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BY JOHN BRESNAHAN, ANNA PALMER AND JAKE SHERMAN

THE TOP

Happy June!

News: President Joe Biden will meet with Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) Wednesday, multiple sources tell us.

This is certain to be a big moment in the infrastructure negotiations between Biden and Senate Republicans. The two sides remain hundreds of billions apart on spending, and they can’t even agree on what “infrastructure” is. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg warned over the weekend that there has to be a “clear direction” on infrastructure talks by June 7, which is when Congress returns from the Memorial Day recess. The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee has a markup of its own infrastructure bill set for June 9, while Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has said she’d like the House to have finished work on its proposal by July 4th. So the clock is ticking.

Senate Republicans are already privately warning us that there is "not going to be any deal” this week barring some dramatic last-minute turnaround. That means Biden, Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) have some big decisions to make on whether to move forward with Biden’s American Jobs Plan and American Family Plan under reconciliation, and if so, how much do they want to spend? Also, if the reconciliation process takes up most of July as Schumer has suggested, how will the House and Senate deal with the annual spending bills and lifting the debt limit? These are all tough issues that Democrats will be forced to consider next month.

Another thing to watch on Wednesday — and Capito has said this on multiple occasions following meetings with the president — Biden sounds ready to make deals when he’s in with Republicans, and then White House officials and Democratic leaders later walk it back. The White House vehmently denies this and it really irks them, and Senate Republicans say it on repeat. We’ll have to see if Biden takes a harder line this time with Capito, as a number of Democrats on the Hill have already had enough of these infrastructure talks with Republicans and want to move on.

Just a reminder: We are only publishing AM newsletters this week. Thanks for reading!

SNEAK PEEK

Inside Michael Bender’s new Trump book

Mike Bender, the Wall Street Journal’s senior White House reporter, has a new Trump book out Aug. 10. You should definitely, absolutely buy it. The title is “Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story Of How Trump Lost.”

Former President Donald Trump has cooperated for this one. Bender has been to Mar-a-Lago twice in recent weeks to talk to him. Bender has interviewed more than 150 people for the book and we hear that there are some amazingly hilarious revelations in the book about former Vice President Mike Pence, Rudy Giuliani, Roger Stone, Tucker Carlson, Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump and the rest of the Trump posse.

Here’s a juicy nugget: Bender reports that Sean Hannity had a role in writing a Trump campaign ad in the 2020 election. This piece only aired during Hannity’s Fox News show, Bender says.

The ad was known in the Trump campaign as “the Hannity ad” and “the one Hannity wrote.”

To be clear, Hannity denied this to Bender. “The world knows that Sean Hannity supports Donald Trump. But my involvement specifically in the campaign — no. I was not involved that much. Anybody who said that is full of shit,” Hannity told him.  

Here’s a summary:

“Multiple internal campaign emails referred to the spot simply as ‘Hannity.’ Another referred to it as the ‘Hannity-written’ spot. ‘POTUS has not yet approved, but Hannity has,’ read one email. ‘Hannity said this is our best spot yet,’ another campaign aide wrote…Inside the campaign, the spot was mocked mercilessly—mostly because of the dramatic, over-the-top language and a message that seemed to value quantity over quality.” 

Donald Trump himself, in a post-election interview with Bender, did not dispute that Hannity wrote the ad, which called Biden a “forty-seven-year swamp creature” who had “accomplished nothing” and supported a “radical, socialist Green New Deal.”

In the book, Bender writes that the Trump campaign “deemed it so useless that they limited it to exactly one show: Hannity. … If Trump and Hannity watched the spot on television — and were satisfied enough to stop asking about the commercial — that seemed to be the best result of the ad. The cost of that investment: $1.5 million" at a time when the cash-strapped Trump campaign was pulling ads elsewhere.

Bender’s book is being published by Twelve, and Javelin did the deal.

THE PEN

W.H. takes on discrimination in the housing market

The Biden administration unveiled new actions this morning to take on discrimination in the U.S. housing market, including addressing the issues of home appraisals, as part of its effort to reduce the racial wealth gap.

This new initiative comes as the Biden administration prepares to formally reverse two Trump administration rules that barred the federal government from using its funding mechanisms to push states, counties and cities on fair housing, as well as shifting the burden of proof in housing discrimination cases. The Trump administration had actually changed these rules from the Obama era, so this is another case of President Joe Biden restoring something that Barack Obama initially enacted. And administration officials are promising more regulatory actions related to the Fair Housing Act.

