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The “Let’s Go, Brandon” slogan, understood as a coded profane insult lobbed at President Joe Biden, has now found its way to a new level of marketing: weaponry.

First published by NBC on Monday, the Palmetto State Armory in South Carolina has begun selling a part intended for an AR-15-style assault rifle it calls the “LETSGO-15 Stripped Lower Receiver.” This part typically features a serial number, meaning it is the only element of an AR-15 rifle that must be purchased through a licensed dealer.

“The product description on the company’s website says the fire selector on the weapon part features three modes: “’F@ck!’” (Safe), “’JOE!’” (Fire), “’Biden’” (Full Auto),” the NBC report notes.

Other dealers, including Culper Precision, advertise their own product with similar sentiments online including an AR-15 magazine with an animated Joe Biden’s face replete with googly eyes.

“Yes it comes with Googeley eyes on both sides, no we will not ship one without googeley eyes,” the product description (included here unedited) states. 

The slogan emerged after an altogether bizarre moment at the Talladega Superspeedway in early October.

NBC reporter Kelli Stavast, during an interview with NASCAR driver Brandon Brown, who was fresh off his win at the speedway, suggested that loud chants heard from a booming crowd nearby were cheers of “Let’s go, Brandon!” In actuality, many were saying, “Fuck Joe Biden!” It is unclear if Stavast misheard the chants or not.

Since then, the phrase has become a favorite one of those on the right and has extended all the way to use by lawmakers in Congress, including Trump cronies like Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who posted a picture of himself on Twitter last week standing with a fan bearing a homemade “Let’s Go, Brandon” sign. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s press secretary, according to the Associated Press, has also retweeted a photo of the phrase emblazoned on a banner and hung near a construction site in Virginia. And Rep. Bill Posey, a Republican of Florida, from the House floor on Oct. 22, ended his remarks with a fist pump and a meek “Let’s Go, Brandon!”

Whether or not the FBI investigates the marketing of products like the one sold by Palmetto State Armory is not clear. A representative did not immediately return a request for comment.

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It’s Election Day! Virginia isn’t the only state with key races on the ballot, but it’s the one everyone is watching. How Virginia goes today, goes the nation next year! Or does it? 

Join us as we discuss today’s elections with Virginia elections expert Carolyn Fiddler, and we examine our chances of prevailing tonight, as well as what the results (good or bad) mean for the country. Also, we’ll talk about other states, too! Because it’s not just Virginia today. 

Show starts at 1:30 p.m. PT/4:30 p.m. ET. 

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Tuesday’s elections include several contests that have critical implications for the right to vote, including ballot measures where voters will directly decide whether to expand access to the ballot box, judicial races that will determine which judges one day rule on such matters, and elections for legislative and executive posts where officials will have the power to reshape voting laws. Below, we’ll preview three important states with relevant elections for voting rights and democracy: Virginia, New York, and Pennsylvania.

• Virginia: Virginia voters will elect a new governor and all 100 state House seats, both of which have implications for voting rights. Former Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe faces off against Republican Glenn Youngkin for governor, while Democrats are defending the 55-45 majority in the state House they first won just two years ago. Both sets of elections could determine how Virginia addresses felony disenfranchisement, while the legislative races in particular will be critical to the composition of the state Supreme Court.

When McAuliffe was governor in 2016, he used his executive power to end lifetime disenfranchisement for those convicted of felonies by restoring voting rights to people who had fully served their sentences. His successor, fellow Democrat Ralph Northam, continued that policy and earlier this year extended it to restore voting rights to everyone on parole or probation, enabling more than 200,000 people to vote. (Only those still in prison remain unable to vote.) Democrats also used their first legislative majorities in a quarter century, which they won in 2019, to pass a constitutional amendment that would permanently end felony disenfranchisement for everyone not in prison.

However, lawmakers have to pass that same constitutional amendment again after this year’s elections before it could go to voters for their approval, meaning Republicans would likely block the measure should they regain the state House. Furthermore, Youngkin could discontinue Northam’s policy of issuing executive orders to restore voting rights and even resurrect lifetime disenfranchisement by rolling back McAuliffe’s policies. Before McAuliffe’s executive orders, this remnant of Jim Crow had left one in five Black Virginians permanently banned from voting, five times the rate of whites.

