Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) offered an apology to President Biden on Thursday after she declined to say if he should run for reelection in 2024 earlier this week, adding that she wants him to run.
“Mr. President, I apologize. I want you to run. I happen to think you won’t be running, but when you run or if you run, I will be there 100 percent,” Maloney said while looking into the camera on CNN’s “New Day.”
“You have deserved it. You are a great president. And thank you for everything you’ve done for my state and all the states and all the cities in America. Thank you, Mr. President.”
Her comments come after Maloney, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) and former Obama administration official Suraj Patel, all candidates running for New York’s 12th Congressional District, were asked during a Democratic primary debate on Tuesday if Biden should make a 2024 bid.
Patel was the only candidate to directly say yes, even though the White House has said Biden plans to run.
“I don’t believe he’s running for reelection,” Maloney said during the debate. She later affirmed that she would support Biden he chose to run again.
“New Day” co-anchor Brianna Keilar pressed Maloney several times on why she thought Biden would not be running again.
“Well, we’re all entitled to have our own information and our own beliefs, but I will support him if he runs for president,” Maloney said at one point.
Record-high inflation has wreaked havoc on an economy already struggling to recover from COVID-19. The Federal Reserve is aggressively hiking interest rates, but it’s too little, too late. When too much money chases too few goods, rising prices are inevitable. Since the start of the pandemic, the monetary base has risen 60 percent and the M2 money supply 40 percent, outpacing the uncertainty-induced spike in liquidity demand. If we want to tame inflation, we need to stop running the printing presses. But we also need bold supply-side reforms.
It’s time to liberalize immigration policy. Making it easier for people to come here and work increases the availability of labor. That would boost the goods supply relative to the money supply. While it’s not a panacea, immigration can ease pricing pressures. Making green cards, visas and even citizenship easier to obtain makes economic sense, and it offers humanitarian benefits as well.
In the long run, living standards depend on supply-side factors. These include the amount of labor and capital, technological progress and a supportive regulatory environment. The White House, Congress and the Federal Reserve have focused too much on the demand side. While demand stimulus can temporarily cushion falling incomes and wealth, it isn’t sustainable. Policymakers quickly run into the fundamental constraint: how much the economy can produce.
Augmenting demand leads to higher prices, but augmenting supply leads to lower prices. The secret to broad-based prosperity is making goods and services more abundant, and therefore cheaper. “Supply-side economics” isn’t fundamentally about tax cuts, and there’s no reason conservatives should have a monopoly on it. Liberals can profit from this agenda, too. Immigration reform is the place to start.
Many people worry that increased immigration will lower current workers’ wages, already eroding because of inflation. While it’s true prices are rising faster than wages, immigration won’t make things worse. In fact, it could make things better. Most studies find no effect on wages for current workers. Some find wages increasing as a result of immigration. After all, immigrant labor complements existing domestic labor, raising everyone’s productivity. When productivity goes up, so do wages.
If more immigration won’t lower wages, and might even raise them, how can it help whip inflation? Material abundance is the key. Wages are an important price – the price of rented labor – but still just one price. Curbing inflation means slowing down price growth across the whole economy. If liberalizing immigration policy results in a temporary surge of workers, that will stabilize the bottom-out point of dollar depreciation. We could even get a durable inflation slowdown if the worker boost is long-lived, buttressing productivity over many years. Whether we get a one-time benefit or a flow of benefits depends on immigrants’ decisions to live and work here. Either result is welcome. With prices rising 9 percent per year, we shouldn’t be picky.
Despite falling production and rising prices, the unemployment rate is still very low at about 3.6 percent. Employers consistently report having great difficulty finding workers to fill vacant openings. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that in May, there were 11.25 million job openings and a total of 5.95 million people unemployed. There are almost 1.9 job openings for every unemployed person, up from 1.7 in March, when Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell described labor markets as “tight to an unhealthy level.” Burnout afflicts many workers. Streamlining the immigration process so that new workers could quickly fill vacancies would reduce the degree to which current laborers are overworked.
Finally, increased immigration comes with humanitarian benefits. Many millions of intelligent, hardworking people around the world are struggling to make ends meet under oppressive regimes and severely dysfunctional economies. In fact, as Branko Milanovic describes, over 80 percent of global income inequality is determined by a person’s country of origin. Granting these people easier access to American labor markets would remove them from the immediate dangers they face while also alleviating extreme poverty. Apart from economic considerations, basic human dignity impels us to welcome those seeking better lives.
Handing out green pieces of paper can make us wealthier, so long as they’re permanent resident cards and not dollars. Taming inflation means giving supply every possible chance to outpace demand. If we’re serious about restoring an inclusive and prosperous economy, we should welcome more immigrants.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) during an interview late Wednesday dismissed the notion that he and other Republicans were “played” on the Inflation Reduction Act negotiated by Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.).
“There’s nothing we could’ve done to prevent the Democrats from doing a bill that only they will vote for, so it’s not a question of being played here,” McConnell told Fox News anchor Bret Baier in response to a viewer’s tweet.
“What’s the storyline here is that Sen. Manchin has agreed to something that he had said publicly and privately over the last two weeks he could never agree to,” McConnell said.
“We’re not involved in the reconciliation bill. There won’t be a single Republican vote for it,” McConnell added. “There’s nothing we can do to deter it, other than to criticize it publicly. And that’s what we’re doing right here.”
McConnell also said that “all of us were somewhat shocked by Sen. Manchin’s reversal of positions he had taken as recently as last week against raising taxes.”
“This raises taxes. It increases the burden of taxation on lower-income people significantly. Calling it an inflation reduction bill is rather laughable. Independent analysis indicates it actually increases inflation in the next two years and may have an impact over 10 years,” the Kentucky Republican said.
“And their policies from last year have already produced 40-year-high inflation. So it’s a terrible package. It appears as if they’re all in line but one. And it’ll be up to Sen. [Kyrsten] Sinema from Arizona [D], who’s quite independent, to determine what the final contours of the bill are,” he added.
