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As the Biden administration and Senate Democrats move to pass a substantive coronavirus-relief bill with or without Republican support, a small GOP coalition has come forward with an interesting counteroffer: “What if we hacked this thing into tiny, useless pieces and called it unity?”
- Ten Senate Republicans led by Sen. Susan Collins (R-CONCERN) met with President Biden on Monday to pitch their $618 billion alternative coronavirus plan, which is less than one third the size of the Biden administration proposal that Democrats have already begun setting up to pass through budget reconciliation. The GOP Relief Lite bill leaves out any money for state and local governments, and shrinks down both stimulus checks and enhanced unemployment benefits, but if Biden’s genuinely committed to bipartisanship and unity, he’s gotta let 10 Republicans unilaterally gut the coronavirus relief plan, right? What does bipartisanship even mean, if not “Republicans stay in control no matter what?”
- Thankfully, neither Biden nor Democratic leaders seem vulnerable to falling into that trap. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki emphasized that the meeting presented Biden an opportunity to hear Republicans out, not to negotiate: “The risk is not that it is too big, this package. The risk is that it is too small. That remains his view.” Biden himself called on Congress to pass his proposed plan immediately, albeit in a tweet completely devoid of caps-lock or typos—not very presidential of him. On Sunday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer made clear that he’s done trying to kick this particular football: “We cannot do the mistake of 2009 where they whittled down the program so that the amount of relief was so small that the recession lasted 4 or 5 years. And then on the ACA, when they spent a year, a year and a half negotiating and then didn't come to any agreement.” Sing it, Chuck.
- Democrats have plenty of good reasons to gently but firmly shove Susan Collins & Co. into the reflecting pool if it means getting big agenda items passed quickly, and most of those reasons are “Republicans.” For one thing, Republicans are already openly bragging about their plans to gerrymander their way back into control of the House in 2022. At the same time, GOP state legislators around the country have already filed 106 bills to make voting less accessible. Those efforts could very well strip Democrats of their majority in two years, shutting down whatever’s left undone on Biden’s agenda. Even if they fail, the ramped-up antidemocratic maneuvers fully expose Republicans’ pleas for “bipartisan cooperation” to be a sick little joke.
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On the coronavirus package in particular, Democrats’ list of reasons for not wasting time on bad-faith negotiations must also include “coronavirus.”
- With contagious new coronavirus variants spreading in the U.S. and creating the need for a much faster vaccine rollout, the Biden administration is still untangling the unbelievable mess it inherited. The overall pace of vaccine distribution is slowly picking up, but supplies are limited, and not just by manufacturing constraints: Biden’s coronavirus team is trying to locate 20 million vaccine doses that the federal government bought and distributed to states, which aren’t yet recorded as having been administered. Under the Trump administration’s “system,” responsibility for tracking the vaccines was left entirely up to the states once they were shipped, leaving the administration blind to the locations of languishing unused doses. Take a look in the back of your freezer, who knows what you’ll find in there!
- A cohesive national response can’t come quickly enough; we’re now a year into the pandemic, and things are getting weird(er) out there. In New York, at least nine top health officials have resigned in recent months as Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) increasingly sidelines his own state health department, shelving its vaccine distribution plan in favor of a rigid rollout that relies on large hospital systems. (Good thing Cuomo got his triumphant book finished early?) In Los Angeles, a group of anti-vaxxers temporarily shut down one of the country’s largest vaccination sites over the weeked, adding “deranged extremists with embarrassing signs” to the litany of potential vaccination challenges.
There are enough genuine obstacles to getting Americans vaccinated and onto more secure financial footing before new coronavirus strains have a chance to wipe out any gains; Democrats rightly see no reason to waste time trying to appease a radicalized Republican Party along the way. Now just to apply that same attitude to every other crisis the country faces.
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Huge news. Medicare for All: A Citizen’s Guide, a new book from America Dissected host Abdul El-Sayed and Micah Johnson, is out today!
