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US

Biden formally announces Ron Klain is stepping down as White House chief of staff and will be replaced by Jeff Zients

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CNN
 — 

President Joe Biden announced White House chief of staff Ron Klain will step down next week and will be replaced by Jeff Zients, the former Obama administration official who ran Biden’s Covid-19 response operation.

Biden said there will be an “official transition” event at the White House next week to “thank Ron for his tireless work and officially welcome Jeff back to the White House in this role.”

Biden hailed Klain in a statement Friday morning, saying when he was elected president he “knew” he wanted Klain to be his chief of staff calling him “as tough, smart, determined, and persistent as anyone I have ever met.”

On Zients, Biden said he is “confident that Jeff will continue Ron’s example of smart, steady leadership, as we continue to work hard every day for the people we were sent here to serve.”

The announcement confirms earlier reporting by CNN and other news outlets.

In his resignation letter Friday, Klain said it had been “quite a journey” serving Biden, writing that 36 years ago he joined Biden’s then-Senate staff on the day he returned from his honeymoon.

“Leaving and returning to your staff several times since, my work for you has defined my life, both personally and professionally,” Klain wrote to Biden, adding he was “filled with gratitude.”

Klain promised to complete “an orderly handoff” to his successor and promised to do “whatever I can to help your campaign” should Biden choose to run for reelection.

“The halfway point of your first term – with two successful years behind us, and key decisions on the next two years ahead – is the right time for this team to have fresh leadership,” Klain said. “I have served longer than eight of the last nine Chiefs of Staff and have given this job my all; now it is time for someone else to take it on.”

Klain touted Biden’s policy record in the first two years of his presidency, comparing him to some of the most notable Democratic presidents of the last century as he touted “the most significant economic recovery legislation since FDR” and praised him for managing “the largest land war in Europe since the Truman era.”

“You did it all in the middle of the worst public health crisis since the Wilson era, with the smallest legislative majority of any newly elected Democratic president in a century,” Klain wrote.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who has maintained an extremely close relationship with Klain through the last two years, praised his tenure as critical to “one of the most historic and productive first two years of a presidency in generations.”

Schumer, a New York Democrat, spoke by phone with Zients before the decision was officially announced and said the two agreed to maintain the “same close relationship with the White House Chief of Staff that I had with Ron.”

“He’s organized, focused, and deliberate, exactly the right person to lead the Biden administration and ensure the American people see and feel the benefits of these new laws,” Schumer, who often spoke to Klain by phone several times a day, said of Zients in a statement.

In replacing Klain with Zients, Biden is turning to a consultant with more business experience than political background as he enters the third year of his presidency.

The decision to pick Zients surprised some internally given that there were differences in Biden’s and Zients’ management styles early on in the administration. But Biden was impressed with his job as the coronavirus response coordinator when Zients inherited what officials described as a “largely dysfunctional” effort by the Trump administration.

Zients is expected to focus on managing the White House and implementing Biden’s legislative and policy agenda, while other senior advisers – namely senior adviser Anita Dunn and deputy White House chief of staff Jen O’Malley Dillon – take the lead on Biden’s political operation as Biden gears up for a reelection campaign.

The balance of power is expected to be similar to the split portfolios of then-White House chief of staff Jack Lew and David Plouffe, a senior adviser to former President Barack Obama who managed political operations. Klain is also expected to remain involved from the outside and additional political advisers are expected to be hired.

A White House official touted Zients as having the ideal set of skills and relationship with Biden to lead the White House in a year that will be focused on implementing key pieces of Biden’s legislative agenda. Officials pointed to Zients’ experience as Biden’s Covid-19 response coordinator and his roles as director of the National Economic Council and acting director of the Office of Management and Budget under Obama. Zients has also worked closely with Biden’s other senior advisers.

Klain’s departure comes at a difficult time for Biden, with a special counsel investigating his handling of classified information after his time as vice president and with the administration and the president’s family facing renewed scrutiny by the GOP-controlled US House of Representatives. An official familiar with Klain’s plans said his decision to step down is not related to the investigation underway about classified documents found at Biden’s private office and Delaware residence, with the decision being made before the special counsel was announced.

Klain has been mulling his exit since November’s midterm elections, according to a person familiar with the matter, who said people inside the White House have watched closely for clues as to his intentions. Klain is known to email staff at all hours and even check on gas prices in the middle of the night – a work pace that many of his colleagues viewed as unsustainable in the long run.

