Sept. 22, 2021, 7:26 a.m. ET

Daily Political Briefing

Treasury must turn over Trump’s taxes to Congress, the Justice Dept. says.

Image
The development does not necessarily mean that former President Donald J. Trump’s tax information would immediately become public.Credit...Cooper Neill for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — The Treasury Department must turn over six years of former President Donald J. Trump’s tax returns to House investigators, the Justice Department said in a legal opinion issued on Friday that most likely paves the way for their eventual release to Congress and potentially to the public.

Hours later, the Treasury told a federal judge that it planned to move ahead.

The 39-page opinion from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel dealt a sharp legal blow to a yearslong campaign by Mr. Trump to keep his tax information secret, reversing a Trump administration position that had shielded the documents from Congress.

Rejecting that view, the Biden administration opinion said that a request for the tax information first lodged in 2019 by the House Ways and Means Committee was legitimate and that the Treasury Department had no valid grounds to refuse it.

“The chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee has invoked sufficient reasons for requesting the former president’s tax information,” the opinion said. “Treasury must furnish the information to the committee.”

Democrats on Capitol Hill, who said they aim to examine the I.R.S.’s presidential audit program and Mr. Trump’s conflicts of interest, hailed the decision as a victory for congressional oversight powers and for national security. The House had sued to enforce the request after the Trump Treasury Department objected, and litigation continues.

“The American people deserve to know the facts of his troubling conflicts of interest and undermining of our security and democracy as president,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a valedictory statement.

Yet even as the decision lowered a key barrier for Congress, it was unlikely to be the final word in the dispute. A highly litigious and determined protector of his financial records, Mr. Trump could seek an injunction in the coming days to try to stop the transfer, setting off a new round of legal wrangling that could take weeks or longer to resolve.

The Treasury Department notified a Federal District Court judge in Washington overseeing the dispute late Friday that it had reached an agreement with the House to hand over the documents, and both sides requested that the court give Mr. Trump until Tuesday to decide.

Even if handed over to Congress, Mr. Trump’s tax information may not become public immediately or at all. Rules governing the sharing of sensitive tax information with the Ways and Means Committee require the panel to vote on whether to share any of the information with the entire House or the public.

Democrats in charge of the committee did not disclose their investigative plans. They have previously indicated that they intend to study the effectiveness of the I.R.S. audit program, including in reviewing possible conflicts of interest for Mr. Trump.

“As I have maintained for years, the committee’s case is very strong and the law is on our side,” Representative Richard E. Neal, Democrat of Massachusetts and the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, said in a brief statement. “I am glad that the Department of Justice agrees and that we can move forward.”

Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer Ronald P. Fischetti did not immediately return phone calls and emails seeking comment on Friday. Reached by phone, Phyllis A. Malgieri, Mr. Fischetti’s legal partner, said, “Knowing him for 32 years, the Italian in him, I’m sure he would have something to say” about the decision. Mr. Trump’s spokeswoman did not immediately return a request for comment.

Mr. Trump’s son Eric Trump and his allies in Congress recoiled at the prospect of his political adversaries gaining access to six years of his personal and business tax data, as well as related I.R.S. files. They accused Mr. Neal and House Democrats of lying about their real intentions, which they claimed were to embarrass and cudgel Mr. Trump.

“Just more harassment … the weaponization of politics and evilness of the far left is hard to comprehend,” Eric Trump, who helps run the family business, wrote on Twitter.

Republicans on Capitol Hill also quickly derided the Justice Department’s opinion as “politically motivated.” They warned that it could usher in a new era of political warfare in which politicians rifled through the tax information of their opponents.

“If politicians in Congress can demand, and ultimately make public, the president’s private tax returns, what stops them from doing the same to others they view as a political enemy?” said Representative Kevin Brady of Texas, the top Republican on the Ways and Means Committee.

The saga over Mr. Trump’s tax returns began more than six years ago, when the reality TV star who made his name in real estate became the first major presidential candidate in decades to refuse to voluntarily release his tax returns. Mr. Trump has long cited federal audits as justification, but his determination to keep them secret has fueled speculation about the health of his finances, whether he inflated his net worth and about possible financial entanglements that could have affected his decision-making as president.

Last year, The New York Times obtained and analyzed decades’ worth of tax information for Mr. Trump and his companies that showed he went years without paying federal income taxes and reported hundreds of millions of dollars in business losses. But the information sought by the House would most likely provide a more comprehensive window into his complex financial dealings.

Mr. Trump was already forced to turn over similar documents to the Manhattan district attorney’s office after the Supreme Court ruled last year that the powers of the presidency did not shelter him from turning them over. That investigation is ongoing, but it resulted in charges that the Trump Organization had helped its executives avoid taxes with fringe benefits hidden from authorities.

