Last Call For Thune Out, Turn On, Drop Out

Although the story of congressional retirements heading into 2022 remains the nearly two dozen Democrats in the House heading out, Republican Senate number two John Thune of South Dakota is reportedly also looking for the exit off Capitol Hill.

Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the second-ranking Senate Republican and a potential future leader, is seriously considering retiring after next year, a prospect that has set off an intensifying private campaign from other Republicans urging him to seek re-election.

Mr. Thune is only 60, but a combination of family concerns and former President Donald J. Trump’s enduring grip on the Republican Party have prompted the senator, who is in his third term, to tell associates and reporters in his home state that 2022 could be his last year in Congress.

His departure would be a blow to South Dakota, which has enjoyed outsize influence in Washington, and could upend Senate Republicans’ line of succession. Mr. Thune has been open about his ambition to lead his party’s caucus after Senator Mitch McConnell makes way, and quiet but unmistakable jockeying is already underway between him and Senators John Cornyn of Texas and John Barrasso of Wyoming.

“John is the logical successor should Mitch decide to not run again for leader,” Senator Susan Collins of Maine said of Mr. Thune, while noting that Mr. McConnell’s hold on their caucus remained “very secure.”

That Mr. Thune would even entertain retirement with the chance to ascend to Senate Republican leader illustrates both the strain of today’s Congress and the shadow Mr. Trump casts over the party. The senator’s departure would represent yet another exit, perhaps the most revealing one yet, by a mainstream Senate Republican who has grown frustrated with the capital’s political environment and the former president’s loyalty demands. The exodus began in 2018 with Senators Jeff Flake and Bob Corker retiring rather than facing primaries, and has accelerated this year.

Part of Mr. Thune’s hesitation owes to Mr. Trump and the potential for the former president — who lashed out at Mr. Thune early this year when the senator rejected his attempts to overturn the election — to intervene in South Dakota’s Senate primary race. But the larger factor may be the longer-range prospect of taking over the Senate Republican caucus with Mr. Trump still in the wings or as the party’s standard-bearer in 2024.

Mr. Thune has said he will decide his intentions over the holidays. Yet a number of his friends and colleagues have become convinced that he is serious about leaving public life.

Among those alarmed is Mr. McConnell himself, who one adviser said had “leaned in” on pushing Mr. Thune to run again.

“I certainly hope that he will run for re-election, and that’s certainly what I and others have been encouraging him to do all year long,” Mr. McConnell said in an interview.

 

Jon Martin at the Times makes it clear that doing Trump's personal bidding for another decade after Mitch settles back down here in KY is absolutely not in his cards, and he basically has that seat for life. To give that up makes me think there's a lot more to the story.

It's certainly not that Thune is a moral man, he's a Republican after all.

Sadly, it just means he'll be replaced by a Republican 100% loyal to Trump instead of say, 95%.

The Vax Of Life

The Biden Administration is planning to do what the Trump regime could never be bothered to do: distribute hundreds of millions of COVID test kits free of charge to all Americans in January.

President Joe Biden will announce Tuesday a purchase of a half-billion at-home rapid Covid-19 tests and a plan to distribute them free to Americans who request them through a website, one of a series of new steps he'll unveil as the country faces a potentially crippling wintertime surge of infections. 

The 500 million new tests will be made available next month and will reach Americans through the mail, the official said. The administration is still working to determine how many tests each household may request. 

The new test shipment scheme will come during remarks meant to underscore the White House's plan to confront what is expected to be a large spike in cases driven by the now-dominant Omicron variant in the coming weeks. Already, cases are rising rapidly in areas around the country and hospitals are nearing capacity. 

Among the President's new initiatives is a plan to prepare 1,000 military service members to deploy to overburdened hospitals across the country in January and February, administration officials said. Those service members will include doctors, nurses, medics and other military medical personnel. 

An official said, "God willing" the full 1,000 wouldn't be needed, "but if we do, they are ready and they're mobilized." 

Biden hopes to reassure Americans that if they are vaccinated, they can still proceed with their holiday plans without fear of becoming seriously ill. Conversely, he wants to tell those who have not yet received shots of the potential for severe illness or death in the coming months.

 

This should have happened six months ago with Delta, but at least it's happening now. Getting half a billion tests into the hands of American families is the right thing to do. 

Still, it's more than the previous guy ever even bothered with, and we can't go back to him, period.

Insurrection Investigation, Con't

The January 6th Committee may be considering referring the insurrectionists for federal criminal charges, and yes, apparently that may include not just Trump's lackeys, but even Trump himself.

When the House formed a special committee this summer to investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol assault, its stated goal was to compile the most authoritative account of what occurred and make recommendations to ensure it never happens again.

But as investigators sifted through troves of documents, metadata and interview transcripts, they started considering whether the inquiry could yield something potentially more consequential: evidence of criminal conduct by President Donald J. Trump or others that they could send to the Justice Department urging an investigation.

That move — known as sending a criminal referral — has no legal weight, as Congress has little ability to tell the Justice Department what investigations it should undertake. But it could have a substantial political impact by increasing public pressure on Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, who in his first year in office has largely sidestepped questions about what prosecutors are doing to examine the conduct of Mr. Trump and his aides as they promoted baseless allegations of voter fraud.

The questions of criminality go far beyond the contempt of Congress referrals that the House has sent to the Justice Department for Mr. Trump’s former chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, and his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, for their refusal to cooperate with the investigation. (Federal law requires prosecutors to bring contempt of Congress charges before a grand jury upon receiving such a referral.)

According to people briefed on their efforts, investigators for the committee are looking into whether a range of crimes were committed, including two in particular: whether there was wire fraud by Republicans who raised millions of dollars off assertions that the election was stolen, despite knowing the claims were not true; and whether Mr. Trump and his allies obstructed Congress by trying to stop the certification of electoral votes.

It is not clear what, if any, new evidence the committee has that might support a criminal referral, when and how it will determine whether to pursue that option and whether the committee could produce a case strong enough to hold up against inevitable accusations that it acted in a partisan manner.

Behind the scenes, the committee’s day-to-day work is being carried out by a team of 40 investigators and staff members, including former federal prosecutors. The panel has obtained more than 30,000 records and interviewed more than 300 witnesses, including about a dozen last week whom committee members say provided “key” testimony.

In recent weeks, the committee has publicly signaled its interest in the question of criminality. Shortly after obtaining from Mr. Meadows 9,000 pages of documents — including text messages and a PowerPoint presentation — the panel’s top Republican, Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, read from the criminal code at a televised hearing.