In addition, Virginia (along with South Carolina) is one of just two states where legislators directly pick justices for state Supreme Court, which currently has a 5-2 conservative majority. Over the next two years, two justices—one conservative and one liberal—will see their terms come to an end, giving lawmakers a chance to reshape the court in either direction. Both chambers vote together when selecting justices, but with Democrats holding only a 21-19 majority in the state Senate (which isn’t up for election this year), Republicans would only need a small majority in the state House to outvote them.

Most importantly of all, Virginia Democrats made the most of their newfound power by passing a slew of voting and redistricting reforms over the last two years including automatic and same-day voter registration, a bipartisan redistricting commission, an Election Day holiday, expanded access to early and absentee voting, and much more. However, that progress would come to a dead halt if Youngkin and Republicans prevail on Tuesday.

• New York: On Tuesday, New Yorkers will have the chance to vote on three statewide constitutional amendments related to elections that would be the culmination of two years of Democratic efforts to turn New York from one of the worst states for voting access into one of the best since regaining full control over the legislature in the 2018 elections.

Proposal 3 would allow lawmakers to pass a same-day voter registration law—something currently forbidden by the state constitution—which Democratic leaders have said they’d go forward with if the amendment passes. Proposal 4, meanwhile, would remove the excuse requirement to vote absentee. Last year, then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo issued an executive order that allowed any voter to cast an absentee ballot because of the pandemic, but the passage of Proposal 4 would lay the groundwork for the legislature to make excuse-free absentee voting permanent.

A third amendment, Proposal 1, would also enact several changes to the state’s redistricting laws that would diminish the sway Republicans have over the mapmaking process but would also enshrine a few nonpartisan requirements for future redistricting plans in the state constitution. New York currently has a convoluted bipartisan redistricting commission that recommends maps to the legislature, but lawmakers can ultimately override the commission’s recommendations and draw their own maps.

However, the poorly drafted 2014 amendment that created the commission makes it unclear whether legislators need a two-thirds supermajority or just a simple majority to override the commission when one party controls the legislature. The proposal on Tuesday’s ballot would require no more than a 60% majority to do so in any event. Democrats currently have two-thirds supermajorities in both chambers, though, meaning they may still have the votes to override the commission regardless of whether voters approve the newest amendment.

While the main purpose of this amendment appears aimed at solidifying Democratic control over redistricting, it does include some nonpartisan reforms. Those include enshrining in the constitution an existing statutory ban on “prison gerrymandering”; freezing the number of state Senate seats at 63; sharply limiting how cities can be split among Senate districts to prevent a repeat of the anti-urban gerrymandering that occurred when the GOP drew the lines after 2010; and authorizing the state to conduct its own census if a federal count is tainted.

• Pennsylvania: Keystone State voters will vote to elect a new state Supreme Court justice on Tuesday, when Superior Court Judge Maria McLaughlin, a Democrat, will face off against Commonwealth Court Judge Kevin Brobson, a Republican, to succeed Republican Justice Thomas Saylor, who will hit the state’s mandatory retirement age in December. Democrats currently hold a 5-2 majority that could expand to 6-1 if McLaughlin prevails, which could help them maintain control for years to come.

Pennsylvania’s top court has been critical for voting rights and redistricting, having struck down the GOP’s congressional gerrymander and replaced it with a much fairer map in 2018. The justices also protected access to mail voting during the pandemic amid Republican efforts to restrict it. Barring unexpected vacancies, the soonest Republicans could take back the court would be 2025, but a win for Democrats on Tuesday would complicate that path and potentially push a possible change of control further into the future.

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It’s open enrollment season for the Affordable Care Act again, and if you’re thinking, “How could that be? It just ended,” you’re right. The Biden administration extended the enrollment period into the summer in order to help all those affected by the pandemic. The Biden administration is also reversing the Trump tradition of limiting the enrollment period, and it will run from Nov. 1, 2021 through Jan.  15, 2022. However, to have coverage that takes effect as of Jan. 1, people will have to enroll by Dec. 15.

Premiums for 2022 will be about 3% lower than this year and there will be more insurers offering more plans. On the whole, there will be more and cheaper options for most everybody, and because of that people who are renewing coverage should go shop for the best deals. They’ll also benefit from more assistance if they need it—President Joe Biden is restoring the funding the former guy slashed for outreach and assistance through the Navigator program.