The case involving Congress has been more complicated. Mr. Neal originally requested the president’s tax information in 2019 under a little-used section of the federal tax code that allows Congress’s tax-writing committees to obtain any information they want for legislative purposes before later seeking the same information via subpoena.

Mr. Trump’s Treasury secretary at the time, Steven Mnuchin, rejected Mr. Neal’s attempts to gain the records after soliciting an opinion from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which provides legal advice for the executive branch. It ruled at the time that Democrats lacked a “legitimate legislative purpose,” were politically motivated and ought not get the information. Mr. Trump also sued in his personal capacity to block their release.

The House filed its own lawsuit to enforce its subpoena, and that dispute remained unsettled when President Biden took office. Mr. Neal updated his request last month, asking for tax records from 2015 to 2020. He said that they could reveal “hidden business entanglements raising tax law and other issues, including conflicts of interest,” or “foreign financial influences on former President Trump that could inform relevant congressional legislation.”

The decision on Friday by the Justice Department has the potential to short-circuit that legal fight. Writing for the Office of Legal Counsel, Dawn Johnsen, an acting assistant attorney general appointed by Mr. Biden, said her predecessors under Mr. Trump had overstepped their bounds by attempting to second-guess the House’s stated reasons for requesting the tax information.

Rather, she concluded that the department needed to show deference to Congress as a coequal branch of government. “Even if some individual members of Congress hope to see information from the former president’s tax returns disclosed on the public record merely ‘for the sake of exposure,’” she wrote, “that would not invalidate the legitimate objectives that the committee’s receipt of the information in question could serve.”

Still, legal experts said they would be surprised if Mr. Trump did not file an injunction to try to stop the release.

Mr. Trump may be aided by another Supreme Court decision last year related to Trump financial records sought by Congress, said Andy Grewal, a University of Iowa law professor. The justices sent the case back to lower courts, but not before putting in place tough new standards for Congress to meet when pursuing financial information about a president.

“The Biden D.O.J. says the relevance of that case must be limited because Trump has left office,” Mr. Grewal said. “I expect that Trump’s attorneys will dispute that position.”

Alan Rappeport and Katie Benner contributed reporting.

The Senate votes to advance a $1 trillion infrastructure package as senators wrangle over details.

Image
Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Jon Tester of Montana, both Democrats, speaking during a news conference about the infrastructure agreement on Friday.Credit...T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York Times

The Senate voted on Friday to keep a bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure package on track after a last-minute dispute about details of the emerging agreement had threatened to delay its consideration.

By a vote of 66 to 28, with 16 Republicans joining Democrats, the measure survived its second test vote as senators in both parties raced to finalize their deal. They were pushing to make progress before a weekend session to debate the sprawling plan, which would fund roads, bridges and highways as well as broadband and climate resiliency projects.

Senate Democrats want to pass the bipartisan measure and their $3.5 trillion budget blueprint — which they plan to muscle through over Republican opposition — before a summer recess scheduled to begin at the end of next week.

The bipartisan bill hit a temporary snag on Friday after some senators privately balked at a 2,540-page draft circulated on Capitol Hill, saying it contained provisions they opposed.

That prompted the lead negotiators — Senators Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, and Kyrsten Sinema, Democrat of Arizona — to issue an unusual public statement seeking to reassure their colleagues that the bill was not yet finished.

“While various pieces of legislative text have been circulating among members, staff and the public for days, if not weeks, none of it is the final legislative text and should not be considered as such,” they said, adding that a finished product was “close” and that they hoped to make it public later on Friday.

Hours later, the bill — which is expected to provide $550 billion in new funding for physical infrastructure projects — had not yet materialized.

After seeing drafts they had not approved circulating Friday morning, Republicans had raised concern that Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, might be trying to trick them into considering a more liberal-leaning measure than the one agreed upon this week. They also cited lingering disputes over broadband policy and the regulation of cryptocurrency, which is included in the deal as a way to pay for infrastructure projects.

Democrats said there was no deception, and Mr. Portman said the majority leader had promised him that the bipartisan group “has the pen” on the final bill.

After 17 Republicans voted on Wednesday with all 50 members of the Democratic caucus to take up the bill, negotiators were hopeful that even more Republicans would sign on once the text was released.

“We can finish the bipartisan infrastructure bill in a matter of days,” Mr. Schumer said on the Senate floor on Friday.

Senate Democrats also want to act within days on a $3.5 trillion budget blueprint that would carry the remainder of President Biden’s $4 trillion economic agenda, including health care, paid leave and additional provisions to address climate change.

“We are champing at the bit and raring to go,” Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, said Friday of the budget plan, which Democrats plan to move through Congress using a budget maneuver known as reconciliation, shielding it from a filibuster and allowing it to pass with only Democratic votes. “We have to negotiate the details. To negotiate a bill where you have to make 50 out of 50 Democrats feel good about it? I wouldn’t want to have Chuck Schumer’s job.”

