Trouble with tha God

NEW YORK — It’s not so much that Charlamagne tha God has beef with the president.

It’s just that he thinks Joe Biden is a lousy messenger and that he lacks the basic political skills that — whatever one thinks about the guy — Donald Trump possesses.

Sitting in the second row of his black Escalade as his driver crawls through Manhattan traffic on a late October morning, the co-host of the influential “Breakfast Club” radio show said Biden and others in his circle spend too much time posturing.

Instead of thinking of better ways to play up policy achievements, he argues, Democrats rely too much on depicting former President Donald Trump as a crook.

“It’s almost like Democrats are doing this purity test. America is not pure. The people of America are not pure. We’re flawed,” he said. “I’m not looking for my politicians to be pure, … I’m looking for my politicians to be effective.”

Biden has faced similarly tough recriminations from other political luminaries. But coming from Charlamagne, it hits different. The radio host, 45, has a loyal audience of 4 million monthly listeners. He is ascendant, having taken on roles guest hosting “The Daily Show,” starting up his own podcasting empire with iHeartRadio and being inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame. He’s also reaching the very voters Biden is struggling to draw: young and Black.

And increasingly, Charlemagne’s appraisal of the Biden administration has been sour. While he anguishes at the thought of a 2020 rematch, the radio personality gives Trump props for commanding attention and selling his ideas.

Trump relentlessly touted — or, in some cases, gave himself outsized credit for — policies he enacted as president. He signed the First Step Act into law, which brought modest reforms to the federal criminal justice system. He pardoned rappers Lil Wayne and Kodak Black. And he sent stimulus checks, or what a lot of folks commonly refer to as “stimmies,” during the first year of the pandemic.

“Imagine you felt like you’ve never gotten anything from the government, ever. And you don’t know how politics work, you just know you just got this check in the mail, with [Trump’s] name on it,” Charlamagne said. “You will feel like he did something.”

Biden sent checks too. But Charlamagne argues that he failed to play it up the way his predecessor did.

Charlamagne doesn’t consider himself a Democrat or a Republican — a position he says allows him to call bullshit on empty campaign rhetoric politicians spew when they decide it’s time to engage Black audiences to wrangle up votes.

“In 2024, it’s a race between the cowards, the crooks and the couch,” he said, referring to Biden, Trump and the option to stay home.

Charlamagne suspects the couch will win.

Born Lenard (pronounced leh-NARD) Larry McKelvey, Charlamagne’s signature interview style keeps his subjects off balance. He pummels them with direct and — at times — piercing questions that can be uncomfortably personal. He’s not afraid to call out an interviewee for not knowing something he feels should be common knowledge for someone speaking to a largely Black audience.

One example was exposing Education Secretary Miguel Cardona a few years ago for not knowing about the weekslong student protests at the historically Black Howard University over living conditions on the campus.

It’s effective. The show has produced countless viral moments over the years, with one of its earliest scores being a 2013 interview with rapper and fashion mogul Kanye West. Charlamagne opened the conversation by referring to him as “Kanye Kardashian,” then in unrelenting fashion, proceeded to rip him over his “Yeezus” album and relationship with the fashion industry. (A decade later, the rapper, who now goes by Ye, saw a slew of business partnerships severed after a series of offensive and antisemitic remarks.)

He drew widespread praise for the Kanye interview. But other segments even Charlamagne now cringes at. He admits some bits crossed a line, like when he inserted himself into the tiff between 50 Cent and Floyd Mayweather. At the time, the rapper called into question the boxer’s ability to read. Charlamagne, against the urging of his co-hosts, played unedited recordings of Mayweather struggling to record 10-second ad spots for the show.

Reflecting on that period, the media personality told POLITICO he was chasing ratings in those early days, but soon learned that lines are easy to cross. The Mayweather moment in particular triggered many in his audience who struggled with literacy. Other critics took issue with him seeming to perpetuate stereotypes about Black people. The pushback laid the groundwork for a course correction — with the show shifting away from shock jock material and more toward politics and accountability. In particular, Charlamagne grew obsessed with calling elected officials to task for policies that allowed disparities in communities of color to continue unabated.

“He’s able to see through a lot of the brokenness that politics has created, but he is also able to understand a measure of redemptive value when people take it seriously and when people get it right,” said Democrat Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, who is expected to be a top surrogate for Biden during his reelection.

Rising political influence

Charlamagne’s breakout moment as a political influencer came during the contentious and drawn-out 2016 Democratic primary campaign between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Each sought to heavily court Black voters, and both candidates made multiple appearances on the show throughout the campaign season. This provided the perfect opportunity to lean into politics with more regularity.

Clinton’s stop in April that year created a viral moment with the former secretary of state alluding that she, just like Beyoncé, always has hot sauce in her bag (a riff off Queen Bey’s lyrics from the song “Formation”).

A politician willing to talk with a majority Black audience — especially if they can pull off attempts at code switching without seeming to pander — can produce shareable internet moments that can amplify a campaign.

To be clear, Clinton’s comments were not that. While she ultimately would overwhelmingly secure the Black vote in the primary and general election — and though her campaign protested at the time, noting that she really did like hot sauce — the moment was seen by many as textbook political inauthenticity.

But like many moments with Charlemagne at the center, it became embedded in the cultural fabric of today’s politics.

Four years later, it was Biden’s turn to face Charlamagne.

In May 2020, during the height of the pandemic — when it was clear the former VP was well on his way to locking up the nomination — he sat down for an interview over Zoom.

Charlamagne peppered Biden with questions about how he was going to energize voters without leaving his home. The host reminded the future president that many Black folks, himself included, felt the Democratic Party takes their votes for granted.

Near the end of the conversation, Biden explained he had to jump off because his wife, Jill Biden, was scheduled to do a media hit from the same room.

