Vice Presidential Pool Reports of October 8, 2021

VP travel pool 1

Checking in from Joint Base Andrews on this beautiful fall day as we await for the vice president to arrive. Your pooler has been tested for COVID and is ready for his first-ever travel pool assignment.

Here's the schedule:

DAILY GUIDANCE FOR THE VICE PRESIDENT
FOR FRIDAY, OCTOBER 8

At 9:35AM EDT, the Vice President will depart Washington, DC en route Newark, New Jersey. The departure from Joint Base Andrews and arrival at Newark Liberty International Airport will be covered by the travel pool.

At 11:45AM EDT, the Vice President will participate in a roundtable conversation on the importance of federal investment in childcare through the Biden-Harris Administration's economic agenda. There will be a pool spray at the top of this roundtable at Ben Samuels Children's Center at Montclair State University.

At 2:40PM EDT, the Vice President will take a tour of the vaccination site at Essex County College. There will be pooled press coverage of this tour.

At 4:35PM EDT, the Vice President will depart New Jersy en route Washington, DC. The departure from Newark Liberty International Airport and arrival at Joint Base Andrews will be covered by the travel pool.

VP travel pool 2

The VP boarded the plane without stopping to take questions, though she waved at the top of the stairs.

We are rolling at 9:38.

VP Travel Pool Report 3

From the White House:

Greeter at JBA: Maj. Guy Evertson, Dep. Director Flight Line Protocol, C-32A Pilot

Background from a White House Official
Today the Vice President is traveling to Little Falls and Newark, New Jersey. She will participate in a roundtable conversation at Ben Samuels Children's Center at Montclair State University, where she will focus on the importance of federal investment in childcare through the Biden-Harris Administration's economic agenda. Then she will take a tour of a vaccination site at Essex County College.

Background on VP's Work to Build Back Better on Child Care

Working with President Biden, the Vice President has helped lead the Administration's effort to address challenges that women in the workforce face. The Vice President has advocated for the Build Back Better Agenda, which will lower the cost of childcare for working parents.

• A few weeks ago, the Vice President visited the home of Jamie Smith, a member of the "sandwich generation," who cares for her children and parents – to discuss how Build Back Better will support caregivers like Jamie.
• Several weeks ago, the Vice President made her first trip to the Treasury Department since taking office to hold an event with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and made the case for proposed investments in childcare.
• In August, the Vice President convened business leaders to make the case for how childcare investments will help companies grow. She also visited a healthcare center to highlight how the Build Back Better Agenda would lower healthcare costs and expand access.
• Immediately after taking office, Vice President Harris called the mass exodus of women leaving the workforce a national emergency.
• The Vice President has also convened leaders in Congress and women leaders of advocacy organizations, visited women-led small businesses across the country to hear how women have been impacted by the pandemic,visited child care centers to see firsthand the challenges that parents and workers face, traveled the country to raise awareness about the Child Tax Credit, and addressed international institutions on the issue of how to make the world work for women.

VP's Work Encouraging Vaccinations

The Vice President has been critical in the Administration's effort to defeat the virus and get Americans vaccinated.

• The Vice President's first event after being sworn in was a visit to the National Institutes of Healthto thank the scientists and to take her second vaccine shot.
• The Vice President's Senate work was foundational in the creation of the White House COVID Health Equity Task Force.
• She led the Administration's nationwide "We Can Do This" tour.
  • This summer, the Vice President led a nation-wide bus tour to highlight the ease of getting vaccinated, encourage vaccinations, and energize and mobilize grassroots vaccine education and outreach efforts.
  • The Vice President visited South Carolina, Georgia, and Michigan as a part of the tour. The First Lady, the Second Gentleman, and members of the Cabinet fanned out across country as part of the tour as well.
• The Vice President announced the launch of the COVID-19 Community Corps as part of her leadership championing the COVID education campaign from the White House to increase access and boost confidence in the vaccine.
• She has taken an innovative approach to reaching people where they are to encourage vaccinations, including engagements with theNBA All Star Game, Nickelodeon, Lifetime, and BET. She has also done digital engagements with Dr. Fauci, Olivia Rodrigo, and Ross Butler and Lana Condor.

