memeorandum: The inescapable overlap of pandemic and politics (Philip Bump/Washington Post)

4:55 PM ET, September 10, 2021

Top Items:

Mike Allen / Axios:

America's civil war of 2021 — Top Republicans are calling for a public uprising to protest President Biden's broad vaccine mandates, eight months after more than 500 people stormed the U.S. Capitol to try to overturn the election. — Why it matters: It has been decades since America …

Discussion: The Guardian, The Western Journal, UPI, Raw Story, Trending Politics, Mediaite, Mock Paper Scissors, Washington Post, BizPac Review, Althouse, Twitchy, Washingtonian and Sacramento Bee

Amber Phillips / Washington Post:

What legal ground do Republican governors have to push back on vaccine mandates? — Not much, based on a century of Supreme Court precedent. — Vaccine mandates have arrived. And so, too, has opposition led by Republicans. Nineteen Republican governors spoke out against President …

Discussion: Townhall, National Review, Washington Free Beacon, Talking Points Memo, Raw Story and Issues & Insights

Barbara Ortutay / Associated Press:

Federal mandate takes vaccine decision off employers' hands — Larger U.S. businesses now won't have to decide whether to require their employees to get vaccinated against COVID-19. Doing so is now federal policy. — President Joe Biden announced sweeping new orders Thursday …

Discussion: HotAir, CBS News, USA Today, New York Times, myfox8.com, BizPac Review, Forbes, Washington Times, Zandar Versus The Stupid, The Verge, MIT Technology Review, IJR and Off the Kuff

Matt Gertz / Media Matters for America:
Right-wing vaccine disinformation is killing people, and the propagandists are furious Biden is fighting back

Discussion: New Republic, Common Dreams, Bipartisan Report, TheBlaze, ABC News, Washington Times, Financial Times, WV MetroNews and Townhall

Robby Soave / New York Times:
Biden's Vaccine Mandate Is a Big Mistake

Discussion: NBC News, Reason, Politico, Fox News, HuffPost, pjmedia.com, CNN, New York Post, National Review, Washington Post, Washington Examiner, Reason, New York Times, Fox News, Washington Post, The White House, Forbes and Arizona Republic

Claire Rafford / Politico:
Biden to vaccine mandate legal challengers: ‘Have at it’

Discussion: Washington Examiner, Digby's Hullabaloo, CBS News and NPR

Politico:
'It's about time': Biden puts the screws on the unvaccinated

Discussion: Washington Examiner and Columbia Journalism Review

Philip Klein / National Review:
The Practical Problems with Biden's Employer Vaccine Mandate

Discussion: HotAir

Roni Caryn Rabin / New York Times:
Vaccines Effective Against Severe Illness From Delta, Studies Confirm

Discussion: Washington Post, Reason, LiveScience, New York Post, Right Side Broadcasting … and The Daily Caller

New York Times:

Times Investigation: In U.S. Drone Strike, Evidence Suggests No ISIS Bomb — U.S. officials said a Reaper drone followed a car for hours and then fired based on evidence it was carrying explosives. But in-depth video analysis and interviews at the site cast doubt on that account.

New York Times:

‘Imminent Threat’ or Aid Worker: Did a U.S. Drone Strike in Afghanistan Kill the Wrong Person? — [explosion] In one of the final acts of its 20-year war in Afghanistan, the United States fired a missile from a drone at a car in Kabul. It was parked in the courtyard of a home …

Washington Post:

Unvaccinated people were 11 times more likely to die of covid-19, CDC report finds — Moderna vaccine is most effective, says another study, the largest to date in U.S. to assess real-world effectiveness … People who were not fully vaccinated this spring and summer were over 10 times …

Discussion: New York Post, Fox News and BuzzFeed News

Noah Garfinkel / Axios:
CDC: Unvaccinated people were 11 times more likely to die of COVID-19

Discussion: Centers for Disease Control …, CBS News and UPI

Phil Willon / Los Angeles Times:

New poll finds Newsom could easily beat recall thanks to motivated Democrats — Momentum has turned strongly against the effort to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom with just days to go before voting ends, a change that comes after a deluge of political ads and support from leading Democrats …

Discussion: Fox News, Recent igs_poll items, Sacramento Bee, Mother Jones, FOX40, Los Angeles Magazine, Bloomberg, CNN, Mercury News, Digby's Hullabaloo, Mediaite, Breitbart, Raw Story, Election Law Blog, Politico, Political Wire, KTLA and HotAir

Reid Wilson / The Hill:
Opposition to California recall widens in new poll

Discussion: New York Times, POLITICUSUSA and Political Wire

Wall Street Journal:

Journalism Schools Leave Graduates With Hefty Student Loans — Students take on debt for master's degrees in hope of news jobs even as opportunities diminish — News reporting has lost thousands of jobs over the past decade, with a further slide predicted.

more at Mediagazer »

Melissa Alonso / CNN:

Florida appeals court rules in favor of DeSantis, reverses order to allow mask mandate ban in schools — (CNN)Florida's 1st District Court on Friday reinstated a stay on mask mandates in schools, blocking face mask requirements in schools for now, court documents show.

Discussion: POLITICUSUSA

Matt Dixon / Politico:

The Second Amendment fight that could upend Florida's midterms — TALLAHASSEE — The Florida Supreme Court will consider a challenge to a 2011 gun law recently expanded by Gov. Ron DeSantis, a decision that could prompt a ruling on the politically contentious issue of Second Amendment rights in the middle of the 2022 midterms.

