Roll Call: “After nearly a decade of bureaucratic slowdowns, advocacy efforts and stalled legislation, veterans may be getting increased access to one of the more effective treatments for combat-related mental health conditions: a service dog.”
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Cuomo Ally Resigns for Trying to Discredit Victims
New York Times: “The fallout from a damaging report that found Gov. Andrew Cuomo sexually harassed 11 women widened on Monday when Roberta A. Kaplan, a nationally prominent lawyer with ties to the governor, resigned from Time’s Up, the organization founded by Hollywood women to fight sexual abuse and promote gender equality.”
“Ms. Kaplan, the chairwoman of Time’s Up and the co-founder of its legal defense fund, was one of several prominent figures whom the report found to be involved in an effort to discredit one of Mr. Cuomo’s alleged victims, and she has continuing legal ties to a former Cuomo aide accused of leading that effort.”
Senate Will Move Immediately to Budget Package
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told Senate Democrats on Monday that once the chamber passes the bipartisan infrastructure package this week, they will “immediately move” to pass a budget resolution that will allow their party to craft a $3.5 trillion social safety net bill, NBC News reports.
Job Openings Above 10 Million for First Time
CNBC: “The number of job openings in the U.S. economy jumped to more than 10 million in June, the highest on record.”
Cash Floods Into Short-Term Markets
“An unusual surge of short-term lending by cash-rich companies is raising concerns on Wall Street that a period of unrest may lie ahead,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Investors such as money-market funds and banks are parking over $1 trillion in spare cash overnight at the Federal Reserve. That is the most on record since the Fed opened its facility for these reverse repurchase agreements in 2013.”
Tim Scott Builds 2024 Fundraising Base
Since last October, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison has contributed $10 million to an outside group aligned with Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), Politico reports.
“Scott’s behind-the-scenes courtship of Ellison illustrates how the senator has quietly become a powerhouse fundraiser and a major force within the Republican Party. Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate, has seen his profile rise since delivering the party’s response to President Joe Biden’s joint address to Congress in April and is developing a vast network of small- and large-dollar donors that spans his party’s ideological spectrum, helping him far outraise Senate colleagues this year.”
“With the top levels of the GOP divided over whether to remain in lockstep with Trump or break away from him, senior Republicans say Scott’s ability to win support from divergent wings of the party could be an asset should he wage a 2024 run.”
Canada Allows Vaccinated Americans to Cross Border
Associated Press: “Canada on Monday is lifting its prohibition on Americans crossing the border to shop, vacation or visit, but the United States is keeping similar restrictions in place for Canadians, part of a bumpy return to normalcy from COVID-19 travel bans.”
Senate Democrats Release $3.5 Trillion Budget Resolution
“Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Monday released the full text of Democrats’ $3.5 trillion budget resolution, which the Senate is expected to pass without any Republican votes as early as this week,” Axios reports.
“What it doesn’t include: Language that would lift the debt limit. This means Senate Democrats face an ugly fight with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Republicans over raising the limit, as they’ll need at least 10 GOP votes to meet the 60-vote requirement under regular order.”
What Redistricting Looks Like In Every State
Here’s one to bookmark: FiveThirtyEight has launched their redistricting tracker ahead of the 2022 House midterms.
“You can look up which party controls redistricting in each state, where the process currently stands and when to expect a new map to take effect; for states with proposed or final maps, you can also view the demographic and partisan breakdown of the new districts, see which party gained or lost ground and check if the map exhibits any signs of gerrymandering.”
Trump Checks In on Iowa
Iowa Republican Party chair Jeff Kaufmann tweets: “Had a great 15 minute call from President Trump this evening. He asked about Iowa’s farmers and other topics including Iowa’s first-in-the-nation status.”
Mystery Attacks on Diplomats Leave Scores of Victims
New York Times: “President Biden’s top aides were told on Friday that experts studying the mysterious illnesses affecting scores of diplomats, spies and their family members were still struggling to find evidence to back up the leading theory, that microwave attacks are being launched by Russian agents.”
