Good morning,

It’s looking like today might be the day the Democrats actually announce a number. Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer were in Wilmington, Delaware, on Sunday meeting with the president, and Nancy Pelosi went on TV saying they were 90 percent of the way there. President Biden is headed to Europe later this week to see the pope and then to Glasgow for the climate summit. The idea, reports Punchbowl, is to pass the infrastructure bill by Wednesday and have a reconciliation package firmed up that they can vote on soon. Yippee.

The piece you need to read today is The Washington Post’s report on the Willard Hotel “war room” for the January 6 coup. John Eastman, Rudy Giuliani, Bernard Kerik, and Steve Bannon are the key players in this grisly story, which centers on pressuring Mike Pence to throw out enough electoral votes to call the presidential result into question. These people are such scumbags. And why did convicted felon Bernie Kerik have $55,000 to spend on a hotel bill? 

The New York Times has a big rundown on the Alec Baldwin tragedy on the set of Rust, built around an interview with Joel Souza, the film’s director. It sheds some light on the normal protocols regarding guns on a movie set, but it still doesn’t answer the basic question we all have, namely how that gun got loaded.

Remember the name Frances Haugen. She’s the Facebook whistleblower who has taken a ton of damning information about Mark Zuckerberg to the Securities and Exchange Commission. A big Washington Post piece today combines her information and original reporting to show what a liar Zuckerberg is. For example: “Zuckerberg testified last year before Congress that the company removes 94 percent of the hate speechit finds—but internal documents show that its researchers estimated that the company was removing less than 5 percent of hate speech on Facebook.”

Op-ed of the day: Binyamin Appelbaum in the Timeson why we pay taxes: “Democracies impose higher taxes than other forms of government because democracies are communities of common purpose. We create and maintain our society through our contributions.

“Or we don’t. And things fall apart.” Hear, hear.

 

Backup op-ed of the day: Alexandra Petri in the Post on the Top 50 Halloween songs of all time. Of course “Monster Mash” is #1. But who even knew there were 50?

 

Today at NewRepublic.com, Grace Segers checks in on the Virginia governor’s race (she went to Saturday’s rally in Richmond headlined by Barack Obama). Walter Shapiro advises that you ignore midterm predictions for a while yet. And please, if you haven’t read Marion Renault’s amazing report from Mobile, Alabama, on how red America’s vaccinated minority has dealt with the vaccine resistance that surrounds them, do it today. It’s a beautiful piece of journalism.

 

Happy Monday,

Michael Tomasky, editor

Friday’s question: What two former presidents died on July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence? 

 

Answer: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Adams’s last words included his belief that “Thomas Jefferson survives.” Ironically, Jefferson had died several hours earlier. (Adams may have been talking metaphorically, because Jefferson’s Democratic Republican theory of governance appeared to be winning out at the time. But it’s funnier if Adams was being literal.)

Friday’s bonus pop culture question: Netflix released the teaser trailer this week for a live-action adaptation of Cowboy Bebop, an iconic genre-bending anime series from the late 1990s that is widely considered to be one of the best animated shows of all time. What is the name of the main character, played in the adaptation by John Cho?

Answer: Spike Spiegel, whom The Atlantic in 2015 described thus: “He is dashing, funny, quiet, a habitual smoker, a world-class fighter—a mix of Bruce Lee, Clint Eastwood’s ‘Stranger,’ and an L.A. noir detective all rolled into one; a space-age samurai-cum-Marlboro Man.” Anyway, Grace says you should watch Cowboy Bebop. 

Today’s wonk question: As we sit around wondering whether the Democrats’ budget will include paid family leave.… Of the 36 OECD member nations, how many don’t provide paid family leave, and what are those countries? Hint: think hemispherically.

Today in history question: Which two nations announced to the world their alliance on this date in 1936? Hint: It wasn’t a happy day.