| | | | | |  | | By Brakkton Booker | With help from Rishika Dugyala and Teresa Wiltz | 
Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., waves to guests in the balcony as he takes his seat on Capitol Hill in February 2017. | AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File | What up, Recast family! Happy New Year! The Food and Drug Administration approves Pfizer's Covid boosters for those ages 12 to 15 as Omicron cases soar, GOP. Rep. Devin Nunes officially resigns from the U.S. House and this week marks one year since the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. But we kick things off with the announcement that Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) isn't seeking reelection. The longtime civil rights activist, former Black Panther and 15-term U.S. representative is leaving Congress at the end of his term. Just don't call it a retirement. "First of all, I'm not retiring man, alright?" he said in an interview with POLITICO Monday evening. "I am not ready to go off to some spot in the sun, sit on nobody's beach drinking tequila." Rush, 75, says he plans to remain in the public eye and use his broad name recognition and his storied career — from Boy Scout, to serving in the Army, to co-founding the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, to Chicago alderman, to member of Congress and pastor — to inspire the next generation of leaders. | 
| He made it official when he addressed friends and colleagues at a Chicago-area church today. Defiant. Relentless. Unapologetic. Controversial. Survivor. All attributes that contributed to Rush's firm grasp of his Illinois district for three decades and made him a legend in Chicago politics. Rush also holds the distinction of being the only politician to not just beat — but trounce — Barack Obama when the future president mounted a primary challenge in 2000 for Rush's seat. | 
Incumbent Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., accompanied by Rev. Leon Finney Jr., left, and Illinois state Rep. Lovanna Jones, right, celebrates his 2000 primary victory in Chicago over challenger Barack Obama. | AP Photo/M. Spencer Green, File | Championing the equality of Black people in the U.S. and around the globe has always been front and center for Rush since he was first elected to Congress in 1992. And he wasn't above using tactics of direct confrontation to draw attention to his causes. There was the 2004 incident where he was arrested for trespassing at the Sudanese Embassy during demonstrations to demand an end to the genocide in that nation's Darfur region. In 2012, Rush donned a hoodie — a direct violation of chamber rules that stipulated members must "remain uncovered" during session. That move earned him and his cause national attention. It also earned him a reprimand as he was escorted off the House floor. That act of protest came in the wake of the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, a Black teenager killed in Florida by a neighborhood watch coordinator. Rush's message: "Racial profiling must stop … Just because someone wears a hoodie does not make them a hoodlum." (Rush's son, Huey Rich, was mysteriously murdered in 1999.) | 
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of Calif. hugs Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill. during a news conference on gun legislation in June 2016. | AP Photo/Evan Vucci | Among his long list of legislative accomplishments, Rush says he's particularly proud of the passage of the Melanie Blocker Stokes MOTHERS Act, which provides funding for support services for new mothers and their families and research for the causes for postpartum depression. The bill, which he sponsored, was passed as part of the Affordable Care Act. "I knew Melanie Blocker Stokes, I knew her family," he said. Stokes, who'd been diagnosed with postpartum depression, committed suicide in 2001 not long after the birth of her daughter. "The fact that she was married to a physician and he didn't even recognize [the symptoms]," Rush said. "I got to work." There have been missteps along the way. In 2018, 15 percent of his congressional salary of $174,000 was garnished to pay off $1 million on a delinquent loan for a now-closed church he founded in Chicago. (He wasn't the only Congress member to face garnishment.) That same year, the House Ethics Committee found Rush had improperly received rent-free office space in Chicago, and ordered him to pay for the space. Rush faced significant health challenges, too: He survived salivary gland cancer, which stripped him of his once powerful voice, leaving it raspy and difficult to understand. In a video scheduled to be played at his midday news conference and viewed by POLITICO, Rush talked about the stinging comments he overheard referring to him as "Congressman Mumbles" or "Congressman Hush." Yes, that hurt his vanity. But he says being a cancer survivor reinforced the intensity of his desire to give back to others. Service, he said, is his "love language." His work, he insists, is far from finished. In this, his final year in office, he plans to focus on causes that shaped him as a youth and as a leader of the Black Panthers. | 
Rep. Bobby Rush and Rev. Jesse Jackson link arms as they march with demonstrators protesting the shooting of Laquan McDonald in Chicago in November 2015. | Joshua Lott/Getty Images | He plans to keep pushing for the COINTELPRO Full Disclosure Act, a bill introduced in May that would open up files from an FBI counterintelligence program that surveilled Black communities. "Let's see how many Americans did J. Edgar Hoover have killed," Rush said in the video. "I want to get those files exposed, but I also want to get J. Edgar Hoover's name off the federal building, the FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C.," Rush added. Another full-circle moment took place when he delivered his retirement remarks at the Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ. The revered Chicago house of worship hosted the 1955 funeral of 14-year-old Emmett Till. It's symbolic for Rush, who is also pushing for the passage of federal legislation that would make lynching a federal crime. His goal: "to make the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act a reality and getting that signed by President Biden," Rush told POLITICO. | 
From left, Rep. Karen Bass, D-Calif., chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., and Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., leave a news conference after discussing the "Emmett Till Antilynching Act" in February 2020. | AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite | Rush's announcement comes in the wake of a wave of Democrats opting not to seek reelection in 2022. Democrats are bracing for big losses in the November midterms with the possibility of losing control of both chambers of Congress. But Rush says that's not fueling his decision to step down. "I don't believe in Ouija boards, I don't believe in forecasting the future — none of that," Rush said. "I think Democrats are in a prime position to retake the House and increase their numbers in the Senate." My POLITICO colleague Shia Kapos, the author of Illinois Playbook, reports there are some 20 candidates who might jump into the race to replace Rush, including a handful who'd announced plans to challenge him prior to this week's announcement. Rush says he plans to endorse a candidate. But not today. "One of the things I've learned about the media is you don't step on your message," Rush said with a deep chuckle. All the best,
The Recast Team
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| Power dynamics are changing. With The Recast, you'll get a twice-weekly breakdown of how race and identity are the DNA of American politics and policy. Stay tuned for fresh analysis, scoops and new voices. Was this forwarded to you by a friend? Subscribe to the newsletter here.
