Sound And Fury: Moderate Dems Slowroll Infrastructure Package In Staredown With Pelosi

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things.

Who’ll Blink First?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) late-night talks with the moderate Democrats who are trying to force her into holding a vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill before voting on the $3.5 trillion budget resolution ended without an agreement.

• Pelosi and other Democratic leaders are slated to continue negotiations this morning before the House votes on the resolution at 12:00 p.m. ET.
• The leadership plans on daring the moderates to vote “no,” according to Punchbowl.
• Other House Democrats are furious with the moderate holdouts and were unafraid to say so: Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-NY) declared that he was “pissed off,” Congressional Black Caucus Chair Joyce Beatty (D-OH) asked “How dare you” and one unnamed lawmaker called the centrists “fucking assholes,” according to Politico.

The Next Step In The House’s Jan. 6 Investigation

Members of the Jan. 6 House select committee will be seeking out phone records of several people, including members of Congress, from various telecommunications companies, committee chair Bennie Thompson (D-MS) said on Monday.

• The committee will send letters requesting voluntary compliance before moving forward with subpoenas.
• There are “​​several hundred” people the committee wants to contact in the investigation, according to Thompson.

Biden Is Expected To Make A Decision On Afghan Evacuation Today

The President will decide today if he will extend the Aug. 31 deadline for the Kabul evacuation mission, according to Reuters.

• The U.S. and its allies flew almost 21,700 evacuees out of the city within the 24 hours ending on Tuesday, according to the White House.
• The U.S. has evacuated or facilitated the evacuation of about 58,700 people since Aug. 14, the day before Kabul fell, the White House said.

Must-Read:

“I served in Afghanistan as a US Marine, twice. Here’s the truth in two sentences” – The Kansas City Star

Voting Rights Are Restored For Thousands

More than 55,000 people in North Carolina who are on parole or probation for felony convictions had their voting rights restored by a state court on Monday, according to civil rights advocates.

• The ruling allows ex-felons to register to vote and cast ballots. The North Carolina Board of Elections declared that county elections officials “must immediately begin to permit such individuals to register to vote.”
• North Carolina Republicans vowed to appeal the decision, which attorney for state House Speaker Tim Moore (R) slammed as an “absurd ruling that flies in the face of our constitution and further casts doubt on election integrity in North Carolina.”

A New Chapter In New York

Kathy Hochul (D) became the first female governor of New York on Monday after taking the reins from accused sexual harasser Andrew Cuomo, who complained in his farewell address that his resignation was “unfair and unjust.”

• Cuomo has “no interest” in running for office again, according to Melissa DeRosa, the ex-governor’s top aide.
• The former governor also abandoned his dog at the Executive Mansion and has been asking around if anyone’s interested in keeping the pooch, according to the Times Union. Richard Azzopardi, Cuomo’s spokesperson, insists that the arrangement is only “temporary” because the governor plans to go on vacation.
• New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio, who feuded with Cuomo for years, curiously seemed to be in good spirits at precisely 12:01 a.m. ET.

pic.twitter.com/1X0qLseSDx

— YakubinMag ✡️????‍♂️ (@EvelKneidel) August 24, 2021

Jailed Boys

Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the far-right Proud Boys, was sentenced to more than five months in jail on Monday for burning a Black Lives Matter banner that was stolen from a historic D.C. Black church in December, and for bringing a high-capacity rifle magazines to D.C. days before the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.

• Federal prosecutors had sought a three-month jail sentence, but the judge asserted that wasn’t strong enough. “He cared about himself and self-promotion,” the judge said. “Not the laws of D.C.”

Big Brained Cops Tried To Hunt Down Imaginary ‘Antifa Buses’

Police officers in rural California launched an aircraft surveillance mission in June 2020 in search of nonexistent “antifa buses” that the California Highway Patrol chief had read about in an Instagram story and a Facebook post.

• This isn’t even the first time cops have been duped by disinformation on social media Boomer-style: Chicago police shut down highways and deployed a helicopter in pursuit of antifa caravans in May 2020 that they’d read about in a fake tweet.

Alex Jones Roasts ‘Dumbass’ Trump

The conspiracy-theory obsessive is fuming over Trump having the audacity to encourage people to get the COVID-19 vaccine, or as Jones likes to call it, a “frankenshot” that will “create mutants.” 

Alex Jones on Trump recommending vaccines: “Maybe Trump’s actually a dumbass” https://t.co/vNk63BY3Pi pic.twitter.com/tutB4S0OOm

— Media Matters (@mmfa) August 23, 2021

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