Last week, the White House released a reconciliation framework that omitted any kind of provision that would allow Medicare to negotiate prescription drug costs. On Tuesday, Senate Democrats announced that they’d arrived at a deal.
Continue reading “Democrats Bring Medicare Drug Pricing Negotiations Back From The Dead”Manchin Denies He Signed Off On Reconciliation Framework Before White House Released It
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) on Tuesday pushed back at the notion that he signed off on the framework for a $1.75 trillion Build Back Better plan before the White House announced it last week.
Continue reading “Manchin Denies He Signed Off On Reconciliation Framework Before White House Released It”Facebook Has A Disinfo Problem. And It’s Blocking Access To Data About How Bad It Is.
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It first appeared at The Conversation.
Leaked internal documents suggest Facebook – which recently renamed itself Meta – is doing far worse than it claims at minimizing COVID-19 vaccine misinformation on the Facebook social media platform.
Continue reading “Facebook Has A Disinfo Problem. And It’s Blocking Access To Data About How Bad It Is.”The Pandemic Through A Mirror, Darkly
I just saw this comment from my friend Chris Hayes …
My unified theory of American social and political life is that we’ve lived through and are living through a once-in-a-century trauma/disruption and the results of that are going to revereberate throughout almost every facet of politics for a while.
I agree with this, with this additional and I believe critical fact: the pandemic hit during a period of intense social and political turbulence and instability in the United States. Not only Trump’s presidency, the escalation of destabilizing actions during his presidency but remember that the pandemic struck within days of the end of the President’s impeachment trial.
Continue reading “The Pandemic Through A Mirror, Darkly”Roger Stone Threatens To Run For Florida Guv If DeSantis Doesn’t Do Trumpy Election Audit
Formerly convicted Trump associate Roger Stone is demanding that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) launch an “audit” of the state’s 2020 elections. Or Else.
Continue reading “Roger Stone Threatens To Run For Florida Guv If DeSantis Doesn’t Do Trumpy Election Audit”Into Virginia
Today is the day for those off-year elections which in addition to electing governors and mayors and various other officials are taken as harbingers of the political climate going into the following year’s midterm elections. Attention tends to focus on New Jersey and Virginia. Democrat Phil Murphy looks set to win handily in New Jersey. But Virginia, where incumbents can’t run for reelection, looks way too close to call. There are two governing patterns in Virginia. One is that it is an increasingly Democratic state. Joe Biden won it by 10 points and it went narrowly for Hillary Clinton in 2016 even as she lost Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. The other pattern is that it tends to be won by the party not currently holding the presidency. The guy who broke that latter pattern, ironically, is none other than Terry McAuliffe, who won in 2013, a year after President Obama was reelected.
Now we see which of those patterns will hold.
Continue reading “Into Virginia”Rugged Prep Schooler Hawley Bemoans War On The Manly Man
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things.
Won’t Anyone Think Of The Macho Men
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) on Monday released a copy of his keynote speech at the National Conservatism Conference the day before, and it’s a deeply embarrassing ode to the apparently dying breed of “masculine” men at the hands of the Woke Left.
- Hawley accused the left of plotting to “give us a world beyond men” and orchestrating an “assault on the masculine virtues,” while he also insisted in the same speech that “I am not here tonight to tell you that men are victims.”
- Those “manly virtues” are “courage, and independence, and assertiveness,” according to Hawley, and American liberty apparently collapses without men specifically possessing those virtues.
- The GOP senator also blamed feminism for men binging on porn and video games.
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All Eyes On Virginia
It’s Election Day!
- The closely watched, over-analyzed, fit-it-to-your-preferred-narrative Virginia governor’s race between former Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) and Trump-endorsed Glenn Youngkin (R) will finally be over.
- But don’t forget New Jersey’s gubernatorial race today either, where incumbent Gov. Phil Murphy (D) is facing off against GOP challenger Jack Ciattarelli.
Critical Race Theory Panic In One Video
A voter says critical race theory is the most important issue in the Virginia gubernatorial race–while fully admitting he doesn’t know what it is.
- “I don’t have that much knowledge on it, but it’s something that I don’t care for,” he told an interviewer from “The Good Liars” comedy troupe.
MTG Racks Up Massive Bill For Her Ongoing Anti-Mask Stunt
Professional far-right troll Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is being forced to cough up at least $48,000 in fines for repeatedly flouting the requirement to wear a mask while in the House chamber.
- She’s refused to wear a mask at least 20 times since May, House Sergeant-at-Arms William Walker noted in a letter to the Georgia Republican sent on Oct. 28.
