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Though he is beset by turmoil overseas, confronting chaos at the border and struggling to contain a deadly pandemic back home, the president’s main challenge this week comes from his own party.

With his economic and domestic policy agenda on the line, President Joe Biden needs a big win from his fellow Democrats, whose early unity around his presidency has been strained as summer turns to fall. Biden’s now trying to coax them back together — and avert an electoral disaster in 2022.

From Camp David, he worked the phones with lawmakers over the weekend, urging them to support the multitrillion spending package party leaders are looking to pass this month. Senior adviser Steve Ricchetti, Biden top economic adviser Brian Deese, another economic adviser, David Kamin and the White House’s legislative affairs team led by Louisa Terrell lobbied lawmakers too, visiting the Hill, calling members and holding Zoom sessions with them.

Allies are spending another $4 million in ads starting this week urging unity around two massive spending plans, according to numbers made available to POLITICO by Climate Power & the League of Conservation Voters. And Build Back Together, an outside group closely aligned with the White House, is pushing out messaging to local media outlets, which it views as the most trusted news, asking Democrats to convey that Biden’s economic plans are “popular, popular, popular,” according to the group’s talking points, the toplines of which stress middle class tax cuts, jobs and making the wealthiest Americans and corporations pay more.

Collectively, it is a throw-everything-at-the-wall attempt to push through a $3.5 trillion Democrat-only social and climate spending plan along with a bipartisan infrastructure package with a $550 billion price tag. And it illustrates the sense of desperation that has taken over the party as those agenda items seem painfully close to failing in Congress.

The impact on Democrats if they come up short: “Disastrous,” said John Podesta, a veteran Democrat and former counselor to Barack Obama.

“You need all three of those things” to have any hope of keeping their majorities in the 2022 midterms, Podesta said, referring to the American Rescue Plan, a $1.9 trillion Covid relief package that passed in the spring, as well as the two pending plans. “If you pull out the fact that when Democrats were in control they couldn’t do anything for you, then drawing attention to how wacky the Republicans have become doesn’t mean a lot.”

Inside the White House, the tension heading into this week is palpable, aides and allies said.

The president’s approval numbers have been stuck in the mid-40s for weeks. Each attempt at recalibration on its pandemic response — the main force driving down his numbers — has been overshadowed by other world events, from the U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan to the troubling scenes of Haitian migrants gathering at the southern border.

Hungry for progress on the domestic front, the White House is now in a compromising state of mind. The president has made it clear he is willing to accept less than the $3.5 trillion that has been the sticker price for his Build Back Better plan, even as his aides publicly say that the cost will ultimately be nothing since it will all be paid for.

Inside the White House, the goal increasingly is to simply get the package over the goal line.

“They need a win,” said Amanda Loveday, senior adviser with Unite the Country, a pro-Biden super PAC, pointing to Afghanistan, the economy and turmoil at the U.S. border on top of the pandemic. “They’re all connected. If you’re able to get more Americans vaccinated, you’re able to see the economy continue to grow. All of it is an intersecting web, the nucleus is a better America for the people of this country.”

Where the White House finds optimism is in the experience of its staff. A person familiar with the White House’s thinking noted that those in charge of ultimately cutting the deals, like Ricchetti, have been in tough legislative battles in past administrations and even earlier this year.

“They understand that until the vote has been cast, they should be worried,” the person said. “That was the case with the rescue plan, that was the case with the bipartisan infrastructure deal coming together, that was the case with the budget resolutions and that is going to be the case with both of these bills. That until the votes have actually been cast, they’ll be working as hard as they can to make sure they do pass.”

But few legislative vehicles are as complicated to pass as the current package, which relies on progressives and moderates in the party to find commonality on massive domestic spending and taxation policy while trusting each other’s motivations. Democratic allies of the White House said this past week that they feared the president’s team had been caught off guard by the stalemate between the two sides of the party and was playing a massive game of catch up with House votes slated on both the infrastructure component and reconciliation bill this week.