“You can’t do that to Black media,” Charlmagne declared, as he pleaded with Biden for more time. “Because it’s a long way until November, we’ve got more questions.”

“You’ve got more questions, but I tell you … if you’ve got a problem whether or not you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t Black,” Biden said tersely.

A firestorm ensued. Biden apologized not long after. The Trump campaign swiftly capitalized and began hawking $30 #YouAintBlack T-shirts. Biden, despite winning the presidency with more than 90 percent of the Black vote, has in many ways, yet to live this gaffe down.

Neither has Charlamagne.

In August, it came up again when he interviewed former GOP longshot presidential candidate Larry Elder. Charlamagne asked Elder if he had ever had a “nigga wake up call,” which Charlamagne explained is when someone gets reminded that they are a person of color “rather brutally by an unexpected act of racism.”

Elder, a talk radio show host himself, turned the tables on him.

“When Joe Biden insulted you by saying ‘you ain’t really Black’ .... it seems to me that should have been a wake up call on your part,” Elder clapped back.

Charlamagne does not see it that way, and accuses Elder of focusing on trying to manufacture a “gotcha moment” for his then-struggling campaign.

What is clear is that the Biden exchange — which Charlamagne calls “historic” — remains very much central to his identity, a marker through which he (and his relationship with Biden) is now judged.

Charlamagne said he empathizes with the octogenarian president — though he repeatedly questions the president’s mental acuity on air. He suspects that moment in 2020 was “a terrible granddad joke” and actually agrees with the broader sentiment Biden was trying to make to Black voters at that time.

“He’s right. Because all he’s simply saying is if you vote for Trump over me then you’re voting against your own interests,” Charlamagne said.

No second endorsement

Reluctantly, Charlemagne did something he said he rarely does — he endorsed Biden’s 2020 presidential bid. Not because he was enamored by the promise of what Biden was selling, but because he selected Kamala Harris as his vice president. While she was a candidate for the Democratic nomination, she and the radio personality, eager to leave behind his shock jock persona, had forged a mutual friendship.

That too seems a bit distant now.

After more than three years of Biden in office, Charlamagne openly questions his endorsement and why Biden can’t take advantage of simple messaging opportunities, like in October when the president announced the designation of 31 tech hubs across the nation intended to spur innovation. The radio personality fumed on his program that the announcement didn’t include basic information about how it could help average Americans or provide clues to what types of jobs folks should be preparing to apply for or how those jobs would be protected from advancements in artificial intelligence.

“I’m not the highest grade of weed in the dispensary,” he quipped to me. “I’m genuinely asking questions, because I want answers and that is just common sense to me. Yeah, it’s good that you’re making all these investments in tech and everything else. But what does this mean, for regular everyday people?” (Fun fact, one of Charlamagne’s next business ventures is opening up a Hashstoria marijuana dispensary in Newark in early 2024 with partners Raekwon of the Wu-Tang Clan and Bakari Sellers, now a TV pundit.)

The administration has periodically back channeled with him, though it’s often to express annoyance with how he is framing an issue. For his part, Charlamagne said the conversations with White House officials are respectful and that he’s never asked him to tone down his rhetoric.

White House officials declined to comment.

Within Democratic circles, including inside the administration, there is a general recognition that the president needs to do more to reach Black voters.

Biden officials convened a meeting at the White House with influential Black Democrats in mid-December to discuss how the administration can better engage Black men ahead of the 2024 elections. And the president has highlighted the administration’s successes helping Black-owned businesses at a recent stop in Milwaukee before Christmas.

Administration officials downplay the idea that Charlamagne is needed to reach this group. But even if they did, his relationship with this White House and in particular Harris, has soured enough that it’s unclear if they could rely on him.

The last time he interviewed her, in December 2021, he pointedly asked on his now-canceled Comedy Central program “Tha God’s Honest Truth” about negotiations over what ultimately became the Inflation Reduction Act: “Who is the real president of this country, is it Joe Manchin or Joe Biden, madam vice president?”

“C’mon Charlamagne,” she said, clearly peeved at the tone of the question. “It’s Joe Biden. And don’t start talking like a Republican about asking whether or not he’s president.”

This moment, like the one with Biden, came after the interview was supposed to have wrapped. Former press aide Symone Sanders tried to cut it off, only for Harris to take on additional questions.

More than two years later, Charlamagne says he feels some vindication, pointing to speculation Manchin may launch a third party White House bid. But it also marked a remarkable shift in his relationship with Harris that was once much more congenial.

Charlamagne stumped with then-presidential candidate Harris in 2019 in Goose Creek, South Carolina. It was there that she unveiled her plan to tackle the nation’s mental health crisis, something of a personal topic to Charlamagne, who has used his platform to speak about his own mental health struggles and tried to destigmatize the issue for Black men.

Since then, he said, Harris and the rest of the Biden administration have not adequately elevated mental health awareness as an issue or done enough promoting criminal justice reforms, particularly on marijuana offenses.

The White House announced a proposed rule in July that closed a loophole that previously allowed health care providers to deny care for mental health disorders and substance abuse. Biden also announced last October that he was pardoning all federal offenses for simple weed possession.

But that wasn’t enough for Charlamagne, who also said has no plans to throw his support behind Biden’s reelection. He said he feels burned by backing Harris.

“I’ve learned my lesson from doing that,” he said. “Once they got in the White House, she … kind of disappeared.”

He suspects neither Biden nor Harris will make a return to “The Breakfast Club” this cycle.

Charlamagne knows his word holds weight with his audience. “When I give people my word like: ‘Yo man, I think we should be supporting Kamala Harris for vice president … because she’s going to hold it down.’ When we say those things and people don’t see her holding it down, that causes issues,” he said.