She suggested that Mr. Trump, by failing to stop the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, might have violated the federal law that prohibits obstructing an official proceeding before Congress.

“We know hours passed with no action by the president to defend the Congress of the United States from an assault while we were trying to count electoral votes,” Ms. Cheney said, adding: “Did Donald Trump, through action or inaction, corruptly seek to obstruct or impede Congress’s official proceeding to count electoral votes?”

 

Let's get a couple things out of the way first.

 

One, as the article says, the committee referring anyone, even Trump, for criminal charges means that a referral from the January 6th Committee and a $10 bill will get you a roll of quarters.  Unless Merrick Garland decides there's a case there, nothing's going to happen. No US Attorney, not Cy Vance in Manhattan, not newly minted DC US attorney Matt Graves, is going to do a damn thing at this level without Garland's express permission, and unless the evidence that the Committee turns over to Garland is damning as hell (it might be, frankly) precisely nothing's going to happen here.

Two, it was always going to come down to Garland and the Justice Department's decision. Congress doesn't do prosecuting, folks. and the evidence is Garland won't issue any charges because of rocking the political boat. It's unfortunate, because the next GOP-appointed Attorney General absolutely will bring charges against Democrats up to and including Joe Biden. But Garland isn't going to be pressured into doing jack shit, not by Biden or by anyone.

 

Three, the usual caveats about the guaranteed violence by Trump cultists if Trump himself is charged. That's the most likely outcome should Garland go forward (or Tish James in New York, which is actually far more likely). America isn't prepared for that. Hell, police and military personnel may support, if not actually be the ones conducting said violence. If Garland has the goods, he needs to act, but understand that there will be a cost in blood, the only question is how much these assholes will extract. Congressional and state Republicans will absolutely vow to take action as well. it will get ugly, folks. I'm not sure if Garland has the fortitude to see this through if he has a case. People are going to be made to suffer, and that has to be part of the calculus.

Having said that, that brings us to point Four: the people who aren't Trump are absolutely fair game for Garland. Rudy, Roger Stone, Mike Flynn, all the dickheads that Trump pardoned and then helped him with the damn coup? Let's put those guys back in jail, shall we?

We'll see where all this goes.

StupidiNews!

• A magnitude 6.2 earthquake struck Northern California on Monday with the epicenter near Cape Mendocino, no casualties or major damage was reported.
• Oklahoma state House Republican Terry O' Donnell is facing multiple felony fraud charges, including a ten-year prison sentence if convicted of conspiracy against the state.
• The case against Jeffrey Epstein confidante Ghislaine Maxwell went to jury deliberations Monday, Maxwell is facing decades in prison if convicted on child sexual abuse charges.
• Quebec officials are closing bars and schools across the province as COVID Omicron cases are ripping across Montreal and Quebec City, hospital cases are up more than 75% in three weeks.
• The EPA has released tough new fuel economy standards, replacing far more lenient Trump-era standards requiring passenger vehicles to average 40 mpg across fleets by 2026 up from 25.
  

Last Call For Ridin' With Biden, Con't

The objective economic data proves pretty convincing when it comes to the Biden Boom in 2021. Joe Biden's comparisons to America's recent presidents finds him on top or at number 2 on all the big economic indicators, according to Bloomberg's Matt Winkler.

U.S. financial markets are outperforming the world by the biggest margin in the 21st century, and with good reason: America’s economy improved more in Joe Biden's first 12 months than any president during the past 50 years notwithstanding the contrary media narrative contributing to dour public opinion.

Exceptional returns from dollar-denominated assets, especially the S&P 500 Index in both absolute terms and relative to its global counterparts, can be attributed to record-low debt ratios enabling companies to reap the biggest profit margins since 1950. Corporate America is booming because the Biden administration's Covid-19 vaccination programs and $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan reduced the jobless rate to 4.2% in November from 6.2% in February, continuing an unprecedented rate of decline during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Consider that real, or inflation adjusted, gross domestic product surged at an average annual rate of 5.03% in each of the first three quarters of 2021, and is poised to expand 5.6% for the year based on the average estimate of more than 80 economists surveyed Bloomberg. If that forecast proves accurate, it would be more than 2.8 times the average between 2000 and 2019 and double the average since 1976.

All of which makes Biden's first year in the White House the standout among the seven previous presidents, based on 10 market and economic indicators given equal weight. According to data compiled by Bloomberg, no one comes close to matching Biden's combination of No. 1 and No. 2 rankings for each of the measures:

• Gross domestic product (1)
• Profit growth (1)
• S&P 500 performance (2)
• Consumer credit (1)
• Non-farm payrolls (2)
• Manufacturing jobs (2)
• Business productivity (2)
• Dollar appreciation (2)
• S&P 500 relative performance (2)

Per capita disposable income, which rose 1.08% this year, is the only comparable weakness for Biden, trailing Donald Trump’s 2.17%, George W. Bush’s 2.01%, Jimmy Carter’s 1.80% and Ronald Reagan’s 1.42%.

GDP growth in every incoming administration during the past four decades never exceeded 2.74% until 2021. Biden is now positioned to surpass Carter (5.01%) as the GDP champion of presidents since 1976. Much of the credit goes to The American Rescue Plan, which poured $66 billion into 36 million households and reduced the child poverty rate by 50%, helping the U.S. recover faster from the pandemic than most other nations.

 

The downside to that is record corporate profits that absolutely are not being shared with workers, and in 2021 economic inequality got considerably worse, even with Biden's recovery act putting billions in the pockets of American families, and oh yeah, significant inflation, even more so than under Carter.

Biden, like Carter, now faces the political fallout of the accelerating inflation from global supply chain breakdowns associated with the pandemic even though maintaining stable inflation and interest rates are the primary responsibility of the Federal Reserve, and the Fed said it's prepared to tighten monetary policy in 2022.

Biden, unlike Carter, benefits from the $29 trillion U.S. debt market. In contrast to the 1970s and early 1980s, confidence in the Fed’s ability to get inflation back under control is unimpaired, reflected in the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note fluctuating below 1.7% as inflation hovers at 4.1%. When Carter was in the White House, investors lost confidence in the Fed, evidenced by the 10-year yield rising to 12.6% with inflation reaching 9.65%.

The clear message from the market that tells all other markets what to do is that the people with the most at stake are betting on the Biden economy.

 

The problem is the GOP continues to put on a master class of blaming Biden for Trump's disastrous economy. For those of you keeping score on Tang The Conqueror's marks among the last 8 presidents:

• Gross domestic product (T-3)
• Profit growth (5)
• S&P 500 performance (4)
• Consumer credit (2)
• Non-farm payrolls (5)
• Manufacturing jobs (3)
• Business productivity (5)
• Dollar appreciation (8)
• S&P 500 relative performance (5) 

 

And remember, this is comparing their first year in office. Trump trashed the dollar in his first year in office and coasted on Obama's economic performance, before cratering the economy entirely in his last year in office.

Biden is kicking ass and bringing the dollar back around. The downside again is the hefty inflation, but Biden can still raise rates and almost certainly needs to.

 

Keep that in mind. Biden's doing very well.

 

The Manchin On The Hill, Con't

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki scorched Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin on Sunday over Manchin's complete reversal on backing Biden's Build Back Better bill, and now we're getting details that indicate Manchin was never going to be on board with the bill's provisions.

After months of haggling with President Joe Biden and other Democrats, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) dashed his party’s hopes on Sunday by announcing he wouldn’t vote for the Build Back Better legislation.

Publicly, his biggest gripes are about the cost of the bill. But privately, Manchin has told his colleagues that he essentially doesn’t trust low-income people to spend government money wisely.

In recent months, Manchin has told several of his fellow Democrats that he thought parents would waste monthly child tax credit payments on drugs instead of providing for their children, according to two sources familiar with the senator’s comments.

Continuing the child tax credit for another year is a core part of the Build Back Better legislation that Democrats had hoped to pass by the end of the year. The policy has already cut child poverty by nearly 30%.

Manchin’s private comments shocked several senators, who saw it as an unfair assault on his own constituents and those struggling to raise children in poverty.

Manchin has also told colleagues he believes that Americans would fraudulently use the proposed paid sick leave policy, specifically saying people would feign being sick and go on hunting trips, a source familiar with his comments told HuffPost.

Manchin’s office declined to comment for this story.

In a statement on Sunday, he said he opposed the Build Back Better agenda largely because of its cost.

 

West Virginia is in nearly every category the poorest state in the nation, and Manchin apparently thinks that the massive number of impoverished in the state are all drug addicts for not being as rich as he is in a country of "endless opportunity" like America. 

Manchin's pretty terrible, but the Republican who will eventually replace him will be far worse. There are several bad Democrats, but there are no good Republicans. Keep that in mind.

So where do Dems go from here? For his part, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer says Dems will be taking several "early 2022" votes on the Biden agenda.

The U.S. Senate will vote early next year on President Joe Biden's sweeping $1.75 trillion policy bill as well as on voting rights, the chamber's top Democrat said on Monday, despite conservative Democratic Senator Joe Manchin's opposition.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer unveiled plans for both votes on Monday, the day after Manchin -- who has stood as a roadblock to many Biden policies in the evenly divided chamber -- said in a television interview that he would not vote for the "Build Back Better" bill, dealing it a potentially fatal blow.

"The Senate will, in fact, consider the Build Back Better Act, very early in the new year so that every Member of this body has the opportunity to make their position known on the Senate floor, not just on television," Schumer wrote in a letter to colleagues.

Democrats need all of their members on board to pass legislation in the Senate. Biden and party leaders negotiated with Manchin for months to satisfy his concerns, but the West Virginia senator said on Monday that those talks were doomed to fail.

 

Schumer isn't playing here. That Dear Colleague letter named Manchin specifically.  But the fact remains as long as Manchin is a no, and that there remains unified resistance from the Senate GOP, nothing gets passed at all.

Something has to change or the vote fails. The question is what, if anything, will change at all.

The Airing Of The Grievances

House Republicans aren't just counting their 2022 midterm chickens before they hatch, they're loudly and openly telling anyone in earshot exactly how they will spend 100% of their time in 2023 and 2024 with constant petty vengeance investigations, televised circus hearings, government shutdown hostage taking, and putting as many Biden administration officials in jail with House contempt votes as they can get away with should they win the House back.

 

House Republicans have begun mapping aggressive probes of the Biden administration if they win back the majority — including inquiries into the origins of COVID, a leak of IRS data about billionaires, and accusations the NSA spied on Tucker Carlson.

Why it matters: The plans, obtained exclusively by Axios, show House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy would make muscular use of majority powers for the last two years of President Biden's term if, as expected, the GOP wins the majority in next year's midterms.
McCarthy plans to send a spate of "preservation notices" to departments throughout Biden's Cabinet, ordering them to retain documents that might be needed for future GOP oversight hearings.

Between the lines: Republicans want to deflect attention from the 1/6 commission, a real-time probe of real violence, death and looting in the Capitol. 

As a prelude, House Republicans in August sent Biden a request to "preserve all records related to your Administration’s withdrawal ... from Afghanistan."

Investigations planned by House Republicans — in parallel with their legislative agenda — show they hope to use congressional power to stoke culture wars for 2024.

 

They are vowing to investigate Biden over everything Democrats hit Trump on: COVID, foreign policy, immigration, the IRS, and everything from Tucker Carlson's email to Critical Race Theory.

 

And we're not even counting the inevitable impeachment investigations. 

If you're considering stayng home and not voting in November because Biden or Manchin or whoever disappointed you, wait until Republicans get power back and take vengeance upon all of us.

StupidiNews!

• Senate Republicans say they will block any Biden Supreme Court pick for two years if they regain control of the Senate in the 2022 elections.
• The Catholic Church is facing a major investigation into sexual misconduct of priests in Spain, with possible abuse cases dating as far back as 80 years ago.
• Chilean leftist Gabriel Boric is claiming victory in Sunday's presidential elections less than two years after nationwide protests against the Pinochet-defending party of rival Juan Antonio Kast.
• Senators Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker both say they have tested positive for COVID Omicron and will be taking measures to control its spread among staffers and Senate personnel.
• ESPN and other Disney-owned channels are returning to YouTubeTV after Google and Disney reached a deal over the weekend for carriage of Disney channels on Google's service.
  

Last Call For School Of Hard-Right Knocks, Con't

Let's be perfectly clear about what Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott is doing to Texas abortion clinics: shutting them down permanently by criminalizing what they do on a daily basis, putting cash bounties on everyone's heads, and having them sued out of existence in civil courts by wingnut assholes.

Now let's recall that Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis apparently wants to do the same to Florida public schools.

Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is pushing a new bill that would allow parents to sue school districts if their children are taught critical race theory in classrooms, which mirrors how Texas' abortion ban is enforced.