Klain himself has noted publicly – and in a more detailed manner privately – the grueling and exhausting nature of the position. But his deeply ingrained presence in nearly every aspect of the West Wing, along with his decades-long relationship with Biden, has made him crucial to the administration’s first two years.

Klain’s departure could preface other shifts inside the West Wing, as senior staff either shift over to the expected reelection campaign or decide themselves to depart the administration after two years. A talent search process has been underway, led by Zients, to identify potential replacements for top posts.

This story has been updated with additional reporting.

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Business

Employee Engagement Is Actually Falling. Just Don’t Call It ‘Quiet Quitting.’

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Here is the published version of this week’s Forbes Careers newsletter, which brings the latest news, commentary and ideas about the workplace, leadership, job hunting and the future of work straight to your inbox every Wednesday. Click here to get on the newsletter list!

I don’t know about you, but I’m starting to rage-read about “rage applying.” I’ve not-so-silently soured on “quiet quitting.” And if one more email hits my inbox about “quiet hiring” or some other supposed trend, it’s going straight to the junk folder.

Enough already.

After three years of pandemic-fueled remote work, record numbers of resignations, heightened burnout and now mass layoffs, I get that it feels like there should be a name for the stress, the turnover, and the disruption of the last few years. Indeed, that may be why—not to mention the incessant cycle of journalists, social media posts and public relations folks who repeat and recirculate these terms—we won’t stop making up words about work, as Vox’s Rani Molla wrote recently.

But talk to anyone who leads human resources teams, and you’ll get an eye roll—and an ear full—when you bring up any of them. People have always applied for new jobs—and yes, many at once—out of frustration in their current ones. “Quiet hiring” is repackaged internal mobility—which may sound like a sinister way to avoid bringing on new employees but can also help reassign underutilized people who might otherwise be laid off.

“Why do [these terms] always have to be alliteration? Why do they have to be two words? I guess we like short form communications,” Paul Rubenstein, the chief people officer at Visier, said in a recent interview. “None of them are truly unique.”

Sure, engagement is lower than it has been. Employee engagement arbiter Gallup released its latest figures Wednesday, and it is seeing a further drop in the data. In 2021, employee engagement in the U.S. saw its first annual decline in a decade, dropping from 36% of employees being “engaged” (which it defines as a measure of the involvement and enthusiasm of employees in their work) to 34% in 2021.

That continued into 2022, Gallup reported Wednesday, with now just 32% of full- and part-time employees being engaged. The percent of employees who were actively “disengaged” rose by two percentage points from 2021. Younger workers, women and people whose jobs could be done remotely but were required to be onsite daily—no surprise there—saw the biggest drops in engagement.

But while the numbers have gotten worse—and may be worse than they’ve been in a decade—it’s not like they’ve never been here before. Gallup’s data shows that 32% is still above the line of how many workers were “engaged” between 2000 and 2013, with some years dipping into the mid-20s on a percentage basis.

“People have been checking out and getting burned out at various stages of their careers forever—forever,” Amy Zimmerman, chief people officer at Relay Payments, told me recently. “It’s just the whole concept of engagement”—or disengagement.

The real question, of course, is which way the line will go from here. If a bad recession worsens people’s relationships with their jobs, and the line falls consistently below where engagement bounced around for the last 20 years, then perhaps something fundamental has shifted, and is deserving of a new term. If it stays where it is, or the threat of a recession reminds people that doing the bare minimum may not help keep them employed, I’m not so sure.

In the meantime, let’s try to retire the repetition of these cringe-worthy terms. At a time of mass layoffs and ongoing gun violence and mental health concerns, workers—and the people who lead them—have bigger issues to focus on. Yes, companies are filling slots with temp workers or reassigning people to jobs where they need them more. People are struggling with burnout and staying engaged in their jobs. And fed up workers are now—and always will be—looking for other jobs when their current one isn’t panning out. We don’t need a catchy name to talk about it.

FEATURED STORY

The New Perk For Women Executives: Membership In This Exclusive Group

The executive women’s network Chief is launching a new offering aimed at corporate customers that will not only fast-track membership review of employers’ eligible women leaders, but automatically have companies foot the bill. Called Chief Enterprise, the new service could lead to growth at the Series B-funded network—as long as employers don’t pull back their spending on diversity commitments or leadership initiatives amid an economic downturn. Read more on Forbes’ exclusive here.

WORK SMARTER

Practical insights and advice from contributors for building your career, leading smarter and finding balance.

No one likes the “what’s your greatest weakness?” question. Here’s how to answer it.

