Thursday News & Notes
JULY 22, 2021 -- U.S. PILOT WILEY POST BECOMES FIRST ROUND-THE-WORLD SOLO PILOT, 1933
•Attorney General Merrick Garland heads to his hometown Chicago today to unveil a set of new “strike forces” designed to close off pipelines of guns illegally trafficked to urban centers with tight firearm laws, Politico reports. The Chicago visit comes as a police reform bill that Sens. Corey Booker, D-NJ, and Tim Scott, R-SC, began negotiating last month languishes on its way to near-certain death, with no significant changes in policing practices in sight.
•Scrapping the legislative filibuster in the Senate would “throw the entire Congress into chaos,” and “nothing at all will get done.” – President Biden at CNN’s Town Hall in Cincinnati, Wednesday.
Showdown at the 1/6 Corral – The House of Representatives appear to be heading for two sets of realities about the January 6 insurrection on Capitol Hill, with Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-CA, pulling all five of his Republican nominees from Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s, D-CA, select committee after she rejected two Trump acolytes Wednesday. McCarthy says he will set up a 1/6 committee of his own.
Pelosi rejected Reps. Jim Jordan, R-OH, and Jim Banks, R-IN, as committee members, “a privilege she has as speaker,” according to The Washington Post. The lone Republican on the committee will be Rep. Liz Cheney, of Wyoming, the traditional conservative chosen by Pelosi, who famously has split with her party’s leadership over the role President Trump had played in triggering the Capitol riots. Along with Banks and Jordan, McCarthy has pulled Republicans Rodney Davis, of Illinois, Kelly Armstrong, of North Dakota and Troy Nehls, of Texas.
“We will run our own investigation,” McCarthy said in a press conference Wednesday. He said that Americans “don’t deserve politics, they don’t deserve destroying the institution. No committee in Congress will work if one person is picking all who can serve.”
Cheney will join Democrats Bennie Thompson, of Mississippi, Stephanie Murphy, of Florida, Jamie Raskin, of Maryland, Elaine Luria, of Virginia, and Californians Adam Schiff, Zoe Lofgren and Pete Aguilar on the committee.
Asked whether McCarthy’s leadership is worthy of elevation to speaker if Republicans retake the House in next year’s mid-terms, Cheney said: “I think that any person who would be third in line to the presidency must demonstrate a commitment to the Constitution and a commitment to the rule of law and Minority Leader McCarthy has not done that.”
Note: McCarthy’s rogue committee will give the loyal Fox News audience the ability to view the MAGA version of events. For instance, Trump described his supporters who attacked the Capitol on January 6 as “happy people,” in a recorded interview with Philip Rucker for Only I Can Fix It, the WaPo reporter’s book co-written with colleague Carol Leonnig.
“These were peaceful people. These were great people,” Trump told Rucker.
While it may be thought that Pelosi played into McCarthy’s hands with her rejection of Jordan and Banks, if Pelosi’s committee is able to show to the American people, chapter and verse, what happened on January 6, the only ones who won’t believe the evidence are those who would rather pretend the insurrectionists were “peaceful. . . great people.”
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Did the Senate’s Rejection of Schumer’s ‘Test’ Vote Doom Infrastructure? – In a word, no. But reports about the rejection of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s, D-NY, procedural meant to advance the $1.2-trillion bi-partisan infrastructure bill had some non-Fox News outlets spelling doom. By Thursday, Punchbowl News AM countered with the growing feeling that the Senate and their staff would be spending their August recess on Capitol Hill instead of going home to constituents or to Delaware’s Rehoboth Beach.
Schumer voted against his own procedural, Roll Call notes, in order to allow the Senate “to reconsider the vote at a future time,” which does sound like there may be some last-minute deals to be had on short-term rentals at Rehoboth.
Republican negotiators unanimously opposed the Schumer test vote, with two disagreements:
•Transit funding – Democrats want to spend more than 20% of the traditional 80/20 highway/mass transit split of federal gas tax money expenditures.
•Which portions of unspent COVID-19 relief money would help pay for the package, which adds in $579 billion in new spending.
“Leader Schumer wanted to understand if there are 10 Republicans in favor of getting on the bill. And we’ve indicated, yeah, there are 10, probably more,” said Sen. Mitt Romney, R-UT, one of the negotiators in the original bi-partisan agreement.
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Dunn to Dems: Build Back Biden—White House Senior Advisor Anita Dunn will be making a presentation to Congressional Democrats to try to gain some traction for the Biden economic agenda. The title of her presentation is “Building Back Better for Working Families: More Jobs. Tax Cuts. Lower Costs.” One of the points she’ll make up front is the point Biden repeatedly made while running for election: “No one earning under $400,000 will pay a penny more in taxes.” And while many critics of the president talk about jobs, Dunn will note, “Build Back Better lowers costs for working families rather than. . .gets people back to work or helps the economy.”
Note: While the Republicans have been beating the drum about reckless socialist plans, Dunn’s PowerPoint deck is about meat-and-potatoes messaging. People who have to put that on the table are the ones who are being addressed with her message. It is notable that in a recent Morning Consult poll, 26% of members of Gen Z (13 to 24) have a positive opinion of socialism and 25% are neutral. Asked about capitalism, 22% are positive and 23% neutral. Seems that that socialist trope may be something that aging generations are trying to hang on to—but which has no purchase when it comes to the new generation of voters.