DeSantis announced the "Stop W.O.K.E. Act" in Wildwood, Florida on Wednesday, alongside state Lt. Gov. Jeanette Núñez and Commissioner of Education Richard Corcoran. "Our legislation will defend any money for K-12 going to CRT consultants," the governor said. "No taxpayer dollars should be used to teach our kids to hate our country or hate each other."

Chris Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, also spoke at the event with DeSantis. In a tweet earlier this year, Rufo promised to make the concept of critical race theory "toxic" in the public imagination.

Under the proposed measure, parents would be granted a "private right of action" to enforce the state's ban on critical race theory in schools. The bill also takes aim at such training in companies, allowing individuals the right to sue businesses if they are forced to learn critical race theory.

There's scant evidence that critical race theory — an academic area of study that examines the modern-day impact of systemic racism in law and society — is actually being taught in Florida public schools or in any other public school system, but it has become a conservative flashpoint. CRT, as it's sometimes known, is often used as a catch-all phrase encompassing diversity trainings and other anti-racist efforts criticized by conservatives.

DeSantis' new plan comes after he directed the Florida Department of Education to ban critical race theory in schools in June.

The Florida State Board of Education unanimously voted to ban teaching ideas related to critical race theory, making it one of the largest public school systems to fall in line with conservative efforts across the country to regulate certain classroom instruction of American history.

As an example of critical race theory being pushed by educators, DeSantis cited an “Equity Toolkit” posted online by the Arizona Department of Education, which he said claimed that “babies show the first sign of racism by three months old.”

The graphic posted by the Arizona government actually cites studies, conducted by researchers in the U.S., the United Kingdom and China, which found that three month olds of all ethnicities prefer to look at the face of someone from their own ethnic group.

The governor called "woke ideology" an attempt to erase the country's history, referencing the removal of statues in recent years. The bill would also let parents collect attorneys fees if they are successful with their lawsuits, DeSantis said.

 

Consider the overly broad definition of "Critical Race Theory" that DeSantis himself has cited.  The entire point of this exercise is to frighten teachers -- and corporations -- into leaving. DeSantis can simply call any company or teacher who leaves a racist, and he wins.

I suspect the courts will have a field day with this law on First Amendment grounds, but the damage would be done as soon as the law would be passed. How many teachers will quit knowing that angry parents will sue them for teaching basically anything in American history or culture? How many businesses will just leave the state?

The more fights DeSantis can pick on this front, the more popular he gets among the Trump CHUD crowd, and he knows it.

There's no downside for him if this passes, unless Florida voters are going to exact a toll, and frankly, the majority of them will support this.

Pretty soon, I suspect we'll see calls for public schools to be eliminated completely in states, and that day is coming sooner rather than later in places like Florida and Texas.

President Manchin Finally Kills The Bill

Merry Christmas to Joe Biden, as President Manchin went on FOX News this morning to announce he will now vote against the Build Back Better plan, effectively killing the legislation.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said he will not be voting for President Biden's Build Back Better Act on Sunday, citing his continued concerns on inflation.

Appearing on "Fox News Sunday," Manchin said his concerns surrounding the massive social spending and climate bill have not been assuaged.

"I've always said this Brett, if I can't go home and explain to the people of West Virginia I can't vote for and I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation. I just can't. I've tried everything humanly possible. I can't get there," Manchin told host Bret Baier.

"This is a no."

 

This is not only Manchin saying he's a no right now, this is Manchin giving up on getting to yes.

 

He's prepared to be the bad guy here, along with all 50 Republican senators.

 

So what happens now?  There certainly won't be a vote on the bill with Manchin a hard no now, and if you noticed, I called this months ago. Once the Senate infrastructure bill was passed and signed into law, Manchin was going to kill the BBB bill. He went on FOX News Sunday specifically to drive the knife in Biden's back.

Biden won't give up completely, but at this point any more cuts in the legislation destroys its chances completely in the House, which is the point. Ideally for Manchin, the chopped bill ends up failing on the House floor, and the game ends where House Progressives are the bad guys for making the good the enemy of the perfect.

 

Again, the real bad guys are the GOP, but Manchin benefits personally from joining them here.  His nuclear option of switching parties remains in play, too. He was always holding the high hand, and he played it to perfection. Dems need to operate under the assumption that they need 52 Senate seats in 2022, minimum. The only way to remove Manchin's (and Sinema's)  power is to make his vote symbolic and irrelevant to passing actual legislation.

It's still possible that Manchin does cut some sort of deal with one or two "priorities" but of course those will be fashioned the way President Manchin wants. Again, the most likely outcome is "nothing." Manchin's position is untenable with 48 other Democrats. He got 100% of what he wanted in the Senate bill he helped create five months ago. Everything else has been kabuki.

But the Biden administration is making it very clear that there's not going to be a deal soon, if ever.

Senator Manchin’s comments this morning on FOX are at odds with his discussions this week with the President, with White House staff, and with his own public utterances. Weeks ago, Senator Manchin committed to the President, at his home in Wilmington, to support the Build Back Better framework that the President then subsequently announced. Senator Manchin pledged repeatedly to negotiate on finalizing that framework “in good faith.”

 

On Tuesday of this week, Senator Manchin came to the White House and submitted—to the President, in person, directly—a written outline for a Build Back Better bill that was the same size and scope as the President’s framework, and covered many of the same priorities. While that framework was missing key priorities, we believed it could lead to a compromise acceptable to all. Senator Manchin promised to continue conversations in the days ahead, and to work with us to reach that common ground. If his comments on FOX and written statement indicate an end to that effort, they represent a sudden and inexplicable reversal in his position, and a breach of his commitments to the President and the Senator’s colleagues in the House and Senate.

 

Senator Manchin claims that this change of position is related to inflation, but the think tank he often cites on Build Back Better—the Penn Wharton Budget Institute—issued a report less than 48 hours ago that noted the Build Back Better Act will have virtually no impact on inflation in the short term, and, in the long run, the policies it includes will ease inflationary pressures. Many leading economists with whom Senator Manchin frequently consults also support Build Back Better.

Build Back Better lowers costs that families pay. It will reduce what families pay for child care. It will reduce what they pay for prescription drugs. It will lower health care premiums. And it puts a tax cut in the pockets of families with kids. If someone is concerned about the impact that higher prices are having on families, this bill gives them a break. Senator Manchin cited deficit concerns in his statement. But the plan is fully paid for, is the most fiscally responsible major bill that Congress has considered in years, and reduces the deficit in the long run. 