There are upsides to being ordered back to the office. Try to focus on them if you’re down about losing remote work privileges.

There are lots of reasons why diversity, equity and inclusion efforts fail. Here are three of the biggest.

Compassion—not fear—is the key for the most successful leaders.

To prevent stress and burnout, focus on progress—not results.

ON OUR AGENDA

News from the world of work

Microsoft’s big AI bet: ChatGPT maker Open AI got a “game-changing,” multibillion-dollar investment from Microsoft, according to Bloomberg, as the tech giant adds to its commitment to the viral artificial intelligence chatbot, which could have big impacts on how we work.

Layoffs surge: Spotify slashed 6% of jobs, and cuts recently hit 3M, crypto exchange Gemini, Alphabet and Wayfair. Tech stocks have surged as investors cheer massive job cut announcements even while employees around the world are facing a job security crisis, a survey of 35,000 workers shows. Nearly 60,000 people were laid off in January alone as major firms increased cuts.

A consultant for the Oval: Ron Klain, President Biden’s chief of staff, will be replaced by former covid czar Jeff Zients, according to multiple reports. The former consultant will face a tough job, navigating a split Congress, growing questions about Biden’s handling of classified documents, and the ramp up to the 2024 election.

Another founder passes the baton: Netflix’s Reed Hastings is stepping down as co-CEO from the streaming service after a rocky year, as one of the few major tech company founders still in place departs the top job.

Ardern’s surprise resignation: New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern shocked the world when she announced her resignation, saying she no longer has “enough in the tank to do” her leadership job justice. The decision prompted a parade of commentary on women, leadership and burnout—from how other women may relate to the impact her association with the pandemic may have had on her career.

READING LIST

An expansion of our near-weekly book pick to include links, surveys and other reads from around the web.

Deep Work author and Digital Minimalism advocate Cal Newport talks with the New York Times about “slow productivity,” the problem with context switching, and why working on a personal computer all day hasn’t really made workers more efficient.

Layoffs are really bad for companies, writes Bloomberg columnist Sarah Green Carmichael, citing the surprisingly consistent research that shows the downsides for the employers—and the people—who remain.

Stanford University business school professor Jeff Pfeffer—one of my favorite people to talk with about what businesses get wrong when managing people—talks with Stanford News about why there are so many tech layoffs, and the role “contagion” has in expanding them.

Performance coach Stefan Falk has a new book out Feb. 7, Intrinsic Motivation: Learn To Love Your Work And Succeed As Never Before, which explores how becoming happier and more productive relies on finding inherent satisfaction in our work rather than in external rewards.

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US

Jeff Zients to Be Named White House Chief of Staff

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WASHINGTON—President

Biden

is planning to name

Jeff Zients,

an investor and former

Obama

administration official who led the White House’s Covid-19 response, to be his next chief of staff, according to people familiar with the decision.

Ron Klain,

Mr. Biden’s current chief of staff, is expected to step down in the coming weeks after more than two years on the job. The Washington Post earlier reported that Mr. Zients was expected to replace him. Mr. Zients didn’t respond to requests for comment, and the White House declined to comment.

Mr. Zients helmed the White House efforts to increase distribution of the Covid-19 vaccine during the first year of Mr. Biden’s presidency, helping to cobble together a network to make the shots available nationally.

He left the administration in April last year, saying he had no specific job plans, and in recent months was tapped by Mr. Klain to prepare for staff departures and help identify potential replacements, according to people familiar with the matter. Mr. Zients co-chaired Mr. Biden’s presidential transition team in 2020.

The president is turning to Mr. Zients as his next chief of staff because of his reputation as a manager with a history of navigating government bureaucracy, the people familiar with the matter said.

Mr. Zients is expected to bring to the job a more decentralized approach than the one favored by Mr. Klain, who was involved in nearly every aspect of day-to-day operations at the White House, some of the people familiar with the matter said. 

While Mr. Zients is expected to focus on policy and governing, other longtime aides to Mr. Biden are likely to be more involved in advising the president on political matters as he faces investigations from newly empowered House Republicans and prepares to announce his reelection bid. 

White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain and President Biden greeting each other at a White House event.



Photo:

KEVIN LAMARQUE/REUTERS

In the coming year, White House officials expect to focus on implementing a slate of laws signed by the president since he took office, including measures to fix the country’s aging infrastructure, invest in renewable energy and boost semiconductor manufacturing. Options for major legislative breakthroughs will be limited now that Republicans have taken control of the House.

