Good morning! Here is your news briefing for Thursday July 29, 2021
1.) THE DAILY SIGNAL
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2.) THE EPOCH TIMES
Red Rock Secured: China’s Plot to Kill the Dollar and Your Retirement Savings. Help Protect Your Money with Gold & Silver. WORDS OF WISDOM “Life is like an onion; you peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep.” CARL SANDBURG MORNING BRIEF TOP NEWS Government agencies have flip flopped their mandates on masks and lock downs again and again. Hard working small business owners have spent millions of dollars attempting to comply with increasingly difficult mandates, regulations and rules. The resulting fallout is that hard working Americans have suffered immeasurably. But Americans have had enough. We are ready to rebuild and reopen. We want to help rebuild and help America reopen, and that starts with helping one of the industries that was most heavily impacted by all of the lockdowns: restaurants. So in support of the restaurant industry, and in particular your local restaurants , we are offering a $50 restaurant gift card to anyone who signs up for a subscription to The Epoch Times: No strings attached. Cancel anytime. Offer ends August 1st.
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8.) FOX NEWS
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9.) UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
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12.) THE FLIP SIDE
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13.) AXIOS
Axios AM
Happy Thursday! Smart Brevity™ count: 1,165 words … 4½ minutes. Edited by Zachary Basu.
💊 Join Axios’ Caitlin Owens and Sam Baker today at 12:30 p.m. ET for a Vitals “Check-Up” event on social determinants of health. Guests include Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.) and Dr. Mary T. Bassett, director of Harvard’s FXB Center for Health and Human Rights. Register here.
Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios
Never in the history of capitalism have the world’s biggest companies grown as fast as the tech giants, Axios Capital author Felix Salmon writes.
- Why it matters: A series of stunning earnings reports this week underscores the astonishing growth of a group of companies that were already some of the most profitable of all time.
The standard view from Wall Street to Silicon Valley has always been that fast growth is found in startups, while mature companies provide a much more reliable income stream. Today’s tech giants, however, are growing at a pace any entrepreneur would covet.
- As recently as 2017, Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Facebook combined were worth less than $2 trillion. Today, Apple and Microsoft alone are each worth more than that. The five biggest tech giants (including Amazon) are now collectively worth $9.3 trillion.
Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
Despite the Olympics’ heritage as the pinnacle for amateurs, Tokyo 2020 athletes are cashing in on more sponsorship deals than were allowed at past Games, Axios’ Hope King reports.
- Why it matters: Marketing deals are an important income stream for competitors, nearly 60% of whom say they’re not financially stable.
The IOC has gradually loosened restrictions around athlete marketing following years of pressure from Olympians and brands.
- A 1991 rule tried to protect the exclusivity of the Games for official sponsors by prohibiting Olympians from being recognized by non-official Olympic sponsors during a “blackout” period before, during and after the Games.
- Under updated rules, the blackout period has been lifted and Olympic athletes, trainers and officials can now “recognize” or thank personal sponsors during the Games on social media up to seven times. They can also be “recognized” by personal sponsors once.
Even hashtags are defined in official guidelines.
- OK: “Thank you @company for supporting my journey #personalbest #gold.”
- Not OK: “Thank you @company #TeamUSA” or “#Tokyo2020.”
- Axios Olympics Dashboard … In photos: Tokyo Olympics day 6 highlights.
Mike Donilon. Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Mike Donilon, one of President Biden’s closest advisers, argues in a White House memo that swing voters want Congress to embrace solutions where the two parties “meet in the middle,” including the $1.2 trillion infrastructure deal that passed a Senate hurdle yesterday.
- Why it matters: Biden has faced doubters — especially in his own party — about the feasibility of working with Republicans. But a core group of advisers, including Donilon, is convinced the president’s political fortunes rest on his ability to transcend partisanship.
“President Biden ran on the message that we need to bring people together to meet the challenges facing our country and deliver results for working families,” Donilon writes in his 3-page memo.
- “While a lot of pundits have doubted bipartisanship was even possible,” he continues, “the American people have been very clear it is what they want.”
State of play: After months of negotiations, the Senate voted 67-32 yesterday on a procedural measure to move forward on the bipartisan agreement to repair roads, bridges and waterways.
- The actual text still isn’t drafted. The 60 votes needed for final Senate passage aren’t assured.
- The Senate bill would then face an uncertain future in the House.
Read the memo … Share this story.
- Go deeper: 2,100-word White House fact sheet on infrastructure deal, from electric buses to high-speed internet.
🕒 Happening today: President Biden will meet with 11 Democratic lawmakers at the White House to discuss the next steps for a pathway to citizenship for undocumented migrants brought to the U.S. as children, a White House official told Axios’ Stef Kight. Go deeper.
Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Schumer speak before a news conference at the Capitol yesterday to urge action on climate change.
Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
Today is the day everyone can begin buying and selling shares in Robinhood, which goes public on the NYSE after raising $1.89 billion in its initial public offering, Axios’ Dan Primack and Kia Kokalitcheva report.
- Why it matters: Robinhood is a proxy for the rise of retail investing, particularly among younger Americans. But it also has drawn regulatory and political scrutiny, and found itself in the crosshairs after users drove up the price of GameStop stock earlier this year.
The bull case: Robinhood has become synonymous with mobile, no-fee trading of stocks, options and cryptocurrencies. Business is booming.
- Revenue soared more than 300% between the first quarter of 2020 and 2021, hitting $522 million. Annual revenue in 2020 was $959 million, up from just $277 million in 2019.
The bear case: The risk factor section of Robinhood’s IPO filing is a whopping 75 pages long.
- Robinhood is the subject of class action lawsuits tied to this past winter’s meme stock trading frenzy, and regulatory lawsuits over alleged securities law violations.
The bottom line: 2021 has been the year of the retail investor. By this time tomorrow, we’ll know how the market is reacting to that reality.
British actor Michael Caine. Photo: Larry Ellis/Express/Getty Images
Jared Kushner talks to Fox News in the network pavilions on the White House North Lawn last year. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Jared Kushner is in the final stages of launching a Miami-based investment firm, Affinity Partners, with plans for an office in Israel later this year, Reuters reports.
- Kushner helped broker normalization agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco, and had his hand in nearly every major White House portfolio.
- He plans to use the new venture to “pursue regional investments to connect Israel’s economy and India, North Africa and the Gulf,” and has a book about the administration coming out early next year.
Ron Popeil — the TV pitchman and inventor known to generations of viewers for hawking the Veg-O-Matic, the Pocket Fisherman, Mr. Microphone and the Showtime Rotisserie and BBQ — died in L.A. at 86.
- Popeil, whose novel products solved problems viewers didn’t know they had, popularized the vernacular of late-night TV ads and infomercials, AP reports.
- “Now how much would you pay?!” … “Set it and forget it” … “But wait — there’s more!”
Building on an invention of his father’s, the Chop-o-Matic, he marketed the slicing-and-chopping machine he called the Veg-O-Matic, sold by the company he founded and named after himself — Ronco.
- Popeil suffused the 1970s with ads for products including the Popeil Pocket Fisherman — and Mr. Microphone, a then-groundbreaking wireless mic that was amplified through the nearest AM radio.
Dan Aykroyd sent him up on “Saturday Night Live” in 1976 with the “Bass-O-Matic.” (“Without scaling, cutting or gutting!”)
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14.) THE WASHINGTON FREE BEACON
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15.) THE WASHINGTON POST MORNING HEADLINES
16.) THE WASHINGTON TIMES
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17.) THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
18.) ASSOCIATED PRESS
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20.) CHICAGO TRIBUNE
21.) CHICAGO SUNTIMES
22.) THE HILL MORNING REPORT
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23.) THE HILL 12:30 REPORT
24.) ROLL CALL
Morning Headlines
Jake Ellzey’s win in the all-GOP runoff in Texas’ 6th District was a rare victory for a Republican candidate over a Donald Trump-backed opponent. But because of some unique aspects of the race, some GOP strategists have warned against drawing too many conclusions about Trump’s effect on future contests. Read more…
The Senate on Wednesday voted to advance bipartisan infrastructure legislation, capping weeks of late-night negotiations and launching the next step in what has become one of President Joe Biden’s key domestic priorities — even as challenges await the measure in the House. Read more…
For GOP, ‘back the blue’ doesn’t matter when there’s an election to be won
OPINION — Twenty-one House Republicans voted against
‘Sometimes you gotta live it’: Tony Gonzales on why Capitol Hill needs more veterans
Tony Gonzales is new to Congress, but not entirely. While serving in the Navy, he came to Capitol Hill in 2016 as a fellow and was assigned to Sen. Marco Rubio’s office. Rep. Gonzales spoke with CQ Roll Call about his memories from those days and why the Hill needs more staffers with military experience. Read more…
This is the future of remote work on Capitol Hill
While some lawmakers’ offices are already using virtual work as a selling point, the state of virtual work is very much in flux on the Hill. Many staffers are returning to the Hill after working from home during the pandemic, but others say they’re not sure what the future will hold. Read more…
Sinema deals blow to Democrats’ budget reconciliation target
Democratic hopes for a $3.5 trillion reconciliation package this fall dimmed a little Wednesday when Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema said she won’t support a price tag that high. However, the objection she raised likely won’t disrupt the Senate’s more immediate task of adopting a budget resolution before the August recess. Read more…
House Democrats change tack on spending bill floor debate
The House abruptly changed gears on appropriations Wednesday, pivoting off a seven-bill package temporarily to take up three separate bills for the coming fiscal year. The reason for the strategy shift wasn’t immediately clear. Read more…
CQ Roll Call is a part of FiscalNote, the leading technology innovator at the intersection of global business and government. Copyright 2021 CQ Roll Call. All rights reserved Privacy | Safely unsubscribe now.
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25.) POLITICO PLAYBOOK
POLITICO Playbook: McConnell’s Herschel Walker problem
DRIVING THE DAY
Senate Minority Leader MITCH MCCONNELL wants to flip the chamber in 2022. But one potential obstacle keeps coming up time and again: multiple DONALD TRUMP-inspired candidates who might sweep their GOP primaries but go on to lose in the general election.
Take Georgia: While Trump is all but begging NFL legend HERSCHEL WALKER to run against Democratic Sen. RAPHAEL WARNOCK, McConnell views Walker’s complicated personal history as a vulnerability. A recent AP story detailed Walker’s record of threatening and violent behavior — including once allegedly holding a pistol to his then-wife’s head and threatening to “blow [her] f—ing brains out.” (Walker has spoken openly about having dissociative identity disorder.) JOSH HOLMES, the GOP leader’s political right-hand man, tweeted a link to the article, writing: “This is about as comprehensive a takedown as I’ve ever read. My lord.”
But their troubles don’t stop with the Peach State:
— In Missouri, former Gov. ERIC GREITENS is hugging Trump’s big lie about the 2020 election in hopes of winning the GOP nomination for retiring Sen. ROY BLUNT’s seat. But Greitens also has major vulnerabilities: In 2018, he was forced to resign after being accused of sexually assaulting a woman, tying her up and taking nude photos of her in order to blackmail her into silence. (Greitens admitted to an affair, but denied the blackmail accusation.) If he wins the primary, senior Republicans worry that they can kiss goodbye what should be a safe seat.
— In Pennsylvania, Republicans are similarly worried about the crop of GOP hopefuls looking to succeed Sen. PAT TOOMEY. None of the major Republican candidates have ever been elected to public office, and every one of them lags behind the race’s top Democrats in fundraising, as the Philly Inquirer recently reported.
— In Arizona, Democratic Sen. MARK KELLY has a formidable fundraising war chest, and Gov. DOUG DUCEY — the Republican whom folks here in Washington see as most electable — is thus far sitting on the sidelines as the former president vows never to endorse him and several Trumpian Mini-Mes jump into the race.
SO WHAT TO DO? (IF ANYTHING.) HERE’S WHERE IT GETS INTERESTING … Earlier this year, McConnell said he would back candidates who can win, signaling his willingness to put his thumb on the scale in 2022. After the 2010 and 2012 cycles, when GOP candidates like CHRISTINE (“I’M NOT A WITCH”) O’DONNELL and TODD (“LEGITIMATE RAPE”) AKIN spurred national mockery of Republicans, the NRSC started stepping in to boost the strongest GOP candidates and kneecap those who could snag the nomination but tank the party.
