential areas of cooperation in mutual interest,” a U.S. official familiar with the issue said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

The balloon, however, “would have dominated all the conversations,” the official said. “It was better to postpone for a better time, and the interagency all agreed with that.”

It’s not clear when Blinken will reschedule his trip. Whether Chinese officials agree to host him fairly soon could be a sign of how quickly they want to put the balloon incident behind them.

Adam Cancryn contributed to this report.

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SEC’s Gensler weighs scaling back climate rule as lawsuits loom

Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler is considering scaling backa potentially groundbreaking climate-risk disclosure rule that has drawn intense opposition from corporate America, according to three people familiar with the matter.

The top Wall Street regulator’s team has signaled that a primary concern is the wave of lawsuits that are expected to challenge the rule once it's finalized, said the people, who asked not to be named while discussing private conversations. The SEC is weighing what to do with one of the most contentious pieces of the plan: A mandate that certain large public companies report data about carbon emissions from their extensive supply chain networks and customers, known as scope 3, the people said.

Potential changes to the proposal have been debated for months. The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that the agency is also considering whether to ease a separate financial reporting element of the plan because of the legal challenges to come. But Gensler’s lingering legal concerns about the draft scope 3 requirements indicate that the SEC — nearly a year after proposing the rule — is still grappling with what to do about one of the most aggressive parts of the plan.

Officials at the SEC stress that no decision has yet been made. How much the agency might ease up on the proposal is not clear. The final rule will need to be approved by three of the SEC's five commissioners, including Gensler, before it can take hold. But any move to substantially limit the regulation could spark a backlash from climate activists, sustainable investors and progressive Democrats, who have been pressing for years for greater insight into companies’ climate footprints.

Under the proposed rule, public companies would have to disclose information about the climate risks their businesses face, as well as the carbon emissions of parts of their operations — just as they do annual revenue, executive compensation and any new updates on legal issues.

Lawmakers, companies and business trade groups, like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, have voiced broad objections to the proposal ever since its introduction, saying the changes are unnecessary and would be too burdensome and costly. Lawsuits are expected to challenge both the content of the rule itself and the SEC’s authority to pursue it — an argument that may carry new weight with the Supreme Court moving to rein in the so-called administrative state.

Another person familiar with the matter said the SEC has also discussed making the scope 3 requirements “more workable” for companies, given the feedback the agency is getting.

If the carbon emission disclosure requirements are curtailed, the SEC could preempt one of the business community’s biggest concerns about the plan.

But if the agency goes too far,it risks causing a significant break with the left. Progressive lawmakers, sustainability-minded investors and environmental advocates have pressed for as strong a rule as possible. They argue that predicting what the courts will do is impossible and shouldn't discourage action now.

“The courts are obviously stacked with pro-pollution judges,” a Senate Democratic aide told POLITICO. “But the SEC should not back down in the face of baseless attacks by corporate lobbyists and preemptively water down the rule.”

An SEC spokesperson declined to comment for this story.

A growing corner of the investment world has been calling on the SEC for years to require companies to provide a clearer lens into how they are handling climate change, as the proposed rule would do. The final rule would also mark another major climate win for President Joe Biden following the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. One of Biden’s first executive orders declared that the federal government must push for climate-related risk disclosures across the economy.

Yet as the rule has taken shape within the agency, Republican state attorneys general across the country, the business world and GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill have criticized it.

Their warnings have varied. But a common one is that the SEC is going outside its mission in seeking to mandate climate risk disclosure. The significance of that complaint quickly escalated following the Supreme Court’s ruling last year that the Environmental Protection Agency overstepped its bounds in trying to rein in power plant emissions.

The SEC is seeking a broad slate of new information from public companies under the rule, including details on how climate-related risks are affecting their business models, if the companies use a carbon price and how, and any details about climate-related goals set by the companies, such as net-zero emissions targets.

Companies would also have to detail the greenhouse gas emissions from their operations and energy use.

For many larger companies, though, executives would face the added responsibility of disclosing estimated emissions from their supply chains and customers, the scope 3 emissions. Proponents argue that scope 3 is critical to the rule’s success, given the amount of a company’s emissions that it represents.

“We still think the proposal should be finalized broadly in the same form,” said Alex Martin, a senior policy analyst for climate and finance at Americans for Financial Reform, a consumer and investor advocacy group. “It would be a mistake to not follow through."

