Good morning,
TNR has moved the daily newsletter, which used to appear in late afternoon, to mid-morning, with a short introduction written most days by Michael Tomasky (editor). Today, and at most Thursday performances, the role of Tomasky will be played by Timothy Noah (staff writer). We regret the inconvenience and will make refunds available at the box office. For those who wish to remain in their seats, letâs get started with installment number four.
The Senate struck a temporary deal this morning on the debt ceiling that will raise it just high enough to prevent default before December 3. The agreement, which may be voted on as early as today, raises the debt limit by $480 billion, The New York Times reports, citing an unnamed Senate aide. The arrangement is less than ideal, but itâs an encouraging sign that Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and other Senate Republicans are starting to worry theyâll get blamed for any economic damage their infantile partisanship incurs; The Wall Street Journal reports that stock futures rose this morning on word of a deal after a jittery week of trading. âMitch McConnell finally saw the light,â Senator Bernie Sanders told Politico. The Democrats say they still wonât bow to McConnellâs demand that they fold the December debt ceiling increase into the reconciliation bill.
President Joe Biden should just invoke the Fourteenth Amendmentâs dictum that âthe public debt of the United Statesâ shall ânot be questioned,â writes Mike Lofgren, a former Republican staffer on the House and Senate budget committees, in a New York Times op-ed. Your correspondent finds this option more appealing than having Treasury mint a $1 trillion coin, mostly because he worries Janet Yellen would forget to take it out of her pants pocket before sending them to the dry cleaner. But itâs far from clear that it would pass muster in the courts.
Speaking of courts, a federal judge in Texas blocked implementation of the stateâs draconian new abortion law. It isnât clear how effective the injunction will be, The New York Times points out, because Texas lawmakers had some inkling when they wrote the law that courts would object and, in response, allowed abortion clinics to be sued retroactively for abortions performed while a court blocked the law.Â
The Nobel Prize in literature was awarded to the Tanzanian novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah, described by Nobel Committee Chairman Anders Olsson as âone of the worldâs most prominent post-colonial writers.â According to British bookmakers cited by the Los Angeles Times, Gurnah beat out âKenyaâs Ngugi wa Thiongâo, French writer Annie Ernaux, Japanese author Haruki Murakami, Canadaâs Margaret Atwood and Antiguan American writer Jamaica Kincaid.â Amazonâs Gurnah page shows precisely two Gurnah works available in translation, one of them selling in hardcover for $62. That will change.
At New Republic.com, Alex Shephard argues that Kyrsten Sinemaâs refusal to explain her opposition to President Joe Bidenâs reconciliation bill, far from establishing her as a bipartisan centrist, is so self-indulgent that it will damage her chances for reelection. Daniel Fernandez questions Bidenâs nomination of Rahul Gupta for drug czar, noting that when Gupta was West Virginiaâs state health commissioner, he authorized a 2018 report that, Fernandez reports, bowed to political pressure by raising gratuitous criticisms of the stateâs needle exchange program. And Tanvi Misra compares the governmentâs numerical limits on Afghans and other refugees to the immigration quotas imposed a century ago on Asians and Southern and Eastern Europeans based on bigoted eugenic pseudoscience.
Over and out, Timothy Noah, TNR staff writer |
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