Time to check-in on ole’ Joey B.
 

• As the Republican presidential primary ramps up, we should talk about what’s happening on the sane side of the aisle. That’s right: I’m talking about President Joseph Robinette Biden. The only challenger in Biden’s lane is Marianne Williamson. She might have what it takes to help journalists fill their false-equivalence quotas with reports about strangeness on #bothsides  but she doesn’t seem to have a strong case for ousting an incumbent. A new Emerson College poll shows that the number of Democratic voters who think President Biden should be the 2024 Democratic Nominee is increasing for the first time, as voters shed their misgivings about his age, with 71 percent of Dem voters ready to give the guy another term. 

• Perhaps most surprising, support for Biden, redux, is highest among 18-34 year olds. Great, now I can’t stop imagining Biden singing “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” from Dreamgirls. It’s at least a little funny that the guy who was not at the top of many lists for the 2020 race has won so many of us over, or at the very least has us saying, “This guy for another four years? Okay, sure.” Credit where credit is due: President Biden has delivered on about as many of his campaign promises and the demands of progressives as he has the power to do. Not all of them, certainly, but a hell of a lot more than we ever expected.
   

• To that end, President Biden announced today that he will seek to raise the Medicare tax on high earners and push for more drug price negotiations to help keep the federal health-insurance program for seniors afloat and running through at least 2050. The proposal is to raise the tax from 3.8 percent to 5 percent on earned and unearned income over $400,000 as part of a package aimed to extend the solvency of Medicare’s Hospital Insurance Trust Fund. In an op-ed for the New York Times, Biden wrote, “Let’s ask the wealthiest to pay just a little bit more of their fair share, to strengthen Medicare for everyone over the long term.” Hell yeah. Using the momentum from his raucous State of the Union address where he backed Republicans into saying they wouldn’t go after Medicare and Social Security in debt ceiling negotiations is clearly an effective strategy.

But President Biden also has some, uh, areas for improvement.
 

• The Biden administration is considering reviving the practice of detaining migrant families who cross the border illegally, which would reverse his decision to shut down the policy in favor of a more humane immigration system. For the past two years, the administration has largely ended the practice of family detention and instead used tracking methods like ankle bracelets and traceable cell phones to keep track of migrant families after releasing them into the United States. But the White House has taken a more restrictive posture as it struggles to handle increasing flows at the border and the resulting attacks from the right-wing that come with that. Biden’s tough new approach includes a crackdown announced last month that could disqualify the vast majority of migrants from being able to seek asylum at the southern border, an overt embrace of a Trump-era approach to immigration. 
   

• The president’s continued support of the GOP crusade to block DC’s revamped criminal code is a frustrating head-scratcher, and out-of-step with most center-left elected Dems. As Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) pointed out, the bill features pretty modest, reasonable changes, like “lower[ing] the carjacking maximum to 24 years…IN LINE with many states,” while also increasing(!) sentences for violent crimes like attempted murder, attempted sexual assault, misdemeanor sexual abuse, and many other crimes. 

The truth is, Biden is and has always been fairly conservative on crime and criminal justice reform—this is the man who helped author the infamous 1994 crime bill, after all. It’s one issue where he hasn’t been willing to meet progressive Democrats at least half way. And while that doesn’t invalidate the other accomplishments the administration has made thus far, it’s important to keep trying to think of new ways to pressure him to stop facilitating more cruelty in our broken carceral system. Maybe Marianne has some ideas?

New damning Fox News emails just dropped. (More on this tomorrow!)
 

The Republican-led Georgia House of Representatives has approved a measure to create a new state oversight board that would allow those very same Republicans to punish district attorneys if, say, those district attorneys are mean to the GOP’s favorite president. 

The Justice Department has filed an antitrust lawsuit to block the sale of Spirit Airlines to JetBlue, saying the deal would be bad for consumers, which is correct!

House Republicans issued another round of subpoenas Monday as part of an ongoing sham investigation into what they allege is the “mistreatment” of parents who protested “woke” (read: anything Republicans don’t like) school policies. 

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell is eyeing more interest rate hikes, because he does not know how to do anything else I guess. 

A nuclear power plant in Georgia has begun splitting atoms for the first time, a key step toward reaching commercial operation at the first new nuclear reactor built in the United States from the ground-up in decades. 

An unarmed man whose murder by Russian-speaking assailants was depicted in a short video was tentatively identified today as a missing Ukrainian soldier, according to the country’s chief prosecutor, who announced a criminal investigation into the killing. Ukraine’s human rights chief argued that the murder constituted a violation of the Geneva Conventions. 

Five women who said they were denied abortions despite grave risks to their lives or those of their fetuses sued the state of Texas on Monday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been on a corrupt warpath since he recently regained power to lead the most right-wing government in Israel’s history. But his plan to severely limit the powers of the country’s Supreme Court has prompted weeks of demonstrations, frightened many international investors and businesses headquartered there, and made the threat of political violence seem increasingly likely. Now, there are even protests emerging in the Israeli military, which conscripts most citizens for at least two years of service. Hundreds of soldiers in the military reserves have signed letters expressing objection to participating in nonessential duty, while others have pulled out of training missions entirely. Israel’s military leadership worries that growing discontentment within the ranks over the government’s anti-democratic, authoritarian plans will affect the operational readiness of the nation’s armed forces. Netanyahu’s plan would increase government control over how judges are chosen, limit the Supreme Court’s ability to strike down new legislation, and make it easier for parliament to overrule the Supreme Court. Sounds bad! Even pro-Israel figures both within the country and abroad have spoken out against the plan. Daniel Gordis, a distinguished scholar at Jerusalem’s Shalem College characterized the Netanyahu government as, “...a very different kind of right wing. It’s not ideological right wing or public policy right wing. This is, tragically—and I say this with tremendous sadness—something that looks a lot like a gang of thugs.” He also noted that this will be a defining moment for the relationship between America and Israel.

Ready to dump all those pills and packets and upgrade your daily routine? Look no further than AG1 by Athletic Greens. AG1 is full of 75 vitamins, minerals, and high quality whole food-sourced ingredients that pack in 9 products in one delicious scoop with cold water, easy to make in under 60 seconds.


Foundational Nutrition is Health From The Inside Out, Starting At Gut Health. The wide-ranging impact of poor gut health is felt by millions. That’s why Athletic Greens set out to pioneer the Foundational Nutrition category, simplifying nutritional needs by offering one synergistic formula, rather than the dozens of individual solutions available on the market.


Since no one has the perfect diet, make the switch to Athletic Greens and let your body and your cabinet thank you. Get your health back in your hands with AG1 today and enjoy a free welcome kit, a year's supply of Vitamin D, a flexible delivery schedule, and even a 60-day money-back guarantee.

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) announced that “California won’t be doing business with Walgreens,” after the company kowtowed to anti-choice extremists by refusing to distribute abortion pills even in states where abortion is legal. 

According to a new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research, wage inequality fell over the past three years. 

Starbucks CEO and union-buster-in-chief Howard Schultz has finally agreed to testify before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions committee after Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) promised to subpoena him.