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

Justice Dept. sues Texas governor over an executive order on migrants.

Image
Migrants waiting for transportation at the Val Verde Humanitarian Border Coalition, a nonprofit that helps migrants released from detention.Credit...Christopher Lee for The New York Times

The Justice Department sued Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas on Friday in an effort to block an executive order that severely limits the transportation of migrants in the state, calling the order unconstitutional.

The lawsuit was filed a day after Attorney General Merrick B. Garland sent a letter to Mr. Abbott telling him that he must rescind the executive order, which bars private transportation suppliers from providing ground transit to many migrants and makes it harder for them to reach their final destinations in the United States.

The executive order “causes injury to the United States and to individuals whom the United States is charged to protect, jeopardizing the health and safety of noncitizens in federal custody, risking the safety of federal law enforcement personnel and their families, and exacerbating the spread of Covid-19 in our communities,” the Justice Department said in its lawsuit.

The department said that the order obstructed the federal government’s ability to administer immigration law and asked the court to “declare the executive order to be invalid and enjoin its enforcement.”

When Mr. Abbott announced the order on Wednesday, he cited the coronavirus as a risk he hoped to stem by prohibiting anyone but law enforcement officials from providing ground transportation to migrants who had been detained on suspicion of illegal entry, or who would be subject to expulsion under Title 42, a Trump-era policy that allows border officials to expel migrants based on Covid-19 concerns.

Mr. Abbott said in a statement that he had “no intention” of abdicating “the authority under long-established emergency response laws to control the movement of people to better contain the spread of a disaster, such as those known to have Covid-19.”

He accused the Biden administration of creating a constitutional crisis between the federal government and his state because his communities “are overrun and overwhelmed by the record-high influx of migrants,” as well as criminals who profit from the border crisis.

The United States often works with private companies, federal personnel and nonprofits to transport migrants in federal custody to other destinations.

The Justice Department said in its lawsuit that there were “a variety of circumstances in which noncitizens must be transported between locations,” including moving unaccompanied children between Department of Homeland Security facilities, Office of Refugee Resettlement facilities and sponsors, who are often family members.

Noncitizens released by Customs and Border Protection also need transportation, the lawsuit said, “frequently through privately arranged travel by bus or rail, to destinations within Texas and elsewhere” so they can reach their final destinations in the United States.

In his letter to Mr. Abbott, Mr. Garland said that Texas’ order would hinder the release of migrants from detention, exacerbate overcrowding in shelters and other facilities, make it hard for people to appear at their immigration hearings and obstruct the federal government’s work to transport people to Covid-19 test sites.

Mr. Garland called the order “dangerous and unlawful” and said that federal officials would not change their transportation practices.

Mr. Abbott’s order also says that the Texas Department of Public Safety can stop and impound any vehicle under “reasonable suspicion” of violating the directive, a broadly worded directive that immigration advocates said could create a new avenue for racial profiling.

D.H.S. begins deportation flights to swiftly remove migrant families.

Image
Jenny Contreras, 19, from Guatemala, was consoled by Lidia Hernández, 22, after they were deported to Mexico in March.Credit...Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times

The Biden administration announced on Friday that it had started using planes to deport some Central American migrant families that it had determined did not qualify for asylum after the authorities apprehended them at the border.

Families were flown to Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras on flights operated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to the Department of Homeland Security, following the implementation of a new policy.

The “expedited removal” policy, announced on Monday, is one of the most consequential steps the Biden administration has taken to try to deter unauthorized immigration.

In a statement, D.H.S. said that “asylum and other legal migration pathways should be readily available to those who need them,” but added, “Those not seeking protection or who do not qualify will be promptly returned to their country of origin.”

The flights departed from Brownsville, Texas, in the Rio Grande Valley, the border sector that has received the largest number of migrant families.

Since taking office, President Biden has been grappling with a large volume of families and others showing up at the U.S.-Mexico border. The influx has shown no signs of abating amid increasing concerns about the spread of the coronavirus in shelters where migrants are transferred after entering the country.

Under Title 42, a public-health emergency order issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Biden administration has the authority to expel to Mexico any migrants who show up at the border without a visa. But the governments of some Mexican states — including Tamaulipas, across the border from the Rio Grande Valley — have refused to accept families with young children back.

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

U.S. announces more sanctions over human rights abuses in Cuba.

Image
A man was arrested in Havana during a demonstration against the Cuban government in June.Credit...Adalberto Roque/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The Biden administration announced sanctions against the Cuban police force on Friday in response to ongoing human rights abuses against peaceful protesters on the island.