Schumer and Manchin unveiled the climate, health and tax package deal last week after the centrist West Virginia democrat resisted a previous deal because of his concerns about inflation.
The bill would invest $300 billion in deficit reduction and $369.75 billion in energy-focused climate programs over the coming decade. On Wednesday, the Congressional Budget Office released estimates forecasting it would lead to a net deficit decrease of more than $100 billion over roughly the next decade.
McConnell during the Fox News appearance also brushed off concerns Republicans are giving President Biden “major victories.”
“Just because there’s a Democrat in the White House, I don’t think means Republicans should do nothing that’s good for the country in the meantime,” he said, mentioning issues like school safety, mental health, infrastructure and postal reform.
And when asked about the upcoming elections this November, McConnell said that he believes they will be “very tight” nationally.
“We have a 50/50 nation,” he said.
McConnell added: “And, this fall, the American people need to decide, are they happy with what this all-Democratic government is giving them, or do they want to make adjustments, knowing full well the Democratic president is going to be there for two more years?”
“Flip the Congress and Joe Biden will become a moderate. He has no choice.”
Europe is my territory for Human Rights Watch and I rarely take note of political events thousands of miles away in Texas. But the news that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas this week was chilling to me — and should be to anyone who cares about basic human rights. From my vantage point in Hungary, where I’ve lived since 2007, I can see a familiar pattern of anti-democratic rhetoric and actions emerging in Texas and the United States more generally. I know where it could end up.
Orbán may not be a household name in Texas but he has become the darling of certain political circles in the United States. Orbán first served as prime minister from 1998 to 2002. After losing his re-election bid, he capitalized on increasing public dissatisfaction and distrust of politicians to then sweep the 2010 election. He had a two-thirds majority in parliament, enabling him to change the constitution several times to carry out his full vision for Hungary.
Since 2012, I have documented for Human Rights Watch this realization of Orbán’s vision — and the draconian policies and practices he has employed to this end. Orbán hijacked public institutions, attacked the independence of courts, and left almost no independent media standing. He has criminalized basic democratic activities by civil society organizations, attacked the rights of LGBT and transgender people, and banned same-sex unions. He encouraged ruthless and rights-abusing treatment of migrants and refugees and the criminalization of those who help them.
His alleged “pro-family” policies actually reinforce traditional gender roles and undermine equality between men and women, reducing women to their reproductive function. Orbán’s previously subtle adherence to the racist “great replacement” theory, which contends that Western countries’ elites are trying to replace white people with nonwhite people for political gain, has reached a shocking fever pitch, risking emboldening white supremacists.
Orbán also has tinkered with the electoral laws to the point that his party needs less than a simple majority of the vote for him to rule with a majority in parliament, and thereby to continue gutting Hungary’s democracy. He has done all of this while using nationalist rhetoric to cement himself and his party as the defenders of the Hungarian, conservative Christian way of life.
In late July, he caused an international uproar when he delivered a stunningly racist speech against migration to ethnic Hungarians in Romania, claiming he wants to prevent Hungary from becoming a “mixed-race” country. Doubling down on white nationalism, Orbán claimed that countries where Europeans live alongside non-Europeans “are no longer nations: they are nothing more than a conglomeration of peoples.”
In the same speech, he made a veiled reference to Nazi gas chambers as a joke. One of Orbán’s advisers resigned shortly after the bigotry-riddled speech, and Romania’s foreign minister and the International Auschwitz Committee of Holocaust survivors condemned his remarks.
But Orbán’s headlining appearance in Dallas, at one of the most influential gatherings in the U.S. of conservatives and Republican Party leaders, apparently will go on. So, why would they want to hear from this wanna-be autocrat? What lessons could he offer for a movement that historically has supposedly stood in opposition to authoritarian rule?
Given rhetoric coming out of some sectors of the conservative movement in the United States, it’s little wonder there may be an attraction to Orbán. But attraction for Hungary’s premier may have detrimental implications for that movement in the U.S.; they would be associating with a leader who has spent more than a decade chipping away at core democratic values and peddling racist rhetoric.
Instead of welcoming Orbán, conservative leaders at the Dallas conference (and beyond) should make clear that Orbán’s values — fixing elections, crushing dissent, and pursuing a nationalism rooted in racism — are harmful and not welcome in the United States.
Capitol Hill remained the center of attention on Wednesday, as Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) described her demands for the reconciliation report that could win her support, and Rep. Jackie Walorski (R), 58, died in an auto accident in her home state of Indiana.
The future of the Democrats’ $739 billion budget package remains cloudy, in large part because Sinema wants changes after more than a year of negotiations.
According to multiple reports, the Arizona senator’s ask includes dropping a provision in the bill that would roll back the carried interest loophole, a move that would alter how some investment income is taxed. Eliminating it would reduce the measure’s projected revenue by $14 billion, which undermines what Democrats would like to spend while also touting deficit reduction. Sinema also wants to add $5 billion in drought funding because Arizona routinely has water supply issues (Politico).
The senator, who has said nothing publicly while her staff says she’s reviewing the plan, also hinted that she has questions about the legislation’s proposed 15 percent minimum tax on corporations. During a call on Wednesday with business groups, she asked if that provision is “written in a way that’s bad” (CNN).
▪ Bloomberg News: Sinema seeks to keep private equity break, curb corporate tax.
▪ The New York Times: With climate deal in sight, Democrats turn hopes on Sinema.
▪ Politico: Electric cars, drug costs and more: 5 battles Democrats could lose on their marquee bill.
Sinema’s reluctance to raise taxes through carried interest, which is a share of profits earned by general partners of private equity, venture capital and hedge funds, would be the latest blow to President Biden and top Democrats who propose requiring wealthy Americans and corporations to pay higher taxes.
As The Hill’s Tobias Burns details, previous proposals now scrapped include raising the individual income tax rate, the estate tax and capital gains and a proposed surtax on high-income households. As a result, the bill’s price tag has been whittled to a fraction of the original $3 trillion envisioned by the majority party.
