Infrastructure talks had a bumpy 72 hours. Here's what you need to know.

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Sunday 06.27.21

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by Paul LeBlanc and Zachary B. Wolf

: Infrastructure back on the rails

After a dramatic week that saw the bipartisan infrastructure bill come together and then quickly almost fall apart, progress appears to be back on track.

What happened. President Joe Biden said Thursday he had agreed to a deal on infrastructure with a bipartisan group of senators after White House officials and the senators had a massive breakthrough the night before in their infrastructure negotiations. Here's what we know about what's in that agreement.

But then, Biden set off a frenzy by telling reporters that he would not sign the bipartisan deal he had just negotiated unless a reconciliation proposal for "human infrastructure" arrived on his desk, too. "If they don't come, I'm not signing," Biden said Thursday. "Real simple."

GOP backlash was swift. The remarks quickly drew criticism from Republicans, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who warned in floor remarks, "That's no way to show you're serious about getting a bipartisan outcome."

The President then walked things back. The uproar gained enough steam that by Saturday afternoon, Biden was forced to release a statement clarifying his pledge not to sign the bipartisan bill on infrastructure unless it came with the larger package, writing that his comments "created the impression that I was issuing a veto threat on the very plan I had just agreed to, which was certainly not my intent."

"The bottom line is this: I gave my word to support the Infrastructure Plan, and that's what I intend to do. I intend to pursue the passage of that plan, which Democrats and Republicans agreed to on Thursday, with vigor."

The effort appears to have worked. Republican senators accepted Biden's public walk-back in television appearances on Sunday morning.

What next? Even with infrastructure talks stabilized, there's still weeks of potential pitfalls ahead. Senators will return the week of week of July 12 with a hefty to-do list to complete before they leave for their August recess. There are several steps and any one of the complicated pieces could bring the entire process down.

Right now the bipartisan bill is a series of ideas, but there isn't legislative text. That bill needs to be written and sources tell CNN that process will begin during the recess and run for the next several weeks.
On reconciliation, the first step is to pass a budget resolution. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has instructed the Budget Committee to come up with a unity resolution that all Democrats or those who caucus with them -- including both Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Joe Manchin of West Virginia -- can agree to by the time lawmakers return from recess.
Once a budget resolution and bipartisan bill are both written, the expectation is that Schumer will bring them both to the floor in July for a vote.

: Trump speed read

Bad week for the 'Big Lie.' In one battleground state, Republican senators issued a report that eviscerated former President Donald Trump's lies about voter fraud. In another, a judge undercut Trump's supporters' hopes to examine nearly 150,000 mail-in ballots. And one of Trump's closest allies, Rudy Giuliani, was suspended from practicing law in New York.

The revenge tour is under way. The former President kicked off his revenge tour against Republicans who defied him in the aftermath of the 2020 election on Saturday, using a sizable event in Lorain County, Ohio, to lambast GOP Rep. Anthony Gonzalez for voting to impeach him earlier this year.

Romney isn't mincing words. The Republican senator on Sunday called on members of his party to "move on" from Trump's 2020 election lies, equating the former President's return to rally-style events to wrestling entertainment.

Trump Organization braces for potential charges. The Manhattan district attorney's office has informed lawyers for the Trump Organization that it could face criminal charges in connection with benefits it has provided to company employees, a Trump attorney confirmed Friday.

The charges, which could come as soon as this week, would likely involve allegations of a company effort to avoid paying payroll taxes on compensation it provided to employees, including rent-free apartments, cars and other benefits, a person familiar with the matter said.

The impossible 2024 Trump tightrope. Would-be challengers are awkwardly threading the needle of fealty to Trump while trying to offer themselves as a Trump alternative. Here's who to watch.

: Vaccine vs. variant (redux)

The US' aggressive vaccination campaign proved enough to outrun the B.1.1.7 variant this spring, defanging it to just a blip in our overall case count.

But the highly contagious and aggressive Delta variant is proving to be a more formidable challenge as it finds a hold in most US states.

Vaccine vs. variant, with a twist. Unlike with previous variants, just one dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna vaccine won't provide a towering level of protection. That's why public health experts like US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky are putting extra emphasis on people getting their *second* shot:

"Please get your second shot," Walensky said Friday in an interview with National Public Radio.
"What we do know is you get some protection from the first shot, but really that second shot gives you breadth and depth of vaccine coverage to really be able to tackle this Delta variant and other variants as well."
"If you missed your second within the time window, get it whenever, get it now, but do get that second shot," Walensky added.

Vaccination snapshot. More than 151.6 million Americans are fully vaccinated, according to CDC data on Friday, which is nearly 46% of the total US population.

And nearly 66% of adults in America have had at least one dose of a vaccine as of Friday, according to the CDC. But more than one in 10 people in the US who received one dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna vaccine have missed their second dose.

Variant snapshot. In the US overall, the Delta variant has accounted for about 21% of cases in the two weeks ending June 19, according to CDC data.

Meanwhile, travel numbers keep ticking up. More than 2.1 million people were screened at TSA airport checkpoints on Friday, according to the agency's official count, marking the eighth day in June where the number has been over 2 million.

The bottom line. "We cannot continue to have pockets of unvaccinated counties and areas in this country," Dr. Jayne Morgan, executive director of Piedmont Healthcare's Coronavirus Task Force in Atlanta, told CNN's Fredricka Whitfield Saturday.

Those pockets of unvaccinated populations create a place where variants can continue to develop, "and then those mutations have the ability to continue to learn, to become smarter, and eventually evade the immunization status of the rest of us," Morgan said.