But Sen. RICK SCOTT (R-Fla.), who now chairs the NRSC, has been very clear that he has no intention of meddling in 2022’s primaries. Scott, we’re told, remembers his first gubernatorial run in 2010, when the Republican Governors Association backed his primary opponent, BILL MCCOLLUM, over him. Ever since, he has felt strongly that GOP voters should choose whom they want — much to the chagrin of some institutional Republicans.
Defenders of Scott’s hands-off approach argue that wading into primaries simply doesn’t work, and point to the NRSC’s recent history spending a ton of time and money backing people like Georgia Sen. KELLY LOEFFLER over then-Rep. DOUG COLLINS (and losing the seat to Warnock), or Sen. LUTHER STRANGE in Alabama while boxing out MO BROOKS — yet still somehow leaving room for ROY MOORE to clinch the nomination. (Moore, who was accused of sexual molestation, lost the seat to Democrat DOUG JONES.)
“Chairman Scott has made clear that the NRSC will not spend one minute attacking other Republicans,” NRSC spokesperson CHRIS HARTLINE said in a statement. “We’ve focused all of our attention on attacking and defining these radical Democrats from Day 1. And we’re not going to stop.”
That means meeting with candidates like Walker, who we’re told has spoken with Scott multiple times about his interest in running for Senate.
To be fair, all it takes for a GOP majority is flipping one seat. And we could still see McConnell and his political team — which didn’t respond to our requests for comment — get involved where the NRSC doesn’t.
But with such a narrow path, and with the calendar hurtling ever closer to 2022, the whispers among Republicans are growing, and every race that comes into play will cost money and time — making their path to the majority more difficult still.
SCOOP — Our own Alex Isenstadt writes in: GOP Rep. BILLY LONG appears to be teasing a Missouri Senate run with the backing of former senior Trump adviser KELLYANNE CONWAY. Long, who’s been rumored to be a candidate, has sent out an Aug. 11 save-the-date invitation for a “Birthday Celebration and Special Announcement.” Conway is listed as the special guest.
Good Thursday morning, and thanks for reading Playbook. Drop us a line: Rachael Bade, Eugene Daniels, Ryan Lizza, Tara Palmeri.
FIRST IN PLAYBOOK — As Trump continues to expand his post-White House operation, he’s added TAYLOR BUDOWICH as director of comms for Save America, Trump’s PAC. He’ll be joining deputy director of comms MARGO MARTIN and LIZ HARRINGTON, who replaced JASON MILLER as Trump’s new spokesperson.
Budowich previously worked as a senior adviser to DONALD TRUMP JR. and KIMBERLY GUILFOYLE, and as a senior comms advisor to RON DESANTIS’ 2018 Florida gubernatorial campaign.
JOE BIDEN’S THURSDAY:
— 10 a.m.: The president and VP KAMALA HARRIS will receive the President’s Daily Brief.
— 11:45 a.m.: Biden will sign the Dispose Unused Medications and Prescription Opioids Act and the Major Medical Facility Authorization Act of 2021 into law in the Oval Office.
— 1 p.m.: Biden and Harris will receive their weekly economic briefing.
— 4 p.m.: Biden will speak from the East Room about the next steps in vaccinating Americans and tackling the delta variant of Covid-19.
HARRIS’ THURSDAY: The VP and SBA Administrator ISABEL CASILLAS GUZMAN will also take part in a virtual meeting with small business owners to talk about the infrastructure bill and helping small businesses.
Principal deputy press secretary KARINE JEAN-PIERRE will brief at 1 p.m.
THE HOUSE will meet at 10 a.m. Texas state representatives will testify before an Oversight subcommittee on voting rights and restrictions in Texas at 10 a.m. House GOP leaders will hold a presser at 9:45 a.m. to discuss Biden and Speaker NANCY PELOSI’s leadership.
THE SENATE will meet at 10:30 a.m. to resume consideration of the motion to proceed to the INVEST in America Act.
PLAYBOOK READS
INFRASTRUCTURE YEAR
BIDEN’S BIG BIF VICTORY — The coverage: NYT, WSJ, WaPo, CNN … See some details of the package here … Senate Majority Leader CHUCK SCHUMER is doing an early victory lap for his two-track approach, though he has acknowledged that more work — and disagreements — lies ahead. Indeed, the drama isn’t over — which leads us to the next item …
SINEMA’S F-U TO THE LEFT — Sen. KYRSTEN SINEMA (D-Ariz.) threw everyone for a loop Wednesday night when she said she’d vote for the bipartisan infrastructure framework, but opposes the $3.5 trillion Democrats-only reconciliation bill.
The left, as you can imagine, went nuts.
— Rep. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-N.Y.) took to Twitter with a threat to torpedo the BIF if Sinema becomes a problem on reconciliation: “Good luck tanking your own party’s investment on childcare, climate action, and infrastructure while presuming you’ll survive a 3 vote House margin especially after choosing to exclude members of color from negotiations and calling that a ‘bipartisan accomplishment.’”
— Rep. RASHIDA TLAIB (D-Mich.) tweeted a story about a 4-year-old going missing in an Arizona flash flood, and wrote: “Sinema seems not to care that her own state is flooding, the west is burning, and infrastructure around the country is crumbling. Sinema is more interested in gaining GOP friends and blocking much needed resources, than fighting for her residents’ future.”
Remember: Pelosi has a slim margin in the House and is already dealing with a Transportation chair who feels jilted and wants to put his own stamp on the bill.
THE VIEW FROM 1600 PENN — “Biden ignores the ‘shiny objects’ and nears a bipartisan win,” by Laura Barrón-López and Chris Cadelago: “It was, the White House stressed, a testament to the president’s political skill and persistence. Despite constant fits and starts, grumbling from many in his party, and predictions that negotiations would fall apart, Biden refused to give up on working with Republicans.
“‘Maybe I’m an ironic person to say it, but it turns out that [decades’] worth of expertise and relationships and pattern recognition are really helpful to getting a big result like this done,’ Transportation Secretary PETE BUTTIGIEG said in an interview. ‘This was a team that was not distracted, the president was not thrown by the different kind of drama of the day, or the shiny objects.’”
THE WHITE HOUSE
NEW — Following Harris’ trips to Guatemala and the U.S.-Mexico border (and a surge in migrants), the Biden administration is out this morning with a new “Root Causes Strategy” to address the reasons why people flee the Northern Triangle for the U.S.
— It has five pillars: addressing economic inequality; fighting corruption; promoting “respect for human rights, labor rights and free press”; cracking down on violence, gangs and criminal organizations; and fighting gender-based, domestic and sexual violence.
— Harris, in the release: “We will build on what works, and we will pivot away from what does not work. It will not be easy, and progress will not be instantaneous, but we are committed to getting it right.”
POLITICAL JARGON WATCH — “Biden’s new weapon against Covid-19: Don’t call it a mandate,” by Sarah Owermohle, Adam Cancryn, Natasha Korecki and Erin Banco: “The White House is readying its most aggressive action to date on Covid vaccinations. But it’s trying to avoid one word: mandate.
“President Joe Biden is due to issue a directive Thursday requiring some 2 million federal employees to attest they’ve received the shot or submit to weekly testing … The move would avoid the kind of top-down order Biden has resisted using for months to contain the virus. But it would give federal departments and agencies discretion to force certain employees to show proof of vaccination.”
JOE ON THE ROAD — “Biden stays close to home as he plots blue-collar focused presidential travel,” by CNN’s Kevin Liptak: “Biden has embarked upon a relatively limited travel radius inside the United States as president, focusing his visits to states that can be visited in a day and don’t require an overnight stay. Aside from Pennsylvania and Delaware, where he frequently spends weekends, Biden’s top-visited states are Ohio and Michigan …
“[A] pattern has emerged in each of Biden’s trips that underscores his attention toward blue-collar workers. … It also [is] a sign he is hoping to avoid what he’s said was a major mistake during the Obama administration: a failure to sell what the President had accomplished during his first years in office. Visiting swing districts — and even some areas where he lost in the 2020 election — marks a departure from former President Donald Trump, who mostly traveled to places where he was popular and could draw large crowds for his rallies.”
CONGRESS
THE SISYPHUS CAUCUS — “Democrats craft revised voting rights bill, seeking to keep hopes alive in the Senate,” by WaPo’s Mike DeBonis: “Several key senators huddled inside Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer’s office on Wednesday to hash out the details of the bill, which is expected to at least partially incorporate a framework assembled by Sen. JOE MANCHIN (D-W.Va.), who expressed qualms about the previous bill, known as the For the People Act. They emerged saying a new product could be released in a matter of days.”
SETTING DOWN A MARKER — “House passes first $67B in funding bills amid bid to bolster government spending,” by Caitlin Emma and Jennifer Scholtes: “House Democrats passed their first two spending bills Wednesday as the next government shutdown threat looms nine weeks away, an attempt to display unwavering ‘unity’ … The more than $67 billion the bills would provide for federal agencies is a sum far higher than Democrats will be able to pass through the Senate.”
NOMINEE TRAVAILS — “Republicans Threaten to Block Two Biden Nominations Over Russian Nord Stream 2 Pipeline,” WSJ
JAN. 6 AND ITS AFTERMATH
WHAT BENNIE THOMPSON IS PLANNING — “Jan. 6 select-panel Dems confident they can corral ex-Trump aides,” by Andrew Desiderio and Nicholas Wu: “That doesn’t mean they’re close to hauling in big names from the ex-president’s turbulent final days. Lawmakers on the Jan. 6 select committee describe their probe’s reach as still undefined, saying in interviews that they have yet to formalize the confines of an already closely watched and fast-moving investigation. …
“House Democrats are making clear that the select panel’s work won’t simply retrace the steps of others. … The committee is still mulling whether the Republicans on the committee will be able to hire their own staff. … The select committee is likely to pursue former White House officials such as then-chief of staff MARK MEADOWS and other close aides who were with Trump while the Capitol was being attacked on Jan. 6. It’s unclear if the Justice Department’s new guidance would apply to them.”
POLICY CORNER
GIVING PEOPLE MONEY WORKS — “Pandemic Aid Programs Spur a Record Drop in Poverty,” by NYT’s Jason DeParle: “The huge increase in government aid prompted by the coronavirus pandemic will cut poverty nearly in half this year from pre-pandemic levels and push the share of Americans in poverty to the lowest level on record, according to the most comprehensive analysis yet of a vast but temporary expansion of the safety net.
“The number of poor Americans is expected to fall by nearly 20 million from 2018 levels, a decline of almost 45 percent. The country has never cut poverty so much in such a short period of time.”
ANOTHER DELAY FOR MIGRANTS — “White House not planning to lift Covid border restrictions this month,” by Sabrina Rodríguez and Anita Kumar
FED NOT FREAKING OUT — “Fed’s Powell downplays delta variant’s threat to the economy,” AP: “‘What we’ve seen is with successive waves of COVID over the past year and some months now,’ [Fed Chair JEROME] POWELL said at a news conference, ‘there has tended to be less in the way of economic implications from each wave. We will see whether that is the case with the delta variety, but it’s certainly not an unreasonable expectation.’”
PANDEMIC
STARTING A VAX TURNAROUND? — @cyrusshahpar46: “Wednesday just in: +754K doses reported administered over yesterday’s total, including 498K newly vaccinated. This is the highest daily number of newly vaccinated reported since 7/1. >2/3 of eligible (12+) have received at least one dose. Picking up the pace, let’s do this!”
THE LATEST MANDATES — “Cuomo mandates COVID vaccine — or weekly tests — for NY state workers,” N.Y. Post … “Google and Facebook lead the way with Covid-19 vaccine mandates. Will corporate America follow?” Recode
THE UNION SUPPORT — “Federal Worker Unions Back Vaccine Mandates Amid Local Backlash,” Bloomberg
THE UNION RESISTANCE — Reuters’ @davidshepardson: “Postal union @APWUnational opposes mandatory vaccines for federal employees.” Their statement
SHOW, DON’T TELL— “CDC reversal on indoor masking prompts experts to ask, ‘Where’s the data?’” by WaPo’s Joel Achenbach, Yasmeen Abutaleb, Ben Guarino and Carolyn Johnson: “In the text of the updated masking guidance, the agency merely cited ‘CDC COVID-19 Response Team, unpublished data, 2021.’ Some outside scientists have their own message: Show us the data.”
