Editors’ Blog

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) is spending her Senate recess in Europe, fundraising for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, her office confirmed to the New York Times this week.

It’s curious that Sinema has taken it upon herself to be a shining visage for the Democratic Party overseas when her mere existence as a senator is holding up the entire party agenda. But that, we are coming to learn, is par for the course for the Arizona senator.

Here’s Virginia GOP Gov candidate Glenn Youngkin when asked this afternoon about the flag from the Jan 6th insurrection which supporters pledged allegiance to at Youngkin campaign rally last night.

Youngkin: “So to be clear I don’t think … if that … I wasn’t involved so I don’t know. but if that is the case then we shouldn’t pledge allegiance to that flag. and oh by the way I’ve been so clear there is no place for violence … none, none in America today.”

Here’s the video …

There are reports this morning that Democrats are planning to punt some of the President’s BBB agenda into a 2022 reconciliation package. On its face that sounds awful. Big stuff gets harder to do, not easier, the closer you get to an election – especially one you think won’t go well. But this is actually a good thing. Or at least a necessary thing. It’s critical to get this legislative long march wrapped up, voted on and signed absolutely as soon as possible. I noted yesterday that I just don’t see a recognition of that urgency from the players on the Hill and the White House. Each day that goes by passage of any of the agenda gets less likely and the electoral consequences of this drawn out season of political impotence grows.

Two Texas-based airlines plan to follow federal regulations about vaccination mandates, defying the state’s Republican governor’s recent mandate barring such mandates in the Lone Star State.

How many times can we say mandate?

Gov. Greg Abbott’s whole positioning on COVID-19 vaccine mandates in Texas would be amusing if it weren’t so dark. Abbott passed an executive order on Monday, banning “any entity” from adopting vaccine requirements in the state, even if private businesses want to implement them and/or follow federal requirements on vaccinations for employees. His order is hyper-focused on the badness of government mandates, while being a mandate in and of itself.

The next episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast with me and Kate Riga will delayed one day. Look for it in your downloads tomorrow afternoon.

I get the sense that the Jan 6th committee is moving rapidly toward holding non-compliant Trumpers in contempt and asking the Justice Department to prosecute refusers like Steve Bannon for criminal contempt. That appears to be TPM Alum Greg Sargent’s sense too. Of course, talk is cheap. And there’s a chorus of understandably frustrated Democrats saying “we’ll believe it when they see it.” But my assumption is that the committee members know their statements over the last week have raised the stakes for themselves dramatically. If they don’t, they are prepping a huge backlash from a lot of people who are tired of seeing Trumpers make the law an object of contempt.

As you may have seen, Jeff Bezos invited William Shatner to take a trip on one of his Blue Origin suborbital space flights this morning. It went all according to plan. Shatner spoke about the experience on live television with Bezos by his side.

As a lifelong Star Trek fan I won’t scuff this up with any cynicism or critical voice. It’s 100% awesome. Shatner is 90 and by appearances in fairly robust health for his age. It is still striking, though, and inspiring that someone his age, when the body can become so fragile, can do what he did this morning. For all the refinements and comforts, traveling about 60 miles straight up in 3 or 4 minutes still unleashes vast physical stresses on the body. And yet he popped out of the capsule seemingly none the worse for wear, not even a bit wobbly from the zigzag from 3G to zero gravity and back.

The big quote making the rounds this morning is this: “I hope I never recover from this” – one of Shatner’s first lines after emerging from the capsule. But it’s something very different that caught my attention.

Congress is in recess and the firehose of public positioning we’ve experienced over the last several weeks will slow to a trickle during these next few days. But important work is still being done on the reconciliation package … or, so we hope.

Kate Riga will have an evening briefing, giving you the latest at the end of each day — at least until senators return to DC. Check out the first installment here.

TPM has been covering the way in which the pandemic and the public health measures necessary to tamp it down have resulted in periodic eruptions of anger, often egged on by opportunistic, MAGA-aligned politicians. It’s become a theme for us: the specter of violence in politics that’s simmered for the last few years, predating the pandemic but inflamed by it.

But of course, the current level of public outrage is not limited to the political sphere of life. Anecdotal reporting — and, increasingly, data — suggest there might be an economic corollary to this trend as well.

Last week in a risible fit of pearl-clutching Senate Republicans expressed that they were aghast that Majority Leader Chuck Schumer took a swipe at them just as they were extending the hand of bipartisan fellowship to bring the nation together. Washington’s worthies seemed to agree. It was that worst of offenses. It was uncalled for. Welcome to the DC black hole, where titanic gravity bends people’s minds, even the good people.

As Matt Cooper points out here, the real outrage – echoed by all the press worthies – is that Schumer told the truth: Senate Republicans again took the nation’s “full faith and credit” hostage in a reckless and dishonest effort to sow chaos at the expense of the safety of the Republic. For once they were outmaneuvered and had to beat a retreat. They blinked. Indeed, their caucus is so addicted to anti-constitutional hi-jinx and legislative junkie behavior that it required a herculean effort to execute the cave – Republicans struggling to break their own filibuster to head off reform of the filibuster. Good times, as they say. Schumer said McConnell blinked, that Republicans should be ashamed of themselves and that it’s a good thing Democrats held tough to force them to cave. This is all accurate.