As Democrats Seethed, White House Struggled to Contain Eviction Fallout - The New York Times

Biden was surprised...

President Biden was surprised by the furious reaction to the White House’s decision to ask Congress to extend an eviction ban, leading to a 36-hour scramble to keep people in their homes.

Biden and the White House tried to ignore the imminent mass-eviction crisis. Ghouls...

Until the last week of July, Mr. Biden and his team had accepted that a moratorium on evictions, which was first imposed last September and had already been extended three times, would have to end for good as planned on July 31 given a recent Supreme Court ruling. While the June ruling permitted the ban to continue to its scheduled end date, it strongly suggested that five of the nine justices were inclined to strike it down past that time if Congress did not enact a new law explicitly authorizing an extension.

Ron Klain asked Pramila Jayapal not to hold a press conference denouncing Biden’s inaction...

As the relief money moved slowly and the Delta variant surged, members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus pressed Gene Sperling, who oversees pandemic relief programs for the White House, and Mr. Biden's chief of staff, Ron Klain, to commit to another extension. The officials were pessimistic and noncommittal. On July 27, Mr. Sperling emailed the group's chairwoman, Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat from the Seattle area, to say the answer was a firm "no." That was followed by a call from Mr. Klain, who asked her to delay a news conference denouncing the move.

Ms. Jayapal refused.

"Then we began agitating and building a chorus," Ms Jayapal said.