The new round of sanctions, largely symbolic measures that freeze any assets that are in the U.S. and block transactions involving the sanctioned parties, followed similar actions the administration took last week against Cuba’s defense minister and an elite brigade of government security forces over a crackdown on protesters this month.

Activists said at least 150 protesters had been arrested or disappeared during the July 11 demonstrations, and internet service was cut for much of the island to stifle anti-government sentiment. In a statement on Friday, the Treasury Department said that Cuba’s National Revolutionary Police, one of the targets of the new round of sanctions, had been suppressing and attacking protesters.

“Today we are adding sanctions against the revolutionary national police as well as individual sanctions against the chief and deputy chief,” Mr. Biden said Friday at a White House event with Cuban American leaders to discuss the recent demonstrations in Cuba. “We are going to continue to add sanctions on individuals that carry out the regime’s abuses.”

Mr. Biden said the United States was also trying to help provide internet access to the Cuban people to bypass censorship. “You always know something is not going well when a country will not allow their people to be on the internet and being able to make their case known around the world,” he said.

And he said his administration was studying how to make it possible for Americans to transfer money to family members in Cuba “without the Cuban military taking their cut.”

“We hear your voices, and we heard the cries of freedom coming from the island,” Mr. Biden said.

In a country known for repressive crackdowns on dissent, the rallies this month have been shocking. Experts have described them as the first time that so many people have openly protested against Cuba’s Communist government since the Maleconazo uprising, which exploded in the summer of 1994 into a huge wave of Cubans leaving the country by sea.

The sanctions announced Friday target the National Revolutionary Police as well as Oscar Callejas Valcarce, the director of the police, and Eddy Sierra Arias, the deputy director, according to the Treasury Department.

Led by Mr. Callejas and Mr. Sierra, the police unit was photographed confronting and arresting protesters in Havana, including the Movement of July 11 Mothers, a group founded to organize families of the imprisoned and disappeared, the Treasury Department said. A Catholic priest in Camagüey was beaten and arrested while he was defending young protesters. Officers in the police force also beat a group of peaceful demonstrators, including several minors, and used clubs to break up peaceful protests.

“Today’s action serves to further hold accountable those responsible for suppressing the Cuban people’s calls for freedom and respect for human rights,” Andrea M. Gacki, director of the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, said in a statement.

Analysis: Biden’s legacy may be shaped by his getting the infrastructure deal Trump couldn’t.

Image
President Biden had pursued centrist Republicans and Democrats for months in hopes of forging an agreement to lift federal spending on physical infrastructure.Credit...Sarahbeth Maney/The New York Times

President Biden’s success at propelling an infrastructure deal past its first major hurdle this week was a vindication of his faith in bipartisanship and a repudiation of the slash-and-burn politics of his immediate predecessor, President Donald J. Trump, who tried and failed to block it.

Whether or not he can keep the bill on track will go a long way to determining his legacy, and it could be the president’s best chance to deliver on his bet that he can unite lawmakers across the political aisle to solve big problems, even at a time of intense polarization.

The measure still has several hurdles to clear, including anger from progressives in the House who are upset at the concessions Mr. Biden made to court Republicans, and skepticism from G.O.P. lawmakers who could still balk at a bill Mr. Trump has repeatedly panned.

For now, though, Mr. Biden has managed to do what Mr. Trump repeatedly promised but never could pull off: move forward on a big-spending, bipartisan deal to rebuild American roads, bridges, water pipes and more.

Mr. Biden had pursued centrist Republicans and Democrats for months in hopes of forging an agreement to lift federal spending on physical infrastructure. In recent weeks, aides said, he requested several daily briefings on negotiations, personally directed administration strategy on policy trade-offs and frequently phoned moderates in both parties to keep the pressure on for a final deal.

Several senators said the president and his team had spent hours with them in person on Capitol Hill and on the phone hashing out the details of the legislation, including thorny disagreements over how to finance billions of dollars in new spending.

“Joe’s experience in the Senate paid dividends in the presidency,” said Senator Jon Tester, Democrat of Montana, one of the 10 Senate negotiators. “Joe’s willingness to compromise made a huge difference.”

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

Biden meets with top Democrats on voting rights as senators ready a scaled-back proposal.

Image
Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, confirmed on Thursday that a small group of Democratic senators had been meeting to hash out a revised voting rights bill.Credit...Matthew Odom for The New York Times

President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and the top Democrats in Congress met at the White House on Friday to discuss their party’s faltering efforts to pass major voting rights legislation.

Mr. Biden’s meeting with Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York came at a crucial moment, as activists are pushing the president to use his power and Democrats’ control of Congress to protect voting rights while they have the chance. Republican-led states have enacted at least 30 new laws containing a host of new restrictions on voting, and G.O.P. senators have blocked consideration of a Democratic bill that would impose sweeping new federal mandates aimed at overriding them.

