memeorandum: My favorite Covid counterfactuals (Matthew Yglesias/Slow Boring)

10:40 AM ET, September 30, 2021

Top Items:

House appears poised to pull infrastructure vote amid stubborn stalemate — House Democrats appear poised to miss a second vote on a bipartisan infrastructure bill this week, highlighting the stubborn stalemate over the larger social benefits package at the core of President Biden's agenda.

Discussion: New York Times, No More Mister Nice Blog, Bloomberg, The Atlantic, WV MetroNews, Power Line, Breitbart, RedState, HotAir and Political Wire

Susan Ferrechio / Washington Examiner:

Manchin trashes Democratic spending bill: ‘Fiscal insanity’ — Sen. Joe Manchin, a key centrist Democrat whose approval is required to pass the party's massive social welfare spending package, firmly rejected the proposal on Wednesday, criticizing the $3.5 trillion cost and the vast new entitlements it would provide.

Discussion: U.S. Senator Joe Manchin …, HotAir, Breitbart, National Review, Politico, RedState, NOQ Report, The Hill, National Review, Salon, New York Times, Washington Post, The Mahablog and Twitchy

John McCormack / National Review:

Manchin: Reconciliation ‘Dead on Arrival’ If It Doesn't Include Hyde Amendment — House Democrats have pushed forward in their reconciliation bill with creating a new “Medicaid-like” program that lacks the Hyde amendment, a measure that generally prohibits federal funding of abortion.

Discussion: The Hill, HotAir, RedState, POLITICUSUSA, LifeNews.com, Washington Post, Breitbart, Patterico's Pontifications and NPR

Politico:

White House gives a wink to progressives as they threaten Biden's infrastructure bill — Progressives in the House are revolting. Inside the White House, they're welcoming it. — One by one, liberal lawmakers have announced that they will vote to defeat a bipartisan infrastructure bill …

Discussion: Washington Post

Seung Min Kim / Washington Post:
Biden sticks to his dealmaking strategy, as some Democrats want him to do more to bring holdouts on board

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, The Hill, UPI, Daily Kos, Althouse, Yahoo Finance, New York Times and National Review

Alan Fram / Associated Press:
Democrats divided: Progressives, centrists say trust is gone

Discussion: CNN, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times and No Labels

CBS News:
What's in the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill?

Discussion: New Republic, IJR and Mediaite

Marianna Sotomayor / Washington Post:
Waiting for ‘Manchema’: House liberals grow exasperated with two Democratic senators as Biden agenda struggles

Discussion: Bloomberg and Wall Street Journal

New York Times:
Kyrsten Sinema Faces a Growing Revolt From Her Former Supporters

Discussion: RedState, Crowdpac, Freddie deBoer, The Hill, Gallup, New York Magazine, First Draft, National Review, The Hill and Washington Post

Associated Press:

AP-NORC poll finds deep divide over Biden vaccine mandate — A survey of Americans on President Joe Biden's plan to require most workers to get either vaccinated or regularly tested for COVID-19 finds a deep and familiar divide: Democrats are overwhelmingly for it, while most Republicans are against it.

Discussion: The Daily Caller, Associated Press and Rolling Stone

David Leonhardt / New York Times:

The Right to Health — Immunization mandates aren't new. One helped win the American Revolution. — The United States owes its existence as a nation partly to an immunization mandate. — In 1777, smallpox was a big enough problem for the bedraggled American army that George Washington thought it could jeopardize the Revolution.

Discussion: The Daily Caller and The Hill

CDC:
COVID-19 Vaccination for Pregnant People to Prevent Serious Illness, Deaths, and Adverse Pregnancy Outcomes from COVID-19

Discussion: The Hill, Twitchy, Associated Press, KVIA-TV, NPR, WGN-TV, Axios and New York Post

Lauren Hirsch / New York Times: After its mandate, Tyson Foods reaches a 91 percent vaccination rate.

