| : Weekend update A potential ecological disaster is unfolding in Southern California. A pipeline breach about 5 miles off the coast of Huntington Beach in Orange County has devastated wildlife.
Supply chain woes worsen. Production and shipping delays threaten Christmas, reports CNN Business. President Joe Biden is coming under pressure from business groups to roll back his predecessor's China tariffs to help relieve pressure on importers and consumers, but so far hasn't made any changes.
Five new details about Melania Trump's time in the White House. Former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham's upcoming memoir reveals more details about the former first lady's time in the White House, writes CNN's Kate Bennett.
: No movement on Biden's big bills Democrats start the week essentially where they left off in their negotiations over Biden's infrastructure plan and bigger social spending package, aside from having passed a 30-day extension on highway funding that had lapsed on Thursday.
CNN White House correspondent John Harwood writes that one problem plaguing the whole deal is that it's being defined by its price tag, currently somewhere between the $1.5 trillion floor offered by West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin and the roughly $3.5 trillion package outlined in the preliminary legislation. (Both of those figures are over 10 years.)
The absence of a single signature element is making talks more difficult, Harwood writes: What do you call the contents of a sprawling bill covering priorities that range from child care to climate change?
Biden aides and Democratic leaders have employed a variety of labels, from the "American Families Plan" to "Build Back Better" to the "human infrastructure" package. Media commentators variously describe the bill as about the "safety net," "social benefits," "climate and economic policy" or, most obscurely of all, "reconciliation," which refers to the budget procedure Democrats are using to advance it.
The problem of squishy definition makes the bill harder for Democrats to promote -- and easier for Republicans to attack. Lacking a singular focus like such transformative forebears as the Affordable Care Act or Medicare, it has become known mostly by its digits.
Read more here.
The fate of the deal has increasingly come down to an impasse between Democratic progressives on one side and Manchin along with Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona on the other. But CNN's Harry Enten suggests that Sinema, in particular, is engaging in some curious politics given that her state -- home of the late self-identified maverick Sen. John McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee -- has trended increasingly blue.
Enten writes: Part of what may be happening is that Sinema thinks that Arizona is a redder state than it actually is. That's understandable insofar as Democrats have only started winning statewide races there with regularity recently. Sinema became the first Democrat to win an Arizona Senate race since 1988.
This feat, however, was repeated by Mark Kelly in 2020. Kelly won by basically the same margin against the same opponent as Sinema and in a tougher political environment. Biden, too, became the first Democrat to win the state on the presidential level since 1996.
Beyond Kelly and Biden, Democrats in Arizona now control two of the five seats on the state's corporation commission, the secretary of state's office and superintendent of public instruction office. They also hold five of the nine US House seats.
Read the whole thing here.
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