Good morning,

Starting this week, TNR is moving the daily newsletter, which you used to get in the late afternoon, to mid-morning, with a short introduction written by me or staff writer Tim Noah or someone else. So—let’s go.

The New York Times leads with yesterday’s Facebook meltdown; The Washington Post goes with President Biden warning that he couldn’t guarantee that the United States wouldn’t breach the debt limit this month. Punchbowl News (subscribers only) has a long take on debt ceiling politics. In sum: It’s all looking pretty grim because Mitch McConnell seems perfectly willing to tank the economy as long as Biden pays the political price. It’s a new low for a man whose middle name is New Lows. 

The Punchbowl folks seem to hope that 10 Senate Republicans—the number needed to clear a cloture vote—will bow to reality: “Financial services companies and big banks are going to start pressing them on this issue. Big employers in their home states will get anxious. Political donors, former college classmates and their neighbors are going to ask them what’s happening. People at their country clubs.” That last category is probably key, although … what kind of country club would have Ted Cruz? (Oh, this one.)

Op-ed column of the day: Michelle Goldberg on Kyrsten Sinema. No, it’s not really campaign cash that drives her obstructionist posture. It is more likely, Goldberg quotes one Arizona activist as saying, that “she’s just really invested in that self-image, personally, as someone who stands up to her party.” Sounds right to me. But even if it means opposing policies that will help her state’s people? Which leads me to …

Second op-ed of the day (paywalled, apparently): Todd Gitlin in the New York Daily News on what’s in the damn bill. He breaks down what’s actually in the $3.5 trillion package and argues that the media need to do more of this (actually, so do Democrats; they do it, but not effectively enough, so far, to shift the frame from “Geez, $3.5 trillion is a lot of money” to “Hey, free community college and 12 weeks of paid family leave are pretty cool things”).

At NewRepublic.com today, we have Daniel Strauss’s look at Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen’s Hill testimony and more broadly at what the Biden administration is going to do with antitrust policy; Jason Linkins on how corporate-friendly Democrats may wreck the Biden administration; Natalie Shure on Big Pharma’s choke hold on Congress; and Alex Pareene on the scam of climate-friendly investment.

Thanks for reading,
Michael Tomasky, editor

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Yesterday’s question: Jimmy Carter won just five states in 1980 (along with the District of Columbia). What five states did he win?

Answer:  Jimmy Carter won his home state of Georgia, veep pick Walter Mondale’s Minnesota, Maryland, Rhode Island, and … West Virginia! Yep, it was a Democratic state then. It even went with Mike Dukakis in 1988.

Today’s question: There is today a sitting senator who was the first Democrat ever elected to the Senate from his/her state. Who’s the senator, and what’s the state?

Today’s nonpolitics question: I don’t follow baseball that much anymore, but I am aware that the Yankees and Red Sox play tonight. I remember watching the last time they played a one-game playoff, in 1978. Everybody knows that Bucky Dent hit the home run that lifted the Yankees to victory (at Fenway, incidentally, as tonight’s game is). But who was the winning pitcher?