| Welcome to The Daily 202! Tell your friends to sign up here. This is Caroline, your Daily 202 researcher, in today for Olivier. On this day in 1813, Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" was first published (anonymously) in London. | | |  | The big idea | | Biden has promises left to keep on his LGBTQ agenda |  (Washington Post illustration; Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post; iStock) | | | Measured against his predecessor, who didn't observe Pride Month for three of his four years in office, it hasn't been difficult for President Biden to assert himself as a friend of the LGBTQ community. As a candidate, Biden surprised advocates by addressing the killing of transgender women — particularly women of color — during a town hall. He then made history by tapping openly LGBTQ officials like Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, the first openly gay Cabinet member to be confirmed by the Senate, and U.S. Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine, the first publicly transgender federal official. He welcomed a transgender teenager into the White House to introduce him before a Pride Month speech. There's no question the visibility this administration has given LGBTQ people is unparalleled. But advocates still say Biden has plenty left to do. Biden made many promises to the community. He's kept a lot of them, but not all. Heading into what Democrats expect to be a grim midterm election, the president clearly would benefit from close ties to this key voting bloc, which helped propel him to victory in 2020. (AP VoteCast found that 73 percent of LGBT voters supported Biden.) Biden made some immediate changes that had a real impact, especially in rolling back Trump-era policy that nullified LGBTQ rights. He marked his first day in office with a "sweeping executive order making it clear that gay and transgender people are protected against discrimination in schools," our colleagues Samantha Schmidt, Emily Wax-Thibodeaux and Moriah Balingit reported. During his first week in the White House, Biden reversed Trump's transgender military ban. His State Department issued the first-ever U.S. passport with an "X" gender marker for Americans who do not identify as male or female. | | Biden wasn't always a champion of the LGBTQ community. | | He voted for the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, which blocked the federal recognition of same-sex marriages. He supported the Clinton-era "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. In 1973, in one of the off-handed remarks he would become known for, he said his "gut reaction" was that gay people in the military posed a security risk. But in 2012, one of the then-vice-president's off-script comments pushed President Barack Obama to "speed up his public affirmation of same-sex marriage," our colleague Steven Levingston recounted last year. Just as Obama's reelection campaign kicked off in 2012, Biden "veered from the campaign playbook" on national television, Steven wrote. Asked whether his views on same-sex marriage had evolved, the former vice president took an accidental sledgehammer to the Obama campaign's delicately orchestrated messaging. "'Look,' Biden began. 'I just think — that — the good news is' — he set his elbows on the table and interlaced his fingers, almost prayerlike. Same-sex marriage, he explained, came down to 'a simple proposition: Who do you love?' He repeated it for emphasis: 'Who do you love? And will you be loyal to the person you love?' He explained that most people believed that was what all marriages were about, 'whether they're marriages of lesbians or gay men or heterosexuals.'" And so began the public story of Joseph R. Biden as an ally. | | LGBTQ issues loomed large in Biden's 2020 campaign. He promised to pursue a bold agenda and address the wide-ranging erasure of protections for the community implemented by the Trump administration. Lambda Legal, an American civil rights organization focused on the LGBTQ community and people living with HIV/AIDS, released a progress report on Biden's first year in office. It found that "significant work" remains for the president, particularly regarding discrimination in federally funded programs, barriers to transition-related health care in federally run programs and a "gross underrepresentation" of LGBTQ people on the federal bench. "On the one hand, I want them to be able to feel good and feel appreciated for the work that they've done in year one," Sharon McGowan, chief strategy officer and legal director for Lambda Legal, told The Daily 202. "But considering how much of that was rectifying the devastation of the prior four years, getting us back to where we were in 2016 is not good enough." The organization called on Biden to speak out more frequently and forcefully on transgender rights issues and highlighted the need for the administration to champion forward-looking measures, such as legislation prohibiting future presidents from reimposing a ban on transgender Americans serving openly in the Armed Forces. The White House did not respond to a request for comment on Biden's LGBTQ agenda. | | Other calls included requiring federal prisons to consider safety when deciding where to house