VP Travel Pool Report 4- arrival in NJ

We've landed at Newark Airport, exit 14 on the New Jersey Turnpike. Touchdown at 10:23, Nexy, we head to the Montclair State University day care center in Little Falls for our first stop of the day.

VP Travel Pool 5 - Greeters

Greeters at Newark:

- Governor Phil Murphy (D-NJ)
- Tammy Snyder Murphy, First Lady of New Jersey
- Congressman Donald Payne (D-NJ-10)
- Mayor Sean Spiller, Mayor of Montclair

Murphy is up for re-election next month.

VP Travel Pool Report 6

We've arrived at the Montclair day care center, across the street from Francis A. Sinatra Hall.

Nine kids and three teachers are here. Two kids are painting. Another kid is playing with a Mr. Potato Head.

They are three and four year olds.

Travel was a breeze on the Garden State Parkway when the traffic is held up for the motorcade. I've never seen it so empty.

Some drivers whose cars were stopped on the entrance ramp had their phones out, snapping pictures.

VP Travel Pool Report 7

VP Harris, Rep. Mikie Sherrill, D-11th Dist., and Gov. Murphy walked into the classroom and spread out to talk to the kids. They were accompanied by Milla Yakubov, director of the Ben Samuels Child Care Center.

Harris asked one kid who was looking at numbers, what comes next? He answers "8."

Another one asks Harris, "Are you older than 8 years old?"

Harris says, "I'm a little bit more than 8 years old."

Murphy and Sherrill visited kids at other tables.

In a second room of 3-5 year olds, Harris says to one of the teachers, "I wanted to come by and see you. Thank you for your work."

She later played shapes bingo with other kids.

"I'm working with the governor on the future of New Jersey," she said.

Murphy responded: "You've come to Ground Zero."

VP Travel Pool Report 8

After the classroom visits. Harris presides over a roundtable with Murphy, Sherrill and five educators. The room was arranged you shape, with Harris in the middle of the horizontal table behind the vice presidential seal, two educators and Sherrill behind one perpendicular table and three and Murphy behind the other.

In her remarks, Harris talked about "the significance of supporting our children, supporting our parents."

She praised Murphy, calling him a "true leader," and Sherrill, saying,"I've known of your work in the halls of the United States Congress."

She made a pitch for the child care funding in the Build Better Act.

"Our nation is strongest when everyone is able to participate. This is fundamentally what the issue is about when it comes to working parents."

More quotes to come. Please check against transcript.

We were ushered out of the roundtable and are holding in a nearby classroom.

VP Travel Pool Report 9 - more quotes

Harris talked about places where child care is too expensive or even unavailable. "We have coined a term, child care desert."

She said 2 million women left the workforce during the pandemic. "A working person cannot go to work if they have no one to take care of their kids."

Rep. Sherrill, mother of four children: '"I know first hand how difficult child care is in this country."

Also quoted 2 million figure.

"Women losing ground is America's middle class losing ground. This is an economic issue."

Gov. Murphy said that the child care provisions in the Biden spending bill "would be a game changer for New Jersey" as he endorsed both that bill and the infrastructure bill.

"The pandemic clobbered us. It clobbered families. It especially clobbered working moms."

Before we head to the next stop, Harris is doing a couple of interviews with local press.

VP Travel Pool Report 10 - protest

About 30 unauthorized immigrants and students assembled near the child care center, calling on the VP to support a path to citizenship in the spending bill through reconciliation.

I do not know if Harris saw the protesters. We did not see her leave the motorcade and enter the building.

The group sponsoring the protest, Make the Road NJ, contacted me separately to let me know they were there and sent me a quote from one of the protesters.

"As an essential health care worker during the pandemic, I put my life at risk every day to help keep a health clinic open," said Mariana Velasquez, a member of Make the Road NJ. "But I fear being separated from my children. New Jersey is my home."

VP Travel Pool Report 11 - on the move

At 2 pm, we are on the road again and heading to the vaccination site.