If the Build Back Better Act being negotiated now in the House passes, and the Senate passes it as well, there will be more ACA changes and big changes in a few discreet parts of the ACA and health care in general. Some of those elements aren’t clear yet: Medicare expansion to include hearing, dental, and vision care and drug price negotiating are still being worked out.

One key ACA expansion that has been a point of contention for Democrats is Medicaid expansion to the people in the gap—the red state citizens whose lawmakers have deprived them of the program. That’s about 2 million people, and for Democrats like Sen. Raphael Warnock in Georgia, a key priority. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia has opposed it because he views it not as helping those low-income workers, but as a “reward” for the states that haven’t expanded. In response, his colleagues have worked on a plan that he should like—it basically rewards health insurers by giving them more customers, but at the same time extends coverage to this group.

Those in the Medicaid gap live in the dozen states that haven’t expanded Medicaid. They earn incomes that are too low to qualify for subsidies on the ACA exchanges (which begin at 100% of the federal poverty line), but are too high for traditional Medicaid. Lawmakers originally talked about essentially putting a limited public option for this population on the exchanges, but Manchin balked. So now lawmakers have come up with a plan to expand the subsidies on the Obamacare markets to the low-income adults in those states through 2025. The bill would also punish non-expansion states by reducing payments they get in Medicaid Disproportionate Share Hospital payments and federal funding for uncompensated care pools—the two programs that care for the uninsured. That theoretically wouldn’t hurt the low-income people or the hospitals in those states, because they would now have private insurance to cover their care.

Speaking of Medicaid, the bill makes a serous effort to help low-income mothers, who are disproportionately people of color, by providing health coverage for new moms for a full year after giving birth.

The bill also extends the bump-up of ACA subsidies that was first passed in the American Rescue Plan earlier this year. Under that expansion, people making more than 400% of the federal poverty level—about $52,000 per year for an individual—became eligible for Affordable Care Act subsidies. That program was supposed to expire in 2023, and this bill extends it through 2025. People who make below 400% of the poverty line will continue to get more generous subsidies as well. This is part of what makes those new plans so much more affordable this year.

Slipped into the bill is language to permanently fund the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and to require states to keep children in the program for a full 12 months even if the household income rises above the eligibility level for the program during the 12-month period. Families at this income level often teeter in and out of qualifying for the program. This change would ensure stable coverage for kids, even as their families’ income fluctuates.

The bill still includes $150 billion to expand home- and community-based Medicaid services for  elderly and disabled people, down from the $400 billion Biden originally requested. The funding will raise wages for those homecare workers, hopefully growing that workforce and thus shortening the waiting list for these services. The federal government provides matching funds to states for these home- and community-based services, and the bill bumps that matching rate up permanently by 6%. The goal is to have all states provide these services outside of institutions, so that people who can be cared for in their homes don’t have to go to nursing homes because it’s the only option available.

It’s still possible that the loss of vision and dental coverage in a Medicare expansion provision will be picked up partially by making that coverage mandatory under Medicaid. That would still leave some elderly people out of coverage—those who don’t qualify for Medicaid but can’t afford the private coverage for those services. But low-income elderly people would have it, so that’s better than what we’ve got now. Coverage for hearing services in Medicare has survived so far, beginning in 2024 and paying for audiology examinations and hearing aids once every five years.

There are a number of other provisions, like bits of funding for pandemic preparedness ($3 billion); to build up the public health workforce ($7 billion); to increase the palliative care and hospice workforce ($100 million); and a few billion for grant programs for building, and capital projects for public health programs and community health centers.

Charles Gaba (our own brainwrap) has extensive section-by-section reporting on the bill and its health provisions as it stood as of the weekend. Some of that—the Medicare, Medicaid, and prescription drug pieces—are the most subject to change. Assuming Joe Manchin hasn’t blown the whole thing to smithereens.

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Georgia congresswoman and anti-mask, anti-vaccine zealot Marjorie Taylor Greene was hit with four more fines Monday after refusing to don a mask in the House chamber. Greene has racked up $48,000 in fines after failing to wear a mask about 20 times since the rule went into effect.  

“You have been observed not wearing a mask on July 29, August 2, September 20, 21, 23, 24, 27, 28, 29, 30, and October 1, 12, 19, 20, 21, 22, 25, 26, and 27, and have been asked by a member of my staff to wear a mask while in the Hall of the House of Representatives on each occasion unless recognized to speak by the chair,” House Sergeant at Arms William Walker wrote in a letter on Oct. 28. 