In anticipation of those votes, new ads funded by Climate Power and the League of Conservation Voters — two of the most aggressive champions of the climate components of the reconciliation bill — will go live on TV and digitally this week. The new spending is in addition to $9 million in ads the groups have already been aired in key districts. Rep. Kathleen Rice’s (D-N.Y.) New York district and Rep. Stephanie Murphy’s (D-Fla.) Florida district are among those targeted with ads underscoring the need to tackle climate change.

A Tuesday news conference held by Climate Power and League of Conservation Voters will also amplify messaging that ties climate change to the economic packages. Reps. Sharice Davids (D-Kan.), Steven Horsford (D-Nev.), Andy Kim (D-N.J.), Susie Lee (D-Nev.), Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.), and Lauren Underwood (D-Ill.) are set to join the groups.

Last week, Podesta sent a memo to every Democratic congressional office warning the party could lose its majority if lawmakers didn’t coalesce around a bigger spending package. He also pushed for the need to act on the climate while underscoring the political realities that would keep various Democratic factions from getting what they wanted. It was a major turn for Podesta, who earlier this year had urged the White House to not hold out for Republicans on an infrastructure package.

Jesse Ferguson, a Democratic strategist who regularly helps run focus groups that look at issues facing the White House, downplayed Biden’s dropping polling numbers as a typical consequence of the realities of governing.

“Anyone who has thought that initial polling numbers at the start of the administration would hold for four years doesn’t understand the partisan climate in which we live,” he said.

But Biden’s numbers — with a Gallup poll last week putting him at just 43 percent approval — remain a concern both in the White House and among Democrats facing tough midterms next year. Donald Trump’s Gallup approval was in the upper 30s at this time in 2017 and Republicans took a pummeling in the midterms the following year.

Still, Ferguson said in the samplings he’s seen, Americans are pointing more and more to “a faction of the minority” they blame for holding back the country’s progress on Covid. “The biggest imperative going forward,” he said, “is to now show he is successfully solving these problems and at the same time when they can’t be solved, making clear who’s to blame.”

Sam Stein contributed to this report.

The White House on Tuesday sought to minimize the impact of congressional testimony from top military officials that contradicted President Joe Biden’s past assertions that he was not urged to keep thousands of troops in Afghanistan.

“I think it’s important for the American people to know that these conversations don’t happen in black and white, like you’re in the middle of a movie,” press secretary Jen Psaki said during the daily press briefing.

Gen. Frank McKenzie, who commands U.S. Central Command, told members of the Senate Armed Services committee earlier Tuesday that he recommended maintaining a force of roughly 2,500 troops in Afghanistan earlier this year.

McKenzie also acknowledged discussing with Biden a similar recommendation to leave a few thousand troops on the ground from Gen. Scott Miller, the commander of U.S. Forces Afghanistan until July. Miller detailed that recommendation to Congress in closed testimony last week.

“I was present when that discussion occurred, and I am confident that the president heard all the recommendations and listened to them very thoughtfully,” McKenzie testified Tuesday.

Just prior to the briefing, Psaki pointed to part of Biden’s mid-August interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos in which the president acknowledged that military advisers were “split” on whether to leave a residual force in Afghanistan rather than having the U.S. completely withdraw.

“There was a range of viewpoints, as was evidenced by their testimony today, that were presented to the president, that were presented to his national security team, as would be expected,” Psaki told reporters Tuesday.

However, also during the interview Psaki cited, Stephanopoulos pressed Biden directly on the matter: “So no one told — your military advisers did not tell you, ‘No, we should just keep 2,500 troops. It’s been a stable situation for the last several years. We can do that. We can continue to do that’?”

Biden replied: “No. No one said that to me that I can recall.”

Nevertheless, the Biden administration has held firm in its belief that pulling out of Afghanistan was the correct decision, even amid withering criticisms from both sides of the aisle over the chaos that unfolded during the operation, a posture that Psaki reiterated from the podium Tuesday.