But groups like the National Association of Manufacturers say scope 3 emission disclosures would be riddled with legal, reliability and usefulness questions for investors and companies.

“All options are on the table,” said Aric Newhouse, senior vice president of policy and government relations at NAM, in an interview about how the group would respond to the final rule. Newhouse said that could include a lawsuit against the SEC over the rule, once finalized. “We’re going to throw the full weight of the industry behind [this] effort.”

Litigation has been hanging over the SEC’s head for some time. In September, while testifying on Capitol Hill, Gensler was peppered with questions about the rule, as many Republican senators zeroed in on the implications of the Supreme Court case, West Virginia v. EPA. At the time, Gensler said the SEC takes “seriously the courts and particularly the Supreme Court,” but defended the agency’s ability to pursue the plan.

“Investors are using this information now, and they want the information,” Gensler said. “And I think it does fit into our 80- or 90-year history of how we do disclosures. … We have a role to ensure that there is not only investor protection, but, as the law said, fair dealing that the actual disclosures are not misleading.”

Many in the legal world agree. Former SEC officials, including several commissioners from both sides of the aisle, academics and even one former clerk to conservative Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch have written in support of the agency’s powers to regulate corporate disclosures, even if they relate to emissions.

“This is essentially core SEC rulemaking,” University of Pennsylvania law Professor Jill Fisch said.

The final rule is likely to look different from the proposal no matter what, as is typical for many SEC regulations.

Whether the SEC opts to include scope 3 as it is drafted in the proposal or scrap it entirely, the lawsuits will come either way, said Fisch, though she added that scope 3 does make the rule “more vulnerable.”

The question is whether the courts will look to brush back decades of legal precedent.

“It’s very hard to predict how far the court will go,” Fisch said.

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DNC votes to shake up presidential primary calendar

Members of the Democratic National Committee overwhelmingly approved a dramatic shakeup of the party’s presidential nominating calendar Saturday morning, reordering what states will vote first in primaries and upending a century of political tradition.

The new calendar — recommended by President Joe Biden and his advisers and approved by a majority vote of the DNC — elevates South Carolina to the first-place position in the primary calendar on Feb. 3, replacing the Iowa caucuses, which held the coveted perch for a half-century.

Under the new schedule, New Hampshire and Nevada would jointly host their primaries three days later on Feb. 6, followed by Georgia on Feb. 13 and Michigan on Feb. 27, two brand-new states added to the early window. But several hurdles remain to ultimately implement this calendar.

Iowa, which has held its caucuses first since 1972, will fall out of the early nominating process altogether.

“We are overdue in changing this primary calendar,” said Michigan Rep. Debbie Dingell, who has led her state’s effort to join the early window for almost two decades. “No one state should have a lock on going first.”

The DNC reopened the presidential nominating calendar earlier this year, under pressure from both inside and outside the party to diversify the voters who get to participate early in the process. In December, Biden recommended his preferred slate, giving a particular nod to states like South Carolina and Georgia that gave him a boost in his 2020 presidential bid. It also nearly eliminates any path for a potential Democratic primary challenge ahead of 2024 by elevating states that represent the president’s base of support.

The vote comes on the heels of a rare joint appearance by Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in back-to-back speeches Friday night, previewing the likely 2024 ticket as the pair road tested campaign one-liners and themes of attack against the GOP.

But there are still logistical challenges that Democrats must face before implementing the new lineup, particularly around New Hampshire and Georgia, where Republican-controlled legislatures and governors stand in the way of changing the primary dates.

Resistance out of New Hampshire is particularly fierce, where elected officials and party leaders insist that they cannot comply with the DNC’s new calendar because it directly conflicts with state law, which requires them to host the first presidential primary one week before any other state. They have vowed to hold their contest first regardless of the DNC’s decision.

On Saturday morning, the New Hampshire and Iowa Democrats made a final appeal to DNC members, urging them to reconsider the proposal. But it did not change the vote.

“This is not about New Hampshire’s history or state pride. This is about a state law that we cannot unilaterally change,” said Joanne Dowdell, who represents New Hampshire on the Rules and Bylaws Committee.

She also raised the possibility that if Biden doesn’t file in New Hampshire, a potential sanction against the state, “it could provide an opening for an insurgent candidate” who could “potentially win the first presidential primary of 2024, something that no one in this room wants to see.”

