FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2021
•The U.S. Capitol Police have prepared for Saturday’s ‘Justice for J6’ rally, organized by former Trump campaign official Matt Braynard, with temporary fencing erected around the Supreme Court Capitol buildings. Braynard has said the rally would be ‘100 percent’ peaceful (Newsweek), but there also are reports of individuals online saying they will target “local Jewish institutions, elected officials and ‘liberal churches.’”
•The FDA issues a decision today on whether to authorize booster shots for those who already have taken full doses of the COVID-19 vaccines.
Milley Says Calls to Chinese Counterpart Were Part of His Job – Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff confirmed he called his Chinese counterpart to warn of former President Trump’s potential authorization of a strike against the country, and said his actions were “perfectly within the duties and responsibilities of his job.” Milley’s remarks were made to an Associated Press reporter and one other reporter in Athens, Greece, while on a tour of Europe.
Milley told the two reporters such calls were made “to reassure both allies and adversaries in this case in order to ensure strategic stability.”
The Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, whose term is set to run from October 2019 to October 2023, has been the topic of argument over whether he should step down or be fired, after release of excerpts from Peril, an upcoming book from Bob Woodward and Robert Costa of The Washington Post revealed that Milley took action before and after last November’s presidential election because he perceived instability in Trump’s reaction to his loss.
Note: It is interesting the Republican base have attacked the CIA, the FBI and now the Joint Chief of Staff. Wasn’t the GOP the party of “law and order” and “strong defense”?
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Biden Cannot Use Public Health to Expel Immigrants – U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan has ruled that Title 42, a public health order, cannot be used to expel immigrants crossing the Southern border, Politico reports. The Biden administration had sought to use the policy to return immigrants to Mexico. The judge’s order takes effect in 14 days.
Note: It makes sense the Biden administration has attempted to extend Trump’s policy, as the president suffers criticism over allegedly record crowds of immigrants trying to cross the Southern border, but it seems there is no real solution short of immigration reform.
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Immigration Crisis Intensifies – More than 10,000 Haitian refugees have crossed the Rio Grande into Texas over the past few days, where they are sleeping outdoors under a bridge in the town of Del Rio, The Washington Post reports, creating a humanitarian emergency. WaPo notes that the refugees, coming from an island country hit by a severe earthquake weeks after its president was assassinated, comes as the Department of Homeland Security struggles to resettle more than 60,000 refugees from the sudden withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.
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Climate Is a Concern … A Big Concern — In a global survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, 72% of the respondents answered, “Concern that global climate change will harm you personally in your lifetime” as “Very/somewhat concerned.” And 80% said they would do “A lot/some” willingness to change the way they live and work in order to “help reduce the effects of global climate change.”
The survey shows that while 78% of people from around the globe surveyed think that China is doing a bad job when it comes to addressing global climate change, the U.S. is in second place, with 61% saying it is doing a bad job.
Of the question regarding whether they think climate will have an effect on them during their lifetime and their level of concern, 33% of Americans answered “somewhat” and 27% “very.”
Note: Even climate is ideological in the U.S. When asked about their willingness to make “a lot/some” change in their daily living to help mitigate climate change, 45% of those identifying as being of the right-wing said they would, while 83% of centrists and 94% of those on the left said they would. This 49% difference between the right and the left is by far the biggest ideological divide among the countries surveyed. Canada, which has the second highest, has a divide of just 26%.
Not surprising, older Americans are less concerned than younger ones. While 52% of those who are 65+ are “very/somewhat concerned,” 71% of those who are 18-29 say they are.
One could conclude that a whole lot of right-wing Americans who are collecting Social Security figure they’ll be checking out before anything bad happens climatically.
This age and ideological divide should give Republicans pause. Maybe they’re doing okay right now, but those seniors are on the wane while the younger demographic is growing.
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Corporations Shouldn’t Talk About Abortion — Forty-six percent of U.S. adults think that it is acceptable for brands to talk about access to abortion in their messaging while 39% say they oppose it, according to a Morning Consult poll. While that might seem to put abortion access messaging in a good place (15% answered “don’t know,” or have no opinion), of the 13 issue categories raised, abortion access is the only one below 50% positive. Odds are that isn’t going to be a message in ads for consumer products.
Note: The next-lowest rankings are for Black Lives Matter, police reform and racism, all at 52% acceptable. LGBTQ rights and immigrant rights are both at 53%. Then there is a notable jump, with climate change at 62%. Voting rights is at 65%, civil rights at 67%, registering to vote at 68%, women’s rights at 69%, and health care access at 73%.
The most acceptable topic of all: equal pay, at 76%. You’d imagine that talking about wages is one of the last things that corporations would be interested in discussing.
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Australian PM Says He Told Macron About Sub Deal – Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison says he told French President Emmanuel Macron in June that Canberra might scrap its deal to purchase conventionally powered submarines from France’s Naval Group, Politico reports. French Foreign Minister Jean Yves-LeDrian said it was a “stab in the back” when Australia announced yesterday it would cancel its 50-billion euro ($58.8 billion) agreement in favor of joining a U.S.-U.K. alliance to supply nuclear-powered subs to the country.
Note: China and France are in the same boat. Sort of. China is angry about the possibility of quiet Australian nuclear subs lurking about the South China Sea for months at a time. France is unhappy they lost the boat-building bid.
