•President Biden says he would potentially support Senate Democrats removing the legislative filibuster for a voting rights bill, and “other issues,” in a CNN Town Hall Thursday night.
•”Are you close to a deal?” on the Build Back Better budget reconciliation package, CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked Biden. “I think so,” the president responded.
•Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-AZ, has reportedly accepted a package of tax changes that would help pay for the budget reconciliation package, NPR’s Morning Edition reports. Moderate and progressive Democrats have negotiated the package to somewhere between $1.75 trillion and $1.9 trillion.
Moderate and Progressive Democrats Still Aren’t There – Despite all the sunshine and bunnies evoked by President Biden and Sen. Krysten Sinema, the two sides aren’t that close to a deal on budget reconciliation. “Democrats are unlikely to strike a framework deal … this week,” The Hill suggests, “as divisions between centrist Democrats and progressives continue to plague negotiations and threaten to derail them entirely.”
In a separate story in The Hill, Sen. Joe Manchin III, D-WV, provided an explanation for the “bullshit” Mother Jones story that said he had threatened to leave the Democratic caucus to become an “American independent.” According to the Capitol Hill newsletter, Manchin told Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, “that if it would help (the Democratic caucus) ‘publicly’ to become an independent who still caucuses with the party” as they negotiate a bill as large as possible in order to appease progressives, he was willing to do so.
Note: Typical storm before the vote, as the herd of Democratic cats keeps trying to gather itself up to vote for the reconciliation bill. Prospects are probably better than it looks – but will either side of the party be satisfied with the outcome?
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House Vote is 229-202 to Hold Bannon in Contempt – The full House of Representatives voted 229-202 to hold former Trump advisor Stephen K. Bannon in contempt of Congress for failing to respond to a subpoena to question him for his role in the January 6 Capitol insurrection. Nine Republicans joined House Democrats voting for the contempt charges. Former Vice President Mike Pence’s brother, Rep. Greg Pence, R-IN, did not vote.
Select Committee on January 6 Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-MS, said Bannon “stands alone in his complete defiance of our subpoena,” according to Roll Call. The committee unanimously voted to move Bannon’s contempt charges forward to the full House. The two Republicans on Thompson’s committee, Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, were among the nine members of their party voting for the charges in the full House.
The others were:
•Peter Meijer and Fred Upton, Michigan.
•John Katko, New York.
•Nancy Mace, South Carolina.
•Anthony Gonzalez, Ohio.
•Brian Fitzpatrick, Pennsylvania.
•Jaime Herrera Butler, Washington.
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McCarthy to GOP Consultants: It’s Me or Cheney – A prominent Washington lobbyist close to Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-CA, is warning political consultants to choose between the House minority leader and January 6 Select Committee member Liz Cheney, R-WY, The New York Times reports. This has prompted “one fund-raising firm to disassociate itself from Ms. Cheney,” according to the report.
The Morning Group has informed Cheney it can no longer work on her 2022 primary campaign, the NYT says.
Note: Back in July, Cheney told Fox News she had set two straight record fund-raising quarters in a row after McCarthy ousted her from GOP House leadership, per the conservative-turned-Trumpist magazine, National Review. McCarthy obviously intends to put an end to that, and The Morning Group’s acquiescence to the minority leader will force Cheney to seek help outside the usual channels. This will be a test of how large and serious the post-2016 anti-Trumpist conservative movement really is.
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Maybe It Wasn’t the Autopilot — Tesla is under investigation by both the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB — which you’re probably more familiar with vis-à-vis plane crashes) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
The issue is whether the company’s so-called “Autopilot” system is the cause of fatalities or crashes, as there seems to be an unfounded understanding that the Tesla vehicles can drive themselves (they can’t). In August, NHTSA opened an investigation of 11 crashes “in which Tesla models of various configurations have encountered first responder scenes and subsequently struck one or more vehicles involved with those scenes.”
NTSB has been looking at an accident that occurred in Spring, Texas, last April in which there were two fatalities. The NTSB released an update yesterday, according to Automotive News, which indicate that the driver was behind the wheel of the Model S, not in the rear passenger seat, as had been initially claimed by some outlets. The investigation is on-going.
