Pete Buttigieg’s biggest test

Mar 27, 2024

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg arrives for a news conference near the scene where a container ship collided with a support on the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Dundalk, Md. on Tuesday. | Matt Rourke/AP

A BRIDGE TO SELL — Pete Buttigieg has faced a consistent stream of infrastructure disasters during his time as Transportation Secretary. The collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore is his biggest test yet.

Unlike in East Palestine, Ohio, when he faced criticism for dithering before showing up at the site of a train derailment last year, a crisis more under the purview of EPA Chief Michael Regan, Buttigieg was on the ground with first responders the day of the collapse.

Buttigieg, whose work cell phone buzzed not long after the bridge collapsed at 1:30 a.m, spent time on the phone with Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott and White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zientz, and the state’s congressional delegation before canceling a planned trip to Wyoming and Montana, briefing President Joe Biden by phone and heading to Baltimore.

“It’s definitely one of the most striking and extreme emergency situations that we’ve faced,” Buttigieg told POLITICO in an interview today, not long after briefing Biden in the Oval Office, and then later, the press. “We’ve obviously encountered issues with aviation safety, with rail safety. But to have a major maritime incident, and a major bridge incident, all wrapped up into one is definitely calling on all of the resources that we have at the department. And I’m giving it everything I’ve got.”

The Biden administration and its partners face a three-fold challenge: reopen the port, which falls to the U.S. Coast Guard, deal with the supply chain challenge, and rebuild the bridge, Buttigieg said from the podium at the White House press briefing. In part, his response builds on the work his office has already done to alleviate supply chain issues that once threatened to delay the arrival of Christmas presents.

And for Buttigieg, it is a political challenge, as well. Though he has said his only current ambition “is to be the best secretary of Transportation that I can,” the failed 2020 presidential candidate may run for political office again. And as with his every move, his management of the crisis will be a closely scrutinized part of his resume.

“No question about it: his biggest test yet, and he’s handled it with flying colors,” said former Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, the former Republican congressman from Illinois who keeps in regular touch with Buttigieg.

Buttigieg is not untested. Before the bridge collapse, he had to contend with Covid-induced supply chain snarls, air travel meltdowns and a train derailment in the heart of his native Midwest. At almost every turn, the role has delivered its share of unprecedented opportunities and challenges.

And there are signs he learned lessons from the criticism that he wasn’t immediately on site in the aftermath of East Palestine.

“Every disaster, emergency or crisis that you face informs how you deal with the next one,” Buttigieg said.

In Washington, Buttigieg’s challenge will include outreach to the Hill to cover emergency funding, after Biden said the federal government will pay the costs of rebuilding the bridge. Buttigieg built legislative relationships while pushing the bipartisan infrastructure law to members of Congress in 2021, though the funding path for the bridge reconstruction is unlikely to be as complicated as that was.

“The relationships that we’ve built, advocating for the bill, passing it and then implementing it are definitely serving us well in this crisis situation,” Buttigieg said.

He’ll have to marshal resources within his department as well. “He’s going to have to pull his whole team together, and all hands on deck, to make this work,” LaHood said.

Buttigieg is now working on a response to the state emergency relief request from the Maryland Department of Transportation, and then meeting with shippers and supply chain players.

“Now it’s time to really have a more direct conversation about what they think the implications will be,” he said.

It is likely they will still be ongoing after Buttigieg leaves the administration. Buttigieg earlier this month said he does not plan to stay in the role longer than five years, and LaHood said efforts to rebuild the bridge will likely outlast Buttigieg’s DOT tenure.

“The rebuilding of this bridge is going to take several years,” LaHood said. “Planning is going to take a couple of years, and the rebuild is going to take several years. But he can lay the groundwork and the blueprint. And if he does that, whoever succeeds him will have a good game plan.”

Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at awren@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @adamwren.

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What'd I Miss?

— Joe Lieberman, 2000 vice presidential nominee, dies at 82: Lieberman, a longtime senator from Connecticut who became the first Jewish American to be nominated on a major party’s ticket, died today. He was 82. Lieberman’s family stated that he died “due to complications from a fall. He was 82 years old. His beloved wife, Hadassah, and members of his family were with him as he passed.” Halfway through his 24-year Senate career, Lieberman was chosen as Al Gore’s running mate for the 2000 presidential election. The ticket lost one of the closest elections in American history.

— Federal appeals court keeps Texas immigration law SB4 temporarily blocked: Texas still cannot temporarily enforce a controversial new law that would authorize police to arrest and detain migrants suspected of illegally crossing the border from Mexico, a federal appeals court ruled late Tuesday. The panel split, 2-1, on the decision for Texas’ request for a stay of a U.S. district judge’s preliminary injunction of the law pending appeal.

— The FEC wants to let campaigns pay for security: The Federal Election Commission wants to allow federal candidates to use campaign funds for a wide range of security measures, a significant expansion of what campaign war chests can be used for amid a heated political environment. The proposal from the campaign finance regulator comes amid a spike in threats to politicians; the U.S. Capitol Police said it investigated over 8,000 cases last year — a number the agency expects to grow in 2024.

— D.C. bar investigators rest case against Jeffrey Clark: Jeffrey Clark, the former Justice Department official who aided Donald Trump’s last-ditch maneuvers to subvert the 2020 election, pleaded the Fifth today in a disciplinary proceeding that could result in the loss of his law license. Clark’s decision to invoke his constitutional right against self-incrimination underscores the criminal jeopardy he faces in other ongoing legal proceedings. In Atlanta, he’s charged alongside Trump in an alleged racketeering conspiracy to corrupt the 2020 election, and in Washington, D.C., federal prosecutors identified him — but have not charged him — as one of Trump’s alleged co-conspirators in a scheme to seize power.