POLITICS ROUNDUP
HILLBILLY WHO? — “J.D. Vance Is Notorious in Washington. In Ohio, Voters Are Still Looking Him Up,” by Sheehan Hannan in London, Ohio, for POLITICO Magazine: “A candidate who built his national brand as a voice of the Appalachian region, and who campaigns as a populist trying to represent salt-of-the-earth Ohio voters, just isn’t all that well-known among those salt-of-the-earth voters yet—at least not as a political candidate. …
“Most voters, with some prompting, possessed a sometimes-vague knowledge (or loathing) of him as someone they had seen on the news, or whose life story had been made into a movie on Netflix. Almost none knew much about him as a politician, and those Republicans that did had learned about him recently from Fox News or directly from his campaign. And to observers here, that makes his chances at a Senate seat look very different than they might look from Washington.”
ANNALS OF INFLUENCE — “Washington’s Oil Lobby Pivoted on Climate Change—and Made No One Happy,” by WSJ’s Timothy Puko and Ted Mann: “[I]n March, the group signaled an about-face. It released its ‘Climate Action Framework,’ a set of new policy prescriptions to lower emissions and support cleaner fuels. The core of the plan called for two policies API had opposed for years: more regulation on methane … and a price on carbon …
“Even by the standards of Washington, it was a remarkable shift. And it made nobody happy. Democrats’ embrace of alternative energy and skepticism of the oil industry continue unchanged. Republican allies, long a bulwark for the industry, feel alienated.”
2020 POST-MORTEM LISTEN — “What the NBC/WSJ poll got wrong in 2020 and what we’re doing to fix it,” the latest episode of NBC’s “The Chuck ToddCast”
TRUMP CARDS
A PERFECT PHONE CALL — “As Trump pushed for probes of 2020 election, he called acting AG Rosen almost daily,” by WaPo’s Josh Dawsey and Devlin Barrett: “The personal pressure campaign, which has not been previously reported, involved repeated phone calls to acting attorney general JEFFREY ROSEN in which Trump raised various allegations he had heard about and asked what the Justice Department was doing about the issue. …
“Rosen told few people about the phone calls, even in his inner circle. But there are notes of some of the calls that were written by a top aide to Rosen, RICHARD DONOGHUE … Donoghue’s notes could be turned over to Congress in a matter of days, they added, if Trump does not file papers in court seeking to block such a handover.”
MORE LIKE THE MINUS TOUCH, AMIRITE — “Texas loss alarms Trump advisers worried about party clout,” by Alex Isenstadt: “[SUSAN WRIGHT’s] loss Tuesday night sent shockwaves through the former president’s inner circle. Many privately concede the pressure is on them to win another special election next week in Ohio …
“More broadly, losses could undermine his standing in the Republican Party, where his popularity and influence has protected Trump’s relevance even as a former president barred from his social media megaphones. Some in the former president’s orbit worry that he’s been too prolific in endorsing candidates running in contested primaries.”
STRANGE BEDFELLOWS — “Anti-Vaxxer Naomi Wolf Joins Trump’s Doomed Tech Suit,” by The Daily Beast’s Adam Rawnsley
PLAYBOOKERS
SPOTTED: Sarah Huckabee Sanders at a Phish show in Arkansas on Wednesday night. We totally get the sunglasses. We too would be embarrassed to be seen at a Phish show. Pic
MEDIA MOVE — Elana Zak will be head of newsletters at POLITICO, a newly created role. She most recently has been senior editor of programming at CNN Business.
STAFFING UP — The White House announced three new nominations: Jainey Bavishi as assistant Commerce secretary for oceans and atmosphere, Chavonda Jacobs-Young as undersecretary of Agriculture for research, education and economics, and Thea Kendler as assistant Commerce secretary for export administration.
FIRST IN PLAYBOOK — Alexis Weiss is joining Walmart as director of technology comms, heading comms for the U.S. tech and core services: retail and emerging technology organizations and based in San Francisco. She most recently has been SVP for corporate and reputation at Edelman, and is an NBC and CNN alum.
TRANSITIONS — David Colberg is now VP of global government affairs and public policy at Alteryx. He most recently was senior director of government affairs at Palo Alto Networks. … Curtis Kincaid is joining the Blockchain Association as director of comms. He previously held strategic comms roles with the Consumer Technology Association.
WELCOME TO THE WORLD — Elizabeth Ellis, director of outreach for the JPMorgan Chase Institute and JPMorgan Chase PolicyCenter, and Brendan English, principal product designer at LearnZillion, welcomed Emma Ellis English on July 4. She joins big brother JD.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) … NBC’s Peter Alexander … White House’s Herbie Ziskend … Ja’Ron Smith of the Center for Advancing Opportunity … Ken Burns … WaPo’s Carol Eisenberg … Sheila Dwyer … Jim Hake of Spirit of America … Kelsey Brugger … CNN’s Kristin Fisher … Rick VanMeter … Laura McGann … Alexah Rogge … Chris Carr … Rob Hennings … Lise Clavel … Katherine Lugar of the American Beverage Association … Tom Kimbis … Laura Nichols … Bloomberg’s Aaron Kessler, Ellie Titus and David Westin …Garance Franke-Ruta … former Reps. Jeff Denham (R-Calif.) and Deborah Pryce (R-Ohio) (7-0) … Caitria Mahoney … Washington Lt. Gov. Denny Heck … Bill Pascoe … former Sens. Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.) and Nancy Kassebaum Baker (R-Kan.) … Marilyn Quayle … POLITICO’s Olivia George … Charles Hoskinson … Lyndsay Polloway of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce … Nathan Sell of the American Cleaning Institute … Nate Rawlings (4-0) … Denver Mayor Michael Hancock … Reuters’ Joanna Plucinska … POLITICO Europe’s Jacopo Barigazzi … Karl Douglass … former Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn
Send Playbookers tips to playbook@politico.com. Playbook couldn’t happen without our editor Mike Zapler, deputy editor Zack Stanton and producers Allie Bice, Eli Okun and Garrett Ross.
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26.) AMERICAN MINUTE
27.) CAFFEINATED THOUGHTS
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28.) CONSERVATIVE DAILY NEWS
29.) PJ MEDIA
30.) WHITE HOUSE DOSSIER
31.) THE DISPATCH
The Morning Dispatch: What’s Taking the FDA So Long on Vaccine Approval?
Plus: How the Delta variant is affecting school reopening plans, and some more movement on Capitol Hill on infrastructure.
The Dispatch Staff | 32 min ago | 2 |
Happy Thursday! The Dispatch’s softball team is getting up off the mat and taking on the U.S. Agency for International Development tonight. They better hope they’ve developed some defense—we’re bringing out the big bats.
Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories
- The Senate voted 67-32 on Wednesday to open debate on a bipartisan infrastructure package that would allocate approximately $550 billion in new federal spending toward roads, bridges, waterways, airports, internet, and more. The full text of the bill is still being written, and final passage is not yet guaranteed.
- United Kingdom officials announced yesterday that fully vaccinated travelers from the United States and European Union will no longer need to quarantine upon arrival to the country, starting August 2. The White House has not reciprocated, keeping in place its ban on most British people entering the United States.
- In an effort to “promote accountability for entities and individuals that have perpetuated the suffering of the Syrian people,” the State Department on Wednesday announced the imposition of sanctions on a handful of Syrian prisons, Assad regime officials, and militia groups/leaders. They are the first new sanctions the Biden administration has imposed on the country.
- A group of bipartisan House lawmakers announced Wednesday that they were forming a new caucus aimed at holding the Chinese government accountable for the genocide it is allegedly perpetrating against the Uyghur people.
The Mystifying Wait for Full Vaccine Approval
We wrote to you yesterday about the growing prevalence of COVID vaccine mandates, a discussion that’s gained steam as the Delta variant rips through the population. Some employers are beginning to require certain workers to get shots, but many institutions are waiting on the Food and Drug Administration to grant the vaccines full approval—rather than the current emergency use authorizations—before doing so. The longer the pandemic lingers, the more public health officials wonder: What the heck is taking so long?
“I can’t explain it,” Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease expert at the University of California San Francisco, told The Dispatch. “It doesn’t even seem like there’s a story that can be written about the reason for the delay, because I don’t think there are any reasons for it.”
To get full authorization from the FDA, Gandhi explained, companies are typically required to show clinical trial data—usually published in a peer reviewed journal—and submit six months of data showing the ongoing effects of their vaccines. When Pfizer and Moderna received emergency approval from the FDA in December 2020—the first time new vaccines had received such an authorization—the second criterion had not yet been met.
“When we went to emergency approval of these vaccines, they had only released their results in November and had only two weeks’ worth of data for some of the participants in their Phase 3 trials,” Gandhi said. “But now we’re past the six months—quite a bit past the six months—for some of those participants, because they started enrolling in July [2020].”
Both Pfizer and Moderna requested full authorization from the FDA earlier this summer. And in a recent essay for the New York Times, Eric Topol, a professor of molecular medicine at The Scripps Research Institute and a former FDA advisor, noted that 180 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine and 133 million of Moderna’s have been administered in the United States.
“In the history of medicine, few if any biologics (vaccines, antibodies, molecules) have had their safety and efficacy scrutinized to this degree,” he wrote. “It’s frankly unfathomable that mRNA vaccines have been proved safe and effective in hundreds of millions of people and yet still have a scarlet ‘E.’”
Delta Disrupts Back-to-School
It’s hard to believe, but the end of the summer is quickly approaching. For your Morning Dispatchers, that will mean welcome relief from the D.C. heat and humidity and a fond farewell to our intrepid interns. For more than 50 million kids across the United States, it will mean going back to school in an educational system that has been profoundly disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
A report released Tuesday by the consulting firm McKinsey & Company underscores the negative effects of “unfinished learning” caused by the pandemic. By the end of the 2020-2021 school year, elementary school kids in grades one through six were “five months behind in mathematics and four months behind in reading” on average, with a disproportionate impact falling on poorer, majority-minority, and urban schools. These setbacks could be permanent, leading to depressed economic productivity and other ill effects years down the road.
Chris Marsicano, an education policy professor at Davidson College who helped develop the Return to Learn tracker at the American Enterprise Institute, told The Dispatch that despite years of research showing that in-person learning is better for students, the “transitions from online K-12 education to hybrid or in-person systems” that happened across the country this past spring still showed “negative trends … relative to previous years in terms of student outcomes, whether they be test scores or grades or what have you.”
Marsicano’s colleague Nat Malkus, an AEI scholar, said “the return to normal school operations will be the best way to get kids sort of back on track—not necessarily caught up, but back on track.”
Unfortunately, normal operations may be further off for many than many had hoped. Earlier this month, the American Academy of Pediatrics updated its COVID-19 guidance for schools, urging universal masking while also “strongly advocating” for in-person learning. This week, the CDC followed suit.
Lucy Lets Charlie Brown Kick the Football on Infrastructure
If you follow politics and Congress closely, you know that accomplishing anything ambitious related to infrastructure has been the source of jokes on Capitol Hill for several years. Many elected officials across the political spectrum have promised to fix roads and bridges, saying it is a topic where Republicans and Democrats hold common ground.
During the Trump years, Democrats repeatedly pointed to infrastructure as a potential area for collaboration with Republicans—only for the two parties to differ dramatically on how much money to spend and how to finance that new spending. Many of those disagreements remained coming into the Biden administration, but a group of bipartisan senators has sought a deal for several months to address traditional infrastructure items including airports, highways, and rail.
After weeks of negotiations with their Democratic colleagues and the White House—and several false starts—a handful of Republicans led by Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio announced outside of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s office that an agreement had finally been reached.
Republicans weren’t the only ones taking a victory lap. “This deal signals to the world that our democracy can function, deliver, and do big things,” President Biden said in a statement. “As we did with the transcontinental railroad and the interstate highway, we will once again transform America and propel us into the future.”
Worth Your Time
- If you enjoy good faith debate and discussion between two people who legitimately disagree, you’ll love this podcast featuring Ross Douthat and Ezra Klein. In it, the pair discuss how serious current threats to the democratic process actually are, how we should think about teaching American history, and why certain populations harbor such distrust for the medical establishment.