The Congressional Budget Office report that the Senator cites analyzed an unfunded extension of Build Back Better. That’s not what the President has proposed, not the bill the Senate would vote on, and not what the President would support. Senator Manchin knows that: The President has told him that repeatedly, including this week, face to face. Likewise, Senator Manchin’s statement about the climate provisions in Build Back Better are wrong. Build Back Better will produce a job-creating clean energy future for this country—including West Virginia.

Just as Senator Manchin reversed his position on Build Back Better this morning, we will continue to press him to see if he will reverse his position yet again, to honor his prior commitments and be true to his word.

In the meantime, Senator Manchin will have to explain to those families paying $1,000 a month for insulin why they need to keep paying that, instead of $35 for that vital medicine. He will have to explain to the nearly two million women who would get the affordable day care they need to return to work why he opposes a plan to get them the help they need. Maybe Senator Manchin can explain to the millions of children who have been lifted out of poverty, in part due to the Child Tax Credit, why he wants to end a program that is helping achieve this milestone—we cannot.

 

I was right all along, folks. The bill as it is now is dead. If the BBB passes at all, it will be much smaller.

Anyone surprised at coal in everyone's stocking from the coal state senator was never paying attention.

Nobody say that you weren't warned.

Sunday Long Read: The Journey And The Destination

This week's Sunday Long Read comes from Slate Magazine's Henry Grabar, who takes a look at that most American of obsessions, speeding. We're always in a hurry, even in the COVID era, and an entire cottage industry, not to mention billions of dollars in tickets, fines, police funding, speed traps, red light cameras, and more have sprung up as a direct result of us wanting to shave a few minutes off the trip.

Not to mention the injuries and deaths.

One Tuesday morning this fall, I strapped on a Kevlar vest and slid into the passenger seat of a gray Ford Interceptor sedan, the souped-up Taurus that replaced the Crown Vic as America’s default police car a decade ago.* (And has since been replaced itself: Ford no longer produces police cars, only SUVs and pickups.) This model has several features that are not available for civilian use, including a siren on the roof and a V6 Mustang engine under the hood.

That came in handy when Kevin Roberts, a talkative, thoughtful third-year cop, steered us onto Connecticut’s Interstate 84 for the day shift. We were heading toward Waterbury, whose interlocking expressways are his to patrol. Roberts was in the left lane going 80, and I had the uncanny experience of surveying the highway from his point of view. How many times have I been on the other side—overtaking some slowpoke, 12 over the limit, only to see a rack of siren lights in the rearview mirror and ask myself: How slowly can I complete this pass?

Roberts and I were waiting for that moment of panicked recognition. He knows people resent that the police are always speeding, but he says it’s the only way to do the job. You can’t drive the speed limit or below, because no one wants to pass a cop. The highway’s self-organizing system would disintegrate and traffic would slow to molasses. “Everyone’s at 10 and 2,” he said as we made our way past another stone-faced commuter. It’s the morning rush, and drivers are on their best behavior. “You’ve got to wait for people to spread their wings.”

Roberts is not out to ticket every last speeder, because that would be impossible. “We know not everyone is going to go 55, 65, we’re realistic,” he said. “Not everyone is going to go the speed limit.” When he’s not responding to an accident or a crime, he sees his role as corrective. Sometimes that means loop after loop on the city’s highway landmarks, the Mountain (a steep slope to the east) and the Mixmaster (a decked highway near the city), without stopping to set a trap at all.

But sometimes that means making good on the threat that’s implicit in all that driving. Roberts rolled into the grass alongside an on-ramp, hidden from oncoming traffic by a sign and a bend in the road. He pulled out a TruSpeed S, a top-of-the-line radar gun that permits him to gauge the speed of passing cars from any angle. We sat there for about 30 seconds before he clocked a blue Buick doing 90, and then we were off, racing down the highway until we were right behind the car in question.

Speeding is a national health problem and a big reason why this country is increasingly an outlier on traffic safety in the developed world. More than 1 in 4 fatal crashes in the United States involve at least one speeding driver, making speeding a factor in nearly 10,000 deaths each year, in addition to an unknowable number of injuries. Thousands of car crash victims are on foot, and speed is an even more crucial determinant of whether they live or die: The odds of a pedestrian being killed in a collision rise from 10 percent at 23 mph to 75 percent at 50 mph. And we’re now in a moment of particular urgency. Last year, when the pandemic shutdowns lowered total miles traveled by 13 percent, the per-mile death rate rose by 24 percent—the greatest increase in a century, thanks to drivers hitting high velocities on empty roads. “COVID,” Roberts said, “was midnight on the day shift.”

In the first six months of 2021, projected traffic fatalities in the U.S. rose by 18 percent, the largest increase since the U.S. Department of Transportation started counting and double the rate of the previous year’s surge. “We cannot and should not accept these fatalities as simply a part of everyday life in America,” said Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg in a press release.

But we do. Such carnage has not prompted a societal response akin to the movement elicited by drunk driving in the 1980s. Part of the reason is that Americans love driving fast and have confidence in their own abilities. About half admit to going more than 15 over the limit in the past month. Meanwhile, drivers do generally regard their peers’ speeding as a threat to their own safety, and so we have wound up with the worst of both worlds: Thousands of speed-related deaths on the one hand, and on the other, a system of enforcement that is both ineffective and inescapable.

 

For my part, Weebledad taught me to keep it at 5 over, and I admit to doing, say, 80 in a 70 zone once in a while on the interstate, but I work from home these days and it amazes me just how much of my time I used to spend in my car. I don't miss it, and I see why people would rather speed and save time, even a few minutes. I used to be that way myself.

 

These days, not so much. Especially when cops and civil forfeiture are involved.

Last Call For The Vax Of Life, Con't

With the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals reinstating the Biden Administration's vaccine mandate, OSHA now says it will begin enforcing the new vaccine mandate rules for companies with more than 100 employees for not having vaccinated employees or weekly testing starting January 10.

 

The Occupational Health and Safety Administration said Saturday that it would not issue citations tied to its coronavirus vaccination mandate before Jan. 10, so that companies have time to adjust to and implement the requirements.

The federal agency separately said there would be no citations of companies regarding its testing requirements before Feb. 9.

The announcement came after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth District in Cincinnati decided on Friday that the mandate for large employers could go forward, reversing a previous court decision made after 27 Republican-led states, conservative groups, business associations and some individual companies challenged the mandate.

OSHA said in a statement that it would not issue citations before the listed dates “so long as an employer is exercising reasonable, good faith efforts to come into compliance with the standard.”

The mandate was previously slated to take effect Jan. 4.

