| | | | |  | | By Steven Shepard, Eli Stokols, Lauren Egan and Ben Johansen | Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Eli | Email Lauren The women’s basketball bandwagon is getting crowded ahead of this weekend’s Final Four in Cleveland — which may be why President JOE BIDEN’s reelection campaign wants to also jump on. The campaign last week placed ads in its core seven battleground states for Sunday’s championship game. And given the explosion of viewer interest in the first four rounds of the NCAA women’s tournament, the ads are a relative bargain. It will cost Biden $5,000 for a one-minute ad on the ABC affiliate in Philadelphia, according to a contract between the campaign and WPVI-TV posted to the Federal Communications Commission’s online Public File. The same 60-second ad will cost $10,000 on WXYZ-TV in Detroit and $4,000 on KNXV-TV in Phoenix. The teams playing on Sunday will be determined in the Final Four games Friday night, and the championship could feature a marquee matchup between Iowa senior standout CAITLIN CLARK and undefeated and top-seeded South Carolina — though don’t count out SAM STEIN’s Connecticut Huskies and the great PAIGE BUECKERS just yet. [Editor’s note: U-COOOONN, HUS–KIEEEES!] More than 12 million people watched Monday’s Elite Eight game between Iowa and Louisiana State, as Clark, who was named The Associated Press’ Player of the Year on Thursday, scored 41 points and added 12 assists to propel the Hawkeyes to victory in a rematch of the 2023 championship game. That is a major audience for a presidential campaign. Biden’s folks know it. Their ads are set to run in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Those are the same states where the president is concentrating his main advertising campaign, including the major post-State of the Union push currently underway. The campaign says it is running its primary spot, “For You,” during the Sunday women’s championship game. That’s the ad it debuted just days after last month’s State of the Union address, which begins with Biden saying direct-to-camera, “Look, I’m not a young guy. That’s no secret,” before listing his first-term accomplishments and attacking former President DONALD TRUMP on infrastructure and abortion. According to AdImpact, the ad has been in steady rotation since it first ran on March 9 and has already been backed by $2.8 million in campaign spending. But Sunday’s game gives Biden a chance to reach a new audience. While TV audiences are generally in a sharp decline, sports programming — especially growth sports, like women’s basketball — is an exception. And it’s mostly consumed live, without the kind of fast-forwarding through commercials that viewers do for scripted programming. Women’s basketball also typically draws a younger and more female audience than other sports. Just under 10 million people watched last year’s championship game, which had been a record for a women’s basketball game until this spring. This year’s game, which will air on both ABC and ESPN, is expected to draw even more. In a podcast hosted by The Athletic’s RICHARD DEITSCH, it was speculated that an Iowa-South Carolina final could draw as many as 18 million viewers, shattering any existing records and likely out-rating Monday night’s men’s championship game. A shade under 15 million people watched last year’s men’s championship game on CBS; this year’s on TBS could be even lower. MESSAGE US — Are you Iowa guard GABBIE MARSHALL? We want to hear from you. And we’ll keep you anonymous! Email us at westwingtips@politico.com. Did someone forward this email to you? Subscribe here!
| | | | SUBSCRIBE TO GLOBAL PLAYBOOK: Don’t miss out on POLITICO’s Global Playbook, the newsletter taking you inside pivotal discussions at the most influential gatherings in the world, including WEF in Davos, Milken Global in Beverly Hills, to UNGA in NYC and many more. Suzanne Lynch delivers the world's elite and influential moments directly to you. Stay in the global loop. SUBSCRIBE NOW. | | | | | | | | | Which president had the first televised press conference? (Answer at bottom.)