But some DNC members pushed back on New Hampshire, including Leah Daughtry, a Rules and Bylaws committee member who said she’s “heard a lot about a state law” that “somehow gives some people a divine right of privilege,” but “none of that is more important than what the party says it wants in its process.”

Though the DNC members approved the calendar on Saturday, there are still several outstanding questions that linger. POLITICO lays out what’s still ahead for the Democratic presidential calendar:

Sanctions delayed

Even though Democrats approved the new calendar on Saturday, there’s no guarantee it will hold in 2024. New Hampshire and Georgia haven’t moved their primary dates yet. Earlier this month, the Rules and Bylaws committee granted the pair extensions to June 3, which has also kicked any discussion of sanctions against those states that don’t comply to the summer.

Each state faces different challenges. New Hampshire Democrats have vowed that they will hold their first-in-the-nation primary, arguing that they are “willing to withstand” the consequences as “long as the penalties don’t have an impact on our candidates,” said New Hampshire Democratic Party Chairman Ray Buckley at a press conference on Friday afternoon.

But it’s not clear the severity of the sanctions the DNC might levy against New Hampshire. Last year, the Rules and Bylaws Committee voted to strengthen their penalty power over states that jump the line. Not only will those states automatically lose half their delegates, the DNC also broadly empowered the national party chair to take any other “appropriate steps” to enforce the early window.

Georgia, meanwhile, faces an even steeper uphill climb. Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, sets the state’s primary date, and his office already ruled out splitting the Democratic and Republican primaries into two different dates. The office also said it wouldn’t schedule a primary that jeopardizes delegates for either party.

Any changes would also need “to be equitable to both political parties,” said Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs last month.

Republican Gov. Brian Kemp also announced last month that he wouldn’t support any changes.

Should Georgia fail to move its primary date, then it would fall out of the early window, shrinking the number of early states from five to four.

How will Republicans respond?

Reordering the DNC’s primary calendar unlinks Democrats from Republicans, which have held nearly identical line ups since 2008. The Republican National Committee, which has an open presidential primary contest in 2024, voted last year to affirm its current early-state slate of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. They also could impose sanctions on states that choose to jump the line.

For Michigan Republicans, that could be particularly problematic since they now face a Democratic-controlled state legislature and governor’s mansion. Last week, Michigan’s legislature passed a bill to change the state’s primary date, which is expected to be signed by Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

An RNC party aide noted that states have until Oct. 1 to alert the RNC for how they plan to allocate their delegates, and “if Michigan’s primary date violates our rules, the state party can choose to hold its own process on a compliant date or accept the delegate penalty,” the aide continued.

Doing this again in 2026

Democrats will revisit the early nominating calendar ahead of 2028, reopening the application process to states to be a part of the early window. But it could present a bigger challenge to Democrats, who are expected to face an open presidential primary in 2028, potentially making it harder for the party to impose sanctions against states or candidates who seek to go outside the approved calendar.

It’s not yet clear how the 2024 calendar might set a precedent for 2028, but “those three states will have experience,” Daughtry said, referring to South Carolina, Nevada and Michigan, the three states that are likeliest to appear in the early window in 2024.

“To the extent that experience running an early primary is a plus, that’s a plus,” Daughtry said.

New Hampshire’s approach in 2024 could also impact its ability to regain entry to the early window in 2028, several DNC members noted privately.

But Buckley said that “it’ll be an open presidential race,” which will change the dynamics and incentives for candidates to campaign in New Hampshire, and “we’ll have that conversation in 2026 and 2027.”

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'Are you with me?' Biden previews re-elect campaign at DNC

PHILADELPHIA — President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris delivered an early preview of their likely reelection campaign Friday night, rallying the Democratic Party faithful ahead of an expected formal 2024 announcement.

In their back-to-back speeches, Biden and Harris took a victory lap on strong economic numbers released this week, touted accomplishments from their first term and doubled-down on attacking Republicans as “extreme MAGA.” Their rare joint appearance at the DNC served as a soft launch for their reelection efforts as the pair road tested their 2024 pitch.

"Let me ask you a simple question: Are you with me?” Biden said, sparking chants of "four more years" from the crowd, waving signs blazoned with “Go Joe” and “Kamala.”

Biden’s campaign rhetoric on Friday night doesn’t necessarily mean a formal announcement is imminent, as Democrats expect an announcement in late March or April. But the DNC has already hired several communications rapid response directors who will be deployed to the four Republican early states and Florida, according to a party aide.