There are, however, other issues Democrats may have to consider. Automakers are calling on Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) to revisit the newly structured $7,500 electric vehicle tax credit over fears that it could be unworkable. According to Reuters, the complaint centers on new sourcing requirements for battery components and critical minerals, but Manchin has shown little interest in heeding their wishes.
“Tell [automakers] to get aggressive and make sure that we’re extracting in North America, we’re processing in North America and we put a line on China,” Manchin told reporters. “I don’t believe that we should be building a transportation mode on the backs of foreign supply chains. I’m not going to do it.”
▪ Business Insider: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) tears into Manchin’s surprise deal.
▪ Bloomberg News: Automakers, including Ford, General Motors and Toyota, are blitzing Congress to fix an electric vehicle tax credit they can’t use.
▪ The Hill: Manchin deal could raise new hurdles for electric vehicle incentives.
▪ The Hill: Democrats’ plan would decrease the deficit by more than $100 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Tragedy struck the Capitol Hill community on Wednesday when Walorski, a six-term lawmaker, and two staff members died in a car crash. The two-vehicle accident occurred in Indiana around 12:30 p.m., according to the Elkhart County Sheriff’s Office.
Walorski was traveling with Zachery Potts, 27, and Emma Thomson, 28. The congresswoman’s office confirmed the deaths.
“Dean Swihart, Jackie’s husband, was just informed by the Elkhart County Sheriff’s office that Jackie was killed in a car accident this afternoon,” the office’s statement said.“She has returned home to be with her Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Please keep her family in your thoughts and prayers. We will have no further comment at this time.”
Walorski, the top GOP member on the House Ethics Committee, was remembered by lawmakers as a hard worker who cared deeply about representing her constituents. Prior to winning her seat in 2012, Walorski spent five years in the Indiana House of Representatives and served alongside her husband as a missionary in Romania for four years.
“Jackie was a dear friend, trusted advisor, and the embodiment of integrity who achieved the admiration and respect of all her colleagues in the House. She always put others first,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said in a statement, calling her death “absolutely devastating.”
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Biden ordered the flags at the Capitol and White House, respectively, to be flown at half-staff to honor Walorski (The Hill), the third lawmaker this year to die. The others: Reps. Don Young (R-Alaska) and Jim Hagedorn (R-Minn.) (Roll Call).
Finally, there was legislative action on Wednesday as the Senate overwhelmingly greenlighted a resolution ratifying Sweden’s and Finland’s admittance into NATO. Senators voted 95-1 to do so, with Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) being the lone “no” vote. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) voted present.
The pre-recess vote was pushed heavily by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who panned any lawmaker who opposed NATO entry to the two Nordic countries. The move sends another signal that Congress remains unified in opposing Russian invasion of Ukraine and aggression toward Europe.
“There is just no question that admitting these robust democratic countries with modern economies and capable, interoperable militaries will only strengthen the most successful military alliance in human history,” McConnell said on the Senate floor.
Finland made the NATO push due in part to the 800-mile border it shares with Russia. Sweden, meanwhile, shares a strategic interest with Moscow in the Baltic Sea, which gives the Russian naval fleet access to the Atlantic (The Hill).
Related Articles
▪ Bloomberg News and Reuters: China on Thursday test-fired missiles in military drills around Taiwan one day after Pelosi’s departure.
▪ The New York Times: Pelosi’s Taiwan visit risks undermining U.S. efforts with Asian allies.
▪ The Washington Post: Pelosi’s Taiwan visit ushers in new phase of China’s pressure campaign.
▪ The Wall Street Journal: Pelosi trip delays Contemporary Amperex Technology’s (a Chinese-based electric-vehicle battery supplier for Tesla) North America plant announcement.
▪ The Associated Press: After Taiwan, Pelosi is in South Korea to meet political leaders.
LEADING THE DAY
➤ POLITICS
Are GOP voters so enthralled with former President Trump, so raw about the 2020 election and so willing to embrace Trump’s endorsees that midterm GOP candidates are becoming more vulnerable this year than the Republican Party imagines?The Hill’s Brett Samuels asked political analysts to help answer that question.
Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen did not poison outcomes for hard-right GOP candidates in Tuesday’s primaries, presenting new questions about how contenders will perform in November’s general election. Republican primary voters overwhelmingly chose candidates who made the 2020 election a central part of their campaign messages, The Hill’s Julia Manchester reports.
Michigan Rep. Peter Meijer (R) is the latest casualty of Trump’s pledge to exact revenge on conservatives who voted to impeach him after the Jan. 6 attack at the U.S. Capitol. He became the second of 10 Republicans who broke with the party to back impeachment and was ousted in a GOP primary.
Meijer lost on Tuesday to John Gibbs, a former Housing and Urban Development official who snagged Trump’s endorsement in the race for the state’s 3rd District. The defeat turned a spotlight on the Democratic House campaign arm’s feint to back the most pro-Trump contender across the aisle, hoping to wind up with opponents the party could paint as extremist Trump acolytes and peddlers of the “big lie.”
As The Hill’s Max Greenwood writes, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spent nearly half a million dollars on ads boosting Gibbs, believing that he might prove in November to be easier for Democratic nominee Hillary Scholten to defeat. Many analysts warn that Democratic officials are playing with fire by trying to game the GOP field (The Hill).
The New York Times: Meijer’s defeat in Michigan shows Republican intolerance for Trump’s antagonists.
As was always the case ahead of November’s election dramas, much for Democrats rides on overcoming inflation and pocketbook fears, ginning up high turnout from blocs of progressives and even independents, and finessing Biden’s low job approval and the left’s assumption that the party in power in the White House usually loses seats in off-year elections.
▪ The New York Times: Here’s who won and lost in Tuesday’s key primaries in five states.
▪ Jeff Greenfield, Politico Magazine: How the November midterms could still surprise us. (“When it comes to gaming out the next three months, even at the most basic level, we don’t really know what we think we know.”)
Democrats were thrilled but astonished on Tuesday to see primary voters in red-state Kansas back abortion rights by nearly 59 percent. The next political battlefields will be in Kentucky, Michigan and Montana, among other states (The Hill).
