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Ezra Klein Profile picture
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25 Jan, 4 tweets, 1 min read
“It was the harassment of my wife, and particularly my children, that upset me more than anything else. They knew where my kids work, where they live.” nytimes.com/2021/01/24/hea…
“One day I got a letter in the mail, I opened it up and a puff of powder came all over my face and my chest. That was very, very disturbing to me and my wife because it was in my office.”

Jesus.
Putting aside the grotesque harassment Fauci received, the whole interview is a window into how lethally dysfunctional the Trump White House was on COVID. How many people could’ve been saved by a competent president and a coordinated response?
This wasn’t one of the situations where the president was disengaged. In Fauci’s telling, he was quite engaged, and that was part of the problem.

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More from @ezraklein

Ezra Klein Profile picture
26 Jan
This is a point I've been making forever but people refuse to believe it. The filibuster *diminishes* the incentive to compromise because it lets the minority kill bills and nominations outright. Without it, the choice is a protest "no" vote or compromise where you get something.
So much of the confusion in filibuster discourse comes from thinking that bipartisanship is something the majority needs to be incentivized to seek, rather than something the minority needs incentives to seek. But the reverse is true.
There's obvious reasons for the majority to want bipartisan support: Things are more popular if they're bipartisan, and the majority benefits from popular governance.

The minority has the reverse incentives: they lose if the majority is seen as governing well.
Read 8 tweets
Ezra Klein Profile picture
26 Jan
First episode of my new podcast is up! It's with @vivek_murthy, co-chair of Biden’s coronavirus task force, and you can listen to in full here. But I want to pull out some of what he told me in this thread. nytimes.com/2021/01/26/opi…
I asked him whether the FDA was being too conservative on approving rapid, at-home testing (Hi @michaelmina_lab!). “I do think we've been too conservative,” he said. “I do.”
“There's a difference between public health/surveillance testing and diagnostic testing…The FDA to me speaks to our failure to think broadly enough about the kind of testing that we needed.”


Encouraging! Hopefully they can change that, quickly.
Read 12 tweets
Ezra Klein Profile picture
26 Jan
Did Schumer win the fight with McConnell? I'm less certain on this than others. He certainly didn't lose it. Sinema and Manchin simply said what they've said before on the filibuster. On that level, McConnell got nothing new.
But another way of looking at it is this: McConnell engaged in the most blatant, ridiculous act of obstructionism imaginable, and instead of telling him that if he kept it up, they'd take that power from him, key Dems reassured him that they'd never take that power from him.
I'd have much preferred to see this end by Manchin, Sinema, and other Democrats saying they didn't want to get rid of the filibuster, even on organizing resolutions, but if McConnell didn't cut it out, they'd have no choice.
Read 6 tweets
Ezra Klein Profile picture
25 Jan
I’ve been doing a bunch of reporting on vaccine distribution, and there are a few things that experts inside and outside the administration seem to agree on:
Welp, something failed in the posting here: let's try again!
1. The Trump administration did some real good with Warp Speed, but did very little planning for distribution. The situation the Biden admin walked into was chaotic.
Read 11 tweets
Ezra Klein Profile picture
21 Jan
I think there’s good evidence that visible, tangible policies create feedback loops - Clinton failing to pass HC isn’t contrary evidence on this score.

But even if I’m wrong, then at least you passed good policies and helped a lot of people before losing!
One other possibility I take seriously but don’t argue in the piece: The book “Stealth Democracy” has a lot of evidence for the idea that what people hate is long, drawn out, angry legislative fighting. Policy preferences are weak, but process aversion is strong.
I suspect that getting rid of the filibuster and just passing lots of big stuff is a better looking process, for all the carping Republicans will do, then fighting in Congress endlessly and not getting much done.
Read 6 tweets
Ezra Klein Profile picture
21 Jan
Democrats have a lot of good ideas to help people fast, and visibly. They have good ideas for deepening democracy, like the "For The People Act." But if they let Senate Republicans filibuster everything, they will lose in 2022, and they will deserve it. nytimes.com/2021/01/21/opi…
A lot of them understand this. “I’m going to do everything I can to bring people together,” Senator @RonWyden, who will chair the powerful Senate Finance Committee, told me. “but I’m not just going to stand around and do nothing while Mitch McConnell ties everyone up in knots.”
“This is a fight not just for the future of the Democratic Party or good policy,” Senator @BernieSanders told me. “It is literally a fight to restore faith in small-d democratic government.”
Read 12 tweets

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