Today’s announcement nearly doubles a target set by President Obama in 2015 as part of the Paris climate accord, “by vowing that the nation will reduce its emissions between 50 and 52 percent by 2030 compared with 2005 levels. Biden plans to formalize the new goal in a submission to the United Nations, the White House said.”

• “Every country has to come to the table. … The stakes could not be higher,” former secretary of state John F. Kerry, Biden’s special envoy for climate, told Brady in an interview on Wednesday. “We hear people talk about this being existential. For many people on the planet, it already is. But we’re not behaving internationally like it is, in fact, an existential challenge.”
• “In its pledge Thursday, the Biden administration will not spell out precisely how it plans to meet the new target or how much individual sectors of the economy would have to reduce their emissions. Rather, the White House plans to detail the various sectors where it believes significant emissions cuts can happen in the years ahead.”

The 85 percent: The next two days will take the temperature of whether U.S. allies and some of the world’s largest economies are serious about embracing similar climate goals to the U.S. – as 85 percent of global emissions are from from outside the U.S.

“Biden’s renewed carbon-cutting pledge and the two-day White House summit are intended in part to reestablish U.S. leadership on international climate action, and to kick-start momentum ahead of a key U.N. gathering this fall in Scotland, where nations are expected to arrive with bold new blueprints for how they intend to help slow the Earth’s warming,” Brady reports. 

• “Already this week, the United Kingdom on Tuesday announced plans to reduce its emissions by 78 percent by 2035, compared with 1990 levels — a goal the government said would take the nation more than three-quarters of the way toward reaching net zero by 2050. The European Union, meanwhile, has put forward a pledge to cut 55 percent of its emissions by 2030.”
• 👀: “One major question mark remains China, the world’s largest emitter, which has pledged to reach net zero emissions by 2060, but it has yet to spell out the near-term actions it plans to take to begin altering its trajectory of greenhouse gas pollution. Previously, China said its emissions wouldn’t peak until 2030.”
• “Without China at the table, there is simply no way to resolve the climate crisis,” Kerry told Brady, noting that China is “the producer of almost half of the world’s coal-fired energy.” Kerry recently traveled to the country in hopes of fostering common ground on climate change, despite ongoing tensions with the United States over a range of other issues.

Biden has yet to spell out exactly how his administration plans on meeting the new target – and succeeding will be challenging without help from Congress and private industry. 

• “Much of that work includes policies Biden has previously identified: decarbonizing the power sector by 2035, boosting renewable energy technologies, electrifying millions of buildings around country, mandating more fuel-efficient cars and trucks, incentivizing sustainable agriculture practices and targeting emissions of methane, hydrofluorocarbons and other potent, short-lived climate pollutants,” per Brady.
• “…  hitting the new target will depend in part on whether the expectation that Congress adopts a sprawling economic recovery package that includes extensive funding for clean-energy projects, green transit and climate-related research and development, as well as installing electric-vehicle charging stations from coast to coast.”

Biden has recruited a team of “climate all-stars” to help reach these goals but “it still won’t be easy for Biden and his climate-conscious team to convert his bold rhetoric into reality,” Politico’s Michael Grunwald reports.

• Biden’s senior climate change adviser in the White House, Gina McCarthy, will “lead negotiations with Congress for permanent new climate change laws that could withstand the next change of administration,” the New York Times’s Coral Davenport reports. 
• Many of the ambitious climate plans Biden proposed in his infrastructure plan, which aim to redirect the nation’s energy trajectory from fossil fuels, are a tough sell in a divided Congress.

And the question of whether the U.S. can be trusted in the climate change fight after four years under Trump lingers: “…on Friday, China likened the United States’ desire to rejoin the Paris Agreement global warming accord that Mr. Trump abandoned to a naughty child trying to sneak back into school after cutting class,” the New York Times’s Lisa Friedman reported. 

• “The U.S. chose to come and go as it likes with regard to the Paris Agreement,” Zhao Lijian, the spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said last week ahead of the summit. “Its return is by no means a glorious comeback but rather the student playing truant getting back to class.”
• “Something countries of the world are very familiar with is this whiplash of going from a Republican to a Democratic to a Republican administration,” Robert N. Stavins, an environmental economist at Harvard University, told Friedman, adding: “That goes to the heart of the long term credibility.”

