Good morning,

It was one year ago today that Mitch McConnell delivered his scathing floor speech about Donald Trump, on the eve of Trump’s second impeachment trial: Trump “provoked” the insurrection and “fed lies” to people, he said. As Trump mounts his return to politics and makes moves to run in 2024, keep an eye on McConnell. He is known, or perhaps “known,” to be cool to Trump. The important thing is whether he’ll have the guts to say anything when it matters.

Every so often, a Republican lets the cat out of the bag on what the party is really about these days. New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu did just that in an interview with David Drucker yesterday in the Washington Examiner. Drucker says Sununu was pretty keen on running for Senate initially (he would challenge first-term Democratic incumbent Maggie Hassan). Then he started talking with GOP senators. He asked them what his first two years on the job might be like: 

The governor said the message from virtually every GOP senator he chatted with—and he chatted with most of them—was that they plan to do little more with the majority they are fighting to win this November than obstruct President Joe Biden until, “hopefully,” 2024 ushers a Republican into the White House. “It bothered me that they were OK with that,” Sununu said.

More than that, Sununu was “bothered” by Republicans’ seeming inability to answer this question: “I said, ‘OK, so if we’re going to get stuff done if we win the White House back, why didn’t you do it in 2017 and 2018?’” How did the Republicans Sununu spoke with answer his challenge? “Crickets. Yeah, crickets,” the governor said. “They had no answer.”

Thanks to Drucker and Sununu’s candor, we stumble into a rarely encountered truth: Republicans admitting that they have no agenda for the country other than to cut their donors’ taxes and block any progress for actual people (pre-K, health care, etc.) that the other party attempts to undertake. It’s just mind-blowing that nearly half the country backs these people.

Some surprising and heartening news from West Virginia, although it probably won’t change anything: Some Mountain State celebs (yes, they exist!) have signed a letter urging Joe Manchin to back voting rights. The letter is addressed directly to Manchin and says, in part: “We are all certain that democracy is best when voting is open to everyone on a level playing field; the referees are neutral; and at the end of the game the final score is respected and accepted.”

The signatories: former NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue (who has no West Virginia roots); Darryl Talley, an All-American West Virginia University football star of the early 1980s who went on to a great career with the Buffalo Bills; Nick Saban, the Crimson Tide coach who grew up in West Virginia; and … Jerry West himself. The NBA star is as close as you get to a god in that state. Thirty years ago, when West’s exploits were fresher in memory and the state was more Democratic, this word from West might actually have had some impact on Manchin. Today, maybe not so much. Still, it’s heartening to see this intervention, perhaps most interestingly from Saban. I doubt most Bama fans will admire this.

Also on the Democratic obstructionist front, Emily’s List, which sent a lot of money Kyrsten Sinema’s way on her rise to the Senate, announced that it will—not might: will—cut her off if she continues to oppose filibuster reform. “She will find herself standing alone in the next election,” they wrote. That’s a big deal.

Biden’s press conference on his first year comes at 4 p.m. today. Despite the national mood, he does have things to brag about. So he needs to brag about them. Why are Republicans so much better at this? Because they get in line behind their leader, and Democrats tend not to. Not saying Democrats should turn into automatons; they should not. But the behavior of some of them over this past year has been pretty extreme in the opposite direction.

Oh, and, uh, the possibility of war: Antony Blinken meets Friday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Signs along the Russia-Ukraine border get more ominous. Obviously, Vladimir Putin and his generals have other things on their mind than American politics—things like the position of their divisions, which way the wind is blowing that day, whether it’s raining or snowing or what. But something tells me that if he can, he’ll time an invasion to inflict maximum awkwardness on the U.S. president he wants to see defeated in 2024 by his friend and ally. 

At NewRepublic.com today, read Timothy Noah on Biden’s approval numbers and the five clichés of American political journalism; Natalie Shure on why the administration’s decision to involve private insurers in covid test distribution was a bad idea; and Kate Aronoff on Norway’s lesson for Build Back Better. 

Hang in there,

—Michael Tomasky, editor

Every day, our journalists are exposing the right’s assaults on our democracy—and pushing the Democrats to go bold to preserve the republic. Here’s a special offer from The New Republic so you won’t miss their scoops and sharp analysis.

Yesterday’s political geography question: We political junkies study maps quite a lot, and of various kinds—congressional districts, judicial districts, state legislative districts, you name it. This includes county maps, counties being the basic political building blocks of federalism. Name the counties in which these 10 major American cities reside: Seattle, Detroit, Atlanta, Houston, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Boston, Philadelphia, Cincinnati.

Answers, in order: King, Wayne, Fulton, Harris, San Francisco, Hennepin, Maricopa, Suffolk, Philadelphia, Hamilton. You’re not really a U.S. political junkie, I say, until you know the names of these and about 40 or 50 other politically important counties.

Today’s political history question: On the subject of the filibuster, the breaking of the filibuster on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the most dramatic filibuster-related moment in Senate history—finally, after decades, liberals were able to overcome the Southern racist bloc and get a meaningful civil rights bill to the floor for passage. It was all the more remarkable because in those days, 67 votes were needed to end cloture, not 60 as today. 

Two questions: Which senator provided the sixty-seventh vote? And one senator, Democrat Clair Engle of California, was incapacitated by a brain tumor and unable to speak; when the clerk called his name, what was the famous gesture he made to indicate his “aye” vote?