| | | | | |  | | By Zach Montellaro | Presented by The American Civil Liberties Union | Editor's Note: Weekly Score is a weekly version of POLITICO Pro's daily Campaigns policy newsletter, Morning Score. POLITICO Pro is a policy intelligence platform that combines the news you need with tools you can use to take action on the day's biggest stories. Act on the news with POLITICO Pro.
| | | — It was a busy weekend of census news: Census Bureau director Steven Dillingham will resign on Wednesday with the change of administration, and the bureau announced apportionment data wouldn't be released until President-elect Joe Biden is in office. — Vice President-elect Kamala Harris has resigned from her Senate seat, clearing the way for Sen.-designate Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) to be sworn in as soon as today. — Today is the last full day of President Donald Trump's presidency. And he is leaving office as a historically unpopular president. Good Tuesday morning. Email me at zmontellaro@politico.com, or follow me on Twitter at @ZachMontellaro. Email the rest of the POLITICO Campaigns team at sshepard@politico.com, jarkin@politico.com, amutnick@politico.com and srodriguez@politico.com. Follow them on Twitter: @POLITICO_Steve, @JamesArkin, @allymutnick and @sabrod123. Days until the LA-02 and LA-05 special elections: 60 Days until the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial elections: 287 Days until the 2022 midterm elections: 658 | | | | A message from The American Civil Liberties Union The Biden administration must end ICE programs – like 287(g) – that tap local governments to detain and to facilitate the deportation of immigrants. Cities and counties, facing dire budget conditions, should be encouraged to direct local resources to more pressing needs, like fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. | | | | | | COUNTING HEADS — The holiday weekend marked the unwinding of key efforts by the outgoing Trump administration to influence the decennial census. First, the latest news: Dillingham, the director of the Census Bureau, is stepping down from his post at the start of Biden's tenure, I reported. "Effective January 20, 2021, I will be retiring from my position as director of the U.S. Census Bureau," Dillingham said in a letter sent to Census Bureau staff on Monday, which was published by the bureau. "I have a smile on my face and gratitude in my heart for all you have done for our Nation." Pressure has been mounting on Dillingham and the bureau, and several key Democratic lawmakers told POLITICO last week that Dillingham should resign, or be removed from his post by Biden, following a memo from the Commerce Department Office of Inspector General alleging he was rushing a technical report on noncitizens. Talking Points Memo's Tierney Sneed first reported Dillingham's resignation on Monday. In a blog post accompanying his resignation, Dillingham said he had "received requests to continue serving during and after the transition, including from a President-Elect Biden transition official," but he did not give a timetable for when those requests were made, and praised the work of employees of the bureau and highlighted his long career of government service. He also said that the whistleblower concerns in the Commerce OIG memo "appear to be misunderstandings regarding the planned process for the review and potential postings of data, and the agreed upon need to apply data quality standards." Ron Jarmin, a career civil servant and deputy director of the bureau who has been there since 1992, would likely serve as acting director in the interim, a role in which he served for about a year and a half before Dillingham was appointed. Biden's transition team did not respond to a request for comment on Dillingham's resignation, but the president-elect would be responsible for appointing a new director for the home stretch of the decennial count. The Census Bureau also announced over the weekend that no apportionment data — or data on the undocumented immigrant population — would be published "prior to the change of Administration on January 20," in an agreement in a lawsuit brought by the National Urban League and other plaintiffs about the accuracy of the count, I (also) reported. This also ends Trump's attempts to exclude undocumented immigrants from the census totals, because Biden has previously said he opposes those efforts. When the apportionment numbers will be published is up in the air. Earlier last week, Justice Department lawyers representing the bureau in that case said that apportionment data would not be available until early March. In the agreement , the government stated that the apportionment data it "will not be in position to finalize or provide apportionment data until many weeks after January 20." The Urban League case was paused for three weeks, and if apportionment data was to be released before that ends, the government would need to give plaintiffs 7 days' advance notice. Meanwhile, the redistricting processes in the states remain in limbo. | | | | A message from The American Civil Liberties Union   | | | | | | MUSICAL CHAIRS — For about 48 hours, Harris will hold