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Happy Independence Day! No, that heartfelt wish is actually not premature, as we pointed out years ago. The second of July is indeed the day American declared her independence from Britain. All the histories, all the traditions, all the celebrations get it wrong each and every year. No, really!
There's a lot of news in the legal world today, so even asking the question: "Will Trump testify?" needs further specification. I am not asking whether Donald Trump will testify in the upcoming case against his namesake Trump Organization and its top financial officer, because it's pretty obvious he would never take the stand in a case like that. Instead, what I'm wondering is whether the still-forming House 1/6 select committee will try to subpoena Trump -- and if they do, whether he'd actually appear or (as is more usual for him) fight it to the bloody end in the courts.
The House of Representatives just passed a measure to create a select committee to investigate the 1/6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and all the things which led up to it and fed into it. This will be a partisan undertaking, as the 13 members of this committee will be named by Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- and while she may be open to allowing up to six Republicans on it, she will also have the power to veto any suggestions made by Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. It is looking like this committee will provide the most substantive and wide-reaching investigation into all the things which were allowed to go wrong. That's important, because America really does deserve to know the truth -- the whole truth -- about what happened that dark day.
So far, most of the attention on the progress of President Joe Biden's economic agenda has been on the bipartisan infrastructure deal. It went first, so it got the spotlight first. Now that the Republicans and Democrats seem to be in the final stages of hammering out a deal, the attention is soon going to shift to the second part of the plan: the budget reconciliation bill that will be designed to make it through the Senate solely with Democratic support.
As I've been pointing out, the most interesting thing about this bill is that Senator Bernie Sanders is in charge of writing it. Bernie's not on the outside looking in anymore, he now chairs the Senate's budget committee. And he's about to flex his power for the first time. Although the key will be (as always, these days) what Senator Joe Manchin will agree to. And this past weekend, this bidding game began in earnest.
President Joe Biden made a political mistake, last week. Thankfully, it looks like he has rectified it with the right people, meaning it will not be a major stumbling block in the continuing negotiations over his hoped-for bipartisan infrastructure deal with a group of moderate Republican senators. Biden walked his error back, and everyone sounded placated a few days later, and now the process is back on track once again. So far so good. But Biden never needed to get out in front of this issue in the first place, because Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi had already volunteered to take all the political heat. Which is precisely what Biden will now allow her to do, and what he really should have done from the start.
Call it true irony. The man who had a book ghost-written for him called "The Art Of The Deal" could never actually manage to strike any kind of deal. So the man who replaced him ran on his own dealmaking skills, in a time where pretty much everyone in Washington considered the idea too old-fashioned to ever work. But President Joe Biden just got his first big deal, this week. A bipartisan infrastructure plan is now going to move forward in the United States Senate and has what can only be called a better-than-average chance of passing.
I just read one of the most hopeful articles I think I've ever read about the Democratic Party. Nancy Pelosi and the White House are making a huge push to get all Democrats to get out there and toot their own horns. This really shouldn't be all that amazing -- it shouldn't even be news because it should be so routine -- but it really is, since Democrats have long been particularly bad in this regard. Republicans know how to settle on one songbook and then endlessly sing the same thing from it -- for just weeks on end. But Democrats have never had that singular focus, which is part of the reason why I became a blogger in the first place (in the hopes that they would, eventually).
President Joe Biden had a pretty good week all around. He began the week in Europe, where he met with the leaders of NATO, the European Union, the G7, a few royals (just to mix things up), and Vladimir Putin. That's a pretty packed schedule, but Biden seemed to manage just fine. The Europeans were both visibly thrilled and massively relieved to be visited by a United States president who was, once again, a sane adult (and not a petulant little child-man). They heaped praise upon Biden -- mostly just for being "President Not-Trump." You may laugh, but please recall President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize solely for being "President Not-Dubya," years earlier. But more seriously, Europe announced some deals with Biden (including, notably, a truce being called on the subsidy war over Boeing and Airbus airplanes). Not only were personal relationships either reaffirmed or begun, tangible diplomatic progress was made. Europe stood as one with the United States over the contentious issues of Russia and China, which only strengthened Biden's position for his meeting with Putin. The Putin summit didn't produce a whole lot in the way of tangible deliverables, but then again it didn't produce an American president willing to believe Russia's ex-K.G.B. leader over his own intelligence services either, so it has to be chalked up as a major improvement. Throughout it all, Biden stuck to one very simple slogan that summed up what his trip was supposed to be showcasing to the world: "America is back."
President Joe Biden wrapped up his tour of Europe today with a personal meeting with Russia's Vladimir Putin and then a solo press conference afterwards (Putin also gave his own solo press conference, before Biden spoke). The summit meeting between the two leaders was built up with breathless anticipation in the political media, but the actual outcome was pretty mundane and more process-oriented than many might have expected. This first meeting was never supposed to be about big breakthroughs or bilateral agreements, it was designed to lay the groundwork for future negotiations and possible cooperation.
President Biden is currently in Europe, in the midst of his first trip abroad since he took office. So the folks at Pew Research decided it was a good time to see how America is now viewed by the rest of the world (or the countries with advanced economies that were surveyed, at any rate). The answers are exactly what you'd expect them to be -- America's standing in the world has dramatically improved, now that a sane adult is in charge of the country once again (instead of an unstable and temperamental toddler).