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The Bidens are at Camp David this morning.
The presidential inbox is aburstin’, with most of the issues that have bedeviled Team Biden-Harris-Klain-Pelosi-Schumer from the start still front and center on the eve of what amounts to the first real work week of 2022.
It isn’t just the stalled BBB and voting legislation that look tough as we sit here, waiting and masked, for Lauriol Plaza to open for the weekly Gang of 500 brunch.
The pandemic, schools, COVID tests, inflation, the supply chain, the Mexican border, Russia, Elmo – all of these challenges and more look somewhere between deeply unresolved and full-blown crisis.
If the members of Team Klain-Dunn-Donilon-Ricchetti-Reed-Anzalone have a theory of the case for raising the POTUS job approval numbers beyond cherry picking positive stats, it has yet to be fully unfurled.
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Here, then, are Sunday’s (other) downward vectors.
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PANDEMIC
Via the New York Times:
With infection rates mounting, the Omicron variant has ushered in a new and disorienting phase of the pandemic, leaving Americans frustrated and dismayed that the basic elements they thought they understood about the coronavirus are shifting faster than ever.
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TESTING
Escalating demand for Covid-19 tests is prompting some laboratories to ration access, giving priority to people with symptoms or other health concerns as the Omicron variant quickly spreads.
Triaging who is eligible for Covid-19 tests can help ensure that patients who need a test the most get results fast enough to isolate or get treatment, pathologists and public-health experts say. The strategy, however, risks perpetuating the virus’s spread if some people get turned away from testing altogether.
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SCHOOLS
Via the Washington Post:
The latest surge in coronavirus cases prompting school and day-care closures has thrust parents back into familiar terrain, trying to navigate work obligations with a changing patchwork of testing protocols, quarantines and a possible return to virtual schooling.
At least 5,225 schools were disrupted for at least part of this past week because of the pandemic, easily a record for the current school year, according to the data firm Burbio. Public schools in Atlanta and Detroit went completely virtual this week, while others, including in the D.C. suburbs of Montgomery County, Md., and Philadelphia, are making decisions on a school-by-school or class-by-class basis. Chicago Public Schools has shut down altogether because of failed union talks over coronavirus safety measures. And day cares around the country are closing for weeks at a time because of coronavirus outbreaks, worsening a long-simmering child-care crisis.
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INFLATION
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SUPPLY CHAIN
Supply-chain backlogs are roiling the new home market, upending efforts to accelerate construction, limiting home-buyer choices, and causing some new owners to move into unfinished homes.
Home builders have increased activity in the past year in response to robust home-buying demand and a shortage of homes in the existing-home market. In many cases, the surge in demand in late 2020 and early 2021 overwhelmed builders, forcing many to halt sales in some markets while they caught up.
Now the industry is struggling with global supply-chain woes. Pandemic-related factory closures, transportation delays and port-capacity limits have stymied the flow of many goods and materials critical for home building, including windows, garage doors, appliances and paint. Freezing weather and power outages in Texas in February led to a shortage of resin, which is used in many home-building products.
While supply-chain delays for some products showed signs of easing at the end of last year, builders say it is still taking weeks longer than normal to finish homes. About 90% of home builders surveyed by housing-market research firm Zonda in November said they were experiencing supply disruptions, up from 75% in January 2021.
Delivery delays can cause a domino effect of rescheduling work crews, which is worsened by a shortage of skilled tradespeople in many markets.
Many builders so far have been able to pass increased material costs along to home buyers. But with home prices higher than ever—the median price of a newly built home in November rose 18.8% from a year earlier to a record $416,900—some builders are concerned about pricing out potential buyers.
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BORDER
Via the New York Times:
The number of migrants crossing the border illegally has soared, with the Border Patrol recording the highest number of encounters in more than six decades in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30. With the surge has come an increase in deaths and injuries from high-speed chases by the Border Patrol, a trend that Customs and Border Protection, which oversees the Border Patrol, attributes to a rise in brazen smugglers trying to flee its agents.
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RUSSIA
Via the Associated Press:
With the fate of Ukraine and potentially broader post-Cold War European stability at stake, the United States and Russia are holding critical strategic talks that could shape the future of not only their relationship but the relationship between the U.S. and its NATO allies. Prospects are bleak.
Though the immediacy of the threat of a Russian invasion of Ukraine will top the agenda in a series of high-level meetings that get underway on Monday, there is a litany of festering but largely unrelated disputes, ranging from arms control to cybercrime and diplomatic issues, for Washington and Moscow to overcome if tensions are to ease. And the recent deployment of Russian troops to Kazakhstan may cast a shadow over the entire exercise.
With much at risk and both warning of dire consequences of failure, the two sides have been positioning themselves for what will be a nearly unprecedented flurry of activity in Europe this week. Yet the wide divergence in their opening positions bodes ill for any type of speedy resolution, and levels of distrust appear higher than at any point since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
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ELMO
Via the New York Times:
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Can any of these challenges be in a meaningfully better place by the president’s March 1 State of the Union address?
Absolutely.
But the interconnectedness of many/most of these problems means short-term solutions will be exceedingly hard to come by.
Back at Camp David, the difficult work continues.
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To lighten you Sunday, two of the all-time best covers of Beatles songs:
DO NOT MISS THE PRINCE GUITAR SOLOS AT THE END OF THIS ONE:
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