Crooked Media - What A Day: Next of Kinz

As Republicans try to sabotage President Biden’s economic agenda in stealth mode, Master of Subtlety Donald Trump has blown their cover by turning the bipartisan infrastructure deal into one more referendum on the GOP’s MAGA loyalty. We’re on the edge of our broken subway seats!

• After Senate Republicans filibustered a test vote on the bipartisan infrastructure agreement last week, a dozen Republicans said they simply needed a few more days to hammer out the details and hoped to be ready to move the bill forward by Monday. That timeline fell apart over the weekend, as Republicans demanded that less than 20 percent of transportation funding go towards public transit for the first time in nearly four decades, rejected a new proposal from Democrats, and then tried to blame Democrats for standing in the way of a deal.
   
• Donald Trump has complicated an otherwise very convincing “Democrats are obstructing Joe Biden’s agenda” narrative by commanding Senate Republicans to obstruct Joe Biden’s agenda, lest they expose themselves as RINOs: “Don’t do the infrastructure deal, wait until after we get proper election results in 2022 or otherwise, and regain a strong negotiating stance. Republicans, don’t let the Radical Left play you for weak fools and losers!” Just to recap, full membership in the Trump GOP now requires denying election results, whitewashing (if not cheering) an insurrection, undermining life-saving vaccinations, and letting a bunch of bridges collapse.      
   
• Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer held Trump’s statement over Republicans’ heads on Monday, challenging them to reveal whether they would “follow the absurd demands of a disgraced former president” and calling on them to “ignore former President Trump.” Schumer said he’s still fully committed to passing the bipartisan bill, and prepared to have the Senate stay in session through the planned August recess if further GOP stalling makes it necessary.

If only there were some other recent referendum on the GOP’s unconditional fealty to Trump that might offer clues about how this will end?
 

• Something like a months-long effort to thwart an investigation into a deadly attack on the Capitol, maybe? Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) has become the second House Republican to join the January 6 committee at House nSpeaker Nancy Pelosi’s invitation, as GOP leaders (and too many reporters) continue to make the case that Republicans who didn’t amplify the Big Lie simply don’t count. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy left open the possibility of punishing Kinzinger and Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) for engaging with reality, under pressure from a growing number of House Republicans, and called the two of them “Pelosi Republicans.”
   
• Cheney is set to deliver one of two opening statements at the committee’s first hearing on Tuesday, while four of the most pro-insurrection dipshits in the House GOP try to distract from the panel by “demanding answers on the treatment of January 6th prisoners” outside the Justice Department. Meanwhile, Democrats’ pick of former CIA Inspector General David Buckley for the committee’s staff director has raised some eyebrows: In 2019, DHS investigators found that Buckley had retaliated against a whistleblower and urged the CIA to reconsider his security clearance. A spokesperson for the committee has denied the allegations, which may not be much comfort to witnesses in the probe who are asked to blow some whistles.

Republicans haven’t been secretive about their undivided focus on slowing down the Biden administration, or taken any opportunity to put the country’s interests ahead of Donald Trump’s. Trump has generously connected those dots in a pre-emptive explanation of why the bipartisan infrastructure deal will (probably) fail; all Democrats have to do is keep a big spotlight on it and get on with the business of governing on their own.

Last week on Lovett or Leave It,  Jon Lovett was joined by the founder and president of Strong Towns, Charles Marohn to talk about the ineffectiveness of “stroads” - that’s when a street becomes a road! Plus, Lovett recaps the News of the Week! New episodes of Lovett or Leave It drop every Saturday. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

As coronavirus vaccinations stall, a few Democratic-led government bodies are No Longer Asking: The Department of Veterans Affairs has become the first federal agency to issue a vaccine mandate, requiring 115,000 of its patient-facing health-care workers to show proof of vaccination in the next two months, or potentially lose their jobs. New York City will require all city workers to either show proof of vaccination or get tested weekly at their own expense, or face suspension, and California has announced a similar mandate for all state employees and many health care workers. More vaccine mandates at private companies are likely on the way: A coalition of 56 leading medical groups has called on health-care employers to require that their workers get vaccinated as the “logical fulfillment of the ethical commitment” to all patients in their care.

• Authorities have identified the last victim in the Surfside, FL, condo collapse. The official death toll is 98.
   
• President Joe Biden and Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi announced on Monday that the U.S. will formally end its combat mission in Iraq by the end of the year, but most troops will be staying put to advise and train Iraqi forces.
   
• Swing-state Democrats and voting-rights activists are increasingly freaking out about what GOP voter-suppression laws will mean for turnout in 2022. “If there isn’t a way for us to repeat what happened in November 2020, we’re fucked,” said Nsé Ufot, CEO of the New Georgia Project.
   
• Biden officials now expect that older and immunocompromised Americans will likely need vaccine booster shots, which could become available even before regulators broaden the vaccines’ emergency use authorizations.
   
• Detroit residents are overwhelmingly more worried about public safety than about police misconduct, according to a new USA TODAY/Suffolk University/Detroit Free Press poll.
   
• Tunisia’s president dismissed his prime minister and suspended parliament on Sunday, after violent mass protests erupted against the government’s handling of the pandemic. The Biden administration hasn’t labelled it a coup, yet.
   
• Britney Spears’s new attorney has filed a motion to remove her father as her conservator, as House lawmakers join the bipartisan Free Britney movement. 
   
• Pennsylvania GOP gubernatorial candidate Charlie Gerow is under investigation by state police for killing a motorcyclist in a car crash last week.
   
• The Philippines won its first Olympic gold medal on Monday after nearly a century of trying, thanks to weightlifter Hidilyn Diaz. Also, That Fairy Skateboarder from That Vine just won a silver medal for Brazil.
   
• The farthest-gone Trump supporters now believe that Joe Biden has been feigning presidency from an 80 percent scale model of the White House on Tyler Perry’s Atlanta estate. Kanye West has been living in an Atlanta stadium, so who are we to pretend to know what is and isn't happening in Atlanta?

Harry Truman’s account of leaving the White House in dire financial straits was pure malarkey, but taxpayers are still subsidizing wealthy former presidents as a result of it. In 1957 and ‘58, when Truman was pushing for a bill to provide him with a pension, he claimed to have only a little money from the sale of his family farm to live on. That narrative was repeated by Truman’s biographers, but new historical research has debunked it: By his own accounting, Truman had a net worth equivalent to $6.6 million in today’s dollars when he left the White House—in part because he’d misused a presidential expense account—and got much richer over the next five years. Truman’s lies about his wealth were the basis for a law that now has taxpayers supporting a twice-impeached tax evader who brazenly exploited his presidency for profit. Could be a good time to revisit it! 

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Sixty-nine percent of Americans have received at least one vaccine dose (nice), and the national pace of vaccinations is the highest it’s been in two weeks. 

President Biden has announced eight U.S. attorney nominations, many of whom would become the first Black or female attorneys (or both) to lead their districts.

The Chicago City Council has approved a plan to give residents direct oversight of the city’s police department.

Luciana Alvarado, the first Costa Rican gymnast to compete at the Olympics, included a tribute to Black Lives Matter in her floor routine.