The Biden administration’s vaccine requirement applies to companies with 100 or more employees and covers about 84 million U.S. workers. Employees who are not fully vaccinated have to wear face masks and be subject to weekly COVID-19 tests. There are exceptions, including for those who work outdoors or only at home.

Administration officials estimate that the mandate will save 6,500 lives and prevent 250,000 hospitalizations over six months.

 

Expect a looooooot of new employee policies in January.

 

Get vaxxed, or get fired.

The GOP's Race To The Bottom, Con't

Time and time again, in state after state, white Republicans are gerrymandering Black Democrats out of existence, and 2022 is going to be the worst yet.

More than 30 years ago, Robert Reives Sr. marched into a meeting of his county government in Sanford, N.C., with a demand: Create a predominantly Black district in the county, which was 23 percent Black at the time but had no Black representation, or face a lawsuit under the Voting Rights Act.

The county commission refused, and Mr. Reives prepared to sue. But after the county settled and redrew its districts, he was elected in 1990 as Lee County’s first Black commissioner, a post he has held comfortably ever since.

Until this year.

Republicans, newly in power and in control of the redrawing of county maps, extended the district to the northeast, adding more rural and suburban white voters to the mostly rural district southwest of Raleigh and effectively diluting the influence of its Black voters. Mr. Reives, who is still the county’s only Black commissioner, fears he will now lose his seat.

“They all have the same objective,” he said in an interview, referring to local Republican officials. “To get me out of the seat.”

“Let’s call it a five-alarm fire,” G.K. Butterfield, a Black congressman from North Carolina, said of the current round of congressional redistricting. He is retiring next year after Republicans removed Pitt County, which is about 35 percent Black, from his district.

“I just didn’t see it coming,” he said in an interview. “I did not believe that they would go to that extreme.”

Mr. Reives is one of a growing number of Black elected officials across the country — ranging from members of Congress to county commissioners — who have been drawn out of their districts, placed in newly competitive districts or bundled into new districts where they must vie against incumbents from their own party.

Almost all of the affected lawmakers are Democrats, and most of the mapmakers are white Republicans. The G.O.P. is currently seeking to widen its advantage in states including North Carolina, Ohio, Georgia and Texas, and because partisan gerrymandering has long been difficult to disentangle from racial gerrymandering, proving the motive can be troublesome.

But the effect remains the same: less political power for communities of color.

The pattern has grown more pronounced during this year’s redistricting cycle, the first since the Supreme Court struck down the heart of the Voting Rights Act in 2013 and allowed jurisdictions with a history of voting discrimination to pass election laws and draw political maps without approval from the Justice Department.

A former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, Mr. Butterfield said fellow Black members of Congress were increasingly worried about the new Republican-drawn maps. “We are all rattled,” he said.

In addition to Mr. Butterfield, four Black state senators in North Carolina, five Black members of the state House of Representatives and several Black county officials have had their districts altered in ways that could cost them their seats. Nearly 24 hours after the maps were passed, civil rights groups sued the state.

Across the country, the precise number of elected officials of color who have had their districts changed in such ways is difficult to pinpoint. The New York Times identified more than two dozen of these officials, but there are probably significantly more in county and municipal districts. And whose seats are vulnerable or safe depends on a variety of factors, including the political environment at the time of elections.

But the number of Black legislators being drawn out of their districts outpaces that of recent redistricting cycles, when voting rights groups frequently found themselves in court trying to preserve existing majority-minority districts as often as they sought to create new ones.

“Without a doubt it’s worse than it was in any recent decade,” said Leah Aden, a deputy director of litigation at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc. “We have so much to contend with and it’s all happening very quickly.”

Republicans, who have vastly more control over redistricting nationally than Democrats do, defend their maps as legal and fair, giving a range of reasons.

Kirk Smith, the Republican chairman of Lee County’s board of commissioners, said that “to say only a person of a certain racial or ethnic group can represent only a person of the same racial or ethnic group has all the trappings of ethnocentric racism.”

 

Black representation of Black constituents is racism you see, and Black Americans should be happy with what the white Republicans drawing the maps to specifically keep Black America without power, without representation, and without a voice in politics deem proper for us.

 

They're never going to stop trying to destroy us.

 

We should be grateful we have the right to vote at all, you see.

 

And soon, we won't even have that.  The new Jim Crow will be even worse than the old days, because it will be legal, and we'll never have a legal recourse to change it. Districts gerrymandered within the granularity of a city street to maximize Republican wins even in cities and counties with Black Democratic majorities, as we'll be divided up among several districts with no chance of winning.

They know exactly what they are doing, and the courts will let them.

And then that's it. They know that if they can break the Black backbone of the Democratic party, they can win supermajorities in state after state and control the House and the Senate for decades, and eliminate the civil rights era completely.

They've almost won. 2024 will be too late.

We have to win 2022.

Insurrection Investigation, Con't

A lot of stuff to cover today on the January 6th investigation front. First up:

 

Will Bunch discusses how close we came to a Trump autocracy, and why the Trump coup failed. In addition to Mike Pence's cowardice as I have pointed out several times, Bunch cites the January 3rd letter from (then) all 10 living former Secretaries of Defense, and the warning from DC Mayor Muriel Bowser for people to stay away from the Trump rally on January 6th so as not to become the justification for military action against the people by the DC National Guard.

Three days ahead of the pro-Trump rally, all 10 then-living ex-secretaries of defense — including Donald Rumsfeld, who died in 2021, and Dick Cheney — published an extraordinary letter in the Washington Post, warning the White House not to engage the military in its election challenge. They wrote: “Efforts to involve the U.S. armed forces in resolving election disputes would take us into dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional territory.”

Americans might well wonder what prompted such a stern warning. One of the signers, in fact, was Mark Esper, whom Trump had shockingly fired as Pentagon chief just days after the Nov. 3 election. The supposed lame duck president had not only replaced Esper but — with just nine or so weeks before leaving office — had installed an entire slate of new loyalists at the Pentagon as well as intelligence agencies. Asked the New York Times in a headline: “To what end?”

To what end, indeed?

Although there was understandable speculation about what the moves meant for U.S. troops then in Afghanistan and the Middle East, the then-president had been increasingly focused since the spring of 2020 — and the at-times destructive protests over the police murder of George Floyd — on what he claimed was a domestic threat posed by “antifa.” In June, Trump promised in a tweet that “the United States of America will be designating ANTIFA as a Terrorist Organization” — even though experts agree such extreme leftist elements are small and lack any umbrella organization.

