•Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen testifies before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee today regarding her criticism of the social platform on 60 Minutes and leak of some of its documents and studies to The Wall Street Journal. The testimony comes a day after Facebook and its other platforms, including Instagram, went offline for several hours, costing the company billions of dollars.
•Johnson & Johnson has asked the Food and Drug Administration to approve extra shots of its COVID-19 vaccine to those 18 years old and up who have previously received its single-shot vaccine, the AP reports.
Schumer to Take Another Shot in Debt Ceiling Fight – Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, says he will schedule another vote on the debt ceiling later this week. It will surely be sunk by his counterpart, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, Politico reports, the third such vote to be defeated by a Republican filibuster. McConnell has made it clear Democrats must go it alone in waiving the debt limit as they move to pass a budget reconciliation bill that currently has a $3.5-trillion price tag.
Schumer and President Biden have called on McConnell to step aside and let Democrats pass a bill to raise the debt ceiling, via a cloture vote. The Senate parliamentarian issued an opinion last week, however, that the Senate could pass a debt ceiling hike via budget reconciliation without endangering protections for the whole budget reconciliation package, according to Punchbowl News. Democrats would rather raise the debt limit without resorting to the complications of reconciliation.
Senate Democrats are in the process of using the fiscal year 2022 budget resolution to pass spending extensions and tax breaks likely in the $2-trillion-plus range, Roll Call reports, to be paid for by tax increases on wealthy households and corporations, chipping away at the Trump tax cuts.
Meanwhile, President Biden travels to Michigan today to promote that budget reconciliation bill, his Build Back Better plan with key provisions for family leave, child care and climate change mitigation. The White House this week will get surrogates out to cable news shows and other outlets to promote budget reconciliation and specifically target McConnell as the key foil to Biden’s sweeping social infrastructure proposals, according to Politico.
Note: The posturing between Schumer, who knows he will fail to get cloture on his third vote on the debt ceiling this week, and McConnell is all about next year’s midterm elections. It’s clear that neither party will budge on both budget reconciliation (as Democrats try to get its progressives and moderates on the same page) and the debt ceiling, so all that’s left is to convince voters the other side has jeopardized the nation’s economic future with their intransigence.
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Biden Reverses Rule Banning Abortion Referrals – The Biden administration has reversed a 2018 rule that bans federally funded family planning clinics from referring patients for abortions, The Washington Post reports. Many of the clinics who received Title X funding simply declined it, after the Trump administration rule went into effect. Biden’s reversal takes effect November 8.
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NIH Director Announces Retirement – National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins, 71, says he will retire by the end of the year, after more than 12 years in the chief position.
“No single person should serve this position too long,” Collins said in his announcement, according to Roll Call, adding “it’s time to bring in a new scientist to lead the NIH into the future.” Collins is the agency’s longest-serving director.
No interim director has been named. President Biden will nominate a replacement for Collins, who must be confirmed by the Senate.
Note: It’s important that Collins specified a “new scientist” to lead the NIH, which has given relatively low-key support to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendations on masking, social distancing and vaccinations for the coronavirus. In normal times, Collins’ replacement would sail through Senate confirmation, but these are not normal times.
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Romania’s Center-Right Coalition is Out – Romania’s center-left Social Democratic Party (PSD) and far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians have joined to vote out Prime Minister Florin Citu’s center-right coalition government, Politico Europereports. The vote of no-confidence comes less than a year after Citu established his coalition. The PSD has demanded elections as soon as possible.
Note: So far, Romania’s government has avoided the authoritarian, nationalist tendencies that have plagued fellow former Eastern Bloc countries, Hungary and Poland. It’s somewhat reassuring that in the context of this short-lived center-right government, its foils combine the center-left PSD with the hard right.
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Charles Dervarics