Hello! It's the weekend, this is The Weekender. ☕

Greetings from Chicago where I have spent the last week miserably cold, wind-burnt and warm-hearted visiting friends and family I didn't get to see over the holidays. 

New York, surprisingly, has turned me into a softie — at least when it comes to the Arctic conditions that make up just casual winter weather here at home. Growing up I owned all the puffer jackets and wool-lined boots and hand warmers to survive the conditions. I must've been suffering from amnesia — a COVID side effect, I've decided (if you Google hard enough all ailments can be blamed on COVID these days) — while packing because I showed up looking like a real amateur with my thin leather boots and my thrifted eighties blazer guised as a “winter coat.” It's been a frigid one.

But the insufferable wind was not the only thing that surprised me during this jaunt to the homeland. I forgot cars/driving are things people do (and I have severely lost my ounce-exalted parallel parking abilities). People smile and say words to you on the street. Chicagoans know how to drink. A lot (RIP my head). And indoor spaces require proof of vaccination to enter, same as New York. Donald Trump would be pleased to see it! (lol)

The former president has been on an interview-bender in recent weeks, loudly (and somewhat surprisingly?) talking about his vaccinated and boosted status. Fine, good, whatever! But it's not not political. This week he made a barely veiled swipe at “gutless” politicians who haven't been as transparent as him about getting inoculated. It was, of course, a jab at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) who has routinely refused to address his vaccination status in public. But we all know what the true crime is here: DeSantis has not fully bent the knee. As a rumored 2024 contender, Trump's tantrum is likely rooted in the popular governor's silence on his 2024 intentions while Trump publicly flirts with running again. 

And as a Republican who has hinged most of his meteoric rise on his state's lax (and that's a nice word for it) COVID mitigation measures, it appears DeSantis won't be going down without a fight. Just Thursday, DeSantis fired his own veiled shot back, telling the hosts of a right-wing podcast that he was disappointed in the Trump administration's handling of COVID in 2020. Not because it was botched or sluggish, but because, in DeSantis' opinion, it was in fact too aggressive. 

We live in hell, etc. 

More on other news below, let's dig in.

— Nicole Lafond

Filibuster Reform Dies. Again.

On Thursday, Democrats’ renewed effort to get the caucus on board with reforming the filibuster in order to pass voting rights legislation ran into a familiar wall: the senior senators from Arizona and West Virginia. Just before President Joe Biden was due on the Hill to give his senators a final heave towards reform, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) took to the Senate floor to reiterate her support of the 60-vote threshold before a heavily Republican audience. Manchin followed up her performance with a statement of his own, vowing not to “weaken or eliminate the filibuster.”

Various members still want to hold a vote on the rules changes: “We need to know where we stand,” Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) told TPM.

Due to an impending snow storm in D.C. and the absence of Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) who has tested positive for COVID-19, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said the Senate will take up voting rights legislation on Tuesday.

— Kate Riga

Dance, Monkeys, Dance!

It’s been obvious for a while now that Trump’s iron grip on the GOP has endured even after leaving office, but this week highlighted just how much of that pressure goes all the way to the top of the party.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) refused to cooperate with the House Jan. 6 select committee’s request for info on his conversations with Trump during and after the Capitol attack – despite initially calling Trump out as being responsible for the insurrection in the immediate days after it happened.

Meanwhile, reliable Trump toady Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) threatened to vote against McConnell as Senate leader unless the Kentucky Republican “can prove” he can have a “working relationship” with Trump. The ex-president’s been bashing “old broken crow” McConnell for months.

— Cristina Cabrera

Play Dumb Games, Win Dumb Prizes

The week began with a right-wing conspiracy theory around January 6 ballooning large, before being deflated. It revolves around Ray Epps, an insurrection attendee who was caught on video the night before the attack telling people to prepare to enter the Capitol. This, and his disappearance from an FBI wanted list, is proof positive for the right that the entire Capitol insurrection was an FBI entrapment scheme, with Epps at the center. That bubble was burst after the Jan. 6 Committee announced that it had interviewed Epps, a former Oath Keeper, and that he disavowed any ties to the federal government.

The week ended with bad news for the Oath Keepers, and a sign of progress in the DOJ’s 1/6 probe. Federal prosecutors obtained an indictment against Oath Keeper leader Stewart Rhodes on charges of seditious conspiracy. It’s the first time a sedition charge has been brought, and is the first charge against someone for planning the attack. It’s a step up the chain for the FBI, and one that took more than a year to charge. That fact was recognized by Rhodes’ civil attorney, Jonathan Moseley, who told me on Friday that he was surprised it took so long. “I’m not saying he’s guilty, but the way things go, they’d have a minimum of probable cause to indict him already if they had wanted to,” Moseley said.

— Josh Kovensky

Remember that time Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass crisscrossed Illinois debating the expansion of slavery?

Well Republican legislators in Virginia do.

When Republican freshman Del. Wren Williams sponsored yet another bill in the Republican panic over "divisive concepts" — read: teaching kids about racism — he included some language about what should be taught, including "the first debate between Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass."

No matter that the debates were between Lincoln and Stephen Douglas, who is distinct from Frederick in just about every possible way.

The Division of Legislative Services, essentially an office of non-partisan legislative aides for lawmakers, took the fall, claiming the mix-up was their error.

— Matt Shuham

In a blow to the White House, SCOTUS blocked the enforcement of Biden’s executive order that would have required employers with 100-plus workers to enforce vaccine mandates or require weekly COVID testing in the workplace. It would’ve affected about 80 million Americans.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) made a really lame joke about karma and sports to distract from the severity of his state’s restrictive voting law.

"What a moron": Anthony Fauci unleashed.