Discussion: Washington Examiner

Kevin D. Williamson / New York Times:

The Trump Coup Is Still Raging — Mr. Williamson writes extensively about politics and more at National Review. — What happened at the Capitol on Jan. 6 was not a coup attempt. It was half of a coup attempt — the less important half. — The more important part of the coup attempt …

Discussion: ABC News, Raw Story and Alternet.org

Betsy Woodruff Swan / Politico:
Hundreds of law enforcement officials were prepped early for potential Jan. 6 violence

Discussion: HotAir, CNN and The Daily Beast

Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton:

Norton Denies Responsibility for Setting Zebras Free, Supports Freedom Generally — Norton says the charges are understandable, but for the first time offers an alibi. The six zebras escaped from a D.C.-area farm early this week — WASHINGTON, D.C. - Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton …

Discussion: USA Today, The Daily Beast, Townhall, Rolling Stone, Forbes, The Daily Caller and Washingtonian

Dan Bloom / Mirror.co.uk:

Britain will now see ‘permanent food shortages’ and it's ‘going to get worse’ — Food and Drink Federation chief Ian Wright said the country won't run out of food, but the days of shoppers knowing they can get whatever they like at the supermarket are gone forever

Krishnadev Calamur / NPR:

Breyer Warns Against Remaking The Court: ‘What Goes Around Comes Around’ — U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has a warning to those who want to remake the court: Be careful what you wish for. — In his new book, The Authority of the Court and the Peril of Politics …

Discussion: TheBlaze, Insider, The Daily Caller, HotAir, IJR and No More Mister Nice Blog

Jordan Williams / The Hill:
Justice Breyer issues warning on remaking Supreme Court: ‘What goes around comes around’

Discussion: RedState

Tim Alberta / The Atlantic:

‘I Was Responsible for Those People’ — On the evening of September 4, 2021, one week before the 20th anniversary of 9/11, Glenn Vogt stood at the footprint of the North Tower and gazed at the names stamped in bronze. The sun was diving below the buildings across the Hudson River in New Jersey …

CNN:

CNN launches new polling methodology — (CNN)The landscape of political polling is changing, and so too is the way CNN carries out its polls. Beginning with Friday's newly released CNN poll conducted by SSRS, the network is implementing a new methodology for measuring public opinion.

Discussion: HotAir, The Daily Caller and Twitchy, more at Mediagazer »

Musadiq Bidar / CBS News:

In speech taking on Trump, Christie calls on Republicans to renounce conspiracy theories and discredit extremists “in our midst” — Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who was once a close adviser to former President Trump, told Republicans gathered at the Ronald Reagan Presidential …

Discussion: The Daily Caller, Washington Examiner and Balloon Juice

Davey Alba / New York Times:

Facebook sent flawed data to misinformation researchers. — More than three years ago, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook trumpeted a plan to share data with researchers about how people interacted with posts and links on the social network, so that the academics could study misinformation on the site.

more at Techmeme »

David Goldman / CNN:

Here's who loves Biden's vaccine mandate: The companies that have to enforce it — New York (CNN Business)President Joe Biden gave a gift to every major company in America by forcing them to mandate vaccines or stringently test their employees for Covid. Their reaction to the new rule: glee.

Discussion: HotAir and Townhall

Daniel Idfresne / Common Sense with Bari Weiss:

I'm 17. And I'm Immunized from Woke Politics. — Here's how. — I'm a first generation, 17-year-old Black American who grew up in Bedford-Stuyvesant, the Brooklyn neighborhood made famous by Jay-Z. — Given that brief biography, perhaps you'd assume that I'm a Black Lives Matter slogan-chanting …

Chris Anderson / Sarasota Herald-Tribune:

The secret moves of the Cyber Ninjas moneyman — Once they finish finding voter fraud in the presidential election, and they will find it, the Cyber Ninjas should rappel down the Tomb of the Unknown Ballot Box and turn their considerable auditing skills to the real estate acquisitions of Patrick Byrne …

CNN:

Trump's House GOP enemies get boost from McCarthy's leadership team — ‘Disgraceful’: Former President Trump's niece reacts to what he's doing on 9/11 — (CNN)House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and his leadership team are quietly working to prop up some of the GOP incumbents targeted …

Discussion: The Hill, BizPac Review, Raw Story, Insider and Political Wire

Nick Miroff / Washington Post:

U.S. has flagged 44 Afghan evacuees as potential national security risks over the past two weeks, vetting reports show — The Department of Homeland Security flagged 44 Afghan evacuees as potential national security risks during the past two weeks as the government screened tens of thousands …

Discussion: New York Post, The Western Journal, The Daily Caller and Breitbart

BBC:

Texas passes social media ‘de-platforming’ law — The US state of Texas has made it illegal for social media platforms to ban users “based on their political viewpoints”. — Prominent Republican politicians have accused Facebook, Twitter and others of censoring conservative views.

Discussion: POLITICUSUSA, more at Techmeme »

Politico:

They Created Our Post-9/11 World. Here's What They Think They Got Wrong. — The sense of vulnerability and fear — yes, terror — was palpable. In the hours and days after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the consensus was that more deadly attacks were being prepped.

Discussion: Insider and The Moderate Voice