“He did not think it was in the interest of the American people, or the interest of our troops,” to keep forces in Afghanistan, she said.

She also downplayed the divergence between the testimony of military leaders and the White House on the withdrawal strategy, saying that Biden was not looking for “a bunch of yes men and women.”

“Ultimately, regardless of the advice, it’s his decision,” Psaki said.

President Joe Biden can’t afford Terry McAuliffe to lose the governor’s race in Virginia — and the White House knows it.

It’s a scenario the president and his aides and close allies increasingly view as a real possibility, given tightening poll numbers in the race and signs of Democratic apathy. The White House, Democratic National Committee and outside partners are closely coordinating their efforts and speaking almost daily, according to three people familiar with the dynamic. Just over a month before Election Day, they are planning to ramp up activity and engagement — in addition to the $5 million the DNC has already budgeted for Virginia, one of the people said.

They know what’s at stake. A loss to Republican Glenn Youngkin in the off-cycle governor’s race could set off a domino effect, with Democrats panicking and thinking it’s 2009 all over again — the year they last lost the state’s gubernatorial race, followed by a wipeout in Congress. Democrats fear the party will lose faith in the idea that Biden’s agenda will help boost their electoral prospects; that they’ll fret about his broader handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, and even question the embrace of vaccine mandates as an electoral cudgel after it found favor with a wide swath of Americans.

“There should be concern, it’s a close race. If Terry loses that’s going to scare a lot of Democrats on the Hill. It’s going to make people worry about the midterms and it’s going to make it harder to pass the president’s agenda,” said Josh Schwerin, a Democratic strategist who has worked as a McAuliffe political adviser and former press secretary. “People are going to get skittish if we lose this.”

“It would be the wrong reaction,” Schwerin added, “but it would be the reaction.”

A source familiar with the White House’s thinking said officials always anticipated a close race in Virginia, noting that Biden himself suggested so when he stumped for McAuliffe in late July. Among their concerns is the number of undecided voters in the contest, said another source familiar with conversations between White House aides and national Democratic Party leadership. Virginia has trended Democratic in recent years, with Biden winning the state by 10 points, but if voters remain on the fence as the election approaches, it gives Youngkin the type of opening he would need.

“Of course I believe the White House is concerned,” said Chris Korge, national finance chair at the DNC who is close with McAuliffe. “Knowing Terry the way I do, this guy is tireless, he never stops, he’ll pull it out. But it’s going to require him running a near perfect campaign.”

Fear within the administration is real. Specifically, a third person expressed concerns about complacency among Democratic voters setting in, and pledged that much of their work over the final 35 days will be on ensuring those restive voters turn in their ballots.

“If Democrats, if the McAuliffe campaign, if the coordinated campaign run a strong [get out the vote] effort, which I believe that they will, I think that they’re going to be in a great spot,” the person told POLITICO. “But people have to show up. They’ve got to show up and vote.”

McAuliffe, whose second and final debate with Youngkin is Tuesday evening, isn’t shying away from the warnings. Recently, he’s sat for interviews on cable TV to lay out the stakes for Democrats in Virginia and beyond.

Operatives in the state compared the early alarm bells to those rung in California this summer after polls showed Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom only narrowly turning back a recall attempt. Newsom successfully branded the effort a GOP-led recall, tagged his opponents as mini-Donald Trumps, and mobilized Democrats before turning out his voters en masse.

But Virginia is a far more closely divided state and unlike in California, not every voter is being sent a mail-in ballot. Korge and others said they’d breathe easier if the Biden administration and lawmakers showed progress — and ultimately passed — the president’s major legislative proposals: infrastructure and a party-line social spending bill.

“Honestly, if they pass infrastructure and reconciliation, my comfort level of Terry winning goes up by a 1,000,” he said.