The protesters referred to in the last report were across the street by the building named for Sinatra.

VP travel pool report 12

Vaccine stop participants below

vaccine tour stop participants
- Governor Phil Murphy (D-NJ)
- Congressman Donald Payne (D-NJ-10)
- House Energy and Commerce Chairman Frank Pallone (D-NJ-6)
- Mayor Ras Baraka, Mayor of Newark
- Joseph N. DiVincenzo, Jr., Essex County Executive (tour guide)
- Judy Persichilli, Essex Health Commissioner
- Colonel Pat Callahan, New Jersey State Police

Participants at earlier roundtable

- Governor Phil Murphy (D-NJ)
- Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ-11) (moderator)
- Dianne Mann, President & CEO, Madison YMCA
- Meghan Tavormina, Executive Director of The Learning Path, Chatham and President, NJAEYC
- Saira Siddiqui, Physician & Livingston resident
- Lisa Blank, Physician & Montclair resident
- Shante Palmer, vice chancellor of Rutgers

VP travel pool report 13

We are at the Essex County vaccination center. There are a row of tables with six people, all wearing scrubs, checking people in.

There was another group of protesters from Make the Road NJ across the street when we turned into the center parking lot. They are demanding a path to citizenship in the Biden spending bill.

VP travel pool report 14

Harris arrived and met with those registering patients. Murphy first bumped them.

The VP thanked them for their work.

"There will be an end to this," she said. "W.e really feel we are starting to get in front of this."

She and the entourage then went into the all-purpose-room-sized room where the shots were being given. Harris stood near a woman who got her shot and delivered a pitch to get vaccinated.

"It will save your life. It's free. It's safe. And it's about you and everybody around you."

She said "it breaks my heart" to hear tales of people dying in ICUs because they won't get the vaccine.

She then called all of health workers around her and again thanked them.

We are now heading to an unscheduled stop.

VP travel pool report 15

The VP made an unscheduled stop at Tommie's Minis, a cake and cupcake shop in Newark.

The store owner, Tommie Rozier, heard the then mayor of Newark, Cory Booker, on the radio talking about how great it would be to have a cupcake store in his city.

Booker, now a U.S. senator, recommended Harris stop by during this trip, so she did.

Booker and Murphy accompanied Harris. Murphy got four cupcakes. Booker, a vegan, didn't get any. Hartis bought some red velvet cupcakes and slices of carrot. pineapple coconut, and sponge cake with chocolate icing.

Rozier told Harris that he initially shut down during the pandemic, then opened bake to order before resuming operations. He said he was helped by a PPP loan.

"It really required you to be creative to get through it," Harris said.

Rozier and other employees took turns posing for pictures with Booker, Harris and Murphy.

And they sent some mini cupcakes for the press.

We are rolling to Newark Airport.

From the White House: Ulani is the girl who was doing her homework and she comes to the bakery after school every day until her mom gets off work. She was asked to help the VP choose her desert.

And one correction to a previous White House email, an incorrect meeting participant, updated below from the roundtable.

Governor Phil Murphy (D-NJ)
- Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ-11) (moderator)
-Cecilia Zalkind, President and CEO of Advocates for Children of New Jersey
- Meghan Tavormina, Executive Director of The Learning Path, Chatham and President, NJAEYC
- Saira Siddiqui, Physician & Livingston resident
- Lisa Blank, Physician & Montclair resident
- Shante Palmer, Vice Chancellor of Rutgers

VP travel pool report 16 --correction

On the list of participants in the visit to the vaccine center. the White House misidentigied Judy Persichilli as Essex County health commissioner. She is the NJ state health commissioner.

We are boarding AF2.

VP travel pool report 17

We are on board and taxiing for takeoff at 4:08. Should be back at Andrews by 5.

VP travel pool report 19 - JBA arrival
[APP Note: This probably should be numbered Report #18.]

Air Force Two landed at 4:45 pm

VP travel pool report 19

The VP came down the stairs of AF2, saluted and boarded the helicopter at 5;01 to return to Washington.

Thus ends my first-ever stint as a travel pool reporter. Have a good weekend.