Good morning from Timothy Noah!

The big news in my house is it’s my sixty-fourth birthday. It’s also the sixty-fourth birthday of my dear first wife, the late Marjorie Williams, who in the previous century wrote charmingly about how she didn’t like sharing her birthday with me. It’s also the ninety-eighth birthday of the late New Republic writer Henry Fairlie, whose posthumous anthology, Bite the Hand That Feeds You, is worth a look. (Henry lived by that principle.)

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy refused the January 6 panel’s request for an interview about his conversations on that day with President Donald Trump. The panel would like to talk to McCarthy about what has been described as his “screaming match” with Trump as McCarthy tried to get Trump to tell the Capitol mob to go home, and also about what Politico reported as Trump’s admission to McCarthy in that same conversation that he bore “some degree of responsibility” for the insurrection. The principled stand McCarthy took that day appears now to cause McCarthy deep regret, and he wishes never to discuss it again. “This committee is not conducting a legitimate investigation,” McCarthy said, by which he meant it’s trying too hard to find out what Trump was up to that day.

Inflation is going a little nuts, rising 7 percent last month in comparison to 12 months earlier. That’s the highest hike since 1982. “While inflation is likely to peak in the next few months,” Sarah House, director and senior economist at Wells Fargo, told The Wall Street Journal, “the overall pace is going to remain a challenge for consumers, businesses, and policy.” I’ve pointed out that corporate concentration is not causing this inflation spurt, as some people in the Biden administration claim; supply chain problems are. But in the Washington Monthly, Paul Glastris argues that corporate concentration has made the supply chains more vulnerable.

Inflation is becoming a serious political problem for Biden, The Washington Post’s Matt Viser and Jeff Stein report. It’s no great surprise that Republican pollster Frank Luntz says there will be “huge consequences in the fall,” and a Quinnipiac poll released yesterday showed a 54 percent majority of Americans think the economy is getting worse.

Another notable finding in that Quinnipiac poll is that a bipartisan majority of Americans say political instability from within represents a greater danger to the United States than our foreign adversaries (one of whom may be on the verge of invading Ukraine). Democrats are most spooked by internal threats, with 83 percent of them naming them as the greatest threat, compared to 66 percent of Republicans. Interestingly, though, more Republicans (62 percent) than Democrats (56 percent) think democracy is in danger of collapse. As the cartoonist Walt Kelly, creator of the cartoon strip Pogo, said, half a century ago: We have met the enemy and he is us.

Today at NewRepublic.com, Thomas Geoghegan argues that the filibuster disenfranchises Vice President Kamala Harris, president of the Senate, by depriving her of a tie-breaking vote, and proposes that she fight back by issuing from the chair a ruling that it’s unconstitutional. Trita Parsi and Annelle Sheline ask why the hell Biden is selling Saudi Arabia $650 million worth of advanced weapons while the Saudis wage war against Yemen. And Dean Obeidallah says it’s time to start worrying that Biden’s losing support among the Democratic base.

Arrivederci,
—Timothy Noah, staff writer

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 current events question: Freedom House, which for years has monitored political and civil rights around the world, measures something it calls the “democracy gap”: the number of countries where freedom has made gains minus the number of countries where freedom is in retreat. In 2005, the democracy gap was +31. That’s good. In 2010, it was -15.  That’s bad. In 2015, it was -29. That’s worse. What was the 2020 number? 

Answer: In 2020, the democracy gap was -45. That’s extremely bad. You might consider staying in bed today and pulling up the covers.

Today’s Washington history question: In addition to being the birthday of Henry Fairlie, Marjorie Williams, and yours truly, today is the fortieth anniversary of the Air Florida Flight 90 crash into Washington’s 14th St. Bridge during a snowstorm, killing 78. On its thirtieth anniversary, The Washington Post said Flight 90 was the second-deadliest weather disaster in D.C.’s history. What was the deadliest?