| | | THE NUMBERS GAME Thursday marks one year since the deadly attack by the U.S. Capitol. The siege on the seat of government is seen by many as one of the darkest days in American history. In a recent POLITICO/Morning Consult survey tracking attitudes of registered voters about the insurrection, respondents provided a mix of responses, particularly when broken down by race.
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| Overall, 43 percent of respondents say the people who broke into the U.S. Capitol were representative of the Republican Party. That number jumped significantly among Black and Hispanic respondents. Nearly two-thirds of Black voters, or 62 percent, and 54 percent of Hispanic voters, said the insurrectionists were representative of the Republican Party. By contrast, just 40 percent of white voters said the attackers were representative of the GOP. When asked if the people who broke into the U.S. Capitol last year were representative of former President Donald Trump, but not the GOP overall, responses were consistent across all racial groups. Overall, 42 percent of voters surveyed said the attacks were representative of Trump, but not his party. Among white respondents, 41 percent said the attack was solely a reflection of Trump, while 43 percent of Black respondents and 47 percent of Hispanic respondents agreed with that assessment.
| | | ICYMI @ POLITICO: MARKING JAN. 6 | 
People attend Turning Point USA's America Fest 2021, a gathering of conservatives and Donald Trump supporters, on Dec. 18 in Phoenix, Ariz. | Spencer Platt/Getty Images | Throughout the week, POLITICO is delivering coverage on the anniversary of the event that altered the trajectory of our modern American politics. Here's just a sampling: Former POTUS Donald Trump is set to deliver a speech from Mar-a-Lago while a prayer service is scheduled at the Capitol. POLITICO's David Siders reports if Trump follows through on his plans he'll "commit a whitewashing of the day, repeating the lie that the 2020 election was rigged and defending his part in fomenting the insurrection." Many House Democrats fear the House of Representatives is finally broken, but it wasn't just the insurrection, it was the more than 140 votes Republican colleagues took to block the certification of Joe Biden, POLITICO's Sarah Ferris reports. Could Jan. 6 Happen Again? POLITICO's Kyle Cheney explores a question with no easy answers. He writes: "while leaders feel readier today than they did on Jan. 5, no one is rushing to declare the threat has passed."
| | | THE RECAST RECOMMENDS Stacey Abrams is arguably the one of the most popular Democrats in the nation. She's running for governor — again — in a closely watched race in battleground Georgia. Is she a moderate? Is she a progressive? Both? Neither? A breakdown of why both wings of the party claim her. With Omicron now the dominant variant infecting Americans, here's a sobering read from The Atlantic: "Our Relationship With COVID Vaccines Is Just Getting Started." And fresh off Michelle Obama's viral New Year's pic of her and hubby Barack Obama, the former first lady is set to make a guest appearance on the season premiere of ABC's "Blackish" tonight. Here's a preview. | 
| Colombian-American multimedia performance artist Stefa Marin Alarcon, also known as STEFA*, talks to Latino USA about their journey as "a non-binary, Indigenous person trying to find home in their body." | 
| Daphne Palasi Andreades' debut novel, "Brown Girls," follows the lives of brown girls living in "the dregs of Queens, New York, where airplanes fly so low that we are certain they will crush us." Chicago's Chance the Rapper competed on Jimmy Fallon's "That's My Jam!" where he covered Nelly's 2002 hip-hop classic, "Hot In Herre" — but morphing it into a country rock jam. | 
| TikTok of the Day: This is what a healthy relationship looks like. | 
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