- House lawmakers are fined $500 for the first strike in violating the mask mandate, then $2,500 for each offense afterward.
Trump-Endorsed Candidate’s Wife Testifies On Alleged Abuse
Laurie Snell, the wife of Pennsylvania Senate candidate Sean Parnell who is seeking a divorce, testified under oath in a child custody trial on Monday that he allegedly strangled her until she bit him to get free, and that the GOP candidate abused their kids.
- The candidate denied his wife’s accusations. He claimed that he “never raised a hand in anger” toward Pell or their children, and that his wife’s allegations don’t “have any basis in fact or truth.”
- Parnell is now the second Trump-endorsed candidate who’s been accused of domestic abuse. Herschel Walker, a GOP Senate candidate in Georgia, allegedly threatened to kill both his ex-wife and his ex-girlfriend.
GOPer Behind Bogus Arizona Election ‘Audit’ Calls It Quits
Arizona Senate President Karen Fann (R), who commissioned Cyber Ninjas’ joke of an election audit that ended up finding absolutely nothing but apparently more votes for Biden than originally counted, announced yesterday that she won’t be seeking reelection in 2022.
- Fann said she looked “forward to a successful session in 2022 advancing policies that benefit all Arizonans,” and “then enjoying the life my husband and I have built for ourselves in retirement with our family.”
Biden Tackles Methane Emissions
The Biden administration on Tuesday unveiled sweeping limits on methane emissions, the second biggest greenhouse gas contributor to climate change after carbon dioxide, as the President attends the U.N.’s global summit on climate change.
- The new rules set aim to plug methane leaks from oil wells and pipelines.
- Biden vowed to work with the E.U. to cut down on methane emissions by at least 30% by 2030 worldwide.
- The President apologized to world leaders for Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Accord, which the U.S. rejoined via executive order on Biden’s first day in office.
Rev. Jesse Jackson Hospitalized
The 80-year-old civil rights icon has been admitted to the hospital after suffering a fall and hitting his head at Howard University.
Abbott Weirdly Accuses Libraries Of Providing Porn
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) sent the Texas Association of School Boards (TASB) a letter yesterday demanding that they get rid of “pornography” and “inappropriate content” in school libraries, though he didn’t provide any examples of whatever material he was complaining about.
- The TASB has no idea why TF the governor sent them the letter. The group said in a statement that they were “confused” by the demand given that the board “has no regulatory authority over school districts” and “does not set the standards for instructional materials, including library books.”
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Where Things Stand: One Year Later, Big Lie Firmly Lives Rent Free In Trumpers’ Heads
While the percentage is significantly higher among Republican voters (and deeply influenced by where said Republicans get their news, which I’ll get into below), the percent of Americans who believe that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Trump has remained relatively steady for (almost) an entire year.
The nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute put out the staggering results of a new poll today, the highlights of which my colleague Josh Marshall lays out here. The results of the poll shed light on Americans’ perceptions on a number of topics, including revealing a concerning uptick in GOP voters being increasingly on board with acts of political violence as a necessary tactic for preserving their take on the country’s founding ideals. But one statistic was particularly striking to me, especially when juxtaposed alongside the same survey’s findings on Americans’ voter fraud concerns.
About three in 10 Americans still believe that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, approximately 31 percent. On its face, the number isn’t that surprising. The more unsettling part lies in this segment of the data: That number hasn’t shifted much, and has actually grown, albeit minimally, over the course of this year — even after countless courts have tossed out Big Lie-related litigation for lacking sound evidence to back up the Trumpy claims and even after politically-motivated election “audit” results have left much to be desired for the far-right proponents of the cause. Nonetheless, from PRRI: “This share has remained steady throughout 2021, in August (29%), June (30%), and March (29%).”
Continue reading “Where Things Stand: One Year Later, Big Lie Firmly Lives Rent Free In Trumpers’ Heads”Conservative Justices Bemoan Bad Options To Block Texas Abortion Ban
While some of the conservative justices admitted that the plaintiffs Monday had strong cases against the six-week Texas abortion ban, they wrung their hands about how to remedy it.
Continue reading “Conservative Justices Bemoan Bad Options To Block Texas Abortion Ban”Jayapal Says Progressives Ready To Vote For Both Infrastructure Bills Regardless Of Latest Manchin-ing
Congressional Progressive Caucus chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) on Monday said that progressives plan to vote for both the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the reconciliation package even without Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-WV) commitment to support the latter.
Continue reading “Jayapal Says Progressives Ready To Vote For Both Infrastructure Bills Regardless Of Latest Manchin-ing”