Greene was fined $500 in May for her first offense, with $2,500 penalties imposed for subsequent offenses/ 

“I will continue my stand on the House floor against authoritarian Democrat mandates because I don’t want the American people to stand alone,” Greene said in a statement on Monday.

Greene doubled down on her anti-mask position Tuesday, stating she also wasn’t going to get vaccinated.

Greene was forced to apologize in June after she compared mask mandates to Nazi Germany forcing Jews to wear the Star of David under Hitler’s regime. 

She was not wearing a mask during the Jan. 6 insurrection while hiding with other House members. Several Democrats were later diagnosed with COVID-19. Greene told Fox News it was “insane” for Republicans to be blamed for the infections. 

The $48,000 in fines will be deducted from Greene’s congressional salary. 

But now Greene is facing some bigger fish than mask fines. She’s being called out by QAnon fixture attorney Lin Wood, who claims Greene never paid him for legal work. Here’s the rub: Wood wasn’t working for Greene in a personal capacity. As The Daily Beast reports, Wood was handling Greene’s campaign committee as it battled two defamation disputes. And that, my friend, is a violation of federal financial reporting laws. 

“I have not been remunerated as of today,” Wood told The Daily Beast, noting he billed for last summer’s services to the tune of $5,000.

Although attorneys can work pro-bono and not break federal election laws, defamation cases are not allowed. 

“If he sent an invoice for legal services, this wouldn’t fit under the category of legal services lawyers can provide for free. So the Federal Election Commission would say that these costs must be reflected on her reports,” Brett Kappel, campaign finance specialist at Harmon Curran, told The Daily Beast. “It could be what’s called a ‘disputed debt,’ but you still have to report that, along with who did the work and what it was for.”

“A worse interpretation for Greene would be that the campaign accepted an illegal corporate contribution,” Kappel added. “But at the end of the day, a campaign can’t have someone do this kind of legal work without it being disclosed.”

Speaking of illegal, how about the new finding by The Daily Beast that on Jan. 4, 5, and 6, Greene made four payments totaling $25,500 in advertising to Parler, a social media platform popular with right-wing users, many of the planners of the insurrection, and those who participated in the attack?

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Even before the polls opened in Virginia on Tuesday, Republican pundits lined up to assure their base that any election resulting in a Democratic victory was supposedly “stolen.”

This is now their go-to play in advance of every election—especially consequential ones with a national audience. Sure, Republicans haven’t won the popular vote in a presidential contest since 2004 (as GOP Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger notes). And now more than ever, they relish catering to their base voters to the exclusion of absolutely everyone else.

So even as Republicans place their bets on a 50-minus-1 strategy in most elections, they groom their base to believe their views have majority support and they are the victims of disenfranchisement—which couldn’t be further from the truth.

Witness former GOP speaker and now fringe conspiracist Newt Gingrich on Fox News Monday when asked whether a close finish in Virginia’s gubernatorial race could signal good things for Republicans.

“First of all, if it’s really tight, they’ll steal it,” Gingrich responded, referring to Democrats. “So you can’t afford to have a really tight election. You have to win by a big enough margin that they can’t steal it.”

Gingrich, once a supposed thought leader in the GOP, is nothing more than a conspiracy theory trash talker now. Desperate to stay relevant, Gingrich is just regurgitating fringe talking points fashioned by coup-inciter Donald Trump and indictee-turned-pardon-recipient Steve Bannon.

On his radio show last week, Bannon didn’t just lie, he offered the polar opposite of the truth: projecting the entire sick GOP strategy onto Democrats.

“They’re Democrats. They’re going to try to steal it,” Bannon told his audience according to Mother Jones. “They can’t win elections they don’t steal, right? They understand this. This is what they did in ’20. It’s time now to start calling them out.”

Trump started pounding the “steal” drum a couple months ago, when he told a right-wing radio show on Sept. 1, “You know how they cheat in elections. The Virginia governor’s election — you better watch it.”

On Monday, Trump also released a statement underscoring the notion that something untoward was afoot in Virginia.

“I am not a believer in the integrity of Virginia’s elections, lots of bad things went on, and are going on,” Trump wrote. “Terry McAuliffe is a low-life politician who lies, cheats, and steals,” Trump added.

