•As if budget reconciliation, infrastructure, the debt limit and next Thursday’s federal budget deadline aren’t enough, the House of Representatives began debate of the $778-billion fiscal 2022 defense spending bill, with 476 amendments proposed, Roll Callreports.
•More than a dozen shots were fired at a car carrying Serhiy Shefir, principal aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelinsky, Politico reports, via Ukrainian media. Shefir was unhurt, but his driver was injured, and hospitalized. Speculation is that the assassination attempt stems from Zelinsky’s campaign to punish corruption in Ukraine. He is best-known in the U.S. as the recipient of the “perfect call” that led to President Trump’s first impeachment, in 2019.
•The Taliban wants to send a high-ranking official to the UN General Assembly being held in New York City this week, The Washington Post reports. The Taliban has sent the request to UN Secretary Gen. Antonio Guterres asking that Mohammed Suhail Shaheen be named the group’s permanent representative. A State Department official told reporters that such requests take time to deliberate.
End of Month Showdown on the Debt Limit – Let’s make sure we’re all on the same page regarding the federal budget and the debt limit. Without a vote on a budget, federal agencies run out of funding and shut down after September 30 –a week from tomorrow. Meanwhile, if Congress fails to raise the federal debt limit, we run out of funds for federal programs in October, according to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellin.
The House of Representatives last night passed a short-term funding bill that would keep federal agencies open through December 3, while raising the debt limit through December 2022, Punchbowl News reports. The 220-211 vote was along party lines, with Rep. Debbie Lesko, R-AZ, not voting. The House bill goes to the Senate today where Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, will call for cloture (to subvert a filibuster), but that vote won’t happen until Friday, the Capitol Hill newsletter says.
Republican senators are expected to vote to keep the federal government open, but Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, has made it clear budget reconciliation with the debt limit increase is dead on arrival, even as Democratic senators complain they voted for such an increase when the Trump tax cuts passed. The question, according to Punchbowl News, is whether Democrats continue to push the budget reconciliation bill, all $3.5-trillion of it, with the debt limit increase attached or “find another path”?
Note: The “other path” comes down to the months-old issue of how to get progressive House Democrats on board and pass the $1.2-trillion infrastructure bill, sending it to President Biden’s desk, on September 27 as scheduled by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA. The $3.5-trillion “social infrastructure” budget reconciliation bill simply will not get through the Senate as-is, without removing the legislative filibuster, and Sens. Joe Manchin III, D-WV, and Krysten Sinema, D-AZ, are not going to vote for the filibuster suspension.
As several news outlets have pointed out, the ongoing fight between moderate and progressive Democrats threatens to “derail” Biden’s agenda.
•••
Trump Family Feud – Donald J. Trump has filed suit against his niece, Mary L. Trump, The New York Times and three of its reporters, accusing them of conspiring on an “insidious plot” to improperly obtain the real estate developer, former president and reality TV star’s tax records “and exploit their use in news articles and a book,” the Times reports. The lawsuit filed in New York Supreme Court in Dutchess County was first reported by the DailyBeast Wednesday morning.
Trump’s lawsuit claims the reporters “relentlessly” sought out his niece – a psychologist and frequent cable news pundit the last four years who criticized the ex-prez and her family in the 2020 book Too Much and Never Enough – and “persuaded” her to smuggle the tax records out of her attorney’s office[GV1] . This breached a confidentiality agreement that was part of a litigation settlement involving the will of Trump’s late father, Fred C. Trump, who died in 1999. The lawsuit says Times reporters Susanne Craig, David Barstow and Russell Buettner, and Ms. Trump “engaged in an insidious plot to obtain confidential and highly-sensitive records which they exploited for their own benefit and utilized as a means of falsely legitimizing their publicized works.”
The suit follows scheduling by a Manhattan criminal judge’s scheduling Monday of the trial of the Trump Organization and its longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, who are accused of dodging taxes. The trial is set for late summer of 2022 and alleges Weisselberg avoided $1.7 million of taxes on fringe benefits received from the Trump Organization.
Note: The AP reports that Susanne Craig, reacting to this claim of an “insidious plot,” tweeted, “I knocked on Mary Trump’s door. She opened it. I think they call that journalism.” Drop the mic.
•••
Biden Says Government Will Buy Half-Billion Vaccines for Developing Nations – Following his speech to the United Nations General Assembly Tuesday, President Biden announced the U.S. will buy a half-billion COVID-19 vaccine doses from Pfizer BioNTech to be donated to developing nations in need. The announcement comes after Biden re-committed the U.S. to re-engage with the global community, which comes after four years of Trump administration nationalism.
“Instead of continuing to fight the wars of the past, we are fixing our eyes on devoting our resources to the challenges that hold the keys to our collective future: ending this pandemic; addressing the climate crisis; managing the shifts in global power dynamics; shaping the rules of the world on vital issues like trade, cyber, and emerging technologies; and facing the threat of terrorism as it stands today,” Biden said.
“We’ve ended 20 years of conflict in Afghanistan. And as we close this period of relentless war, we’re opening a new era of relentless diplomacy…”
Note: Of course, Biden’s words glossed over an end to the Afghan war largely criticized for its poor organization. Meanwhile, the French government is still reeling – and has called its ambassador back to Paris from Washington, D.C., over the U.S.-U.K.-Australian nuclear submarine deal.
And as for the vaccines, according to the BBC, only 4% of the African population, for example, have been vaccinated -- there are some 1.3-billion people who live there. As the Pfizer vaccination requires two shots, half-a-billion doses doesn’t go too far in a place like that.
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Gary S. Vasilash