Post Politics Now House Democrats take aim at gas gouging; Biden heading to Asia

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby will move to the White House in a senior communications role, two people familiar with the personnel move told The Post’s Tyler Pager.

His new title and role remain unclear.

Kirby’s move comes days after Karine Jean-Pierre became White House press secretary, succeeding Jen Psaki, who left the position last week. Kirby, Tyler reports, met with President Biden at the White House the day after he offered the job press secretary to Jean-Pierre.

Some in the White House said Kirby would make regular appearances at the daily press briefing, while others said he would not share duties with Jean-Pierre and would only appear alongside her.

According to Tyler, Kirby is expected to be heavily involved in White House communications, including working closely with the National Security Council.

Read the scoop here.

Before leaving to Asia on Thursday afternoon, Biden said Finland and Sweden’s decision to apply for membership in NATO signals the Western alliance’s growing strength in the face of Russia’s threats.

“Sweden and Finland have strong democratic institutions, strong militaries, and strong and transparent economies, and a strong moral sense of what is right,” Biden said. “They meet every NATO requirement, and then some. And having two new NATO members in the High North will enhance the security of our Alliance and deepen our security cooperation across the board.”

As we reported earlier, Biden met with Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson and Finnish President Sauli Niinisto in the Oval Office. As Missy Ryan reports, Biden told the leaders that their decision to join NATO following the Russian invasion of Ukraine and abandon a decades-old position of military nonalignment proved that a “revived NATO” could provide a strong counterweight to autocracy and aggression.

The three leaders met privately before making remarks in the Rose Garden. In those remarks, they did not reference any specific security measures the United States would provide the two countries before their membership is finalized.

The application period is seen as a particularly vulnerable one, because the two countries are defying years of Russian threats against joining NATO but don’t yet fall under the alliance’s security umbrella.

As Missy explains:

Before being admitted to the 30-nation bloc, Finland and Sweden will have to allay the concerns of Turkey, which has accused them of lax treatment of those whom Ankara deems to be Kurdish militants. This week, Turkey blocked initial talks about cementing the applicants’ accession.

Niinisto said his country was holding talks with Turkey about its concerns and said he looked forward to the moment when both countries would enjoy — and be bound by — NATO’s central tenet, the mutual defense pledge known as Article 5.

NATO officials have said they want to conclude the accession process as quickly as possible. Read more on this process here.

First lady Jill Biden stood in the Presidential Palace in Quito, Ecuador, on Thursday and urged the U.S. ally not to ignore the brutality on display in Russia’s war in Ukraine.

“We’ve seen countries rise up against tyrants and offer shelter to their neighbors,” the first lady said, all but naming Russian President Vladimir Putin, as she spoke of her experience visiting Ukrainian refugees and meeting with Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, less than two weeks before. “Yes, we are connected — especially in the Americas. If one nation is vulnerable to authoritarianism, or a health crisis, or poverty, it won’t be long before those same problems reach all of us.”

Biden is on the second day of her multination tour of Latin America, which will take her to visit three solid U.S. allies: Ecuador, Panama and Costa Rica.

The events occurring 7,000 miles away in Ukraine, she said, were far closer than they may appear for this unstable region, where neighboring countries may be ruled by dictators, a new wave of socialist presidents or relatively conservative proponents of U.S. style democracy, like Ecuador’s President Guillermo Lasso.

Biden was on a mission to set the stage for the Summit of the Americas, which the United States will host early next month; the first time since the inaugural summit in 1984.

But the lead-up to the summit has not been free from controversy. The United States’ ban of the nondemocratic rulers of Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba has led to threatened boycotts from other Latin leaders, including by Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

The first lady’s visit to three of the United States’ best partners is a way of ensuring “at least a minimal presence” at the summit, says Ryan C. Berg, a senior fellow in the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies — who agrees with the dictators being barred.

To that point, Biden told the crowd, “When nations here in South America embrace democracy, they become the living proof that governments can deliver for the people that they represent — inspiring others to follow their lead.”

These days, it seems as if everyone around Biden has contracted covid-19. Vice President Harris got it late April, and so did Secretary of State Antony Blinken, a few days later. The president’s sister, Valerie Biden Owens, also caught it.

