Want to understand the timing and nature of today’s Wide World of News?
It’s a story of a six-year-old’s birthday party, a nap gone haywire, and the fact that beyond a few more “How McCarthy did it” feature pieces that don’t tell us much new or compelling, there isn’t a lot of news out there this morning.
The full story of what happened to me in the last 15 hours will have to wait for another day.
I think the main wisdom I can share is that we are all going to spend a lot of time with the debt ceiling issue in 2023.
And/but to paraphrase and borrow from Woody Hayes, there are three possible outcomes to the debt ceiling face-off and two of them are fine.
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Mark
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(This play was called back because of a penalty, but still…..)
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President Biden’s immigration policy gets a very solid roundup from the Wall Street Journal, while the Associated Press curtain raises today’s border visit:
President Joe Biden is heading to the U.S.-Mexico border on Sunday, his first trip there as president after two years of hounding by Republicans who have hammered him as soft on border security while the number of migrants crossing spirals.
Biden is due to spend a few hours in El Paso, Texas, currently the biggest corridor for illegal crossings, due in large part to Nicaraguans fleeing repression, crime and poverty in their country. They are among migrants from four countries who are now subject to quick expulsion under new rules enacted by the Biden administration in the past week.
The president is expected to meet with border officials to discuss migration as well as the increased trafficking of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids, which are driving skyrocketing numbers of overdoses in the U.S.
Biden will visit the El Paso County Migrant Services Center and meet with nonprofits and religious groups that support migrants arriving to the U.S. It is not clear whether Biden will talk to any migrants.
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I don’t have you read about the pandemic often, but this one is semi-essential from the Washington Post:
Three years after the novel coronavirus emerged, a new variant, XBB.1.5, is quickly becoming the dominant strain in parts of the United States because of a potent mix of mutations that makes it easier to spread broadly, including among those who have been previously infected or vaccinated.
XBB.1.5, pegged by the World Health Organization as “the most transmissible” descendant yet of the omicron variant, rose from barely 2 percent of U.S. cases at the start of December to more than 27 percent the first week of January, according to new estimates by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
More than 70 percent of cases in the Northeast are believed to be XBB.1.5.
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