Crooked Media - What A Day: Meet Joe hack

A quick housekeeping note: Our unofficial slogan here at Crooked Media—“H.R. 1 or we’re fucked!”—has been conveniently shortened to just the last two words, thanks to Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV). 

• In a rambling and logically incoherent opinion column for the Charleston Gazette-Mail announced he will vote against the For the People Act when Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer brings it to a vote later this month. That effectively dooms the legislation, which could only pass with unanimous Democratic support, and only if Democrats first abolished or reformed the filibuster. No H.R. 1, thus, we’re fucked! 
   
• H.R. 1 would’ve established a federal floor for access to the ballot box, ended partisan gerrymandering, reformed campaign-finance laws, and enhanced disclosure requirements for federal officeholders. Manchin took no position on any of those very good reforms, but rejected them all outright simply because Republicans uniformly oppose them, essentially ceding legislative control over American democracy to the party actively trying to destroy it.
   
• Manchin’s announcement also all but closes the door on narrower federal-legislative responses to sweeping state-level GOP efforts to suppress the Democratic vote and seize the power to overturn election results. Manchin claims to support the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would re-establish federal power to block discriminatory state-level voting laws, in part because it has “bipartisan support" in the form of a single Republican, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK). But Manchin also insists he “will not vote to weaken or eliminate the filibuster,” and Murkowski has told reporters “she ha[s] been unable to attract another co-sponsor from her party in the six years since the bill was first introduced.”

As is often the case, Manchin leaves us parsing whether we are completely fucked, or just very likely fucked, with a slim chance of averting outright fuckedness.

• Not too long ago, Manchin conceded that the filibuster should be harder to abuse. Would he vote for changes that don’t weaken or eliminate the filibuster, and that he can describe as strengthening it? We will likely find out this month. Schumer has teed up votes on a series of bipartisan bills he expects Republicans to passively filibuster, seemingly to demonstrate to Manchin that the rules should change to allow legislation like the John Lewis Act to pass. (On the other side of the debate is Donald Trump, who supported abolishing the filibuster for his entire presidency, but now praises Manchin for “doing the right thing.”)
   
• Manchin will be under relentless pressure to get out of the way. Rev. Dr. William Barber has announced that the Poor People’s Campaign will hold a “Moral March on Manchin” in West Virginia, and a Tuesday meeting between Manchin and the NAACP has been broadened to include Rev. Al Sharpton, NAACP Legal Defense Fund President Sherrilyn Ifill, and other civil rights luminaries. 

So what do we mean by “fucked”? We definitely do not mean that the situation is hopeless. We mean that Democrats will enter the next election cycle facing greater structural disadvantages to winning than they did before—even if they get the most votes. But they prevailed over existing unfairness in the past two cycles because people refused to grow complacent and turned out in record numbers to overcome the obstacles. Those tasks remain unchanged.

You love reading What A Day the newsletter every night, which means you’ll probably love listening to What A Day the podcast every morning. Akilah and Gideon pick up right where we leave off and keep you updated on all the latest news. It’s quick, it’s fun, it’s smart and thoughtful—all the things you love about this (we hope!)—and it’s available every morning Monday through Friday at 4am EST. Give it a listen and subscribe to What A Day wherever you get your podcasts.

A Senate Judiciary Committee investigation has unearthed a number of scandalous emails from then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to then-Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen seeking Justice Department investigations of ludicrous conspiracy theories, for the purpose of sowing doubt about, or even nullifying, Joe Biden’s victory. The most bonkers of the requests was for an investigation of the so-called Italygate conspiracy theory, which holds that Italy had used military-intelligence capabilities, including satellites, to remotely switch votes cast on U.S. machines from Trump to Biden. Rosen does not appear to have complied with the requests, but has not yet reached agreement with congressional committees or the Justice Department’s inspector general to testify about the Trump administration’s efforts to abuse federal power to overturn the election. The revelation suggests those efforts went much further than we knew.

• In his first public speech since overseeing a violent transfer of power, and with his pants possibly on backward, disgraced former President Donald Trump fomented further insurrection, calling the 2020 election “the crime of the century” and asserting that “our country is being destroyed by people who perhaps have no right to destroy it.” Hear that? Only Trump has the legitimate right to destroy America!
   
• Here’s a development that couldn’t possibly foreshadow any future revelations about the January 6 attack: It turns out that the Republican lawmaker in Oregon who helped armed insurrectionists breach the state's capitol also coached those same insurrectionists days beforehand on how to access the building.
   
• In insurrection-adjacent news, Benjamin Netanyahu sure seems to be trying to foment his very own January 6.
   
• The Justice Department has seized over $2 million worth of cryptocurrency paid in ransom to the hackers who forced the Colonial Pipeline to shut down.
   
• The Orange County, CA, sheriff’s department instructed officers not to join or parrot insurrectionist and white supremacist groups, as part of an “extremism awareness” training that nevertheless drew a false equivalence between left-wing and right-wing threats.
   
• Feast your ears on Rudy Giuliani bribing Ukraine to manufacture dirt on the Bidens.
   
• Jeff McConney, who serves as senior vice president and controller of the Trump Organization, has testified to the New York grand jury that will decide whether to bring criminal charges against Trump, his company, or its top executives. 
   
• Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) is reportedly lobbying to kill a resolution that would reverse Trump-era regulations that allow predatory lenders to evade state-level caps on interest rates.
   
• Royal Caribbean Cruises will work around Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) by requiring passengers who can’t or won’t document their vaccination status to undergo testing and other yet-to-be-announced procedures.
   
• Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) has signed own DeSantis law, prohibiting businesses from requiring proof of vaccination from customers.
   
• Rep. Moe Brooks (D-AL) had been hiding from a process server to avoid an insurrection-based civil lawsuit for several weeks, so the legal team behind the suit served the complaint to Brooks’s wife instead, and he was so mad about it that he accidentally shared his email password with the entire internet. 
   
• More like Jeff Spaceos.

A George W. Bush-appointed federal judge has declared California’s assault-weapons ban unconstitutional, in an unhinged opinion dusted with anti-vaxx disinformation. In his ruling, Judge Roger Benitez compared assault rifles like the AR-15, which are particularly popular among mass shooters, to the Swiss Army Knife, and asserted, falsely, that “More people have died from the Covid-19 vaccine than mass shootings in California.” Benitez stayed his own ruling for 30 days, which means it won’t take effect as California prepares its appeal, but it serves as an example of both the extent of right-wing extremism on the federal bench, and the kind of rulings we should expect year in, year out indefinitely, as those same judges tee up radical theories in the hope that the stolen Supreme Court will make them the law of the land.

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ACA enrollment reached an all-time high of 31 million, and Presidents Biden and Obama took a moment to celebrate the milestone.

A number of prominent elected Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, will introduce legislation to codify Roe v. Wade.

Speaking of Schumer, he’s thrown his weight behind, Myrna Perez and Dale Ho, both prominent voting-rights advocates, urging President Biden to nominate them to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. 

Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has pledged to expedite visas for Afghans who assisted U.S. forces to protect them from Taliban retribution.