This week’ summit will also be a test Kerry,  “providing early clues as to whether his style of energetic international diplomacy is paying off,” our colleagues Matt Viser and Brady Dennis report. 

• “Kerry already has visited key allies in Europe and made diplomatic stops in India, Bangladesh, the United Arab Emirates, China and South Korea, often as the first prominent Biden official whom the leaders of those nations have met in person.”
• Key quote: You can’t run around the world talking to people if you’re not doing what you’re talking about,’ Kerry said in during a recent trip to India.”

HAPPENING TODAY: The U.S. Postal Service may soon get a makeover, as Biden’s three nominees to the governing board get a Senate confirmation hearing. The “nominees could fundamentally tilt the balance of power at the beleaguered mail agency and add pressure on Postmaster General Louis DeJoy,” our colleague Jacob Bogage reports.

WHO ARE THEY? Ron Stroman: “The Democrat is the recently retired deputy postmaster general, an office he held from 2011 to May 2020. In that role, he was the Postal Service’s liaison to Congress and the White House, and its point person on voting by mail.”

Amber McReynolds: The independent “is chief executive of the National Vote at Home Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group that advises election officials on how to expand mail-in voting. The group [helped] 37 states, including Georgia, send and collect ballots.”

Anton Hajjar: “The Democrat is the former general counsel to the American Postal Workers Union, which represents more than 200,000 agency employees and retirees and is the most left-leaning of all of the Postal Service’s labor groups.”

CHAUVIN VERDICT SPOTLIGHTS HARRIS’S UNIQUE ROLE: “Over the past three months, Harris has flashed an ability to channel the hopes and aspirations, but also the frustration and worries, of people who have been on the wrong side of a political and economic system tilted in favor of White men,” our colleague Cleve R. Wootson Jr. writes.

• “Harris, who is of Jamaican and Indian descent, is widely viewed as a potential heir to Biden. But her own presidential campaign fizzled before the first Democratic caucus last year, in part because she was unable to forge a political identity to complement the inspirational nature of her bid.”
• “As she nears the 100-day mark, that political identity remains a work in progress, and she has yet to craft a distinct message. But she has made a strong effort to speak for those who feel left out of the nation’s aspirations, and she is the first vice president who can use words such as ‘me’ and ‘our’ and ‘my’ in empathizing with the struggles facing people of color — and women.”
• But are words enough?

VOTING RIGHTS NEW BATTLEGROUND: “As the battle over a new Georgia law imposing ID requirements for mail ballots and other voting limits raged earlier this month, Republicans in Texas knew they would be next — and acted quickly to try to head off the swelling number of corporations that had begun to scrutinize even more restrictive proposals being considered there and around the country,” our colleague Amy Gardner reports this morning. 

• “Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick responded to an early trickle of corporate statements criticizing the proposals under consideration in Austin, calling the critics, including Texas-based American Airlines and Dell Technologies, ‘a nest of liars.’”
• “On Wednesday, state Rep. Briscoe Cain (R), the chief sponsor of one of the voting bills, proposed financial penalties against entities that publicly threaten ‘any adverse action against this state’ in protest against election legislation.”
• “To many of the companies and voting-rights advocates, the message is clear: some Republicans have no plans to back down, and businesses that continue to speak out could face retribution.”

“The outcome will test the resolve of corporations that dipped into the national fight over voting and now find themselves in a bind — caught between liberal activists demanding action and Republicans who control economic policy in red states.”

CHAUVIN VERDICT TURNS UP PRESSURE TO OVERHAUL POLICE: “The guilty verdict in the murder of George Floyd has injected new momentum into efforts by the White House and Congress to overhaul policing practices, with bipartisan talks picking up speed as Biden prepares to highlight the topic in his address to a joint session of Congress next week,” our colleagues Seung Min Kim, Annie Linskey and Marianna Sotomayor report. “Democrats and civil rights activists [want] to pass legislation by the first anniversary of Floyd’s death on May 25.”