What abortion message resonated in the Sunflower State ahead of Tuesday’s amendment question, “Should the Kansas constitution be amended to remove protections of abortion rights?”
“This idea that government shouldn’t be involved or shouldn’t mandate what you do when it comes to your health care, that it is a personal decision — that’s the philosophy that was really identified by the opponents of this amendment as something that could really take hold with Kansas voters,”Brianne Heidbreder, an associate professor of political science at Kansas State University, told The New York Times.
▪ The Associated Press: Abortion vote in Kansas sparks new hope for Democrats in midterms.
▪ The New York Times: Tuesday’s abortion rights support in Kansas involved huge turnout across party and geographic lines.
▪ The New York Times: Biden on Wednesday issued an executive order to protect abortion rights — by further studying what he could do to protect abortion rights.
Niall Stanage, The Hill’s The Memo: Will abortion restrictions adopted by GOP state legislators and signed by conservative governors undermine a perceived advantage for Republicans in midterm contests? Democrats are increasingly hopeful, but some observers remain skeptical because so many top-of-mind issues will influence voters in November.
IN FOCUS/SHARP TAKES
➤ ENERGY & ADMINISTRATION
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, headquartered in Austria and also known as OPEC+, said on Wednesday that it would produce an additional 100,000 barrels a day in September, a tiny increase in output amid fears that a global recession will crimp demand. The price of Brent benchmark crude is now trading at around $100 per barrel as traders fear a global recession.
OPEC’s meeting by videoconference, inclusive of allies such as Russia, was the first since Biden visited Saudi Arabia in July and urged the group’s biggest oil producer to pump more (Bloomberg News). … The average price of gas is approaching $4 a gallon nationwide, part of a nearly 60-day decline from unprecedented spikes earlier this year (The Hill).
■ After Kansas, Democrats see an opportunity, by James Hohmann, columnist, The Washington Post. https://wapo.st/3OYTMNn
■ Pelosi has nailed the optics of her Taiwan trip to China’s detriment, by Matthew Brooker, Bloomberg Opinion columnist. https://bloom.bg/3OSJzBX
WHERE AND WHEN
The House is out for the August recess and will return to Washington on Sept. 13. The lower chamber could convene later this month, pending Senate action.
TheSenate convenes at noon and willresume consideration of a joint resolution providing for congressional disapproval of the rule submitted by the Council on Environmental Quality relating to “National Environmental Policy Act Implementing Regulations Revisions.”
The president will receive the President’s Daily Brief at 10:45 a.m. Biden will host a virtual roundtable discussion about the pending Inflation Reduction Act with business and labor leaders.
Vice President Harris heads to Boston this morning. She will receive the President’s Daily Brief via a virtual meeting at 10:45 a.m. Two hours later, Harris is scheduled to hold a roundtable about reproductive rights with Massachusetts state legislators and local leaders and speak at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 103. The vice president will travel from Boston to Martha’s Vineyard at 2:35 p.m. and speak at a Democratic National Committee finance event at 6:15 p.m. at a private residence in Vineyard Haven, Mass. Harris will return to Washington tonight.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will attend a virtual roundtable event at the White House with business and labor leaders to discuss the pending Inflation Reduction Act.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, participating in the U.S.-ASEAN ministerial meeting, the East Asia Summit foreign ministers’ meeting and the ASEAN Regional Forum.
Second gentleman Doug Emhoff and AmeriCorps CEO Michael Smith will visit Civic Works Urban Lot in Baltimore at 10:45 a.m. and assist AmeriCorps members who are building an urban green space.
Economic indicators: The Bureau of Economic Analysis at 8:30 a.m. will report on the trade deficit in June. … The Labor Department at 8:30 a.m. reports on filings for unemployment benefits in the week ending July 29. … For chief executive officers, the era of courting employees with solicitous outreach in a tight labor market may be ending (The Wall Street Journal).
The White House daily briefing is scheduled at 2:45 p.m.
Canada will get an in-person visit from an “eager” Biden, the question is the timing, U.S. Ambassador David Cohen said Wednesday during an interview (Politico).
The Iran nuclear talks will resume in Vienna today at the instigation of the European Union after being stalled for months. Diplomats will be present from the U.S., Iran, China, Russia, Germany, Britain and France, as well as the EU, which is acting as a mediator since Iran refuses to talk directly to the U.S. (Politico).
Near Iceland’s Keflavik Airport, the country’s international air traffic hub, an erupting volcano led the headlines on Wednesday and a live video feed from the site showed molten lava spewing from a narrow fissure. The 2021 eruption in the same area produced spectacular lava flows for several months, attracting hundreds of thousands of spectators (The Associated Press). This week there are travel fears and risky photo opportunities (The Washington Post).
Islands in the Caribbean are being choked by a record amount of seaweed, impacting tourism and killing wildlife. Scientists say more research is needed to determine why sargassum levels in the region are reaching new highs, but the United Nations’s Caribbean Environment Program says possible factors include a rise in water temperatures as a result of climate change and nitrogen-laden fertilizers and sewage waste fueling algae blooms (The Associated Press).
San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins (D) announced on Wednesday that she has revoked 30 plea offers for drug cases made by her predecessor, former District Attorney Chesa Boudin (D), who was recalled in June. Boudin was booted in part due to progressive policies he pushed, including ending cash bail and offering defendants the opportunity to enter a rehabilitation program instead of prison. According to Jenkins’s office, one of the plea offers she nullified involved a case in which a defendant had six open cases for dealing fentanyl and was arrested with more than 100 grams of the drug. Instead, she will now seek a felony charge that includes jail time (The Hill).
➤ PANDEMIC
The president on Wednesday tested positive for the fifth day after being diagnosed with a rebound case of COVID-19 following treatment with the antiviral drug Paxlovid (The Hill). His doctor continues to describe Biden as “feeling well,” despite his bouts with the coronavirus. The yo-yo phenomenon underscores why scientists are still studying the Pfizer drug and its dosages, durations and impacts on specific categories of patients (The Hill).