no political office. She resigned from her Senate seat on Monday, POLITICO's Chris Cadelago wrote. But, as Harris noted in a not-quite goodbye San Francisco Chronicle op-ed , she'll still spend a lot of time on the Hill, especially as the tie-breaking vote in an evenly divided Senate. "As I resign from the Senate, I am preparing to take an oath that would have me preside over it," she wrote. "As senator-turned-Vice-President Walter Mondale once pointed out, the vice presidency is the only office in our government that 'belongs to both the executive branch and the legislative branch.' A responsibility made greater with an equal number of Democrats and Republicans in the Senate." Padilla, the now-former California secretary of state, resigned from his post in the Golden State on Monday as well, and will soon be sworn in to the upper chamber. Our own Andrew Desiderio says that Padilla could be sworn in as early as today. FUTURE OF THE PARTY? — The political future of Ivanka Trump could maybe include … a primary challenge to a sitting Republican senator? POLITICO's Meridith McGraw, Marc Caputo and Sam Stein: "The senior White House adviser is set to decamp to Florida after her father's presidency comes to a close. And though talk of her launching a primary challenge to Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has given off the faint whiff of political fan-fick, in reality, Trump officials say, there have been machinations behind the scenes. … One person close to Trump said that Ivanka herself had denied having interest in running for office. But the president's advisers are openly playing up her political potency." — The freshman Republican class is fracturing over the future of the party, and the role Trump should, and will, play in it. POLITICO's Melanie Zanona and Ally Mutnick: "There are the members who flipped suburban swing-seats and rejected Trump's false claims of voter fraud — a group that includes single moms and Cuban and Korean immigrants. And then there are those such as Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert , who won deep red districts where loyalty to the president is paramount and conspiracy theories are commonplace. The warring factions in the freshman class mirror the broader rift in the GOP, where there is a widening gulf between a Trump-loving base and the moderate wing that can help make Republicans a majority party in 2022." THE BIG FLOAT — There have been, and will be, a lot of floats for potential 2022 runs. We've intentionally been light on the floats in Score (generally, you get an item when you actually announce a bid), but here's one that's interesting: Rep. Cindy Axne, the only Democrat in the Iowa congressional delegation, didn't rule out a 2022 Senate or gubernatorial run. "Listen, we've got a couple of seats coming up in the next couple of years that are really important to the integrity of our country," she said on Iowa Press, per the Des Moines Register's Brianne Pfannenstiel. "And I'm not going to leave anything off the table, but I haven't made a commitment on what I'll be looking at at this time." — A group of former staffers for former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) launched a PAC to target GOP Sen. Josh Hawley, who defeated McCaskill in 2018, per POLITICO's Burgess Everett. The group said it'd go after Hawley, who led the charge to challenge election results, if he runs for president, or reelection, in 2024. McCaskill tweeted that she had no involvement with the group, but encouraged people to donate. THE OUTSIDE GROUPS — The NRA has filed for bankruptcy. CNN's Clare Duffy: "The group said it plans to leave New York State, where it was founded in 1871, and reincorporate as a Texas nonprofit in a move it is calling 'Project Freedom,' according to a statement published Friday. The Chapter 11 announcement follows leadership shakeups and allegations of financial mismanagement at the NRA in recent years."
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ENDORSEMENT CORNER — For the "to the extent you think endorsements matter" file: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi backed former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe's bid to reclaim his former office, per WTOP's Matt Small.
ANTI-TRUMP WING — John Weaver, a co-founder of the Lincoln Project and longtime Republican operative, acknowledged sending "inappropriate" messages to several men, Axios' Lachlan Markay wrote. Weaver, who said he is gay, will not be returning to the group. STAFFING UP — EMILY's List, the group that backs Democratic women who support abortion rights, added four members to its board of directors: Yvette Nicole Brown, Maya Harris, Jennifer Lin and Deborah Simon. Paul Bernon has also been named vice chair of the board and Yolanda Caraway has been named secretary treasurer. | | | | A message from The American Civil Liberties Union The Biden administration must end ICE programs – like 287(g) – that tap local governments to detain and to facilitate the deportation of immigrants. Cities and counties, facing dire budget conditions, should be encouraged to direct local resources to more pressing needs, like fighting the COVID-19 pandemic.