• But “only with the passage of time will we know if the guilty verdict in the trial of Derek Chauvin is the start of something that will truly change America and the experience of Black Americans,” Philonise Floyd, Floyd’s brother, wrote in an op-ed for The Post Wednesday.
• Meanwhile, in Ohio: “The death of 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant, who was shot by Officer Nicholas Reardon on Tuesday during an altercation, comes as the nation is undergoing a broad reckoning over police brutality and racism. Her name joins a long and growing list of Black people killed by police officers in deadly interactions that have sparked protests and broad calls for justice,” our colleagues Randy Ludlow, Derek Hawkins, Paulina Firozi and Toluse Olorunnipa report.

NRA LAUNCHES MILLION DOLLAR CAMPAIGN: On Wednesday evening, the NRA “announced a $2 million campaign to fight Biden’s [gun-control] agenda, including opposing his nominee for director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives,” our colleague Tom Hamburger reports. 

• “More than $400,000 will be spent in Maine, West Virginia and Montana on television ads that say ‘Stop Biden’s gun grab.’ The ads are designed to influence senators whose votes may be in play as the gun-control debate unfolds.”
• First target? Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.).

• “In the last week, an average of 3.02 million doses per day were administered, a 9 percent decrease over the week before,” per our Post colleagues.
• It may explain why the Biden administration has launched a renewed effort to vaccinate “those who were excited to get their shots, the ‘movable middle’ of people who say they want to wait and see, and those who are telling pollsters that they will never get a vaccine,” Politico’s Eugene Daniels reports. 

BIDEN TO FORMALLY RECOGNIZE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE: “More than a century after the Ottoman Empire’s killing of an estimated 1.5 million Armenian civilians, Biden is preparing to declare that the atrocities were an act of genocide,” the New York Times’s Lara Jakes reports. “Biden is expected to announce the symbolic designation on Saturday … He would be the first sitting American president to do so.”

TUMULTY TALKS TO US ABOUT NANCY REAGAN: Washington Post opinions columnist Karen Tumulty’s new book, “The Triumph of Nancy Reagan,” chronicles the architect of one of the most consequential figures — and presidencies — of the 20th century. 

Tumulty spoke with Tobi about Nancy Reagan’s relationship with Ronald Reagan and her policy-setting influence:

• “Nancy Reagan was an extremely controversial first lady and what surprised me was both her complexity, but also how integral she was not only to Ronald Reagan’s rise in politics … but also to his presidency and to his legacy beyond the presidency,” Tumulty told Power Up. “And she had an effect on real policies including things like pushing him to bring about an end to the Cold War.”

“Of all the things that Nancy wanted to see her husband achieve as president, ending the Cold War, she believed, could stand as the accomplishment that secured his legacy as a giant among U.S. presidents,” Tumulty writes in an op-ed adapted from the book.

• So, Nancy got to work. In 1989, Nancy invited the new secretary of state to dinner to show that Ronald was “willing to press forward in developing relations with the communist world, even travel there.”
• It worked. The following Tuesday, the former president and Secretary of State George Shultz sat down with then-Russia ambassador to the U.S., Anatoly Dobrynin.

But Nancy and Ronald Reagan’s marriage was much more than a political alliance or a glamorous match made in Hollywood, Tumulty told Power Up. “For all of her demons, for all of her flaws, which were well-documented through her life, she was very much exactly the life partner and the political partner that Ronald Reagan needed.”

👀Did you know? Nancy Reagan’s mother, Edith Prescott Luckett Davis, was a famous film and Broadway actress in the early 1900s. With her mother’s connections, Nancy received a screen test at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. 

• “It goes well enough that they offer this not very distinguished actress a contract,” Tumulty said. “But the contract that they offer Nancy Davis is one of the reasons they turn down Marilyn Monroe.”
• “That has to be one of the worst decisions ever made in Hollywood,” Tumulty said, laughing. “Nancy Reagan, herself, doesn’t discover this until pretty late … And of course, she finds the whole thing hilarious.”

APRIL SHOWERS BRING MAY … SNOW ANGELS?