Party leaders do not have many options to break through the gridlock. In June, Republicans successfully stalled Democrats’ marquee elections legislation, called the For the People Act, by filibustering it. Democrats’ hopes of changing Senate filibuster rules to bypass Republicans have flagged as a few holdouts within the party continue to oppose such a move. And their window for legislative action is narrow.

Democrats are close to finalizing a scaled-back bill that activists hope could be a battering ram in the fight over the filibuster. The party is also readying legislation to reinforce the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and lawmakers have discussed tucking voting provisions into the $3.5 trillion budget plan advancing in the Senate, which they can push through unilaterally over the opposition of Republicans. But the G.O.P. is largely opposed to all three.

In a statement after the meeting, the White House called passing legislation on the issue a “moral imperative.”

“Recognizing the challenges ahead, the four leaders agreed on the importance of advancing legislation reflecting the priorities and values of those two bills, having them pass the House of Representatives and the Senate, and withstand constitutional challenge,” the statement said.

Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, confirmed on Thursday that a small group of Democratic senators had been meeting to hash out a revised bill that could be released in the coming days. Among them is Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, a moderate who balked at some of the more expansive proposals in the For the People Act and has been a determined holdout on keeping the filibuster intact.

“This isn’t one of these ‘Oh, maybe we’ll get it done,’” Ms. Klobuchar said on Thursday during a call hosted by SiX Action, a progressive group, saying the emerging measure would have provisions on gerrymandering, voting by mail and automatic voter registration. “We are very close to getting an agreement on that bill.”

There is no indication that an accord among a small group of Democrats would draw any more Republican backing than previous proposals have. But activists and progressives want to see the revised measure come up for a vote before the Senate leaves Washington for its August recess, anticipating that it would fail and intensify pressure to dismantle the filibuster.

Mr. Schumer has yet to commit to a timeline, and it is unclear if he would want a full-fledged filibuster fight playing out just as he and Mr. Biden are trying to maneuver a bipartisan infrastructure bill through the Senate.

The revised elections legislation is built around a rough framework provided by Mr. Manchin earlier this year. It is expected to mandate that states provide 15 days of early, in-person voting, including at least two Sundays; a national expansion of mail-in voting; an end to partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts; a national voter identification requirement; and campaign finance provisions that would require super PACs to disclose the identities of their big donors.

The bill’s authors also plan to include language intended to undercut state laws in places like Georgia that they believe would allow Republican elected officials to subvert the results of an election to favor their candidates. Federal lawmakers specifically want to make it harder for their state counterparts to remove local election officials and harder for partisan poll watchers to intimidate voters and election workers. They also want to make the process of challenging any individual’s ability to register to vote more difficult.

Democrats scramble to save the federal eviction freeze, as frustration with Biden mounts.

Image
A worker breaking down furniture left by a renter who was evicted in Chelsea, Mass., in March.Credit...Brian Snyder/Reuters

House Democrats scrambled on Friday to scrape up the votes needed to extend the federal eviction moratorium through the end of the year — a long shot bid to keep the freeze from expiring on Saturday — as leaders vented frustration with President Biden for punting the issue to them.

“We would like the C.D.C. to expand the moratorium, that’s where it can be done,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters at the Capitol, referring to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the federal agency that imposed the moratorium last fall.

“The fact is, almost $50 billion was allocated — $46 billion. Less than 10 percent of that has been spent, around $3 billion,” she said. “Why should the renters be punished for the fact that the system did not put money in their pockets to pay the rent to the landlords?”

Earlier in the day, Ms. Pelosi and her allies, led by Representative Maxine Waters, Democrat of California, found themselves at least a dozen votes short of passing a bill to extend the freeze — which has been responsible for dramatically slowing the pace of evictions during the pandemic — according to two aides involved in whipping the votes.

Video
bars
0:00/1:24
-0:00

transcript

House Democrats Call for C.D.C. to Expand Eviction Moratorium

Lawmakers were racing on Friday to extend the federal eviction moratorium through the end of the year, as it’s set to expire on Saturday, and was responsible for slowing the pace of evictions during the pandemic.

We’re in a situation where the pandemic has, of course, taken its new shape, as we’ve talked before, these viruses are resourceful. They — when they are transmitted, they mutate, and that makes it more of a challenge. We know that that is what we are faced with now. And so the Centers for Disease Control has talked in a new way, again, about mask wearing, about that, urging vaccination and the rest. The moratorium for eviction is a Covid initiative related to the intensity of the issue, and $46 billion was allocated, both in the year-end omnibus last December as well as in the rescue package, $46 billion dollars. This money has largely gone out to the states and local governments to implement and to give to the renters so they can pay the rent, which helps the landlords. Of course, to that we would like the C.D.C. to expand the moratorium. That’s where it can be done, and then and of course, with the public message of governors, mayors, etc, give the money for its purpose to the ranchers. So this is to me an imperative that it be done.