- Vladimir Putin’s “regime is growing stronger, despite social discontent over the economy and Western sanctions for its alleged transgressions,” writes Ann Simmons in the Wall Street Journal. The West has exerted some pressure, but Alexei Navalny—the Russian opposition leader who survived an alleged assassination attempt—remains in jail, a sign of the invincibility Putin currently feels. “He doesn’t appear to feel threatened by the opposition or pressure from the U.S. and cares little about appeasing the public,” Simmons notes. “Authorities instead appear willing to use a range of tools to quash any space for organizing street protests or investigating the financial affairs of Mr. Putin and his inner circle.”
Presented Without Comment
Trump starts to tell @jonathanvswan that he lost in #TX06 but then corrects himself axios.com/trump-team-bla…
Toeing the Company Line
- The Wednesday G-File (🔒) is back, and Jonah is angry—at those minimizing the events of January 6, at the CDC’s mask guidance about-face, at the framing of vaccine hesitancy, at anti-vaxxers, at House GOP leadership. “Whether it’s masks or vaccines, people can’t see past their partisan blinders,” he writes. “It’s all so incandescently stupid.”
- On this week’s Dispatch Podcast, the gang breaks down the start of the January 6 select committee—both the substance and the politics—before turning to the CDC’s new masking guidance and Simone Biles’ decision to withdraw from competition at the Olympics.
- Scott Lincicome’s latest Capitolism (🔒) explores the state of economic inequality, why it drives so much of the policy debate in Washington, and how three variables—omitted income, pre-tax/transfer income, and demographics—distort some of the statistics you might have seen. “American income inequality basically disappears when you consider government policies and the actual financial resources (post-tax/transfer) available to the poor and middle class, instead of just the top line of their paychecks,” he writes.
Reporting by Declan Garvey (@declanpgarvey), Andrew Egger (@EggerDC), Charlotte Lawson (@charlotteUVA), Ryan Brown (@RyanP_Brown), Harvest Prude (@HarvestPrude), Tripp Grebe (@tripper_grebe), Emma Rogers (@emw_96), Price St. Clair (@PriceStClair1), Jonathan Chew (@JonathanChew19), and Steve Hayes (@stephenfhayes).
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32.) LEGAL INSURRECTION
33.) THE DAILY WIRE
34.) DESERET NEWS
35.) BRIGHT
36.) AMERICAN THINKER
37.) LARRY J. SABATO’S CRYSTAL BALL
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KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE— Republicans dominate redistricting in a number of small-to-medium-sized states in the Deep South and Greater Appalachia. — The GOP also already holds the lion’s share of seats in these states, but they may be able to squeeze a bit more out of them. — Democrats are hoping the courts could help them salvage an extra seat or two out of these states, while Republicans may aggressively target, most notably, Rep. Jim Cooper (D, TN-5) in Nashville. Redistricting in America, Part TwoIn 1989, newly-minted Republican National Committee Chairman Lee Atwater, fresh off a career-defining victory as President George H. W. Bush’s 1988 campaign manager, addressed the Republican Governors Association. For a political operative who was best known for launching emotionally-charged attacks on opponents, he spent much of his address emphasizing something that, as he put it, was not a “gut issue” to most voters: redistricting. Atwater argued that if Republicans could win more seats in state legislatures, they’d be in a position to get fairer congressional maps — given a “level playing field,” Republicans would have some chance of picking Democrats’ then-34-year lock on the House of Representatives. “If Democrats want votes, Atwater said, “then let them earn votes, not draw them.” To Atwater’s disappointment, Democrats held serve in the 1990 elections. As a result, with redistricting taking place the next year, Republicans only controlled all the levers of redistricting in states covering a paltry five districts. Democrats controlled the drawing of 172, with the remainder in states with divided government, an alternative form of redistricting, or just a single, at-large seat. The Republicans’ problems were most pronounced in the South, where Democrats retained total control in most places. Though Democrats lost control of the House later that decade, they still came up with some durable gerrymanders. Nowadays, it is Democrats who wish that the redistricting playing field was more level, especially in Atwater’s native South. This is the second part of our multi-part Crystal Ball series on congressional redistricting. This week, we’ll be looking at a number of states in the Greater South that voted for Donald Trump by at least double-digit margins. Those are Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia. These states help illustrate how much has changed in the region since Atwater gave that speech roughly three decades ago: Back then, Democrats controlled every state legislative chamber in these nine states; today, Republicans control all of them. However, Republicans did end up catching some breaks in redistricting even back then, thanks to changes made to the federal Voting Rights Act in 1982, which the Bush-era Justice Department used to force the creation of several majority-minority districts across the South. The creation of these districts sometimes had the effect of consolidating heavily Democratic Black voters, which then made surrounding districts whiter and more Republican. As we’ll note in the state-by-state previews, Democrats are at such a low ebb in these states that they would love to squeeze a few more substantially diverse districts out of them, but that very well may not happen. (As we noted last week, this is also the first redistricting cycle since the Supreme Court’s 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision, so many Southern states and other jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination won’t need to obtain federal preclearance for redistricting.) These nine states will have 50 combined House seats in the next Congress, or 11% of the 435 total. Even taking into account the loss of one of their three current seats in West Virginia, Republicans control 43 of these states’ districts, and they are better positioned than the Democrats to gain in the region through redistricting this cycle. What follows is a state-by-state analysis of each state. As part of each state’s description, we include the number of seats each state is slated to have in the 2020s, the current party breakdown in each state, and the breakdown of each state’s delegation elected in 2012 after the last decade’s redistricting process (as a point of comparison to show how the delegation has changed, or not changed, over the course of the decade). We also list the districts that are most overpopulated and most underpopulated, based on the American Community Survey estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau through 2019 as compiled by the website Redistricting and You from the Center for Urban Research at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Remember, though, these are only estimates. The actual census data that will be used to draw districts won’t be out until Aug. 16, and it will be in a format that will in all likelihood take at least several days for political professionals and analysts to put into a usable form. Finally, we list which party controls redistricting, and which party controlled redistricting in the last redistricting round. ALABAMANumber of seats: 7 (no change from 2010s) Party breakdown in 2012: 6-1 R Current party breakdown: 6-1 R Most overpopulated district: AL-5 (Huntsville, Northern Alabama) Most underpopulated district: AL-7 (Black Belt, Birmingham-Montgomery- Who controls redistricting: Republicans 2012 control: Republicans The 2012 Alabama map was perhaps one of the nation’s most understatedly durable gerrymanders. Going into the redistricting process, the Republicans — who had just won control of the state legislature for the first time since Reconstruction — aimed to lock in their gains from 2010. Though the Democrats were down to holding just one of the state’s seven seats, they had held — or made serious attempts at — three other districts during the last decade. Two Republican freshmen were strengthened: then-Rep. Martha Roby (R, AL-2), who had narrowly ousted a Democrat in 2010, saw several Black precincts in Montgomery removed from her Wiregrass-area district, while Rep. Mo Brooks (R, AL-5), up in northern Alabama, lost a few historically Yellow Dog counties (Lawrence and Colbert), and took in more reliably GOP Morgan County. Finally, Rep. Mike Rogers (R, AL-3), who was held to just a 7% win in 2008, relinquished most of his holdings in Montgomery County in favor of picking up heavily GOP St. Clair County. As a result of the Republican map, and the state’s overall trends, 139 of the 140 congressional races that Alabama saw over the course of the decade ended up as double-digit blowouts, with the one exception being an odd case: in 2016, a Republican write-in candidate took 9% of the vote in AL-2, holding Roby to a 49%-41% win. In the one instance where the state did see a competitive statewide race, the districts behaved just as the GOP mappers would have liked: in the 2017 Senate special election, when now-former Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL) beat Republican Roy Moore, a horribly damaged candidate, Jones took nearly 80% in the Black-majority AL-7, but came up short in every other district — had the previous decade’s map been in place, Jones would have claimed two additional seats. One dynamic that helped Republicans in 2012, which will probably aid them again, is that the state’s most underpopulated district is the heavily Democratic AL-7. While about three-quarters of the district’s population comes from a trio of urban counties (Jefferson, which contains the city of Birmingham, as well as Montgomery and Tuscaloosa), it includes much of the state’s portion of the Black Belt — and the rural counties there are losing population. So, to pick up population, it seems likely AL-7 will have to expand further into the Birmingham and Montgomery areas, which should help insulate Republicans in adjacent districts. The state’s quickest-growing district is the northern AL-5, which is now open, as Brooks is running for Senate. Huntsville, the anchor of the district, may actually now be the largest city in the state — its government facilities, specifically the Redstone Arsenal, have drawn high-tech jobs to the area. A quick fix that Republicans may like would be transferring some Democratic precincts in Florence to the neighboring AL-4 — the 4th is now the reddest district in the country based on the 2020 presidential results, and can easily afford to take in bluer turf. Democrats would love for a court to force the drawing of a second majority-Black or Black-voter-influence district, but that does not strike us as particularly likely. Some projections prior to the release of the 2020 census reapportionment numbers suggested that Alabama was likelier than not going to lose a seat, but that did not come to pass; had that happened, Republicans would likely have lost a seat because the Voting Rights Act would have protected Democrats in AL-7. So this is all to say that, given the population and partisan trends in Alabama, Republicans should have little trouble drawing a similar 6-1 map for the next decade. ARKANSASNumber of seats: 4 (no change from 2010s) Party breakdown in 2012: 4-0 R Current party breakdown: 4-0 R Most overpopulated district: AR-3 (Northwest Arkansas) Most underpopulated district: AR-4 (Southern Arkansas) Who controls redistricting: Republicans 2012 control: Democrats Of all the current congressional maps in place, Arkansas’ is probably the closest thing we have to a dummymander. For the first decade of the 2000s, Democrats held three of Arkansas’ four House seats, with the sole Republican, now-Sen. John Boozman (R-AR), representing the ancestrally GOP northwestern corner of the state. Then, ahead of the 2010 election cycle, two entrenched Democrats announced their retirement — in what turned out to be banner GOP year, those seats went on to flip. The good news for Democrats that year was that their third member, then-Rep. Mike Ross (D, AR-4) was not a top GOP target, and, helped by then-Gov. Mike Beebe’s (D-AR) popularity, they kept the legislative trifecta. As legislative Democrats unveiled drafts of congressional plans in 2011, it was clear that they intended to preserve the basic contours of the existing map, with the goal of winning back a 3-1 advantage in the delegation. The problem, though, was that by then, a pro-Republican trend was obvious, so such a split would likely be unsustainable: in 2008, John McCain improved 10% over George W. Bush’s 2004 showing in Arkansas, with many rural counties shifting 20% or more to McCain. Democrats could have linked Little Rock to some heavily Black counties on the Mississippi Delta, which would have given them one reasonably firm district — with Black residents making up just 16% of the state population, a majority-minority seat is not required in Arkansas. When redrawing AR-4, Democrats deferred to the wishes of Ross, but, in something of an about-face, Ross ended up announcing his retirement. Democrats ended up passing a plan where all four districts would have still given McCain easy majorities. If the political fault lines of the early 2000s still shaped voting habits, Arkansas would likely still have three Blue Dogs and one Republican in Congress. Instead, the state continued its rightward trek in 2012: The three incumbent Republicans were reelected, and, without Ross’ incumbency, AR-4 flipped red. Republicans also gained control of the state legislature that year, and have since increased their majorities. So now, holding the pen themselves, Arkansas Republicans are in a curious position: given their monopoly on the delegation, preserving