He says he still gets blowback from it. “‘Damn, you told us to vote for [them].’ Do you know how many people say that to me all the time?”

Biden’s perpetual critic

There’s a difference, of course, between not endorsing someone and actively criticizing. And for the Biden White House, Charlamagne has become something of an irritant, whether it’s raising questions about the president’s political acumen or helping elevate longshot presidential hopefuls Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Marianne Williamson and Cornel West — but not, notably, Biden or Harris.

His personal favorite seems to be a fellow South Carolinian, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley.

When she appeared on “The Daily Show” with Charlamagne in December he asked: “Why doesn’t the GOP just move away from Trump and get behind you?”

He believes Haley could “definitely” beat Biden — something polling backs up.

Such proclamations make Charlamagne a growing fixture in the conservative media ecosystem.

Fox News and other conservative outlets routinely write about Charlamagne’s digs on the Biden administration, helping to amplify his reach and showcase what many always knew was the case: Biden does not have unified Black support.

For his part, Charlamagne says he does not fully understand conservatives’ obsession with what he does on “The Breakfast Club” or any of his other outlets. At the end of the day, he notes, he is an entertainer and knows that ratings, eyeballs and clicks are good for business.

The posture has earned him his own chorus of critics, who say his push for audience and relevance is blinding him to a very obvious pitfall: His relentless criticisms of Biden may unintentionally elevate Trump, which some Democrats argue will be detrimental for Black voters.

Still, there are other Democrats — particularly those outside of the Biden administration — who understand the unique perch Charlamagne occupies.

There may only be one God. But there’s also only one Charlamagne too.

“I have enormous respect for him, he’s one of the greatest influences of our time,” said Donna Brazile, a longtime Democratic strategist who has appeared on “The Breakfast Club” numerous times.

“He represents a different generation, a different voice, he reaches people that typically do not follow the breaking news each and every day,” she noted.

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RIP ‘worker-centered trade’: Biden’s global economic agenda stalls

President Joe Biden’s ambitious plans to rewrite the rules of global trade — and blunt Donald Trump’s economic message against him — are running aground just as the nation enters election season.

The chief reason: Biden has failed to sell his self-styled “worker-centered” trade policy to key members of his own party, stoking fears of a backlash at the ballot box from the very workers the president and fellow Democrats are courting.

That reality became clear in San Francisco last November, where Biden planned to unveil his signature trade initiative — an economic pact with 13 other Indo-Pacific nations. At the last minute, Biden’s team unexpectedly punted the trade portion of the talks, after Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown and other Democrats warned the proposal could hurt workers (and, implicitly, their election prospects). Even if the president’s agenda was designed to staunch the flow of jobs overseas, perception that it wouldn’t was what mattered most for Brown and at-risk Democrats across the industrial Midwest.

“There were some big concerns that we would be retreating back to the day where trade was a race to the bottom, especially for workers,” said Sen. Tammy Baldwin, a Wisconsin Democrat facing a tough reelection campaign this year who, along with Brown and other senators, successfully pressed Biden to pause the Indo-Pacific trade talks. “And, even if their framework wasn’t really a retreat on the progress we’ve made … the perception would be there.”

The about-face from the Biden administration shocked representatives from other Indo-Pacific nations, who had planned to announce the pact during the biggest diplomatic event of Biden’s term — the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. Despite Biden’s pledge to continue talks this year, senators and trading partners alike doubt the deal will get done, cognizant that an election year will only accentuate political backlash against trade.

“It’s gone,” Brown said of the trade section of the Indo-Pacific deal. “They backed off it, so it’s done.”

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Biden’s initiatives were meant to show that his team could resolve the fundamental contradiction in American trade policy: Designing a global trade agenda that serves American interests abroad without sparking a domestic political backlash that could doom both the policies and the president that proposed them.

The high-profile reversal in San Francisco was just the most recent setback in Biden’s trade agenda. U.S. officials have also hit a stalemate in their talks with the European Union to address the tariffs Trump levied on EU steel and aluminum when he was president — an issue key to Midwestern steel workers. The White House has also backed away from a binding trade pact the president pitched to Latin American countries in 2022; U.S. officials are now pushing a more modest, voluntary framework.

Those moves reveal that Biden and Democrats still fear that trade initiatives, even those framed as “worker centered,” could be an electoral liability in battleground states that Trump wooed with a protectionist message in 2016. Though Biden’s team has tried to differentiate its own policy to counter Trump’s agenda, members of his own party now worry those efforts will backfire at the ballot box.

“The politics on this are a bit less nuanced and more anti-trade than some folks in the administration had been thinking when they embarked on this endeavor,” said Peter Harrell, who led the international economics team on Biden’s National Security Council until November 2022. “At the end of the day the voter in Dayton, [Ohio], looks at this and says: trade deals have been bad for me, I don’t want more trade deals. This sounds an awful lot like a trade deal, and I’m against it.”

The administration insists its trade agenda isn’t dead. While trade was jettisoned from the Indo-Pacific talks, the U.S. still struck pacts with Asia-Pacific nations on supply chains, anti-corruption and clean energy, they point out. And Biden’s new global investment agenda — meant to counter China’s aggressive foreign infrastructure lending — also showed signs of progress late last year. Changing the paradigms of global trade is hard, they argue, and the U.S. has made considerable progress already.

“I think that what we are encountering is a resistance to change and a slowness to coming to the realization of what we're trying to do,” U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai told reporters after the Indo-Pacific talks collapsed, referring to critics in Congress and on K Street. “But it's happening.”

But outside of the administration, even Biden’s allies concede that the year-end debacle could be a fatal blow for the president’s global economic agenda this term. No trade issues are likely to be resolved with an election looming, they said, so if Biden’s team is to succeed in revamping the global economy, they may have to win reelection first.

