The Commentariat -- June 6, 2021
Late Morning Update:
Kim Willsher of the Guardian: "On Sunday, the names of 22,442 soldiers under British command who died on D-day and the subsequent Battle of Normandy were engraved in stone as a permanent reminder of their sacrifice as a new British Normandy memorial was unveiled. The ceremony on a hill at Ver-sur-Mer overlooking Gold Beach, where thousands of British and allied soldiers swarmed ashore on the morning of 6 June 1944, heard a video message from the Prince of Wales, the patron of the Normandy Trust, who said he regretted that Covid had made it impossible for him to be present in France.... Today, 77 years on, the surviving veterans of D-day were defeated in their efforts to return to France, not by war or even growing old unlike their fallen comrades, but by coronavirus.
The New York Times' live updates of Covid-19 developments Sunday are here.
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President Joe Biden, in a Washington Post op-ed, lays out his agenda for his trip to Europe this week: "On Wednesday, I depart for Europe on the first foreign travel of my presidency.... In this moment of global uncertainty, as the world still grapples with a once-in-a-century pandemic, this trip is about realizing America’s renewed commitment to our allies and partners, and demonstrating the capacity of democracies to both meet the challenges and deter the threats of this new age.... And, as America’s economic recovery helps to propel the global economy, we will be stronger and more capable when we are flanked by nations that share our values and our vision for the future — by other democracies.... Those shared democratic values are the foundation of the most successful alliance in world history." ~~~
~~~ Jeff Stein of the Washington Post: “Finance ministers for the G-7 advanced economies announced an accord that could reshape the tax obligations of multinational corporations around the world. The deal reached at the G-7 meeting in London Saturday by Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the U.S. is a major breakthrough for the Biden administration’s efforts to enact a floor on the taxes paid by corporations worldwide.... 'The G-7 Finance Ministers have made a significant, unprecedented commitment today that provides tremendous momentum toward achieving a robust global minimum tax at a rate of at least 15 percent,' [Treasury Secretary Janet] Yellen, who led negotiations on behalf of the U.S., said in a statement.” (Also linked yesterday.)
Amy Wang of the Washington Post: “About 31 million Americans now have health-care coverage through the Affordable Care Act, the White House announced Saturday, setting a record since the law, colloquially known as 'Obamacare,' was enacted in 2010 under President Barack Obama. According to a report from the Health and Human Services Department, about 11.3 million Americans were enrolled in health-care plans through the Affordable Care Act’s federal marketplaces as of February, with 14.8 million people newly enrolled in Medicaid through the law’s expansion of eligibility as of December. The report also counted an additional 3.9 million Medicaid-enrolled adults who would have been eligible even before the Affordable Care Act but credited 'enhanced outreach, streamlined applications, and increased federal funding' from the law for the numbers.The report also said 1 million people were enrolled in the Affordable Care Act’s Basic Health Program option, which covers people whose incomes are just slightly too high to qualify them for Medicaid, as well as for some immigrants.” ~~~
~~~ Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar & Aamer Madhani of the AP: “President Joe Biden turned to his old boss, former President Barack Obama, on Saturday to help him encourage Americans to sign up for 'Obamacare' health care coverage during an expanded special enrollment period in the pandemic. Biden used his weekly address for a brief Zoom chat with Obama to draw attention to the six-month expanded enrollment period that closes Aug. 15.” See President Biden's conversation with Barack from Chicago in the right-hand column.
