We begin with Hayes Brown of MSNBC writing about the good, the bad, and the ugly of Wednesday’s passage of the Fiscal Accountability Bill by the House of Representatives by a vote of 314-117.
First, the deal raises the debt ceiling until Jan. 1, 2025. That’s almost a full year later than Republicans initially wanted, punting the issue until after the next presidential election. Its budget provisions also get us through the next two fiscal years, which means the odds for a potential government shutdown have shrunk significantly. And, importantly, no matter what happens in 2024, the debt limit revision expires when Democrats will still control the Senate and White House. [...]
There’s also still an appropriations battle to go through this year to actually fund the government based on the budget agreements in the deal. There’s also a fun little sequestration provision tucked into the bill, where if a continuing resolution is in place next January then there are automatic 1% cuts to both defense and nondefense spending that will snap into place. That’s something to keep an eye on.
So is the potential political fallout for McCarthy that comes from cutting this deal. Previous GOP speakers haven’t fared well after “caving” to Democratic demands, which is the way members of the House Freedom Caucus are characterizing what McCarthy has done. Murmurs of toppling McCarthy have tamped down in the last few days after some initial grumbling. But the right-wing of the Republican caucus won’t let McCarthy forget how few of their demands were met.
Marianne LeVine of The Washington Post reports that with House passage of the bill raising the debt ceiling, the action moves over to the U.S. Senate with no time to waste.
The House passed the bipartisan legislation late Wednesday night, giving the Senate just a few days to act on it before the government won’t have enough money to pay its bills. Neither Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) nor Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) gave any indication passage was in jeopardy, but rather stressed Wednesday that time was of the essence. [...]
To avoid a default on the debt Monday, senators will first need to come to some type of time agreement, which would govern how long the bill can be debated and requires unanimous consent from all senators. The more amendment votes that occur, the longer final passage will take. And any changes to a House-passed bill in the Senate would mean the House would have to take the legislation up again, which would almost certainly mean blowing past the Monday deadline. Possible amendments are widely expected to be required to pass a 60-vote threshold, essentially guaranteeing that they would largely be symbolic.
Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), the No. 2 Republican leader, said the deal could move “fairly quickly” if a time agreement is reached.
Jennifer Haberkorn, Adam Cancryn, and Nicholas Wu of POLITICO discusses the strategy President Joe Biden used in getting the bill passed.
Progressives openly criticized Biden. Allies, such as Congressional Black Caucus Chair Steven Horsford, vented that the White House needed to do more to communicate about Republican demands. Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal warned of backlash in the streets if Biden gave in to Republicans.
After the deal was announced Saturday night, his team went into overdrive to ensure that the frustration they’d sparked from within their party didn’t metastasize into a full blown revolt. Administration officials placed over 100 one-on-one calls with House Democrats. They held wonky virtual meetings over the negotiation details and took pointed questions on the policy they’d agreed to.
The ice-then-court strategy worked. On Wednesday evening, 165 House Democratic voted for the Biden-McCarthy bill, more than the 149 House Republicans who supported the measure. Many of those Democrats who had voiced opposition to the bill praised the White House for negotiating what they still consider to be a terrible piece of legislation and, ultimately, supported it.
Thanks is also owed to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Minority Whip Katherine Clark for whipping more votes for the bill than Speaker McCarthy was able to do.
Katelyn Polantz, Paula Reid, and Kaitlin Collins report a CNN exclusive that special counsel Jack Smith has heard a recording of Number 45 saying that he had classified material and he knew that the materials weren’t declassified.
The recording indicates Trump understood he retained classified material after leaving the White House, according to multiple sources familiar with the investigation. On the recording, Trump’s comments suggest he would like to share the information but he’s aware of limitations on his ability post-presidency to declassify records, two of the sources said. [...]
Special counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the Justice Department investigation into Trump, has focused on the meeting as part of the criminal investigation into Trump’s handling of national security secrets. Sources describe the recording as an “important” piece of evidence in a possible case against Trump, who has repeatedly asserted he could retain presidential records and “automatically” declassify documents.
Prosecutors have asked witnesses about the recording and the document before a federal grand jury. The episode has generated enough interest for investigators to have questioned Gen. Mark Milley, one of the highest-ranking Trump-era national security officials, about the incident.
The July 2021 meeting was held at Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, with two people working on the autobiography of Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows as well as aides employed by the former president, including communications specialist Margo Martin. The attendees, sources said, did not have security clearances that would allow them access to classified information. Meadows didn’t attend the meeting, sources said.
Marcy Wheeler of EmptyWheel gives more highly informed speculation on what the reporting about the Trump/Bedminster recording might mean.
First, it’s certainly possible this is one of the documents pertaining to Iran that WaPo has reported were among the ones obtained in the search in August 2022.
If it is, then it would be a document that Trump transported back and forth from Florida — something that would make it easier for DOJ to charge this in DC instead of SDFL.
If it’s something DOJ didn’t obtain in the search, but also didn’t obtain among the documents Trump returned in either January or June 2022, then … then we have problems. If this is among the documents that DOJ thinks Trump didn’t return, then we have problems, especially given Jack Smith’s focus on Trump’s LIV golf deal, because this is the kind of document that the Saudis would pay billions of dollars for.
[...]
The document is, as CNN reports, evidence that Trump knew he had stolen classified documents.
Paul Waldman of The Washington Post is over the “crisis-of-masculinity” anxieties being pushed by the far right-wing of the Republican Party.
Like most of the crisis-of-masculinity-mongers, Hawley has little in the way of practical recommendations to fix this supposed problem. But if American men are really overcome by such anxiety, here’s a solution: Stop listening to conservatives telling you that masculinity is in crisis.