Video player loading
Lawmakers were racing on Friday to extend the federal eviction moratorium through the end of the year, as it’s set to expire on Saturday, and was responsible for slowing the pace of evictions during the pandemic.

The hangup, the aides said, was objections by moderate Democrats over the length of the extension. Landlord groups have ramped up pressure on lawmakers in recent days, arguing that an extension would unfairly hurt small landlords pushed to the brink of insolvency by unpaid rent.

Even if the House measure passes, it will almost certainly die in the Senate — where Democrats were likely to seek to pass a one-month extension through a voice vote. A single Republican objection would sink it instantly, and the vast majority of Republicans in both chambers oppose such an extension.

The Biden administration announced two-month extensions on Friday of more limited eviction moratoriums from the Federal Housing Finance Agency and the Departments of Agriculture, Housing and Urban Development, and Veterans Affairs, but the effect of those was expected to be modest.

President Biden on Thursday threw the larger matter to Congress, urging Democrats to quickly enact a second one-month extension of the moratorium on residential evictions specifically, citing the need to buy time to stand up a $47 billion rental relief program plagued by delays and red tape.

The decision to place responsibility on Congress — just two days before the freeze expires — took Democratic leadership by surprise.

White House officials, under pressure from tenants’ rights groups, had agreed last month to a one-month extension of the ban just ahead of its previous expiration date of June 30.

Soon after, the Supreme Court rejected a challenge by landlords, saying it would allow the moratorium to continue until July 31, as planned, to give the Treasury Department and states time to disburse cash to landlords to cover back rent accrued that tenants did not pay during the pandemic.

But Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh wrote in a concurring opinion that any future extension of the moratorium would require Congressional action.

On Thursday, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, citing the steep rise in coronavirus infections around the country, pressed Congress to extend the freeze for another month to avoid a health and eviction crisis.

“Given the recent spread of the Delta variant, including among those Americans both most likely to face evictions and lacking vaccinations, President Biden would have strongly supported a decision by the C.D.C. to further extend this eviction moratorium,” she wrote in a statement. “Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has made clear that this option is no longer available.”

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

Why President Biden’s infrastructure deal still faces a bumpy road.

Image
President Joe Biden delivered remarks on the importance of American manufacturing at Mack — Lehigh Valley Operations in Lower Macungie Township, Pa, Wednesday.Credit...Kenny Holston for The New York Times

The White House won a major victory this week when Republican senators helped advance a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure deal. For President Biden, it’s a “vindication of his faith in bipartisanship and a repudiation of the slash-and-burn politics of his immediate predecessor,” The New York Times’s Jim Tankersley writes.

But the road to passing legislation won’t be smooth, the DealBook newsletter reports, as Democrats fight among themselves over an even bigger proposal and former President Donald J. Trump warns conservatives to resist passing any laws or face political retaliation.

The bill devotes $550 billion in new spending to physical infrastructure, including roads, bridges, rail, transit and water. That’s significantly less than earlier Democratic proposals, with far fewer dollars available for public transit and electric vehicle charging stations, for example. “That’s what it means to compromise and forge consensus,” Mr. Biden said.

Negotiators found new ways to pay for it. Instead of the original plan to bolster the I.R.S. to collect more taxes, money previously earmarked for pandemic-related aid is being repurposed, like the extra unemployment benefits canceled by two dozen Republican governors. The cryptocurrency industry is up in arms over a clause aimed at raising nearly $30 billion by imposing more tax reporting requirements on transactions. This could have “unintended consequences that strike at the heart of innovation,” said Kristin Smith of the Blockchain Association industry group.

Democrats also have a $3.5 trillion budget blueprint to pass. It would provide more spending for the administration’s priorities on climate, health care and education, and theoretically wouldn’t need Republican approval if Democrats unite to pass it through a process called reconciliation. But Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, a centrist Democrat, has said she wants to spend less, drawing ire from Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and other progressives, who implied their support for the Sinema-led bipartisan infrastructure bill is conditional on the $3.5 trillion budget passing reconciliation. Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, has warned colleagues of long nights and weekends ahead.

Trump pressed Justice Dept. to declare the election results corrupt, notes show.

Image
The demands are the latest example of President Donald J. Trump’s wide-ranging efforts to delegitimize the election results during his final weeks in office.Credit...Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times

President Donald J. Trump pressed top Justice Department officials late last year to declare that the election was corrupt even though they had found no instances of widespread fraud, so that he and his allies in Congress could use the assertion to try to overturn the results, according to new documents provided to lawmakers and obtained by The New York Times.

