•Retail sales rose 1.7% in October, the Commerce Department reports, a stronger showing than expected and compared with an 0.8% increase for September. The latest numbers provide much-needed good economic news for the White House.
•Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon was released Monday after turning himself in to the FBI in Washington, D.C., over Contempt of Congress charges. He faces up to $200,000 in fines and two years in jail if convicted, NPR reports, and was required to turn in his passport.
•Jury deliberations have begun in the Kyle Rittenhouse case in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
•In a Washington Post-ABC News poll, 65% said the Supreme Court should overturn Texas’ abortion law restricting the procedure after the sixth week of pregnancy, and 60% believe Roe v. Wade should be upheld. SCOTUS will consider December 1 a Mississippi law restricting abortions after 15 weeks.
Social Infrastructure Vote Saturday? – The House vote on the Build Back Better plan, President Biden’s $1.75-trillion social infrastructure bill, could slip to Saturday, The Hill reports, citing a “senior Democrat source.” Considering how the House dragged out the bipartisan infrastructure vote, Saturday seems pretty optimistic, though the Thanksgiving break looms.
The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office promises its price tag on the bill by end of the day Friday. What’s the over-under on a Sunday vote?
Note: Forget the comparisons with FDR and LBJ over Build Back Better. Thanks largely to the 6.2% U.S. inflation rate, Biden is now being compared with Jimmy Carter.
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Pep Rally for Biden’s BIF Signature – Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, was busy, as promised, with other matters. But Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-AK, who is gearing up for a Trump-picked primary challenger in next year’s midterms, and Sen. Rob Portman, R-OH, who already has announced he will not run for re-election, both attended President Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure bill-signing ceremony Monday afternoon.
House Republicans Don Young, of Alaska (who is not seeking re-election) and Tom Reed, of New York (who is) also attended.
Biden has chosen former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu to be his infrastructure czar. He and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg will administer the $1.75-trillion infrastructure budget, $550 billion of which is new spending.
At the ceremony, Portman had this to say about attacks against the 13 Republican representatives and 19 Republican senators who voted for the bill, which Donald J. Trump has criticized though he had proposed a similar $1 trillion package during his many “Infrastructure Weeks” as president: “Finding common ground to advance the interests of the American people should be rewarded, not attacked.” (Per NPR’s All Things Considered.)
Portman said bipartisan infrastructure will help create jobs and reduce inflation, which might be enough of a win for Biden no matter how his social infrastructure bill goes down.
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Wonder Where the Flat Screen Was Made – The virtual summit between President Biden from the Oval Office, a big flat screen to his left broadcasting the video call, and Chinese President Xi Jingping from Beijing went on for more than three hours Monday night. The two discussed Afghanistan, North Korea, Iran, human rights, climate change and Taiwan but did not produce any major resolutions, according to White House officials (from The Wall Street Journal’s report).
Biden told Xi he remains committed to the “One China” policy, according to White House officials, though he added the U.S. “strongly opposes unilateral efforts to change the status quo or undermine peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.”
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On Christie’s Republican Rescue Effort – Though former New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie has yet to announce a run for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024, he is making the rounds of non-Fox News media outlets in a tour for his new book, Republican Rescue. Though this Republican comeback kid, a sort of GOP counterpart to former perennial presidential candidate Joe Biden, wrote the book to pick a fight and distance himself from former President Trump, the punditocracy isn’t very sympathetic. Christie was one of the earliest mainstream Republicans to support Trump’s 2016 run and was an advisor early in the administration.
The big question though is whether Christie’s re-emergence as a never-in-2024-Trumper is any indication that the GOP is backing away – however slowly – from the former president. On MSNBC’s The 11th Hour Monday, Christie cited the Des Moines Register’s Iowa Poll showing that 61% of self-identified Republicans say they have more allegiance to the GOP than to Donald Trump (26%).
Note: Though The 11th Hour host Brian Williams pressed Christie on his fervid loyalty to Trump through most of the administration, Williams didn’t ask him about the polls over the past 10 months – countering the latest Iowa poll -- that show a vast majority of the nation’s Republicans believe Donald J. Trump’s Big Lie.
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Alex Jones Found Liable in Sandy Hook Case – Infowars host Alex Jones must pay eight families who filed a lawsuit against him for defamation over the Sandy Hook school shooting, The Washington Post reports. Jones had made up stories that families of the 26 killed at the Newton, Connecticut elementary school were paid actors who “faked” the shooting. The judge in the case found for the plaintiffs after Jones refused to turn over documents related to the case.
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Charles Dervarics