something like the current Democratic-drawn map would probably suit them just fine. The state’s fastest-growing district is AR-3 (where Wal-Mart is headquartered), while Little Rock’s AR-2 also saw growth over the past decade. The two primarily rural districts, AR-1 and AR-4, will have to expand. The shifting border between districts 3 and 4 sums up the state’s population trends well: in 1970, AR-3 stopped just short of the Louisiana border to the south — as the slow-growing 4th has expanded over the past decades, it now comes north, close to the Missouri line. National Democrats were not the only group frustrated by Arkansas redistricting in 2011 — to the chagrin of political analysts, the legislature departed from tradition in that they split several counties between districts (election breakdowns for whole-county districts are easier to tabulate). Iowa and West Virginia are now the only two states with more than one district to feature whole county districts. KENTUCKYNumber of seats: 6 (no change from 2010s) Party breakdown in 2012: 5-1 R Current party breakdown: 5-1 R Most overpopulated district: KY-6 (Greater Lexington) Most underpopulated district: KY-5 (Eastern Kentucky) Who controls redistricting: Republicans 2012 control: Split The emcee at the 2013 Kentucky Democratic Party’s Wendell Ford Dinner asked speakers to be brief. So Rep. John Yarmuth (D, KY-3) started his remarks thusly: “I can be really brief tonight and just say Mitch McConnell sucks.” McConnell, the Senate minority leader who at one time served in a county-level office in Louisville’s Jefferson County, and Yarmuth, who represents Louisville in the House, are longtime antagonists. But McConnell, often the target of Yarmuth’s ire, may end up helping to prolong Yarmuth’s time in the House. Yarmuth’s KY-3 is the only Democratic district in Kentucky. It’s not hard to imagine a hypothetical 6-0 Republican map in Kentucky that chops up Louisville. While Joe Biden carried KY-3 by 22 points, Donald Trump easily won the rest of the state. His smallest congressional district victory was by nine points in the Lexington-based KY-6, held by Rep. Andy Barr (R), who won by a bigger margin than Trump and held off a well-funded challenge from Amy McGrath (D) in 2018 (McGrath would go on to lose to McConnell in a 2020 rout). Trump won the remaining four districts by at least 30 points apiece, and his victory in eastern Kentucky’s KY-5, held by long-time Rep. Hal Rogers (R), was his second-best congressional district in the entire country, behind only the aforementioned AL-4 (based on numbers from Daily Kos Elections). But “McConnell has made it known to mapmakers that he feels Yarmuth’s seat should remain intact, according to people familiar with those conversations,” Politico reported earlier this month. He is joined in this by other members of Kentucky’s congressional delegation, who probably don’t want to see their districts radically changed in order to crack Jefferson County and eliminate Yarmuth’s seat and/or are concerned about a court battle. McConnell may also not want to see his hometown sliced up in redistricting, even if failing to do so allows his rival, Yarmuth, to continue in office (Yarmuth does have a progressive primary challenger as well). Ultimately, Republicans in the state legislature will decide, although the opinion of the congressional delegation likely will have some bearing on what they do. Even though Kentucky has a Democratic governor, Andy Beshear, the Republican-controlled legislature can override his vetoes with a simple majority vote, so this is a Republican-run state when it comes to redistricting. It may be that not much changes on the Kentucky congressional map, which would be in keeping with what happened after 2000 and 2010 redistricting. Republicans could solidify their 5-1 hold on the map by strengthening GOP numbers in Barr’s district, although he may not necessarily need too much help given that he survived in 2018. LOUISIANANumber of seats: 6 (no change from 2010s) Party breakdown in 2012: 5-1 R Current party breakdown: 5-1 R Most overpopulated district: LA-1 (Suburban New Orleans) Most underpopulated district: LA-5 (Northern Louisiana) Who controls redistricting: Split 2012 control: Republicans For Louisiana Republicans, the 2011 redistricting process was what the Washington Post described as a “cruel mistress.” In the early years of the 2000s, Louisiana was seeing stagnant population growth — then, in 2005, Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans, displacing thousands of residents. Though Louisiana may still have lost representation in the 2010 census anyway (the state has not seen truly robust population growth since the 1970s), the storm’s impact made downsizing an inevitability. In the state’s congressional delegation, Republicans, who could claim a state governmental trifecta in the state for the first time since Reconstruction, held all but one seat: the state’s Black-majority 2nd District, which was protected by the Voting Rights Act. As a result, a Republican-leaning seat would need to be cut. Ultimately, then-freshman Rep. Jeff Landry (R, LA-3), a Tea Party conservative who is now the state’s attorney general, was thrown into a district that favored four-term Rep. Charles Boustany (R, LA-7), an ally of then-Speaker John Boehner (R, OH-8). Boustany ultimately won an intraparty runoff in the new seat by a 61%-39% margin. One lesson of the Boustany/Landry showdown that will probably be relevant this cycle is that, though party loyalties matter, the first goal of most politicians is self-preservation. During redistricting negotiations, the Lafayette-based Boustany would not relinquish Calcasieu Parish (Lake Charles). This was, geographically, the parish farthest away from Landry’s LA-3, so as long as Boustany retained Calcasieu, any new version of his district would likely include much familiar turf. When it looked like some legislative Republicans had other ideas, Boustany threatened to help Democrats pass a plan, though his fellow partisans eventually appeased him. This cycle, with the state retaining six districts, congressional downsizing won’t generate any redistricting-related drama. Instead, the main source of conflict may come from the governor’s chair: Louisiana is the only state in this group where a Democratic governor might be able to sustain a veto of a GOP-passed map. Though he could well end up signing off on what the legislature comes up with, many Democrats have urged Gov. John Bel Edwards (D-LA) to insist that a second Black-majority seat be drawn. As the state is roughly one-third Black, Democrats argue that two minority-influence seats would better reflect the state’s population. Republicans are just short of a supermajority in the legislature — if Edwards vetoes one of their maps, GOP legislators would need help from a few non-Republicans in the state House to override him. If Edwards and the Republicans can’t agree on a plan, the process will get kicked to the courts, where Edwards (and Democrats) could make the case for more favorable maps. Map 1 shows a minimal change plan, and then a potential plan with two Black-majority districts. Map 1: Hypothetical Louisiana redistricting mapsAfter the 2010 census, LA-2, which had long been a New Orleans-area seat, was the least populous district in the country — as many of its low-income neighborhoods bore the brunt of Hurricane Katrina’s flooding, its population was down to fewer than 500,000 residents by the end of the decade. To retain its Black-majority status, LA-2 followed the Mississippi River up to Baton Rouge, where it takes most of the state capital’s minority-heavy precincts. As New Orleans has repopulated since 2010, LA-2 sheds a few western precincts, but sees little change. House Minority Whip Steve Scalise’s LA-1 likewise loses a few peripheral precincts, but its focus is still the wealthy New Orleans suburbs, and it holds some swaths of coastal wetlands. On the right image, a second Black-majority seat is added, running from Baton Rouge up to Shreveport. Though Louisiana had a district with a similar purpose in the early 1990s, the proposed new map is considerably more compact — in fact, this draft only splits seven parishes, down from the current plan’s 15. LA-2, which is knocked down to 53% Black (the existing district is just over 60% Black), would have still given President Biden 68% in 2020, as white New Orleans liberals often vote with minorities for Democrats. But the new LA-4, which has more of a rural component, would be a racially polarized seat: though it should usually lean Democratic, Biden received 55% in this 54% Black seat. In this scenario, Reps. Letlow and Mike Johnson (R, LA-4) would likely run in the new LA-5, or one may retire. Though a minimum change map seems the more likely outcome, Republicans would, at worst, retain a 4-2 edge in the Louisiana delegation. MISSISSIPPINumber of seats: 4 (no change from 2010s) Party breakdown in 2012: 3-1 R Current party breakdown: 3-1 R Most overpopulated district: MS-4 (Gulf coast) Most underpopulated district: MS-2 (Jackson/Delta) Who controls redistricting: Republicans 2012 control: Split Mississippi, with its four districts, may be one of the more uneventful redistrictings of this cycle. In 2011, with a Republican state Senate and a Democratic state House, legislators couldn’t agree on a plan. When a panel of three federal judges stepped in, they produced a plan largely similar to the existing map. Though Republicans control the process this cycle, there may likewise be little appetite for major changes. To start, Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson’s 2nd District is protected by the Voting Rights Act. Two-thirds Black by composition, it includes much of the Delta region, and almost all of Jackson’s Hinds County. Due to population losses in the rural areas, MS-2 will need to pick up about 50,000 residents; reaching further down the Louisiana border to take in the trio of Adams, Franklin, and Wilkinson counties would basically accomplish this, along with some minor tweaks in the Jackson area. Assuming the changes to MS-2 are minimal, the other three districts should be fairly straightforward. The most overpopulated district is MS-4, which has seen an influx of residents to its Gulf Coast communities. MS-4 routinely gives Republican presidential nominees close to 70% of the vote. Moving north, MS-3 is a wide swath of central Mississippi. Rankin County, a solidly red county that includes parts of suburban Jackson, is MS-3’s most populous county, though it only accounts for 20% of the district population — the balance comes from about 20 counties that are generally more rural. Lastly, MS-1 is essentially coterminous with the northeastern corner of the state. Though MS-1 is the state’s second most Republican district (after MS-4), some of its counties are exhibiting divergent trends. Though DeSoto County, which borders Memphis, TN and is growing more suburban, still gave Trump 61% last year, it saw a 10% swing to Biden — the largest shift, in either direction, in the state. A few miles to the east, Benton County, which is 35% Black, was a rare county that flipped from McCain in 2008 to Obama in 2012. That Trump then carried it by double-digits in both 2016 and 2020 shows the struggles that Democrats have faced in parts of the post-Obama South. While it’s possible to draw two majority-minority districts in Mississippi, any reasonably clean iterations of such districts would only be slightly above 50% Black. Given the highly polarized racial patterns in Mississippi, in a bad year for Democrats, the minority-backed candidate may not be guaranteed victory. It is also questionable whether Thompson would be on board with taking on a significantly more competitive seat, and the Republicans who control the process wouldn’t want to do that anyway. OKLAHOMANumber of seats: 5 (no change from 2010s) Party breakdown in 2012: 5-0 R Current party breakdown: 5-0 R Most overpopulated district: OK-5 (Oklahoma City) Most underpopulated district: OK-2 (Eastern Oklahoma) Who controls redistricting: Republicans 2012 control: Republicans Only two of Oklahoma’s five seats changed hands over the last decade, but they are emblematic of national trends: namely, Democratic problems in rural districts they used to win, and Republican problems in urban/suburban districts that used to be more Republican than they are now. In post-2010 redistricting, the Republicans who controlled the process made only small changes to the state’s five districts. That included then-Rep. Dan Boren’s (D) OK-2, which covers eastern Oklahoma, including the state’s southeast corner along the Texas and Arkansas borders, a region called “Little Dixie.” Boren’s family connections — his father, David, served as governor and U.S. senator — as well as a lingering ancestral Democratic tradition in his district allowed him to win easily even in 2010, despite the district voting for John McCain in 2008 by a two-to-one margin. But Boren, at just age 37, retired in 2011, just a few months after the new map came out, and Republicans easily won OK-2 in all five elections held under the post-2010 map. Meanwhile, Republicans’ urban/suburban problems under Donald Trump became so bad in 2018 that they lost the Oklahoma City-based OK-5 in what was perhaps the Democrats’ most surprising victory that year. Kendra Horn (D), helped by a late infusion of cash from Michael Bloomberg, seemed to catch then-Rep. Steve Russell (R) by surprise. But now-Rep. Stephanie Bice (R, OK-5) restored Republican order in the district, beating Horn by four points. Still, there is a clear Democratic trend in the district: Mitt Romney won it by 18 points, but that margin fell to 14 for Donald Trump in 2016 and just five in 2020. So one would assume that Republicans, who control redistricting, will attempt to modify OK-5 to prevent it from falling into Democratic hands this decade. The current OK-5 contains most, but not all, of Oklahoma City’s Oklahoma County, which came within about a point of voting for Biden. That the county stuck with Trump meant