This is the first book to offer a realistic roadmap to policy supported by more than three-quarters of Americans and gives readers a deeper understanding of a proposal that would fundamentally transform the way we give, receive, and pay for healthcare in America.
Got questions or concerns about Medicare-for-All? This book answers them, introducing those concepts in simple, conversational language and going beyond the talking points. Got a parent who doesn't understand why you support M4A? This is the book you can buy them to explain it. Order Medicare for All: A Citizen’s Guide now, through your favorite indie bookseller →
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Thiamine deficiency is the hot new disorder sweeping the world’s marine ecosystems, and nobody knows exactly why. Early in 2020, salmon hatcheries across Northern California started reporting unusually high mortality rates among their fish, a problem that biologists found they could reverse by bathing the fish in thiamine, or vitamin B. That didn’t solve the underlying problem, though, and salmon aren’t the only victims: A lack of vitamin B has been causing illness and death in birds, fish, invertebrates, and possibly mammals all over the world. In 2016, a group of researchers published a paper hypothesizing that thiamine deficiency might be a cause of long-term wildlife population declines, and scientists are now pretty confident that humans are behind it all. The mechanism is still unknown—whether warmer oceans are affecting the microorganisms that produce thiamine, for example, or causing species of fish with a thiamine-destroying enzyme to dominate the food chain—but it’s becoming clear that decreased levels of a simple vitamin could be the start of an ecological emergency.
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Myanmar’s military has seized control of the government in a coup, detaining senior politicians including the country’s de facto civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi. After five decades of military rule, Myanmar had been a quasi-democracy since 2011, when the military implemented parliamentary elections. This week, the new parliament was scheduled to hold its first session since the November 8 election, in which Suu Kyi’s pro-democracy party won 83 percent of the open seats—results that the military refused to accept. (Some subtly familiar themes here!) Suu Kyi had cooperated with the military so thoroughly as to actively and repeatedly defend the country’s ethnic cleansing of Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslims, but that evidently wasn’t enough to hold off a coup when her party started gaining strength. The military has announced it will stay in power for one year, the Biden administration has threatened sanctions, and because we live in a broken simulation, this lady continued filming her aerobics class while a coup went down behind her.
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ALL THE PRIME MINISTER’S MEN
The new documentary podcast series by Al Jazeera’s investigative team - the I-Unit.
It’s a true-crime story of how a mobster family has captured a state and is now at the center of power.
INVESTIGATIVE TOOLS
If you like investigative journalism, you’ll love this podcast.
The I-Unit has a history of breaking big stories and All The Prime Minister’s Men is no different. This podcast takes you inside the investigation as a team of journalists use all the tools in the investigative toolkit, surveillance, public records, undercover and stunning whistleblower testimony, to help solve a mystery 25-years in the making.
HISTORY
Bangladesh is a country that doesn’t get a lot of coverage, but it has a rich and tragic history.
In this story, you’ll learn about how the past and the present converge. The daughter of the country’s founding father, their George Washington, is now the Prime Minister and she’s in bed with some pretty rough characters. It all ties back to her father’s assasination and the I-Unit has broken the story wide open.
DEMOCRACY IN DECLINE
There's a corrupt bargain between criminals and the political class that is hastening Bangladesh’s slide into autocracy. The I-Unit has exposed how the government uses violence, targeted arrests and mass surveillance to maintain its hold on power and reward allies.
Check out the new documentary podcast series, “Al Jazeera Investigates: All the Prime Minister’s Men'' wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe to Al Jazeera Investigates.
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The Biden administration has reached a $230 million deal to boost availability of the first approved at-home, over-the-counter coronavirus test, which has been shown to be 96 percent accurate.
Oregon has become the first state to officially decriminalize the possession and personal use of all drugs.
Sens. Cory Booker (D-NJ), Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) have issued a joint statement pledging to advance comprehensive cannabis reform legislation.
Deborah Archer, a clinical law professor at NYU, has been elected the first Black president of the ACLU.
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