Although it didn’t receive a ton of attention at the time, violence between pro-Trump groups like the Proud Boys and leftist counterprotesters may have peaked on December 12, 2020, at rallies which in hindsight look like trial runs for January 6. A man was shot in Olympia, Washington, while several dozen people on both sides were arrested or hurt in the D.C. fighting that lasted well into the night. In another bit of foreshadowing, Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio posted mysterious pictures from the White House portico. Trump previewed the “wild” January 6 rally one week later.

But then something happened that arguably altered the course of history. People on the left who’d spent four years actively resisting Trump in the streets shared a surprising new message in those two weeks ahead of the insurrection: Stay home on January 6. This was reinforced by a number of Democratic officials who pushed out the same message to both traditional leftists and Black Lives Matter activists.

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser was typical: “I am asking Washingtonians and those who live in the region to stay out of the downtown area on Tuesday and Wednesday and not to engage with demonstrators who come to our city seeking confrontation.” But more important, arguably, were rank-and-file anti-Trump liberals sharing that message on social media sites. There was even a hashtag making the rounds, #DontTakeTheBait.

The anti-Trumpers didn’t take the bait. We’ll never know what would have happened if there had been street battles between the two factions on January 6, but there’s a chilling hint in the coup-planning PowerPoint presentation from Trump ally and former Army psy-ops specialist Phil Waldron that circulated both among Meadows and others in the White House as well as their allies in Congress. It called for Trump to declare a “National Security Emergency” — a move that might have aligned with his “antifa” memo of the day before.

Meanwhile, if National Guard troops were — as Meadows stated in his email — indeed on standby to support pro-Trump protesters, military leaders seemed to freeze that Wednesday afternoon when they were asked to do the exact opposite and confront the insurrectionists. D.C. officials who dispatched metro police officers to quell the insurrection pleaded with the Pentagon — which had operational control over the D.C. National Guard — to send in added forces, only to face three long hours of stunning inaction.

More recently, a former high-ranking official in the D.C. National Guard has called two top Army generals “absolute and unmitigated liars” in their efforts to explain the delay in deploying Guard troops positioned at a nearby armory until nearly 5:30 p.m., or when the worst fighting that injured scores of police officers was already over. This discrepancy needs to be answered — but so does the question of whether Guard troops would have been more hastily deployed in the event of leftist protesters, and whether that action would have impeded Biden’s certification. (Also, the question of why one of those two generals in that line of command was Gen. Charles Flynn, brother of Trump ally Michael Flynn who was leading efforts to overturn the election.)

While an alarming timeline about the possible role of troops and a national security emergency on January 6 is taking shape, there are, of course, many holes that still need to be filled in by an aggressive House investigation. First and foremost is learning what communications took place between Meadows and other White House staffers with the Pentagon to believe that soldiers were “on standby” to support their cause. Investigators should also ask about Trump’s focus on “antifa,” right up to the middle of the afternoon on January 6. Increasingly, the question is less whether there were plans for a coup on January 6 — clearly, there were — but who needs to be held accountable for the greatest assault on U.S. democracy since 1861.

Keep in mind something else rather shocking that we learned this week — that even knowing that the violent Capitol Hill insurrection was the work of Trump supporters, and horribly wrong, key Fox News hosts like Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity went on national TV that night continuing to suggest antifa might somehow be to blame. Because once the script for a coup has been written, apparently it’s hard to break character.

 

Again, we know what the plan was: The Justice Department would put the election "under investigation" for fraud in the five battleground states Biden won, Mike Pence would send the electoral votes for those five states back to the legislatures (all controlled by the GOP), declare that there were not enough electoral votes to elect either Biden or Trump, and send the matter to the House where Trump would win based on House state delegations.

In addition, the plan was to justify Pence's actions and declare a national state of emergency precipitated by the destructive Trump rally, with the DC National Guard to be called in to deal with the "Antifa caused chaos" while electoral votes were being counted. If Pence balked, he would be "taken to a secure location" where in the ensuing emergency, House Republicans would declare Trump to be President.

We know that Trump's team was also considering sending US Marshals to all 50 states to secure electoral vote boxes from all 50 state legislatures. The final result would have been a Trump second term, and enough House and Senate races flipped due to "election fraud" in favor of the GOP that the Republicans would keep Congress.

It would have been the end of American democracy, with martial law declared to maintain Trump's hold on power.

It was absolutely a coup.

The question now is whether or not we send the people who engineered the attempt to prison, and whether or not we stop the inevitable next attempt when it happens in 2022 and 2024, as three retired US Army generals warn us.

With the country still as divided as ever, we must take steps to prepare for the worst.

First, everything must be done to prevent another insurrection. Not a single leader who inspired it has been held to account. Our elected officials and those who enforce the law — including the Justice Department, the House select committee and the whole of Congress — must show more urgency.

But the military cannot wait for elected officials to act. The Pentagon should immediately order a civics review for all members — uniformed and civilian — on the Constitution and electoral integrity. There must also be a review of the laws of war and how to identify and deal with illegal orders. And it must reinforce “unity of command” to make perfectly clear to every member of the Defense Department whom they answer to. No service member should say they didn’t understand whom to take orders from during a worst-case scenario.

In addition, all military branches must undertake more intensive intelligence work at all installations. The goal should be to identify, isolate and remove potential mutineers; guard against efforts by propagandists who use misinformation to subvert the chain of command; and understand how that and other misinformation spreads across the ranks after it is introduced by propagandists.

Finally, the Defense Department should war-game the next potential post-election insurrection or coup attempt to identify weak spots. It must then conduct a top-down debrief of its findings and begin putting in place safeguards to prevent breakdowns not just in the military, but also in any agency that works hand in hand with the military.

The military and lawmakers have been gifted hindsight to prevent another insurrection from happening in 2024 — but they will succeed only if they take decisive action now.

These are bold actions that need to be taken. If Trump gets into power again, if the GOP is allowed to steal the election in 2024, the US military will absolutely be used. We have to find the weaknesses and shore them up.

 

Meanwhile, back on the January 6th Committee, it seems that Stop The Steal founder Ali Alexander is turning states' evidence on Trump and his GOP co-conspirators.

Ali Alexander, who founded the pro-Trump “Stop the Steal” movement and attended the rally that preceded the Capitol attack, told congressional investigators that he recalls “a few phone conversations” with Rep. Paul Gosar and a text exchange with Rep. Mo Brooks about his efforts in the run-up to Jan. 6, his lawyers confirmed in a late Friday court filing.

Alexander also told the Jan. 6 House select committee that he spoke to Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) in person “and never by phone, to the best of his recollection,” his lawyers say.