that, for the fifth straight presidential election, Republicans won every county in Oklahoma. Trump won every other district in the state by at least 20 points or more, so it wouldn’t be hard to strengthen the GOP in OK-5 at the expense of some surrounding areas. SOUTH CAROLINANumber of seats: 7 (no change from 2010s) Party breakdown in 2012: 6-1 R Current party breakdown: 6-1 R Most overpopulated district: SC-1 (Charleston suburbs) Most underpopulated district: SC-6 (Charleston/Columbia/Black Belt) Who controls redistricting: Republicans 2012 control: Republicans Since the 1990 census, either of the Carolinas has gained a district: after two consecutive rounds, 1990 and 2000, of adding seats, North Carolina remained stagnant at 13 districts after 2010 (but the state is adding a 14th seat for the 2020s), while South Carolina jumped from 6 to 7 last decade. The question of the new seat’s placement led to a more dramatic redistricting than usual in South Carolina, despite total Republican control of the process. Essentially, while the state House placed the new 7th seat in the Pee Dee River Basin, the state Senate plan placed it south of Charleston. The result was a compromise that tracked closer to the House plan, and legislators had the goal of a 6-1 Republican delegation. For most of the decade, the map worked as intended. The 1st District, which hugs coastal communities around Charleston, was the only district to see partisan turnover. In 2018, when pro-Trump Republicans in the 1st District primaried out Rep. Mark Sanford (a former governor who had also represented SC-1 in the 1990s), Democrats snagged the seat with Joe Cunningham. In 2020, though Trump’s margin dropped from 53%-41% to 52%-46%, Cunningham narrowly lost to now-Rep. Nancy Mace. While Mace initially showed some of Sanford’s independence, she has since seemed more of a mainstream Republican. In any case, Mace may benefit from the state’s population trends: her SC-1, the most populated district, is adjacent to SC-6, the least populated. The 6th District has sent now-Democratic Majority Whip Jim Clyburn to Congress ever since it became a Black-majority seat, in 1992, and it will need to pick up tens of thousands of residents. The 6th could easily grab some Democratic-leaning Charleston precincts in SC-1, which would push the latter seat a few points to the right. Though both seats are currently held by Republicans, a similar tradeoff could take place between districts 3 and 4 in Upstate South Carolina. SC-4, which is the Greenville-Spartanburg area, has gotten smaller (geographically) over the last several decades, and it could simply transfer more of its Greenville County precincts to SC-3, a rural seat which needs to gain population. The districts in between Lowcountry and Upstate may not see many changes: all three are already within two percentage points of the ideal district population and each is reliably red, although the 2nd, held by Rep. Joe Wilson (R), could perhaps be strengthened as it became a little less Republican over the course of the decade. TENNESSEENumber of seats: 9 (no change from 2010s) Party breakdown in 2012: 7-2 R Current party breakdown: 7-2 R Most overpopulated district: TN-4 (South-Central Tennessee) Most underpopulated district: TN-9 (Memphis) Who controls redistricting: Republicans 2012 control: Republicans Going into the 2011 redistricting process, Republicans were riding high in Tennessee. In 2010, they picked up the governorship and turned a 5-4 Democratic majority in the congressional delegation to a solid 7-2 GOP advantage. Importantly, the three seats that Republicans gained seemed solid: they’d all given McCain double-digit wins in 2008, and the GOP freshmen were replacing entrenched Democrats, whose appeal would be hard for future Democratic challengers to replicate. So with Republicans’ existing edge in the delegation, the 2011 redistricting in Tennessee was in large part driven by incumbent, not partisan, considerations. For example, then-Rep. Diane Black (R, TN-6) won her 2010 primary with a 31% plurality — it was not surprising when Rutherford County, where her two main primary opponents fared well, was removed from the district. Though Tennessee Republicans ended up passing a map that preserved their comfortable 7-2 advantage, more aggressive options were considered. While Memphis’ TN-9 is heavily Black (radically altering it would have surely result in court challenges), Nashville’s TN-5, which is white-majority, emerged as a possible target. Currently, the three districts that surround TN-5 are all ruby red (each gave Trump at least 67% in 2020), so it would not be hard to dilute Democratic votes in Nashville by splitting them up among several districts. In Map 2, Davidson County is split among four districts — the most Democratic of these seats is TN-5, which would have given Trump 57% both times he was on the general election ballot. We used the Cumberland River, which bisects Nashville, as something of a natural guide, but the are many ways to crack the county. Map 2: Hypothetical pro-Republican gerrymander of TennesseeFrom a demographic perspective, many of the state’s fast-growing counties form a crescent around Nashville: Sumner and Wilson counties are in TN-6, Rutherford was moved into TN-4 for 2012, and Williamson County, the state’s wealthiest and most college-educated county, has been in TN-7 since 2002. A decade ago, those four counties had 720,000 residents, or just over the population of a single district — they now claim 860,000 residents, which is 115,000 over the ideal district population. On the other extreme, TN-9 has seen the slowest growth, and needs to add roughly 60,000 people — it will likely pick up some suburban Memphis precincts from TN-8, but it should still be around 65% Black. TN-8, which takes in West Tennessee, was amenable to Democrats 15 years ago, but is now a safely red seat, and it probably won’t change as much as the Nashville-area districts. The only two counties east of the Nashville area where Joe Biden cracked even 40% of the vote were Knox (Knoxville) and Hamilton (Chattanooga); they anchor TN-2 and TN-3, respectively. While those counties have seen some pro-Democratic trends, both districts contain a handful of deeply red rural counties, so Republicans should feel secure in each. Finally, TN-1 will likely see minimal changes — it’s been nestled in the northeastern corner of the state for essentially the state’s entire history and last elected a Democrat in 1878. WEST VIRGINIANumber of seats: 2 (down 1 from 2010s) Party breakdown in 2012: 2-1 R Current party breakdown: 3-0 R Most overpopulated district: WV-2 (Charleston/Eastern Panhandle) Most underpopulated district: WV-3 (Southern coalfields) Who controls redistricting: Republicans 2012 control: Democrats In 1952, when voters in a Charleston-area district first sent Robert Byrd to Congress, he was part of the state’s six-member House delegation. Six years later, Byrd made the jump to the Senate, where he’d serve for more than half a century. While Byrd used his clout to steer resources to the state, demographic trends have not been kind to West Virginia: today, some counties in the state’s southern coalfields claim less than half of their 1950 populations. At the start of the next Congress, the Mountain State will be down to just two seats in the House. Even worse for Republicans, who have full control of state government for the first census since the Hoover Administration, is that one of their own members will have to go — they hold all three of the state’s seats. Though Democrats, who had a government trifecta in 2011, considered some creative plans last cycle, they ultimately took a minimal change approach. In what was dubbed the “Mason County flip,” just one county on the entire map changed districts (Mason County was moved out of WV-2 and into WV-3). West Virginia has always kept counties whole. In a ruling that defined the state’s 2011 redistricting outcome, the U.S. Supreme Court maintained that, in the interest of keeping counties whole, a greater-than desirable population deviation between districts is permissible. There are several combinations of whole counties that could produce two districts. Since 1992, the most awkward district on the map has undoubtedly been the 2nd District, which includes both the Charleston metro area and the Eastern Panhandle. As the Washington, D.C. suburbs have spilled into the panhandle, the two extremes of WV-2 have become increasingly dissimilar. An obvious fix would be to essentially split WV-2 in two. WV-2’s panhandle could easily be given to WV-1, which is based in Morgantown and includes the state’s Northern Panhandle, while Charleston’s Kanawha County would be grouped with the southern coalfields, which make up the current WV-3. Though Rep. Alex Mooney (R, WV-2) has a base in the Eastern Panhandle (before his time in Congress, he served in Maryland’s legislature) and would probably prefer an east-west configuration, the state’s cultural, and political, lines seem to fall on more of a north-against-south axis. Regardless of which Republicans are bunked together, West Virginia is so red these days that virtually any two districts there would both vote safely Republican. ConclusionIn this Republican-dominated group of states, the GOP could get even stronger, most likely by the dismantling of Democratic-held TN-5 in Nashville. Other than that, the GOP could shore up some of the seats that got more competitive over the course of the last decade, like OK-5 and SC-1. Squeezing a second seat out of Louisiana through Gov. Edwards’ veto pen and/or court action is probably the Democrats’ best chance to get a new seat in these states next year. It seems possible that whatever the outcome in these seats are in 2022 could last the entire decade given the region’s overall lack of competitiveness, but, of course, political trends could upset some of the maps there. Read the fine printLearn more about the Crystal Ball and find out how to contact us here. Sign up to receive Crystal Ball e-mails like this one delivered straight to your inbox. Use caution with Sabato’s Crystal Ball, and remember: “He who lives by the Crystal Ball ends up eating ground glass!” |
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38.) THE BLAZE
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48.) NBC MORNING RUNDOWN
THURSDAY, JULY 29, 2021
Good morning, NBC News readers.
Covid vaccine mandates are becoming increasingly common across the country, the U.S. continues to haul in the medals at the Olympics, while the rise in Covid cases in Tokyo looms over the Games.
Here’s the latest on that and everything else we’re watching this Thursday morning.
If people won’t get a Covid vaccine, federal and state employers, as well as some private businesses, are edging closer to requiring workers to get one.
Spooked by the intensifying resurgence of Covid, such measures should help drive down infections and jump-start stalling immunization rates, health and legal experts say.
“Every little bit helps,” Dr. Aaron Carroll, the chief health officer of Indiana University who has written about the efficacy of vaccine mandates, said Wednesday.
“The reason mandates work is because they’re nudges. If we make the default ‘Don’t be vaccinated,’ then a lot of people simply won’t.”
Almost 58 percent of people in the United States 12 and older are fully vaccinated against Covid-19, according to federal health data, although the rate has slowed significantly since April, when more than 3 million shots were being administered a day.
Read the full story here.
In other Covid news this morning:
Thursday’s top stories By Corky Siemaszko in Tokyo | Read more One of the United States’ best hopes for track and field gold was forced out of the Olympics on Thursday as Covid-19 spread chaos through the athletes’ ranks just as events were about to get underway.
Sam Kendricks’ positive test result was an unwelcome reminder of the virus’ threat to the Games.
Elsewhere in Olympics news this morning:
By Josh Lederman | Read more The nation’s aging power grid and burgeoning clean energy sector are set to get major boosts under a $550 billion bipartisan infrastructure deal reached by the Senate and the White House.
The White House also announced Wednesday that its “once-in-a-generation investment in our infrastructure” would include a part dedicated to improving Americans’ access to the internet. By Dan De Luce and Veronika Melkozerova | Read more Frustrated with Washington, Ukraine is cutting deals with a rival superpower, inviting China to build infrastructure while holding back criticism of Beijing’s human rights record. OPINION By W. James Antle III | Read more The terror of Jan. 6 was sufficiently bad to require no embellishment or inapt comparisons to past atrocities, write the political editor of the Washington Examiner. By Rachana Pradhan | Read more Under a law Congress passed last year, many surprise medical bills will be banned starting in January. But urgent care clinics may not be covered. BETTER By Kait Hanson | Read more What does it take to power an Olympian? If you’re Katie Ledecky — lots of practice and protein.
Want to receive the Morning Rundown in your inbox? Sign up here.
Also in the news …
A doctor and two hair stylists recommend the best clarifying shampoos for various hair types and needs, including fine hair, curly hair and dry hair.a
One fun thing What do you do when your daughter aspires to be an Olympic gymnast but you can’t afford a balance beam?
If you’re Sunisa “Suni” Lee’s dad John, you build one.
“She goes to the gym and she practices but we don’t have a beam here. So I couldn’t afford a real beam, so I built her one,” he told the “TODAY” show.
It paid off: the 18-year-old gymnast celebrated winning silver with the U.S. women’s gymnastics team on Tuesday, and she’s going for individual gold this morning.
And the balance beam? It’s still in the family’s backyard.
Read the story and watch the video here.
Thanks for reading the Morning Rundown.
If you have any comments — likes, dislikes — send me an email at: patrick.smith@nbcuni.com.