Nightly Road to 2024

PRESIDENTIAL LINEAGE — When President Joe Biden needs advice, there are two people he can turn to who know what it’s like to sit in his chair. Sometimes he will invite Barack Obama over to the White House for a meal or he will get on the phone with Bill Clinton.

The three men share decades of history at the pinnacle of American and Democratic leadership, making them an unusual trio in presidential history. Although there has sometimes been friction as their ambitions and agendas have diverged, they have spent years building toward a similar vision for the country. On Thursday, the Associated Press writes, their partnership will be on display in what has been described as a one-of-a-kind fundraising extravaganza in New York City to help Biden build on his already significant cash advantage in this year’s presidential election. It’s a dramatic show of force intended to rally the Democratic Party faithful to secure a second term for Biden despite his stubbornly low poll numbers and doubts due to his age (81).

SILICON VEEP — Nicole Shanahan, RFK Jr’s pick to join his ticket, is a walking manifestation of big tech’s idiosyncratic politics — a blend of “innovation”-minded libertarianism, West Coast institutional skepticism, and an interest in mysticism, alternative lifestyles and medicines, POLITICO reports.

RFK Jr., so far, has thrived by connecting all those lines in one celebrity-surname package. His highest-profile supporters so far have been the libertarian-minded Silicon Valley techno-utopianists who once flirted with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ doomed campaign. They defected en masse to Kennedy after a press conference on Twitter last summer.

The two names on the RFK Jr. ticket now form a sort of Venn diagram, with Kennedy’s paranoid distrust of the establishment and Shanahan’s crunchy California progressivism joining their circles around a fair number of voters put off by what they see as calcified Republican and Democratic politics.

AROUND THE WORLD

Ukrainian troops ride atop an armored personnel carrier vehicle in the Zaporizhzhia region.

Ukrainian troops ride atop an armored personnel carrier vehicle in the Zaporizhzhia region on June 11, 2023. | Anatolii Stepanov/AFP via Getty Images

EXECUTION CLAIMS — Russia may have executed more than 30 recently captured Ukrainian prisoners of war over the winter months, according to reports received by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, POLITICO EU reports.

The human rights watchdog “verified three of these incidents in which Russian servicemen executed seven Ukrainian servicemen hors de combat,” according to the latest UN report on the subject.

From December to February, as President Vladimir Putin’s invading Russian forces were rapidly advancing in Avdiivka, in the Donetsk region, and attempting to recapture Robotyne in the Zaporizhzhia region, dozens of execution videos were posted on social media.

In eight of the reported cases, videos showed Russian servicemen killing Ukrainian POWs who had laid down their weapons or using other captured Ukrainian POWs as human shields.

“As of 29 February 2024, OHCHR had obtained corroborating information for one of the videos,” the report reads. “In that video, what appears to be a group of armed Russian soldiers stands 15-20 meters behind three Ukrainian servicemen who are kneeling with their hands behind their heads. After a few seconds, smoke appears from the Russian soldiers’ weapons and the Ukrainian servicemen fall to the ground.”

A HUMAN TOUCH — In multiple calls and meetings since Oct. 7, the Netanyahu government told their American counterparts they would open humanitarian aid routes into Gaza — but that they would do so solely because Washington asked, POLITICO reports. “We’re going to say the Americans requested it,” one senior Israeli official said this year, as relayed by a senior Biden administration official.

President Joe Biden has been leveraging his decades-long familiarity with Benjamin Netanyahu to move the Israeli leader, who faced his own domestic pressure to appear hawkish, in directions he didn’t necessarily want. In this case, to pry crossings open and boost the amount of food, water and medicine available to Palestinians in Gaza.

The limits of that one-on-one strategy are being tested, however. This week, Netanyahu abruptly canceled a planned visit of Israeli officials to D.C. to discuss guardrails for a planned Rafah invasion, backing off a pledge he’d made directly to Biden in a recent phone call.

That fed into a growing sense in Washington — even among those who have long backed Biden’s approach — that his reliance on a personal relationship with Netanyahu is no longer enough to navigate the Israel-Gaza crisis.

Access New York bill updates and Congressional activity in areas that matter to you, and use our exclusive insights to see what’s on the Albany agenda. Learn more.

Nightly Number

$600,000

The amount of money that former RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel still expects to be paid by NBC — the full price of her contract, spanning two years at $300,000 per year — after she was let go by the network just two days after her job began.

RADAR SWEEP

LEFT IN THE DARK — When New York Jets’ quarterback (and one-time RFK Jr. VP shortlister) Aaron Rodgers talked about spending four days in the dark on ESPN, it was the first that most people in America had heard of the idea of a “darkness retreat.” But tucked away in the New Mexican desert, there’s a couple that runs multiple rooms of darkness like a high-priced and very strange bed and breakfast. It’s a four day program in which guests are under the earth in total darkness — but are provided with ample food, water and a furnished room that you can feel your way around. Proponents suggest that it changes their life, allowing them to unlock a deeper understanding of themselves. For Outside Magazine, Tim Neville set out to see for himself, subjecting himself to the program and coming out with a fascinating story about what it really feels like to be (mostly) alone in the dark.

Parting Image

On this date in 1979: Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin sits in his hotel suite in Washington before going to Capitol Hill to meet with members of Congress. A day earlier, Begin signed the Egypt-Israel peace treaty along with Egypt's President Anwat Sadat and U.S. President Jimmy Carter that came out of the 1978 Camp David Accords. Begin and Sadat shared the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize.