Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from Allie Bice.  

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PROGRAMMING NOTE: We’ll be off for Thanksgiving this Thursday and Friday, but back to our normal schedule on Monday, Nov. 28. We hope distance makes the heart grow fonder. 

Top aides to President JOE BIDEN are gaming out what happens next year in Congress when Republicans will hold a narrow majority in the House.

And it’s not all about fending off oversight probes into HUNTER BIDEN’s laptop. Some even see glimmers of political opportunity.

No one expects a divided Congress to produce the kind of landmark legislation Democrats have delivered in the two years since Biden took office. But even with some of Biden’s most trusted Republican friends retiring, the White House is confident new ones will emerge.

In fact, the soon-to-be freshmen whose wins this month flipped control of the House to the GOP are being viewed as potential allies on some pieces of legislation. “Everyone in a district that Joe Biden carried [in 2020] is going to need bipartisan legislation to run on in 2024,” one senior administration official said.

For all the talk from Oversight panel hard-liners like Reps. JIM JORDAN (R-Ohio) and JAMES COMER (R-Ky.) about aggressively going after the Biden administration, some comments from these rookie moderates have offered White House aides reason to believe that bipartisan bills may yet emerge during the next two years.

Rep.-elect MIKE LAWLER, the Republican who unseated SEAN PATRICK MALONEY, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair from Westchester County, N.Y., said just after the election that his focus would be on curbing inflation and cost of living issues. Similarly, Rep.-elect GEORGE SANTOS, who flipped a swing district on Long Island, expressed a desire to focus on increasing the country’s energy independence and reducing crime.

Lawler and Santos were also among a handful of Republicans on the House floor last week to hear Speaker NANCY PELOSI announce plans to step down from her post as Democratic leader.

“Whether it's Ukraine [funding] or immigration or the debt ceiling or crypto, they're gonna have to make it clear that they're interested and that will take sitting on both sides,” said Rep. JOSH GOTTHEIMER (D-N.J.), the co-chairman of the problem solver’s caucus, a group of moderates he expects will grow next year. “We'll see very early on what direction we're moving.”

Biden knows the importance of giving lawmakers space to hash out the details of future legislation on their own, his aides say. That said, there is some optimism that lawmakers could come together to address pocketbook issues. Sen. MITT ROMNEY (R-Utah) last year put forth a compromise proposal on the expired child tax credit enhancement, a policy area that could be revisited.

But Romney will be up for reelection soon and facing a potential primary from the right. And some of Biden’s most trusted and helpful GOP interlocutors will be gone. One of them, Sen. ROB PORTMAN (R-Ohio), led infrastructure talks in 2021 and stood at Biden’s side during its South Lawn bill signing ceremony. He also attended a White House event in Ohio in September where Biden touted the bipartisan law to boost semiconductor manufacturing and the benefits for his state.

Still, while Portman’s early decision not to seek reelection made it easier for him to work with a Democratic White House on policy, other Republicans have said they’re comfortable collaborating too.

Senate Minority Leader MITCH MCCONNELL, who has a years-long relationship with Biden, made clear he didn’t mind if more consensus-oriented GOP senators worked on policy with a Democratic White House. All Senate Republicans were, “to varying degrees, liberated by McConnell having trust that Biden was a willing participant in the talks and that both sides, at the end of the day, were probably willing to bend to get some sort of deal,” a senior Senate aide said. McConnell’s post-election commentary blaming his party’s losses on Republicans creating “too much chaos” signaled that his recent inclination toward deal-making in some areas could extend into 2023.

On Tuesday, moderate Rep. DON BACON (R-Neb.) suggested that the time could be right for a long elusive compromise on immigration reform. “If we could agree on some security measures for the southern border, I think we could make some great strides on legal immigration,” Bacon said during an interview on CNN.

In the final weeks before Election Day, Biden was criticized for focusing so much of his campaign appearances on his legislative achievements: the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure overhaul and CHIPS bill.

In the end, a good chunk of Democrats believe, the administration’s record of accomplishment, including several bipartisan wins, helped vulnerable incumbents hold on.

“The big takeaway for me from the numbers and how it shook out was: Americans want common sense and governing and unity, not division and extremism,” Gottheimer said. “There's a real opportunity to govern if they're willing.”

MESSAGE US — Are you Rep.-elect MIKE LAWLER, the Republican who unseated DCCC chair SEAN PATRICK MALONEY? We want to hear from you! And we’ll keep you anonymous. Email us at [email protected].