Mr. Zients was a top economic adviser to President

Barack Obama,

serving as the director of the National Economic Council and a senior official at the Office of Management and Budget. Mr. Zients joined the board of

Facebook Inc.

—now part of Meta Platforms Inc.—in 2018 after leaving the Obama administration. He was a top executive with the Cranemere Group, an investment holding company.

At the beginning of Mr. Obama’s presidency, Mr. Zients was appointed the administration’s chief performance officer, a newly created role that centered on making the government more efficient. He later led a mission aimed at fixing HealthCare.gov, the federal website for the Affordable Care Act, when it experienced technological difficulties in 2013. He brought in private companies and technology firms to undertake a rapid review of the platform’s problems.

Mr. Zients is known as a meticulous planner. In his beginning days handling the Covid-19 response, he scheduled hour-by-hour what needed to be done to execute his pandemic plan. He and Mr. Biden spoke three to four times a week while he was overseeing the coronavirus response.

While Mr. Zients’ selection to handle the pandemic was initially criticized by some progressives who said he lacked public health experience, he earned bipartisan praise in hearings for his efforts to rapidly disseminate vaccines after a bumpy rollout during the end of the Trump administration. About 65% of the population, or more than 200 million people, were fully vaccinated by the time he announced in March 2022 that he would be leaving his position. 

He also won high marks for shifting the administration from a more reactive approach to the pandemic to responding to Covid-19 as an ongoing public health issue. He pledged a wartime response to the administration’s global response to Covid-19 but some donations to poor countries fell short of targets because of low demand and limited funding.

Mr. Biden was criticized in 2021 for holding a massive July Fourth party on the South Lawn and declaring “we’re closer than ever to declaring our independence from a deadly virus”  just as the Delta variant began spreading in the U.S., causing another round of shutdowns.  

Later that winter when the Omicron wave caused infections to spike, the lack of testing kits caused long lines and concerns across the country. The president acknowledged in a January 2022 speech that the situation was “frustrating.” 

Messrs. Biden and Zients developed a relationship during the Obama administration, and became closer when Mr. Zients was brought on as an adviser to Mr. Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign. Mr. Zients doesn’t have the kind of decadeslong relationship with Mr. Biden that some of the president’s closest aides have. But those advisers—including senior White House aides

Mike Donilon,

Steve Ricchetti

and

Bruce Reed

—are expected to continue working closely with Mr. Biden as he prepares to announce his reelection bid in the coming month.

“He has the utmost integrity and that’s why everyone trusts him,” said Andrew Slavitt, who was a senior adviser for the Biden administration Covid-19 response. “He over-communicates and seeks out everyone’s views but does it in a way to push the ball down the field every day.”

Mr. Zients’ experience and ties in the business world has engendered skepticism from some progressive groups, many of whom developed close relationships with Mr. Klain.

Matt Stoller, the director of Research at the American Economic Liberties Project, a nonprofit that advocates for strict antitrust enforcement, called Mr. Zients “an ugly choice” for the job, noting that he joined the board of Facebook in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Write to Andrew Restuccia at andrew.restuccia@wsj.com, Stephanie Armour at Stephanie.Armour@wsj.com and Annie Linskey at annie.linskey@wsj.com

Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

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US

Jeff Zients to replace Ron Klain as White House chief of staff

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CNN
 — 

Jeff Zients, who ran President Joe Biden’s Covid-19 response effort and served in high-ranking roles in the Obama administration, is expected to replace Ron Klain as the next White House chief of staff, according to three people briefed on the matter.

Klain is expected to step down in the coming weeks.

The move to replace Klain is particularly important for Biden, who has entered a critical moment in his presidency and his political future. As he continues to weigh whether to seek reelection in 2024, the early stages of a special counsel investigation into his handling of classified documents has rattled Democrats and emboldened congressional Republicans, who now hold the House majority and have pledged their own probes.

Biden decided on Zients after an internal search when it became clear that Klain favored Zients as his successor, a factor that played a big role in the president’s decision. Klain had tapped Zients to lead a talent search for expected staff turnover following the midterm elections, but that didn’t ultimately materialize after Democrats performed better than expected. Klain is now the most significant departure and is being replaced by the person he picked to help bring in new team members.

A source said Klain will continue to be involved and remain close to the West Wing. Biden’s core political and legislative team – which includes Steve Ricchetti, Anita Dunn, Mike Donilon, Jen O’Malley Dillon, Bruce Reed and Louisa Terrell – will continue to advise him. Zients’ new role is being compared to when Jack Lew was Obama’s chief of staff and others, like David Plouffe, focused more on his political portfolio.