Charlie Savage & Katie Benner of the New York Times: "The Biden administration said on Saturday that no one at the White House had been aware that the Justice Department was seeking to seize the email data of four New York Times reporters and had obtained a gag order in March barring a handful of newspaper executives who knew about the fight from discussing it. The disavowal came one day after a court lifted the gag order, which permitted a Times lawyer to disclose the department’s effort to obtain email logs from Google, which operates the Times’s email system. It had begun in the last days of the Trump administration and continued until Wednesday, when the Biden Justice Department asked a judge to quash the matter without having obtained the data about who had been in contact with the reporters." ~~~
~~~ Eric Tucker of the AP: “The Justice Department said Saturday that it no longer will secretly obtain reporters’ records during leak investigations, a policy shift that abandons a practice decried by news organizations and press freedom groups. The reversal follows a pledge last month by President Joe Biden, who said it was 'simply, simply wrong' to seize journalists’ records and that he would not permit the Justice Department to continue the practice. Though Biden’s comments in an interview were not immediately accompanied by any change in policy, a pair of statements from the White House and Justice Department on Saturday signaled an official turnabout from an investigative tactic that has persisted for years.... White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement Saturday that ... 'the issuing of subpoenas for the records of reporters in leak investigations is not consistent with the President’s policy direction to the Department.'... Justice Department spokesman Anthony Coley said that 'in a change to its longstanding practice,' the department 'will not seek compulsory legal process in leak investigations to obtain source information from members of the news media doing their jobs....' In ruling out 'compulsory legal process' for reporters in leak investigations, the department also appeared to say that it would not force journalists to reveal in court the identity of their sources.”
Noise. Quinn Scanlan & Mark Osborne of ABC News: "... Donald Trump returned to the stage on Saturday night, delivering a speech at the North Carolina Republican Party State Convention, and claiming America is backsliding under President Joe Biden.... Trump referred to 'bad things' happening in the 2020 election, while saying the GOP would have a 'tremendous 2022' in the midterm elections. Trump teased -- slightly -- a 2024 run as well.... Trump's supporters gathered early in the day outside the Greenville Convention Center, some carrying 'Trump 2020' flags while others were already displaying 'Trump 2024: I'll Be Back' banners. Many wore 'Trump won' hats, being sold outside the arena. About 1,200 attendees were expected in the room...." MB: "I'll be back"? Really? That's Arnold Schwarzenegger's signature line, and Trump has been calling Schwarzenegger a loser for several years. ~~~
~~~ Meredith McGraw of Politico: “Never before in U.S. history has a former president returned to the campaign trail to claim that his election loss was fraudulent. But in his informal reemergence on the political scene before the GOP faithful at the North Carolina GOP convention in Greenville, Donald Trump did just that, insisting — falsely — that the 2020 race was stolen and corrupt. 'The evidence is too voluminous to even mention,' Trump said at one point. Tellingly, he never mentioned it, choosing instead to insist that dead people had voted, that Facebook had encouraged get out the vote drives in liberal enclaves, and that 'Indians' were paid to vote (ostensibly referring to Native Americans) — none of it supported by fact.... He was met with a standing ovation when he demanded China pay $10 trillion in 'reparations' for its role in the coronavirus pandemic and again when he called for the banning of critical race theory in schools, the culture wars issue du jour for the GOP.... At times, it gave off the vibe of an entertainer in the twilight of his career, playing the hits for a Vegas crowd.”
** Katie Benner of the New York Times: "In Donald J. Trump’s final weeks in office, Mark Meadows, his chief of staff, repeatedly pushed the Justice Department to investigate unfounded conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election, according to newly uncovered emails provided to Congress, portions of which were reviewed by The New York Times. In five emails sent during the last week of December and early January, Mr. Meadows asked Jeffrey A. Rosen, then the acting attorney general, to examine debunked claims of election fraud in New Mexico and an array of baseless conspiracies that held that Mr. Trump had been the actual victor. That included a fantastical theory that people in Italy had used military technology and satellites to remotely tamper with voting machines in the United States and switch votes for Mr. Trump to votes for Joseph R. Biden Jr. None of the emails show Mr. Rosen agreeing to open the investigations suggested by Mr. Meadows, and former officials and people close to him said that he did not do so.... But the communications between Mr. Meadows and Mr. Rosen ... show the increasingly urgent efforts by Mr. Trump and his allies during his last days in office to find some way to undermine, or even nullify, the election results while he still had control of the government." (Also linked yesterday.) Mother Jones has a summary story here. ~~~
~~~ Marie: Over there. It's the Venezuelans! No, it's the Chinese! No, it's the Italians! I'm surprised we haven't heard that those UFOs Navy pilots have been seeing zapped voting machines & turned real Trump votes to fake Biden votes.
