FRIDAY, AUGUST 13, 2021
•Scroll down for details on the Senate’s $3.5-trillion budget reconciliation framework, debated here in the left and right columns.
•The Taliban have now captured Kandahar and Herat in its surprisingly quick takeover of Afghanistan, leaving only four major cities under government control, with just four major cities left, including the capital of Kabul, The New York Times reports. The U.S. is responding by sending 3,000 troops, in addition to remaining troops that are scheduled to leave by the end of the month, to help evacuate the embassy and interpreters.
•Tune in to Clubhouse at 5 p.m. Eastern time today for the first installment of The Hustings Week in Review. Download the Clubhouse app at clubhouse.com.
Moderate Democrats Reject Coupling Budget Resolution with Infrastructure – Nine moderate Democrats in the House of Representatives have called on Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, to de-couple the Senate’s bipartisan $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill from its $3.5 trillion budget resolution, Punchbowl News reports. Pelosi has called House members back to the Capitol Aug. 23, ahead of its scheduled return from August recess after Labor Day.
“We will not consider voting for a budget resolution until the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act passes the House and is signed into law,” the Democratic representatives said in a letter to Pelosi.
Democrats currently have an eight-vote majority in the House, at 220-212, with three vacancies.
The speaker said earlier this summer that the House would not consider the so-called hard infrastructure bill unless it was accompanied by the much larger “social” infrastructure package, which Senate Republicans, led by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, have rejected outright. The White House had split a proposal that would have packaged together “hard” and “social” infrastructure to avoid a filibuster on the former, the “roads & bridges” bill (the Biden administration has marketed these together, along with his COVID-19 relief package, as the Build Back Better Act).
The Senate passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act Tuesday by 69-30 vote, with 19 Republican senators joining all 50 Democratic senators (including independents Bernie Sanders, of Vermont, and Angus King, of Maine). Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer promptly introduced the framework for the Build Back Better Act, which passed Tuesday afternoon by 50-49 vote with no cloture required because it’s under budget reconciliation.
Mutiny on Pelosi: The nine moderate Democratic representatives who signed the letter to Pelosi are Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, Carolyn Bordeaux of Georgia, Jared Golden of Maine, Ed Case of Hawaii, Jim Costa of California, Kurt Schrader of Oregon, and Filemon Vela, Henry Cuellar, and Vincente Gonzalez, all of Texas.
Note: This latest Democratic Party mess calls into question Pelosi’s much-vaunted political leadership skills, for its awful timing and public lack of unity. Pelosi should paraphrase Will Rogers: “I’m not the House speaker from any organized party, I’m a Democrat.”
Why did it take this long for nine Democratic moderates to push back against sophomore and junior progressives, who have said for weeks that the two spending bills must be considered together? Why wasn’t this settled well before the Senate took up the hard infrastructure bill? To be fair, President Biden also wanted both the infrastructure bill and the budget resolution to reach his desk for his signature at the same time, but Sens. Krysten Sinema, D-AZ, and Joe Manchin III, D-WV, already have indicated they will not vote for a $3.5-trillion spending bill. Republicans, especially those worried about being “primaried” by pro-Trump candidates next year, now have the opportunity to kill both bills and take away Biden’s bipartisan victory.
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Census Results Show We’re Less White, More Urban – First results from the U.S. Census – four months late because of coronavirus shutdowns and Trump administration delays – show a declining non-Hispanic white population, a declining birth rate and a higher concentration of population around major urban areas, The Washington Post reports. These early results could point to a coming clash between the growing non-white urban population and states like Georgia and Texas that are trying to constrict voting laws after urban areas delivered large margins for Joseph R. Biden for president last November.
Some key results…
•Non-Hispanic whites made up 57.8% of the population in last year’s census, down from 63.7% in 2010.
•The 5.1 million drop in non-Hispanic whites marks the first time this segment of the population fell since 1790.
•People of color now make up a majority of the population under 18 years old, at 52.7%.
•The birth rate is at its lowest since the 1930s, during the Great Depression.
•The Hispanic population has tripled in the last three decades, to 62.1 million people, or 18.7%.
•The Asian population has more than doubled since 1990, from 3% to 6.1%.
•The non-Hispanic Black population remains steady, at 12.1% of the population.