This one’s from Allie. What was the Thanksgiving holiday first celebrated under the new Constitution?

(Answer at the bottom.)

DARK BRANDON RISES: With Republicans soon taking over the House, the White House has been preparing to counter an anticipated barrage of right-wing attacks, our CHRISTOPHER CADELAGO reports.

West Wing officials are girding themselves “for congressional probes and possible impeachment fights. They’ve been coordinating with a long list of department officials and bringing on attack dogs to help them turn back Republican narratives about the administration,” Cadelago writes. “Presidential aides know they’re coming in for uncomfortable, even deeply personal, clashes over everything from the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan to migrants crossing the southern border to the Biden family itself.”

MAWAGE IS WOT BWINGS US TOGEDER TODAY: Vogue magazine on Tuesday published a behind-the-scenes look at NAOMI BIDEN and PETER NEAL’s White House wedding, including an interview with the bride and pictures of her getting ready. As is customary in this town, there was some drama accompanying it.

Members of the White House press corps noted that press secretary KARINE JEAN-PIERRE had said the couple wanted to keep the event private, a stance at odds with also having a glossy magazine spread.

NYT’s KATIE ROGERS tweeted she “had reporting in Oct about Vogue being tapped to cover this and I was waved off. Official explanation is that Vogue wasn’t there the day of. Loophole = the family staged a ‘wedding at the WH’ shoot beforehand.

‘Private’ per @PressSec = not for the White House press corps.”

In response, a White House official rejected the notion that the wave-off had been misleading, noting that “Vogue covered no wedding events.”

We, of course, wish the couple well.

SWAN SONG: Dr. ANTHONY FAUCI, during a valedictory appearance in the White House briefing room, spoke largely about new variants of Covid-19 as the administration kicked off a six-week effort to get more Americans vaccinated and booster.

“Maybe the final message I give you from this podium is that, please, for your own safety, for that of your family, get your updated Covid-19 shot as soon as you're eligible,” said Fauci, 82, who is retiring at year’s end after 54 years at the National Institute of Health. Asked about his biggest disappointment from his years in public health, he spoke of Americans “not getting vaccinated for reasons that have nothing to do with public health but [because of] divisiveness and ideological differences. As a physician, it pains me."

Dr. ASHISH JHA, the administration’s Covid coordinator, praised Fauci as “the most important, consequential public servant in the United States in the last half century.” Things went off the rails a bit later amid questions about Covid’s origins shouted from the back of the room, because of course they did.

FIRST IN WEST WING PLAYBOOK: ALLIE PANTHER has been named the deputy assistant secretary for administration at the Transportation Department, DANIEL LIPPMAN has learned. She most recently was White House liaison at DOT.

— MAGGIE MURPHY is the new White House liaison at DOT. She most recently was director of scheduling and advance at the Department of Education.

ABOUT THOSE STUDENT LOANS… The Biden administration announced it will extend the payment pause on federal student loans, as the White House’s debt forgiveness plan remains blocked in court, our MICHAEL STRATFORD reports. The pause was scheduled to expire Dec. 31, but Biden tweeted that the Education Department will postpone restarting monthly student loan payments to "no later than June 30.” That should give the Supreme Court time to hear the case in its current term," he said.

CALLS FROM CONGRESS: Sixteen bipartisan senators, led by JONI ERNST (R-Iowa) and JOE MANCHIN (D-W.Va.), pressed Defense Secretary LLOYD AUSTINabout the administration’s decision to transfer the MQ-1C Gray Eagle armed drone to Ukraine, our LEE HUDSON reports. The administration has since been hesitant to send the armed drone to Ukraine, for fear it may end up in Russia’s hands.

It's not just Joe Biden. Plenty of Americans are now working into their 80s. (Insider’s Jason Lalljee, Madison Hoff and Andy Kiersz) 

A Tale of Two Weddings: Trump and Biden (NYT’s Vanessa Friedman)

On Oct. 3, 1789, President GEORGE WASHINGTON “issued a proclamation naming Thursday, November 26, 1789 as a day of public thanksgiving, the first time Thanksgiving was celebrated under the new Constitution,” according to the White House Historical Association.

AND, A CALL OUT — Do you think you have a harder one? Send us your best one about the presidents with a citation and we may feature it.

Edited by Eun Kyung Kim and Sam Stein.