"We have momentum," Harris said in her speech. "And now, let's let the people know this is what they voted for."

Democrats are also eager to present a united front, hoping to contrast themselves with a Republican Party that is struggling with its own intra-party drama and a divided presidential field.

Even though former President Donald Trump announced another presidential run last year, several other GOP candidates are still expected to launch their own bids. Former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley is expected to launch her presidential campaign in two weeks, while Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) will kick off a "listening tour" in South Carolina and Iowa. Former Vice President Mike Pence is also planning stops in South Carolina, an early presidential nominating state. And last weekend, the Republican National Committee closed out its own winter meeting with a contentious chair’s race.

“It makes sense for them to come here, talk to the party, as a ticket, and both of them make the case, heading into the State of the Union,” said Mo Elleithee, a DNC member, citing Tuesday’s State of the Union speech, another high-profile, message-testing vehicle.

“It’s feeling like showtime,” Elleithee added.

It’s also a marked contrast from Biden’s standing a year ago, when his legislative agenda appeared stalled, inflation continued to spike and Democrats privately worried about Biden’s 2024 prospects.

In his speech, Biden ticked through Democratic priorities accomplished during his first term, including lowering the cost of prescription drugs, investing in combating climate change and appointing the first Black woman to the Supreme Court. He also laid out a number of policy goals for a potential second term, including banning assault weapons, codifying Roe v. Wade and strengthening voter access laws — a policy wish list that’s not currently possible with a divided Congress.

“America is back,” Biden said, “and we’re leading the world again.”

Biden and Harris also veered into sharper attacks on Republicans, returning to themes that they regularly hit ahead of the 2022 midterms by tying the GOP to extremism and election denialism.

In 2022, Harris said, “we defeated ‘Big Lies’ and extremism," but "extremist so-called leaders" are still banning books and "criminali[zing] doctors."

“This is not your father’s Republican Party,” Biden said. “These aren’t conservatives. These are disruptive people. They intend to destroy the progress we made.”

Mark Longabaugh, a Democratic strategist who served as a senior adviser on Bernie Sanders’ 2016 bid, said the Democratic Party “feels like this worked for them in the 2022 elections,” and “I'm guessing they've got a certain amount of research that shows that it continues to be a salient message.”

Biden and Harris also appeared at a Democratic fundraiser Friday afternoon, where Biden told donors that Democrats have to “lay out what we’ve done, tell them what more we have to get done and how we’re going to pay for it.”

The three-day DNC gathering will culminate on Saturday with a vote to dramatically upend the presidential nominating calendar. The proposal, recommended by Biden, would elevate South Carolina to a coveted first-place position and eliminate Iowa from the early window. It would also seek to add Georgia and Michigan to the early nominating process.

The proposal has faced significant pushback from New Hampshire Democrats, who have waged a public battle against their state’s position in the lineup, which would put them three days after the South Carolina primary and on the same day as the Nevada primary.

“We’re in an impossible, no-win situation,” said New Hampshire Democratic Party Chairman Ray Buckley at a press conference on Friday afternoon, citing the Republican-controlled legislature and GOP Gov. Chris Sununu’s opposition to repealing or changing the state’s century-old law that requires them to be the first-in-the-nation primary.

“It seems odd we’d be punished for something that’s completely out of our control,” he said.

They also stressed that by forcing New Hampshire out of compliance with its own state law, it would “give Republicans an opportunity to out-organize us” and “create a perfect storm to hurt Biden and Democrats all the way down” the ticket, Buckley said.

But the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee, the group charged with recommending the new line up early states, delayed any talk of sanctions against New Hampshire by granting them an extension until June 3 to comply with the DNC’s requirements. Georgia, another state controlled by a Republican governor and legislature, was also granted an extension.

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A balloon upended Blinken’s trip to China. That could be a good thing.

Not everyone in Washington is freaking out about the suspected Chinese spy balloon flying high over the United States. Some former officials say it’s giving U.S. diplomats exactly what they need: more leverage over Beijing.

The Chinese airship forced the U.S. military to scramble fighter jets, prompted lawmakers to demand answers from the Biden administration and led Secretary of State Antony Blinken to indefinitely postpone his trip to Beijing this weekend.

But Blinken was going to China without much hope of getting concessions on major issues such as Beijing’s support for Russia’s war on Ukraine, its human rights abuses or its threats to Taiwan. Now, some former officials who’ve worked on international negotiations say he may be in a stronger position, though that advantage may fade over time.

“This event definitely strengthens the hands of the United States,” said Heather McMahon, a former senior director at the President's Intelligence Advisory Board. “Anytime an espionage operation is exposed, [it] gives the advantage to the targeted nation.”

Blinken was preparing to see top officials in China on Sunday and Monday in a follow-up to President Joe Biden’s meeting with Chinese paramount leader Xi Jinping in Bali in November.At the time, Biden pledged to “maintain open lines of communication” with Beijing amid worsening bilateral tensions.

The Pentagon’s announcement Thursday of an alleged Chinese surveillance balloon hovering over Montana changed that plan. In canceling Blinken’s trip, at least for now, the State Department said the incident “would have narrowed the agenda in a way that would have been unhelpful and unconstructive.”

Beijing admitted Friday that the balloon was Chinese, reversing its initial claims of ignorance, and said it was a civilian airship used primarily for meteorological purposes that had been blown into U.S. airspace by high winds.

That admission and the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s rare expression of “regrets” for the incident in a statement published on Friday suggests Beijing is in damage control mode at a time when it’s trying to stabilize ties with the U.S.

The revelation “has pushed China a little bit on the back foot,” said Zack Cooper, former assistant to the deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism at the National Security Council and now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

And that could give Blinken an edge in his efforts to prod Beijing to deliver meaningful results when he eventually travels to China.

John Kamm, who has decades of experience negotiating with Chinese officials in his role as founder of the Dui Hua prisoner advocacy organization, said “it puts pressure on China to do something as a goodwill gesture in response to what they've done.”

Much of Blinken’s planned two days with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang — and a possible meeting with Xi — would have been lost to ritual recitations of respective U.S.-China positions on issues ranging from Taiwan and trade tensions to concerns about Beijing’s human rights record, its growing nuclear arsenal and its alignment with Russia’s war on Ukraine.

In an interview before the balloon was reported, David R. Stilwell, former assistant secretary of State for the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, said the meeting was unlikely to produce movement on any of those issues. “Beijing uses ‘talks’ to reduce pressure — while giving nothing of significance — and to humiliate the other side,” Stillwell said.

Still, some say Blinken could have seized the opportunity to make heavier demands in person.

“If Tony went now, Xi and the Chinese would be deeply embarrassed, grateful that he came, wanting to put it behind him,” said Danny Russel, a former senior Asia hand in the Obama administration. The balloon incident could have become “a teachable moment,” he said.

Delaying the trip risks the Chinese becoming more defensive over time, and less inclined to come to a meeting of the minds, said Russel, who nonetheless stressed that he understood the Biden administration’s calculations.

The Chinese government had recently shifted to a softer diplomatic tone — an effort by Beijing to reduce U.S.-China tensions while it grapples with a disastrous Covid outbreak and an economic downturn.

Blinken’s indefinite postponement of his Beijing trip until “the conditions are right” has won him measured praise from GOP lawmakers.

Delaying the trip is “a right call for now,” Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) chair of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the U.S. and the Chinese Communist Party, said in a video he tweeted on Friday.

The trip postponement “is an appropriate step to underscore the seriousness” of the balloon’s intrusion, Rep. Darin LaHood (R-Ill.) said in a statement.

Blinken can now see if Beijing’s eagerness for even symbolic gestures of reduced bilateral rancor produces Chinese diplomatic sweeteners for a rapid rescheduling of Blinken’s China travel plans.

But time may not be on Blinken’s side given the crowded Chinese political calendar.

“The Chinese have their national legislative session in early March, and House Speaker [Kevin] McCarthy is projected to visit Taiwan around Easter, so the trip may not happen until the late spring, where the bilateral atmosphere arguably will be even more challenging,” said Chris Johnson, president and chief executive of the China Strategies Group, a risk consultancy.

Regardless of the spy balloon’s short-term diplomatic fallout and the possible short-term advantage Blinken could reap from it, the longer-term prospects for U.S.-China relations remain grim.

“Beijing is hoping talks provide a timeout from bilateral friction that allows it to focus on domestic issues; the U.S. wants China to agree to guardrails that allow relations to remain abrasive without getting too hot,” said Robert Daly, director of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States at the Wilson Center. “Those goals are probably irreconcilable.”