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Trump Sets Up Iowa Team for 2024 (Re-) Run – Donald J. Trump’s Save America PAC has hired Eric Branstad and Alex Latcham as senior advisers to “help on many political matters,” according to a spokesman. The ex-president has all but confirmed his plans to run again for the Republican nomination for president in 2024.
Bloomberg first reported that Trump’s PAC had hired the two advisers in Iowa. Branstad was Trump’s state director in Iowa in 2016, and a senior adviser again in 2020. In between, he was a senior adviser for the Trump administration in the Commerce department. He is the son of Trump’s ambassador to China, Terry Branstad, who had previously served as a once-moderate Republican Iowa governor.
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SCOTUS Strikes Down Part of New York Eviction Moratorium – The U.S. Supreme Court, has granted – 6-3 with liberal justices dissenting – a request to lift certain parts of a New York residential eviction moratorium that have been in place since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic early last year, SCOTUSblog reports. In Chrysafis v. Marks, landlords argued in a New York federal court that tenants’ ability to declare financial hardship to avoid eviction violated their right to due process by allowing tenants to put the brakes on eviction proceedings without proving financial hardship from the COVID-19 pandemic, and without allowing landlords’ rebuttal.
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Nic Woods
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THURSDAY, AUGUST 12, 2021
•The U.S. Census Bureau releases 2020 population data today expected to set off a redistricting fight that will affect state legislature majorities via gerrymandering.
•The Taliban have captured their 10th provincial capital in Afghanistan in the past week, NPR reports, as U.S. and NATO military forces continue their withdrawal. The latest is in Ghazni, just 80 miles southwest of Kabul.
•Doing the math: The Senate left town Wednesday after passing the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill and $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill. It returns in September to a Republican vs. Democratic struggle over the debt limit. The House of Representatives returns from its August recess early, on the 23rd, to consider the two packages, totaling $4.7 trillion in spending.
•Read details of the $3.5-trillion budget reconciliation framework making its way through the Senate in the August 11 News & Notes file below, and check out the debate on the budget, with Craig Fahle in the left column and David Iwinski in the right column.
Weekly Unemployment Claims Fall to 375,000 – The rate of weekly unemployment claims fell by 12,000 to 375,000 for the week ended August 7, the Labor Department reported Thursday morning, a near-low for the pandemic. The previous week’s claims were adjusted upward by 2,000 to 387,000. The insured unemployment rate for the week ended July 31 was 2.1%, off 0.1% from the previous week’s rate.
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Trump Considered Replacing Rosen in Order to Push ‘Big Lie’ – President Trump’s last acting attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen, told the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Office of Inspector General in a two-hour phone call last Friday that he had to persuade the president not to replace him with a colleague who was willing to push the narrative that continuing election fraud investigations placed doubt on Joseph Biden’s victory last November, according to The New York Times. Sources told the Timesthat Rosen testified Trump threatened to fire Rosen with Jeffrey Clark, a Justice Department official apparently willing to support the “Big Lie” narrative.
Trump did not fire Rosen, the Times notes, but “the plot highlights” the president’s ongoing efforts to use the Justice Department for his own political purposes. Rosen’s Justice Department colleague, Jeffrey Clark, gave the newspaper no comment, but said back in January that his communications with Trump were “consistent with the law.”
Note: Keep in mind that Rosen served as acting AG for less than a month, after William Barr resigned just before Christmas, when he declared there was no widespread fraud in Biden’s election victory over Trump.
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Trump to Meet with Cheney Challenger – Ex-President Trump is scheduled to meet today with Harriet Hageman, a potential 2022 mid-term primary challenger to Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, Politico reports. Cheney is one of 10 House Republicans who voted in favor of Trump’s second impeachment earlier this year, and currently serves on the House select committee investigating the January 6 pro-Trump attacks on the Capitol. Hageman is a Republican trial attorney who unsuccessfully ran for Wyoming governor in 2018, but she also served on Cheney’s short-lived 2014 U.S. Senate campaign, according to Politico.
Note: This is yet another early indicator of Trump’s Republican support going into the 2022 midterm elections. By most appearances, Trump retains his popularity on the state and regional level in such red states as Wyoming, even while his command of Capitol Hill Republicans – consider the Senate bipartisan infrastructure bill – appears to be wavering.