The description of the testimony comes in a lawsuit Alexander filed to block the committee from obtaining his phone records from Verizon. Alexander says in the suit that the records include contacts with people protected by privileges: religious advisers, people he counsels spiritually and his lawyers. He also indicated that he already shared more than 1,500 text messages with investigators, in addition to sitting for an eight-hour deposition. The Brooks text, he indicated, is among the texts he turned over.

Alexander’s testimony underscores the degree to which the select committee continues to probe the roles of their Republican colleagues in efforts to promote former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud — and their potential support for fringe figures who helped gather people in Washington on Jan. 6, the day Congress was required to certify the 2020 election results.

The panel hasn’t formally requested testimony from any of the GOP lawmakers yet but has continued to ask witnesses about Gosar, Biggs, Brooks and Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), who helped push a strategy to use the Department of Justice to promote the fraud claims.

 

The GOP lawmakers like Jim Jordan and Paul Gosar really, really, really do not want those phone records used as evidence, almost as if it would empirically prove a case of seditious conspiracy.

We'll see where all this goes.

The Vax Of Life, Con't

From the "I Coulda Told You This" Department comes proof that Donald Trump's regime deliberately made COVID worse in the US because he didn't want to be held responsible for it. Luckily, voters did that anyway.

Trump administration officials made "deliberate efforts to undermine the nation's coronavirus response for political purposes," the House Select subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis led by Democrats said in a report released Friday.  

The committee, which spent months working to interview former Trump officials, said the administration worked to undermine the public health response to the coronavirus pandemic by blocking officials from speaking publicly, watering down testing guidance and attempting to interfere with other public health guidance. 

Many pieces of the report were a summation of documents and interviews they've released throughout the year, but the report also outlined new examples where health guidance was adapted despite officials' concerns about the potential harmful effects of the changes. 

In one instance, Dr. Jay Butler, the deputy director for infectious diseases at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told the committee he was upset and concerned about guidance he was directed to update in May 2020 for faith communities. He said he feared that some of the altered guidance about masking and other church practices could potentially put lives at risk. 

He wrote in an email about the change that he was "very troubled on this Sunday morning that there will be people who will get sick and perhaps die because of what we were forced to do." 

"I was doing a lot of soul searching about whether or not I should have agreed to even make the change in the document," Butler told the committee when asked about his words. "Clearly, it was a directive, but that was a real struggle as I felt like what had been done was not good public health practice." 

Butler told the committee that while he wasn't aware of any examples where the guidance had adversely impacted the health of Americans, "that concern will haunt me for some time." 

The report also chronicled deep frustration from then-White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx, who at one point was so upset about a meeting that included doctors whom she called part of a "fringe group" that she told colleagues she would not attend. 

"I can't be part of this with these people who believe in herd immunity," Birx wrote in an email released by the committee. That approach has been widely decried by public health experts, who note that a previous infection doesn't guarantee immunity and who say such an approach would most certainly have led to even more hospitalizations and deaths. "These are people who believe that all the curves are predetermined and mitigation is irrelevant -- they are a fringe group without grounding in epidemics, public health or on the ground common sense experience. I am happy to go out of town or whatever gives the WH cover," she wrote. 

The report also laid out how one briefing so angered former President Donald Trump that CDC officials were blocked by the Trump administration for more than three months from conducting public briefings. 

One official, then-CDC National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases Director Dr. Nancy Messonnier, told the committee Trump was "angered" after she gave a briefing on February 25, 2020, that warned about the danger of Covid-19. She told the select subcommittee she felt "upset" after she received calls from then-CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield and then-HHS Secretary Alex Azar about it. 

CNN has reached out to Redfield and Azar for comment.

 

Yet another example of why Trump can never be allowed the levers of power again, but the honest truth is he'll remain a threat because he's not going to prison, and he's nt going to prison because there's a 99% chance that would start, at the very least, a series of devastating white supremacist military terrorist attacks across the country that would kill thousands, and possibly far worse. 

 

There is good news, however. Last night the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals here in Cincy reinstated President Biden's vaccine mandates, allowing the OSHA rules to go forward. Republican attorneys general are almost certainly going to make an emergency appeal to SCOTUS in the weeks ahead.

A federal appeals court has reinstated the Biden administration’s vaccine and testing requirement for private businesses that covers about 80 million American workers.

The ruling by the 6th U.S. Court of Appeals in Cincinnati lifted a November injunction that had blocked the rule from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which applies to businesses with at least 100 workers.

In the decision Friday, the 6th Circuit noted that OSHA has historical precedent for using wide discretion to ensure worker safety and “demonstrated the pervasive danger that COVID-19 poses to workers—unvaccinated workers in particular—in their workplaces.”

The Justice Department argued last week that blocking the requirements would result in “enormous” harm to the public, as hospitals brace for an increase in Covid cases this winter and the highly mutated omicron variant takes root in more states.

“COVID-19 is spreading in workplaces, and workers are being hospitalized and dying,” the Justice Department argued in a court filing on Friday. “As COVID-19 case numbers continue to rise and a new variant has emerged, the threat to workers is ongoing and overwhelming.”

The policy required businesses with 100 or more employees to ensure their workers were fully vaccinated by Jan. 4 or submit a negative Covid test weekly to enter the workplace. Unvaccinated employees were required to start wearing masks indoors starting Dec. 5.

Republican attorneys general, private companies and industry groups such as the National Retail Federation, the American Trucking Associations, and the National Federation of Independent Business sued to have the policy overturned. They argued that the requirements are unnecessary, burden businesses with compliance costs, and exceed the authority of the federal government.

“These assertions ignore the economic analysis OSHA conducted that demonstrates the feasibility of implementing the ETS [Emergency Temporary Standard],” the 6th Circuit said Friday, labeling concerns by the petitioning groups “speculative.”

The Biden administration last month stopped implementation and enforcement of the requirements to comply with an order issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in New Orleans. Judge Kurt D. Englehardt, in an opinion for a three-judge panel, said the requirements were “staggeringly overbroad” and raised “serious constitutional concerns.”

 

Republicans went judge-shopping and got Englehardt, a Trump-appointed goofball who raged against the mandate as unconstitutional. The Sixth Circuit not only overturned that, but found that the Biden administration absolutely proved that with hundreds of thousands of Americans dying from COVID, that there may be an actual point to using OSHA's emergency powers. 

Sadly, as I've pointed out before, if the corrupt Roberts Court wants to blow a hole in federal executive agencies and cripple them for decades, this is exactly the case to use to do it.

We'll see.