The demands were an extraordinary instance of a president interfering with an agency that is typically more independent from the White House to advance his personal agenda. They are also the latest example of Mr. Trump’s wide-ranging campaign during his final weeks in office to delegitimize the election results.

The exchange unfolded during a phone call on Dec. 27 in which Mr. Trump pressed the acting attorney general at the time, Jeffrey A. Rosen, and his deputy, Richard P. Donoghue, on voter fraud claims that the department had disproved. Mr. Donoghue warned that the department had no power to change the outcome of the election. Mr. Trump replied that he did not expect that, according to notes Mr. Donoghue took memorializing the conversation.

“Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me” and to congressional allies, Mr. Donoghue wrote in summarizing Mr. Trump’s response.

Mr. Trump did not name the lawmakers, but at other points during the call, he mentioned Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, whom he described as a “fighter”; Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, who at the time promoted the idea that the election was stolen from Mr. Trump; and Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, whom Mr. Trump praised for “getting to bottom of things.”

The notes connect Mr. Trump’s allies in Congress with his campaign to pressure Justice Department officials to help undermine, or even nullify, the election results.

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

Meeting with Western governors, Biden promises ‘urgent action’ on the growing threat from wildfires.

Video
bars
0:00/1:15
-0:00

transcript

‘We’re in for a Long Fight’: Biden Addresses Climate Change

President Biden addressed concerns over climate change and rising temperatures as fires in the Western states continue to burn.

In short, we’ve got a big complex wildfire burning across multiple areas, and despite the incredible — I’m not being solicitous — the incredible bravery and heroism of our firefighters, our resources are already being stretched to keep up. We need more help, particularly when we also factor in additional nationwide challenges of pandemic-related supply chain disruptions, and our ongoing efforts to fight Covid. We’ve had a few Covid clusters at our fire camps, which have further limited resources. It’s just one more reason why it’s so darn important that everyone get vaccinated, I might add. But we’re in for a long fight yet this year, and the only way we’re going to meet those challenges is by working together. Wildfires are a problem for all of us, and we have to stay closely coordinated in doing everything we can for our people. That’s why I asked the governors to join us — Democrats and Republicans alike — so they can update me and the vice president directly on what they need, and what we can possibly do more of. And so we can discuss what’s needed. Today, we went to meet in urgent danger at hand, a plan for what we can do to make sure we’re better prepared next time.

Video player loading
President Biden addressed concerns over climate change and rising temperatures as fires in the Western states continue to burn.CreditCredit...Sarahbeth Maney/The New York Times

President Biden met virtually on Friday with governors from seven Western states, where devastating wildfires have grown more severe in recent years as climate change leads to a hotter and drier landscape. They discussed how the federal government can help states with prevention, preparedness and emergency response efforts.

President Biden saluted the “incredible bravery” of those fighting the fires, noting that they deserved a pay raise. “They need more help,” he added.

More than 80 large fires were burning across the country on Friday, scorching nearly 1.7 million acres across 13 states. The largest, the Bootleg Fire in southern Oregon and the Dixie Fire in Northern California, have both been described by fire officials as burning earlier and more intensely than is usual for this time of year, because of drought conditions and record heat across the region.

This week, the governors of California and Nevada, touring the wreckage of the Tamarack Fire, which has charred some 68,000 acres across the two states, pleaded for more assistance, saying that federal firefighting efforts have been underfunded. The federal government controls a significant portion of land across the American West, so it plays a major role in managing fire.

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California was among those meeting with Mr. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, along with Governors Kate Brown of Oregon, Greg Gianforte of Montana, Mark Gordon of Wyoming, Jay Inslee of Washington, Brad Little of Idaho and Tim Walz of Minnesota.

Mr. Newsom said his state was “blowing past all the records” and pleaded for “more boots on the ground.” He also said the states need more air tankers to help fight the fires. “We do not come close to having the tools in the air that we need,” he said.

The administration announced two new groups this week focused on reducing the damage from wildfires and addressing climate change. The first will study long-term strategies, such as prescribed burns, that can reduce the catastrophic devastation of wildfires. The second would focus on combating the health effects of extreme weather on vulnerable communities, White House officials said.

The Biden administration’s approach to the wildfires that are intensifying across the American West stands in stark contrast to how the previous administration addressed a worsening crisis. Former President Donald J. Trump did not acknowledge the role of climate change in wildfires, which are growing larger, spreading faster and reaching higher. Mr. Biden, in contrast, underscored the impact of climate change and the need for “urgent, urgent action.”

Mr. Inslee, who was branded by the former president as a “nasty person,” lauded Mr. Biden’s focus on the issue. “It’s so refreshing to have a president who cares about the Western forest,” he said.

Biden signals support for Democrats’ plan to advance immigration changes unilaterally, via a budget bill.