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Federal Judge Agrees to Release Trump Hotel Records – U.S. District Court Judge for the District of Columbia Amit Mehta ruled Wednesday that the House Oversight Reform Committee should be able to obtain some records related to Donald Trump’s hotel lease on his company’s development of the Old Post Office Building in Washington into a luxury hotel, Roll Call reports. The investigation relates to the emoluments clause of the Constitution, and whether foreign governments paid millions of dollars through the hotel by booking rooms there, as the Trump administration conducted policy affecting the governments. Trump’s attorneys are sure to appeal Mehta’s ruling.
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California Requires Teacher Vaccinations – Gov. Gavin Newsom, D, announced Wednesday that California will require all teachers and school employees to be vaccinated, or submit to weekly COVID-19 tests, Politico reports. Newsom faces a recall election September 14.
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Cuomo Replacement Will Run in ’22 – Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, who takes over the New York governorship when a disgraced Andrew Cuomo steps down August 24, says she will run for the Democratic nomination for the November 2022 gubernatorial election, The Wall Street Journal reports. Hochul also is reportedly considering a mask mandate in New York schools to fight COVID-19.
Trump attorney and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s son, Andrew Giuliani, is considering a bid for the Republican nomination, while two more Republicans, state Rep. Lee Zeldin and former Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino, already have announced for next year.
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Nic Woods
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Debating Budget Reconciliation
Build Back Better Plan -- Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, says the House of Representatives will not vote on the just-passed $1.2-trillion Senate infrastructure bill unless it is accompanied by President Biden's $3.5-trillion budget reconciliation bill. Unlike the infrastructure bill, the Bring Back Better Plan, as it's called, does not need any Republican senators to support it, though it will need the support of Sens. Joe Manchin III, D-WV, and Krysten Sinema, D-AZ, as well as support of most progressive Democrats in the House. Fresh off his infrastructure bill's bi-partisan support, however, Biden says he expects both bills to land on his Oval Office desk on-time, which most optimistically is mid-September. Pundits Craig Fahle and David Iwinski take their first look at the reconciliation bill, and debate them from the left column, and right column, respectively.
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News & Notes -- WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 11, 2021
•The Senate passed the $3.5-trillion budget blueprint via reconciliation just before 4 a.m. Wednesday, 50-49. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, followed up the vote by setting up Senate consideration in September for voting rights bills. The House of Representatives will return early from recess, on August 23, to take up the blueprint along with the $1.2-trillion infrastructure bill, says Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-MD, according to Punchbowl News. Details below.
Consumer Prices Rise 0.5% in July – The Consumer Price Index rose 0.5% on a seasonally adjusted basis for July, following an 0.9% increase in June, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday morning. The annual inflation rate remains high at 5.4% thanks in part to shortages in many sectors due to effects of the pandemic and its shutdowns.
Still affected by computer chip shortages, new vehicle prices rose 1.7% in July, though used vehicles were up only 0.2%, after a 10.5% rise in June. Food prices were up 0.7% in July, and food-away-from-home was up 0.8%, reflecting increases in fast food workers’ wages. Energy was up 1.6% and the gasoline sector was up 2.4%.
Note: Assessing the data, Josh Bidens, director of research at the Economic Policy Institute, noted, “the mid-year inflation spike is real, but largely contained. It continues to be far, far too early to think the data merit serious [Federal Reserve] tightening right now. The recovery is going quite well—we should keep fostering it, not trying to weigh it down.”
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Infrastructure, Budget Reconciliation Pass Senate – After 19 Republican senators voted with 50 Democrats to pass the $1.2-trillion infrastructure bill the two parties returned to their separate corners because of the $3.5-trillion in proposed additional spending. That leaves Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-NY, to navigate her party’s ship between its thin majority in the House of Representatives and its own progressives, who seem to consider the majority in both chambers to be absolute.
On NPR’s All Things Considered Tuesday, Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-MA, reiterated the progressive wing’s demands for budgeting “social infrastructure,” including the “care” economy, climate change, housing and a pathway for immigrants to citizenship. When Alisa Chang, of NPR, pressed Pressley on the question of whether progressives are willing to “torpedo” the “entire infrastructure bill if that entire $3.5-trillion package does not end up passing in the Senate,” Pressley ducked a direct yes-no answer.
“I expect we will honor the original terms of the deal,” Pressley responded, referring to Pelosi’s promise to only vote on the infrastructure bill in tandem with the budget reconciliation bill.