Schwerin stressed that even though Democrats will likely be spooked into thinking there are wider implications for Biden’s agenda if McAuliffe loses, it likely would be due to other dynamics, including a different electorate in off-year elections and the absence of a motivating anti-Trump sentiment. “I think McAuliffe is running a good campaign and he’s a good candidate,” he said. “It’s the climate.”

While McAuliffe has worked to yoke Youngkin to Trump — contending that the state’s progress on Covid and the economy will go to shambles under Republican leadership — Youngkin has largely resisted invitations to nationalize the race. Still, Republicans see more opportunities to leverage Biden’s shortcomings to drive turnout.

The messy and ultimately fatal U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, rising prices for goods and groceries driven by inflation and another wave of migrants to the southern U.S. border have the GOP bullish about Youngkin’s prospects.

“Republicans are angry and motivated, and independents are acting more like Republicans today than any time in the last year,” said Phil Cox, the former campaign manager for Republican Bob McDonnell’s Virginia gubernatorial campaign, citing a recent public survey showing that independent voters supported Youngkin over McAuliffe by six points. “I think we’ve got the best chance in more than a decade.”

Chris Saxman, a conservative who is executive director of the nonpartisan business group Virginia FREE, went as far as suggesting that Youngkin “could be a unicorn candidate” for the GOP.

“He’s new, he’s completely outside politics. He’s never run for office before,” Saxman said. “So, he’s coming in this [with his] eyes wide open on what’s going on in Virginia and figuring out what needs to change.”

Several public surveys of voters have been within the margin of error, though a Monmouth University Poll published Monday showed McAuliffe holding onto a five-point advantage over Younkin with registered voters, with 48 percent of those surveyed supporting the Democrat and 43 percent backing the Republican newcomer.

Those numbers were virtually unchanged from where the two candidates stood in Monmouth’s August poll. While Biden’s approval numbers have lagged in the state, largely due to the resurgence of Covid-19, those queried put their faith behind McAuliffe, who led Youngkin 41 percent to 28 percent on the question of who they would trust more on handling the pandemic.

The people close to the White House said they’ve come to view Youngkin as boxed in with Trump on the virus, election security and the Jan. 6 insurrection, which they contend could resonate more widely with voters given Northern Virginia’s proximity to the Capitol.

At times, they note, Youngkin has equivocated or shifted his answers so as not to offend the base of the party. In a recent interview with Axios, he would not say whether he would have voted to certify the 2020 election on Jan. 6 were he a member of Congress. Youngkin later said he would have voted to do so.

Democrats also are encouraged by what they see as his inability to settle on a closing message.

“For a Republican to win, their base has to be at maximum intensity and our base has to be at minimal intensity,” said former Rep. Tom Perriello, who ran and lost in a Democratic primary for Virginia governor.

Perriello said he’s cautiously optimistic in Democrats’ turnout effort and the partnership of the campaign and allies. He also notes that this is the first gubernatorial election with extensive in-person early voting and mail voting. Recent polling shows that there is still a divide between parties on how people plan to vote: Most Republicans still plan to vote on Election Day and a majority of Democrats said they plan to vote before Nov 2.

“But that doesn’t mean I am not terrified,” Perriello allowed. “Cause the stakes for the state and the country are huge.”

The White House on Friday evening clarified an earlier statement by press secretary Jen Psaki suggesting that President Joe Biden had opted against shielding any of Donald Trump’s records from the committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Following Psaki’s comments at a briefing earlier in the day, the White House said it intends to review each request by the former president to prevent the disclosure of such records on a “case-by-case” basis. Psaki intended to refer to a decision weeks earlier by the Justice Department not to invoke privilege to block officials from providing documents and testimony to the committee.

During Friday’s White House press briefing, Psaki told reporters that members of the Trump administration haven’t reached out to suggest protecting any of the records and that they don’t have regular communication with the former president or his team.

“I would say that we take this matter incredibly seriously. The president already concluded that it would not be appropriate to assert executive privilege,” Psaki said. “And so, we will respond promptly to these questions as they arise. And certainly, as they come up from Congress, and certainly we have been working closely with congressional committees and others as they work to get to the bottom of what happened on Jan. 6.”

