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A small Latino policy organization in Chicago — with a staff of under 20 — is getting bi-weekly email invitations to join talks with the White House.

The emails from ERNESTO APREZA, senior adviser for public engagement, which go out to multiple Latino stakeholders, were a surprise to SYLVIA PUENTE, who has run the Latino Policy Forum for more than ten years.

“That is obviously not something that existed under Obama, didn’t exist under Trump,” Puente said.

Latino outreach has been a key focus for Team Biden ever since they were hit hard by disappointing results with Latino voters during the 2020 elections—results that Latino leaders predicted well in advance. And it remained so on Tuesday, as Biden, along with nine aides, met with 12 Latino organization leaders to talk about the Build Back Better agenda, voting rights and immigration. The more than 90-minute meeting started on Biden Standard Time (a bit late).

LORELLA PRAELI, co-president of Community Change Action — and a former Latino outreach director to HILLARY CLINTON — called the meeting “robust and much longer than expected” and said it covered the economy, immigration and voting rights. She said community leaders requested that Biden and Vice President KAMALA HARRIS meet with them quarterly and to have a direct line of communication with them.

“The President reiterated his commitment to creating a path, passing and getting a path to citizenship done via reconciliation,” Praeli told West Wing Playbook, referring to the massive budget bill that Democrats are beginning to move through Congress by a party-line vote.

The New York Times last week unpacked the ways in which the White House has proactively reached out to Latino advocacy groups about voting rights and immigration. The rationale in part, is to not take the Latino vote for granted, especially ahead of the midterm elections.

Although Biden won the Latino vote with a 59-38 percent margin over Trump in 2020, he trailed Hillary Clinton’s 2016 margin by 17 points, according to the Pew Research Center. That’s a massive drop in support from a growing constituency and a lot of points to make up before the next election cycle hits.

CHUCK ROCHA, a former BERNIE SANDERS senior adviser who runs Nuestro PAC, said it’s clear Biden and outside Democrat groups were terrified of the 2020 numbers. And the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is spending more than $1 million around the country in midterm battleground districts to make gains among minority voters.

That figure may seem relatively small, given the size of the committee’s ad budget. But Rocha said it’s the timing that matters here.

“I've never seen a group of folks go out and spend money, talking to Latinos as early as the pro Biden outside groups have done. So Building Back Together, Unidos and other groups, it’s like they all got the s*** scared out of them with Miami and the Texas valley last time and they are actually doing what all of us who were complaining about, they're doing it differently, really differently,” Rocha said. “You never saw Bill Clinton, or even Barack Obama, go out six months after the election and spend millions of dollars in Spanish, telling people what they're doing to make their lives better.”

Former Biden campaign pollster MATT BARETO is a senior adviser for the White House approved nonprofit Building Back Together, and is working to show the Latino community the direct impact of Biden's agenda through TV and digital ads.

While advocacy groups say the Biden administration has done some things well in his first six months — including early executive actions to try to undo or place reviews on Trump era policies — there have been no shortage of tension points.

This week, the administration backed away from plans to begin phasing out the use of Title 42 to expel migrant families, arguing that the Delta variant and a growing number of border apprehensions required continued use of the public health law provision.

We asked the White House about their Latino outreach efforts and they gave us a lot (like eight pages) of info, including a “representative” but not “exhaustive” list of all meetings Biden has conducted with Hispanic members of Congress, DREAMERs and other stakeholders.

Of note, the White House says between March and June OPE and PPO conducted weekly check-ins with external organizations to “create a pipeline of Latino candidates for Administration roles.”

In total, Biden held at least 16 meetings, calls or recorded remarks, dating back to January 30. First Lady JILL BIDEN is close behind with at least 15 events, interviews with Spanish media and meetings targeting Latino outreach efforts.

They included her July 12 appearance on a “Sesame Street Inclusion Special,” where she talked about “inclusion, kindness and being an ‘upstander with Rosita,” a 5-year-old turquoise Mexican muppet familiar to anyone with small kids.

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With the Partnership for Public Service

The Secret Service began protecting the president in 1901, after the assassination of former president WILLIAM MCKINLEY — but what was the secret service originally established to protect?

(Answer is at the bottom.)

BYTE INTO AN APPLE — Apple has scooped up one of Biden’s former speechwriters, DYLAN LOEWE, to be the company’s new director of public relations and CEO TIM COOK’s new chief speechwriter, per Loewe’s recently updated LinkedIn. Loewe was Biden’s speechwriter in 2012 and 2013 in the vice president’s office.

He also collaborated with Vice President KAMALA HARRIS on her memoir ahead of her 2020 presidential campaign. Both he and Apple declined to comment.

