The House of Representatives will take up two bills before its July 4 recess: A resolution creating a 1/6 Select Committee to examine the Capitol Hill riots, and the $715-billion Invest in America Act, Punchbowl News reports, an infrastructure bill that a Senate bi-partisan bill will supersede. More on infrastructure below. NOTE: The Hustings News & Notes takes its own recess next week, for the July 4 holiday.
TODAY: We debate critical race theory on the home page of The Hustings, https://thehustings.news.
SCOTUS Rejects Appeal on Transgender Restroom Rights Case – The Supreme Court declined Monday morning to hear an appeal of a ruling that a Virginia school board had practiced sex-based discrimination and violated the rights of a transgender high school student when it prevented the student from using a male restroom, The Washington Post reports. The court returned without comment an appeal by the Glouchester County, Virginia, school board of a U.S. District Court it had discriminated against the transgender student, Gavin Grimm. Only two of the nine Supreme Court justices, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, indicated they would have been willing to hear the appeal.
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U.S. Airstrikes Target Iran-Backed Militias – U.S. airstrikes hit “facilities used by Iran-backed militia groups” in Syria and Iraq Monday, the White House announced. The militias were using the facilities to launch unmanned aerial attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq, according to Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby, who described the U.S. airstrikes as “defensive,” the AP reports.
It is the second time the Biden administration has taken action in the region, and the first since hardliner Ebrahim Raisi was elected Iran’s president earlier this month. Iranian Foreign Minister Saeed Khatibzadeh accused the U.S. of creating instability in the region.
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Bipartisan Infrastructure Back on Track – After President Biden just about derailed Friday the $1.2 trillion (eight-year version) bipartisan “hard” infrastructure package negotiated last week, it now appears back on track.
“I was very glad to see the president clarify his remarks because it was inconsistent with everything that we had been told all along,” Sen. Rob Portman, R-OH, one of five Republicans who worked with five Democrats to develop the “hard” infrastructure package, told ABC News This Week Sunday.
Biden indicated Friday he would not sign the bipartisan bill — which is set to face a vote without filibuster threat in the Senate — unless accompanied by a much bigger anti-poverty bill that would follow the reconciliation process that requires just 51 Senate votes.
Biden tried to clarify those remarks Saturday, saying he was not trying to create “the impression that I was issuing a veto threat on the very plan I had just agreed to, which was certainly not my intent.”
Note: A two-tier hard and anti-poverty infrastructure track always has been part of the plan for Congressional Democrats, as the huge anti-poverty portion has some degree of support from the potential swing vote, Sen. Joe Manchin III, D-WV, who a.) represents a state that overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump last November, but b.) has bigger poverty issues than most other states. In a separate ABC News This Week interview, Manchin said “we have two tracks. And that’s exactly what I believe is going to happen. And we’ve worked on the one track. We’re going to work on a second track. There’s an awful lot of need.”
If there’s any certainty to all this, it’s that a.) Sen. Bernie Sanders’, I-VT, $6 trillion reconciliation proposal will be substantially negotiated down before Manchin comes on board, and b.) we’re in for a long, hot summer.
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Some Republicans Try to Move Past Trump – The former president has a big campaign chest for loyal acolytes who will “primary” more moderate Republicans running for re-election in the Senate and House of Representatives in next year’s midterms, and he has support from some 30% to 35% of the electorate, but does he have a future?
While ex-President Trump tantalized his crowd in Wellington, Ohio, at his first MAGA rally since he left office with the possibility he would run again in 2024, all supposedly in support of Max Miller as his candidate to beat Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, R-OH, in 2022, one of his GOP critics pressed for the party to move on.
Sen. Mitt Romney, R-UT, compared Trump’s rally with the World Wrestling Federation, calling it “a lot of show and bombast, but it’s going nowhere.” Romney spoke on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday.
Note: The “bombast” of the Trump rallies and the rhetoric Congressional Republicans have employed to block a bipartisan 1/6 commission seems to cloud the level of mainstream support MAGA has in today’s Republican Party. Romney’s comments may help to stem that support, but unless others between the Romney/Cheney branch and the Trump acolytes chime in, it looks like we’ll have to wait for the returns from next year’s primaries to figure out exactly how much support the former president has remaining.
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UK Health Secretary Resigns – Matt Hancock, UK Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, resigned Saturday. A video emerged that had been taken by CCTV in Hancock’s office, where he was seen kissing and embracing Gina Coladangelo, non-executive director of the Department of Health and Social Care. The issue wasn’t of the marital status of the two, but because the video was reportedly, by The Sun, from May 6, two weeks before cross-household contact was permitted under COVID-19 protocols in the UK.
Note: Leave it to the Brits to have something of a sex scandal during the pandemic. While Hancock had been under fire for several months for his handling of the pandemic — alleged botching of testing, lacking PPE procurement, etc. — he’d managed to hang on until this latest revelation.
--Edited by Todd Lassa, Gary S. Vasilash and Nic Woods