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MORNING REPORT

PRESENTED BY CITI

Monday, December 19

by Kristina Karisch

Jan. 6 panel to dominate this week

This week will be crucial for the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol as the panel gears up for its final presentation, the release of a highly anticipated report outlining findings from its probe and a vote on criminal referrals to the Department of Justice (DOJ).

Votes on criminal referrals are expected today during the committee's business meeting, a significant step for the group, which has said it aims to prevent the violence on Jan. 6 from occurring again. The referrals, as well as other milestones scheduled for this week mark the culmination of the panel's investigation, which has consisted of almost a dozen hearings, testimony from more than 1,000 witnesses and millions of documents. The Hill's Mychael Schnell breaks down five things to watch for as the panel meets in the coming days, from the criminal referrals to the final report and legislative recommendations.

We're focused on key players and we're focused on key players where there is sufficient evidence or abundant evidence that they committed crimes, and we're focused on crimes that go right to the heart of the constitutional order such that the Congress can't remain silent," Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), a committee member, told reporters last week.

One of the individuals who is likely to be recommended for criminal charges is former President Trump, along with several of his advisers. It would mark the most serious blow to the former president, who just weeks ago launched a comeback bid for the presidency. The committee is set to vote on three charges against the former president, including obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress, insurrection and conspiracy to defraud the United States (Bloomberg News).

While the referrals will be closely watched inside and outside Washington, they are also largely symbolic. The DOJ — which is in the midst of conducting its own investigation into the Capitol riot — will receive the committee's referrals, but it will be up to special counsel Jack Smith to decide whether the department acts on them. Regardless of the Justice Department's decision, the criminal referrals are likely to have a large impact on public perception, and the DOJ will likely make use of the evidence it is given by the panel as part of the referrals (Vox and Politico).

The Hill: Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) says Trump's political relevance may have slowed DOJ probes.

In an NBC News analysis, Michael Conway, a former counsel for the House Judiciary Committee, breaks down what to watch for beyond Trump in the Jan. 6 committee report.

The Hill: After a week of sagging polls and mockery, Trump faces looming Jan. 6 action.
Roll Call: Ways and Means chairman sets meeting on Trump taxes.
The Washington Post: How Trump jettisoned restraints at Mar-a-Lago and prompted legal peril.
The New York Times: Proud Boys trial is set to open, focusing on their role in the Jan. 6 violence.

Lawmakers, meanwhile, are preparing to be in session for one last week before the 118th Congress is seated on Jan. 3. Current members are in the midst of an eleventh-hour effort to push through a fiscal 2023 omnibus spending bill with a $1.7 trillion price tag.

President Biden last week signed a one-week stopgap spending bill that averted a government shutdown gave lawmakers more time to negotiate a final deal, pushing their funding deadline to Dec. 23 (USA Today).

The Hill: Congress set to tackle crack, powder cocaine sentencing disparity before year's end.

Politico: Wine tasting in Napa and a staff revolt: How a progressive powerhouse went kaput. Founded after the 2004 Howard Dean presidential campaign, Democracy for America was felled by poor fundraising and what many former employees described as shoddy management.
The Hill's The Memo: Twitter's turmoil under Elon Musk roils political waters.
Politico: The "Twitter Files" congressman on Musk and taming Silicon Valley:
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) still believes in Silicon Valley. But after a brutal year for tech, even its biggest optimist wants more guardrails.
The Hill: House Republican says "we will get there" on Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy's (R-Calif.) Speakership bid.

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Leading the Day

➤ POLITICS

Republican lawmakers say the dramatic decline in Trump's popularity among Republican voters is due to waning confidence that he can win the presidency in 2024, The Hill's Alexander Bolton reports. GOP senators say this became clearer after Trump-aligned candidates performed poorly in the 2022 midterm elections and that there is growing fatigue with Trump among Republican voters, many of whom want to move on to a new party standard bearer with fewer political baggage and legal problems weighing them down.

The Hill: Retiring Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) said Trump's 2024 campaign is having an "unbelievably terrible rollout" while assessing the former president's influence on the GOP as "absolutely" waning.

An already-bullish Republican Party is growing increasingly so about its chances to retake the majority in 2024 following Sen. Kyrsten Sinema's (I-Ariz.) decision to leave the Democratic Party last week, writes The Hill's Al Weaver. Sinema's move, coupled with a likely Democratic bid by Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), has flung the barn door wide open for Republicans to come in and retake a seat the party dropped four years ago. Now, all eyes are on outgoing Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) and whether he will take the plunge after deciding against a run against Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) in November.

While Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) declined to wade into the Ducey waters on Tuesday, other Senate Republicans would love to see the Arizona governor join their ranks.