The Biden administration is also looking to steer tens of billions of dollars in federal contracts to “small disadvantaged business,” according to a White House document released Tuesday morning, “for which Black- owned, Latino-owned, and other minority-owned businesses are presumed to qualify.” This new initiative could pump as much as $100 billion into these businesses by 2026, according to the White House.

Black homeowners have long alleged that Black-owned homes are appraised at far lower values than homes owned by white Americans, leading to big disparities in sales prices and what sellers walk away with financially.

“President Biden is charging Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Marcia Fudge with leading a first-of-its-kind interagency initiative to address inequity in home appraisals,” a White House document released early this morning states. “The effort will seek to utilize, quickly, the many levers at the federal government’s disposal, including potential enforcement under fair housing laws, regulatory action, and development of standards and guidance in close partnership with industry and state and local governments, to root out discrimination in the appraisal and homebuying process.”

The White House is playing up Biden’s American Jobs Plan, which includes tens of billions “to build wealth in communities of color.” This proposal’s initiatives include a $10 billion “Community Revitalization Fund,” as well $15 billion to “reconnect neighborhoods” that were cut off by previous transportation projects. In many American cities, the post-World War II suburban boom meant building roads and train lines right through Black, minority and poor neighborhoods, leaving these communities isolated and cut off, ghettos located on the wrong side of the road or track.

Biden also wants to enact a “Neighborhood Homes Tax Credit’ to help attract private investors to build or renovate low and moderate-income homes.

NEW YORK CITY RECESS VIBE

Everything in these photos screams Chuck Schumer.

MOMENTS

9:30 a.m.: President Joe Biden will get his intelligence briefing.

11 a.m.: Biden leaves the White House for Andrews, where he will fly to Tulsa. Karine Jean-Pierre will gaggle on Air Force One. 

1:50 p.m.: Biden will arrive in Tulsa.

2:45 p.m.: Biden will tour Greenwood Cultural Center with HUD Secretary Marsha Fudge, Susan Rice and Cedric Richmond.

4:15 p.m.: Biden will speak to mark the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre. 

5:50 p.m.: Biden will leave Tulsa for D.C., where he will arrive at 8:10 p.m.

Pre-visit reading: Tulsa World: “President Joe Biden to visit Greenwood 100 years after its destruction,” by Randy Krehbiel

CLIP FILE

NYT

→ “Why a New Mexico House Race Is a Crucial Test of the G.O.P. Focus on Crime,” by Jonathan Martin in Albuquerque: “The contest between [Melanie] Stansbury and her opponent Mark Moores, both state legislators, carries symbolic as well as practical implications. Special congressional elections in the first year of a new administration have historically offered insight on the strength of the party in power. And this race may prove to be one of the few competitive elections to fill a vacancy ahead of next year’s midterms.”

→ “Push for Voting Overhaul in Congress Falters,” by Nick Fandos

→ “Can a New ‘Change Government’ Change Israel?” by Isabel Kershner in Jerusalem

→ “Israel on Edge as Politicians Wrangle Over Coalition to Oust Netanyahu,” by Patrick Kingsley in Jerusalem

→ “A Siege, a Supply Run and a Descent Into a Decade-Old Battle,” by Thomas Gibbons-Neff in Marja, Afghanistan: “Marja today is nothing like what American military officials envisioned so many years ago. It’s a microcosm of failed counterinsurgency strategies, abandoned development projects and costly drug eradication campaigns, and the hundreds, if not thousands, of wounded and dead Afghans and Americans. The end result: two remaining government-controlled outposts surrounded by Taliban fighters.

WaPo

→ “After defeating restrictive voting bill, Texas Democrats send loud message: ‘We need Congress to do their part’” by Amy Gardner

→ “Biden set for G-7 boost in bid for all nations to impose minimum global corporate tax,” by David J. Lynch

WSJ

→ Editorial Board: “Twilight of the Netanyahu Era? Israel may get a new government, but don’t expect a left turn.”

AP

→ “‘Past the point of no return’? Iowa Dems feel hopes fading,” by Tom Beaumont in Keokuk, Iowa

Politico

→ “An Evangelical Battle of the Generations: To Embrace Trump or Not?” by Maggie Severns

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