The Biden crew prepping for a post-Roe world

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Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from Allie Bice.

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A little known group within the White House is about to be thrust into the center of the most contentious fights in American politics.

Monday evening, POLITICO broke the news that the Supreme Court had drafted a majority opinion that would strike down the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, likely leading to the outlawing of most abortion services in dozens of conservative states.

In a brief statement on Tuesday, Biden said that the White House Gender Policy Council and the White House Counsel’s Office were working together to “prepare options for an Administration response to the continued attack on abortion and reproductive rights, under a variety of possible outcomes in the cases pending before the Supreme Court.”

So… what is the Gender Policy Council? The White House revived the office in 2021 with the goal of addressing how administration policies affected womens’ lives.

But as it became clear last year that the Supreme Court seemed poised to overturn Roe, the group ramped up its work examining its limited options for how to help women (particularly those without the means to easily cross state lines) maintain some access to abortion. According to White House officials, the council is considered interally further to the left on abortion than Biden, who embraced the party’s past “safe, legal, and rare” language on the issue. The council member’s more unambiguous pro-abortion rights positions occasionally created tension with other officials in the White House who, like Biden, believe it’s better politics to make the argument about a right to privacy than a right to abortion access.

A White House official pushed back on the characterization, saying that there is “less a disconnect with the administration’s policies and thinking on abortion,” than an effort by the council to “think of bold approaches in this moment.”

JULISSA REYNOSO, First Lady JILL BIDEN’S former chief of staff, co-chaired the policy council until earlier this year, but a spokesperson confirmed she stepped away from the role when she was nominated to be ambassador to Spain. And so, for now, the council is being headed up by JENNIFER KLEIN, who was previously the group’s co-chair and, prior to that, was a top official at Time’s Up.

Last week, our own LAURA BARRÓN-LÓPEZ spoke with Klein, who said that the White House spent the last year bracing and planning for the decision, including holding listening sessions led by Vice President KAMALA HARRIS, with health care providers, patients and advocates across Texas, Mississippi and Kentucky. Klein’s also held meetings in recent weeks with state legislators in other states where laws have similarly been passed restricting access to abortions.

“This court is poised to overturn 50 years of precedent,” Klein told Laura. “At the moment, what we are doing is working very hard to explore all options, every option to protect reproductive health care, including access to abortion, and we’ll continue to do that.”

A Biden adviser said the GPC is the hub within the White House on the issue, and will decide what options are available to protect abortion rights. “But the short of it is there’s no there’s no replacement, there’s nothing that can replace the protection of Roe versus Wade, if that goes away.”

One Biden adviser said that while the council is examining policy options, the Department of Justice will likely look at different state anti-abortion laws where the administration could litigate.

The president’s team is also thinking about the issue on a political level. With little hope that this Congress will eliminate the filibuster and pass a law enshrining the right to abortion, the Biden team is hoping that the issue can galvanize voters to elect pro-choice lawmakers.

“The more extreme Republicans and those who oppose this right … they put themselves in a difficult position because the strong majority of Americans support this right,” Klein told POLITICO last week. “Politically it is more motivating for Democrats and pro choice Americans than it is for that small minority of Republicans.”

TINA TCHEN, who ran the White House council on women and girls during the Obama administration and has worked with Klein, said that the council is coordinating different parts of the federal government to develop possible responses.

“This is a whole new era, and it’s why you want a group like a Gender Policy Council… to sit at the center, at White House reporting to the president that can command all of these different parts of the federal government to bring those resources to bear,” said Tchen, who left her perch at the group Time’s Up during the fallout over the scandal involving former New York Gov. ANDREW CUOMO. “There’s a little bit of a head start now to June [when a final Court decision is expected] to be looking at what options there may be.”

(West Wing Playbook will have more in tomorrow’s newsletter on what actions abortion rights advocates want the administration to take).

With help from Laura Barrón-López

TEXT US — ARE YOU SHILPA PHADKE, deputy director of the Gender Policy Council. We want to hear from you (we’ll keep you anonymous).

Or if you think we missed something in today’s edition, let us know and we may include it tomorrow. Email us at [email protected].

POTUS PUZZLER

A little bit of geographical trivia today — the capital of Liberia was named after which U.S. president?

(Answer at the bottom.)

The Oval

THE PANDEMIC ISN’T OVER, PART 173: ABC News’s JONATHAN KARL tested positive for Covid-19, people told Max, days after he attended the White House Correspondents’ dinner. During the dinner, Karl sat next to KIM KARDASHIAN, received an award, and interacted with the president. Tuesday seemed like the day that informal contact tracing texts started to go out: West Wing Playbook received several messages from people who attended the parties or the dinner who have since tested positive for Covid.

We reached out to Kardashian’s people for comment but have not heard back.

WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE WANTS YOU TO READ: Deputy Press Secretary ANDREW BATES tweeted out these two polls from this year by CNN and Washington Post/ABC News showing over half of Americans opposed overturning Roe v. Wade.

WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE DOESN’T WANT YOU TO READ: This NYT story about rapidly rising electricity bills in addition to gas prices, further compounding inflation for Americans. “The national average residential electricity rate was up 8 percent in January from a year earlier, the biggest annual increase in more than a decade.”

@NEERA’s TAKE: As Republican leakers have focused on the leaking of the draft decision about abortion, White House Staff Secretary NEERA TANDEN wrote: “When the history books are written of this era, the decision will be the chapter and the leak may be a footnote, if that. Don’t fall for this.”

The A-WORD: Biden doesn’t like to use the word “abortion,” preferring euphemisms that he believes won’t alienate voters in the middle (i.e. “protecting the rights of women”). Today, however, he included the word in his statement and he spoke it in remarks to reporters outside of Air Force One.

THOMAS AQUINAS HAS ENTERED THE CHAT: Biden drew fire from some conservatives for his religious analysis of Roe v. Wade. “Roe says what all basic mainstream religions have historically concluded, that the existence of a human life and being is a question,” he said today. “Is it at the moment of conception? Is it six months? Is it six weeks? Is it quickening, like [St. Thomas] Aquinas argued?”

Agenda Setting

MORE WORK PERMITTED: The Biden administration moved to extend worker permits Tuesday, allowing hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers to be able to continue to use their existing work permits for nearly 18 months after they expire, our NICK NIEDZWIADEK reports. The order goes into effect Wednesday and reflects the latest attempt to address an immigration backlog of roughly 1.5 million work-permit applications.

BIG LABOR MEET-UP: CHRISTIAN SMALLS, the leading labor organizer behind the unionization efforts at Amazon’s Staten Island fulfillment centers, announced on Twitter he’s meeting with the White House this week. The White House told us he will join Vice President Harris and Labor Secretary MARTY WALSH on Thursday along with “other grassroots union organizers from Starbucks/SEIU, United Paizo Workers/CWA, Titmouse Productions/IATSE, Baltimore Public Library/IAM, and REI/RWDSU.”

Biden surprised a lot of people last month when he told labor leaders: “Amazon, here we come.”

MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX TOUR: Biden toured a Lockheed Martin facility in Alabama today that makes Javelin anti-tank missiles. “Those Javelins I saw, there are 10 for every tank. We’re changing people’s lives,” Biden said. “You’re allowing the Ukrainians to defend themselves.”

What We're Reading

U.S. preparing 19,000 beds for migrant children in case of spike in border arrivals, officials say (CBS News’ Camilo Montoya-Galvez)

U.S. CDC says travelers should still wear masks on airplanes (Reuters’ David Shepardson)

CIA instructs Russians on how to share secrets with the spy agency (WaPo’s Shane Harris)

CIA Chief Met Saudi Crown Prince Last Month in Push to Mend Ties (WSJ’s Stephen Kalin, Summer Said and Warren P. Strobel)

What We're Watching

The vice president speaking at the EMILY’s List Gala this evening at 7 p.m. EST. POLITICO’s EUGENE DANIELS is traveling with her so follow him here.

Where's Joe

Biden traveled to Montgomery, Ala., this morning from Washington, D.C.

Aides traveling with him included: Defense Department Deputy Secretary KATHLEEN HICKS, Deputy Chief of Staff, Principal Deputy BRUCE REED, National Security Adviser JON FINER, Director of Oval Office Operations ANNIE TOMASINI and Press Secretary JEN PSAKI.

He visited a Lockheed Martin facility in Troy, Ala., and delivered remarks about military aid to Ukraine in the afternoon.

He was scheduled to arrive back at the White House around 7:35 p.m.

Where's Kamala

As mentioned, the vice president was set to deliver remarks this evening at EMILY’s List 30th Annual We Are Emily National Conference and Gala in the Omni Hotel in Washington, D.C.

The Oppo Book

White House National Climate Adviser GINA McCARTHY is a big mystery book nerd.

She told 19th News in an April 2021 interview that she was reading a mystery from author “DAVID BALDACCI … which is about an FBI agent whose last name is Pine, who is a woman who works in Arizona at the Grand Canyon, and she’s a real spunky woman.”

Sounds like a page turner.

McCarthy said she likes the genre because “they kind of take your mind away from things. And they end.”

POTUS PUZZLER ANSWER

Monrovia, Liberia, was named in honor of former President JAMES MONROE, as it was founded during his administration in 1822.

A CALL OUT — Do you have a more difficult trivia question? Send us your best question on the presidents with a citation and we may feature it.

Edited by Eun Kyung Kim and Sam Stein