Jonathan Levin / Bloomberg:
U.S. Covid Recovery Spreads as Prospects Improve in 47 States

Discussion: Balloon Juice and HotAir

Alan Levinovitz / Washington Post: How the phrase ‘natural immunity’ misleads us about real risks and dangers

Ed Yong / The Atlantic: We're Already Barreling Toward the Next Pandemic

The White House:

President Biden Names Eighth Round of Judicial Nominees — The President is announcing fourteen judicial nominees, including ten new candidates for the federal bench. All of the nominees are extraordinarily qualified, experienced, and devoted to the rule of law and our Constitution.

Morgan Chalfant / The Hill:

Biden announces 14 more nominees to courts — President Biden on Thursday announced plans to nominate 10 people to the federal bench and four to serve on local Washington, D.C., courts. — It's the eighth round of nominees announced by Biden, who has now named 53 federal judicial nominees.

Discussion: CNN

NBC News:

Senate reaches deal to avoid government shutdown, Schumer announces — Congress racing to prevent government shutdown — WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Wednesday that senators have reached a deal on a stopgap government funding measure to prevent a shutdown.

Discussion: CNBC, USA Today, Talking Points Memo, WTOP, Letters from an American, Insider, Washington Times, CNBC, Los Angeles Times, Washington Times, ABC7, Talking Points Memo, New York Post, The Guardian, The Hill, Political Wire, Politico and Washington Post

Jennifer Schuessler / New York Times:

Leader of Prestigious Yale Program Resigns, Citing Donor Pressure — The historian Beverly Gage, who has run the Grand Strategy course since 2017, says the university failed to stand up for academic freedom amid inappropriate efforts to influence the curriculum.

The Markup:

There's a Multibillion-Dollar Market for Your Phone's Location Data — A huge but little-known industry has cropped up around monetizing people's movements — Companies that you likely have never heard of are hawking access to the location history on your mobile phone.

Axios:

Scoop: Milley's blunt private blame for the State Department — In a classified briefing with senators on Tuesday, Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley directly blamed the State Department for a botched evacuation from Afghanistan, saying officials “waited too long” to order the operation …

Discussion: The Daily Caller, Washington Post, The Bulwark, HotAir, The Daily Signal, Insider, The National Interest, The Hill, New York Post, National Review and Breitbart

KMVT-TV:

Idaho Secretary of State refutes Mike Lindell's statewide election manipulation claims — BOISE, Idaho (KMVT/KSVT) — Staff from the Idaho Secretary of State's office visited two Idaho counties last week following receipt of information that alleged statewide manipulation of Idaho's election results.

Discussion: National Review, Bonner County Daily Bee and Raw Story

Maggie Haberman / New York Times:

Trump Super PAC Removes Corey Lewandowski After Sexual Harassment Claim — The move came after a donor to former President Donald J. Trump said that Mr. Lewandowski had made unwanted sexual advances and touched her inappropriately. — Corey Lewandowski, a longtime political adviser to Donald J. Trump …

Matthew Yglesias / Slow Boring:

My favorite Covid counterfactuals — Ross Douthat published a couple of speculative columns on Covid Counterfactuals. As someone who loves alternate history as a genre and also took a whole very serious philosophy class about the importance of counterfactual analysis for thinking about history, I like this type of column.

CNN:

January 6 committee targets organizers of Stop the Steal rally in latest batch of subpoenas — (CNN)The select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection has issued its second round of subpoenas, this time targeting individuals involved in the planning and organization of the …

Wall Street Journal:

Facebook's Documents About Instagram and Teens, Published — The Senate holds a hearing Thursday about the social network's impact, prompted by The Wall Street Journal's coverage — Facebook Inc. is scheduled to testify at a Senate hearing on Thursday about its products' effects on young people's mental health.

Discussion: Washington Post, New York Times, Protocol, TechCrunch, Fox News and The Verge, more at Techmeme »

Philip Jaffa / The Bulwark:

My Father and the Birth of Modern Conservatism — The inspiration for the 1964 “Extremism in the defense of liberty” speech he wrote for Barry Goldwater. — On July 16, 1964 Barry Goldwater strode to the podium at the Cow Palace in Daly City, California and accepted the Republican party's nomination for president.