In all these instances, however, the White House assured Americans that the president was not at risk of catching the virus — because none of these figures were considered “close contacts” of his, Annie Linskey writes.

Per CDC guidelines, one is considered a “close contact” of a person who tests positive if you spent more than 15 minutes with them in proximity — meaning, under six feet of distance — within a 24-hour period.

The growing number of cases within the White House and Biden’s orbit, Annie writes, has indirectly proved that very few people appear to spend more than 15 minutes with the president:

In a Washington where proximity to power is prized, a notable number of high-ranking people — including second gentleman Douglas Emhoff and former press secretary Jen Psaki (twice infected) — don’t seem to be within six feet of power very often.

Arguably, that raises questions about who is spending time with the president. ...

If a person who tests positive for the coronavirus does meet with Biden maskless — and it has happened at least twice — the White House hews to the exact guidance from the CDC defining a “close contact.”

Biden was indoors, unmasked and physically close to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) — twice — in the days before she tested positive. And he spoke with Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin, with neither masked, just before Martin saw the results of his positive test. The two spoke for just 7½ minutes, Biden said, keeping them inside the 15-minute window. ...

If Biden’s meetings include such hugs and backslaps, they apparently don’t last very long.

Read more about Biden’s limited socializing here.

House Republicans have spent days accusing the Biden administration and the Food and Drug Administration of not doing enough to ease the baby formula shortage. But, on Thursday, 192 Republicans, including House GOP leaders, voted against a measure that would give $28 million to help the FDA address the crisis.

As Eugene Scott and Felicia Sonmez report, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) and Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) voted late Wednesday against the measure to provide the funding.

The House ended up approving it on a largely party-line vote of 231 to 192. Twelve Republicans broke ranks and joined with the Democrats in backing the money.

The House also voted Wednesday on a separate bill that will allow the federal Women, Infants and Children (WIC) Program — a major national purchaser of formula — to source the product from foreign suppliers. The program is used by low-income parents to buy formula. The vote was 414 to 9, with all the opposition coming from Republicans.

The Senate approved the legislation Thursday by voice vote. It heads to Biden, who will sign it into law.

Read more about these efforts to fight the shortage here.

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority is potentially poised this summer to take down one of the nation’s oldest and most restrictive gun-control laws: New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.

As Amber Phillips writes, it will be the court’s first major Second Amendment case in more than a decade and happens to be coming amid rising gun violence in the nation and an uptick in gun sales in recent years. The justices’ decision could unravel laws across the nation restricting who can carry guns in public.

The case is testing whether New York can place severe restrictions on who can carry a gun in public. The state has a 108-year-old law that says anyone who wants to carry a gun in public has to apply for a license, be 21 or older, have no criminal record, have “good moral character” and have a demonstrated need to carry a gun beyond average safety fears.

This is the part that is being challenged. It’s known as “proper cause.” The case comes from a lawsuit from two Upstate New York men who applied to carry a gun at all times but received allowances only for hunting or going to and from work. They argue that the law violates their Second Amendment rights to “keep and bear arms.”

Even though the New York law has been on the books for more than a century, it is at risk of being knocked down by this conservative court. And, as Amber notes, depending on how widely the justices rule, they could knock down other state laws like it.

Read more about the case here.

The Pentagon announced Thursday that it would be launching Operation Fly Formula to accelerate imports of baby formula into the United States, provided that it meets federal safety standards.

The U.S. Transportation Command will be coordinating with other departments and agencies “to find these inventories” and “accelerate” bringing them to the United States, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said. “It’s evident … that there’s a significant shortage out there,” he added.

At this point, the operation is expected to rely on commercial airliners contracted to help the government carry supplies into the country, but that could be subject to change if necessary, Kirby said.

Military commissaries are also experiencing a shortage of baby formula. In the United States, commissaries are stocking formula at about 50 percent of normal levels, while those overseas are stocked at about 70 percent of normal.

“We’re not immune to the same shortages as the rest of the American people,” Kirby said. When asked, he said he was not aware of any plans to prioritize replenishing the military’s stocks before those available to the general public.