| | GETTING A WEEEEE BIT TESTY: President Biden spoke with Israeli Prime Minister BENJAMIN NETANYAHU on Thursday for the first time since an airstrike killed seven humanitarian aid workers in Gaza, our MYAH WARD reports. And if the readout of the call as shared by the White House is to be believed, it was a blunt exchange. Biden, the White House said, “emphasized that the strikes on humanitarian workers and the overall humanitarian situation are unacceptable” and “made clear that U.S. policy with respect to Gaza will be determined by our assessment of Israel’s immediate action on these steps.” Maybe the most notable part, however, was the insinuation that Netanyahu is personally standing in the way of a ceasefire. The statement said the president urged his counterpart to “empower his negotiators to conclude a deal without delay.” The implication being: he hasn’t. The readout was a sharp warning from a president who has grown increasingly frustrated with Israel and faced mounting political pressure at home to rethink his approach to the conflict. It is as close as Biden has come to saying he would condition aid to Israel since the war began. “If we don’t see changes from their side, there will have to be changes from our side,” national security council spokesperson JOHN KIRBY said at Thursday’s press briefing after the call. THE JOHNSON BACKCHANNEL: The White House did not dismiss Speaker MIKE JOHNSON’s “innovations” on Ukraine aid that he outlined over the weekend. Nor have aides attacked the speaker for the foot dragging on a matter they consider critical. As our JENNIFER HABERKORN, Eli and JONATHAN LEMIRE reported this morning, the administration has been keeping in touch with Johnson, working to convince him of the importance of getting Ukraine more aid while allowing him a bit of room to navigate the complicated dynamics within the House GOP conference. Whether it results in legislation making it to the floor remains up in the air, especially as Rep. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE (R-Ga.) is threatening to oust Johnson should he allow Ukraine aid to pass with largely Democratic votes, as RACHAEL BADE and our Playbook pals reported this morning. THIS WILL SHOW NETANYAHU WHO’S BOSS! On the same day as the Israeli strike that killed seven aid workers working for the charity group World Central Kitchen, the Biden administration signed off on a transfer of thousands of more bombs to Israel, WaPo’s JOHN HUDSON reports. The State Department approved the transfer of more than 1,000 MK82 500-pound bombs, over 1,000 small-diameter bombs and fuses for MK80 bombs. Although a State official said that the approval of the arms transfer occurred sometime “prior” to when the strike happened, the U.S. has the authority to suspend an arms package any time before delivery. WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE WANTS YOU TO READ: This piece by Spectrum News’ MADDIE GANNON, who reports on a new fact sheet from the White House warning that spending cuts being proposed by House Republicans could lead to longer wait times for people seeking assistance with Social Security and Medicare. The sheet pointed to a 31 percent proposed cut in discretionary spending, which the White House says would force some Social Security field offices to close and the Medicare call center to have a longer wait time. The sheet says that the spending proposal from the Republican Study Committee would lead to $1.5 trillion in cuts to Social Security. Deputy press secretary ANDREW BATES and communications adviser for economic messaging ROB FRIEDLANDER shared the story on X. WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE DOESN’T WANT YOU TO READ: This piece by CNN’s KYLIE ATWOOD and JENNIFER HANSLER, who report on House testimony by former State Department officials, detailing the botched withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. During the interviews with House investigators, State officials said they created their withdrawal operations from scratch. “We were roughly as effective as we could be under the circumstances,” said JIM DEHART, former deputy to the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan. The transcripts, obtained by CNN, detail the chaos leading up to the exit, which officials say could have been mitigated if the State Department had called earlier for a “noncombatant evacuation operation.” THE RARE 2-BY-2: During next week’s state dinner on April 10 with Japanese Prime Minister FUMIO KISHIDA, the two leaders will hold a joint press conference, Bloomberg’s JENNIFER JACOBS reports. These joint pressers with heads of state have become a rarity under the Biden administration, with only 19 since taking office. During Kishida’s last visit to Washington in early 2023, there was no press conference.
| | THERE WILL BE LABELS: After failing to recruit anyone to run for president on its ballot line, the centrist organization No Labels told allies that it is abandoning its effort to create a “unity ticket” this fall, WSJ’s KEN THOMAS and KRISTINA PETERSON scooped. Among those who said no to this fool’s errand: former New Jersey Gov. CHRIS CHRISTIE, former Maryland Gov. LARRY HOGAN, former South Carolina Gov. NIKKI HALEY, West Virginia Sen. JOE MANCHIN, and former Georgia Lt. Gov. GEOFF DUNCAN. Some RANDOM DUDE FROM GEORGIA was interested in the idea before the group pulled the plug.