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Jordan fires off first subpoenas against Biden admin

Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan unloaded the House GOP's first subpoenas a month into the new majority, demanding records about certain Biden administration decisions regarding threats against school officials during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Jordan (R- Ohio) on Friday sent subpoenas to Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray and Department of Education Secretary Miguel Cardona — requesting a laundry list of documents by March 1, according to a review of the three subpoenas by POLITICO.

The subpoenas, which Jordan formally signed Thursday, are linked to a long-held GOP claim that federal agencies “targeted” parents. It stems from a memo sent by Garland in 2021 about a “spike in harassment, intimidation and threats of violence" against school officials.

Garland and the FBI have strenuously rejected the GOP accusation — which fact checkers have also deemed false — saying their focus was on protecting school board members amid sharply escalating threats of violence, with no emphasis on parents or those raising policy concerns about Covid restrictions.

The subpoenas primarily seek communications between top FBI and Justice Department officials and outside advocates and the Department of Education. Despite the March 1 deadline, subpoenas typically give way to further negotiation that results in shifting due dates and a narrower scope of document production.

Jordan’s quick-trigger finger on the subpoenas underscores the intensely adversarial posture that is likely to define the GOP’s investigations of the Biden administration. It also illustrates Jordan’s effort to maximize his leverage ahead of a potential brawl with the administration over access to sensitive documents.

On the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue, it's the first test of the Biden administration’s willingness to cooperate with some of the red-meat Republican-led House investigations that Democrats largely regard as rooted in conspiracy theories and grievance politics. The administration has repeatedly insisted that it will take the GOP House’s oversight requests seriously and attempt to negotiate document production when possible — for example, the Justice Department, in a Jan. 20 letter obtained by POLITICO, offered “staff-level meetings” to Jordan. But those promises often belie deep distrust and resistance between the branches.

Previewing the fierce political battle to come, Democrats and the White House immediately hit back at Jordan — saying he was marshaling his powerful gavel in pursuit of right-wing conspiracy theories that had largely been debunked.

“Republicans do not want to be bothered by this inconvenient truth,” said Del. Stacey Plaskett (D-V.I.), the top Democrat on the Jordan-led panel probing claims of government politicization, in a statement. Plaskett also made a dig at Jordan’s defiance of a subpoena from the Jan. 6 select committee last year.

Ian Sams, a spokesperson for the White House, added that the subpoenas “make crystal clear that extreme House Republicans have no interest in working together with the Biden Administration on behalf of the American people — and every interest in staging political stunts.”

The information Jordan is requesting largely reflects a months-long push by the Ohio Republican. The White House previously warned him and Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) that they would have to re-submit any requests they made while they were still in the minority.

Among the broad swath of records Jordan is requesting from Garland is any documents or communications between DOJ employees and the National School Boards Association, any guidance that stemmed from Garland’s memorandum on threats against school officials and documents and communications from the task force the Justice Department announced in October that was supposed to discuss potential prosecution of any crimes. A DOJ official confirmed the receipt of the subpoena on Friday.

Jordan, in his subpoena to Wray, asked for documents and communications related to the task force, or the bureau's role, and documents and communications related to a tag the FBI used to track threats against school officials. The committee also conducted a voluntary transcribed interview earlier this week with former FBI official Jill Sanborn as part of its broad investigation into the FBI and DOJ.

The FBI confirmed that it received the subpoena and pushed back on the central claim of Jordan’s investigation.

"As Director Wray and other FBI officials have stated clearly on numerous occasions before Congress and elsewhere, the FBI has never been in the business of investigating speech or policing speech at school board meetings or anywhere else, and we never will be. Our focus is and always will be on protecting people from violence and threats of violence,” the bureau said.

And in the subpoena for Cardona, Jordan is asking for any documents or communications between the Justice Department and Department of Education employees that refers or relates to Garland's memo or the National School Boards Association's letter to President Joe Biden about the rise in threats and asking for input from the FBI, among other entities. The National School Boards Association subsequently apologized for the letter.

The Department of Education had responded to Jordan's January letter on Thursday, according to a copy of the letter obtained by POLITICO. In it, Gwen Graham, an assistant secretary for legislation and congressional affairs, noted that “as the Department has repeatedly made clear … the Secretary did not request, direct any action, or play any role in the development of the September 29, 2021, letter from the NSBA to President Biden.” That, Graham noted, was also “confirmed by an independent review by outside counsel retained” by the National School Boards Association.