Note: What is interesting about this from a political point of view is that Tesla has been remarkably blasé about the claims that it makes for its “Autopilot” and “Full Self-Driving” (it isn’t) systems. More conventional OEMs have tended to be more responsive to addressing the concerns of federal investigatory agencies. Seems like the same indifference to things like subpoenas by both public servants and private citizens has made its way to corporations, as well.
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Gary S. Vasilash
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THURSDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2021
•The full House of Representatives votes today on whether to charge former Trump advisor Stephen K. Bannon with contempt of Congress for failing to respond to the January 6 Select Committee investigating his alleged role in the Capitol insurrection. The House is expected to vote in favor of the charges mostly along party lines, plus committee members Reps Liz Cheney, R-WY, and Adam Kinzinger, R-IL.
•The FDA has authorized Johnson & Johnson and Moderna COVID-19 vaccine boosters, as well as mixing and matching of the coronavirus vaccines, including Pfizer-BioNTech. In other words, whatever you had as a vaccine, you can take a different booster shot.
Magazine: Manchin Considers Ditching Democratic Party – Sen. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia has told associates he is considering leaving the Democratic Party to become an “American Independent,” and has an exit plan if the $3.5-trillion Build Back Better budget reconciliation isn’t cut in half to $1.75 trillion, according to a scoop by Mother Jones Washington bureau chief David Corn. The revelation in the progressive magazine comes after President Biden appears to have convinced both factions of the party that the ceiling on the budget reconciliation bill will be no higher than $1.9 trillion, in part by reducing the length of key programs within the bill down from 10 years. More important to the coal country senator, the plan would seriously pare down a program to promote clean energy alternatives for powerplants.
Note: The Mother Jones scoop comes just as progressive and moderate Democrats appear to have made progress negotiating the reconciliation bill. Indications are that the White House had agreed to a target price of $1.75 trillion to $1.9 trillion after meeting with progs and moderates separately early this week. Agreeing to the lower price tag will be key to passing the reconciliation budget by the end of October as planned. Manchin can then wait until the end of the year to join independent Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and Angus King of Maine as officially without a party.
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Build Back Faster — President Joe Biden gave a speech yesterday at the Electric City Trolley Museum in Scranton, Pennsylvania, a hometown speech meant to gin up support for the Build Back Better bills that are stalled in the Democratic meeting rooms on Capitol Hill. Biden has been criticized by many in his own party for being insufficiently vocal in support of the legislation. The speech ran for some 8,200 words. Gettysburg Address? About 270. Biden’s speech was about 30 times wordier.
Note: Biden talked about his parents, grandparents, siblings, neighbors, neighborhoods, riding the trolley, racking up miles on Amtrak, the space race, a school-age nickname, and a variety of other folksy topics. While he did hit on things from job creation to health care to child care, much of it was buried in the vignettes.
In his peroration Biden said, “I ran for President saying it was time to build the backbone of the nation. And by that, I was very precise: The middle class has been the backbone of this nation.”
Biden buried the lede.
•••
Cloture Fails, as Expected, in Freedom to Vote Act – The Senate on Wednesday rejected Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s, D-NY, cloture vote on S 2747, the Freedom to Vote Act, along party lines. The bill was Sen. Joe Manchin III’s, D-WV, proposal in September to pare down other bills that seek to counter several state Republican legislatures that are tightening their voting laws in the wake of President Biden’s “landslide” victory over incumbent Donald J. Trump last November.
Schumer promises to bring other such bills back before the Senate, where he doesn’t have 10 Republicans willing to overcome a filibuster. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, has kept his 49 fellow caucus members in line by objecting to federal laws that he says would usurp states’ rights on election laws.
Note: It’s the age-old struggle that goes to the question of whether we’re more a democracy or a republic, and entails filibusters, the electoral college, and representation in the Senate itself. Schumer & party are caught in a vicious loop in which filibusters on voting rights bills won’t be overcome without Democrats gaining 10 seats in the Senate, and that won’t happen so long as voting rights legislation continues to fail.
•••
Dead Heat in Virginia Gubernatorial Race – Less than two weeks before Virginia’s election day, with early voting ballots already flooding in, Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin has pulled up to a dead heat in the polls with Democrat Terry McAuliffe. Each has a 46% share of those polled by Monmouth University. McAuliffe, who served as Virginia’s governor from 2014 to 2018, previously had a 2- to 7-point lead in earlier polls.
