What A Day: Debt fraught American summer

Senate Democrats are gearing up for an infrastructure sprint in the precious few weeks between their summer vacations, with GOP relay partners who are openly admitting that their participation is a ploy to slow the legislative agenda to a crawl. Fingers crossed for a light, steady jog?
 

• Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has said he wants the Senate to consider both the bipartisan infrastructure deal and the budget resolution that would lay the groundwork for a broader reconciliation package before the August recess, and the bipartisan bill could come to a floor vote as early as the week of July 19. The reconciliation package itself likely won’t be ready to pass until the fall.
   
• The bipartisan deal has apparently recovered some momentum after Republicans’ fake tantrum about Democrats’ plan to pursue their other priorities threatened to tank it. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce endorsed the deal on Thursday, along with the AFL-CIO and other major business and labor groups. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has even reset the proverbial football, telling the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, “I think there's a decent chance that may come together."
   
• McConnell has also promised Kentuckians a “hell of a fight” against Democrats’ next big party-line effort to improve their lives against his will, and as far as progressives are (still) concerned, there won’t be a bipartisan bill without it. On Thursday, a group of 10 House Democrats led by Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) sent a letter to Democratic leadership demanding that bold climate action be central to any final infrastructure deal. 

It’s also worth noting that while 20 senators have reached an agreement on a bipartisan framework, the actual provisions are still TBD—and Republicans may yet try to make it worse.
 

• A number of major conservative groups have mobilized against proposed funding to beef up IRS enforcement, which would in turn bring in tax revenue to pay for the bipartisan package. Those groups are working on a letter that will warn Republican leaders not to negotiate with the White House unless they agree to “no additional funding for the Internal Revenue Service.” (Presumably with the P.S., “we the undersigned pay our fair share in taxes, btw. No need for anyone to look into this further.”)
   
• Meanwhile, with the national spotlight still firmly on the bipartisan deal, President Biden hit the road this week to sell voters on Democrats’ other initiatives in the American Families Plan—and soothe nervous progressives at the same time. Speaking at McHenry County College in Illinois on Wednesday, Biden reaffirmed his commitment to investments in child care, universal pre-K and two years of free community college, affordable housing, and a clean energy standard. 

Biden doesn’t have much selling to do: Crooked’s latest poll with Data for Progress found that the bipartisan infrastructure bill is incredibly popular with voters from both parties, and we know from past polling that voters are fans of the Democratic priorities that would need to pass separately. The moment Republicans try to slow down those initiatives further, Democrats should have no qualms about throwing them off the team. 

This week on Hysteria, Erin Ryan and Alyssa Mastromonaco are joined by Tien Tran and Julissa Arce to discuss this year’s controversy-ridden Olympic games, the IOC’s problematic rules and how we can still support our favorite athletes despite it all.

New episodes of Hysteria drop every Thursday. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

A number of QAnon followers have shifted their focus to running in local elections in the wake of Donald Trump’s defeat, a development that we cannot say was on our vision board for this year. Many of them are publicly distancing themselves from QAnon while pursuing school-board positions where they can continue pushing Q-flavored conspiracy theories, sometimes blended with the au courant anti-CRT platform. For the past month, a leading online QAnon forum has featured a quote attributed to Michael Flynn: “Local action = national impact. Take responsibility for your school committees or boards. Get involved in the education of our children. Run for local, state and/or federal office. No more excuses.” It’s not pipe bombs and mob violence, but it is Not Great.

• President Biden announced that U.S. troops will fully withdraw from Afghanistan by August 31, even as the Taliban makes territorial gains: “We did not go to Afghanistan to nation-build.” Biden pledged to evacuate thousands of interpreters who had worked with the military, along with their families. 
   
• The search and rescue effort at the collapsed condo in Surfside, FL, has transitioned to a recovery operation, and the confirmed death toll now stands at 64.
   
• Olympic organizers have banned spectators from attending events after some spectator hopefuls tested positive for marijuana amid Tokyo’s rapidly worsening coronavirus situation.  
   
• A federal judge sentenced disgraced lawyer Michael Avenatti to 30 months in prison for trying to extort Nike. Avenatti openly wept ahead of his sentencing as he begged for mercy, and delivered what is unfortunately a very good tattoo idea: “TV and Twitter, your honor, mean nothing."
   
• Toyota will halt its donations to Republicans who voted against the certification of Biden’s election, after their refusal to do that made a ton of people real mad, for some reason.
   
• Haitian authorities have detained two Haitain Americans in connection with the assassination of Haitian president Jovenel Moïse, along with four other people. Four more suspected assailants were killed in a gunfight with police.
   
• The State Department inspector general found that Michael Pack, the Trump-appointed leader of Voice of America, unlawfully retaliated against six employees who had raised concerns about Pack’s politicization of the agency.
   
• The FDA has narrowed its prescribing recommendations for Biogen’s controversial Alzheimer’s drug, amid criticisms that the drug hadn’t been proven to work and would drain Medicare’s budget.
   
• Blackwater founder and Bond-villain-edited-out-for-being-too-over-the-top Erik Prince had plans to create a $10 billion private army in Ukraine, with the help of none other than Andriy Derkach, a Russian agent who fed disinformation to Rudy Giuliani ahead of the 2020 election.
   
• Speaking of whom, Rudy’s legal defense fund has raised $9,590, nearly 0.2 percent of his goal! A legendary winning streak continues. 

Newsmax paid $25,000 for a Facebook ad touting Donald Trump’s endorsement in a local election, exploiting a huge loophole in campaign finance laws. Newsmax placed the last-minute ad to boost disgraced former Rep. Vito Fossello’s (R-NY) run in the Staten Island borough president GOP primary, the only one of its ad buys last month that targeted a single state. Fossello himself didn’t spend a dime advertising Trump’s endorsement (or on any social media advertising), and Newsmax’s paid promotion of its own story doesn’t need to be reported to the city Campaign Finance Board. That ad took in at least 350,000 impressions in the final days leading up to the election, and Fossello ultimately won by 290 votes. A far-right network spending thousands of dollars on an ad buy that just happened to swing an election for a pro-Trump candidate isn’t illegal, but as a Staten Island political science professor put it, “it sure is funny business, that’s for sure.”

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Vice President Kamala Harris has announced a $25 million expansion of the DNC’s “I Will Vote campaign,” as part of the fight against GOP voter-suppression laws.

Pfizer and BioNTech have announced they’re working on a vaccine booster to target the Delta variant. 

A new report from the American Cancer Society shows that cancer death rates in the U.S. have continued to decline across all groups.

A new study found genetic variations in coronavirus patients that could help narrow the search for effective treatments.