•With restrictive abortion laws in Mississippi and Texas threatening to overturn Roe v. Wade, the FDA has eliminated key restrictions on abortion pills, WaPo reports. The pills now can be prescribed via telehealth consultation and mailed to the patients, but some states already ban sending and mailing the pills.
•’Trump’s Coup Must be Stopped’ posts on The Hustings front page at https://thehustings.news Friday afternoon, with comments from our contributing pundits in the left and right columns. To comment on this debate, please email editors@thehustings.news.
Build Back Later – The inevitable delay of President Biden’s $2.2-trillion social safety net, climate change and tax bill, Build Back Better, was finally confirmed Thursday after the Senate parliamentarian ruled the bill could not contain a section granting legal status for undocumented immigrants, The New York Times reports.
Work to pass BBB as a budget reconciliation package, which would require only the 51 votes of the Senate’s Democratic majority including Vice President Kamala Harris, will continue “over the days and weeks ahead,” Biden said Thursday, thus releasing the chamber for their holiday recess. “We will – we must – get Build Back Better passed, even in the face of Republican opposition.”
Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-IL), who has been working for years to provide a path to citizenship for undocumented aliens, said “we’re not going to stop fighting for them.”
About that pricetag: No, the $2.2-trillion noted in the lead sentence is not inflation, exactly. The Congressional Budget Office last week “scored” BBB at that cost over its 10 years, but not including tax offsets, which is one of the issues over which Biden and Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-WV) have been negotiating in earnest for weeks.
The figure we’ve used up to release of the CBO report is $1.75 trillion, including the tax offsets. Manchin’s own upper limit has been $1.5 trillion.
Note: The failure of the Senate to pass BBB this year became inevitable when Biden’s $1.2-trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill was passed earlier this fall. Now the pressure seems to be relieved a bit, and Democrats now can use the infrastructure bill as a weapon against Republican challengers fighting to regain control of the House and Senate next November.
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Trump Has Far Less GOP Support in the Senate, Report Says – Former President Donald J. Trump continues to attack Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) for failing to join in on the “Big Lie” about the November 2020 presidential election, but the minority leader’s caucus is having none of it, according to a report in Politico.
“How this guy can stay as Leader is beyond comprehension,” Trump wrote Thursday. “This is coming not only from me, but from virtually everyone in the Republican Party. He is a disaster and should be replaced as ‘Leader’ ASAP.”
Trump’s efforts to “depose the Senate minority leader has resulted in firm pledges from just two Republican candidates, and no senators,” according to Politico, “and it has failed to turn up a formidable challenger to run against McConnell.”
Trump reportedly has the support of Fox News, including Tucker Carlson, who last week announced he would be regularly highlighting “problems” with McConnell, and called him an “instrument of the left.”
Note: Contrast this with House Republicans, where Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is acceding to Trump acolytes like Marjorie Taylor Greene, of Georgia, and Lauren Boebert, of Colorado as McCarthy tries to maintain position as minority leader ahead of becoming House speaker after next November’s mid-terms.
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Federal Judge Foils Sackers’ Escape – Legal releases shielding the Sackler family from civil opioid lawsuits are not permitted under the bankruptcy code, federal judge Colleen McMahon of the Southern District of New York, ruled late Thursday, according to The Wall Street Journal. Her ruling ices the Perdue Pharma Chapter 11 bankruptcy plan that would have protected the family that has controlled the company.
Prior to filing for bankruptcy, Perdue Pharma distributed more than $10 billion to key members of the Sackler family, and set aside $4.5 billion to be distributed directly from the company to states with opioid addiction claims. The Sackler family thought their funds would be shielded from the lawsuits filed against the company.
Court appeals by Perdue Pharma, the Sackler family and groups representing opioid victims are expected, but the judge’s ruling could also affect other U.S. companies seeking to protect majority shareholders with Chapter 11.
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Note With Impending News -- In February 2020, in a courtroom in London where extradition hearings were underway, Julian Assange’s lawyer reportedly told the court that then-president Donald Trump would offer the WikiLeaks founder a pardon if, upon return to the U.S., he would agree to say that Russia was not involved in hacking emails from the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign during the 2016 election.
This is the same ex-president who said, during the 2016, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” referring to those allegedly on a missing server containing Hillary Clinton emails.
So let’s see: He was going to pardon someone who is charged with disclosing national defense information and he reached out to a national adversary.
Nothing like Making America Great Again through such methods.
In a piece earlier this week on MSNBC.com about a ruling from a U.K. Court that will allow Assange’s extradition to face charges in the U.S., Frank Figliuzzi, a former assistant director for counterintelligence for the FBI, posits that it is possible that the Justice Department could cut a deal with Assange to obtain his testimony.
Figliuzzi writes:
‘When questioned by Mueller’s investigators, Trump denied knowing anything about the Russian–WikiLeaks connection. At least 30 times in response to Mueller’s questions, he said he either had “no recollection” or he “didn’t know.” But if he was lying to Mueller about his knowledge of any role WikiLeaks or Russia had in assisting his campaign, then he was lying to federal agents and committing a felony. Trump’s lies would also have obstructed the special counsel investigation.’
Remember “WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks. I love WikiLeaks!”? Maybe if Assange flips that affection will change.
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Gary S. Vasilash