Note: The gubernatorial election in purple Virginia will be a big indicator of Donald J. Trump’s influence over the GOP, and the electorate in general. While Youngkin, a former CEO of private equity firm The Carlyle Group, has tried to distance himself from the ex-president, Trump endorsed him last weekend, and former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani put out a bizarre video Wednesday in which he dressed as Abraham Lincoln and criticized McAuliffe for “selling” the Lincoln Bedroom in the White House during the Clinton administration, when he was party chairman – a long-disproven scandal.
•••
Zuckerberg Added to Data Mining Lawsuit – Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been added to the District of Columbia’s lawsuit over the Cambridge Analytica data-mining scandal, Washington’s attorney general, Karl Racine announced on Twitter. Racine tweeted that his investigation, begun in 2018, has revealed that Zuckerberg was “personally involved in decisions related to Cambridge Analytica and Facebook’s failure to protect user data,” The Verge reports.
Note: Facebook coincidentally has announced it will change its name, though apparently Zuckerberg hasn’t decided, or at least said, what the new moniker will be. It will not be called Truth Social, which is the new social media platform designed as an alternative to big tech like Facebook, announced yesterday by Donald J. Trump.
--Edited by Todd Lassa, Gary S. Vasilash and Charles Dervarics
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WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 20, 2021
•Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, will hold a cloture vote on the Freedom to Vote Act today. The procedural vote will fail. Details below...
Another Stab at Expanding Voter Rights to Fail – Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, will filibuster S 2747, the Freedom to Vote Act, which Schumer has promised to bring to the floor for a vote. The bill is a pared down version of more expansive bill languishing on Capitol Hill that sought to restore key provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that were negated by the 2013 Supreme Court ruling in Shelby v. Holder. The Freedom to Vote Act was sponsored in September by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-MN, and is meant to address new, restrictive voting laws in Georgia, Texas, Iowa, and pending in other states.
Senate Republicans are not receptive to any federal law that ultimately would give them a disadvantage in future elections, and the only way for this bill to succeed would be a vote ending the legislative filibuster, which Sen. Joe Manchin III, D-WV, opposes.
Key provisions of S 2747 are:
•Makes election day a federal holiday.
•Expands same-day, and other voter registration rules.
•Expands voter access, including vote-by-mail and early voting.
•Limits removal of voters from the rolls.
•Allows those convicted of a crime to vote, unless serving a felony sentence at the time of the election.
•Establishes certain federal offenses for violating voter laws.
•Requires states to conduct post-election audits for federal elections.
•Addresses redistricting, including “generally” prohibiting mid-decade redistricting.
•••
Yesterday’s Separate White House Talks with Progs, Moderates, Worked – Why not gather progressive and moderate Democrats together in one meeting in order to work out the $3.5-trillion Build Back Better budget reconciliation bill?, we asked yesterday. President Biden met with both groups separately, and it seems to have worked, with NPR reporting “new momentum” toward reaching a deal that would guarantee support from nearly all the House Democrats and absolutely all 50 Senate Democrats.
Rep. Ro Khanna, D-CA, told NPR’s Morning Edition he feels “closer than ever before” on a deal. The Washington Post reports that Biden has told Democrats that the new target should be a package of between $1.75 trillion and $1.9 trillion. Biden had previously promised the budget reconciliation would be paid for, though funding still apparently must be hashed out.
Note: This compromise will seem to be a victory for moderate Democrats, as Congress cuts the child care tax credit down to a one-year extension, and two years of free community college becomes an expansion of the Pell Grant program. The big winner of course, is Sen. Joe Manchin III, D-WV, who has won some pushback against the climate change programs within the bill. Progressives appear satisfied that some climate change provisions as well as expansion of Medicare benefits will prevail (per WaPo). Paid maternity leave will be pared down to four weeks from the original bill’s 12 weeks.
While it’s a much smaller bill, progressive Democrats appear satisfied that the package provides them some sort of victory – a pretty good win, in fact considering the party’s very narrow majority – as the $1.2-trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill now can finally move through the House and make its way to Biden’s desk to hand him a much-needed victory.
