Crooked Media - What A Day: Down the Abbott hole

Senate Republicans have pledged to delay the passage of a wildly popular relief bill and two Republican governors have doubled down on lifting mask mandates over the pained screams of CDC officials, in a powerful display of unity and cooperation with coronavirus. 
 

• The Senate voted to proceed with President Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package along party lines on Thursday, with all 50 Republicans opposed. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) then forced an unfortunate Senate clerk to begin reading all 628 pages of the bill out loud, which could take something like 10 hours. A wonderful use of time from the senator who brought us the thought-provoking argument, “If you stacked up all the dollars in this bill, the stack would be really tall.” Not enough people are talking about this. 
   
• Democrats had hoped they might lure Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) across the aisle with a handful of last-minute Alaska-friendly provisions, but Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell made clear that he wanted to deny Biden any bipartisanship for the sake of denouncing the lack of bipartisanship, and so far Republicans are all in with Mitch. The Joe Manchin Posse fortunately seems to have been appeased by Biden’s concession to further whittle down stimulus check eligibility, because Democrats will likely need every vote: Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) predicted on Thursday that not a single Republican would vote in favor of the bill supported by 77 percent of all voters—including more than half of GOP voters.
   
• Meanwhile, the GOP governors of Texas and Mississippi have defended their Tuesday decisions to abandon basic public-health measures in the face of more contagious variants, after Biden called their strategy “Neanderthal thinking.” (Republicans are now pretending to be offended by this, and the Neanderthal Museum has entered the chat.) A number of major retailers and restaurants have announced that they’ll continue to require masks in those states, which is certainly better than the alternative, but the situation could put the lower-income workers responsible for mask enforcement in a much more difficult position.

The important thing to remember here is that if coronavirus cases suddenly spike in Texas, it is all Joe Biden’s fault. 
 

• After lifting a statewide mask mandate against the explicit urging of the CDC and without consulting his own medical advisors, Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) turned around and blamed Texas’s ongoing outbreak on 1) undocumented immigrants and 2) the Biden administraton for releasing them, and “[refusing] to test” them for coronavirus. You will be shocked to learn that this is a big fat lie: Abbott has been stalling Biden-administration efforts to provide federal funds for coronavirus tests for migrants released from custody. Cool distraction from Texas’s post-storm humanitarian crisis, though! There’s nothing like a preventable wave of death and suffering to turn the page on a preventable wave of death and suffering. 
   
• One bit of good news, which we can probably at least partly attribute to the blessed destruction of Donald Trump’s Twitter account: Other GOP governors haven’t immediately thrown in with Texas and Mississippi. Gov. Kay Ivey (R-AL) said she would extend Alabama’s mask mandate for another month, and Gov. Jim Justice (R-WV) even criticized the decision to relax restrictions prematurely: “I don’t know really what the big rush to get rid of the mask is because these masks have saved a lot, a lot of lives.”

Republicans have chosen sabotage of the Biden administration at all costs, whether it means opposing the relief legislation that their own constituents want and need, or risking their states’ hard-won gains against the pandemic when the end is in sight. And people will die as a result. Marsha Blackburn’s right: Neanderthal was probably too kind a word. 

Introducing Takeline, the newest podcast from Crooked Media. Takeline is a weekly podcast hosted by Jason Concepcion and Renee Montgomery that’s a fast-paced exploration of the NBA and world of sports and culture. Each week Jason and Renee talk about the games, players, controversies and issues that run both on and off the court. The show will be a place for lively debates, guests (experts and super fans), and contributors who will provide game analysis, get deep into the storylines and will give the audience a chance to learn everything they didn’t even know about the games. The trailer's out now, and series premiere drops on March 16. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your pods! 

The coronavirus-relief package includes a significant overhaul of the ACA, which hasn’t gotten much attention because Republicans have realized they’re politically better off screaming about Dr. Seuss. The reforms would make subsidies to purchase insurance available to people with “higher” incomes (over $51,520) for the first time, making plans more accessible to those who would otherwise be stuck paying the full cost of their premiums. The bill would also cap the maximum premium anyone is expected to pay at 8.5 percent of their income, and increase tax credits at lower incomes. It would also boost incentives for states to expand Medicaid by having the federal government pick up the tab for new recipients. Those changes would be temporary (for now), but could set the stage for a broader overhaul and would immediately expand health care access: The CBO estimated that the added subsidies would insure 1.3 million more people by next year.

Cyprus will launch a register identifying thousands of company owners on the island, ending a storied tradition of taking foreign investors’ cash with no questions asked. Starting on March 16, the details of thousands of companies, including many thought to have Rusisan links, will be collected for entry in an Ultimate Beneficial Owner (UBO) register. Companies will have six months to either enter their details, or find a new home base for their money laundering/mob financing/other assorted shell companies. It’s a big step forward, but activists say that for the UBO register to be truly effective in cleaning out corruption, it should ultimately be both a) public, and b) linked to other databases, like real-estate ownership. 

The U.S. is now administering an average of two-million coronavirus-vaccine doses per day.

California will begin reserving 40 percent of all vaccine doses for the state’s most vulnerable neighborhoods. 

FedEx has pledged to make its global operations carbon neutral by 2040, with a $2 billion initial investment.  

Nine great apes at the San Diego Zoo have become the first primates to receive a coronavirus vaccine developed for animals.