New York Daily News:

New York AG Letitia James teases run for governor, bashes Cuomo as 2022 race takes shape — New York State Attorney General Letitia James strongly hinted she plans to run for governor next year during a speech delivered Wednesday to a group of influential political players.

Discussion: THE CITY, New York Magazine, WTOP and abc7NY

Daniel Greenfield / Front Page Magazine:

Black Lives Matter Killed 2,000 Black People — The number of black murder victims rose 62% in one year. — Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

Ariane de Vogue / CNN:

Justice Sonia Sotomayor: ‘There is going to be a lot of disappointment in the law, a huge amount’ — (CNN)Days before the start of a tumultuous term, and after the Supreme Court justices divided bitterly over a Texas law that bars most abortions after six weeks, Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned …

Discussion: LifeNews.com, Washington Post, Reason, Insider and Associated Press

Kirsten Grieshaber / Associated Press:

Former Nazi camp secretary in German trial, 96, on the run — BERLIN (AP) — A former secretary for the SS commander of the Stutthof concentration camp was being sought on an arrest warrant Thursday after skipping the planned start of her trial in Germany on more than 11,000 counts of accessory to murder, officials said.

Discussion: The Daily Beast, New York Post, Mediaite, Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Aurelien Breeden / New York Times:

Ex-President Sarkozy Convicted for Campaign Spending Violations — Nicolas Sarkozy was found guilty of illegally financing his 2012 presidential bid by exceeding France's strict electoral rules and sentenced to a year of house arrest. He said he would appeal.

Discussion: CNN, Associated Press, Reuters, Politico, UPI, Eschaton, Bloomberg, Forbes, Raw Story and WTOP

Christina Coulter / Daily Mail:

Black student is revealed to have written N-word graffiti that called for death of black people and led to walk-out at Missouri high school — A black student scrawled racist graffiti featuring the N-word that led to walk-outs at Parkway Central High School in Missouri, school officials said Tuesday

Discussion: The Gateway Pundit and St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Washington Post:

Democrats worry a loss in Virginia could set off a cascade of election troubles — President Biden's slumping approval ratings and gridlock on Capitol Hill have raised the risk that Democrats could lose the Virginia governor's race, according to party insiders who fear a defeat …

Discussion: Politico, NBC News, ABC7, National Review, Washington Free Beacon, Inside Elections, Washington Post, Instapundit and Roanoke College

Sabato's Crystal Ball:

New Initiative Explores Deep, Persistent Divides Between Biden and Trump Voters — The University of Virginia Center for Politics has partnered with Project Home Fire, a new initiative dedicated to finding common ground in American politics, on an innovative new data analytics and polling project …

Discussion: CNN

Washington Post:

Antisemitic mailer in Virginia legislative race follows a recent GOP pattern — Antisemitic stereotypes, tropes and imagery, centuries old, recur episodically in American politics, and not only on the ideological fringes. Days ago, in a tightly contested Northern Virginia state legislative race …

Discussion: Raw Story and Democratic Legislative …

U.S. Department of Justice:

Leader of ‘Atomwaffen’ hate group convicted of five federal felonies for conspiracy to threaten journalists and Anti-Defamation League employees — Defendant created threatening posters sent to homes in three states — Seattle - The leader of a Neo-Nazi hate group ‘Atomwaffen’ was convicted today …

Discussion: UPI, Joe.My.God., Associated Press, The Hill, CBS News and Raw Story

NBC News:

Could Sen. Kyrsten Sinema face a primary? These progressives are trying to make it happen. — WASHINGTON — A group of Arizona Democrats backed by a network of deep-pocketed donors is laying the groundwork for a primary challenge to Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, organizers said.

Discussion: The Hill, POLITICUSUSA and blog.ohpredictive.com