So Andy resigned (yay) and the bipartisan infrastructure bill passed in the Senate (yay).
Regarding Andy, here’s a couple of paragraphs from New York’s Justin Miller:
The report also revealed for the first time allegations by a state trooper that Cuomo ran his hands over her body after picking her out of the ranks to serve on his protective detail.
Cuomo summarized his defense against the complaints as a matter of personal ignorance regarding supposedly changing mores involving the treatment of women. “I didn’t realize the extent to which the line has been redrawn,” he said. “There are generational and cultural shifts that I just didn’t fully appreciate.”
He seriously thought groping a state trooper used to be normal? Well, truth to tell, it probably was, but not for a long time. See Andrew Prokop at Vox on why Cuomo resigned and Trump didn’t.
After the report’s release, leading Democrats said Cuomo had to go. New York’s entire Democratic congressional delegation called on him to resign, as did national Democratic leaders like President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Longtime allies in state politics abandoned him too, from unions to state legislature power brokers. A majority of legislators in the state assembly went on record supporting his impeachment. Voters rejected him too — a Quinnipiac poll found that 70 percent of New York voters wanted Cuomo to quit.
The writing on the wall became clear — he couldn’t win. Furthermore, a conviction in his impeachment trial could have banned him from holding state office in the future. So now, he hopes, he will avoid that trial altogether.
And look for Bill DeBlasio to be very cheerful. Oh, and Trump didn’t resign because Republicans didn’t pressure him to, says Prokop. In case you wondered.
Regarding the bipartisan infrastructure bill, Paul Waldman explains why nineteen Republicans (although not all of the Republicans who had negotiated the thing) voted for the bill. In brief, some Republicans really want big infrastructure projects in their states to get funded. And a few aren’t afraid of being bipartisan. Plus this:
The key GOP constituency — big business — wants this bill. Republicans may feed their base a steady diet of manufactured culture-war controversies, but when it comes time to write laws, few things matter more to them than the opinions of the business interests that fund their campaigns.
Those interests are now eager for the government to spend on the infrastructure on which they depend, which is why this bill is backed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable and the National Association of Manufacturers, as well as many influential CEOs. Those aren’t people Republicans say no to very often.
It still needs to go to the House, where its fate is tied to the reconciliation bill. See German Lopez at Vox for how that’s likely to go. It could all blow up, but it might not.
In other news — Dominion Voting Systems is suing OAN, Newsmax, and the former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne for $1.6 billion in lost profit and business value. Heh.
Anti-vaccine protesters tried to storm the BBC’s offices. But they had the wrong address. It comforts me that we don’t have all the dim bulbs
.