Under Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, the budget reconciliation framework debate immediately commenced, with a 50-49 vote (Sen. Mike Rounds, R-SD, was absent) including Sens. Krysten Sinema, D-AZ, and Joe Manchin III, D-WV, and obviously no support from any of the 50 Republicans, in the affirmative.
Vote-a-Rama: The Senate considered a record 47 amendments in a 15-hour ‘vote-a-rama,’ Punchbowl News reports, including the issues of critical race theory, fracking, inflation, the Green New Deal, police funding, sanctions on Hamas, taxpayer funding of abortion and opposition to tax increases on anyone earning less than $400,000 per year. The House can accept these “non-binding” amendments or send them back to the Senate.
An amendment by Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-AL, went viral on Twitter. He introduced an amendment that would eliminate federal funding for any locality that votes to “defund the police.”
Sen. Corey Booker, D-NJ, immediately “embraced” the amendment and called for a voice vote for its passage, urging every senator to make it clear they want “to fund the police, believe in God, country and apple pie.”
The amendment passed with all 50 Democrats joining the Republicans.
“This is a gift,” Booker continued. “I’m sure we’ll see no political ads attacking anybody here over ‘defund the police.’”
Booker was calling out Republicans who were introducing amendments to become fodder in midterm election campaign ads. On Twitter, the response from liberals was split between those who understood Booker’s “satire” and those who didn’t.
Note on Bipartisanship: President Biden praised open talks with Republicans and Democrats on the bi-partisan infrastructure bill from the White House Tuesday afternoon. “We went through years of infrastructure week, and now we have infrastructure decade,” he said, “…that I truly believe will transform America.”
Biden laughed at a reporter’s question about whether he feared the House will not pass the Senate bill if Democrats are not satisfied with the accompanying budget resolution. “It will happen,” he replied, evidently confident of the bill’s passage – hinting, perhaps, that Pelosi has a strategy for quick approval in order to place two bills covering a massive portion of the White House’s agenda within the coming month.
Note on Bipartisanship II: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, appears to be moving the GOP away from Trumpism, as he dismissed the former president’s ongoing criticism of the infrastructure bill, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.
“Infrastructure is popular with Republicans and Democrats,” he said. “The American people, divided, sent us a 50-50 Senate and a narrowly divided House. I don’t think the message from that was ‘do absolutely nothing.’ And if you’re going to find an area of potential agreement, I can’t think of a better one than infrastructure, which is desperately needed.”
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Republican “Yays” on Infrastructure – Republican senators who voted with 50 Democrats to pass the $1.2-trillion infrastructure bill Tuesday are: Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Kentucky), Roy Blunt (Missouri), Richard Burr (North Carolina), Shelley Moore Capito (West Virginia), Bill Cassidy (Louisiana), Susan Collins (Maine), Kevin Cramer (North Dakota), Michael D. Crapo (Idaho), Deb Fischer (Nebraska), Lindsay Graham (South Carolina), Chuck Grassley (Iowa), Joe Hoeven (North Dakota), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Rob Portman (Ohio), James Risch (Idaho), Mitt Romney (Utah), Dan Sullivan (Alaska), Thom Tillis (North Carolina) and Roger Wicker (Mississippi). (Per The New York Times).
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All About the Timing – Clearly seeing no path to running for an unprecedented fourth term next year as New York governor, Andrew Cuomo announced his resignation, effective in two weeks. Facing a New York attorney general’s report that accuses him of sexual harassment, Cuomo said he was “caught up in generational and cultural shifts.”
Cuomo also is facing allegations he covered up roughly half of COVID-19 deaths in the state’s nursing homes during the peak of the pandemic last year.
Replacement for the rest of his term is Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochuk, a Democrat from Buffalo not closely aligned with Cuomo, who becomes New York’s first female governor.
Note: Pundits on the left wasted no time comparing Cuomo’s resignation to the lack of response outside of denial by Republican politicians accused of sexual impropriety, including former President Trump and current Rep. Matt Gaetz, of Florida.
The conspiracy theorists also came out on this one. Snopes put out a post saying that governor-to-be Kathy Hochuk is notNancy Pelosi’s stepsister.
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Country Is Predictably Divided — A Morning Consult/Politico poll conducted August 7-9 shows that the Democrats and the Republicans are pretty much divided on the categories that each has long been associated with, with the Dems stronger in social issues and the Republicans on economic and security ones. One number that ought to give some solace to the White House is that 51% approve of the job President Biden is doing and 46% disapprove.