“The report came in an unusual, classified meeting called by the director of national intelligence.”
Delta Vanquishes All Variant Rivals
Washington Post: “The coronavirus pandemic in America has become a delta pandemic. By the end of July, it accounted for 93.4 percent of new infections, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The speed with which it dominated the pandemic has left scientists nervous about what the virus will do next. The variant battles of 2021 are part of a longer war, one that is far from over.”
“Epidemiologists had hoped getting 70 or 80 percent of the population vaccinated, in combination with immunity from natural infections, would bring the virus under control. But a more contagious virus means the vaccination target has to be much higher, perhaps in the range of 90 percent. Globally, that could take years.”
Minimum Wages Rise on Their Own
Washington Post: “Wages have been rising rapidly as the economy reopens and businesses struggle to hire enough workers. Some of the biggest gains have gone to workers in some of the lowest-paying industries. Overall, nearly 80 percent of U.S. workers now earn at least $15 an hour, up from 60 percent in 2014.”
“This higher pay is likely to be permanent as wages rarely fall once they move up. Economists caution that a higher average wage is not the same as a $15 minimum wage… Nonetheless, rising pay is still a game-changer for millions of workers.”
Zuckerberg’s Cash Fuels GOP Suspicion
“When Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg donated $400 million to help fund election offices as they scrambled to deal with the coronavirus pandemic late last summer, he said he hoped he would never have to do it again,” the AP reports.
“Republican legislatures are granting him that wish.”
“At least eight GOP-controlled states have passed bans on donations to election offices this year as Republicans try to block outside funding of voting operations. The legislation often comes as part of Republican packages that also put new limits on how voters can cast ballots and impose new requirements on county or city-based election officials.”
Will Ohio Buy J.D. Vance’s Conversion to Trumpism?
New York Times: “Today, as J.D. Vance pursues the Republican nomination for an open Senate seat in Ohio, he has performed a whiplash-inducing conversion to Trumpism, in which he no longer emphasizes that white working-class problems are self-inflicted.”
U.S. Abandons Afghanistan
New York Times: “If the Taliban had seized three provincial capitals in northern Afghanistan a year ago, like they did on Sunday, the American response would most likely have been ferocious. Fighter jets and helicopter gunships would have responded in force, beating back the Islamist group or, at the very least, stalling its advance.”
“But these are different times. What aircraft the U.S. military could muster from hundreds of miles away struck a cache of weapons far from Kunduz, Taliqan or Sari-i-pol, the cities that already had been all but lost to the Taliban. The muted American response on Sunday showed in no uncertain terms that America’s 20-year war in Afghanistan is over. The mismanaged and exhausted Afghan forces will have to retake the cities on their own, or leave them to the Taliban for good.”
Biden’s Approval Slips
Playbook: “For months, Biden’s approval has been extraordinarily steady. But a few pollsters have detected a recent dip that is making Dems nervous. Even such a small change — and this one seems tied to the reemergence of the coronavirus pandemic — could have big consequences in 2022 given the tight margins in Congress.”
Harry Enten: “None of these polls or the average show a massive decline in Biden’s approval rating. Together, though, they seem to be telling a story that Biden’s approval rating has leaked a little bit. This wouldn’t be a story if it weren’t for the fact that Biden’s approval rating has been so steady.”
The Infrastructure Bill Timeline
Punchbowl News: “Here’s a question that’s bouncing around Senate circles: Will the Senate vote to pass the infrastructure bill at 4 a.m. Tuesday morning? That’s the earliest the chamber can vote on final passage for the $1 trillion measure, if there’s no agreement to speed things up.”
“But Schumer can try to get consent to move the vote to a more rational time, let’s say 11 a.m., for instance. But as we saw over the weekend, any one senator can block a time agreement. So we won’t believe that will happen until it happens.”
“Schumer plans to move right into the debate over the budget resolution as soon as the infrastructure bills passes. There’s 50 hours of debate divided equally between both sides, and then a ‘vote-a-rama.’”