The White House has been considering releasing the information to Congress about what Trump and his aides were doing during the Jan. 6 attacks, according to the Washington Post, which first reported Biden’s thinking Thursday night. Trump has said he will cite “executive privilege” to block the committee’s requests, seeking protection from a legal theory that has allowed past presidents and their aides to avoid or delay congressional oversight for decades.

But Biden on Thursday was already leaning toward releasing the material for use, given the weight of Jan. 6 and what it meant for American democracy, according to The Post.

The House panel, which is examining whether the White House or Trump allies tried to delay the certification of the presidential election, sent a letter to the National Archives on Aug. 25, requesting any documents and communications within the White House on Jan. 6 that relate to the insurrection. The National Archives has identified hundreds of pages of relevant documents, which will be sent to Biden and Trump lawyers, as required by statute.

Once the documents are delivered, Trump has 30 days to approve or deny the release, according to the statute. If Trump decides to object, Biden can still turn the material over, since his White House has the final say on the matter.

Kyle Cheney contributed to this report.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi is reversing a months-long vow to push through the two major planks of Democrats’ domestic agenda in tandem, a huge shift just days before a critical infrastructure vote.

Pelosi explained her thinking in a rare Monday night caucus session, saying she and President Joe Biden are continuing to push the Senate on negotiations related to the social spending package, but the House must move ahead on infrastructure this week before surface transportation funding expires Thursday.

The speaker had declared earlier this summer that the House would only pass Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure bill if both chambers had also agreed to the party’s broader social spending plan. The California Democrat privately told members that the thinking began to change 10 days ago when she learned that Democrats would need to scale back the initial $3.5 trillion price tag for that spending bill — a massive legislative task.

“It all changed, so our approach had to change,” Pelosi told her caucus Monday, according to Democrats present.

“We had to accommodate the changes that were being necessitated.” And we cannot be ready to say, she added, “Until the Senate passed the bill, we can’t do [infrastructure].”

The California Democrat said Biden and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer continue to push Senate moderates to agree to a topline spending target, saying spending bill action in her chamber is effectively frozen until that happens.

“We are not going to pass a bill that won’t pass the Senate. And that’s why we have to come up with a number,” Pelosi told Democrats. “But we’re not there yet.”

But even as Pelosi attempted to rally her caucus around the new plan, the senator who would be key to any deal showed no movement.

“It would be a shame if anyone took credit for sinking an infrastructure bill this country needs,” said Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), adding that those warnings would not affect him. “I don’t do really good on threats,” he said.

House Democratic Caucus Chair Hakeem Jeffries said Democratic leaders would continue to try to push the Senate on the broader bill this week while moving ahead on the infrastructure vote.

“What’s holding everything up are a few senators who aren’t providing us with any clarity as to where they ultimately will land,” Jeffries said. “That’s the issue in front of us right now, and we have to try to resolve it in the next few days.”

Still, Democrats have not started to whip the infrastructure vote and some progressives signaled Monday night that they wouldn’t go along with the plan.

“Absolutely not. A deal is a deal. We are not passing anything short of having the full Build Back Better agenda,” said Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) when asked if progressives would be willing to advance the infrastructure bill even as the broader bill remained unfinished.

Sources close to Pelosi say the speaker was left without a choice given the looming expiration date for highway and transit programs and the resistance from Senate moderates to publicly commit to overall funding or program guarantees within the broader spending package.

The closed-door session Monday marked the first time the Democratic caucus sat down since Pelosi announced the the House would vote Thursday on Biden’s infrastructure package. The speaker also declared over the weekend that the House would vote this week on Democrats’ sprawling domestic policy bill — an aim so loft that few Democrats believe it is possible in the coming days.