“Today, it looks like trade is probably going to be a post-election agenda, and it will obviously look quite different depending on whether we get a Biden term two or a Trump term two” said Harrell. “I think it’s a shame because, while big comprehensive trade deals have never been first term president projects, I feel we should have been able to make some headway.”

A new-look trade framework

The Indo-Pacific deal counted on policy nuance to resolve political discontent with traditional trade pacts. The unpopular part of past global trade deals, Biden’s team reasoned, was that they encouraged job outsourcing by lowering tariffs and offering foreign competitors access to the U.S. market.

So, Biden’s team decided it would simply leave tariffs and market access out of the negotiations and engage on what it saw as positive aspects of trade, like encouraging higher labor and environmental standards abroad, along with coordination on supply chains, anti-corruption and clean energy. That approach has animated its trade talks not just in Asia, but Latin America and elsewhere.

“The administration’s theory is if the U.S. doesn't offer market access, then the U.S. shouldn’t have an adverse political dynamic,” said Harrell.

That approach to trade had some immediate benefits for Biden — like cutting out Congress. Any trade agreement that adjusts tariffs or market access rules would trigger a vote from the legislature, opening a gauntlet of negotiations. Take those parts of the deal off the table, and the administration figured it could strike a so-called “executive agreement” with other nations and not worry about Capitol Hill.

The Biden administration's most significant goal was to use trade to raise labor and environmental standards in other nations — as opposed to past deals that incentivized outsourcing to nations with lower standards. Tai and her allies aimed to turn that paradigm on its head, using the promise of foreign investment to encourage a “race to the top” on domestic rules.

In traditional trade deal talks, other economies would usually expect something in return for instituting the labor and environmental rules that the U.S. wants — namely, lower tariffs and more access to the U.S. market. That wouldn’t change in this negotiation just because the U.S. wanted tariffs off the table.

But instead of that traditional quid-pro quo, Tai’s strategy started with an appeal to trading partners’ self interest. Foreign trading partners — particularly U.S. allies in the Indo-Pacific region including Japan and South Korea — should want to raise their labor and environmental standards for the good of their own workers, Tai argued, and other nations agreeing to do the same could create a rising tide that lifted workers across multiple economies.

But there was another, more implicit, motivation as well. If foreign trading partners brought their labor and environmental standards closer to those in the West, they would be in a better position to benefit from the other side of Biden’s international economics agenda — a surge in infrastructure project financing backed by the U.S. and Western banks. Those initiatives, meant to combat China’s Belt and Road initiative, were negotiated under the non-trade portions of the Indo-Pacific pact, as well as separate infrastructure programs Biden unveiled at the G-20 summit earlier last year.

Indo-Pacific economic flop

Less than a week before the scheduled unveiling of the Indo-Pacific pact, administration officials remained optimistic a final deal was in sight, telling reporters they expected to announce most of the pact’s trade provisions in San Francisco, some of which would be legally binding.

But that never came together. In the final rounds of negotiation, some countries continued to object to new labor and environmental standards without getting more in return from the U.S. government. The self-interest argument simply wasn’t enough.

“It’s not a secret that the United States for a while now has pushed for high standards in these areas and that some of our trading partners find that difficult,” said a senior administration official, granted anonymity to discuss ongoing negotiations. “Even though that can be the case, the United States — especially under President Biden — is not going to back away from the importance of these things.”

Back in Washington, lawmakers were aghast. Congressional Democrats had complained for months that the administration hadn’t properly consulted with Congress on the negotiations. Now, with labor and environmental provisions in doubt, their skepticism morphed into outright opposition.

Just a week before the pact’s planned unveiling, Brown, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, told his colleagues at a lawmaker lunch that he would publicly oppose the entire package unless Biden dropped the trade pillar completely. Facing a tough reelection in increasingly Republican Ohio this year, the third-term senator said he would rather have no deal than a deal that lacked binding labor and environmental protections.

“I want there to be trade between nations,” Brown insisted after derailing the deal. But “I don’t want it to be about corporate giveaways and hurting workers.”

Other Democrats quickly piled on. Senate Finance Chairman Ron Wyden — increasingly frustrated with the administration over what he viewed as inadequate consultation on the Indo-Pacific negotiations — said he endorsed Brown’s view.

“I am going to oppose flawed trade proposals,” Wyden told POLITICO. “And what we have seen thus far on trade is Congress being pushed to the side, and I consider that to be flawed.”

Both Brown and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called the White House to urge it to drop trade provisions. The message from lawmakers was simple: the Indo-Pacific trade provisions could hurt Brown, Baldwin and Biden’s reelection campaigns, giving Republicans an opening to paint the deal as a job-outsourcing global trade agreement.

It was a particularly penetrating criticism for Tai. Since the start of the administration, she had urged Biden to tread lightly on trade issues, saying the backlash over the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a far more ambitious 12-nation agreement negotiated by former President Barack Obama, was a key to Trump’s 2016 victory over Hillary Clinton in a handful of Midwestern swing states.

The eventual collapse of Biden’s deal felt all too familiar to trading partners after the U.S. reversal on the TPP last decade. Trump withdrew from that agreement as one of his first official actions when he took office.

“We understand the political environment in which the Americans are dealing with these sorts of issues,” Australian trade minister Don Farrell told POLITICO in San Francisco shortly after the trade pillar was jettisoned. “Nobody wants to see a repeat of the 2016 situation with the Trans-Pacific Partnership.”

The fallout

In public, trading partners put on a brave face, each pledging to continue the Indo-Pacific economic conversations this year. When regional leaders unveiled the rest of the pact onstage with Biden in San Francisco, only Singapore’s prime minister even mentioned the jettisoned trade portion of the deal, saying “it takes time to work through sensitive areas,” adding conspicuously — “and choose the best moment to commit to the deal.”