"He's been a great governor, and I think he's a fantastic guy," said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a top McConnell ally. "I like him a lot."

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), meanwhile, sidestepped questions about whether he'd leave the Democratic Party after being asked about his comments regarding his serving in the Senate as an "independent voice" (The Hill and Bloomberg News).

"If people are trying to stop something from doing so much good because of politics, thinking somebody else will get credit for it, let's see how that plays out," Manchin told CBS's "Face the Nation" moderator Margaret Brennan. "And then I'll let you know later what I decide to do."

For all the good news for Biden — from a strong Democratic midterm performance to support from allies and controversies surrounding Trump — many Democrats don't want to see him run for a second term, writes The Hill's Amie Parnes. Yet a CNN poll last week showed that 59 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents want a new candidate to be their nominee in 2024, painting a confusing picture for the White House and Democrats more generally.

"President Biden's standing with Democrats is a riddle wrapped in an enigma," said Brad Bannon, a Democratic strategist. "He is very popular with Democrats and is well positioned to win the party's nomination in 2024, but most of the party faithful don't want him to run again."

The Wall Street Journal: Biden advisers craft reelection plans as the president weighs his final decision.
Bloomberg News: As he preps for 2024, Biden has finally found his footing as president.
The Wall Street Journal: Biden and the House GOP are set to start 2023 with scant ties but lots of tension.

➤ ADMINISTRATION

Biden will likely be forced to ramp up administrative actions and executive orders next year, when a divided Congress will offer him far fewer chances for legislative wins, writes The Hill's Alex Gangitano. Advocates say Biden needs to move forward in response to the better-than-expected midterm results for Democrats and tackle the policy promises he ran on in 2020, with or without the help of the new GOP-controlled House.

"President Biden must ramp up and use the entirety of his executive power going into this new Congress to get things done for the young people who saved this midterm election for Democrats," Deirdre Shelly, campaigns director for the Sunrise Movement, told The Hill. "That means canceling even more student loan debt, declaring a climate emergency, using the Defense Production Act to expedite our transition to renewable energy, and a range of other far-reaching executive actions that would help the lives of people across the country."

The White House is steeling itself for new challenges posed by winter in Ukraine and an incoming GOP House majority promising to curb funding. The administration is pushing to make sure Ukraine has the assistance it needs to make it through the winter, most immediately leaning on Congress to pass more funding in the omnibus spending bill that's currently being negotiated.

In doing so, the White House is relying on some unlikely allies: moderate Republicans in the House who have voiced support for the funding, as well as McConnell, who has steadfastly backed the assistance to Ukraine (Politico).

The New York Times: Military spending surges, creating new boom for arms makers.

The combination of the war in Ukraine and concern about longer-term threats from Russia and China is driving a bipartisan push to increase U.S. capacity to produce weapons.

In Focus / Sharp Takes

➤ INTERNATIONAL

A top adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that Russia could sharply escalate the war in a winter offensive driven by mass infantry and that Western allies needed to be prepared. Despite suffering severe setbacks over the first 10 months of war, the Russian military is laying plans for mass infantry attacks similar to tactics employed by the Soviet Union during World War II, according to the adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak. His comments came as top military and political leaders have been warning that Russia is massing troops and armaments to launch a renewed ground offensive by spring that most likely would include a second attempt to seize Kyiv (Bloomberg News and The New York Times).

Heating has been fully restored to Kyiv as of Sunday after the latest Russian attacks that targeted water and power infrastructure. "The city is restoring all services after the latest shelling," Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on the Telegram messaging app (Reuters). But just hours later, Moscow launched a "kamikaze" drone attack today, hitting key infrastructure in and around Kyiv, as Russian president Vladimir Putin heads for Belarus. The move is fuelling fears that he will pressure his ex-Soviet ally to join a new offensive on Ukraine (Reuters).

Russian soldiers go into battle with little food, few bullets and instructions grabbed from Wikipedia for weapons they barely know how to use. A new New York Times investigation based on interviews, intercepts, documents and secret battle plans shows how a "walk in the park" became a catastrophe for Moscow.

The Guardian: "Our weapons are computers": Ukrainian coders aim to gain a battlefield edge.
The Wall Street Journal: The battle for Bakhmut is a critical test of Russia's prospects in Ukraine.
Reuters: Streets deserted in China's cities as new COVID-19 surge looms.