Image
Supporters of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA, demonstrating in New York last month.Credit...Justin Lane/EPA, via Shutterstock

President Biden said on Thursday night that he supported a plan championed by congressional Democrats to use a legislative process intended for budget-related measures to bypass Republican opposition and legalize millions of undocumented immigrants.

Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, has been quietly exploring whether it would be possible to attach a broad revision of immigration laws to a $3.5 trillion budget plan that Democrats intend to pass unilaterally through a fast-track process known as budget reconciliation.

Mr. Biden said on Thursday night that White House staff were “putting out a message right now” that “we should include in the reconciliation bill the immigration proposal.”

That means throwing the White House’s weight behind using the budget maneuver to provide a pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants, should bipartisan talks on providing a pathway to citizenship fall apart.

Mr. Biden met on Thursday with Democratic lawmakers to discuss a program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, that protects some immigrants, known as Dreamers, from deportation. Advocates have pushed for Democrats to provide expedited citizenship to Dreamers, amid legal challenges to DACA.

“It went very well,” Mr. Biden said of the meeting, which included members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and leadership of the Senate and House Judiciary Committees.

The president spoke to reporters en route to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center with his wife, Jill Biden, who was to undergo a medical procedure on her foot.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi last month endorsed the idea of using reconciliation to push through an immigration measure, citing the “budget impacts of immigration in our country.”

Republicans, however, have already called it an abuse of the reconciliation process and raised questions about whether the parliamentarian would even allow immigration legislation to advance under a procedure that is intended to deal exclusively with budget rules.

It is not clear that such a maneuver by Democrats would be successful. A team of immigration activists and researchers as well as congressional aides is currently exploring the question, digging into the best way to present the case to the parliamentarian, who has not indicated any position on the matter.

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

U.S. military personnel will be asked their vaccination status or will face testing.

Image
A U.S. Army soldier standing guard while on patrol with local allied forces in May near the Turkish border in northeastern Syria.Credit...John Moore/Getty Images

The Pentagon said on Thursday evening that it would require military personnel to attest to their vaccination status against the coronavirus or face frequent testing and other restrictions.

The announcement came just hours after President Biden announced that federal employees and on-site contractors must be vaccinated against the coronavirus, or be required to submit to regular testing and other measures.

Mr. Biden also called upon the Department of Defense to move rapidly toward requiring coronavirus vaccines for all members of the military, a step that would affect almost 1.5 million troops, many of whom have resisted taking a shot that is highly effective against a disease that has claimed the lives of more than 600,000 Americans.

But he stopped short of saying he would use his powers as commander in chief to compel service members to get vaccines not yet fully approved by the Food and Drug Administration by issuing a waiver.

On Thursday night, Jamal Brown, a deputy Pentagon press secretary, said in a statement that military members would need to adhere to the same guidelines as the department’s civilian workers.

Employees would be asked to “attest to their vaccination status” and, if unwilling to do so, they “will be required to wear a mask, physically distance, comply with a regular testing requirement and be subject to official travel restrictions,” the statement said.

The military sits firmly at the center of an escalating debate over vaccine mandates as Mr. Biden and other officials struggle to get ahead of the Delta variant sweeping through the nation.

Members of the military are regularly given vaccines, and unvaccinated service members are sometimes not allowed to deploy abroad and face other restrictions. But as a political matter, forcing the coronavirus vaccines on the military is all but certain to set off a firestorm among Mr. Biden’s critics.

The widow of a D.C. policeman who shot himself after Jan. 6 wants his death marked ‘in the line of duty.’

Image
“When my husband left for work that day, he was the Jeff that I knew,” Erin Smith said in an interview. “When he returned after experiencing the event, being hit in the head, he was a completely different person.”Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times

Jeffrey Smith was one of hundreds of Metropolitan Police Department officers deployed on Jan. 6 to defend the Capitol from a violent mob. He was hit in the head with a metal pole during the melee and afterward, his wife said, seemed to slip into depression. Ordered back to work eight days later, he shot himself with his service weapon, becoming the second officer to take his own life in the wake of the riot.

On Friday, his widow, Erin Smith, will petition the District of Columbia Retirement Board to label his suicide as a death in the line of duty, a designation that comes with vastly greater financial benefits and, she says, more dignity. But the odds are against her.

While the military commonly awards benefits to families of soldiers who take their own lives, police do not — in fact, the law generally forbids that designation. The families of officers who kill themselves say the rules represent an outdated approach that recognizes only some of the dangers of policing.

“When my husband left for work that day, he was the Jeff that I knew,” Ms. Smith said in an interview. “When he returned after experiencing the event, being hit in the head, he was a completely different person. I do believe if he did not go to work that day, he would be here and we would not be having this conversation.”

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT