The good news: Democratic leaders say they’ve come closer to an agreement on the tax half of their Build Back Better plan and are exploring their options to raise the debt ceiling without GOP votes, if necessary. The annoying news: All of this is as vague as it sounds.
 

• Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced Thursday that the White House and top Democrats had come to an agreement on a “framework” of tax hikes to pay for their $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill, though the specifics remain under discussion. Biden held a series of meetings with Democratic leaders, key progressives, and the centrists threatening to tank his agenda on Wednesday in an effort to wrangle everyone onto the same page. 
   
• As Biden defends his (incredibly popular) proposal to force corporations and the ultrawealthy to pay their fair share in taxes from a handful of centrist Democrats funded by corporate interests, White House economists have published a new analysis of billionaires’ obscenely low tax rates to back him up. By including the wealthiest Americans’ investment gains as income, the analysis found that the richest 400 households in the country pay an average federal income-tax rate of just over eight (8) percent per year. The question Build Back Better asks is, what if somebody fixed that?
   
• While Democrats try to prevent Smanchinema from blowing up that plan, they’re also reckoning with Republicans’ willingness to blow up everything else. The White House has directed federal agencies to start buckling up for a possible government shutdown, though Democratic leaders have insisted that neither a shutdown during a pandemic nor a default on the debt are acceptable outcomes, and have reportedly begun discussing their Plan B for when Republicans filibuster the stopgap measure next week.

Nuking the filibuster would be the most sensible way to end the debt-limit standoff, but there are some other creative options available.
 

• On Thursday, Pelosi suggested bypassing a vote to raise the debt ceiling altogether, calling it a “tradition” that might not be strictly necessary. She’s referencing the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which includes a Public Debt Clause that says, “the validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law...shall not be questioned.” In a literal interpretation, that clause allows the president to order the Treasury to ignore the debt limit and continue borrowing after it expires. Pelosi said in 2013 that then-President Obama should have invoked the 14th Amendment when Republicans were (once again) holding the debt limit hostage, and the circumstances have only grown more dire. 
   
• It is also possible that Pelosi has joined Team #MintTheCoin. The silliest and therefore best debt-limit solution goes like this: Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen could mint a platinum coin, declare that it is worth $1 trillion (or whatever), walk it over to the Federal Reserve for deposit, and then proceed with business as usual, economic catastrophe averted. Is it ridiculous? Yes. Would it work? Sure. Is Yellen firing up the coin machine? Absolutely not. The Treasury ruled out the idea of becoming legends in a Thursday statement: “There is only one viable option to deal with the debt limit: Congress needs to increase or suspend it.”

Biden could put on a pair of aviators and order the Treasury to be cooler, of course, but as much fun as a $1 trillion coin would be, there’s nothing stopping Senate Democrats from raising or scrapping the debt limit on their own, if and when it comes to that. Democratic leaders went this far to call Republicans’ bluff; their next step should be to call Joe Manchin’s. 

Exciting news: Crooked Media has launched the brand new video series Crooked History. Narrated by familiar voices like Pod Save the World’s Ben Rhodes, Hysteria’s Erin Ryan, and Pod Save the People’s Kaya Henderson, this series will take you through pivotal moments in history that changed our politics forever–from the launch of the Sputnik satellite to the election of Richard Nixon. You can check out new episodes of Crooked History on the Crooked Media YouTube Channel or head over to crooked.com/crookedhistory to learn more.

Daniel Foote, the U.S. Special Envoy for Haiti, resigned on Thursday, writing that he “will not be associated with the United States’ inhumane, counterproductive decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees and illegal immigrants to Haiti.” State Department spokesman Ned Price pushed back on Foote’s assertion that his policy proposals had been ignored: “He failed to take advantage of ample opportunity to raise concerns about migration during his tenure and chose to resign instead.” The U.S. has been deporting hundreds of asylum seekers to Haiti on multiple flights each day, after more than 15,000 migrants amassed at the border in Del Rio, TX. Many of them had been living outside of Haiti for years, and are now being returned to a politically-unstable, earthquake-ravaged country they barely know. The Biden administration has accelerated those flights using Title 42, a Trump-era law that allows immigration authorities to deny migrants asylum hearings during the pandemic. The administration hasn’t applied that rule universally, but using it against people fleeing impossible conditions is both cruel and pretty clearly not working as a deterrent.