ANONYMOUS SOURCES: The New York Times’ KATIE ROGERS asked JEN PSAKI today about our report from yesterday on JILL BIDEN’s polarizing top aide, ANTHONY BERNAL, and whether his behavior—which involved demeaning fellow staffers and creating a noxious office culture—would be looked into.

Rogers noted that the report was based on anonymous sources to which Psaki replied: “You know how I love anonymous sources placing criticism.” Psaki added that she’d worked with Bernal for six months now. “He’s been nothing but supportive and communicative and that’s been my experience,” she said. “It’s hard to look into anonymously sourced reports.”

P.S. A former colleague of Bernal’s from the Clinton White House messaged us today to say that, in the 1990’s, Bernal was “Literally the same. Only with no power.”

SPOTTED IN PAGE SIX: Harris senior adviser SYMONE SANDERS was name dropped in the New York Post’s Page Six last night. She was spotted at a pop-up party celebrating the life of rapper BIZ MARKIE ahead of his funeral Monday. She joined DAVE CHAPPELLE, former host of “The Chew” CARLA HALL, and Washington Football Team president JASON WRIGHT.

MOHR FOR PRESIDENT?: They say all politics is local. If so, MORGAN MOHR, an associate director of strategic planning in the White House’s political shop, is well on her way to a promising political career.

The White House staffer earned some effusive press today in her local paper, “The Kokomo Perspective,” back in Howard County, Indiana.

“So what comes next for Mohr? The possibilities seem limitless. Mayor? Governor? Senator? President?,” the paper wrote at the end of an interview with Mohr. “Whatever she decides, it’s not hard to imagine Mohr’s foot finally breaking through the glass ceiling that Hillary Clinton, Vice President Kamala Harris, and other women before them put so many cracks in.”

QUINTUPLE CHECKED — A day after White House economic adviser GENE SPERLING said that the president had “not only kicked the tires” but “double, triple, [and] quadruple checked” what he could do about an expired eviction’s moratorium, the president announced his team had found an option. KATY O'DONNELL, LAURA BARRÓN-LÓPEZ and HEATHER CAYGLE reported that Biden called NANCY PELOSI and progressive lawmakers before the announcement.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention unveiled the new policy this afternoon, which it said would last through October 3 and “applies in United States counties experiencing substantial and high levels of community transmission levels” of Covid. When previewing it, Biden didn’t sound particularly confident that the revised moratorium would be legal. In fact, he said he’d talked to constitutional scholars who said it wouldn’t after the Supreme Court moved to curtail the administration’s authority on eviction moratoriums in June. But Biden also conceded that the lawsuits that were likely to come were the actual goal: reasoning that renters would get temporary relief while the matter was re-litigated in the courts.

ALL EYES ON CUOMO — Biden has joined other key Democrats in saying New York Gov. ANDREW CUOMO should resign following the attorney general of New York’s investigation that found he sexually harassed nearly a dozen women and worked to retaliate against one of his accusers, AP’s MICHAEL R. SISAK and MARINA VILLENEUVE report.

“I think he should resign,” Biden told reporters, echoing the sentiments of Pelosi and Cuomo’s home state Senators, CHUCK SCHUMER (D-N.Y.) and KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND (D-N.Y.). Cuomo, in turn, has said “the facts are much different than what has been portrayed” and that he “never touched anyone inappropriately or made inappropriate sexual advances.”

Children stopped at border likely hit record-high in July (AP’s Elliot Spagat)

New marker highlights work of slaves in building White House (E&E News’ Rob Hotakainen)

White House back-channeling with networks on Covid coverage (Politico’s Christopher Cadelago)

Biden and Vice President Harris met with Latino community leaders to discuss immigration reform and the second anniversary of the El Paso mass shooting, among other things.

The president also delivered remarks from the East Room regarding vaccination progress in the U.S. and abroad. During those remarks, he unveiled a new policy with regard to eviction moratoriums.

With the president.

A quirky, how-they-met story for today’s oppo: National Security Council spokesperson SEAN SAVETT met his now-wife, TAYLOR LUSTIG, the senior manager of external and government affairs at PepsiCo, at a Democratic Party happy hour in Washington, D.C. (Naturally.)

But when the two ran into each other again at a coffee shop, according to their marriage announcement in the New York Times, Savett didn’t remember — err, recognize — Lustig.

Lustig told Savett that she had gotten a haircut with bangs since the party, and then Savett said made the connection. Smooth, Sean. Smooth.

The Treasury Department established the Secret Service in 1865 to weed out counterfeiting of the nation’s currency.

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