Going down into the issues, here are some of the responses when asked which party in Congress was trusted to handle the specific issues:
Health care
- Democrats: 47%
- Republicans: 36%
Immigration
- Democrats: 38%
- Republicans: 45%
Climate change
- Democrats: 48%
- Republicans: 29%
Environment
- Democrats: 48%
- Republicans: 29%
Energy
- Democrats: 42%
- Republicans: 38%
Education
- Democrats: 44%
- Republicans: 36%
National security
- Democrats: 36%
- Republicans: 47%
Gun policy
- Democrats: 39%
- Republicans: 44%
Medicare/Social Security
- Democrats: 44%
- Republicans: 37%
Coronavirus
- Democrats: 45%
- Republicans: 33%
Voting rights
- Democrats: 45%
- Republicans: 40%
Of those 11 categories, the Republicans come out on top in just three.
The margin of error of the poll is ±2%.
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Gary S. Vasilash
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TUESDAY, AUGUST 10, 2021
SENATE PASSES $1.2-TRILLION BIPARTISAN INFRASTRUCTURE BILL, VOTES TO BEGIN DEBATE ON $3.5-TRILLION 'SOCIAL INFRASTRUCTURE' BUDGET RECONCILIATION – The Senate Tuesday morning passed the $1.2-trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill by a vote of 69-30, nine more than needed to avoid a filibuster. Republican senators voting with the 50 Democrats include Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, and Chuck Grassley of Iowa.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, immediately took up a vote to debate the White House's $3.5-trillion "social infrastructure" budget reconciliation package.
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CUOMO RESIGNS -- Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo resigned Tuesday afternoon over the state attorney general's report investigating sexual harassment claims against him. Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, becomes the first woman to serve as governor of New York. It is unclear whether Cuomo may be impeached after he has left office.
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New Millennium Deal – Democrats unveiled their $3.5 trillion “blueprint” for budget reconciliation, a sweeping “social” infrastructure plan that requires 12 Senate and 13 House committees to submit a filibuster-proof fiscal package by September 15, Roll Call reports. The proposal highlights spending for health care, social policy, and climate policy. Democrats have proposed just $1.75 trillion, half the package, in tax increases for upper income and in corporate taxes and by reining in prescription drug costs and other savings to pay for it. The draft package includes room to grow the budget deficit in the coming decade, which Democrats say could be partially mitigated by closing the “tax gap” between what is owed and what is paid.
Once adapted, the package “will allow the Senate to move forward on a reconciliation bill that will be the most consequential piece of legislation for working people, the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor since FDR and the New Deal of the 1930s,” Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-VT, says on his website. “It will also put the U.S. in a global leadership position to combat climate change and to make our planet healthy and habitable for future generations.”
Top expenditures in the Senate Democrats’ blueprint include $726.4 billion to health, education, labor, and pensions, $332 billion to banking and the Department of Housing and Urban Development and $198 billion for energy and natural resources.
Note: A substantial infrastructure package seemed like a bipartisan dream just a month or two ago, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, remains determined to tie that package with this $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation “social” infrastructure package, which can only pass so long as moderate Democratic senators such as Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema are on board. One more reminder that Democrats do not have a decisive majority in the House and Senate, even if Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, have to treat it as such to appease their party’s progressives. Considering Pelosi’s two-bill mandate, President Biden’s first big non-pandemic victory is still not the slam-dunk it should be.
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New Senate Voting Rights Bill Expected -- Senate Democrats are planning to propose a stripped-down voter rights bill this week that will include requirements for a voter registration card in order to potentially garner some Republican support. House of Representatives Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-SC, who told NPR Tuesday morning that voter rights is the third leg of a three-legged Democratic agenda stool, along with infrastructure and the budget reconciliation bill, says he would support inclusion of a voter registration card requirement[VJ1] .
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U.S. Attempts Diplomacy Appeal with Taliban in Afghanistan – U.S. Envoy Zalmay Khalilzad warned the Taliban that a government that comes to lead Afghanistan by force will become an international pariah and will not be recognized, the Associated Press reports, as the Biden administration’s attempts at a peace deal founder. Zalmay traveled to the Taliban’s political office in Doha, Qatar, to deliver the message, following Taliban insurgents’ capture of five of 34 provincial Afghani capitals within a week, the AP says.
