It started with “Fox and Friends” host Steve Doocy on Monday morning, urging viewers to get the COVID-19 vaccine because it will “save your life” — all while his co-host Brian Kilmeade hedged that “we’re not doctors” and said the network anchors aren’t going to “go there and give you other medical advice.” (FWIW, Doocy has been a encouraging viewers to get the shot for some time now, unlike some of his co-hosts.)
Continue reading “Where Things Stand: Back To The Regularly Scheduled Programming”
I made this point yesterday. I wanted to restate it here and add some further points: The best and most equitable path forward is to restrict non-essential public activities to those who are vaccinated or have non-subjective medical reasons for not being vaccinated.
Now, I say this recognizing that in our current political reality this is highly unlikely to happen. Red states won’t do this and rightwing courts will limit our ability to do this at the federal and state level. But it is important to understand and articulate what the right policy is even if it can’t or won’t be implemented fully. You cannot get anywhere without at least knowing where you are trying to go. At present we are in the perverse position of beginning to add new burdens to the vaccinated/responsible population (mask mandates) to make up for the persistent irresponsibility of the non-vaccinated. The social cost of low vaccination rates should be borne as much as possible by those causing the problem, the voluntarily unvaccinated. So restrict non-essential public activities to those who are vaccinated.
From a TPM Reader …
Watching anti-vaxx harden into a MAGA/GOP loyalty test reminds me, yet again, of an important insight into: Trump’s is a follower of the right-wing irreality, not its leader. And the way we know this to be true is that, if Trump had the power to sway (and not simply surf) the conservative outrage mob, it would have been in his interest to claim credit for developing the vaccines. He can’t because he doesn’t have that ability to do so. Trump is good at getting his name on things that he didn’t build. That’s the best way to understand Trumpism, too.
This isn’t totally right. But there’s a lot in it that is right.
The insider sheets this morning paint Chuck Schumer and Senate Democrats in a pretty tough bind, with Republicans holding most or all of the cards. Schumer is creating a put up or shut up moment for the bipartisan mini-bill by scheduling the first of several votes on the deal for this Wednesday. If Republicans don’t produce 10 votes, either 500 billion or a trillion of ‘hard’ infrastructure falls by the wayside and that in turn endangers the series of compromises that gets all 50 Democratic Senators lined up for the big infrastructure reconciliation package where most of the big progressive priorities are housed.
But this misstates the dynamics at play or rather places the initiative or leverage in Republican hands more than it is. Coverage in the big outfits like the Post seems entirely oblivious to this part of the story and takes Republican stalling tactics at face value, as no more than good faith efforts to write legislative language. Let’s start with the reality that this will be a months long, really complicated process. Democrats have to carry all of it alone with Republicans trying to upend it at every stage. Schumer is pressing forward aggressively now both because Republicans don’t hold the deciding hand here and to ensure that they don’t.
Continue reading “How to Understand This Week’s Senate Fireworks”
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things.
By rule, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) can reject Kevin McCarthy’s picks for the Jan. 6 committee. Her dilemma, such as it is: Should GOP members who enabled and supported the subversion of the election sit on the committee investigating the subversion?
Jim Banks (IN), ranking member: voted to overturn the 2020 election
Jim Jordan (OH), professional saboteur: voted to overturn the 2020 election
Troy Nehls (TX), freshman: voted to overturn the 2020 election
Rodney Davis (IL)
Kelly Armstrong (ND)
My statement on being appointed by @GOPLeader to serve as the Republican ranking member on the Select Committee to investigate Jan. 6: pic.twitter.com/dSJNF56EA9
— Jim Banks (@RepJimBanks) July 19, 2021
“I think if I had it to do again, I would have brought in the military immediately,” Trump told Carol D. Leonnig and Philip Rucker.
You might quibble with his 8-month sentence, but the judge in the first felony sentencing of a Jan. 6 insurrectionist understood the stakes:
A New York man has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for making threats to U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of Washington, D.C., who presided over the trial of former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn.
A FBI agent involved in busting the kidnapping plot against Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) has been arrested on state domestic violence charges.
Great piece from the Texas Tribune on the Houston lawmaker recovering from a serious illness who can’t flee the state as part of the Democratic effort to block the GOP’s new voting restrictions bill.
Twitter suspends Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s account for 12 hours for disseminating COVID misinformation.
‘Conservative Porn Star’ Expelled After First Day Of TPUSA Student Event–Josh Kovensky
Wilbur Ross did mislead Congress about his attempt to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, the Commerce Department inspector general found, before referring the case to the Trump Justice Department, which declined to pursue it.
The Turning Point USA adviser whose racist newsletter we exposed in a joint project with The Informant has resigned as a trustee of the Buffalo Bill Center of the West.
The network whose on-air personalities rail against the COVID vaccine while it implements a vaccine passport program internally may be shifting its public tone:
Fox, amid significant scrutiny, made a noticeable shift today regarding vaccines. Some of its hosts were more vocal than normal in encouraging viewers to get a shot. That said, Tucker Carlson, Fox’s most-watched host, continued with his normal anti-vaccine rhetoric. https://t.co/hXlAvbNRrE
— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) July 20, 2021
Or it may be struggling with cognitive dissonance:
Before this clip, Hannity criticized a university for mandating vaccines.
After this clip, Hannity interviewed a young woman who lost feeling in her legs for a month in 2019 after getting a different type of vaccine. https://t.co/cczyquYJm8
— Jan Wolfe (@JanNWolfe) July 20, 2021
How are we doing? Let us know!
On Sunday, Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) said on CNN that giving the IRS more resources to go after very wealthy tax evaders, a provision that senators hoped would net $100 billion in 10 years to help pay for the bipartisan infrastructure plan, was officially on the cutting room floor.
After remaining tight-lipped about whether he will appoint Republicans to the House select committee probing the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is reportedly slated to name five House Republican men to the panel. Continue reading “McCarthy Picks 5 GOP Men For Jan. 6 Select Committee”
This week, the Senate is hurtling towards a determinative moment on the bipartisan infrastructure deal.
On Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) set up a vote to move the bill to debate for this Wednesday. Some Republican negotiators in the group groused about the move, saying they won’t vote to proceed to debate — a vote that precedes final passage — if the bill’s text is still not finished.
Schumer’s camp retorts that this is the timeline he’s been previewing all along, and that even if the bill needs more work, that shouldn’t keep members of the group from voting to at least debate the bill’s contents.
This drama could consume the first half of this week. But ultimately, this deal is lower stakes for Democrats than the sweeping $3.5 trillion budget package to be passed through reconciliation that they’re working on simultaneously. The bipartisan deal is much smaller and narrower.
While it would give Democrats and President Joe Biden a bipartisan legislative victory, Democrats have been pretty clear-eyed about the realities here: rustling up 10 Republicans to vote on pretty much anything Democrats want to do has always seemed remote. And if the bipartisan deal collapses, they can wrap some of those proposals into the reconciliation bundle — assuming that moderates allow a higher topline to encompass the “hard infrastructure” provisions.
The leader of the Proud Boys pleaded guilty Monday to destruction of property after admitting months ago that he’d burned a historically Black church’s Black Lives Matter banner in Washington, D.C., the Justice Department announced.
Continue reading “Proud Boys Leader Pleads Guilty To Burning Church’s Black Lives Matter Banner”
Republicans ask for more time to stall bipartisan mini-bill.