•••
January 6 Committee Forwards Bannon Contempt Charge to House – The House Select Committee investigating the January 6 Capitol insurrection unanimously recommended to charge former Trump advisor and provocateur Stephen K. Bannon be held in contempt for ignoring a subpoena in the case. The full House of Representatives is expected to vote for contempt charges, though Bannon’s failure to appear, and the question of whether he will be compelled to testify, as well as Donald J. Trump’s lawsuit seeking to block the committee from obtaining his White House records, and the Library of Congress from providing them, Roll Call reports.
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Charles Dervarics
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TUESDAY, OCTOBER 19, 2021
•President Biden will host progressive and moderate Democrats at the White House today in separate meetings in his continuing effort to reach a deal on his Bring Back Better social infrastructure program, the budget reconciliation bill with the $3.5 trillion sticker price. Wouldn’t it be more productive to get both sides in the same meeting?
•The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the Capitol is expected to approve contempt charges against Stephen K. Bannon for his failure to respond to a subpoena in a 7:30 EDT session tonight.
•Booster shots for COVID-19 do not have to be from the same source as the initial vaccines, the CDC has ruled. Those who have received the single-jab initial vaccine from Johnson & Johnson, which has proved to be less effective than Pfizer or Moderna two-shots, would be better off with a Moderna booster (WaPo).
Trump Sues Committee to Block Release of his White House Records – Former President Trump has filed suit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to block the January 6 Select Committee from obtaining records related to the Capitol insurrection. Trump’s attorneys argue the House of Representatives Select Committee’s request is “almost limitless in scope,” and that most records sought are covered by executive privilege, reports NPR’s Morning Edition.
Note: We’re off to the races, as Trump attempts to block release of the records long as possible. Most analysts and Constitutional scholars agree that the ex-president doesn’t have a legal leg to stand on, though that hasn’t stopped him in more than 4,000 lawsuits during his real estate, reality television and political career. The longer Trump can draw this out, even into next year’s midterm election campaigns, the better for him. Meanwhile, Washington is agog waiting to see whether former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon, who was never an official in the administration and nevertheless claims executive privilege, will be carted off to jail.
•••
Colin Powell’s Multiple Myeloma Compromised COVID Vaccine Effectiveness – It shouldn’t be necessary to say this, but former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s death at age 84 Monday from complications of COVID-19 despite having been fully vaccinated was related to his suffering with blood cancer that compromised his immune system. But there are reports that right-wing social media used his death to again question the effectiveness of the vaccines.
“I’ve got multiple myeloma cancer, and I’ve got Parkinson’s disease, but otherwise I’m fine,” Powell told The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward in July, in what was likely his last interview. “Don’t feel sorry for me,” he added.
•••
Alternative to Clean Electricity Program? – Sen. Joe Manchin III’s, D-WV, refusal to accept a $150 billion clean electricity provision in the $3.5 trillion Bring Back Better budget reconciliation bill is sending his congressional colleagues back to the drawing board, as they look for an alternative to appease the coal country senator.
“I’ve been told it would be prudent to plan alternatives and be very happy if it’s not out,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-RI, described by Roll Call as one of the Senate’s climate hawks.
Manchin opposes the clean electricity provision, which seeks to fund a shift to solar, wind, nuclear and other renewable energy sources, because “he thinks energy companies are already making the transition,” Roll Call says.
Note: Punchbowl News says “I told you so,” in a post Tuesday noting that Manchin is sticking with the position he has taken since negotiations begun. That includes a $1.5 trillion cost ceiling with little wiggle-room even though progressive and moderate Democrats reportedly are zeroing in on a final price tag closer to the $2 trillion mark.
But Manchin’s receptiveness to negotiation was on display yesterday, as he and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-VT, posed for news cameras together on the Capitol grounds. News & Notes finds it notable that while Roll Call calls Manchin a “moderate Democrat” in its report, Punchbowl News uses the term, “conservative Democrat.” We’d bet the latter tag determines Manchin’s final position, and that the progs will want to develop that clean electricity alternative tout suite.
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Nic Woods
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MONDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2021
•Former President Bill Clinton has been released and is heading home to New York after spending six days in an Orange County, California, hospital for a non-COVID infection, NPR reports.
•Jury selection begins in Georgia today in the trial of Greg McMichael, his son Travis McMichael and neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan for the February 2020 shooting of an unarmed Black jogger, Ahmaud Arbery, in their suburban neighborhood. Jury selection could take weeks, and location for the trial may be moved to a different region of Georgia, WaPo says.