Additional political talent is expected to join for the likely re-election campaign, CNN is told.

In replacing Klain with Zients, Biden is turning to a consultant with more business experience than political background as he enters the third year of his presidency.

The decision to pick Zients surprised some internally given that there were differences in Biden’s and Zients’ management styles early on in the administration. But Biden was impressed with his job as the coronavirus response coordinator when Zients inherited what officials described as a “largely dysfunctional” effort by the Trump administration.

Another factor in the search was how this stretch of Biden’s presidency will focus on implementing the legislation enacted in his first two years, and Zients is seen internally as a “master implementor,” one source said. His operational skills were on display as his handled the coronavirus response and helped with the bungled 2013 launch of HealthCare.gov during the Obama administration.

Zients now has a closer relationship with Biden and with his senior advisers and multiple Cabinet members.

While Zients is not viewed as a political operator, his deep experience inside two administrations and his reputation for technocratic skill would likely serve as assets at a time when both are viewed as critical for what Biden faces in the year ahead. Still, he will be tasked with replacing an official who was a central force inside the administration – and someone with a rapport developed over decades with Biden himself.

Klain, who had long planned to depart the White House after Biden’s first two years, has targeted the weeks after the February 7 State of the Union address for the end of his tenure.

A number of top officials had been viewed as top candidates to succeed Klain, including Cabinet members and close Biden advisers such as Ricchetti, counselor to the president, and Dunn, the senior adviser with a wide-ranging strategy and communications portfolio.

But while Zients isn’t among the tight-knit circle of long-tenured Biden advisers, he’s been deeply intertwined with the team since the 2020 campaign, when he served as co-chairman of Biden’s transition outfit.

After the election Biden tapped Zients to lead the administration’s Covid-19 response effort as he entered office with the country facing dueling public health and economic crises. While Zients left that role last spring, he was once again brought into White House operations a few months later when Klain asked him to lead the planning for the expected turnover inside the administration that historically follows a president’s first midterm elections.

Zients was tasked with conducting a wide and diverse search for prospective candidates outside the administration to fill Cabinet, deputy Cabinet and senior administration roles, officials said, in an effort that would be closely coordinated with White House counterparts.

But even as wide-scale turnover has remained minimal for an administration that has taken pride in its stability in the first two years, now, the official leading the planning effort may soon shift into one of, if not the, most critical role set to open.

The White House chief of staff is a grueling and all-consuming post in any administration, and Klain’s deep involvement across nearly every key element of process, policy and politics touching the West Wing only served to elevate that reality.

A long-time Washington hand with ties Democratic administrations – and Biden – that cross several decades, Klain is departing at a moment that officials inside the West Wing have spent the last several months viewing as a high point.

Biden entered 2023 on the heel of midterm elections that resulted in an expanded Senate majority for his Democratic Party and the defiance of widespread expectations of massive GOP victories in the House.

The sweeping and far-reaching cornerstones of Biden’s legislative agenda have largely been signed into law, the result of a series of major bipartisan wins paired with the successful navigation of intraparty disputes to secure critical Democratic priorities.

Biden has made clear to advisers that the successful implementation of those laws – which is now starting to kick into high gear across the administration – is one of their most critical priorities for the year ahead.

But Zients will also inherit a West Wing now faced with a new House Republican majority that is girding for partisan warfare – and wide-scale investigations into the administration and Biden’s family.

This story has been updated with additional information.

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US

Top Biden aide Ron Klain expected to soon leave White House

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REHOBOTH BEACH, Del. (AP) — White House chief of staff Ron Klain, who has spent more than two years as President Joe Biden’s top aide, is preparing to leave his job in the coming weeks, according to a person familiar with Klain’s plans.

Klain’s expected departure comes not long after the White House and Democrats had a better-than-expected showing in the November elections, buoyed by a series of major legislative accomplishments, including a bipartisan infrastructure bill and a sweeping climate, health care and tax package that all Republicans rejected.

The personnel change is also a rarity for an administration that has had minimal turnover so far. No member of Biden’s Cabinet has stepped down, in stark contrast to Donald Trump’s White House, with frequent staff turmoil and other crises.

The person familiar with Klain’s plans was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity to confirm the development, which was first reported by The New York Times.

The White House did not return calls or emails seeking comment on Klain’s expected exit. Spending the weekend in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, Biden did not respond to shouted questions about when his chief of staff is expected to depart.