Texas Trumpist AG Says Trump Would Have Lost Texas without Voter Suppression. Jason Lemon of Newsweek: "Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, said ... Donald Trump would have lost in Texas in the 2020 election if his office had not successfully blocked counties from mailing out applications for mail-in ballots to all registered voters. Harris County, home to the city of Houston, wanted to mail out applications for mail-in ballots to its approximately 2.4 million registered voters due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the conservative Texas Supreme Court blocked the county from doing so after it faced litigation from Paxton's office. 'If we'd lost Harris County — Trump won by 620,000 votes in Texas. Harris County mail-in ballots that they wanted to send out were 2.5 million, those were all illegal and we were able to stop every one of them,' Paxton told former Trump adviser Steve Bannon during the latter's War Room podcast on Friday.... Notably, the Texas attorney general conflated mail-in ballots with applications for mail-in ballots in his remarks to Bannon. Harris County did not attempt to mail actual ballots to registered voters—just applications to request them if the individual voter wanted one." MB: Still, Paxton has a point. ~~~
~~~ Marie: And that's precisely why Joe Manchin opposes the For the People Act. Oh, and the Senate filibuster: ~~~
~~~ Sen. Joe Manchin (DINO-W.Va.), in a Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette-Mail op-ed: "Democrats in Congress have proposed a sweeping election reform bill called the For the People Act. This more than 800-page bill has garnered zero Republican support. Why?... The truth, I would argue, is that voting and election reform that is done in a partisan manner will all but ensure partisan divisions continue to deepen. With that in mind, some Democrats have again proposed eliminating the Senate filibuster rule in order to pass the For the People Act with only Democratic support." MB: IOW, if everybody gets to vote, Republicans know they will lose, and that's a bad thing.
Neil Irwin of the New York Times: “The relationship between American businesses and their employees is undergoing a profound shift: For the first time in a generation, workers are gaining the upper hand.... The erosion of employer power began during the low-unemployment years leading up to the pandemic and, given demographic trends, could persist for years. March had a record number of open positions, according to federal data that goes back to 2000, and workers were voluntarily leaving their jobs at a rate that matches its historical high. The 'reservation wage,' as economists call the minimum compensation workers would require, was 19 percent higher for those without a college degree in March than in November 2019, a jump of nearly $10,000 a year....” MB: “Reservation wage”? That seems like a rather unfortunate term. On the other hand, I suppose they could have gone with “plantation wage.”
Ray Jenkins of the Washington Post: “John Patterson, an intractable segregationist Democrat of the 1950s and 1960s who served as Alabama’s attorney general and then governor and belatedly said he came to regret the stances that helped him rise to power in a tumultuous era, died June 4 at his home in Goldville, Ala. He was 99.... Exactly 50 years after his election as governor, he announced he would vote for then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), who became the nation’s first Black president. 'Having a record of supporting segregation,' Mr. Patterson said in an interview for this obituary, 'is a terrible burden to bear.'” MB: If you like to read obituaries, you'll enjoy this one.
The Pandemic, Ctd.
The New York Times' live updates of Covid-19 developments Saturday are here. (Also linked yesterday.)
Fractured History. Matt Viser & Yasmeen Abutaleb of the Washington Post: “Donald Trump and his Republican allies have spent the past few weeks trying to rewrite or distort the history of the pandemic, attempting with renewed vigor to villainize Anthony S. Fauci while lionizing the former president for what they portray as heroic foresight and underappreciated efforts to combat the deadly virus.... 'They’re using Dr. Fauci as a way to direct attention from what actually was a massive government failure from the White House and individuals Donald Trump put in place to handle some of this pandemic,' [Amesh] Adalja [of Johns Hopkins] said.”