“The Trump-era ‘Remain in Mexico’ program will resume Monday as long as Mexico officially approves the plan, as expected Thursday,” Axios reports.
“President Biden has been forced by court order to restart the controversial program, which makes asylum seekers wait in Mexico for their U.S. court hearings. The administration is simultaneously seeking to end the program, again.”
The chief of staff for Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) has stepped down to pursue a “new opportunity in the private sector” in 2022, The Hill reports.
For members: Nancy Mace Is a Goner
“The Jan. 6 select committee plans to hold ‘multiple weeks’ of public hearings in 2022 to lay out how the violent attack on the Capitol took shape — and how Donald Trump attempted to overturn the election, ” Politico reports.
“It’s the first indication of the committee’s plans for 2022 and how it intends to reveal the findings of its intensive, closed-door probe. And it’s a further signal that the panel intends to finalize its work by the spring, as Chair Bennie Thompson has previously said.”
As the campaign to recall Seattle City Councilmember Kshama Sawant draws to a close, financial contributions and endorsements help shed light on city and outside forces influencing the recall,” the Seattle Times reports.
“Both sides of the recall were closing in on $1 million in contributions on Tuesday, one week before the end of voting.”
“The House is expected to vote Thursday on a short-term funding patch to avert a government shutdown in less than 48 hours and punt the new deadline to mid-February,” Politico reports.
“The vote comes after House Democrats announced an eleventh-hour deal with Republicans on Thursday morning, following days of frenzied talks as both parties scrambled to prevent Congress from stumbling past the deadline.”
Washington Post: “But it’s still unclear if the measure can be rushed through the Senate by midnight Friday, which is the deadline to avert a government shutdown. A number of conservatives have signaled they would attempt to block a vote because of their opposition to the Biden administration’s vaccine and testing requirements for workers.”
Michael Cohen plans to list his former prison badge as a nonfungible token during the upcoming Miami Art Week, Page Six reports.
“In his new memoir, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows blames just ‘a handful of fanatics’ for the 6 January attack on the Capitol – over which nearly 700 people have now been charged,” The Guardian reports.
“Germany has announced sweeping new restrictions for people who have not been vaccinated against Covid,” the BBC reports.
“California plans to dramatically curtail water delivery next year from its network of canals, pipelines and reservoirs to 27 million Californians and three-quarters of a million acres of farmland because of a two-year drought,” Bloomberg reports.
Jonathan Chait notes a new poll that shows the Republican party “is an extremist outlier in comparison with major conservative parties in other democracies.”
“Supporters of the British Conservative party were split almost evenly between fearing cultural change and fearing right-wing extremism. Supporters of the Christian Democratic parties in Germany deemed the far right a much larger threat. But Trump voters, on the other hand, took a dramatically more conservative stance, deeming the cultural left a bigger threat than the far right by overwhelming margins.”
“Indeed, if you want a comparison to the Republican perspective, you can only find it in a far-right party like Germany’s AfD, an extremist faction that has combined attacks on immigration with unsettling revisionism around the condemnation of the Third Reich that has been a foundation of Germany’s postwar political consensus.”
Daily Beast: “Steve Bannon—the right-wing media personality turned adviser to Donald Trump turned right-wing media personality again—became the first person in nearly 40 years to be indicted on a charge of criminal contempt of Congress last month after he refused to cooperate with the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection. Now, Bannon appears to be using his criminal case to go after the committee that went after him.”
“Bannon is attempting to force investigators to potentially expose who they’ve talked to and what they’ve said, peek into secret communications on the committee, and create a playbook for other resistant witnesses, according to several legal experts.”
“Former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows went on Newsmax on Wednesday night and agreed with his old boss that his new book is ‘fake news.’ After former President Donald Trump (sort of) denied Meadows’ account that Trump tested positive for Covid-19 three days before his first debate with Joe Biden last year, Meadows said Trump was right,” the Daily Beast reports.
Said Meadows: “Well, the president’s right, it’s fake news.”
“The United States ranks as the world’s leading contributor of plastic waste and needs a national strategy to combat the issue,” the Washington Post reports.
“Overall, the United States produced 42 million metric tons of plastic waste in 2016 — almost twice as much as China, and more than the entire European Union combined.”
Sara Goddard says the worst is yet to come and no, recycling is not the best solution.
Emmanuel Macron privately branded Boris Johnson a “clown” and a “knucklehead”, according to reports in France as Anglo-French relations were described as the worst since Waterloo, the Times of London reports.
“The U.S. government on Wednesday moved one step closer to a potential shutdown, as some Republicans seized on a fast-approaching fiscal deadline to mount fresh opposition to President Biden’s coronavirus vaccine and testing mandates,” the Washington Post reports.
“The emerging conservative campaign quickly divided GOP lawmakers, enraged congressional Democrats and threatened to unravel days of delicate bipartisan talks on Capitol Hill. The current federal spending agreement is set to expire Friday at midnight.”
“When Covid-19 variants arise, the accepted wisdom is that the constellation of mutations they contain developed in an immunocompromised person who contracted the virus and couldn’t shake the infection. But some scientists have an alternative theory for where the latest variant of concern, Omicron, may have acquired the unusual mutations that stud its spike protein,” Stat reports.
“They speculate the virus could have evolved in another animal species.”
“The theory goes that some type of animal, potentially rodents, was infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus sometime in mid-2020. In this new species, the virus evolved, accumulating roughly 50 mutations on the spike protein before spilling back over into people.”
Washington Post: “Experts say that price would also net Trump a hefty profit, probably $100 million or more, based on the financial documents and the company’s lease with the government. That would provide Trump with a rate of return that many hedge fund managers would envy, thanks to a market that is snapping up hotels in the expectation the pandemic will wane and travel will roar back.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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