Note: Order in Afghanistan has proven to be untenable since ancient times – just ask Soviets of the 1980s. The U.S. withdrawal, finally, comes as The Washington Post publishes excerpts from its reporter, Craig Whitlock’s new book, The Afghanistan Papers, including a story this morning that the Bush administration hid from the public attempts to attack Vice President Dick Cheney. So, here’s just a bit of solace: A Taliban military chief warned his fighters in an audio message not to harm Afghani forces and government officials in the captured territories, the AP says.
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District Judge Questions Restitution Amounts in 1/6 Riots – Why are Capitol riot defendants being asked to pay only $1.5 million in restitution, leaving American taxpayers to foot most of the costs to fix the building and grounds of more than $500 million? Chief U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell, asked prosecutors Monday. Howell challenged the toughness of the Justice Department’s position in plea hearings for a Colorado Springs man who admitted to one of four non-violent counts of picketing the U.S. Capitol, The Washington Post reports.
Howell criticized the prosecutors for seeking only $2,000 per defendant charged with a felony, and $500 per defendant charged with a misdemeanor.
“I’m accustomed to the government being fairly aggressive in terms of fraud when there have been damages that accrue from a criminal act for the restitution amount,” she said.
Note: While not explicitly stated, Howell’s comments recall criticism from the left earlier this year that the mostly white, male, Capitol rioters were not being treated by law enforcement with the sort of force that protesters of color often face. This is compounded by fears some authorities have that ex-President Trump could trigger the most rabid of his MAGA-followers to commit further, more intense violence in the name of the November election “Big Lie.”
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Abbott Asks to Suspend Surgeries — Texas governor Greg Abbott, R, has asked hospitals in the state to voluntarily postpone elective procedures and said that the Department of State Health Services is seeking medical workers from outside the Lone Star State to help with the unprecedented surge in COVID cases there, Politico reports.
Note: Abbott issued an executive order May 18 prohibiting government entities — as in counties, cities, school districts, public health authorities, and government officials — from requiring masks. What’s more, any local government or official that would not follow the executive order could be fined up to $1,000. Abbott’s rationale? According to a press release from his office, Abbott said, “Texans, not government, should decide their best health practices, which is why masks will not be mandated by public school districts or government entities. We can continue to mitigate COVID-19 while defending Texans' liberty to choose whether or not they mask up." This is not a “Remember the Alamo” moment. Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, et. al would probably have had everyone in the chapel of the Mission San Antonio de Valero wearing masks lest the virus take them down.
What’s more, “elective surgeries” may sound benign, but all this means is that they are surgeries that are scheduled, which can mean anything from hip replacement to kidney stone removal to heart bypass grafting. Abbott’s mandate isn’t making it easier on those Texans.
--Edited by Todd Lassa, Gary S. Vasilash and Nic Woods
•Read Stephen Macaulay's commentary on the former acting attorney general’s reported testimony to the Justice Department on how Donald J. Trump tried to subvert last November’s presidential election, today at https://thehustings.substack.com
•The Senate is expected to take a full vote on its $1-trillion bi-partisan infrastructure plan by Tuesday morning, following a procedural vote on cloture today. Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellin will call on Congress today to raise the debt limit by “regular order,” as Senate Democrats release their $3.5-trillion reconciliation budget this morning. Yellin will repeat to Congress that “increasing or decreasing the debt limit does not increase government spending, nor does it authorize spending for future budget proposals. It simply allows Treasury [department] to pay for enacted expenditures.”
•The Taliban have overrun the provincial capital of Sar-e-Pul, Afghanistan Monday, the AP reports, after capturing three other cities Sunday. U.S. military forces are to complete withdrawal from Afghanistan after nearly 20 years of fighting, by the end of August.
Climate Change Report a ‘Code Red for Humanity’ – Humans have altered the environment at an “unprecedented pace,” and it’s almost too late to change course, a damning report by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports. UN Secretary Gen. Antonio Guterres calls the report “a code red for humanity.”
Greenhouse gas release is growing, and countries have failed to meet targets set under the 2015 Paris Accords, according to The Washington Post account of the report. “There is no time for delay, and no room for excuses,” Guterres says.
The report is from 234 authors relying on more than 14,000 studies from around the globe. It says the Earth has warmed more than 1 degree Celsius (1.8F) with little sign of slowing, and could reach 1.5 degrees Celsius by the early 2030s, as heat waves, hurricanes and rain storms become more intense.
