•The Tomb of the Unknowns marks its 100th anniversary at Arlington National Cemetery and is open to the public for the first time in 96 years, for just two days, NPR says.
•President Biden will sign the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill Monday, The Hill reports.
•A federal judge has approved a $626 million settlement of civil claims regarding the Flint, Michigan, water crisis. Nearly 80% of the settlement is for children, but it does not settle all lawsuits over lead contamination in the city’s water, Michigan Public Radio reports.
•Go to https://thehustings.news to read a new comment in the right column regarding our ongoing debate, ‘Was January 6 a ‘Dress Rehearsal’?” It’s not too late to add your own comments to the left or right columns – email us at editors@thehustings.news.
Insurrection vs. Inflation – District Judge Tanya Chutkan refused to delay the Friday deadline for the National Archives to turn over Trump White House documents to the January 6 House select committee, while the former president appeals the judge’s decision of earlier in the week (The Hill). Meanwhile, President Biden spoke of easing up supply shipping bottlenecks with the passage of his $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill, after the Labor Department yesterday released news of the highest annual Consumer Price Index in 30 years.
What do these two issues have to do with each other?
If Donald J. Trump’s attorneys can’t get the Supreme Court to stay the district judge’s decision before the White House documents are turned over to Rep. Bennie Thompson’s, D-MS, committee tomorrow, much will be revealed about the president and his advisers’ involvement in the Capitol insurrection.
If, on the other hand, Trump manages more delay, the select committee will get stalled probably well into 2022. Next year, coincidentally, is when Treasury Secretary Janet Yellin expects inflation to come down to normal levels while the White House holds out high hopes that bipartisan infrastructure will help fix the supply chain bottleneck and all those container ships stacked up off U.S. coasts.
Known knowns: Sen. Joe Manchin III, D-WV, is highly unlikely to let the $1.8 trillion Build Back Better social safety net plan go anywhere, especially after the dire CPI numbers.
Known unknowns: The House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on the safety net bill next week. But it’s unlikely to advance, at least in the Senate, until next year if at all, depending on how the inflation rate plays out in coming months. By the time that happens, the House select committee either will, or will not, have scrutinized Trump’s White House papers.
Unknown unknowns: House Republicans who support Trump want to strip the 13 moderate House Republicans who voted for the bipartisan infrastructure bill of their committee assignments, even though the bill has widespread support across the country, as it fixes roads and bridges – and ports – while boosting employment levels. The Trumpists do not want to hand Biden any victories, especially as his poll numbers plummet -- a USA Today/Morning Consult poll released yesterday says Biden’s approval rating has dropped to a Trump-like low of 38%.
They also want to root out moderate House Republicans (many of whom, including Illinois’ Adam Kinzinger, one of only two GOP members on the 1/6 committee, have already announced they will not run for re-election) on their way to a much-expected route of Democrats in next November’s mid-terms.
Known known II: If the 1/6 select committee struggles next year with Trump’s stall tactics, and the inflation rate and struggling economy hands the GOP a turnover of the House, its new speaker, Kevin McCarthy, R-CA, will dismantle the committee.
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House Dems Hope to Censure Gosar — A group of House Democrats will offer a resolution to censure Paul Gosar, R-AZ, which, if accepted, would have the consequence of Gosar having to stand in the well of the House as the censure is read out by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA. Gosar posted “an edited video on social media depicting himself as murdering Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and attacking President Joe Biden,” according to Punchbowl News.
Note: Gosar is 62 and generally considered to be a grown-up. An edited anime with one of his colleagues being killed and the president of the United States being attacked is something that one might imagine a pimply-faced teen to post. Yes, this is what it comes to in the political entity formerly known as the “Grand Old Party.” There is nothing grand about it. Stupid, perhaps. Incidentally: Gosar’s former career was as a dentist. The mind boggles.
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There’s Always Chris – Former New Jersey governor, “friend” of Donald J. Trump, and likely 2024 presidential candidate Chris Christie told the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas last weekend that it’s time for the GOP to focus on future fights rather than rehash the 2020 election, Axios reports in a preview of an exclusive interview for an upcoming HBO show.
Predictably, Trump put out a statement that Christie “was just absolutely massacred by his statements that Republicans have to move on from the past.” Christie left New Jersey with a record-low approval rating of just 9%, Trump continued, without explaining why he would have relied on such a disliked politician for his 2016 campaign.
Note: Good news for never-Trump Republicans, Democrats and other defenders of democracy is that Christie’s almost inevitable ’24 run will make it hard for Trump to hold on to all but his most loyal acolytes over the next three years.
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Obituary: F.W. de Klerk, South Africa’s Last Apartheid President – The last president of South Africa’s Apartheid regime, F.W. de Klerk, has died after battling cancer at his home near Cape Town Thursday, age 85. De Klerk served as South Africa’s president from 1989 to 1994, when he lost re-election to the formerly imprisoned African National Congress leader, Nelson Mandela. The two men shared the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize. While de Klerk apologized for Apartheid, the question remains of whether he sufficiently rejected its moral injustice.
--Edited by Todd Lassa, Gary S. Vasilash and Nic Woods