Two Weeks in Washington – Prepare for two weeks of tortuous negotiations between progressive and moderate Democrats on Capitol Hill as the two sides haggle over how to cut President Biden’s Build Back Better program, the $3.5-trillion budget reconciliation bill, to about $2 trillion, The Hill previews.
On Saturday The New York Times reported that Sen. Joe Manchin III, D-WV, told the White House he “strongly opposes” a $150-billion provision in the bill to quickly replace coal- and gas-fired powerplants in the U.S. with wind, solar and nuclear energy. Biden travels to Glasgow in two weeks for a United Nations summit on climate change, and Manchin’s demands to remove the $150 billion provision will make it difficult to convince the rest of the world that the U.S. is serious about the problem, the NYT notes.
Another point of contention to be hashed out in two weeks is a provision in the bill, also championed by progressives, to reduce the cost of prescription drugs. It faces opposition by Sens. Bob Menendez, D-NJ, and Krysten Sinema, D-AZ, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Note: While conventional wisdom on Capitol Hill says that Congress loves deadlines and will work all this out in two weeks, these points of contention appear to be more of a power struggle between the two sides of the Democratic Party than simply differences in political philosophy. The $1.2-trillion infrastructure bill has been under threat since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, agreed to connect its passage to the budget reconciliation bill, and now the U.S.’s already poor image on climate change seems likely to suffer, too, as Donald J. Trump’s GOP watches Biden’s presidency fail under the weight of his own party.
•••
Buttigieg Says Supply Chain Won’t Be Fixed Soon — “A lot of the challenges that we have been experiencing this year will continue into next year,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said on CNN’s State of the Union, regarding the global supply chain. As for what the Administration can — or can’t — do, he said on NBC News’ Meet the Press, “Nobody wants the federal government to own or operate the stores, the warehouses, the trucks or the ships or the ports. Our role is to try to make sure we’re supporting those businesses and those workers who do.”
Note: Those last comments would qualify Buttigieg for hurrahs from the traditional Republican party, were such a thing still in existence.
One of the things that somehow seems to get overlooked when there are discussions of the broken supply chain is the fact that there has been a global pandemic since March 2020. Had all the countries in the world gotten after it when it first started spreading rather than, in some cases we are familiar with, thought it would go away on its own through some magical thinking, it would not have the magnitude that it has — and will continue to have. Sick workers can’t make microchips.
In addition to which, it is worth recognizing that this is a global problem, and not something that is the consequence of Joe Biden’s presidency.
•••
China’s Economy Stalls – China’s economy grew 4.9% over the last year, The Wall Street Journal reports, and while this may seem positive by the standards of the world’s largest economy (yes, the U.S. is still number-one), for number-two, it’s not that good. The Chinese economy is up this year only in comparison with the nadir from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, and even then it pales next to China’s annual increases during the last decade that were typically in the 8-10% range.
Compounding the poor economic outlook are a.) reports of electricity outages across China due to energy shortages and b.) the expected collapse of Evergrande, the country’s most indebted real estate developer. Companies like Evergrande have overbuilt real estate in China for decades, resulting in “ghost” buildings and even “ghost” cities according to numerous reports.
Note: China’s dominance of the global economy may not be quite the threat we thought, though Evergrande’s fate will affect the U.S. economy as well. More troubling is how China’s economy could continue to affect the supply chain for computer chips and electronic devices, and how it might affect the urgency of China’s urgency in retaking control of Taiwan.
•••
Obituary: Former Secretary of State Colin Powell – Colin Powell, the four-star general who became the first Black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, under President George H.W. Bush, and the first Black secretary of state under President George W. Bush, died Monday from complications of COVID-19. Powell was once considered a potential candidate for president, though he declined to run. As Bush 43’s secretary of state, Powell launched war against Iraq to prevent Saddam Hussein’s government there from using “weapons of mass destruction” (WMDs), that were later revealed to not exist. Powell, 84, was awarded the Congressional Medal of Freedom twice. He was fully vaccinated, his family said in a Facebook post. (From reports by Politicoand NPR’s Morning Edition.)
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Gary S. Vasilash
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