As you’ve likely seen, President Biden put out a statement yesterday to settle the waters over the mostly pretextual Republican freakout over his saying he’d only sign both the bipartisan mini-infrastructure deal and a larger reconciliation (i.e., 50 vote) package. A lot of people rushed forward to claim vindication that Biden had in fact turned the tables on Republicans or “upended” the deal by some last minute switcheroo. That’s not the case. It’s really better seen as a nicely crafted bit of snowflake therapy. In Biden’s new statement he restates what was clear a week ago, clear three days ago and remains clear today: for him it’s a package deal.
I’ve written over many years that despite the seesawing of control in Congress and executive branch, Washington remains wired for the GOP. We’re seeing another striking example of that in the way most establishment DC press outlets are are treating the brouhaha over President Biden’s alleged ‘veto threat’. We started with Biden stating openly what all the parties to the proposed bipartisan legislation know, which is that for Democrats it’s a package deal. Democrats know that. Republicans know that. The reporters know that. And yet the same folks have decided to take the feigned Republican freakout entirely at face value regardless. Politico of all places was closer to the mark on Friday when they noted that it took a day for Republicans to realize they were upset and what about.
And it’s actually accelerated over the weekend.
I had missed this important development in the rush of events on Friday. We’ve been discussing the rising tide of harassment (legal, extralegal and illegal), threats and sometimes actual violence against election officials around the country. Sometimes it’s relatively high level elected officials like Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. But more often it’s little known election administrators at the local level – elected, appointed or simply hired to conduct the nuts and bolts of managing elections. Now the Garland DOJ has set up a special task force focused on these threats.
I’ve spent some time over the last few days trying to puzzle out the available information on vaccine efficacy, the Delta variant and what if anything we can see about the future from what’s happening today in a few test case countries around the world.
No, really. Thanks to Mitch McConnell for confirming how he suckered most of the big DC publications with the faux drama over President Biden’s ‘veto threat’. The word from the bigs over the weekend was that yes, all knew that Democrats were proceeding with the two bills in tandem, that the two were linked. It was just that Biden made this too clear by saying he would not sign the bipartisan mini-bill if only that one came to his desk.
But now McConnell is helpfully clarifying that in fact he is objecting to what everyone knew in advance and that even he spoke about numerous times on the record.
As anti-trans rights laws pop up in GOP-led state legislatures across the country, fueling one of Republicans’ top culture wars in the Biden era, the majority conservative Supreme Court decided to not take up a key transgender rights case today, a surprising victory for LGBTQ rights.
JoinOh Boy! As you’d expect, having taken the whole shocked, stunned, totally really angry line at face value Politico Playbook is shifting gears to this …
There is a great irony in the fact that Democrats tried very hard to create a truly bipartisan Jan 6th Commission in which – critically – Republicans had an effective veto on any and all actions the Commission would take. That means, among other things, subpoena power. And not just anyone with R after their name – not Tom Keane or Jack Danforth or pick your list of Never Trump Republicans – but commissioners chosen by Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy. They even had a guarantee it would finish its work well ahead of the 2022 election cycle – yet another unmerited protection. But all but ten opposed the bill in the House and Republicans filibustered a vote on the empowering legislation in the Senate.
The Colorado gun congresswoman is now allowed to block critics on Twitter.
JoinThere’s been a lot of fretting over the last couple days about whether a group of Republicans who had not actually committed to support the bipartisan mini-bill were no longer going to support it, thus putting in doubt President Biden’s entire infrastructure agenda. But that’s the wrong way to look at this. This has always been and remains an issue in Democrats’ hands – especially Joe Manchin’s hands. Republicans are just players on a chess board in which Democrats are making the moves. And Joe Manchin made this pretty clear this morning.