Crooked Media - What A Day: Heimer-prick maneuver

With two weeks left on the GOP’s “destroy the economy” countdown clock, and just over three before highway funds lapse, Democrats are finally down to brass tacks on questions like: What should we do about this? And, when can we give Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) an atomic wedgie? 
 

• As the wounds from last week’s manufactured-deadline drama heal, Democrats have begun setting key priorities: How big will the Build Back Better bill be? What can a bill of that size include? His Admiralty Joe Manchin has seemingly accepted that Build Back Better will be larger than the $1.5 trillion topline he laid out as his preference. President Biden has reportedly told other Democrats he thinks he can convince Manchin to support a bill with $2.2 trillion worth of stuff in it, and Manchin hasn’t objected to that characterization. But Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), the House’s top progressive, says members of her caucus have “little appetite” for a bill smaller than $2.5 trillion. (We’d note that the average of the bill’s $3.5 trillion ceiling and Manchin’s $1.5 trillion floor is $2.5 trillion.)
   
• Having homed in on a topline, Democrats must make strategic and values-based decisions about what to spend it on. With less money to go around, they can either eliminate some Build Back Better proposals, or make more of them temporary and/or smaller, then fight for their renewal in the future. The former option puts important party priorities (like the child tax credit and expanded Medicare benefits) in competition with each other; the latter risks making the programs disappointingly narrow, or vulnerable to expiring, if Republicans take political power and refuse to renew them. It’s unclear how Democratic leaders will approach this thorny prioritization challenge, though Manchin reportedly prefers fewer programs, funded permanently, to the grabbag approach. 
   
• Democrats have to do all this without losing any votes in the Senate, and can only spare a handful in the House. So it isn’t super helpful that Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) still won’t say anything about what she will and won’t support, or that Gottheimer insists on wasting a huge chunk of money lifting the cap on the state- and local-tax deduction to help his affluent constituents. At the same time the lobbying push to make the bill suckier has begun in earnest, and the GOP-aligned U.S. Chamber of Commerce has made its peace with killing both the Build Back Better Act and the Senate Infrastructure Bill, rather than see them pass together.

Meanwhile, Republican legislative terrorism has left Democrats few options but to scale back the filibuster.
 

• Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer still says he “can’t” jump through GOP-dictated hoops to increase the debt limit. (Aside: does that mean he would if he could?) If he sticks to his guns, increasing the debt limit will either require Republicans to cave, or Democrats to eliminate the filibuster, at least for debt-limit legislation. (President Biden seemingly supports this approach.) Speaking of “can’t” McConnell says he “can’t” get all 50 Republicans to drop their debt-limit filibuster—it only takes one senator to keep the filibuster going—which, by process of elimination, leaves it up to Democrats to change the Senate rules. 
   
• As if they needed a clearer indication that Republicans are abusing their power to threaten the country’s well being, Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) admitted on Monday that Republicans would drop their unprecedented filibuster if Democrats simply agreed to stop helping Americans. "Some Republicans would vote to raise the debt limit if they knew the Democrats were going to abandon the $3.5 trillion package, which appears unlikely,” she said, “but that's an agreement that could be reached."

What do Muhammad Ali and Anthony Bourdain have in common? They were both supporters of the #FreeJason movement, which was an online petition to free Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian from an Iranian prison. You can hear all about it in the latest episode of Crooked’s newest podcast 544 Days. Episodes four and five are available now. Listen and follow for free only on Spotify. 

In a rare Senate hearing that Republicans didn’t intentionally turn into a circus for spite, Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen offered lawmakers a stark choice: Do something about Facebook, or the societal problems it exacerbates will only get worse, because that’s how Facebook makes money. “Until the incentives change, Facebook will not change,” she said. “Left alone, Facebook will continue to make choices that go against the common good, our common good.” Her critique invited Congress to think beyond antitrust action as the government’s main lever to reduce Facebook’s harms (she actually came out against breaking up the company) and to think about ways to scrutinize, and bring transparency to, the algorithms it uses to promote engagement. Those algorithms have turned the company into a giant amplifier for hate, violence, conspiracy theories, and other forms of content that stir user passions.

• Attorney General Merrick Garland has instructed federal authorities to work with law-enforcement agencies on strategies to counteract a surge in right-wing threats of violence against school-board members, teachers, and other education officials. 
   
• The Justice Department has agreed to review its decision not to charge the FBI agents who ignored sexual assault allegations against Larry Nassar, then lied about it. 
   
• Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Coronavirus) is still laundering anti-vaccine conspiracy theories on Fox News.
   
• NIH Director Francis Collins will step down by the end of the year after working at the agency for nearly three decades.
   
• The FBI has raided the offices of the Sergeants Benevolent Association—a New York police union—and the home of its president, Ed Mullins. 
   
• The DEA covertly surveilied racial-justice protests last summer in 51 jurisdictions at the request of other law enforcement officials. 
   
• QAnon groups have gone international, afflicting other countries with such charming antics as kidnapping children at the behest of people who’ve lost custody of them.
   
• Disgraced former president Donald Trump failed to make the Forbes 400 list this year. Sad. :)
   
• Meghan Trainor and her husband Daryl Sabara had toilets installed adjacent to one another so they could relieve themselves at the same time. 
   
• Millennials ruined everything, La Cosa Nostra edition.

The fourth wave of the U.S. coronavirus epidemic has confronted health-care workers with a new challenge. Previous waves also filled up their hospitals, exposed them to infection, and left them physically and emotionally exhausted. But this time around, a huge percentage of their patients are also abusive. And, yeah, it’s a Trump thing. Earlier outbreaks took a toll on more random cross-sections of the country, but the people who’ve become seriously ill during the fourth wave—which began well after vaccines were widely available—are overwhelmingly people who’ve chosen not to be vaccinated. That means hospitals are teeming with MAGA dead-enders, antisocial conspiracy theorists demanding ivermectin, and just generally angry people. And that means right-wing anti-vaccine politics are imposing yet another unnecessary social burden on the rest of us—job flight from the health-care sector. “As unvaccinated individuals crowd hospitals and patients become increasingly violent [ ] health care workers are facing significant burnout that’s pushing them from the field in Michigan and nationwide.”

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The FDA has authorized a new rapid COVID-19 antigen test, which should quickly double the country’s at-home testing capacity. 

NASA’s about to launch a spacecraft and crash it into an asteroid to test its ability to change the trajectories of future near-earth objects that threaten life on the planet.

Saleema Rehman, a 29-year-old Afghan refugee, became a trailblazing gynecologist because her mother suffered serious complications during delivery, and has now been recognized by UNHCR for her work treating other displaced people in Pakistan.

The Texas state parole board has recommended a posthumous pardon for George Floyd, who was arrested in the state over a decade ago on the word of an officer who’s now at the center of a vast police-violence and evidence-fabrication scandal.