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Trump Critic Won’t Seek a Third Term – Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, of Ohio, one of 10 Republican House members who voted to impeach President Trump last January has announced he will not seek a third term, according to Roll Call. Gonzalez, 38, cited wanting to grow a young family in a tweet announcing his retirement from Congress, but added, “the current state of our politics, the especially toxic dynamics inside our own party, is a significant factor in my decision.”
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Gary S. Vasilash
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THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2021
•Democrats on the House of Representatives’ Ways and Means Committee completed mark-up Wednesday of the $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation package, which now proceeds to the full House and Senate (The Washington Post). President Biden met with Sens. Joe Manchin III, D-WV, and Krysten Sinema, D-AZ, Wednesday to help work out a deal, but the two appear to remain resistant (The Hill). Their votes are needed for the bill to pass the Senate without Republican support.
•The FDA says data show that the coronavirus vaccines remain effective without the need for booster shots, and it’s not ready to recommend their use. WaPo says an FDA panel will vote Friday on whether to approve Pfizer’s booster shot. President Biden had planned to have booster shots available for most adults by next week.
•SpaceX successfully launched a rocket with a capsule carrying an all-civilian crew Wednesday that will circle the Earth every 90 minutes for three days before splashing down this weekend in the Gulf of Mexico (MSNBC).
Nuclear Subs to Australia – A new defense alliance among the U.S., the United Kingdom, and Australia will share nuclear-powered submarine technology, NPR’s Morning Edition reports. The alliance will provide Australia with its first nuclear-powered subs, which can move faster, are much quieter, and can remain submerged for months. Just six countries have the technology, an analyst told the BBC.
The U.S.-U.K.-Australian nuclear-powered subs will not carry nuclear warheads, but they do pose a counterpoint to the People’s Republic of China’s recent aggression in the South China Sea.
Note: Negotiations between the U.S. and Australia go back 18 months, which means they began under the Trump administration. The deal thus represents another international affairs issue in which the Biden administration is hewing to the predecessor’s policy direction, in this case, playing up adversarial relations with China. Reuters reports that the Chinese embassy in Washington reacted by saying in a statement that the U.S. needs to “shake off the Cold War mentality.”
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Biden Briefs Execs on Vaccines — President Biden met with top executives from Columbia Sportswear, Disney, Microsoft, Walgreens Boots Alliance, Kaiser Permanente, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and Louisiana State University yesterday to detail the vaccine/testing mandates that his administration is putting in place after his address to the nation last week, The Washington Post reports. The newspaper quotes Tim Boyle, Columbia Sportwear chief executive, as saying; “Now with the federal government stepping in, that’s where we really felt comfortable and immediately put out a similar message to our employees.”
Note: Essentially the Biden administration is providing business with “cover” in terms of their being able to mandate their employees get the vaccinations or take the tests. What is notable about this meeting is that unlike the previous occupant of the White House, Biden didn’t make a big deal about meeting with these executives.
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Milley Isn’t Going Anywhere – Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, ranking Republican member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has called for Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to resign after revelations he warned a Chinese counterpart of President Trump’s potential plans last year to launch a military attack on the country, to maintain control of the White House, and told chief military officers to consult with him before executing a potential command by Trump of a missile launch. But President Biden pushed back, saying he has “great confidence” in Milley, whose four-year term as Joint Chiefs’ chairman ends in October 2023.
“The president has complete confidence in his leadership, his patriotism, and his fidelity to our Constitution,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters at the daily briefing (per Roll Call).
Note: Milley took these precautions because Trump appeared to be particularly unhinged in the weeks surrounding his loss in last November’s election, according to excerpts of Peril, the book by The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and Robert Costa due for release next Tuesday. Milley’s defenders in the media say the final months of the Trump administration resembles that of Richard M. Nixon in 1974, when cabinet members feared what the president might do with his military powers as he was reportedly drinking heavily, talking to paintings in the White House, and demanding Secretary of State Henry Kissinger get down on his knees and pray with him.
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Yes, Virginia, There is a Republican Gubernatorial Candidate – Now that the California recall election of Gov. Gavin Newsom has gone the way most every poll and analyst expected, sending Larry Elder back to his AM radio day job, the punditocracy is concentrating on an early election that should tell us much more than the Golden State did about the condition of Donald J. Trump’s hold on the GOP.
Purple Virginia’s gubernatorial election is November 2, with Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin and Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe seeking to replace term-limited Democrat Ralph Northam.
The odd-year election sets former Democratic National Committee chairman and Clinton confidant McAuliffe, who already has served one term as Virginia governor, against businessman Youngkin, a former CEO of the Carlyle Group, who has been distancing himself from Trump. An early Youngkin campaign commercial pictured supporters sitting in an audience, only one of whom was wearing a red hat – it was impossible to tell from the commercial whether the hat was embossed with “Make America Great Again”.
Note: Currently, the Republican campaign is running a commercial that pivots from Youngkin, saying in a voiceover; “It’s your right to make your own choice,” to “I hope you’ll join me in getting the vaccine.”
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Tucker Carlson on Time100 List -- Fox News personality Tucker Carlson is the only TV talker to make the Time100 List of most influential people, TVNewser reports. This means that Carlson joins other broadcasters, including Gayle King (2019), Sean Hannity, Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb (2018), Gretchen Carlson (2017), Jorge Ramos (2015), Charlie Rose and Megyn Kelly (2014), Matt Lauer (2012), and Joe Scarborough and Ayman Mohyeldin (2011).
Note: Given what happened to some of the men in the list, it is a somewhat dubious honor. And one can only wonder what some of the other people on that list think about the latest addition.
--Edited by Todd Lassa, Gary S. Vasilash and Nic Woods