The GOP’s constant baseless rants about stolen elections have in many ways had the desired effect. An NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll this week found that nearly two-thirds of GOP voters (64%) said they don’t trust elections to be fair, saying they either have very little faith in elections or no faith at all.

Overall, the poll found that 58% of respondents had either a great deal/good amount of trust in elections to be fair, including 86% of Democrats, 60% of independents, and just 34% of Republicans.

But Trump’s Big Lie hasn’t just stoked distrust among Republicans and GOP-leaners, it has also made them more prone to violence. In a PRRI poll also released this week, 30% of Republicans agreed that “true American patriots might have to resort to violence in order to save our country.” That sentiment was particularly high among respondents who believe 2020 was “stolen” from Trump, with 39% of that cohort endorsing potential violence.

The GOP’s perpetual commitment to the baseless “steal” narrative could have some short-term upsides for Democrats, but ultimately it is serving to entirely undermine the nation’s democratic system of government.  

On the one hand, regardless of the Virginia results, Republicans are continually depressing some of their voters by incessantly stoking distrust in them. On the other hand, Trump and his henchmen are grooming his voters for violence, which is surely baked into their calculations.

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An unidentified Virginia voter had his big moment to articulate his opposition to critical race theory in public schools with the political comedy pair The Good Liars, and to say the least, he fumbled the ball. To expand on that, he fumbled in a way that seems to be representative of many Republican voters riled up by clips of outraged parents at school board meetings and GOP politicians in televised interviews.

They’re angry, that much is obvious, but often they’re not exactly sure about what. When comedian Jason Selvig asked the Virginia man about the most important issue in the gubernatorial race in the state, he said that it was “getting back to the basics of teaching children, not teaching them critical race theory.” It was a fair enough opinion, but upon further questioning, Selvig learned it was based on very little actual knowledge of what critical race theory is. When he asked the voter what the framework was, he responded: “Well, I’m not going to get into the specifics of it because I don’t understand it that much, but it’s something that I don’t, what little bit that I know, I don’t care for.”

Selvig pushed the voter for an explanation of the little bit he knows about critical race theory, and he doubled down on his position. “I don’t have that much knowledge on it, but it’s something that I don’t care for,” he said. Some would argue there’s a reason the man doesn’t know much about the framework, which maintains that America’s legal system is largely based on its history with racism. The theory is a higher-level academic framework more frequently taught in law schools, and elementary or even high school campuses were never under any real “threat” of the framework being taught there.

A Nevada superintendent told an angry crowd protesting the theory at a school board meeting as much, but the words of Douglas School District Superintendent Keith Lewis did little to appease the Nevada residents, among them a former attorney general vying for a Senate position to represent the state, CNN reported. “I call on this board to permanently ban critical race theory and all of its appendages,” Adam Laxalt said to the crowd. The attendees clapped, failing to recognize the thinly veiled political tactic of pouncing on a fiery nonissue to drum up support.

Laxalt didn’t have to promise anything or explain how he would actually represent the people of Nevada to garner support from the school board attendees. He just had to call for the removal of something already out of play in schools. It was the easiest of wins that while those like the voter interviewed by Selvig were susceptible, Douglas High School students Jacob Lewis, Sydney Hastings, and Kimora Whitacre were not. “I feel they don’t understand that our school doesn’t even have CRT,” Lewis told CNN about the school board critics. “They’re arguing for something that we don’t even have.”

Whitacre told the news network she didn’t know any of the protesters featured in one school board meeting she could access via Zoom, but she could clearly see the effect the criticism was having on educators. “You can see the wear it takes on our administrators,” Whitacre said. “They’re just trying to educate us. That’s where I get disappointed. We’re just trying to learn.”

Every vote counts and it is not too late to reach Virginia voters today. Click here to phone bank and get this victory over the finish line! 

RELATED: What if GOP pushed school ban on planes instead of critical race theory?

RELATED: ‘It didn’t happen’: Mom’s claim school lesson led to white kid asking if she’s evil raises red flag

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Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has decided to brush aside the effort by Sen. Joe Manchin to derail the reconciliation package Congress has been focused on for months and keep moving. She told reporters Tuesday that they will try to get the bill to the Rules Committee on Wednesday, to prepare it to go to the floor for a final vote on Thursday. That would put the House on track to potentially pass both the bipartisan hard infrastructure bill that the Senate has already passed (let’s keep calling it BIF), and the large domestic spending bill that comprises President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better (BBB). The BBB would still need to pass in the Senate, where it needs every Democratic vote, but is not subject to the filibuster, so Democrats can do it on their own.

