•The Supreme Court hears arguments today from the Biden administration and by abortion providers in their effort to strike down Texas S.B. 8, which relies on private individuals to enforce the law. It restricts most abortions after the sixth week of pregnancy.
•The United Nations’ two-day COP26 climate conference has begun in Glasgow, Scotland, without China and Russia. World leaders from the G-20 industrialized nations met over the weekend without a specific deal on emission cuts, WSJ reports.
•Jury selection begins today in Kenosha, Wisconsin, for the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, who is accused of shooting three protesters after police shot a Black resident last summer. Rittenhouse, who was 17 at the time and drove to Kenosha from nearby Antioch, Illinois, will claim self-defense, according to his attorneys.
Closing in on Budget Reconciliation Deal? – Democrats in the Senate and the House of Representatives came close to a deal with the White House last weekend on prescription drug prices that would allow some Medicare negotiations with pharmaceutical companies, Politico reports. But passage of the $1.75 trillion Build Back Better budget reconciliation bill is not likely to happen in time for Tuesday’s Virginia gubernatorial election.
Note: By now it seems Democrats may be resolved to Republican Virginia gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin being just about even in the polls with Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe, and that the BBB and bipartisan infrastructure bills won’t help. We’re also betting none of this will get a vote until after Thanksgiving break, just in time to take up the debt limit as well.
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Kinzinger Won’t Seek Re-Election – One of only two Republicans on the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 Capitol insurrection, Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, said Friday he would not seek re-election after Democrats in his state’s legislature paired up three sets of incumbents in their gerrymandering. Kinzinger would face fellow Republican Darin LaHood for Illinois’ new 16th District seat. Kinzinger also faced a primary challenge from a supporter of Donald Trump, as the congressman was one of 10 Republicans to vote for the 45th president’s second impeachment last January.
Referring to his 2010 campaign for his first term in the House, Kinzinger says he remembers “saying that if I ever thought it was time to move on from Congress, I would. And I think that time is now.”
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U.S. ‘Rarely’ Enforced Conditions on Aid to Afghanistan, Report Says – The U.S. failed to enforce its own conditions on the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces in exchange for nearly $89 billion in aid during the nearly 20 years of the Afghanistan war against the Taliban, according to a special inspector general’s report released to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
The U.S. military assistance didn’t hold the ANDSF “to account by enforcing the conditions it established to create a stronger, more professional and self-reliant ANDSF,” the inspector general, John Sopko, wrote in an October 6 letter to Austin and other military leaders that has just surfaced publicly, Roll Call reports.
Note: For those following U.S. military efforts to train the ANDSF to be self-reliant since the early 2000s, this isn’t much of a revelation. The inspector general’s audit was completed and circulated for comment inside the Defense Department two months ago, according to Roll Call, which would have been just after the 11-day takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban, and the country’s president, Ashraf Ghani, reportedly fled with a helicopter full of cash.
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COVID-19 Death Toll Tops 5 Million Globally -- The global death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic has topped 5 million, according to Johns Hopkins University’s tracker. The U.S., the UK, the European Union and Brazil account for nearly half that number, although those nations have about one-eighth of the world’s population combined.
The U.S. leads the death toll among all nations, at more than 745,000 to date.
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Nic Woods