But behind the scenes, foreign delegations were less sanguine. The U.S. decision to pull the plug on trade “came as quite a shock,” said a delegation member from an Asian nation, rubbing tired eyes underneath their glasses as they rushed between meeting rooms in a cavernous San Francisco hotel. “We’ve done seven rounds” of negotiation already, said the person, granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the deal. “Everybody is drained out.”

“We are very pessimistic” about finishing the deal in 2024, added another official from an Indo-Pacific nation in San Francisco, also speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the press about the negotiations. “Next year is an election year.”

It’s unclear which nations objected to the labor and environmental provisions, but the developing countries in the pact — such as Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia — would have the most reason to oppose them. During his remarks at the APEC CEO summit, Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. decried nations that “discriminate” on trade based on labor and environmental rules.

Marcos did not specify exactly which environmental policies his government opposes. But in an interview with POLITICO the next day, his own trade minister said the Philippines had no objection to U.S. demands in the talks.

“In the context of the [the Indo-Pacific pact], we are aligned with the overall direction of having higher standards when it comes to the environment,” Secretary of Trade and Industry Alfredo E. Pascual told POLITICO. “In fact, for us, we like that because that is a way for us to differentiate the Philippines [from] other countries who might be having problems.”

In remarks to reporters, Tai said she believed the problem was less with the foreign governments themselves, and more with the guidance they got from Western consultants and business lobbies who clung to the old paradigms of free trade and globalization.

“I think it might be the fancy consultants that they have hired in Washington advising them not to” agree to higher labor and environmental standards, Tai said. Those same corporate interests, she added, had been “kicking IPEF like a lonely dog in a back alley for the past year and a half.”

The road ahead

The Biden administration stresses that its broader global economic agenda in the Asia-Pacific remains on track. The Indo-Pacific agreement won’t address trade issues for now, but countries finalized voluntary agreements on supply chain coordination, anti-corruption and clean energy.

More significantly, the administration announced a new infrastructure partnership that it says will help open up access to Western financing for Indo-Pacific nations that want to build clean energy projects or other forms of infrastructure.

That agenda has made some legitimate strides. In San Francisco, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo unveiled tens of billions of dollars in new funding for infrastructure projects in the region, much of it coming from the likes of Western financial institutions like Citi or Blackrock, whose CEOs flanked Raimondo at the kickoff event.

Those advances in the administration’s investment agenda are welcome, said Harrell. But they remain “base hits” and not “not triples or home runs” in the twin races against climate change and Chinese influence.

And many trading partners want to see more. In addition to completing the Indo-Pacific pact’s trade provisions, the Philippines wants to open negotiations on a critical minerals deal with the United States that could see it gain access to some of the tax incentives for electric vehicles created by Democrats’ landmark 2022 climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act.

Japan has already signed such an agreement, and talks are underway with the European Union on a similar one, but Pascual, the Philippines minister, said his country’s talks with the U.S. have not yet started. From his perspective, the U.S. should want that deal more than the Philippines.

“I've been to China eight times just this year — seven of those are in the past three months — because of very serious intention, very serious discussions with [Chinese] high tech companies who would like to invest in the Philippines for mineral processing, for [wind energy] turbines, blades, for monopiles — for renewable energy,” Pascual said.

“Our intention is to add value to our minerals,” he added. “But if the U.S. is slow on that, I’ll tell you, the Chinese are very aggressive.”

Part of an occasional POLITICO series: The Changing Landscape of Global Trade.

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Washington helps millions pay their internet bills. This spring that help could go away.

Rolanda Hayden may owe her job to a fast home internet connection — and a benefit from Washington that lets her afford it.

The 56-year-old resident of mountainous Brevard, N.C., started receiving federal aid that helps low-income people pay for broadband internet while she was studying for her bachelor’s degree during the coronavirus pandemic. The criminal justice degree helped her get a job at a local courthouse — and she still receives the aid, which has effectively reduced her broadband bill to $0.

“I’m blessed,” she said. “Happy as a clam.”

But far from Hayden’s rural home, Washington is battling over whether to keep the program going — potentially cutting off more than 22 million households from a subsidy they’ve come to rely on. It launched with bipartisan support in 2020, but is now trapped in a partisan war between Democrats who want to renew it, and Republicans worried it will let President Joe Biden take too much of a victory lap during a campaign year.

Known officially as the Affordable Connectivity Program, the federal subsidy that keeps Hayden’s broadband on is predicted to run out of money by April. And because of its unique launch — initially, as emergency pandemic relief signed by former President Donald Trump and later codified in Biden’s infrastructure law — it’s a large federal benefit with no long-term funding mechanism and no clear way to pay for it going forward.

If Congress can’t find a way to fund the program by spring, the federal government will have to quickly unwind it. A failure could also come with political consequences at a critical time ahead of 2024, giving voters in swing states a cause for frustration at politicians yanking away aid.

The Federal Communications Commission, which runs the program, estimates that 3 million more will be enrolled by April. The benefit offers $30 a month for most eligible consumers, who also frequently enjoy low-cost internet plans from participating providers — a situation that often means free internet.

Since it launched, the subsidy effort has run through much of the initial $17.4 billion allocated by Congress, including $14.2 billion from the 2021 infrastructure law and $3.2 billion from its emergency predecessor.

The politics around it have also changed in the three years since it launched. Broadband access is a largely bipartisan issue, creating economic opportunity in rural red states and blue inner cities. Trump signed the initial pandemic relief law that created its emergency forebear, and many of its beneficiaries live in deep-red districts. But the subsidies are now seen as a Democratic initiative, and several prominent members of the GOP have begun to warn the program could be a wasteful expansion of government.