The issues that are still outstanding, Pelosi told members in a closed meeting Tuesday, are climate, prescription drugs, and immigration. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus is fine with votes this week on both of the bills. Whether that can actually happen is questionable, because the remaining issues are thorny politically, with Manchin still bigfooting his way around, stomping good ideas down.

Those antics are one of the reasons the House Democrats want to get this done. “I think we need to move. I think every day we delay plays into Joe Manchin’s theatrics,” House Budget Chair John Yarmuth, a Kentucky Democrat, told Politico. He said that he told his colleagues the same thing in a Monday night meeting. Manchin will keep up this game of whack-a-mole indefinitely—once Biden and Democratic leadership answer one of his demands, he’ll just come up with another.

Manchin’s been doing this for months, with some help from colleague Kyrsten Sinema. The Arizona Democrat has been less obstructive in recent days, so for now she seems to be less of a thorn for Democrats, except for the pesky issue of reversing the Trump tax giveaway to the rich in order to fund good stuff for everyone else. “There is no one except Kyrsten Sinema who thinks substantively we shouldn’t reverse the Trump tax cuts and who doesn’t think politically it wouldn’t be a much better thing for us to do than what we are doing,” a Democratic senator told CNN’s Ron Brownstein. “And that to me is the biggest disappointment of this whole thing.”

That aside, the three big issues yet to be resolved each present different complications, some that could be resolved straightforwardly, like immigration. What everyone is waiting on is the results of the third attempt by Senate Democrats to get immigration reform cleared for the package, which could happen Tuesday. Given the big news on that Tuesday, that Elizabeth MacDonough was at Immigration and Naturalization Service prosecutor working to deport people before she joined the parliamentarian’s office, Democrats have every reason to challenge an adverse ruling from her. By all rights, she should recuse herself from this one, given her professional background. Her not doing so gives Democrats all the justification they need to ignore her advice.

On the prescription drug piece, there’s a glimmer of an agreement giving Medicare the ability to negotiate on a narrow set of drugs, including insulin. It would cap drug price hikes to the rate of inflation, and include a $2,000 annual cap on what Medicare enrollees have to spend out of pocket. That’s according to Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden. Capping out-of-pocket prescription drug spending for people with the highest expenses and enacting it immediately is a good idea. It wouldn’t save the government nearly as much money as full drug price negotiation, but it would save a lot of seniors a lot of money. There is no limit now to what Medicare Part D enrollees pay out on drugs.

Importantly, Sen. Bob Menendez, a big PhRMA booster in the Senate and a stalwart obstacle to drug price reforms, is “on board” with this proposal. The New Jersey Democrat told Politico “I’ve been talking to Chairman Wyden quite a bit and I think we’re on a pathway to have negotiations and a series of other things.” Menendez justifies his resistance to reforms by saying  “In a state that has 300,000 jobs in the pharmaceutical industry … they’re not supportive of price negotiations but it will have price negotiation and we will get a big chunk of money out of them.” There are probably more seniors trying to decide between buying their prescription or paying their heating bill in New Jersey than there are pharmaceutical jobs, but at least there could be partial drug price negotiations going out of this.

On the last big issue, climate, negotiators are working on how to cut methane emissions to help meet Biden’s goal, reiterated at the Glasgow climate summit, of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 50% of 2005 levels by the year 2030. Lawmakers are replacing the word “fee” with the word “penalty” for oil and gas companies that have to pay up for the methane that escapes from their operations. The penalty in the new version of the provision would start a $900 per ton starting in 2023, down from $1,500. The penalty would increase to $1,200 per ton in 2024 and $1,500 in 2025 and beyond. Delaware Sen. Tom Carper has been working on Manchin with this one. Because, of course, it’s Manchin who’s the problem. Manchin hasn’t commented on the proposal.

At the same time, the Biden administration has released a broad new set of regulations Tuesday to cut those methane emissions. The proposed rules “could establish standards for old wells, impose more frequent and stringent leak monitoring, and require the capture of natural gas found alongside oil that is often released into the atmosphere.” The industry is opposed to the proposed legislation and thus far non-committal on Biden’s proposed rules.