One health benefit that emerged from the grim pandemic was a reduction in tobacco purchases and smoking. A highly transmissible respiratory virus that in the pre-vaccine months had a high mortality rate appeared to inspire smokers to quit, according to a new study conducted in Denmark (The Hill).
Looking like a wagon wheel, flower or rotary dial on a telephone, the Cartwheel Galaxy, located about 500 million light-years away in the Sculptor constellation, is NASA’s latest photo release, courtesy of the James Webb Space Telescope (CBS News).
The Sunshine State is preparing enthusiastically for another NASA rocket launch Aug. 29, in part because such events are good for Florida business. Artemis I, the first launch of NASA’s moon-focused Space Launch System rocket, is attracting travel bookings and spurring tourism ahead of next month’s liftoff from the Kennedy Space Center. Standing 322 feet tall, the rocket promises to be the most powerful soaring from Florida’s Space Coast in years (USA Today).
➤ SPORTS
Phil Mickelson and 10 other golfers on the Saudi-backed LIV Golf circuit filed an antitrust lawsuit against the PGA Tour seeking to overturn their suspensions. The LIV series argues that the PGA Tour has a monopoly over professional golf, with the latter organization suspending those golfers for joining the new golf venture. The 11 golfers involved in the suit claim the PGA Tour is trying to hurt their careers. A number of other golfers who joined LIV Golf were not suspended by the PGA Tour and, instead, resigned their membership (The Wall Street Journal).
And finally … It’s Thursday, which means it’s time for this week’s Morning Report Quiz! Alert to all sorts of exchanges and transactions in the news, we’re eager for some smart guesses about swaps and trade.
Email your responses to asimendinger@thehill.com and/or aweaver@thehill.com, and please add “Quiz” to subject lines. Winners who submit correct answers will enjoy some richly deserved newsletter fame on Friday.
Why did baseball experts this week describe the Washington Nationals’ trade of Juan Soto to the San Diego Padres as a monumental midseason event in the sport?
He’s the first player 23 or younger to be traded in-season in a year when he was an All-Star
He is viewed as baseball’s best hitter
Soto has the potential to be an all-time great with the change in teams
All of the above
China deployed trade sanctions on Wednesday among retaliatory responses to show Taiwan it opposed Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit. Which export to the independent island did Beijing block?
Sand
Pineapples
Shark fins
None of the above
The administration wants to swap imprisoned WNBA star Brittney Griner and former Marine Paul Whelan, both held in Russia, reportedly for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, who has been behind bars in Illinois since 2012. What is Bout’s nickname, according to news accounts?
“Merchant of Death”
“Bloody Bout”
“Putin’s Puppet”
“Reaper Man”
The first ship since the onset of war in February carrying Ukrainian corn for trade left Odessa this week. Can you name the merchant vessel?
Democrats are working quickly to move a sprawling tax, health care and climate plan through the Senate in the coming days using a complex procedure known as budget reconciliation that could allow passage without any Republican votes.
If Democrats remain unified in the critical stretch between now and when they bring the bill to a floor vote, reconciliation will allow them to pass a mammoth bill that Republicans would have likely been able to block in the Senate under normal operating rules.
But to use the procedure, Democrats must jump through a series of hoops before they bring the bill to the floor for a vote.
One of those last steps is a vote-a-rama — an often grueling, hours-long session in which senators can offer a series of amendments for a chance to influence legislation before senators vote on the overall bill.
The looming prospect of the voting marathon in the coming days has been a source of mixed feelings among Republicans and Democrats alike.
Republicans see vote-a-rama as an opportunity to offer potential last-minute changes to the bill’s text and line up tough votes for their colleagues ahead of the 2022 November midterms. Democrats also eye the event as the last procedural hurdle to securing passage on a long-sought plan to advance key pieces of President Biden’s agenda.
But there are also members on both sides of the aisle that wouldn’t exactly say they’re looking forward to the marathon, which can often take all night and last well into the morning.
“Generally speaking, it’s theater, where the underlying bill is what ultimately passes out, and it’s dishonest,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) told The Hill on Wednesday.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) also said he wasn’t looking forward to the event, which he called “largely a waste of time.”
“I’ve been through many of them, and they’re largely meaningless,” Blumenthal added. “People know what the result is. Nobody’s paying a lot of attention to it.”
The Senate generally defines vote-a-ramas on its website as “legislation the Senate voted on 15 or more times in one day.” According to the Senate’s records, there have been over 60 such sessions since the 1970s, most often when lawmakers passed legislation using reconciliation.
If Democrats press forward with the bill as planned, it would mark the fourth time the Senate has held a vote-a-rama during the current congressional session.
The Senate had its last vote-a-rama in August 2021, when Democrats attempted to pass a larger plan known as Build Back Better, a centerpiece of Biden’s agenda.
But talks fell apart after opposition from Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), a key centrist holdout. Manchin and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) reached a deal late last month on a narrower plan aimed at deficit reduction, dubbed the Inflation Reduction Act. They hope to pass this bill later this month.
However, Republicans are peeved with Democrats’ efforts to ram the reconciliation plan through Congress, arguing it would add to rising inflation and lead to higher taxes for American families and small businesses.
Republican amendments introduced during the former session were largely nonbinding, but experts say any amendments passed in a subsequent vote-a-rama on the current bill could become law, raising the stakes on lawmakers.
“Every vote is actually live ammunition to do and change the law, as opposed to something that’s, to some extent, nonbinding,” Zach Moller, a former Senate Democratic budget aide and director of the economic program at the centrist think tank Third Way, said.
However, Republicans have also grumbled about the chance of Democrats using what’s known as a wraparound amendment, which Moller noted is typically “stacked last before the final passage vote” and can be used to erase earlier “amendments adopted in the vote-a-rama.”
“It was used before, but it can upset some senators. I don’t know if it will be used again,” he added.
Democrats have argued their plan would help reduce inflation by, in part, cutting the deficit through proposed reforms to prescription drug pricing and tax measures aimed at the wealthy and large corporations.
However, Republicans are peeved with Democrats’ efforts to ram the reconciliation plan through Congress, arguing it would add to rising inflation and lead to higher taxes on lower- and middle-income families.