The manliest thing one can do might be to stop caring about masculinity altogether. That’s not to deny that men face some genuine problems, especially when it comes to educational achievement — even as they still dominate almost every facet of public life, from politics to religion to business.
But when Tucker Carlson suggests you tan your testicles to boost your testosterone, he isn’t just worried about rates of admission at medical schools. Instead, it’s the feeling of anxiety among men that he and others are playing to.
As much as this anxiety is described as a response to rapidly changing ideas about gender, it’s decades, if not centuries, old. In fact, it is often built into manhood itself.
Centuries? Try going back at least two millennia, to start with. Go back even further in time.
CREON: Pass, then, to the world of the dead, and, it (sic) thou must needs love, love them. While I live, no woman shall rule me.
Antigone by Sophocles (translated by R.C. Jebb)
Male anxiety might be the underlying primary issue of Greek tragedy. Male anxiety is also a central theme of Aristophanes’ comedy “Lysistrata.” Don’t get me started on the Bible.
Elaine Kamarck and Michael Hais of the Brookings Institution looks at polling that strongly suggests that among younger voters (18-44 years of age), there is no gender gap as it pertains to the political party that the demographic votes for.
Why the absence of a gender gap among younger voters? Abortion is probably a big reason — like their female partners, men under 45 years old grew up under Roe v. Wade. Historically men’s and women’s views on abortion have not differed dramatically.
But there are likely more fundamental reasons. Since the 1950’s, 1960’s and 1970’s, when today’s older generations were in their formative years, America’s culture has changed markedly. Today, little girls can more realistically aspire to graduate from college or graduate school and hold such traditionally “male” occupations as soldier, police officer, lawyer, and doctor, and men’s presence in some traditionally “female” occupations, such as nursing, is becoming more common.
As expected, there was some opposition to these challenges to traditional culture, especially among older Americans.
In spite of the resistance, however, significant change did occur. In 1950, only 24% of those awarded bachelor’s degrees and 10% of those earning Ph.D.’s were women. By 1980, those numbers had risen to 49% and 30% respectively. In 2020, 58% of bachelor’s degree and 54% of Ph.D. recipients were women. Currently, about 40% of American lawyers, 37% of active physicians, 18% of police officers, and 19% of active duty commissioned military officers are women. At the same time, men now make up more than a quarter of public-school teachers, one in five social workers, and one in ten nurses.
This chart was particularly surprising.
Anjan Sundaram of Foreign Policy writes about how “colonial inequalities” affects war reporting in the Global South.
Even as we receive round-the-clock news from the war in Ukraine, with dozens of international reporters rotating through the country, journalists are still unable to cover much of our world. The dead haven’t been counted in the conflict in CAR [Central African Republic]. The war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the world’s deadliest since World War II, makes the front pages of newspapers briefly, only when violence explodes. In Latin America, hundreds of environmental activists have been killed while bravely defending precious forests, mountains, and rivers, and many of their deaths are just a footnote in the news. The reasons are timeless: a lack of interest in places deemed faraway, and in violence against people seen as unlike us. We don’t grieve as much for some people as others.
Another problem is that news from places such as CAR and Congo often needs to travel to London or New York before it reaches countries such as Nigeria and India. This means that much of international news is filtered through a Western lens or neglected altogether. A lack of international news outlets in the global south has led to great gaps in coverage—even when millions of people die in the world’s deadliest wars.
Finally today, El País in English tells highly courageous first-person accounts of the dangers three journalists encounter regularly while working in Latin America. (The excerpt below is of a reporter currently working in Nicaragua who remains anonymous.)
Under the table where I usually write, I have my suitcase packed. I keep it there, touching my feet, in case I ever receive a call one day (I hope to receive it in time) alerting me to the fact that the Nicaraguan police want to arrest me, as has been the case with at least 10 journalists and media executives who have been imprisoned since protests against the regime broke out in April 2018, or that one of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo’s operators is out looking for me. Most of my colleagues who have been convicted were accused of “spreading false news” or “betraying the homeland” – two pieces of legislation passed in 2020 to criminalize critical voices.
In my suitcase there are some spare clothes, personal hygiene products, a computer and my most important documents: passport, vaccination card, and a document from the hospital that proves that I’m a chronically-ill patient who suffers from hypertension and heart disease. If I’m ever captured, at least I will have proof that I need my daily pills, since several political prisoners have denounced that they don’t receive the medicines they require in prison. I think – or I want to believe – that having my suitcase ready can save me a few minutes, that it will help me if I have to hide in a safehouse for a few days, or if I definitely have to flee Nicaragua, crossing the border through blind spots so as not to be jailed, as did 185 Nicaraguan journalists who have gone into exile since 2018. Just last week, a source confirmed to me that a new group of 11 journalists was in the process of fleeing the country. [...]
In recent months, I’ve been scared to consult sources who I don’t know well. I’m afraid that one of them may be a sympathizer of the Sandinista Front – the ruling party – and denounce me for being a journalist. I’ve continued reporting, but less and less and with much more planning. I take special precautions that I cannot detail here, because it would put the few remaining journalists in Nicaragua at risk. But I know that no security protocol is foolproof. On more than one occasion, due to the adrenaline of stepping out on the street, I’ve found myself in conversation with the wife of a police officer, with a retired soldier, or with a member of the Sandinista party. Luckily, the interactions haven’t gone any further – no one has ratted me out or denounced me for being a journalist. I don’t want to resign myself to doing journalism locked in a room, but I have to accept that it’s increasingly dangerous to go out. With each passing day, it gets more complicated to do my job.
I also have to remind myself that similar working conditions have and, in some cases, still exist in the United States and we are, perhaps, one presidential election away from the scenarios told so descriptively by the three journalists currently working in Latin America happening here in the U.S. Again.
Have the best possible day, everyone.