Klain sent an email to White House staff on Friday, which was the second anniversary of Biden’s inauguration. “Although much work remains ahead, as we look back on these two years, I am awestruck at what this team has done and how you have done it,” he wrote in the email, obtained by The Associated Press, and noted that he bought cake to mark the occasion. He added: “These cakes are my small way of adding my personal thanks to those of the President, the Vice President and the country for your service and outstanding achievements.”

Now that Republicans have regained a majority in the House, the White House is preparing to shift to a more defensive posture. GOP lawmakers are planning multiple investigations into the Biden administration, examining everything from the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan to U.S. border policy. Republicans are also pledging to investigate the president’s son, Hunter Biden.

Klain’s departure also comes as the White House struggles to contain the fallout after classified documents dating from Biden’s time as vice president were discovered at his home in Wilmington, Delaware, and at his former institute in Washington. Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed a special counsel to investigate the matter. Biden’s lawyer said Saturday that the FBI searched the Wilmington home on Friday, locating six additional documents containing classified markings and taking possession of some of his notes.

Among those on the shortlist to succeed Klain include Steve Ricchetti, counselor to the president; Labor Secretary Marty Walsh; former White House COVID-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients; Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack; and Anita Dunn, a White House senior adviser.

Dunn has publicly ruled out interest in the chief of staff job but would be the first woman in the post. She played a leading role in shaping Biden’s political and communications strategy, including the “ultra-MAGA” framing of Republicans that helped Democrats exceed expectations during the 2022 midterms.

Zients has returned to the White House since running the COVID-19 response team in a low-profile role to ensure the administration is appropriately staffed for the remainder of Biden’s first term. Ricchetti, a former lobbyist, followed after Klain and senior adviser Bruce Reed as Biden’s final vice presidential chief of staff.

Walsh, Boston’s mayor before joining the Cabinet, earned praise from Biden as recently as Friday for his job performance. Vilsack, a former Iowa governor, is in his second stint as agriculture secretary after serving in the role for the entirety of the Obama administration. He volunteered for Biden during Biden’s ill-fated 1988 presidential bid in Iowa.

Klain, a longtime Democratic political operative, has overseen a West Wing that has been largely free of the high-stakes drama that permeated the upper echelons of the Trump administration. Klain has been an outspoken proponent of Biden’s agenda via Twitter, where he frequently engages with reporters to defend the president’s record.

His social-media use has run Klain into trouble at times. In October, he was found to have violated the Hatch Act, which bars government officials from political activity when acting in their official capacity, when he retweeted a message from a political group last spring. At the time, the White House said Klain “got it wrong this time” and he promised to be more careful with his Twitter account.

The Indianapolis native has served under Biden for decades, including as chief counsel of the Senate Judiciary Committee when Biden was its chairman. Klain also worked on judicial picks in the Clinton White House, helping with the nomination of Ruth Bader Ginsberg for the Supreme Court.

“With all due respect to my predecessors, I’m sure this is a higher priority for me.” Klain said in an Associated Press interview last month in which he discussed the importance placed by Biden of seating judges on the federal bench. ”The fact that (the president) makes it such a priority, makes it a big priority for me.”

Klain helped lead then-Vice President Al Gore’s legal team during the 2000 election’s Florida vote recount in the race against Republican George W. Bush. Actor Kevin Spacey portrayed Klain in HBO’s “Recount,” an account of the events that determined the presidency.

He was also tapped during the Obama administration to lead its response to the Ebola crisis — a background that came in handy as the Biden White House took on the COVID-19 pandemic in the early months of his presidency.

The father of three is married to Monica Medina, an assistant secretary of state.

___

Balsamo and Miller reported from Washington.

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Health

Experts say COVID-19 cases don’t tell whole story

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For nearly two years, Americans have looked carefully at coronavirus case numbers in the country and in their local states and towns to judge the risk of the disease.

Surging case numbers signaled growing dangers, while falling case numbers were a relief and a signal to let one’s guard down in terms of gathering with friends and families and taking part in all kinds of events.

But with much of the nation’s population vaccinated and boosted and the country dealing with a new COVID-19 surge from omicron — a highly contagious variant that some studies suggest may not be as severe as previous variants — public health officials are debating whether the nation needs to shift its thinking.

Many people are going to get omicron — but those that are vaccinated and boosted are unlikely to suffer dire symptoms.

As a result, hospitalizations and deaths are the markers that government officials need to monitor carefully to ensure the safety of communities as the nation learns to live with COVID-19.