And the House, now GOP-led, is struggling to agree on how to keep the doors of government open at all, much less finding new ways for popular programs to survive under a Democratic president.

“Losing this program would be huge,” Hayden said in an interview. “I would have to give up the internet.”

To keep the broadband program alive, ragtag coalitions have been assembling for the last several months rallying for more funding. The effort has brought together consumer and community advocates, the telecom industry and its allies, the AARP and even some veteran Washington conservatives who favor the voucher-style structure allowing money to flow to consumers, without putting bias in favor of any one technology. Local leaders visited Washington this summer to brief Hill staff about the program’s successes and have kept up that pressure in recent months.

The telecom industry, meanwhile, likes the program because it means customers. Some providers are already urging customers to pressure Congress.

There’s one additional layer of bureaucratic complexity: Many state governments are laying out their own plans that rely on the Affordable Connectivity Program for funding. The Commerce Department will soon dole out $42.5 billion to states to build more broadband infrastructure, and the Biden administration has required them to include affordable broadband as a condition of receiving grants.

With the ACP in flux, it’s increasingly unclear how states, whose final spending proposals were due to the federal government Dec. 27, will navigate these grant requirements. That’s led governors and other state officials — including from rural Republican states — to crank up the pressure on Congress.

“We were stumping for eight hours on the Hill yesterday, and it is not looking good,” Kansas Broadband Development Office Director Jade Piros de Carvalho warned attendees of the U.S. Broadband Summit in mid-November.

Top Biden aides early on saw the political benefit of driving up enrollment, and the administration has kept up an active recruitment campaign. More than a year ago, White House infrastructure adviser Mitch Landrieu declared during a forum hosted by broadband trade group USTelecom that more sign-ups would make it “much harder” for Congress to let the program die.

Biden has pledged to add all eligible families to the program over time, which would mean gradually adding another 30 million households. The push has included a road show over the last two years where top officials like Landrieu, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and mayors of major cities trumpet the initiative.

Nathan Kuenstler serves as a volunteer ambassador for the program in Austin, Texas, alongside his mother, in connection with the local housing authority’s work. His work as an ambassador means handing out fliers and speaking to people at events, where he says the aid can change a person’s economic situation.

“$30 makes a difference budgeting for anything,” said Kuenstler, who also receives the aid while attending classes at the nearby community college. “That gives me $30 more to spend on my groceries in a week — $30, I can get gas, I can get milk, 36 eggs, some cheese, tortillas.”

But the more people enroll, the more will be affected if the funding runs out. Early in 2024, the agency would have to let providers know they’ll need to notify enrollees and halt new sign-ups as well as stop enrollment advocacy, FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel cautioned lawmakers during a Nov. 30 hearing. She touted the program as a model for the rest of the world.

Democratic lawmakers warn of dire consequences that should be fueling greater urgency.

“If the funding runs out, millions of Americans will be cut off,” Rep. Doris Matsui of California, the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce telecom subcommittee, said in an interview. “You can’t take things away from people who finally get it and are using it and understand how important it is in their lives.”

At the center of the problem is a fast-changing and increasingly political game of chicken on Capitol Hill.

The funding question involves multiple congressional players, including appropriators as well as the Commerce panels tasked with reviewing FCC operations. In late October, the White House issued a formal request for $6 billion to keep the program running through 2024.

Matsui, who helps helm House Democratic telecom efforts as a subcommittee leader, initially outlined a goal of obtaining more funding by the end of December, speaking to POLITICO in August ahead of the fall session and emphasizing the program’s funding as a top priority for her colleagues, who have repeatedly raised the concern in hearings throughout 2023. But as fall weeks ticked by, it seemed like there were cascading crises over even more basic questions, such as whether the government itself would be funded or who would serve as House speaker.

Amid the political turmoil, pessimism quickly took hold.

“The situation in the House is affecting everything,” Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), who chairs the Communications, Media and Broadband Subcommittee, told POLITICO in October. “The dysfunction and the civil war that we’re seeing play out is holding everything up.”

Many Republicans say they’re skeptical of allocating billions more to the program without better information about how it’s administered and the extent it’s helped expand the country’s number of internet users. Senate Commerce ranking member Ted Cruz and GOP Whip John Thune have both publicly worried about possible waste, fraud and abuse in the program.

Republicans point to a Government Accountability Office report from last January that found the FCC could improve how it measured the program’s performance and managed the risk of fraud, and dinged the agency for having no anti-fraud strategy. (The GAO says the agency has since resolved this specific strategy concern.) Weak FCC oversight could mean the agency might not be able to root out problems such as duplicate subscribers.

The FCC inspector general, meanwhile, has found signs of wrongdoing. In one case in 2022, for example, more than a thousand Oklahoma households signed up using the identity of the same eligible individual, a four-year-old child on Medicaid. It found this wasn’t an isolated problem, if rarely that egregious.

More recently in September, the IG chided the commission and described an internet service provider that improperly claimed nearly $50 million in benefits over a year and had to voluntarily repay the government. Within hours, the FCC announced additional measures to bolster program accountability.

The FCC’s inspector general is conducting a broader performance audit of the agency’s implementation of the Affordable Connectivity Program, with results expected by early 2024. Some Republicans want to see the findings before deciding how to proceed. The FCC, for its part, has said the agency would resolve the entirety of GAO concerns by the end of 2023.

House Energy and Commerce Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), whose panel oversees the FCC and would be central to any legislative negotiations, has declined to say whether she would support a boost of funding. In addition to the fraud concerns, she and other Republicans have questioned whether the aid is truly increasing broadband access for Americans who need it and seem to suspect many enrollees would be able to afford broadband without it.

“We’re still looking at it and trying to get more feedback as far as where the money’s been used,” she told POLITICO in September.

