Greetings from your Thursday newsletter person, Timothy Noah.

The death cult is alive and well in the GOP. The Senate voted Wednesday, 52–48, to repeal the Biden administration’s requirement that businesses employing 100 or more workers compel them either to be vaccinated against Covid-19 or get tested weekly at their own expense. Every Republican senator supported the measure, plus two Democrats, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and … no, not Kyrsten Sinema, but Jon Tester of Montana. The bill is unlikely to pass the House, where Democrats have a larger majority, and, even if it did, it would face certain veto by President Joe Biden. But the mandate has already been blocked temporarily by a judge in the reactionary Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans.

Republicans were able to force the vote under the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to vote under expedited procedures to repeal a regulation within a restricted time period after the regulation is implemented. Republican Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas told The Washington Post that he’s preparing a second bill to repeal the vaccine mandate for health care workers.

Supporters of these bills say they aren’t anti-vaccine, just anti-mandate, but Covid can’t tell the difference. A New York Times analysis concludes that Covid cases are up 27 percent from two weeks ago, with hospitalizations up 15 percent, overwhelming hospitals in Michigan, Vermont, and Maine. These are primarily delta variant cases, not omicron, which is only beginning to make landfall. Covid deaths are up 12 percent, the Times reports, with 1,275 people dying from it every day. Most of the dying exercised their Fifth Circuit–granted liberty to refuse vaccination. The U.S. vaccination rate is about 60 percent, putting us behind the rest of the developed world and quite a bit of the developing world, according to this unbelievably depressing Times chart. (We’re kicking Guyana’s butt, though.)

Ukraine’s military intelligence chief told The New York Times that “there are not sufficient military resources for repelling a full-scale attack by Russia if it begins without the support of Western forces.” The only surprise here is that he’s willing to say this so forthrightly. A Russian attack could occur as early as January or February, though it isn’t 100 percent clear whether Putin will launch one. Biden yesterday ruled out deploying U.S. troops (no great surprise there, either), though we’re supplying the Ukranians with Javelin anti-tank missiles. In a video call Tuesday with Putin, Biden said U.S. economic sanctions would exceed those imposed after the 2014 Russian invasion of Crimea.

Unemployment claims, at 184,000, fell lower last week than they’ve been since, wait for it, September 1969. The Wall Street Journal says this demonstrates that “employers are reluctant to lay off workers at a time when jobs are plentiful, consumer demand is high, and the pool of prospective workers remains lower than before the pandemic.” If you ever harbored a desire to make rude comments to your supervisor about his mother, this would appear the moment to indulge it.

At NewRepublic.com, Matt Ford writes that after you’re done guffawing at Representative Matt Gaetz’s plan to install Donald Trump as speaker of the House if the GOP wins a House majority in 2022, take a moment to consider it seriously. Mark Meadows and Steve Bannon have signed on, you don’t have to be a member of Congress to be elected Speaker, and Trump maintains a tight grip on congressional Republicans. Kate Aronoff questions the American exceptionalism that undergirds Biden’s online Summit for Democracy, which starts today. Alex Shephard asks why nobody ever gripes about the inflationary and deficit-expanding effects of throwing $768 billion at the Pentagon. If the price tag for the reconciliation bill is $1.7 trillion, which is what it would cost over 10 years, how about pricing the Pentagon appropriation at $7.68 trillion, which is what that will cost over 10 years? (Except it will be more, because the Pentagon budget never stays flat.) And Jennifer C. Berkshire observes that the new parents’ rights hysteria to expunge Toni Morrison and other alleged smut-peddlers from public school curricula is a replay of the same prudery and bigotry that we saw in the 1990s, when the bogeymen (and women) were Heather Has Two Mommies, Daddy’s Roommate, and some legal writings on children’s rights that then–First Lady Hillary Clinton published two decades earlier. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. I won’t translate that from the French because it’s too filthy for a newsletter that high school social studies teachers might share with their students.

—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 U.S.–world history question: Most Americans probably don’t know that the United States of America once actually invaded Russia. When, under what president, and why?

Answer. In 1918, President Woodrow Wilson sent 5,000 Army troops to the North Russian port city of Arkhangel’sk to prop up the Allied powers’ Eastern Front after the Bolsheviks made a separate peace with the Central Powers. This became known as the Polar Bear Expedition. A separate force was sent to Siberia to restart the stalled Trans-Siberian Railroad. Both armies engaged in multiple battles with the Red Army, which didn’t want us there, and hundreds of American soldiers were killed. The troops didn’t come home until a year after the Armistice.

Yesterday’s culture question: December 8 is the date on which John Lennon was shot in 1980. This will be easy for people of a certain age, but for those not of that age: Who told America of the shooting that night, and through what venue?

Answer: Sportscaster Howard Cosell, on ABC’s Monday Night Football, at what had seemed up to that moment a pivotal point toward the end of a Patriots-Dolphins game.

Today’s politics question: Bob Dole, who died this week, didn’t like Newt Gingrich, and Gingrich didn’t like Dole. What did Gingrich call Dole in 1985, shortly after Dole became Senate majority leader, and how did Dole exact revenge three decades later?