Thanks, Patrick Smith
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62.) 1440 DAILY DIGEST
No images? Click here Good morning. It’s Thursday, July 29, and we’re covering the emerging infrastructure deal, a major fossil find, and much more. Have feedback? Let us know at hello@join1440.com. First time reading? Sign up here. NEED TO KNOWBreaking news: A tsunami alert was issued for the Alaskan coast this morning after an 8.2-magnitude earthquake struck just off the state’s southwestern peninsula. Infrastructure DealA bipartisan group of senators announced yesterday an agreement on the top-level details of a broad-ranging physical infrastructure package. Led by Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) and White House officials, the legislation cleared a procedural vote last night by a 67-32 vote. The deal would cost $974B over five years, about $579B of which would be new spending. Early reports suggest $312B of the new spending will fund transportation projects like roads and bridges ($110B), mass transit ($39B), electric vehicle infrastructure ($7.5B), and more. The other tranche of money would fund power grid upgrades ($73B), broadband internet infrastructure ($65B), and water infrastructure ($55B), among other items. The package is separate from the Biden administration’s $3.5T “human” infrastructure plan, a bill Democrats are expected to try to pass via a party-line budget reconciliation vote in the coming weeks. Earth’s Oldest Animal Fossils Geologists may have found the oldest animal fossils discovered to date, according to results published yesterday. The specimen, believed to be the remains of an ancient sponge, was uncovered in Canada’s remote Northwest Territories—a region that was a rich marine ecosystem roughly a billion years ago. The find is more than 300 million years older than the current earliest confirmed sponge fossil. If confirmed, the 890-million-year-old fossil would suggest prehistoric animals arose before conditions on Earth were considered hospitable to complex life (see timeline). It would also mark the first direct evidence of animal life prior to an oxygenation event that culminated roughly 540 million years ago and led to an explosion in animal diversity. While animals evolved relatively recently (in geological terms), bacteria have been around much longer—the oldest-known bacterial fossil has been dated to 3.5 billion years ago. Vaccine and Testing MandatesNew York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) announced yesterday New York state employees must either be vaccinated against COVID-19 by next month or undergo mandatory weekly testing for the virus. The announcement followed a similar decision by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) regarding city workers. Cuomo also said patient-facing healthcare workers in state-run facilities must be vaccinated. At the federal level, President Joe Biden is expected to announce a requirement that roughly 2 million civilian federal employees receive COVID-19 vaccinations or submit to similar testing measures. In the private sector, Google delayed a return to in-person work until October and said all on-campus employees must be vaccinated. New US COVID-19 cases continue to rise, with the current average at 63,000 new cases per day (see data). Daily deaths have risen at a slower pace, currently hovering near 300 per day. Overseas, the United Kingdom said vaccinated travelers from the US and European Union may enter the country without quarantine. To the surprise of health officials, cases in the UK have made a sharp decline over the past two weeks. In partnership with The Motley FoolSELF-DRIVING REVOLUTIONThe Motley Fool aims to invest on the cutting-edge of big tech shifts: 5G, streaming, e-commerce, you name it. And what better tech shift to cover today than the advent of self-driving cars? Their team has identified one stock with a huge opportunity in the self-driving revolution. But as the technology becomes more mainstream, the potential returns become less exciting. And after a recent feature on ABC’s “Shark Tank” (leading to one of the program’s biggest-ever investments), this technology could become commonplace before we know it. So in the spirit of beating the crowds to massive potential returns, The Motley Fool has released a new report titled “One Stock for the Self-Driving Revolution.” Learn about this exciting technology and why The Motley Fool’s analysts recommend you invest in the company behind it. Access the report today, included in Stock Advisor membership. Please support our sponsors! IN THE KNOWSports, Entertainment, & CultureBrought to you by The Ascent > Olympics: US women win gold in Olympic debut of 3-on-3 basketball (More) | See predictions for track and field competition, beginning tonight (More) | See complete schedule of today’s events (More) | Updated medal count (More) > Dusty Hill, Rock and Roll Hall of Famer and founding member of ZZ Top, dies at 72 (More) | Iconic infomercial pitchman Ron Popeil dies at 86 (More) > The 2021 NBA Draft will be held in-person tonight (8 pm ET, ABC/ESPN) from Barclays Center in Brooklyn (More) | See complete two-round mock draft (More) From our partners: $607 in your first year? This no-annual-fee credit card offers a sign-up bonus worth up to $200 after spending $500 in your first three months with this card and competitive cash back, valued at $407 (or more) by The Ascent’s credit card experts. Apply in minutes today. Science & Technology> Astronomers make first observation of light originating from behind a black hole; predicted by Einstein’s general theory of relativity, the black hole warps space-time such that traveling light bends all the way around it (More) > France suspends prion research after second lab worker is diagnosed with a fatal brain disease (More) | Read more about the infectious misfolded proteins (More) > Scientists turn pure water metallic by dropping a thin layer onto liquid alloy droplets; pure water also behaves as a metal under extreme pressure, such as at the center of large planets (More) Business & Markets> Federal Reserve holds interest rates near zero, states the US economy continues to grow despite pandemic worries (More) > Facebook tops revenue and earnings expectations, but warns Apple iOS updates limiting ad targeting could negatively impact future earnings; shares down 3% in after-hours trading (More) | Robinhood prices initial public offering at $38 per share, raising near $2B and valuing the free stock trading company at approximately $32B; will start trading on Nasdaq today (More) > Boeing posts quarterly profit after six consecutive unprofitable quarters; revenues grow as airplane deliveries return following pandemic-induced travel slowdown (More) Politics & World Affairs> Line of near-hurricane force storms moves through Chicago and Midwestern states this morning (More) | More than 30 million people in the central US under heat emergency (More) > Chinese officials reportedly meet with Taliban leaders; analysts say the move is an effort to fill the power vacuum left by the US withdrawal (More) > Wisconsin judge finds probable cause to charge former police officer Joseph Mensah in the 2016 shooting of Jay Anderson Jr.; decision overrules prosecutors who previously found Mensah acted in self-defense (More) IN-DEPTH‘Take Him to the River’AP News | Jason Dearen. A foiled 2015 murder plot revealed insight into the nature and operations of a modern Ku Klux Klan cell. (Read) A History of GymnasticsSmithsonian Mag | Meilan Solly. Tracing the dramatic evolution of the sport from its roots in ancient Greece to the 2020 Olympics. (Read) SHARK TANK AGREESIn partnership with The Motley Fool Recently, an exciting new technology was pitched on ABC’s “Shark Tank” … and the sharks ate it up. Seeing its immense potential in the self-driving vehicle space, one investor made one of the biggest investments in the show’s history. And The Motley Fool thinks this technology will soon go mainstream. They’ve created a report, “One Stock for the Self-Driving Revolution,” to help Stock Advisor members make sense of this technology. Read it today. Please support our sponsors! ETCETERASix takeaways on the state of the news media. Simone Biles said she got the “twisties”—what does that mean? When you find a $39M lotto ticket lost in your purse. Scientists create a magnet just one atom thick. Watch Cassie the Robot run a 5K. Another beautiful clip of a powerful microburst. Cartoonify yourself for your next Zoom call. A mind-boggling audio hallucination. Clickbait: Find happiness by contemplating death. Historybook: Italian dictator Benito Mussolini born (1883); RIP Vincent van Gogh (1890); NASA is established (1958); 750 million people worldwide watch wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana (1981); RIP Nobel Prize-winning chemist Dorothy Hodgkin (1994). “I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.” – Vincent van Gogh Enjoy reading? Forward this email to a friend.Why 1440? The printing press was invented in the year 1440, spreading knowledge to the masses and changing the course of history. Guess what else? There are 1,440 minutes in a day and every one is precious. 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73.) POPULIST PRESS
The truth behind the cop who testified about Jan 6 Trump supporters has been exposed
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California Sec. Of State Candidate Proves Trump Won
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Bad News For COVID Vaccinated
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Democrats Freak Out After Learning What Jim Jordan Did on Jan 6
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TRUTH Behind Capitol Cop Who Testified Trump Supporters were Chanting the “N-Word”
- GOP Rep. Jordan Goes Public, Reveals Why Pelosi Blocked His Appointment
- Nancy Pelosi on Her Last Legs, Could Be Out Soon
- Republican Exposes Biden for ‘Dangerous’ Decision
- Top Audit Official May Have to Resign After Explosive Discovery
- ALERT: Special Election Results Are Officially In
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IN DEPTH:
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82.) CNN
Thursday 07.29.21 Several key Covid relief projects are ending soon, which could leave millions with renewed financial risks including housing issues, unemployment, student loan payments and more. Here’s what else you need to know to Get Up to Speed and On With Your Day. Infrastructure
A bipartisan group of senators have reached an agreement on key points related to a massive infrastructure package. The Senate also voted to open debate on the plan, with 17 Republicans joining Democrats in voting to do so. The measure includes money for roads, bridges and public transportation, and while it falls far short of President Joe Biden’s initial $2.25 trillion proposal, Biden is still touting it. This bill falls more around the $1 trillion mark, with about $550 billion in new federal investments in America’s infrastructure. The bipartisan breakthroughs yesterday may move the plan forward, but only by a matter of inches. Many Republicans, and progressive Democrats who want more from the bill, could still bog down any significant movement.
Coronavirus
Mask mandates. Postponed events. Full emergency rooms. Signs of the difficult early days of the pandemic are reemerging, and some experts say stricter vaccination compulsions may be the best way to prevent a full downward spiral. The US House is reinstating its mask mandate, prompting some conservatives to push back. White House officials are also preparing to enact Biden’s decision to require federal employees to get vaccinated. The CDC estimates only 49.3% of the US population is fully vaccinated — a far cry from the 70% to 85% that experts have estimated would be needed to slow or stop the spread of the virus. In all, 49 states are seeing a surge in cases. Capitol riot
Responses to the January 6 insurrection are shifting into a new gear after Tuesday’s emotional hearing featuring police officers who were on duty the day of the attack. That same day, the top Democrat and Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee announced a deal on a roughly $2 billion spending bill to enhance Capitol security. Investigators on the House’s January 6 select committee have vowed a deep dive into the attack, and are preparing for a battle over subpoena requests and other legal snarls. This week, the Biden Justice Department formally declined to assert executive privilege over testimony related to the incident, which means DOJ employees can provide “unrestricted testimony.” Afghanistan
Chinese officials met with senior leaders of the Taliban in China yesterday, reinforcing a growing relationship between Beijing and the resurgent Islamist group. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi described the Taliban as an important military and political force in Afghanistan, and said China expects the group to play a big role in the country’s “peace, reconciliation and reconstruction process.” The Taliban’s influence has rapidly expanded as the US nears the end of its military withdrawal from Afghanistan, stoking fears of more instability and violence to come. China, however, has specific interests at play here. Beijing has invested heavily in infrastructure in Central Asia in recent years, and has discussed the possibility of extending the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) into Afghanistan. Cuba
Cubans involved in the historic protests that gripped the country a few weeks ago are now facing mass trials, raising concerns about due process and the validity of some arrests. One man who was sentenced to a year in prison says he was arrested simply for trying to take photos of the demonstrations. Families of others who were arrested say they were detained just for being in the street. Cuban officials have refused to say how many people were arrested following the island-wide protests, which were the most significant the country has seen since Fidel Castro’s revolution. Cubalex, a human rights organization, estimates about 700 Cubans were detained. Cuban officials justified the crackdown on protesters by saying the demonstrations had been fomented by Cuba’s Cold War nemesis, the United States. Sponsor Content by The Farmer’s Dog Try smarter, healthier pet food. Dogs don’t know what’s in that kibble they’re eating, and most humans don’t either. With The Farmer’s Dog, what you see is what you get – real, fresh meat and vegetables. Plus, it’s delivered to your door. Get 50% off your first box!
People are talking about these. Read up. Join in. Why Olympians bite their medals and what they do with them
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‘Arthur’ to end at PBS Kids with Season 25 in 2022 Olympics update
American Caeleb Dressel has won the men’s 100 meter freestyle final with a time of 47.02 seconds, an Olympic record.
Follow here for the latest Olympic news and highlights, and check out the best photos from the Games so far. The outpouring love and support I’ve received has made me realize I’m more than my accomplishments and gymnastics, which I never truly believed before.
Simone Biles, who recently withdrew from Olympic gymnastics individual all-around competition to prioritize her mental health. Brought to you by CNN Underscored The best water bottles of 2021 To determine which water bottles are truly worth their price tag, we found 15 top-rated options and put them to the test. After two months of drinking a whole lotta water, we narrowed it down to two bottles. Bear tested. Bear approved. 5 THINGS You are receiving this newsletter because you’re subscribed to 5 Things.
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83.) THE DAILY CALLER
84.) POWERLINE
Daily Digest |
- Regarding Simone Biles
- California’s Nuke Follies
- The “Follow ‘the Science’” Clown Show
- Mask the CDC
- Masks Again?