During this pandemic, the costs of local agencies doing ICE's work can be lethal: It makes people afraid to get a COVID-19 test or a vaccine — for fear that state and local agencies won't safeguard their information, or that local police will use it to locate them and facilitate their deportation. That endangers all of us. | | | | | | ON THE WAY OUT — Trump is leaving office at one of the lowest points in his presidency in the eyes of the public. The lowest watermark came from the Pew Research Center , which found that just 29 percent of Americans approved of the way he was handling his job, and 68 percent disapproved, easily the lowest in his presidency. His job approval rating among Republicans is also at its lowest, but it is still a supermajority: 60 percent of Republicans approve of the job the president is doing in his final days in office. The president's decline in popularity was also seen in other recent public polling. A Gallup poll found a similar drop: Just 34 percent approved of the job was doing, the lowest mark in his presidency. (But not the lowest final Gallup job approval rating: That distinction goes to Harry Truman's 32 percent.) Even one of the highest approval ratings for the president among mainstream pollsters still has him well underwater: In an NBC News/The Wall Street Journal poll, he is at 55 percent disapprove to 43 percent approve. This also isn't a direct apples-to-apples comparison, because Pew and Gallup are among adults, and NBC/WSJ is among registered voters. Trump's job approval rating also cratered in POLITICO/Morning Consult polls last week, and another survey out this morning shows his approval rating at 39 percent. LEADING THE PARTY — State party leaders were thrilled that Biden picked Jaime Harrison, the former South Carolina state chair, to be the next chair of the DNC. But party leaders and DNC members are more alarmed about Jen O'Malley Dillion, his former campaign manager, having a key role in the president-elect's political portfolio, POLITICO's Holly Otterbein wrote: "they view her as a culprit in the kneecapping of the national party that occurred during former President Barack Obama's administration. … State party leaders complain of being underfunded during that period, and point to Dillon as the person negotiating with them at the national committee." Or, as Colorado-based DNC member Jeri Shepard told Holly: "I do not perceive Ms. O'Malley Dillon as being an ally to the grassroots … I would like to be proven wrong." — The Arizona GOP has crumbled during Trump's presidency, and his fingerprints are all over it. POLITICO's David Siders and James Arkin have a story on the party, where state party chair Kelli Ward is currently battling Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, and more. — Manny Diaz, the new chair of the Florida state Democratic Party, has terminated two-thirds of the party's staff as part of an overhaul of the embattled state party, POLITICO Florida's Gary Fineout reported. Party officials said the cuts were temporary. AFTER THE FACT — The Michigan state GOP is moving to replace Aaron Van Langevelde, the Republican on the state board of canvassers who voted to certify election results despite immense pressure for him to not do so. His term expires on Jan. 31, and "instead of renominating him for a four-year term, the Michigan Republican Party has proposed three well-known activists to take his spot," The Detroit News' Beth LeBlanc and Craig Mauger reported. The state party said he "did not request" to be reappointed. CODA — QUOTE OF THE DAY: "It's weird to turn on CNN and see my dad. I'm like, 'Wait, you don't belong there! But I guess you do?'" — Cole Emhoff, the son of soon-to-be second gentleman Cole Emhoff, to The New York Times. | | | | KEEP UP WITH CONGRESS IN 2021: Tensions remain high on Capitol Hill as we inaugurate a new president this week. How are lawmakers planning to move forward after a tumultuous few weeks? How will a new Senate majority impact the legislative agenda? With so much at stake, our new Huddle author Olivia Beavers brings you the most important news and critical insight from Capitol Hill with assists from POLITICO's deeply sourced Congress team. Subscribe to Huddle, the essential guide to understanding Congress. | | | | | | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |
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