The government has been funded, the Build Back Better Act has been yanked back from the edge of a cliff, and the debt-limit time bomb is, well, still ticking pretty loud. The point is, Congress’s Big Week of Complicated Emergencies could’ve gone a whole lot worse!
 

• House Democratic leaders delayed Thursday’s BIF vote into Friday, after progressives stood their ground and refused to provide the votes for it without a detailed agreement on Build Back Better. Moderate Democrats would like you to know that because the House never adjourned and they chugged a pack of Red Bulls instead of going to sleep, it is still technically Thursday, which, sure. Confused political reporters would like you to know that Democrats are in disarray and that President Biden’s agenda has suffered a major setback, which is simply not what happened.
   
• Democrats blew past an arbitrary deadline because a largely united party refused to cave to a few rogue holdouts, and made it much more likely that they’ll be able to pass a much larger chunk of Biden’s agenda. They could still wind up passing nothing, of course, but the House Progressive Caucus just ensured that the reconciliation package lives to fight another day. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) told reporters on Friday, “We've seen more progress in the last 48 hours than we've seen in a long time on reconciliation.”
   
• There’s reason to think the BIF won’t pass on Friday Thursday II, either. The House is poised to vote on a 30-day extension for surface-transportation programs (highway and bridge repairs, etc), which expired on Thursday. The lapse caused the Department of Transportation to furlough 3,700 employees. Lawmakers wouldn’t bother with a 30-day patch if they thought they were about to lock down the five-year reauthorization in the BIF, and also, Biden told members on Friday that BIF “ain’t going to happen until we reach an agreement on the next piece of legislation.” So no matter how much Adderall Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) snorts in the next few hours, that vote probably won’t happen tonight.

The odds would be a little higher if all of the key people holding up Biden’s agenda were actually in Washington.
 

• While Biden was meeting with House Democrats on the Hill to help ease tensions, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) had already flown home. Her staff offered an official explanation that she had a medical appointment and would be negotiating remotely. But Sinema also happens to have a fundraiser at a fancy Phoenix resort on her schedule this weekend, which is surely unrelated. For what it’s worth, Jayapal told Meet The Press that she spoke with Sinema last weekend and thought she was “very engaged” and “cares about a lot of these things.” A hot and hopeful take!
   
• Meanwhile, it is now October, the spooky month in which the government will default on its debt and cause a disastrous recession unless somebody does something. Senior White House officials have reportedly decided that it will need to be Congress, having reviewed alternative options to raising the debt limit like “minting the sickest coin in the world” and “ignoring the debt limit, which is stupid, and continuing to make payments anyway.” Since Democratic leaders have ruled out creating more borrowing authority via reconciliation, and Republicans have blocked them from doing so with a majority vote, it increasingly looks like Democrats will either reform the filibuster or the economy will blow up.

There’s no telling what the final reconciliation package will look like, but House progressives have made real negotiations possible by holding centrists to their two-track deal. That’s a big step forward for the Biden agenda (or at least, a correction of a big step back), and it should inform how Democrats handle the Gottheimers among them from here on out.

Lovett or Leave It is back with live show dates in Los Angeles and New York! Take a deep dive into what the hell is going on in the news, laugh along with his hilarious guests like B.J Novak, Phoebe Robinson and others — and do it all IRL. Tickets are on sale right now. For more information head to Crooked.Com/Events!

Texas is determined to send no Hurricane Harvey relief funding whatsoever to Houston, which sustained the most deaths and damage in Hurricane Harvey. The Texas General Land Office released a revised plan for distributing billions in federal aid, after first awarding $0 to both Harris County and the city of Houston. The new proposal would send $750 million to Harris County, and still nothing at all to Houston, when both county and city leaders say they need $1 billion each to complete flood control projects in the most vulnerable communities. The Houston Chronicle found that the GLO, when distributing the federal funding, used scoring criteria that disproportionately awarded aid to less populous inland counties over the larger coastal counties that are most exposed to hurricanes and flooding. Could the fact that those coastal counties tend to elect Democrats have anything to do with it? Alas, a mystery for the ages.

• Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh has tested positive for coronavirus, days before the opening of the Court’s new term. Kavanaugh is fully vaccinated and experiencing no symptoms, which we report in a completely neutral tone without a trace of disappointment.
   
• In other cool guys who deserve the best, Justice Samuel Alito got very upset about recent criticism of the Supreme Court and took it out on a bunch of straw men. 
   
• Alex Jones lost three lawsuits brought by Sandy Hook parents this week, and will be liable for all damages stemming from his lies that the school shooting was a hoax.
   
• Good news for everybody getting overwhelmed by all of the letters and packages constantly whipping into your home at the speed of sound: Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s mail slowdown began today.
   
• A National Women’s Soccer League team fired head coach Paul Riley after several former players accused him of sexual and verbal abuse, the second coach to be fired for misconduct this week. The league has canceled all weekend games.
   
• Scarlett Johansson and Disney have settled her breach of contract lawsuit over the streaming release of Black Widow, for an undisclosed amount.
   
• Ozy Media announced it will shut down less than a week after the New York Times reported that its COO posed as a YouTube executive on a conference call with potential investors, setting off an avalanche of revelations about how the whole company was a scam.
   
• For your Cursed Tweet collection, here is Kyrsten Sinema celebrating Women’s History Month 2015 with a tribute to Elizabeth Holmes.

Some 60,000 members of the International Association of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) have begun voting on whether to authorize a strike, which would be the first in the union’s history. IATSEs primary issue is workers’ ungodly long work days: Production workers in film and TV have long been expected to put in 14-hour days, and the growth of the streaming industry has erased any downtime between projects. IATSE is fighting for a 10-hour minimum turnaround between production days, better rest periods within the work day, and higher pay, among other improvements, and negotiations have broken down with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers after four months of talks. The authorization vote is expected to pass by a huge margin, which wouldn’t necessarily mean the union will go on strike. If it does, production on the vast majority of movies and TV shows will be forced to shut down.

Fake news is finally doing some good. Concern Worldwide is on a mission to end extreme poverty, whatever it takes. In fact, Concern is willing to go so far to reach their goal, they’re calling out the corporations, governments, and billionaires who could end extreme poverty, but haven’t. Concern is launching a campaign called #UnfortunatelyFakeNews. The campaign features fake news headlines like this one: “Billionaire obsessed with going to space donates billions to end extreme poverty on earth.” Bet you can guess who that one’s about. Concern says there’s no time to wait for the most powerful entities to do their part. With over 700 million people struggling to survive on less than $1.90 per day, the situation is dire. Your help is needed now. 

Until the #UnfortunatelyFakeNews is real, please donate. Visit ConcernUSA.org.

Merck announced that its experimental pill to treat coronavirus infections cut the risk of hospitalization or death by about 50 percent. 

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) has issued the first statewide vaccine mandate for K-12 public schools, which will take effect as soon as vaccines for each age group have full FDA approval.

President Biden will nominate ACLU voting rights lawyer Dale Ho for a seat on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Kavon Ward, who worked to return Bruce’s Beach in California to the Black family it was taken from, has founded the nonprofit Where Is My Land to help other Black families reclaim their seized land.