transgender people, which the Bureau of Prisons addressed Wednesday by issuing new guidance reversing a Trump-era policy that advocates say put incarcerated transgender people at risk. With all eyes on Build Back Better over the past several weeks and months, LGBTQ advocates remained zeroed-in on another consequence of the deadlocked Senate: Biden's inability to sign The Equality Act, sweeping legislation to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. (Biden has said he will sign the legislation if it ever lands on his desk.) GLAAD (formerly the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) has also been monitoring the president's LBGTQ agenda in the form of its Biden Accountability Tracker, which "details appointments, policies and statements across the administration" and hit its hundredth entry last week. Sarah Kate Ellis, the president and CEO and GLAAD, praised the Biden administration as being the most progressive ever on LGBTQ issues. "I think he's done as much as he possibly can in the period of time he was given," she said. Ellis emphasized that there's much more work to do and said one of her organization's major goals as the midterms approach is to make sure voters understand "what's at stake and how having pro-equality leaders is essential to our health and well-being as a community." | | |  | What's happening now | | Putin is unrelenting on Ukraine demands in meeting with France's Macron aimed at heading off invasion |  Soldiers take part in an exercise for the use of NLAW anti-aircraft missiles at the Yavoriv military training ground, close to Lviv, western Ukraine on Friday. (Pavlo Palamarchuk/AP) | | | "Russian President Vladimir Putin reiterated his call for 'lasting, legally-binding security guarantees' from the United States and NATO in a phone call Friday with his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, the Kremlin said, after a top Russian official threatened that Russia would 'retaliate' if its demands were not met," Robyn Dixon, Andrew Jeong and Rick Noack report. | - "Putin warned Macron that further NATO expansion was 'unacceptable' to Russia, saying that United States' and NATO's responses to Russia's demands did not take into account Russia's key security concerns, the Kremlin said."
| Pittsburgh bridge collapse injures 10 on day Biden to visit city to talk infrastructure | | "Pittsburgh Public Safety acknowledged a 'confirmed bridge collapse' at around 6:50 a.m. A photo from KDKA showed at least four vehicles, including a Port Authority bus, on the Fern Hollow Bridge near Forbes and Braddock avenues. Another vehicle was shown dangling near the edge of the collapsed bridge, which is located in Frick Park and connects the Point Breeze, Regent Square and Squirrel Hill neighborhoods of Pittsburgh," Timothy Bella reports. | Lack of Medicare coverage for at-home coronavirus tests sparks outcry | | "When the Biden administration began requiring insurers to pay for at-home coronavirus tests, it left out a group especially vulnerable to the virus. Medicare, the federal insurance system with 64 million older or disabled Americans, was not included in the order, and the absence has triggered a fusillade of complaints," Amy Goldstein and Christopher Rowland report. | - "Advocates contend that the agency, which has made it easier for people with Medicare to see doctors through telehealth during the pandemic, should be flexible about covering at-home tests, as well. But Medicare law does not make that simple."
| Last year, U.S. labor costs grew at their fastest pace in two decades | | |  | Lunchtime reads from The Post | | Books, speeches, hats for sale: Post-presidency, the Trumps try to make money the pre-presidency way |  People walk outside 40 Wall St., also known as the Trump Building, in New York. (Brendan McDermid/Reuters) | | | "Years after shuttering businesses selling Trump steaks, Trump vodka and Trump mattresses, the Trumps have returned to unconventional direct-to-consumer appeals that trade on his continued popularity among a devoted base to the tune of millions of dollars in receipts. Even as some of his traditional businesses have struggled after a polarizing presidency, Trump and his family have been launching a whole set designed to target his die-hard followers," Michael Scherer and Josh Dawsey report. | Biden, who pledged to diversify the Supreme Court, has already made progress on lower courts | | "The president already has muscled through the highest number of federal judges in the first year of a presidency in four decades, with picks from a diverse range of racial, gender and professional backgrounds," Adrian Blanco reports in this visual project. | America purchased the spyware Pegasus. Now it's trying to ban it. | | "The F.B.I. had bought a version of Pegasus, NSO's premier spying tool. For nearly a decade, the Israeli firm had been selling its surveillance software on a subscription basis to law-enforcement and intelligence agencies around the world, promising that it could do what no one else — not a private company, not even a state intelligence service — could do: consistently and reliably crack the encrypted communications of any iPhone or Android smartphone," Ronen Bergman and Mark Mazzetti report in this New York Times Magazine investigation. But though the many abuses of Pegasus had already been well documented, "none of this prevented new customers from approaching NSO, including the United States. The details of the F.B.I.'s purchase and testing of Pegasus have never before been made public." | | |  | The Biden agenda | | Biden assembles veteran team to guide Supreme Court nomination |  Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer gestures while Biden listens as Breyer announces he will retire at the end of the court's current term. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters) | | | "Biden will consult closely with Vice President Kamala Harris in a selection process that will be led in part by chief of staff Ron Klain, White House counsel Dana Remus, senior counsel Paige Herwig, and senior adviser Cedric Richmond, the White House said," Reuters's Jeff Mason and Steve Holland report. | Biden's focus on environmental justice led to a year of progress — and burnout | | "As he prepared to embark on 'the most ambitious climate and environmental justice agenda ever pursued' in Washington, President Biden tapped one of the nation's foremost experts on the topic to lead his historic effort," Darryl Fears reports. "But Cecilia Martinez barely lasted a year in a role that felt like a pressure cooker." | What to expect from Biden's Pittsburg visit | | "The White House said Mr. Biden will use his Pittsburgh trip to 'discuss strengthening the nation's supply chains, revitalizing American manufacturing, creating good-paying, union jobs, and building a better America, including through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law,'" the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Julian Routh reports. | | |  | The U.S. economy, visualized | | | "The U.S. economy grew by 5.7 percent in 2021, the fastest full-year clip since 1984. The economy grew at a 6.9 percent annual rate from October to December, the Bureau of Economic Analysis said Thursday, a sharp acceleration from 2.3 percent in the previous quarter," Rachel Siegel and Andrew Van Dam report. | | |  | Hot on the left | | Who is Biden's likeliest Supreme Court pick? |  Possible picks for the Supreme Court to replace retiring Justice Stephen Breyer. (AP Graphic) | | | The Atlantic's Elaine Godfrey has placed her bets on Ketanji Brown Jackson. "Dozens of candidates are being talked about, but nearly all of the Court watchers I interviewed for this story have their money on one in particular: Ketanji Brown Jackson," Godfrey writes. "Jackson, who is 51, fulfills a lot of requirements for the establishment set. She has the same Ivy League credentials as the sitting justices, having earned both her undergraduate and her law degree from Harvard and edited for the Harvard Law Review. She clerked for three federal judges—including Breyer, from 1999 to 2000 … Jackson would be coming directly from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, the second-most-important court in the country after the Supreme Court." "Jackson does not have a history of controversial rulings. But in her previous perch as a federal district judge, she drew attention for deciding several times against the Trump administration. Most famously, Jackson ruled in 2019 that former White House Counsel Don McGahn had to comply with a congressional subpoena and testify before Congress as part of its impeachment inquiry into then-President Donald Trump. A particular line in the ruling impressed Democrats: 'The primary takeaway from the past 250 years of recorded American history is that Presidents are not kings,' Jackson wrote." | | |  | Hot on the right | | Trump is caught in a MAGA firestorm over a House endorsement | | "Trump on Tuesday evening endorsed Morgan Ortagus, who served as a State Department spokesperson during his administration and is pondering a run for a Middle Tennessee-based congressional district. The announcement has caused a firestorm, with far-right, high-profile backers ranging from North Carolina Rep. Madison Cawthorn to conservative activist Candace Owens taking to social media to voice their support for Robby Starbuck, a rival candidate who's been a mainstay of the pro-Trump movement," Politico's Alex Isenstadt reports. | | |  | Today in Washington | | | At 1:25 p.m., Biden will visit Carnegie Mellon University at Mill 19 in Pittsburgh. The president will deliver remarks on infrastructure and the supply chain at 2 p.m. At 4:20 p.m., Biden will return to the White House. | | |  | In closing | | Meet Willow, the Bidens' long-awaited White House cat | | "Willow will be the first cat to live in the White House since President George W. Bush's cat, India, in 2009 — and one of only a dozen feline inhabitants in the entire history of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue," Maura Judkis reports. The gray-and-white tabby first met Jill Biden when she interrupted one of the now-first lady's speeches on the campaign trail. Want to know more about the mysterious lives of presidential kitties? Bonnie Berkowitz has answers to your most burning questions, like, "Who scoops the litter box?" | | Thanks for reading. See you next week. | | |
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