Instead, Pelosi and key members of her caucus are focused on reaching a public agreement with key senators on the total cost of the social spending plan as well as other major aspects. But it’s unclear exactly how many specifics Democrats will secure from Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), the Senate’s most vocal centrists, in time for their Thursday vote, according to people close to their thinking — which Democrats believe has essentially forced their party to delink the two bills.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer confirmed after the meeting that the infrastructure vote would happen Thursday: “There is an absolute consensus we need to pass these two bills, period.”

In the push to reach a bicameral accord, Sinema has been in close contact with a small group of House moderates, including Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.). Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) has also been in touch with some of those moderates, including Sinema.

Dynamics within the caucus remain deeply strained, with progressives publicly vowing to oppose the Senate’s bipartisan public works bill without passage of the social package, and moderates threatening to tank those party-line talks without an infrastructure vote this week.

Some moderates — who had demanded the infrastructure vote this week — privately emerged from the meeting feeling like they had secured a win over the left faction of their caucus.

In the Democratic meeting Monday, moderate Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.) told her colleagues to stop “using the word ‘leverage.’”

“Delaying the bill isn’t going to make us any more or less likely to support reconciliation,” she said. “I am a legislator, not a lemming.”

Even as progressives and centrists remained publicly intractable Monday, both sides had been slowly starting to concede in private that they will have to give some ground in order to ensure Biden’s domestic agenda stays afloat.

Publicly though, Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, was still insisting as of Monday afternoon that progressives wanted to see the sprawling spending plan passed in both the House and Senate before the caucus will support the infrastructure vote.

“What we have said is we need the entire reconciliation bill,” Jayapal told reporters. “Some framework that can still take another couple months to get done, that the Senate hasn’t agreed to, that hasn’t been voted on, that’s not going to do it for us.”

Jayapal’s thinking had not changed after Pelosi’s shift to decouple the two spending bills.

“We are going to vote for both bills after the reconciliation bill is done,” she said after the caucus meeting.

Jayapal also downplayed the surface transportation date, saying the program’s authorization has expired many times in the past but “nothing happens as long as we keep the appropriations going.”

The list of lingering questions about Biden’s broader package remains long. Both Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer are still wrangling their members about what they’re willing to support on both the scope and substance of the legislation. Democrats are split over the price tag of the bill — currently at $3.5 trillion — as well as huge questions about government drug price negotiations and expanding Medicare and Medicaid.

“I think we’re going to do everything Nancy Pelosi said we’re going to do. That’s usually the way things turn out,” said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.). “It’s not pretty, it’s not gonna be easy, but what I know is that there’s not a single Democrat who will walk into that room who’s interested in sacking our quarterback.”

Pelosi and Schumer spoke to Biden via phone before the House caucus meeting Monday evening. Several senior Democrats are also hoping Biden will more forcefully weigh in on the infrastructure vote Thursday, publicly declaring that the bill needs to be passed by the House on that day.

So far the president has not done so directly, instead speaking about the overall urgency of his agenda during a brief interaction with reporters Monday. Without specifying a deadline, he said “we got three things to do: the debt ceiling, the continuing resolution, and the two pieces of legislation. If we do that, the country is going to be in great shape.”

Pelosi teed up the infrastructure vote on Thursday for two reasons; the first is to exert maximum pressure on members to vote yes, given the expiration of key surface transportation funding that day.

Senior Democrats on both sides of the Capitol are hoping to secure that official “framework” for that policy bill that would have buy-in from Senate moderates — ideally enough of a commitment to convince liberals in the House to back down on their threat and support the infrastructure bill.

Progressives say that framework must lay out precise details on what the Senate centrists are willing to support on everything from Medicare expansion to climate provisions. If not, they will not vote for the infrastructure bill.

Democrats are gearing up for an intense few days as Pelosi and her leadership team attempt to lock down the votes on Thursday.

“The temperature will never go down. People are passionate. The heat won’t go down until this is over,” Rep. Greg Meeks (D-N.Y.) said leaving Monday night’s meeting, adding that the speaker took “meticulous” notes from each speaker. “She’s listening to everybody.”

Burgess Everett and Nicholas Wu contributed.