Opinion

Zelensky is facing a Valley Forge moment, by Earle Mack, contributor, The Hill. https://bit.ly/3BIH7u0
Book banning is bad policy. Let's make it bad politics, by E.J. Dionne, columnist, The Washington Post. https://wapo.st/3WrW1wR

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Where and When

👉 The Hill: Share a news query tied to an expert journalist's insights: The Hill launched something new and (we hope) engaging via text with Editor-in-Chief Bob Cusack. Learn more and sign up HERE.

The House will convene on Wednesday, with votes postponed to 6:30 p.m.

The Senate will convene at 3 p.m.

The president will receive the President's Daily Brief at 8 a.m. He will return to Washington from New Castle, Del. at 10:20 a.m. and meet with President Guillermo Lasso of Ecuador at 1:30 p.m. at the White House. At 7 p.m., he and first lady Jill Biden will host a Hanukkah holiday reception at the White House.

The vice president has no public schedule.

The first lady will host a White House Hanukkah holiday reception with the president at 7 p.m.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken will meet with Maltese Foreign Minister Ian Borg at 10:30 a.m.

The White House daily press briefing is scheduled at 2:30 p.m.

Elsewhere

➤ TECH

Billionaire Twitter CEO Elon Musk on Sunday tweeted a poll asking whether or not he should step down as head of the company, saying in the accompanying post that he will "abide by the results of this poll." The question comes two months into his rocky tenure at the head of the company, which has been marked by mass layoffs and frequent policy changes.

Musk on Sunday also suggested that he hadn't been successful in finding someone to take over. "No one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive. There is no successor," he tweeted (The Hill and The Washington Post).

As of this writing, the poll leans toward "yes," with a majority of votes in favor of Musk stepping down.

The Washington Post: Musk blamed a Twitter account for an alleged stalker. Police see no link.
Vox: Angry, irrational, erratic: This is Musk's Twitter.

Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried is expected to appear in court in the Bahamas on Monday to reverse his decision to contest extradition to the United States, where he faces fraud charges after his cryptocurrency exchange declared bankruptcy last month (Reuters).

➤ PANDEMIC & HEALTH

COVID-19 is trending upward in the United States again, with new cases reaching more than 450,000 and deaths climbing up to 3,000 per week. But hospitals will have to face this year's winter surge without a valuable tool in their arsenal after the Food and Drug Administration revoked its emergency use authorization for bebtelovimab in late November.

The monoclonal antibody treatment for COVID-19, hasn't proved effective against the latest variants of the virus, meaning there are no monoclonal antibody treatments left that work against the subvariants of the omicron variant that are currently causing most new infections. Hospitals are also contending with a spike in other infections, including respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and the worst flu season in two decades, further straining their capacity. There are still COVID-19 therapies that remain effective, and it's still possible to prevent infections in the first place. But without monoclonals as a backstop, some of the most vulnerable people will be at greater risk of suffering and dying (Vox).

New bivalent COVID-19 booster shots are more effective at reducing risk of hospitalization than boosters of the original vaccines, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported in two new studies Friday. The CDC recommended a bivalent booster in September to better protect against the omicron variant (NPR).

The Hill: COVID-19 response coordinator: People are "confused" about whether they need an updated booster.

Information about COVID-19 vaccine and booster shot availability can be found at Vaccines.gov.

The New York Times: Can a federally funded "Netflix model" fix the broken market for antibiotics?
The Wall Street Journal: The failed promise of online mental health treatment.

Total U.S. coronavirus deaths reported as of this morning, according to Johns Hopkins University (trackers all vary slightly): 1,087,410. Current U.S. COVID-19 deaths are 2,703 for the week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (The CDC shifted its tally of available data from daily to weekly, now reported on Fridays.)

The Closer

And finally… ⚽🇦🇷 ¡Viva Argentina! After beating France in a penalty shootout Sunday, Argentina clinched its first World Cup championship since 1986.

The teams faced a 3-3 draw in Lusail, Qatar, where the South American team narrowly eked out a penalty shootout victory, beating the reigning world champion. France was bidding to become the first repeat champion since Brazil won consecutive trophies in 1958 and 1962. The game marked the first World Cup win — as well as fifth and likely last appearance — for star player Lionel Messi, in an end-career highlight.

Messi, 35, scored twice, but France's Kylian Mbappé netted a stunning hat trick — the first in a final since 1966 — as both superstars battled it out on the biggest stage of all (The Washington Post and CNN).

Sports Illustrated: Watch the final penalty kick that clinched the World Cup for Argentina.
The Washington Post: "Argentina endures": In Buenos Aires, emotional celebrations of a World Cup victory.
The New York Times: How Argentina's favorite song became the World Cup's soundtrack. The song, "Muchachos, Ahora Nos Volvimos A Ilusionar," has been a constant refrain in Qatar.