Republicans seem to think a lapse may not be as dire as Democrats think, and aren’t ruling out letting the program simply expire. During the Nov. 30 House hearing, Rep. John Joyce (R-Pa.) downplayed the consequences of a lapse. He posited a certain share of the 22 million low-income households had likely subscribed to broadband internet before the benefit, even though they had to pay more, and said he wanted clearer data addressing that.

The GOP concerns could lead to a negotiated solution where lawmakers restrict the eligibility criteria or subsidy amounts in exchange for further funding, although there is likely to be much sparring over what changes to make, if any. And there’s currently little bipartisan discussion apparent at all.

Joel Thayer, a telecom lawyer and former GOP staffer who leads a nonprofit called the Digital Progress Institute, is concerned the partisan bickering could backfire on Republicans, who will take the blame if the program ends. And he predicted broad backlash: “I don't care what political party you're in. You're about to get a lot of angry calls when the ACP money runs out.”

The program does have some Republican support. Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) led a letter signed by eight Republicans asking the White House to support the program in June by using unobligated Covid aid. And in August, Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) and Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) signed onto a bipartisan House Problem Solvers Caucus letter asking to include more funding in an appropriations bill. Republican governors, too, are among those seeking to pressure Congress.

Another unresolved question is just where the money would come from, particularly for the long-term future of the subsidy beyond 2024.

Some lawmakers want to tie the funding to the FCC’s Universal Service Fund. That would provide a permanent stream of revenue that is raised from service charges on phone bills, but policymakers largely agree that system requires much deeper reform — and it’s unlikely Washington can resolve those issues before the aid program’s money lapses.

Lawmakers have also eyed using revenue from FCC spectrum auctions to fund the program, although efforts to pass wide-ranging spectrum legislation have floundered over the last year amid unrelated interagency fights.

Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.) recently pledged to soon introduce legislation to help secure all the requested funding for the benefit, although she hasn’t disclosed details of this strategy. In November, Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) also promised to file legislation that would force tech giants to foot the cost of the Affordable Connectivity Program’s operations.

Whatever happens, however, will likely require broad GOP buy-in.

Program advocates are appealing to Republican instincts around their voters, showcasing data like the exact number of households that receive aid in each lawmaker’s district.

Politically significant states like Ohio, Florida and Texas each count more than a million enrolled households each. The new House speaker, Mike Johnson of Louisiana, represents a district where 29 percent of households are enrolled in the program — nearly double the average congressional district.

For enrollees like Hayden, the distant battle in Washington is alarming from where she sits in North Carolina. It’s an issue Hayden believes goes beyond politics and speaks to broader societal fairness.

“I care less about Democrats and Republicans — to me, we’re all in the same boat together,” she told POLITICO. “I understand about party lines and all this stuff, but I think that’s petty when you see that a program can actually work and benefit the people. Then let it benefit.”

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The USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier is returning home after extended deployment defending Israel

After months of extra duty at sea providing protection for Israel, the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier strike group will be heading home, the Navy announced on Monday.

The Ford and its accompanying warships will be replaced by the amphibious assault ship the USS Bataan and its accompanying warships, the USS Mesa Verde and the USS Carter Hall. The three vessels had been in the Red Sea and have been transiting toward the Eastern Mediterranean over the last few days.

The Ford will sail for home “in the coming days,” the U.S. 6th Fleet, the European-based U.S. naval command that's responsible for ships sailing in the Mediterranean, said in a statement.

The Ford was sent to the Eastern Mediterranean to be within striking distance of Israel since the day after Hamas' Oct. 7 attacks. The carrier stayed in the Eastern Mediterranean while its accompanying warships had sailed into the Red Sea, where they repeatedly intercepted incoming ballistic missiles and attack drones fired from Houthi-controlled Yemen. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin visited the Ford last month.

Since it was extended in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Ford and the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier have been part of a two-carrier presence bracketing the Israel-Hamas war, underscoring U.S. concerns that the conflict will widen. The Eisenhower has recently patrolled near the Gulf of Aden, at the mouth of the Red Sea waterway, where so many commercial vessels have come under attack in recent weeks.

On Sunday, helicopters from the Eisenhower and its destroyer the USS Gravely responded to a distress call from the container ship Maersk Hangzhou, which was under attack by four Iranian-backed Houthi small boats. As the helicopters responded, the boats fired at them with crew-served weapons and small arms and the helicopters returned fire, sinking three of the four boats and killing their crews, the U.S. Central Command said.

The incessant attacks on the commercial ships have led some companies to suspend transits through the narrow Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which connects the Gulf of Aden to the southern Red Sea and then the Suez Canal.

The Bataan's accompanying warship the Mesa Verde is a transport dock ship, carrying approximately 2,000 Marines from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit. Those Marines provide “forces capable of supporting a wide range of missions,” the U.S. 6th Fleet said.

The Carter Hall is a dock landing ship, which carries amphibious landing craft and their crews. Both vessels and the Bataan can support rotary aircraft; the Bataan can also carry and support Marine Corps' F-35 vertical takeoff fighter aircraft.

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In rare apology, Israeli minister says she ‘sinned’ for her role in reforms that tore country apart

JERUSALEM — A former member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Cabinet offered a rare public apology Sunday for contributing to the internal strife in Israel that preceded the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas militants from the Gaza Strip.

The mea culpa by Galit Distel Atbaryan, a lawmaker from Netanyahu’s Likud Party, was one of the first times a Likud member has accepted responsibility for the polarized atmosphere ahead of the attack, which triggered a devastating war that has continued for nearly three months.

Distel Atbaryan appeared to accept the argument that the internal divisions created perceptions of weakness that encouraged Hamas to attack.