“This is the new normal,” said Leana Wen, a public health professor at George Washington University and former Baltimore health commissioner. “This is what we will have to accept as we transition from the emergency of COVID-19 to living with it as part of the new normal.”

David Dowdy, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said that Americans all need to shift to focus on hospitalizations over cases as we enter into another year of the pandemic.

“I think that we need to start training ourselves to look, first of all, at hospitalizations. I think hospitalizations are a real-time indicator of how serious things are,” he said.

Rising case numbers still say something about the disease, and the spikes from omicron are leading to real concerns.

Anthony FauciAnthony FauciFauci on lack of tests during holiday season: ‘We’ve got to do better’ Fauci on domestic air travel mandate: Anything to get people more vaccinated ‘would be welcome’ Fauci says he was ‘stunned’ by boos from Trump supporters over booster revelation MORE, the government’s top infectious disease expert, noted on Sunday that even if omicron leads to less severe cases of COVID-19, if it infects tens of millions it will have the potential of straining resources in hospitals.

“If you have many, many, many more people with a less level of severity, that might kind of neutralize the positive effect of having less severity when you have so many more people,” he said during an appearance on ABC’s “This Week.”

At the same time, the nation must get used to dealing with the coronavirus as it would deal with an annual flu season. It’s a challenge for most parts of American life, from schools and businesses that have to consider worker and student safety, to professional sports leagues that must decide how long someone sits out after a positive test — even if the person is vaccinated and not symptomatic.

“Omicron in a way is the first test of what it means to live with COVID-19,” said Wen. “And by that I mean we are going to see many people getting infected but as long as our hospital systems are not overwhelmed and as long as vaccinated people are generally protected against severe outcomes, that is how we end the pandemic phase and switch into the endemic phase.”

The omicron strain is so infectious that once the current surge has faded in the United States, it’s likely a large majority of the population will either have been vaccinated against COVID-19 or have been infected, experts say. At that point, the focus should shift away from preventing infection to preventing serious illness, multiple experts said, a message already being echoed in some corners of the White House.

Many states have been seeing staggering numbers of positive tests and lines for COVID-19 testing that stretch for several blocks. Washington, D.C., and New York state have set records in recent days for the number of new cases reported as omicron barrels through the population.

But even with case totals surpassing last year’s numbers, President BidenJoe BidenThe 10 races that will decide the Senate majority Bidens: Desmond Tutu’s legacy will ‘echo throughout the ages’ Media love bad news; you don’t have to MORE and White House officials have been quick to point out that hospitalizations haven’t been as high as the numbers seen in the winter of 2020.

“Because we have so many vaccinated and boosted, we’re not seeing hospitalizations drive as sharply as we did in March of 2020 or even this past fall. America has made progress; things are better,” Biden said on Monday on a White House COVID-19 response team call with the National Governors Association to discuss the administration’s response to the omicron variant.

“But we do know that with rising cases, we still have tens of millions of unvaccinated people and we’re seeing hospitalizations rise,” he added, saying that some hospitals are going to get overrun both in terms of equipment and staff.

The White House pointed to Biden’s remarks last week when asked about whether the president wants Americans and health experts to take the emphasis off of case numbers and put it on hospitalizations.

“Because omicron spreads so easily, we’ll see some fully vaccinated people get COVID, potentially in large numbers. There will be positive cases in every office, even here in the White House, among the vaccinated … from omicron. But these cases are highly unlikely to lead to serious illness,” Biden said on Dec. 21.

Chief of staff Ron KlainRon KlainDemocrats like what they saw in Harris-Charlamagne tha God exchange Democrats face tough choices on Biden plan after Manchin setback White House incivility is what ‘lost’ Joe Manchin MORE on Monday retweeted a CNN report about how hospitalizations are about 70 percent less than what they were around the last peak in September, but that COVID-19 cases in unvaccinated Americans could end up overwhelming health systems.

Health experts have suggested the White House’s shift in messaging away from a focus on the number of cases is a sign of what’s to come as the pandemic eventually becomes endemic.

“For two years, infections always preceded hospitalizations which preceded deaths, so you could look at infections and know what was coming,” Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, said Sunday on ABC. “Omicron changes that. This is the shift we’ve been waiting for in many ways.”

Dowdy said positive tests are also up because people are getting tested before visiting relatives.

“If a lot of people are testing positive because they are asymptomatic and wanting to make sure that they can travel etc., having a lot of those kinds of cases is not a big problem,” he said.

“In fact, that’s a good thing. It means that we’re doing the right thing as a country to define those cases,” Dowdy added.

Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health at Georgetown University, said the shift away from tracking case numbers as a way to measure the pandemic means devoting more resources toward treatment options like the Pfizer antiviral pill.

Gostin also said testing should increasingly be used to self-diagnose so individuals can get proper treatment, rather than testing for the purpose of stopping the spread of the virus.

“The White House has got a very difficult balancing act. Certainly for now it’s going to have to emphasize the idea of masking and distancing for the purpose of protecting the health system,” Gostin said.

“We can’t live our lives in a bubble to prevent us from getting a pathogen that’s so contagious that you can’t avoid it if you’re going to be circulating and living a life in this world,” he continued. “What it means to transition to a normal life or more normal life is you have to focus not so much on preventing cases, but on preventing hospitalizations and deaths.”

Nathaniel Weixel contributed to this story.



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Biden to meet House Dems before Europe trip: report

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President BidenJoe BidenBiden invokes Trump in bid to boost McAuliffe ahead of Election Day Business lobby calls for administration to ‘pump the brakes’ on vaccine mandate Overnight Defense & National Security — Presented by Boeing — Afghanistan reckoning shows no signs of stopping MORE is expected to attend a House Democratic caucus meeting on Thursday morning before he departs for Europe to attend a pair of global summits, in a last-minute attempt to push through the multi-billion dollar bipartisan infrastructure bill.

Sources familiar with the plans told NBC News that Biden is expected to attend the 9 a.m. meeting on Capitol Hill, where he will push progressives to help get the infrastructure bill passed.

Many progressives in the House are still refusing to vote for the infrastructure package until a deal is secured on a broader social spending package, called the Build Back Better Act.

NBC noted the meeting will likely delay Biden’s overseas travel plans, but White House Press Secretary Jen PsakiJen PsakiOvernight Health Care — Presented by Altria — FDA advisers endorse Pfizer vaccine for kids The Hill’s 12:30 Report – Presented by Facebook – White House to host lawmakers as negotiations over agenda hit critical stage MORE has said that “flexibility” is built into the president’s schedule.

Speaker Nancy PelosiNancy PelosiOvernight On The Money — Senate Democrats lay out their tax plans Democrats haggle as deal comes into focus Dem hopes for infrastructure vote hit brick wall MORE (D-Calif.) said in a letter to colleagues that “Democrats are close to agreement on the priorities and the topline” of the social spending package, as she aims for a vote on the infrastructure bill this week. She called on her colleagues to have some “trust” in each other for the sake of expediency.

“We are facing a crucial deadline for the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework to pass. To do so, we must have trust and confidence in an agreement for the Build Back Better Act,” wrote Pelosi.

Heading into the high-stakes climate summit in Europe, Biden is already having to contend with losing key climate provisions in the spending package after centrist Sen. Joe ManchinJoe ManchinOvernight Energy & Environment — Presented by American Clean Power — Dems see path to deal on climate provisions Overnight On The Money — Senate Democrats lay out their tax plans Overnight Health Care — Presented by Altria — FDA advisers endorse Pfizer vaccine for kids MORE (D-W.Va) pushed back against the measures.

Democrats need all 50 of their senators on board to pass the social spending bill through the budget reconciliation process, which allows the party to bypass a Republican filibuster. 

Sen. Angus KingAngus KingSenate Democrats propose corporate minimum tax for spending package Lawmakers praise upcoming establishment of cyber bureau at State The Hill’s Morning Report – Presented by Facebook – Biden, Democrats inch closer to legislative deal MORE said earlier this week that losing those provisions weakened Biden’s position in the United Nations climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, which begins this weekend.

“I think the most unfortunate part about losing the provisions of the reconciliation bill is that it weakens Joe Biden’s hands in Glasgow, the climate meeting that’s coming up, because if we’re going to get the rest of the world to take serious steps to remedy this problem, we’ve got to do it ourselves,” King said on Sunday.

Democrats have scrambled to find alternate climate provisions acceptable to Manchin, and have said they could still spend some $500 billion on climate-related programs. 

“We’re talking about an investment in climate change larger than the entire Department of Energy,” Biden’s chief of staff, Ron KlainRon KlainOvernight Energy & Environment — Presented by American Clean Power — Dems see path to deal on climate provisions White House plans for 0B for climate in Democratic spending bill Klain says it will ‘take time’ to heal country’s divisions MORE, said on Tuesday. “We just now have to go get that done. I think we’re making a lot of progress in that regard.”



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