Good Wednesday to you,

It’s a rare day, so savor it: a day of perhaps not good news, but at least a day in which the bad guys are clearly on the defensive. 

Item one: The House voted shortly before midnight to hold Mark Meadows in contempt. The vote was 222–208, along party lines except that Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger voted with the Democrats. The matter now kicks to the Justice Department, which will decide in the early part of next year whether to charge the former White House chief of staff. Also last night, the select committee released more text messages that Meadows handed over before he decided to stop cooperating, and The Washington Post headline gets right to the point: “Text messages to Meadows renew focus on Trump’s inaction during Jan. 6 attack.”

Next shoe to drop? Well, so far, the names of most of the texters to Meadows, specifically which members of Congress were in touch with him, aren’t known. Select committee Chairman Bennie Thompson said Tuesday the names will not surprise us. Sounds like we’re going to start finding out.

More good news: A federal judge—appointed by Donald Trump, no less—dismissed a Trump lawsuit and paved the way for Congress to see his tax records. And still more good news: The Post reports that the Manhattan grand jury empaneled by the Manhattan district attorney to look into criminal charges against Trump has taken testimony from a longtime outside accountant for Trump and a high official from Deutsche Bank, which was about the last remaining bank in the world that was willing to lend Trump money. The New York Times adds that prosecutors “have zeroed in on financial documents that he used to obtain loans and boast about his wealth, according to people with knowledge of the matter.”

Back to the normal menu of bad news: The Post has a really grim report on the omicron variant and what a brutal winter we could be in for. One little factoid: It may be time to lift the southern Africa travel ban—because it will hardly make a difference at this point.

We seem to have forgotten about Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. They’re still around. In fact, they just had a lovey-dovey meeting. They gushed all over each other. Putin has had subsequent chats with Emmanuel Macron and Boris Johnson. So the Ukraine business is still something you should be worrying about. 

Finally, it looks like the urban-rural blue-red divide is hardly limited to the United States. The Mexico City Congress is likely to vote early next year to ban bullfighting in the capital, one of the last bastions of the blood sport in the world. Mexico City made abortion legal in 2007 even as the practice remained illegal in the country—until September, when Mexico’s Supreme Court decriminalized abortion and left degrees of legality up to the individual states. Bullfighting defenders are criticizing “a willingness to discard history in the name of an imported wokeness.”

At NewRepublic.com today, Daniel Strauss says the January 6 commission now has a crystal-clear focus and looks at where it is headed next. Grace Segers notes that Mitch McConnell is taking some gruff from his right for agreeing to let the Democrats raise the debt limit. Kate Aronoff has an interview with Adam McKay, director of the new climate change message movie Don’t Look Up. And you can read my own analysis of how Senate Democrats have nixed the filibuster twice—this month!—proving that they can dump it whenever it pleases them if they wish to. 

Thanks for reading,

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 question: Liz Cheney’s invocation of those 187 minutes brings to mind another famous set of minutes from the not-too-distant history of this country. When someone speaks of “the missing ___ minutes,” which presidency and scandal are they referring to, what does the word “missing” refer to, and how many minutes were involved?

Answer: Richard Nixon, Watergate; the missing minutes referred to a gap in the Oval Office tapes that everyone suspected included something horribly incriminating that was spliced out. The gap lasted 18 minutes. It was famous at the time, such that if Johnny Carson or any comedian merely mentioned 18 minutes, everyone laughed.

Yesterday’s Christmas carol question: Match the composer to the popular twentieth-century Christmas song. Songs: “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas,” “The Christmas Song,” “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” Composers: Mel Tormé and Robert Wells, Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane, Bob Geldof and Midge Ure, Meredith Willson.

Answer: “Have Yourself” was Martin and Blane, “It’s Beginning” was Willson, “Christmas Song” was Tormé and Wells; “Do They Know” was Geldof and Ure.

Today’s political question: Thinking about the stew Mark Meadows is in … what do Reagan Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and baseball great Roger Clemens have in common?

Today’s Christmas history question: Saint Nicholas was a real person. He was the patron saint of children (in addition to sailors, merchants, archers, and pawnbrokers). He also had a penchant for secret gift-giving. In what modern-day country did he live? It’s probably not where you think.