Is Donald Trump's stranglehold over the Republican Party fading? One can only hope....

It is indisputable that Trump's voice is fading. Banished from polite online society, Trump is now reduced to sending out an email blast every once in a while and doing interviews on far-right media outlets. This does get his message out to his base, but with a lot smaller a megaphone than he once wielded to his tens of millions of social media followers.

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It is a rare day when I devote a whole column to praising any Republican politician, but Representative Liz Cheney certainly deserves some thanks and appreciation today. She has accepted the role of de facto Republican lead on the House January 6th Select Committee, much to the consternation of most of the other members of her caucus (including everyone in GOP leadership). Cheney and Adam Kinzinger were the only two Republicans willing to honor their oath of office to the United States Constitution by accepting a seat on the committee and bringing a serious demeanor to the investigation into what went so horribly wrong.

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Today the House's new January 6th Select Committee convened for the first time and held its first hearing. Today's initial hearing was all about setting the stage for what is to come, explaining why such an investigation is necessary, and countering all the Republican gaslighting that has been attempted of late by instead reminding the country of exactly what did happen that day. It was brutal -- the videos played (once again) showed an out-of-control mob hellbent on harming sworn police officers while storming the seat of democracy, in an effort to overturn an election result they didn't like. Just like we all saw with our own eyes on that dark day.

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Last week was supposed to be Infrastructure Week. I naively believed this was possible. However, Senate Republicans then blew a big hole in that, leaving in doubt if even this week will prove to be the grand time when bipartisanship reigns once again in the Senate chamber and hands President Biden a big bipartisan gift... or not. Because so far, all the Republicans seem to be proving is that they are capable of Olympic-level stalling. They can always come up with new reasons why something can't get done. They are masters of it, in fact.

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It's like the Republicans all suddenly got put on double-secret probation or something. It seems to have finally dawned on them that the Delta variant of the COVID-19 virus is actually real, and it is now killing off an inordinate number of their own base voters. So some of them had, as President Joe Biden said this week, their "altar call" moment.

Of course, hearing "Delta," what popped into our minds for this tectonic shift was Animal House's John Belushi asking his fellow Delts: "Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell, no!" Of course, his speech ended when his frat brother stood up and proclaimed: "I think this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part." To which Belushi responded: "And we're just the guys to do it!"

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Last night, President Joe Biden participated in a town hall in Cincinnati, Ohio, hosted by CNN and moderated by Don Lemon. He made some news there, because when he was directly asked if preserving the Senate filibuster was more important than passing voting rights bills, he sounded like he kind of wanted to have it both ways. He seems absolutely convinced that either: (1) Republicans are going to suddenly magically develop a conscience and a high-minded sense of civic duty and start joining with Democrats to pass good legislation; or (2) that getting rid of the filibuster would somehow "throw the entire Congress into chaos and nothing will get done." The first seems naive, at best. The second, however, is completely backwards.

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Republicans in the House of Representatives, led by Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, are trying to paint Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her Democrats as being somehow "too partisan" about investigating the attempted insurrection at the United States Capitol on the sixth of January. This is supposed to somehow delegitimize the effort, but it is in fact laughable on the face of it. Because when you get right down to it, of course it is a partisan exercise. The reason? Because one of America's major two political parties was complicit in attempting to overturn the will of the people in a national presidential election. One party did that. In a very partisan way. So any investigation of the incident is going to naturally expose this fact in a glaring way, because at this point only one party is even interested in getting at the truth -- the other party doesn't want that at all because they know they are so complicit. It doesn't matter who investigates it, the facts are the facts -- and one party bears the blame. This is precisely what Republicans don't want to talk about, which is why they've attempted to either stop or sabotage the entire effort to investigate 1/6 in any way, shape, or form from the very beginning.

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The ball is now in Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's court. Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy finally named his five picks for the 1/6 Select Committee investigation, but the way the bill creating the committee was written gives Pelosi full veto power over any or all of these suggestions. At a minimum, she should reject at least one of the names put forth by McCarthy. [Editorial Note: This entire article should be read "as of this writing," as Pelosi could act at any time.]

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It became a running joke in the previous administration (the phrase a mockery since none of it ever came to fruition), but we may now have finally arrived at a real, honest-to-goodness "Infrastructure Week." Or, to put it another way, it's finally time for everyone to stop kidding around. By week's end, we may know what sort of legacy President Joe Biden is going to leave. He could be counted by history as one of the more transformational presidents of the modern era, or it all may fall apart at the last minute. Either way, this week will likely be the pivotal one.

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There were two interesting developments in the congressional sausage-making process this week, both of which Democrats should immediately adopt as their main messages for the next week or so.

The first was that Senators Bernie Sanders and Mark Warner announced they had come to a compromise on the reconciliation bill which will fund the lion's share of President Joe Biden's economic agenda. They settled on a total figure of $3.5 trillion in new spending, which is far less than Bernie's original goal of $6 trillion (just for this bill alone), but also far more than the opening bid of the fiscally-conservative Democrats, which was in the $1.5 to $2 trillion range. It also will mean that Biden got the exact total he asked for in his "three-legged stool" of economic legislation. His first big legislative achievement (the American Rescue Plan) spent $1.9 trillion, and the bipartisan infrastructure deal represents $0.6 trillion more, which will mean a grand total of $6 trillion for all three -- which is exactly what Biden asked for in the first place.

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