•A Senate Judiciary Committee interim report released Thursday morning gives new details on Donald J. Trump’s efforts to use the Justice Department to overturn the November 2020 election (WaPo). The report reveals “the extent to which government lawyers threatened to resign en masse” if Trump carried out his January 3 threat to replace acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen with Jeffrey Clark.
•Former President Trump’s Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino, advisor Steve Bannon, and Kash Patel, chief of staff to Trump administration acting Defense Sec. Christopher Miller, are due to respond today to the January 6 House Select Committee’s subpoenas regarding its investigation of the Capitol insurrection, according to MSNBC. None are expected to comply, and Select Committee-appointed investigators have been unable to even find Scavino in order to serve him.
McConnell Will Not Block Short-Term Debt Limit Extension – Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, reached a deal with Democratic leaders Wednesday to extend the federal debt limit into December, and avert an economic crisis without forcing Democrats to use budget reconciliation, or “nuke” the filibuster. McConnell has promised not to filibuster the debt limit increase and not use procedural tools to “drag out” the arduous reconciliation process, Roll Call reports, and instead “kick the can” a short month-and-a-half down the road.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, said early Thursday that he and McConnell were still working out details. While Democrats initially pushed to extend the debt limit deadline through December 16, 2022, McConnell wants a specific dollar amount, which Senate Finance Committee ranking member Michael D. Crapo, R-ID, says could be about $300 billion.
Note: Who is the winner, who is the loser, here? Both Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-MA, and former President Trump suggest the loser is McConnell, according to Politico Playbook. “Looks like Mitch McConnell is folding to the Democrats, again,” said Trump, still miffed over the minority leader’s damning speech after he helped acquit the ex-president over his second impeachment. Common wisdom Thursday is that a potential threat by Democrats to “nuke” the legislative filibuster pushed McConnell into caving.
Don’t dismiss Wall Street lobbyists’ effect on this struggle. As reported Wednesday, Roll Call says K Street lobbyists for business and corporate interests were poised to push Republicans into caving on the debt ceiling in order to avoid almost certain economic calamity by the time the federal government would start defaulting, October 18, according to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellin’s warnings.
And while McConnell “lost” this battle, Schumer hasn’t quite won the war. Democratic leaders now have to extend the debt ceiling again in December, while bringing together the party’s progressives and moderates to pass the bi-partisan infrastructure bill and negotiate – and pass – a compromised version of the $3.5-trillion (the $2.2-2.3 trillion range seems likely) Build Back Better budget reconciliation bill. Happy holidays.
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Federal Judge Temporarily Blocks Texas S.B. 8 – U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman temporarily blocked Texas’ controversial law banning abortions as early as six months into pregnancy, The Texas Tribune reports. It’s far from certain the ruling by the Obama-appointed judge will open the state to abortions, as Texas quickly filed notice of appeal and will likely seek an emergency stay with the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, considered among the most conservative in the nation.
The law, S.B. 8, would subject violators to potential litigation, and the ACLU of Texas said in a press release that it’s unclear how Pitman’s ruling will affect abortion procedures in the state.
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COVID Cases Decrease … Sort Of — The number of new COVID cases has fallen by about 22% over the past two weeks, to approximately 102,000 new cases per day, according to stats from The New York Times. Still, 102,000 is a non-trivial number, given the number of people who have already been infected. While the decrease is certainly encouraging, there are still plenty of people who still need to be vaccinated —and perhaps not the people who you think. Axios Vitals, citing stats from the Kaiser Family Foundation, writes that while there is a general sense that people of color are lagging in jabs, it turns out that 64% of the unvaccinated are white compared with 14% Black and 16% Hispanic.
Note: Among the aforementioned unvaccinated, 59% are Republicans and 46% have a high school education. You can make your own assessment.
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World’s First Malaria Vaccine Approved – The World Health Organization has approved the world’s first malaria vaccine, The Washington Post reports. The vaccine took more than three decades to develop, because malaria is caused by a parasite, which is harder to target than a virus, the newspaper explains. Malaria kills more than 400,000 people a year globally, more than 260,000 of them children under age 5 in Africa.
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Gary S. Vasilash