Currently, the legislation is undergoing review by the Senate parliamentarian, who decides which parts of the measure comply with budget reconciliation rules. Senators are closely watching the process, during which Republicans are also able to make objections to parts of the legislation, to see what falls out.
Timing around when Congress would proceed with a vote-a-rama is up in the air, though Democrats say it could happen as early as this weekend.
“If we get onto it Thursday, and then maybe we start voting on amendments on Friday, I mean, you could see this thing going into Sunday, maybe even early next week,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.).
GOP leaders say lawmakers can likely expect hundreds of amendments filed by Republicans in the days leading up to the event, as some in the party have already voiced appetite for votes on areas like taxes and immigration for the session.
But leaders anticipate the amount senators actually end up voting on will be considerably less.
“The last time we did reconciliation, I think there were over 1,000 amendments filed,” Sen. Roy Blunt (Mo.), a member of GOP leadership, said earlier this week, though he noted only several dozen were actually voted on.
President Biden testing positive for COVID-19 again days after completing a course of Paxlovid has raised the question of whether the length of the antiviral treatment should be reconsidered.
Just days after he completed a five-day round of Pfizer’s COVID-19 antiviral treatment, Biden’s physician Kevin O’Connor said in a letter on Saturday that the president had tested positive once again. As of Wednesday, Biden is still testing positive for COVID-19.
This phenomenon has come to be known as “Paxlovid rebound,” when a person tests positive for coronavirus again even after initially testing negative following a round of treatment with the antiviral. A recent preprint study found that Paxlovid rebound occurred among 3.5 percent and 5.4 percent of coronavirus infections at the 7-day and the 30-day mark after treatment respectively.Biden’s chief medical advisor Anthony Fauci also experienced Paxlovid rebound after contracting the virus and started a second round of treatment.
Some experts have called for studies into extending Paxlovid treatments to be prioritized, as early research has suggested that Paxlovid rebound could occur due to insufficient exposure to the drug. Researchers from the University of California San Diego School of Medicine said last month that the drug may not be reaching enough infected cells in the allotted time.
Paxlovid, under an emergency use authorization issued by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), is administered in two doses taken daily over the course of five days. Physicians are not permitted to prescribe longer rounds of treatment and clinical data on courses lasting more than five days has yet to be completed.
Earlier this year, Fauci said the National Institutes of Health was in talks with Pfizer about studies looking into longer courses of Paxlovid, though any updates on these possible trials have not been disclosed.
“I’m actually still flabbergasted that we have not set up a clinical trial to figure this out. It’s an easy thing to do,” Robert M. Wachter, chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, told The Hill.
“Wouldn’t cost that much to be able to accumulate enough patients in a week or two and follow them for a few weeks so we could have an answer,” Wachter said, adding that the data needed to potentially extend the length of a round of Paxlovid could have been collected already if trials had been started just a few months ago.
According to Wachter, there aren’t any similar antiviral “analogies”to compare Paxlovid to. Viral rebound isn’t usually tested for and other antiviral treatments aren’t administered in the same manner.
Eric Toner, Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, noted that viral rebound has rarely been studied as much as it is now in the context of COVID. However, Toner said instances of viruses or bacterial infections still lingering after treatment do occur.
Instances of viral rebound of coronavirus are also not unique to Paxlovid. Cases of rebound with molnupiravir, the COVID-19 antiviral created by Merck and Ridgeback, have been observed as well.
People who experience cases of antiviral rebound are still at risk of transmitting COVID-19 to other people. Michael Charness, a researcher from the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Boston, recently told CNN that he and his colleagues had observed at least two instances of people infecting others after their symptoms reoccurred. Both cases involved people who tested positive again after taking Paxlovid.
People tend to have much milder symptoms that resolve fairly easily on their own after testing positive again, Toner said. For this reason, he said a second round of treatment, even in cases of Paxlovid rebound, is probably unneeded. O’Connor, Biden’s physician, has provided regular updates on the president’s health, but has not disclosed whether he has started a second course of Paxlovid like Fauci did.
While the need for and feasibility of longer Paxlovid rounds remains uncertain, the U.S. may find itself relying on antivirals more going forward as new variants of COVID-19, more infectious and better at evading immune protection, continue to crop up.
“If we do see more variants and they’re more evasive and we have more people with infections who are at risk of a serious outcome, then antivirals will become increasingly important,” Wachter said, though he added, “As far as we know, none of that is really true.”
He noted that even with subvariants like BA.5 spreading and causing more infections, the current vaccines are still offering strong protection against severe cases, hospitalizations and deaths.
Researchers have previously said that it would be difficult, but not impossible, for COVID-19 to become resistant to Paxlovid treatment, as the drug targets a part of the virus that does not change easily.
When reached for comment, a Pfizer spokesperson pointed to a health advisory from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released earlier this year that stated a brief return of COVID-19 symptoms following the completion of Paxlovid treatment “may be part of the natural history of SARS-CoV-2.”
“While further evaluation is needed, we have not seen any viral resistance emerge to date in patients treated with PAXLOVID, and we continue to monitor data from our ongoing clinical studies and post-authorization safety surveillance,” said the spokesperson. “We remain very confident in PAXLOVID’s clinical effectiveness at preventing severe outcomes from COVID-19 in patients at increased risk.”
The spokesperson for Pfizer did not comment on the possibility of longer Paxlovid courses.
Talk of former President Trump’s loosening grip on the GOP may be overstated, as evidenced by Tuesday’s primary results in states like Arizona and Michigan.
Trump-backed candidates have picked up wins in the Senate primary in Arizona, the GOP governor’s race in Michigan, as well as House and secretary of state primaries.
Overall, the results show that Trump is still a powerful force within the GOP, even as questions about his viability as a presidential candidate in 2024 linger.
“I do think it should put to rest this idea that I think certain people in the party were wishcasting that Trump was losing influence when very clearly he hasn’t been,” said Andy Surabian, a GOP strategist and former Trump White House official.