| | PERSONNEL MOVES: CHIRAAG BAINS is now a senior fellow at Democracy Fund, our DANIEL LIPPMAN has learned. Bains, a Biden White House alum, is a public policy and legal strategy consultant and also a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. — WARREN RYAN is now acting deputy assistant secretary for Europe, Africa and the Western Hemisphere in the Office of Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes at the Treasury Department. He most recently was a senior adviser and anti-money laundering standards coordinator at Treasury. YOU’RE A WINNER: The White House Correspondents’ Association announced the recipients of its annual journalism awards. Congratulations to Axios’ BARAK RAVID, NYT’s PETER BAKER (Theo can’t be winning all the awards in that house), NPR’s TAMARA KEITH, NYT’s DOUG MILLS and the staff of the WASHINGTON POST. I guess they didn’t have a newsletter category this year because we know how that would have gone.
| | BUBBLE WRAP FOR THE DEEP STATE: The Biden administration is finishing up new rules that would restrict presidents from axing civil service protections for federal employees, a move that is largely seen as a response to Donald Trump saying he would root out a “deep state” if he returned to the White House. Under a new rule from the Office of Personnel Management, our NICK NIEDZWIADEK reports that employees whose job includes civil service protections would not lose the security if converted to an exempt category. The regulations also establish hurdles for an administration wanting to shift the category a job falls under. SOME REAL GREEN MONEY: The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday rolled out $20 billion in federal green bank grants to eight community development banks and nonprofit organizations, AP’s ALEXA ST. JOHN reports. The funding is aimed toward projects combating climate change in disadvantaged communities and assisting Americans in curbing their carbon footprint. DO MORE: Over 400 lawmakers, activists, civil rights leaders, musicians and actors penned a letter to Biden on Thursday, urging the president to support a list of congressional bills on racial justice through executive actions and orders, ABC News’ BEATRICE PETERSON reports. The letter, the third sent to Biden this year, included signatures from NAACP President DERRICK JOHNSON, Rev. AL SHARPTON, actress ERIKA ALEXANDER and progressive lawmakers such as Reps. BARBARA LEE (D-Calif.) and CORI BUSH (D-Mo.). LENDING A HAND: Deputy Treasury Secretary WALLY ADEYEMO will join Rep. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-N.Y.) in New York on Friday, touting a new IRS website that allows some Americans to file their taxes for free, Spectrum News’ KEVIN FREY reports. Last month, the Treasury and IRS debuted a pilot program of their Direct File portal in 12 states, including New York, where taxpayers with simple forms such as W-2s and certain 1099s can file directly with the IRS.
| | How Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Could Doom Joe Biden (Adrian Carrasquillo for POLITICO Magazine) Big winner in Biden’s EV charging revolution: Gas stations (E&E News’ David Ferris) Far-right politics could hurt business in North Carolina, some fear. Again. (WaPo’s Danielle Paquette)
| | | Have you ever bought something from eBay that you might not need but you saw an ad online for it so now you neeeeed to have it? You have U.S. ambassador to Turkey MEG WHITMAN to thank. During her ten years as CEO of the company, Whitman took it from $5.7 million in sales to $8 billion. And it’s not like she was thrown into it easy. On her first day in 1998, the eBay website crashed. During her tenure, Whitman grew the company of 30 employees to one employing 15,000 people.
| | In 1955, President DWIGHT EISENHOWER came into the Indian Treaty Room and told the room of the “experiment” they were about to be a part of, according to the White House Historical Association. A CALL OUT! Do you think you have a harder trivia question? Send us your best one about the presidents, with a citation or sourcing, and we may feature it! Edited by Sam Stein.
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