•Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, moved Thursday night to cut off Senate debate on the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill in time for a Saturday vote, The Hill reports. Schumer’s move accelerates the process, which, as we noted yesterday Punchbowl News estimated could take at least another week and eat up a week of the Senate’s August recess. Still, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, has said the House of Representatives must have the $3.5 trillion “social infrastructure” budget reconciliation in-hand before it votes on the final version of the infrastructure bill.
•Meanwhile … the Congressional Budget Office calculates the bipartisan infrastructure bill will add $256 billion to the national debt (The New York Times).
The White House is considering the imposition of federal regulatory powers and the threat of withholding federal funds from institutions to push more Americans to get vaccinated, The Washington Post says. This could apply to a wide variety of institutions ranging from long-term care facilities to cruise ships and universities. RELATED: Read our home page debate on Mask Mandate 2.0 at https://thehustings.news
Economy Adds 943,000 Jobs in July – Total non-farm payroll employment rose by 943,000 jobs in July, notably in leisure and hospitality, local government, education and professional business and services, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. Unemployment fell by 782,000 jobs to 8.7 million, representing an 0.5% drop in the unemployment rate to 5.4%.
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Justice Department Investigates Phoenix Police – The Department of Justice has launched a “pattern of practice” investigation into the Phoenix police department, Attorney Gen. Merrick Garland and Assistant Attorney Gen. Kristen Clark have announced (The Hill). The investigation is the third pattern-of-practice investigation (common for the Justice Department except in the Trump administration) under Garland. The DOJ also is investigating the “pattern of practice” by police departments in Minneapolis and Louisville, Kentucky.
The investigation revolves around police shooting of 28-year-old Dion Johnson, a Black man, on May 25, 2020, the same day a Minneapolis police officer murdered George Floyd.
Phoenix’s Democratic mayor, Kate Gallego, says she welcomes the investigation. “Comprehensive reform of policing in the City of Phoenix has been my priority since the day I took office,” she said in a statement.
Note: This is not “defund the police,” although Democrats have yet to apply discipline on such red-meat criticism-ready rhetoric. Rep, Cory Bush, D-MO, used those three words earlier this week to defend her use of $200,000 worth of private security when demonstrating in favor of the extended eviction moratorium on U.S. Capitol steps (per Chris Cilizza’s The Point! newsletter).
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Carlson Celebrates Authoritarian Leader – Fox News’ most popular evening political commentator, Tucker Carlson, took his talk show to Hungary this week to pay homage to the Central European country’s petty autocrat, Prime Minister Victor Orbån. According to The Atlantic, Carlson told Orbån at a dinner party in the nation’s capital, Budapest, “You’re hated by all the right people.”
“And yes,” the magazine’s staffer Anne Applebaum wrote, “’all the right people’ includes everyone who has faith in the American dream.”
Applebaum, author of Twilight of Democracy; the Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism writes that Carlson’s embrace of Orbån is “showing us how much he despises the United States, its Constitution and its heritage.”
Note: Carlson’s week in Budapest with his show seems to confirm what many Democrats and never-Trump Republicans believe; That pro-Trump populists favor an authoritarian rule over a democracy with liberal voting rights in the U.S. so long as their candidate gets back in the White House. The revelation here is not that Trump populists embrace authoritarianism, but that the Fox News host is so open about it.
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AFL-CIO President Trumka Dies – Richard Trumka, the third-generation Pennsylvania coal miner turned labor leader and president of the AFL-CIO, died Thursday after suffering a heart attack on a family camping trip. He was 72.
Trumka helped organize the group Jobs With Justice in the 1980s and then became president of the United Mineworkers Union, before he was named secretary-treasurer of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, its number-two position, in 1995, according to The New York Times. He became the AFL-CIO president in 2009, and had close ties with presidents Obama and Biden. Trumka tried in vain to form a relationship with Donald Trump, telling his members to only criticize the administration’s policies and not the president.
The AFL-CIO’s presidential election was delayed from this year to 2022 because of the pandemic. The labor organization’s secretary-treasurer, Liz Shuler, will serve the remainder of Trumka’s term.
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Nic Woods