Crooked Media - What A Day: Schmuck and coverup

Heads up! There will be no What A Day email on Monday, May 31. Have a great Memorial Day weekend, and see you Tuesday.

The Senate has spoken resoundingly, by a 54-35 margin, that Congress should establish a commission to investigate the January 6 Capitol insurrection. Naturally that means the vote failed, and no such commission will be formed. 
 

• Six Republicans joined all 48 Democrats who were present on Friday to end the GOP’s filibuster of the commission. But despite the lopsided vote count, the filibuster succeeded, because the Senate’s current rules require three-fifths of all sworn members to end debate on legislation. That means that unless Democrats change the rules, they’ll need 60 votes to create the commission—and even if absent commission-supporting Sens. Patty Murray (D-WA), Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), and Pat Toomey (R-PA) had been present, they still would’ve come up three votes short.
   
• This would seem to leave the ball squarely with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) who as recently as a few weeks ago allowed that filibustering may have become too easy, and the rules might have to change to require the minority to hold the floor. The nine absent Republican senators deftly illustrated his point, while also calling his bluff. After the vote failed, he acknowledged he’d misjudged Republicans thanked them for not abolishing the filibuster when Donald Trump was president. 
   
• Though Friday’s filibuster was foreordained, Democrats did not come armed with a fallback plan for investigating the insurrection. However, House Democrats did hint that they may respond to the GOP bait-and-switch on the commission by empaneling a special committee to probe the same set of facts. "While today’s vote is a remarkably dark moment in our history, we will uncover the full and sad truth about that deadly day,” said Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), who led the House’s Ukraine investigation two years ago, “with or without Republican cooperation."

With the commission now on ice, if not completely dead, we begin the hunt for any signs that everything else is not completely fucked. 
 

• In a letter to colleagues ahead of the Memorial Day recess, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer advised Senate Democrats that relevant committees will advance infrastructure legislation “with or without the support of Republican Senators,” even as President Biden gives negotiations with Senate Republicans the Weekend at Bernie’s treatment. Most of Biden’s infrastructure agenda can pass through the budget-reconciliation process, which means Republicans can’t filibuster it.
   
• And there’s still the most distant flicker of hope that Democrats will finally get it together and abolish the filibuster so they can pass everything else. In the same letter, Schumer wrote, “I reserve the right to force the Senate to vote on the [commission] bill again at the appropriate time.” He also announced that the Senate will vote on S.1 in the last week of June.

Perhaps Schumer’s fiendish plan is to let Republicans crush democracy in serial, as a recurring reminder that Democrats have decided to let them. Or maybe, despite everything Manchin has said, the filibuster story isn’t over. That’s where you come in, ideally very loudly.

On this week's ALL CAPS NBA: Late Late Show writer Ian Karmel joins to talk about his Portland Trailblazers. The New York Knicks defeat the Atlanta Hawks in Game Two at Madison Square Garden thanks to some rare flexibility from Tom Thibodeau and a rowdy home crowd. The first round of the NBA playoffs have everyone feeling extra competitive and a little bit chippy. Jason Concepcion breaks all of this down and more! Watch and smash that subscribe button → youtube.com/takelineshow

The Russian hackers behind last year’s SolarWinds attack have struck again, according to Microsoft. The hacking group, known as Nobelium, breached an email system used by USAID, and used it to weasel into the networks of human-rights groups, think tanks, and government agencies. Microsoft said the campaign had targeted 3,000 email addresses across more than 150 organizations, and that the attack seems to be ongoing. The latest hack comes a month after President Biden announced a series of sanctions on Russia for the SolarWinds operation, which evidently did not prompt a frantic all-hands meeting at the Kremlin, and just three weeks before Biden is scheduled to meet with Vladimir Putin for the first time in Geneva.

• President Biden has released his $6 trillion budget plan for the 2022 fiscal year, which includes his two-part infrastructure proposal and calls for substantial spending increases in education, health care, and the fight against climate change.
   
• Fifteen percent of Americans believe in the central premise of the QAnon conspiracy theory, according to a new poll, meaning QAnon is now as popular as some major religions. (The key distinction being that most major religions with some 50 million adherents are not outright murder cults.)
   
• In other news you love to see on the same day that Senate Republicans block an investigation into a violent assault on the Capitol (and two days after the latest horrendous mass shooting), Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) suggested that conservatives should shoot people who work at social-media companies.
   
• Teachers in states where Republicans have introduced (or passed) legislation purportedly banning critical race theory say it’s already forcing them to second guess how they discuss race in the classroom, as intended. 
   
• New York City mayoral candidate Dianne Morales’s campaign more or less imploded this week, as staff members resigned over complaints of a toxic work environment, or were fired after launching a unionization effort to address those complaints.
   
• In more heartening NYC primary content, please enjoy Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) and Jumaane Williams waxing poetic on ranked choice voting. (If you’re in New York, today is the registration deadline to vote in the primaries—make sure you’re registered!)
   
• Russia has started blocking European airlines from entering Russian airspace if they avoid flying over Belarus, as they’ve been instructed to do after Belarus kidnapped a journalist out of the sky.
   
• NASA’s Mars helicopter had a mid-flight glitch and went momentarily insane, but managed to land safely. 
   
• Babydog for Senate 2024.

A new analysis of House Democratic losses in 2020 suggests that Democrats could do a better job of pointing out that the GOP has become a radicalized, antidemocratic cult, which seems like a timely lesson on Insurrection Cover-up Day. The group Way to Win found that Democrats spent three times more than Republicans on ads about bipartisan outreach, while Republicans spent 10 times more on ads with the words “extremist” and “radical.” Democrats were pledging to reach across the aisle to work with the people casting them as cartoon villains, helping normalize Republicans’ dishonest attacks in the process, and the result wasn’t great. It’s impossible to conclude that Democrats’ focus on bipartisanship was The Reason they lost seats, but the analysis is a compelling argument for the White House to rethink its apparent plan to sidestep the threat of Republican extremism in the midterms.

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A new poll suggests that the U.S. could be on track to hit the 70 percent vaccination goal by the summer.

The E.U.’s drug regulator has approved the use of the Pfizer vaccine for kids ages 12-15.

New York and New Jersey will make vaccines available at beaches over the weekend to jab the Memorial Day crowds.

Minnesota has announced some extremely Minnesotan vaccine incentives, including free fishing licenses.