Questions swirled in recent weeks about Trump’s hold on the Republican Party, driven largely by compelling hearings held by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riots at the Capitol that revealed new details about Trump’s inaction amid the violence and his refusal to condemn his supporters.
Trump also had a fairly weak showing in Georgia’s primaries and subsequent runoffs, with multiple endorsed candidates losing. Then last month, a New York Times poll showed Republican voters were split on the idea of Trump running again in 2024.
But Tuesday’s primaries were overall a success for Trump.
Blake Masters prevailed in the Republican Arizona Senate primary with Trump’s backing. Kari Lake, Trump’s pick in the gubernatorial primary there, held a narrow lead as of late Wednesday and appeared poised to hold off Karrin Taylor Robson, who was endorsed by former Vice President Mike Pence and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R). And Trump’s preferred candidate in the secretary of state race, election denier Mark Finchem, won his primary.
In Michigan, Tudor Dixon won the governor’s nomination after a late endorsement from Trump. Rep. Pete Meijer (R-Mich.), one of 10 Republicans to vote to impeach Trump in 2021, narrowly lost to John Gibbs, who had Trump’s backing.
Eric Schmitt emerged from a crowded field in the Missouri Senate GOP primary to take the nomination after Trump endorsed “Eric,” without specifying if he meant Schmitt or Greitens, the former governor. But the move allowed the former president to claim victory in that race as well.
Trump’s only real blemishes appeared to be in Washington state, where two members of Congress who voted to impeach him after the Capitol riots were on track to win their primaries.
“Endorsements don’t get any more powerful or conclusive than the Endorsements of last night. I wonder if anyone will write or report that? Just asking?” Trump posted Wednesday morning on Truth Social, his fledgling social media platform.
“Ran the entire board!” he added in a subsequent post.
The former president’s track record of endorsements has been especially strong in primaries where there are multiple candidates vying for the nomination.
One GOP strategist also noted that there are scant examples of Republicans winning a primary by being vocally anti-Trump. Even individuals who have overcome Trump-backed primaries, like Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R), are still generally supportive of the former president.
Instead, Trump’s most ardent critics up for reelection in November have either opted to retire or are facing defeat.
The most prominent example is Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who is facing a primary election on Aug. 16. Cheney has been a leading Trump critic for over a year, voting to impeach the former president and serving as vice chair of the committee investigating the Capitol riots.
A poll released last month by the Casper Star Tribune found Cheney trailing Harriet Hageman, who is backed by Trump, by 22 percentage points.
“Trump should be buoyed by his candidates’ performance last night. After Cheney’s destruction coming up, Trump will be in a prime position to launch his campaign and cruise smoothly through his primary,” said John Thomas, a Republican consultant who works on House campaigns.
While Trump remains the dominant figure within the GOP and has helped shape the outcome of several primaries, the next test will come in November when his candidates face a broader swath of voters.
Trump allies believe that the political environment will be so bad for Democrats, particularly if inflation remains high, that even those who currently trail in polling — such as Masters in Arizona and Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania — could prevail.
But others are less sure.
Chuck Coughlin, a GOP strategist in Arizona who has worked on campaigns there for years, argued that candidates like Lake, Masters and Finchem, who have tied their entire candidacy to Trump, and in some cases specifically to his false claim that the 2020 election was rigged, will have a difficult time winning over independent voters and even some moderate Republicans in a general election in a purple state.
“The stranglehold was demonstrated last night that his candidates in very competitive primaries still prevailed,” Coughlin said. “So, the party itself is the party of Trump. And so, is that enough to win a general election in Arizona in November? I don’t believe it is. You’re going to have to do something more than that to win the general election in November.”
The deal struck last week by Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), a slimmed-down version of the Build Back Better Act, leaves out most of President Biden’s proposals to pull in greater government revenues from rich taxpayers.
Increases in individual income tax rates for high earners, increases in the estate tax, increased taxes on capital gains like stock and property holdings, a tax on billionaires, a plan to build out the net investment income tax and a surtax on high-income households are plans that have been scrapped from the Inflation Reduction Act.
“The administration proposed many, many tax increases that aren’t reflected in this legislation,” UCLA tax economist and former tax analyst for the Treasury Department Kimberly Clausing said Wednesday on a call with reporters.
“This past November, [there was] a version of this legislation that was broader and that would have included a lot more tax increases, including the net investment income tax provision, [which is] a very important loophole that hopefully Congress will close someday,” she added.
Among the many proposals nixed from the current legislative package is a plan to restore the top income tax rate of 39.6 percent, brought down to 37 percent by the Trump administration’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, as well as a 3 percent surtax on taxpayers with income of $5 million or more put forward by the House Ways and Means Committee in 2021.
Also missing is a plan to increase taxes on investment earnings, known as capital gains, to 25 percent, as well as an expansion of the net investment income tax, more than half of which would have been paid for by the top 0.1 percent of taxpayers, according to an analysis by the Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank.
“President Biden, in his campaign, in his budgets, proposed a substantial amount of tax increases on high-income people,” analyst Howard Gleckman of the Tax Policy Center said in an interview. “It included this idea of expanding the net investment income tax, which was a provision in the 2010 Affordable Care Act that would have extended a 3.8 percent tax to certain kinds of businesses that were not subject to the original one.”
“The finance committee people were moving along on the net investment income tax,” he added. “I mean, that required some background work to do, and they were doing that. They were under the impression that this was going to happen. And then suddenly it didn’t.”
Economist Kimberly Clausing said that the makeup of the Senate, which is split evenly along party lines, is the reason that more measures to tax the rich weren’t included in the Inflation Reduction Act. Republicans are pretty much intolerant of progressive taxation policies, but Democrats, too, have encountered resistance in their ranks to such tax hikes, notably from centrists like Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) and Manchin.
“Any observer of this process will note that the Senate is 50-50,” Clausing said. “And when the Senate is 50-50, that means that there’s absolutely no room to be any more ambitious than that 50th senator is willing to be.”
White House economist Jared Bernstein traced the resistance to tax hikes on the rich beyond Congress, to the economic forces that act upon lawmakers through their constituencies.