• A CDC advisory group has endorsed giving booster shots of the Pfizer vaccine to Americans over 65 and people with underlying conditions, but voted against recommending boosters for people whose jobs put them at higher risk of infection, in a break from the FDA’s emergency use authorization. 
   
• The House January 6 committee has issued its first round of subpoenas for witness testimony from former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, his former deputy Dan Scavino, former Pentagon official Kash Patel, and outside coup accomplice/podcast host Steve Bannon.
   
• Texas abortion providers have asked the Supreme Court to once again quickly review the state’s abortion ban, and decide on the core issue without waiting around for a lower court to hold a hearing in December at the earliest. Meanwhile, Florida Republicans have introduced a copycat bill that would ban most abortions.
   
• The U.S. has released new, alarming projections for the drought-affected Colorado River, suggesting that California could be in its second phase of water cuts by 2025.
   
• Donald Trump had a tremendously normal Wednesday night, releasing a flurry of statements in which he called former President George W. Bush a “RINO,” and attacked Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) for not doing enough to help him overthrow the government.
   
• After a refreshing night’s rest, Trump issued an open letter to Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) demanding that he add another fraudulent election audit to the legislature’s special session agenda. 
   
• Not to be left behind by Texas in the Red State Race to Hell, Florida GOP state Sen. Manny Diaz has called for a review of all existing vaccine mandates. Mumps and measles...welcome back.
   
• The Senate parliamentarian seems to think it is her job to protect the filibuster from reform. It is not!
   
• Broadcast news shows all chose to completely ignore the discovery that a lawyer working with the Trump White House wrote a memo outlining how to do a coup, which seems bad.
   
• Proudly-unvaccinated Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is back in COVID isolation after his health minister tested positive while in New York for the U.N. General Assembly.
   
• The Deep State plans to sneak coronavirus vaccines into your salad dressing, according to former national security adviser and current man-yelling-in-the-supermaket-produce-section Michael Flynn.

The giant Chinese property developer Evergrande is on the brink of collapse, and it could conceivably do some damage to the global economy on the way down. Evergrande is a very grande private developer that’s close to defaulting on billions of dollars of debt, after the pandemic and China’s new crackdown on real-estate borrowing made it impossible for the company to keep up its business model of pre-selling apartments (and taking on debt) to pay for the next huge development. Beijing is trying not to bail them out, instead asking local governments to step in at the last minute if the company falls apart. Without intervention, the Evergrande crisis could cause a larger financial crisis in China which would then ripple through the global economy, but U.S. officials and Wall Street analysts say it’s unlikely. That seems to have calmed down investors, after the company’s troubles caused the stock market to tank earlier this week.

Protect the First Amendment with the ACLU

During Donald Trump’s presidency, our country repeatedly suffered his administration’s attacks on the First Amendment, including freedom of the press. Now, the Biden administration Department of Justice is quietly taking up the Trump mantle to fight free press, free speech, and government transparency in court.

The U.S. Freedom Press Tracker has documented the recent demise of press freedom, marking an unprecedented year of attacks on press in 2020 during the George Floyd uprisings across the country. This is why the ACLU, the ACLU of Oregon, and partner organizations are calling on Attorney General Merrick Garland to permanently adopt protections for journalists and legal observers at protests, and place restrictions on law enforcement’s ability to interfere with journalists and legal observers covering protests. Add your name to join our demand to protect the First Amendment. 

Freedom of the press is part of the fabric of our democracy. It acts as both a check against government power and a tool for enabling the public to make informed decisions. This is why it’s critical for journalists to have the protections they need to keep the public informed. 

The Biden DOJ recently announced it will pursue prosecutions against January 6th rioters that attacked journalists. The DOJ is also simultaneously and paradoxically in court defending the ability of law enforcement to engage in the same conduct as January 6th rioters. This does nothing more than maintain the status quo of decades of harmful federal policing of protests rather than addressing the systemic problems laid bare last summer. We need advocates like you in the fight with us to ensure all of our voices are heard – are you in? Sign our petition today.

Sincerely,

The ACLU Team 

The EPA has finalized its first new climate rule, which will sharply reduce the use of super-polluting hydrofluorocarbons over the next 15 years.

New York City has passed the first aggressive legislation to improve conditions for food delivery workers. 

The Virginia Supreme Court has tossed out a challenge to the state’s law ending prison gerrymandering. 

The Biden administration has begun sending money to Florida school board members who lost pay by issuing mask mandates.