Jordan had signaled in his January letters to Wray, Garland and Cardona, among others, that he would use subpoenas if they didn't comply with his requests for records.

“Accordingly, for the final time, we reiterate our outstanding requests … and ask that you provide this material immediately. The Committee is prepared to resort to compulsory process, if necessary, to obtain this material,” he wrote in each of the letters.

Josh Gerstein contributed to this report.

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Florida GOP calls for special session to expand controversial migrant flight program

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Gov. Ron DeSantis will use a special session next week to broaden a controversial immigration program he used in September to fly 50 mostly Venezuelan asylum seekers from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard.

The special session, which legislative leaders called Friday, will include consideration of a bill that would create a “Unauthorized Alien Transport Program,” according to the Florida House and Senate. Lawmakers will also handle other issues during next week’s session, including how to deal with Disney’s Reedy Creek district.

House Speaker Paul Renner (R-Palm Coast) and Senate President Kathleen Passidomo (R-Naples) sent separate memos to their members saying the program is in response to an “influx of migrants landing in the Florida Keys.” The DeSantis administration has used state resources in recent weeks in response to hundreds of mostly Cuban and Haitians landing by boat in the Florida Keys.

The memos don’t contain any specifics about how the program would operate, and legislation on immigration is not yet formally been filed.

The moves by DeSantis and GOP legislative leaders signal that the governor has no intention of stopping his controversial program to transport migrants to Blue strongholds like Massachusetts. His first and only set of flights, in mid-September, caused a massive uproar, with Democrats and immigration advocated accusing DeSantis of using migrants as political pawns.

DeSantis received $12 million for the migrant transport program in his current year budget, which he said was needed to highlight what he called the Biden administration’s failed border policies. The money came from funds connected to federal Covid-19 relieve funds.

The current state budget directs the money only to be used to remove migrants “from this state,” meaning Florida. Because the migrants were sent from Texas last fall, that language has become the subject of a lawsuit from state Sen. Jason Pizzo, a Miami Democrat who says DeSantis violated the spending provision because they were moved from Texas not Florida.

DeSantis’ new proposed program would allow the state to fund future migrant flights that originate anywhere in the United States, according to the proposal. DeSantis’ proposed budget, which was unveiled Wednesday, asks for another $12 million for the program.

Multiple lawsuits have been filed against the DeSantis administration over the migrant flights, including from the Center for Government Accountability, which alleged that the DeSantis administration was withholding public records related to the program. Another, from the Boston-based Lawyers for Civil Rights, accused the governor conducting “premeditated, fraudulent, and illegal scheme” by flying the migrants to Massachusetts.

Documents released in late December showed that DeSantis’ top safety official, Larry Keefe, helped write the language that helped the company responsible for chartering the flights, Vertol Systems, his former law client, secure a state contract to fly the migrants from the San Antonio to Martha’s Vineyard. The records also revealed that Keefe used a non-public email address that made it appear that emails were coming from “Clarice Starling,” the main character in “The Silence of the Lambs.”

Those records were not originally released as part of the lawsuit, but instead were dropped days before Christmas with a note from the DeSantis’ public records office that they originally were unaware of Keefe’s private account.

The state has paid Vertol Systems $4.4 million since September, including $950,000 on Jan. 31, state records show, making the total cost of the program nearly $90,000 for each migrant relocated.

In a September email, James Montgomerie, Vertol’s top executive, told Florida Department of Transportation purchasing administrator Paul Baker, that under the contract, they would transfer “unauthorized aliens from Florida.”

The email indicated that the “humanitarian services” would take place from Sept. 19 through Oct. 3, and said the “wrap around private” would be $950,000. The email does not offer further explanation, but four $950,000 state payments have been made to the company, records show.

Though the administration carried out only one set of flights, in late September it signaled that it was chartering another from Texas to near Rehoboth, the summer vacation spot on the Delaware coast where President Joe Biden has a home. Humanitarian organizations in several states scrambled to be in position to offer services for migrants on the flights. A flight took off but it never landed in Delaware and it’s unclear whether migrants were on board.

During a press conference Wednesday, DeSantis doubled down on his support of the plan amid the growing cost and controversy.

“We have had a deterrent effect, and people are sick of having an open border with no rule of law in this country,” he said.

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