Editors’ Blog

I’m starting to think this latest bout of debt limit hostage taking will end with a filibuster carve out. On its face that seems highly improbable given the resistance through the year from Manchin and Sinema. And I think Manchin has said no way to this specifically. So it seems really improbable. But we’re down to very improbable outcomes and this is starting to seem like the least improbable one.

Let’s walk through the scenarios.

Facebook, Instagram and other applications owned by the social media giant are all down today. The company is describing the outage as “networking issues,” while tech sleuths and new reports suggest the problem might be bigger than that.

I won’t speculate on technology as I know nothing about technology. But the outage comes just one day after a previously anonymous former Facebook executive and whistleblower went on “60 Minutes” to make new allegations concerning the company’s apathy about the dangerous spread of far-right disinformation on the platform.

Over the last four to five days, we’ve seen a fascinating and occasionally surreal set of contending storylines for what happened on Capitol Hill with the President’s infrastructure, climate and safety net agenda. In advance we saw the continued portrayal of an intra-party fight between “progressives” and “moderates” when in fact we had something closer to unanimity with a tiny but critical number of holdouts. Really it was Manchin and Sinema vs everyone else.

Over the weekend, as Pelosi and Biden finally decided to toss aside the self-imposed deadline for passing the “hard” infrastructure bill, this prog. vs mod. storyline escalated into “Biden throwing in his lot with the left,” or a “left-wing revolt.” A weekend story in the Times actually claimed that in his meeting with House Democrats Biden had said for the “first time” that the two bills were linked. Apparently we all forget that just a couple months ago there was a whole faux mini-scandal when Biden threatened to veto the hard infrastructure bill if the two weren’t passed together. For a lot of the insider pubs it’s been a story of the collapse of Biden’s agenda whereas for most Democrats it seems more like it’s starting to get back on track.

This is all a testament to how a deeply entrenched set of assumptions can have wildly distorting effects on coverage of fairly nuts and bolts factual issues.

Let’s step back and see what I think actually happened here. Because it’s certainly not the collapse of Biden’s agenda. Nor is it the left wing triumph storyline that the elite publications and actually some progressives have each, for very different reasons, latched on to.

Austin Fire Department arson investigators and the FBI have arrested 30 year old Ryan Faircloth after an investigation into who threw a Molotov Cocktail into the Travis County Democratic Party headquarters early Wednesday morning. Security cameras showed a man alleged to be Faircloth first throwing a rock through the building’s front door, then returning with the Molotov Cocktail.

Damage was minimal. Patrons at a bar across the street saw the fire and quickly put it out. Security cameras were installed after a graffiti incident last year. Faircloth is charged with 2nd degree felony arson 3rd degree felony possession of a prohibited weapon.

I see myself as a friendly critic of The New York Times. It has all its shortcomings, which are many. But it also produces day in and day so much that, were it not to exist, we would be deeply impoverished as readers, as a country. Here though is an article which is so comically wrong in its basic understanding of events that I really do have to wonder what’s wrong with the publication’s DC bureau. Something there and really in the whole operation right up to the top is seriously wrong for this piece to have been published.

Let me republish the first three grafs …

So Joe Manchin says he doesn’t think there’s going to be a deal tonight.

That’s fine. I’d say it’s actually good. What we’re talking about here is a vast and historic legislative package. Scrambling to hash it together in the wee hours of night for no reason makes no sense. This deadline was always arbitrary.

The good news is that, based on Manchin’s comments, they seem now actually to be negotiating. That’s good. There’s no reason not to let it take a couple days to get it right. That’s completely okay.

As Kate Riga notes here, having blown through not just the deadline but the backup deadline, this puts a bit more slack into the system.

It’s worth stepping back and seeing what appears to have happened here.

John Durham is still digging in deep to find proof of some sort of anti-Trump origin of the Russia probe. So far, his findings haven’t produced the kind of damning evidence Republicans and Trump allies were hoping for. But a new report suggests he may be trying to expand the case he’s been trying to build for two years.

There’s a fascinating peek into one aspect of the sausage production process in tonight’s Politico Influence, their newsletter about the lobbying world. The headline says it all: “Lobbyists’ frustration with BIF uncertainty spills out into the open.” The account is chock full of the heads of the big industry lobbies tossing WTFs at the House Progressive caucus. But the fascinating part is a bit more than that. They’re pissed at the Progressive Caucus. No mystery there. What’s clear – and this matches what I’ve been hearing nonstop – is that the big business and manufacturing lobbies want the BIF really, really bad. What also galls them though is that House Republicans won’t save it for them.

A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Josh and Kate discuss the current congressional morass and announce the winner of the JMP theme song competition!

Watch below and email us your questions for next week’s episode.

You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.

You’ve probably seen the news that Corey Lewandowski, the much-fired Trump soldier, was canned as the head of the MAGA Action Trump PAC. This came after he was accused of groping, harassing and stalking a Trump donor at an event in Las Vegas on Sunday night. Given Lewandowski’s reputation and rap sheet this is a highly, highly plausible accusation. But it also came simultaneously with charges from a pro-Trump publication a day before that Lewandowski was having an affair with South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem. Was this latter claim – which comes from a conservative website and offers little if any corroboration – somehow intended to distract from the assault claim? Noem was also at the Sunday night dinner.