Good morning,

Big day in the House of Representatives: The January 6 select committee is effectively going to hold Steve Bannon in criminal contempt. What happens next? As this CNN.com piece explains, the whole House then votes on whether to advance the criminal contempt referral to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. The U.S. attorney can then bring the matter before a grand jury, which can demand (or try to demand) Bannon’s record and compel (or try to compel) him to appear.

It’s all going to take a loooooong time. And Monday, Donald Trump filed a crap lawsuit against the committee and the National Archives to try to block the release of relevant documents. Trump is asserting an executive privilege he obviously no longer enjoys. Make no mistake: The stakes here are huge. This will probably end up in the Supreme Court. If Trump & Co. get away with this, the idea of congressional oversight, a principle since the beginning of the republic, may be dead.

On the Build Back Better front, Joe Biden is having two separate meetings today with House progressives and House moderates. This, after having met with Representative Pramila Jayapal, the leader of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, on Monday. Axios reports that the pace of talks is “accelerating.… [T]his progress means we can conclude negotiations soon.”

Meanwhile, Senators Bernie Sanders and Joe Manchin are “talking,” Politico reports. Non-shocker of a quote from New Mexico Democratic Senator Martin Heinrich: “They’ve never been particularly close, and they have very different approaches.” Well, never hurts to talk.

Interesting story out of what we East Coast snobs call the other Washington. Nick Rolovich, the head coach of the Washington State University football team, got canned Monday because he refused to get vaxxed, putting him in violation of Democratic Governor Jay Inslee’s (remember him?) statewide vaccine mandate for state employees. Rolovich sought a religious exemption, but the university president and athletic director weren’t buying. The Cougars are 4–3 this year. The Washington Post reports that Rolovich has never explained his vaccine position publicly. It’s a bold throwdown by Wazzou brass, given that Rolovich, at $3.2 million, is the state’s highest-paid public employee (higher than the U-Dub football coach, really?? Apparently so, by $100,000). 

The train derailment on the Washington Metro last week involved a type of car that represents 60 percent of the system’s fleet. WMATA has pulled all those trains out of service, at least through this week. The results are … predictably grim. Metro has been underfunded for years, though it did get $193 million from the American Rescue Plan (the Covid relief bill). There’s about $150 million more for the system in the pending infrastructure bill. 

At NewRepublic.com today, Alex Shephard takes a whack at the conventional wisdom that says if Terry McAuliffe loses the Virginia governor’s race, the Democrats are doomed in the midterms. Casey Michel takes a really interesting deep dive into the Pandora Papers, spotlighting the American law firms that help global kleptocrats do the nasty things they do. And Raina Lipsitz has a fascinating piece on why you ought to care about the Erie County, New York, sheriff’s race. Read it. You’ll see.

Onward,

Michael Tomasky, editor

Yesterday’s political history question: Thomas Jefferson was the second governor of Virginia. Who was the first? Hint: You know his name. He was kind of a second-tier Founding Father best known for one famous quote.

Answer: Patrick Henry. The quote, of course, is “Give me liberty, or give me death.” Henry was against the Constitution, by the way.

Yesterday’s bonus history–pop culture question: The Clean Water Act became law on this day in 1972. What incident sparked the movement that led to this law, and which recording artist memorialized it in what song?

Answer: The Cuyahoga River catching fire; “Burn On,” by Randy Newman.

Today’s political history question: Today is a rather momentous day in American history—on October 19, 1781, General Cornwallis surrendered to George Washington at Yorktown. Whom did Washington charge with blocking Cornwallis’s land-route escape, effectively hemming him in and forcing his surrender? Hint: There’s a song about him in a recent Broadway musical that the singer raps reallyreallyreallyreally fast. 

OK, harder Revolutionary War–era question: After Yorktown, loyalists to the crown began to flee the colonies. About 15,000 of these loyalists were Black. Many went to Africa to help found which country?