Note: As the U.S. returns to the strictures of the Paris Climate Accords under the Biden administration, China and India, late to the Industrial Revolution Party continue to increase greenhouse gas emissions with little curb in sight. The UN report seems to indicate it’s “almost” too late to mitigate emissions, a message that climate change scientists have been making for decades now.
According to the EPA’s no-longer updated A Student’s Guide to Global Climate Change, “Higher temperatures mean that heat waves are likely to happen more often and last longer, too. Heat waves can be dangerous, causing illnesses such as heat cramps and heat stroke, or even death.
“Warmer temperatures can also lead to a chain reaction of other changes around the world. That's because increasing air temperature also affects the oceans, weather patterns, snow and ice, and plants and animals. The warmer it gets, the more severe the impacts on people and the environment will be.”
And you wonder why Greta Thunberg is concerned.
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This Won’t Help – The price of oil and other “key industrial commodities” slid Monday over fears the Chinese government failed to halt the spread of the COVID-19 delta variant, The Wall Street Journal reports. Brent Crude Oil fell 4% to $67.87 barrel, and West Texas Intermediate futures fell 4.3%, to $65.38 per barrel.
Note: However, the price of oil in the first half of 2021 was up more than 45% and Wall Street traders have speculated that there could be a run up to $80 per barrel as the economy recovers.
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Cuomo’s Top Aide Resigns – Melissa DeRosa, top aide to three-term New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, D, resigned after last week’s attorney general report released evidence of the governor’s alleged sexual harassment of other government workers. The AG report says DeRosa helped Cuomo retaliate against one of the women who accused him of the harassment, The New York Times says.
Note: Cuomo thus remains the only New Yorker who believes he will remain in office to the end of his term, next year.
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Vax Passport Needed to Ship Out -- U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams held with Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings, granting the cruise line’s request for a preliminary injunction against a Florida state law that bars businesses — such as Norwegian Cruise Line — from requiring proof of COVID-19 vaccination, noting in her ruling that the state “fails to provide a valid evidentiary, factual, or legal predicate” for the ban, Politico reports. Florida’s anti-vax passport law stemmed from an executive order that Gov. Ron DeSantis, R, signed in April, which was then codified into law by the state legislature.
Note: According to the Florida Department of Health, during the week of May 28 there were 11,437 cases and 10 weeks later the number was 134,506. Possibly DeSantis was thinking about Trump’s statement in February 2020 “You know, a lot of people think that goes away in April with the heat — as the heat comes in. Typically, that will go way in April.” In Florida the average temperature in April is 69.3 degrees. In July it is 81.6 degrees. Evidently that’s not working out as “a lot of people” think.
What is bizarre about this (well, there are actually plenty of odd things about Florida’s approach to the pandemic) is that here is a business that wants to require proof of vaccination for people to enter its establishment. It isn’t being done because the company wants to reduce the number of potential customers but because it makes financial sense for the company: Were there to be a breakout of the virus on board the ship it is conceivable that this would mean that the ship would not be permitted into port, which would therefore mean that the company’s asset — as in the ship — would not be making money for it. This is purely a business decision on behalf of Norwegian Cruise Line. (The argument for masks in schools—something DeSantis has also banned, and which is the object of lawsuits—is entirely different.)
And to think that DeSantis positions himself as being pro-business. As WUSF reported on February 7, 2021, in a story about the coronavirus impact on passenger cruise operations, “The Florida Ports Council, which continues to push for seaports to be included in federal pandemic relief efforts, has estimated that the economic impact of COVID-19 on the 15 ports in Florida has reached $22 billion, cutting $775 million in tax revenue and affecting 170,000 jobs.” Clearly an important business that DeSantis seems to be thumbing his nose at.
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Bi-Partisanship is Real – The Senate passed by voice vote the Puppies Assisting Wounded Servicemembers for Veterans Therapy Act (PAWS) last Thursday, Roll Call reports. Once signed by President Biden, the pilot program will provide service dogs to military veterans with mental illness, not just those with mobility issues as is currently the program. The bill was introduced in the House by Rep. Steve Stivers, R-OH, and co-sponsored by 317 of his colleagues from both parties.
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Gary S. Vasilash
MONDAY, AUGUST 9, 2021