“I’m here sitting and telling you, the democratic, secular public: I sinned against you, I caused pain for you, I caused you to fear for your lives here, and I am sorry for this,” she told Channel 13 TV.

Distel Atbaryan added that she was taking responsibility for her role in the massive protests and civil discord that erupted after Netanyahu’s right-wing government attempted to implement a far-reaching overhaul of the judicial system. The crisis sparked mass protests, alarmed business leaders and former security chiefs, and drew concern from the United States and other close allies.

“I was one of those people that caused the state to be weakened, that harmed people,” she said. “I created a split, I created a rift, and I created tension. And this tension brought weakness. And this weakness, in many ways, brought massacre.”

Distel Atbaryan, who served as public diplomacy minister, was one of Netanyahu’s strongest supporters and drew attention for her harsh criticism of his opponents.

But days after the Oct. 7 attack, she resigned when it was clear that other government ministries were handling her responsibilities.

Distel Atbaryan said the office was a “waste of public funds” during wartime. She has remained as a member of parliament in the Likud.

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Former Texas Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson dies at 88

Former Texas Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, a trailblazing Black Democrat in who served in Congress for 30 years, has died at 88, her son said Sunday

“I am heartbroken to share the news that my mother, Eddie Bernice Johnson, has passed away. She was a remarkable and loving mother, mother-in-law, grandmother and great grandmother, as well as a trailblazer and public servant,” her son, Kirk Johnson, wrote in a post on Facebook.

“While we mourn the loss of an extraordinary woman, we celebrate her life and legacy. She will be deeply missed.”

Johnson was born in Waco, Texas, on Dec. 3, 1935, and worked as a nurse before she was elected to the state legislature, becoming the first Black woman to represent Dallas in the state Senate since Reconstruction. According to the Almanac of American Politics: "She told the [Dallas] Morning News in 1987 that she first got interested in politics in the early 1960s, when she went to buy a new hat and was shocked to learn that blacks in the city weren't allowed to try on such headgear. She organized a boycott of the store."

She ascended to Congress in 1992, and later became the first Black woman to chair the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.

In 2021, Johnson announced that she would not seek reelection in 2022. Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) won the race to fill Johnson’s seat, with the congresswoman’s support.

Tributes to Johnson began to pour out Sunday from local politicians and her former congressional colleagues.

“I am stunned and saddened to learn of the passing of my dear friend, Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson. Congresswoman Johnson was a groundbreaking leader for this country and for our state and city, and there really are no words to express my profound sense of grief and loss at the passing of this legendary American,” Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson wrote on XSunday.

“Today, the world has lost a trailblazer, and Texas has lost one of its most dedicated public servants and iconic leaders,” Crockett said in a statement. “Everyday that passes is a day that I dedicate to continuing her work and attempting to fill her shoes.”

“North Texas and our nation mourn the loss of Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson. Congresswoman Johnson was a trailblazer, friend, and mentor to many, including myself,” Rep. Marc Veasey (D-Texas) posted.

“Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson's life was a demonstration of the importance of leadership with a purpose, the power of perseverance, and the impact of lifting others as we climb,” Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.) wrote on X. “I'll miss her dearly and am praying for her loved ones during this difficult time.”

Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), who joined Congress the same year as Johnson, described her as, “a treasured colleague, trusted confident, and most importantly, a dear friend.”

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America is 'full,' Lindsey Graham says

Sen. Lindsey Graham said Sunday the U.S. is "full" in saying a solution is desperately needed for the surge of migrants at the Southern border.

"When you come to our border, we say: I'm sorry, we're full," the South Carolina Republican said on CBS' "Face the Nation."

The surge of migrants arriving at the southern border and claiming asylum has left a record number of them in legal limbo as they wait for their cases to be resolved.

Graham said the best solution is to ship large numbers of migrants back to where they came, something he said would discourage others from attempting to enter the country: "1.7 million people are ready to be deported. Let’s deport them before we let new people in.”

He also said President Joe Biden should utilize the Title 42 authority that was used during the Covid years to expedite the removal of undocumented immigrants. "It's not complicated," Graham said, twice in a row.

Title 42 authority came from a World War II-era public health law. It allowed for the expulsion of migrants as a matter of public safety, a way to temporarily override legal protections for those seeking asylum. The policy ended in May.

"This is a predictable outcome of bad policy choices made right after Biden became president," Graham said of the current situation.

Efforts in Washington in recent weeks to approve supplemental aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan have floundered because of an inability of Democrats and Republicans to agree on ways to change the immigration system. Graham, a staunch supporter of international aid for America's allies, said doing something about immigration remains the priority.

"I cannot come back to South Carolina, and talk about giving aid to Ukraine and Israel if the border is still broken," Graham said.

Graham also made it clear that he believes that former President Donald Trump, if returned to the White House, would go all-in on the type of measures he supports.

"When Trump gets to be president, if he does, if you're here illegally you're going to be deported," he told host Margaret Brennan. "There's going to be mass deportation under Donald Trump."

Following Graham on the CBS show, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Denver Mayor Mike Johnston both also saw surging immigration as a crisis, but directed their criticism toward Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who has been shipping migrants to their cities without coordinating basic logistics with officials in their communities. (Johnson and Johnston are both Democrats, Abbott a Republican.)

"What we have attempted to do is to create structure and some coordination around this humanitarian crisis," Johnson said of the situation in Chicago, adding that Abbott "is determined to continue to sow seeds of chaos."

Denver's mayor concurred.

"What we don't want is people arriving at 2 in the morning at a city and county building with women and children outside in 10-degree weather and no support," Johnston told Brennan. "And so, we want buses here to do what every other bus does, which is land at a bus station and a bus stop at hours when we can have staff there to receive them and to direct them toward services."

He added: "We just want it to be coordinated, and in a humanitarian way."

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