Bernstein told CNBC last year regarding the Biden administration’s budget proposals that plans to tax the wealthy are often thwarted by lobbying groups in Washington who solicit members of Congress on behalf of particular industry trade groups.
“As you well know,” Bernstein said, “when you go up to Capitol Hill and you start negotiating on taxes, there are more lobbyists in this town on taxes than there are members of Congress.”
Democrats are holding their breath over a decision from Sinema on the bill. Her dissent could stymie the latest attempt to get Biden’s domestic priorities through Congress.
And while it omits most of the earlier legislative proposals aimed at taxing rich people, it may still be able to increase government revenues from the wealthy through additional enforcement measures.
The bill aims to raise revenues from increased tax enforcement by the IRS by $124 billion, according to a one-page summary of the bill from Senate Democrats.
The legislation would fund the IRS over the next 10 years to the tune of $45.6 billion for enforcement efforts, $25 billion for operations support, $4 billion for technology modernization and $3 billion for taxpayer services.
“Nearly three-quarters of Americans believe the IRS should conduct more tax audits of large corporations and millionaires,” Senate Democrats said in a July 27 write-up of the bill released along with the reconciliation bill’s text.
But economist Joseph Stiglitz cautioned during a Wednesday call that wealthy taxpayers can protect themselves against audits by using expensive lawyers.
“Very wealthy people are, quite frankly, using very expensive lawyers to avoid paying taxes,” he said. “Having a system that enforces the tax system and that makes everybody pay their fair share means that just because you have a good lawyer, you can’t escape taxation. That’s really important.”
“So it’s not only that these small investments will yield large returns. They create a fairer tax system and a fair tax system is really important for a fairer society,” Stiglitz added.
The Washington consensus might have been proven wrong once again — this time on abortion.
The Supreme Court’s decision on June 24 striking down Roe v. Wade was always going to be huge news.
But Beltway strategists in both parties questioned the degree to which it would have a real electoral impact.
The popular view was that people for whom abortion is a pivotal issue already vote in every election — and that the economy would dominate November’s midterms.
Now, that idea looks far more questionable.
On Tuesday, voters in Kansas delivered a seismic shock, handing the pro-choice side a victory in one of the most deep-red states in the nation.
The proposal before the electorate would have stated explicitly that the Kansas constitution confers no right to abortion. It was rejected by about 18 points amid a massive turnout.
An abundance of national polling also shows Democrats’ chances improving in the midterms.
The Democratic rise in the polls seems to have commenced in or around late June — at exactly the same time the Supreme Court handed down its decision.
There could be other factors at play, including gas prices having declined from their highest levels. But it seems clear abortion is playing a big part.
On the day of the Supreme Court decision, data and polling site FiveThirtyEight gave Republicans a 53 percent chance of controlling the Senate after the midterms. Now, that has declined to 43 percent.
A Monmouth University poll released Wednesday gave Democrats a seven-point advantage among all adults when respondents were asked which party they would prefer to see control Congress. The last time Monmouth polled that question, in June, the result was a tie.
The RealClearPolitics polling average showed Republicans with a 3.4-point lead over Democrats on the day the Supreme Court ruled. The margin has now dwindled to three-tenths of a point.
Democrats, though they are horrified by the loss of Roe, believe the Supreme Court has sparked a huge backlash — and that their party leaders need to press the political advantage.
“We are at such a tipping point now,” Democratic operative Abigail Collazo told this column. “We have the right message. Our message is aligned with the will of the voters. But where this could go off the rails is if the Democratic Party decides not to put the money behind the groundwork in states where this message can really make the difference.”
Other advocates of abortion rights assert that the Supreme Court decision has made the issue far more politically salient — and to a wider group of voters than ever before.
“A lot of people assumed, I think, that Roe v. Wade would always be the law of the land,” said Sam Lau, a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood Votes. “What has changed is the direct threat now, and how it is making headlines every day. I think that is going to be a motivating force to bring people to the polls like never before.”
Those hopes clearly extend to the White House and congressional leaders.
President Biden asserted on Wednesday that Republicans and others pressing an anti-abortion agenda “don’t have a clue about the power of American women.” He added, “In Kansas, they found out.”
Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on the Senate floor that Kansas voters had “sent an unmistakable message to MAGA Republican extremists: back off women’s fundamental rights.”
And White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Wednesday that the previous 24 hours had seen “a lot of momentum…in our fight to restore Roe.”
In addition to the Kansas vote, Jean-Pierre pointed to the Department of Justice’s decision to sue Idaho over especially onerous restrictions on abortion set to take effect later this month.
She also noted the president’s signing of an executive order Wednesday designed to make it easier for women to travel out of state to obtain abortions.
To be sure, none of this makes it certain either that abortion restrictions can be rolled back or that Democrats can avoid electoral defeat in November.
Anti-abortion activists insist that the issue energizes their side as much as their opponents. They are casting the Kansas defeat as a minor setback in a longer, victorious march.
Meanwhile, Republicans and some independent analysts question whether abortion really has the power to reshape a political landscape otherwise dominated by economic issues.
Reacting to Biden’s comments Wednesday, Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel released a statement insisting, “Our country is in a recession, Americans can’t afford gas or groceries, and yet all Joe Biden cares about is pushing his radical and unpopular late-term abortion agenda.”
But Democrats like Collazo argue that the supposed division between “social issues” and “kitchen-table issues” is a false dichotomy when abortion access is in such self-evident peril.
“It is a kitchen table issue,” she argued. “People are talking about this in the grocery store, with their loved ones, in their faith communities.”
Meanwhile the diminishing band of pro-choice Republicans lament the direction the party has taken.
“At present, the Republican Party seems to be in the thrall of the far-right faction,” said Susan Bevan, a former national co-chairwoman of the now-defunct Republican Majority for Choice, a group that advocated for pro-choice policies within the GOP.
“A Republican Party that was affiliated with limited government and fiscal responsibility has changed to be the party that I see now.”
One way or another, the outcome in Kansas is a powerful warning shot.
The abortion issue could yet transform the midterms.