Manchin could tank the whole thing either on the basis of the climate provisions, or immigration, or, well, anything. He could justify rejecting the whole thing if the majority decides to include immigration, even though he’s offered no objections to adding it to the package. He’d hinge his objection on the procedure rather than the substance. Some of his colleagues believe he’s absolutely fine with nothing passing at all. An anonymous senator unloaded about that to Brownstein.

It’s “nonsense,” the senator said, for Manchin to claim, as he did Monday, that no one “wants to compromise” with him given that the bill’s cost was cut in half largely to meet his objections.

But Manchin, the senator added, feels that he’s compromised plenty already because “he’d say ‘I’m at zero’“—meaning he would be content passing no reconciliation bill at all. “I believe him if he says, … ‘I’d rather go home to West Virginia and say I’m not passing anything,’“ the senator added. In private or public, when it comes to the reconciliation bill, Manchin “never says anything positive about it. He doesn’t like it … but apparently he’s decided he doesn’t want to destroy the Biden presidency, which I’m grateful for.”

That’s the big question. Will he be comfortable tanking Biden’s agenda and potentially his presidency. Some senators don’t think so. “Manchin is not going to be the guy who pulls the foundation out of the Biden first-year track record,” Virginia’s Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine told Politico. “I don’t think he’ll surprise me on this.”

That could be what Democrats are betting on now in deciding to just push the bill through and put Manchin and Biden both to the test. Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Senate Budget Chair—is on board—with just getting it done. “[T]his process cannot go on week after week, month after month,” he told reporters Tuesday. “It’s finally got to come to an end. And I will do everything I can to see that we get a vote on the floor of the Senate as soon as possible. Hopefully next week.” He added “This thing has dragged on for long enough. It’s got to get to the floor and if people want to vote against it, they have the right.”

Meanwhile, Manchin is insisting he needs more time, while also insisting that he’s working in good faith – on all sorts of good things. “My goodness, we’re agreeing on childcare, we’re agreeing on pre-K, we’re agreeing on homecare,” he told reporters. “And we’re working on climate very progressive, I think in a good way and we’ll get something done I believe.”

Just . . . someday. Maybe.

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Donald Trump has been handing out what pass as endorsements for candidates running in upcoming elections, and the only criteria seems to be absolute fealty to any and all things MAGA. Since Donald Trump only represents Donald Trump and his policies consist of protecting and gathering more power for Donald Trump, the delusional nature of courting a Trump endorsement is frightening. Pennsylvania, meanwhile, has been a true focal point of a lot of truly dubious Jan. 6 insurrectionism and Big Lie activities.

Sean Parnell, an Army veteran, is running in the GOP primary for Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate seat, and has received the Donald Trump faux-golden ticket endorsement that so many extremists covet. Along with other GOP candidates like former professional football player Herschel Walker (who has also received the Trump nod) and former disgraced Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens (who hasn’t yet received it), Parnell seems to share a history of violence against the women in his life. Like, real dark and scary violence.

On Monday, the MAGA candidate’s estranged wife Laurie Parnell took the stand to testify under oath in the couple’s custody hearings. Warning: graphic details of domestic abuse to follow

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that Laurie Parnell gave very emotional testimony detailing the verbal and physical abuse she endured at the hands of Sean Parnell during their marriage. This includes accusations that he would frequently call her a “whore,” and a “piece of shit,” and had once left her alone on the side of the road after the two argued about her pregnancy—that Sean wanted her to abort. “He tried to choke me out on a couch and I literally had to bite him” she testified. “He was strangling me.” Parnell has denied all of his estranged wife’s allegations. 

Parnell has been in a very contentious divorce and custody dispute with his estranged wife. The details of this divorce include very serious allegations of severe abuse on the part of Parnell toward his wife. Protective orders have been filed against Parnell, and he has tried to silence his wife with his own set of protective orders. However, a judge did not find that there was grounds for the kind of “sweeping gag order” Sean Parnell was hoping for in order to keep this story quiet during his campaign.

Receiving an endorsement from Trump means that you either believe in a make-believe universe where Donald Trump has always received all of the votes and really is the current president, and only mysterious deep state characters who are communists, Muslims, and/or woke corporations, are stopping this from happening. Conversely, you are so cynical and sociopathic that you believe this is your best bet to climb up a the ladder of wealth and power. Those are the two poles within which you will find any and all Donald Trump endorsements.