Regarding Simone Biles
Posted: 28 Jul 2021 12:58 PM PDT (Paul Mirengoff)You might think that white supremacists would be the ones to inject race into discussions of African-American gymnast Simone Biles cracking under the enormous pressure of these Olympic games. For all I know, white supremacists might be doing so. However, the only piece I’ve read that puts a racial twist on this subject is by Candace Buckner, a Black sportswriter for the Washington Post. According to Buckner, exceptional Black women “have to be superlative, as well as trailblazers.” “Simply being great isn’t good enough” because women like Biles are “carrying a gender and an entire race.” This burden “chokes,” says Buckner, by way of explaining Biles’ meltdown. Take out the gender part, and this might have been a persuasive argument had Jackie Robinson fallen short when he broke baseball’s color barrier in 1947. Seventy-four years and hundreds of shattered color barriers later, Buckner’s contention seems like a reach, to put it kindly. The only evidence Buckner offers in support of her theory is this statement by Biles the day before she bowed out of the team finals: “I truly do feel like I have the weight of the world on my shoulders at times.” But Biles didn’t say she feels that way because of her race. Nor is there any reason to doubt that White athletes on whom extraordinary expectations are placed don’t feel the same way, at times. I saw an interview with Biles that also took place the day before the team finals. She was asked about the difference between competing when she was younger and competing now, at age 24. Biles said she used to be fearless before competing, but these days thinks about the many things that can wrong in each of her routines. This sounds like a case of burnout, one that requires no resort to racial explanations. Any athlete of any race can burn out. Buckner compares Biles’ case with Katie Ledecky’s loss in the 400-meter freestyle race. She says that, unlike with Biles, Ledecky’s second-place finish “made her story even more intriguing.” I’m not sure what Buckner means by that. Most of the “intrigue” seems reserved for Biles’ story. In any case, the comparison is specious. Ledecky didn’t drop out of her event[s]. She competed, turned in her second fastest time ever (and the fourth fastest by anyone), and won a silver medal. Meanwhile, the media’s treatment of Biles couldn’t be more sympathetic. That’s fine. She deserves sympathy. However, Mike Tirico and others at NBC are praising Briles for her “bravery” in not competing. That’s one way of spinning things. A more realistic take would be to praise the athletes who competed and neither commend nor condemn Briles for not being mentally up for the competition. Buckner concludes her piece by urging that we “let[] Black women be great without carrying a deeper narrative.” I believe that most of us do let this happen. It’s mainly the race mongers who insist on a “deeper narrative.”
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California’s Nuke Follies
Posted: 28 Jul 2021 12:24 PM PDT (Steven Hayward)Of all of the endless follies of California these days—I know, it’s hard to enumerate all of them let alone put them in rank order—closing our last nuclear power plant at Diablo Canyon ranks perhaps at the top of the list. It provides more than 10 percent of California’s electricity, and can run 24/7, unlike wind and solar power. As one of the last nuclear power plants built and brought online in the 1980s, it easily has another 40 years of potential service left in it, if not more. The perverse energy policy of California, which excludes nuclear along with any new dams from its legal definition and mandates for clean or “renewable” energy, virtually compelled the closure of Diablo Canyon, and the corporate socialists who run PG&E simply lied to the public that they can make up the shortfall with wind and solar power and magic batteries. In fact, they will make it electricity shortfalls in large part with natural gas and power imports from other states. It will likely cause California’s CO2 emissions (and utility rates) to rise, just as closing nukes in Germany has halted and perhaps reversed the greenhouse gas emissions decline in Germany, while doubling their electricity prices. Even the very liberal Sacramento Bee has figured out that closing Diablo Canyon is a mistake. It editorialized earlier this week (and hat tip to our lefty friends at the Breakthrough Institute for breaking through to the Bee‘s editorial board):
Meanwhile, have a look at this short video on nuclear power from the brand new “Kite and Key Media” project, whose work we intend to feature more regularly here on Power Line.
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The “Follow ‘the Science’” Clown Show
Posted: 28 Jul 2021 08:13 AM PDT (Steven Hayward)“Follow the science” has become one of the most tiresome clichés of our time. It didn’t begin with the climate hustle, and it won’t end with the government’s COVID power lust, which is doing more than the endless hyperbole of the climatistas to reveal to the public what a clown show “authoritative” science has become. The roots of this pretence stretch back to the Enlightenment and the rise of the narrow empiricism which holds that the only propositions that can be considered “true” are those that can be verified by the “scientific method,” i.e., things that can be studied with “objective” data and replicated. Of course, lots of things in the supposedly subjective world of political and social “values” can be replicated, like socialism, for example. Just how many times do we need to replicate the East Germany/North Korea/Cuba/Venezuela experiment before we reach a solid conclusion—a “consensus” even—that socialism doesn’t work? Instead, right now the U.S. is embarked on twin replications studies in the real world of Keynesianism in economic policy, and lax law enforcement in social and urban policy. Don’t expect many “social” scientists, who attempt to replicate the empirical precision of physics and chemistry with extraordinary zeal, to recognize the repeat failures from these replication studies; most of “social” science today seems dedicated to denying or obfuscating what anyone with common sense can see. Which is why Aristotle’s social science is still the best. In social policy, we appear to be back to the good old days of 1960s-style “root causes” liberalism, when in fact the root cause of a lot of our social ills is . . . liberalism. No wonder liberals don’t—and won’t ever—get it. Beyond these methodological problems, the scientific community, like most other parts of the mainstream establishment today, has allowed itself to become politicized. This is not new, but it has been getting worse. Harvard geneticist Richard Lewontin, who recently passed away, wrote a shocking admission in the New York Review of Books way back in 2004:
“This time”? As I liked to say to Nader voters after the 2000 election, “George W. Bush thanks you.” With political judgment this bad, is it any wonder there might be doubts about the policy prescriptions of scientists? So let’s take in a few recent developments in the world of “science,” starting with Nature magazine, which I read so that you don’t have to.
Maybe astronomers should look in the mirror at themselves first, before looking askance at the big mirror they want to point out at the cosmos:
To paraphrase Glenn Reynolds, behold another cesspool of sexism and bigotry in a domain of liberals. It’s almost like they’re hypocrites or something. Meanwhile, over in medical schools, there is increasing pressure for professors to stop referring to “male” and “female.”
This is a great example of the consequential logic of progressive identity politics. For the last several years, I’ve heard the identity mongers say that there is a distinction between biological sex, which is clearly related to anatomy and biochemistry, and “gender,” which was claimed to be a purely “social construct.” (Think of the custom of dresses for women, and pants for men. Fair enough.) By degrees, we have seen that biological sex itself now lacks an objective basis in the progressive mind. Chaser #1: I think NASA needs to retrieve the old Voyager satellite from the 1970s, which includes a depiction for any aliens who may come across the probe in a million years or so of “male” and “female” humans. Clearly this is Wrongthink. We wouldn’t want to give aliens the wrong idea about humans. Chaser #2: Never mind the massive problem of replication in the sciences today. How much of it is simply faked? Again, from Nature:
Please remind me again of why we should “follow the science” on matters of politics and policy? What a total clown show. P.S. For an additional perspective (and if you have a Wall Street Journal subscription), don’t miss last Saturday’s interview feature with Matt Ridley on “How Science Lost the Public’s Trust.” Excerpts:
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Mask the CDC
Posted: 28 Jul 2021 07:53 AM PDT (Scott Johnson)As the Biden administration secretly redistributes illegal aliens carrying the Covid virus around the United States, the CDC has issued a new set of “interim public health recommendations for fully vaccinated people.” The CDC has promulgated the recommendations in response to the big nothing of the Delta variant applicable to all those in K-12 schools and counties with high or substantial levels of viral transmission — regardless of vaccination status, as it says in the heading of the recommendations. I am beginning to think that the authorities are fond of exercising control over the days of our lives. Indeed, they seem to have become habituated to it. It’s a narcotic of its own kind, probably more addictive than Fentanyl. The CDC has revealed itself as an administrative agency that is worse than worthless. It was the CDC that lawlessly extended Congress’s eviction moratorium. The latest CDC extension expires this week. I believe that the CDC may have omitted to suspend the tax obligations or other debts of landlords affected by the moratorium, but the CDC has been reliably “informed that unprecedented emergency resources have been appropriated by various Federal agencies that assist renters and landlords during the pandemic.” The CDC order is denominated “temporary.” As always, it’s a long way to temporary. Six federal courts of appeals have held the CDC’s eviction moratorium to exceed the CDC’s lawful powers. Even though three federal appellate courts upheld the moratorium, it’s not a close question. The CDC extended its moratorium under terms broader than Congress’s. The CDC moratorium prohibited eviction of all “covered persons” (as defined by specified income levels) — without regard to whether the rental property relied on federal funds or loans. Congress got in on the act again in late December, before the CDC eviction moratorium elapsed, including a provision in the Consolidated Appropriations Act that extended the order through January 31, 2021. The CDC jumped in again too, extending the order three more times beyond the congressionally authorized date. As I say, it’s addicting. A majority of the members of the Supreme Court seemed to acknowledge the illegality of the CDC’s eviction moratorium, but wouldn’t be bothered to do anything about it thanks to the deep thoughts of Justice Kavanaugh. Relying on Congress to restrain itself or the Supreme Court to rein in lawless government puts you in a bad spot. It’s like Republicans relying on Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. It may turn out okay in the end, but you really don’t want to bank on it. Reason associate editor Christian Britschgi draws attention to the Sixth Circuit opinion this week in Tiger Lily v. HUD this week. Britschgi’s column is “Federal Appeals Court Sneaks in One Final Ruling Against the CDC’s Expiring Eviction Moratorium.” The Wall Street Journal also devoted a good editorial to the Sixth Circuit opinion, written for a unanimous three-judge panel by Judge John K. Bush. Under the CDC’s interpretation of its powers, Judge Bush wrote for the court, the CDC “can do anything it can conceive of to prevent the spread of disease. That reading would grant the CDC director near-dictatorial power for the duration of the pandemic, with authority to shut down entire industries as freely as she [Rochelle Walensky] could ban evictions.” The current CDC moratorium expires July 31, but “the pandemic” rolls on (not).
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Masks Again?
Posted: 28 Jul 2021 07:14 AM PDT (John Hinderaker)So the utterly useless CDC wants us to go back to wearing masks. I don’t think it will happen, but in the meantime, the question to which there is no answer is, why? Yesterday Peter Doocy asked Jen Psaki why, if vaccines work, the vaccinated should go back to wearing masks. Her answer? Because we said so:
The dilemma couldn’t be more obvious. If the vaccines don’t work reliably, the government should stop hectoring everyone to get vaccinated (and admit that the vaccine resisters were right all along). If the vaccines do work reliably, it is ridiculous to pressure the vaccinated to wear masks. The government’s effort to have it both ways will, I think, fail.
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90.) CONSERVATIVE TRIBUNE
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91.) USA TODAY
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92.) THE DAILY BEAST
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93.) JUST THE NEWS
Just The News: Daily Newsletter
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95.) RIGHTWING.ORG
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97.) US NEWS & WORLD REPORT
98.) NEWSMAX
Breaking News from Newsmax.com |
Key Dem Senator Balks at $3.5T Budget Price Tag
Special: Americans Urged to Search Their Name on New Site That Exposes Public Information – Enter Any Name Politico Poll: Majority Blames Biden for Rising Inflation Georgia Asks Judge to Toss DOJ’s ‘Politicized Intrusion’ of Election Law Megyn Kelly to Newsmax: CDC’s Walensky ‘an Hysteric’ Special: #1 Solar Gadget Can Save Your Life in a Crisis Democratic Sen. Sinema Appalled by Biden’s $3.5 Trillion Spending UK Opens to Vaccinated Travelers, No Quarantine
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99.) MARK LEVIN
July 28, 2021
On Wednesday’s Mark Levin Show, you can always count on the Senate Republican leadership to take an issue that they’re actually winning on, and that would benefit future generations of Americans, and throw in the towel. Republicans have caved and agreed to spend an additional $1.2 trillion on infrastructure. While the politicians declare all things to be infrastructure in the name of bipartisanship, the actual backbone of our nation is crumbling. Marxism is pervasive and infects all aspects of American culture. Media types like Chuck Todd do the bidding of the American Marxists. Later, President Biden tells union workers that he never would have won without union support in a forgetful Pennsylvania speech. Also, Nancy Pelosi mumbles that Kevin McCarthy is a moron and she seems to base it on “science.”
THIS IS FROM:
Washington Examiner
Senate negotiators say they have deal on bipartisan infrastructure package
Save America
Statement by Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States of America
American Spectator
Un-American Marxism
Breitbart
Todd: ‘Reckoning’ for ‘Campaign of Mistrust’ Against Mainstream Media by Right ‘Is in an ICU’
Right Scoop
Pelosi BABBLES incoherently, answering question with MANTRA like a loon, and media FINE with it.
Politico
Bipartisan infrastructure deal sails through first Senate vote
The podcast for this show can be streamed or downloaded from the Audio Rewind page.
Image used with permission of Getty Images / NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP
100.) WOLF DAILY
101.) THE GELLER REPORT
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102.) CNS
103.) DAN BONGINO
104.) INDEPENDENT SENTINEL
105.) DC CLOTHESLINE
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106.) ARTICLE V LEGISLATORS’ CAUCUS
107.) THE INTERCEPT
108.) SONS OF LIBERTY
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109.) STARS & STRIPES
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