Top Democrats are preparing to make the case to impose new limits on the filibuster, in a move that could bring to a head six months of smoldering tensions over an expected Republican blockade of Joe Biden’s legislative agenda. The Senate had its first filibuster of this Congress last week, when Republicans used the tactical rule to block a bipartisan House-passed measure to create a 9/11-style commission to investigate the Capitol attack perpetrated a pro-Trump mob. Even as a majority of senators voted in favor of the commission, the bill’s defeat at the hands of Republicans deploying the filibuster underscored the ease with which legislation can be blocked under current Senate rules that require a 60-vote margin in the 100-strong chamber. Republicans at the same time last week delayed a bipartisan measure aimed at improving American competitiveness with China, also proving to Democrats that the party was more interested in denying legislative wins to Biden than advancing bills that they helped write. Now, in an attempt to demonstrate Republicans have all but turned the filibuster into a weapon to wage bad-faith politics, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer is embarking on a strategy to force votes on some of Biden’s most high-profile measures. The idea is to demonstrate to Democrats opposed to curbing the filibuster – most notably West Virginia’s Joe Manchin and Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema – that Republicans will sink any Democratic policy, giving Schumer no choice but to defuse the procedural rule in order to pass Biden’s vision.

The Justice Department in a court filing Tuesday said it can “vigorously” defend a religious exemption from federal civil rights law that allows federally funded religious schools to discriminate against LGBTQ students, a move that surprised some LGBTQ advocates who said the wording went further than just an obligation to defend an existing law. In the filing, the Biden administration said it “shares the same ultimate objective” as the conservative Christian schools named in the case. “What this means is that the government is now aligning itself with anti-LGBTQ hate in order to vigorously defend an exemption that everyone knows causes severe harm to LGBTQ students using taxpayer money,” said Paul Carlos Southwick, director of the Religious Exemption Accountability Project, which filed the case in March on behalf of dozens of current and past students at conservative religious colleges and universities. “It will make our case harder if the federal government plans to vigorously defend it like they have indicated.” At issue in Hunter v. the U.S. Department of Education are 40 LGBTQ students at conservative religious colleges and universities who are suing the government for its role in providing funding to schools with discriminatory policies. The schools say they have a First Amendment right to promote traditional religious beliefs about sexuality and gender. “The Plaintiffs seek safety and justice for themselves and for the countless sexual and gender minority students whose oppression, fueled by government funding, and unrestrained by government intervention, persists with injurious consequences to mind, body and soul,” reads the March suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Oregon. “The Department’s inaction leaves students unprotected from the harms of conversion therapy, expulsion, denial of housing and healthcare, sexual and physical abuse and harassment, as well as the less visible, but no less damaging, consequences of institutionalized shame, fear, anxiety and loneliness.”

President Biden is revoking the Trump administration orders that sought to ban TikTok, WeChat and other Chinese apps and replacing it with a new security review that could prompt fresh steps to restrict those or other apps. A new executive order will create a process to scrutinize whether apps controlled by a foreign adversary present risks to U.S. national security and the security of Americans’ sensitive personal data, the White House said Wednesday. After the review, the government can “take action, as appropriate,” the administration said in a fact sheet. Senior administration officials said they remain concerned about the risks posed by Chinese apps but noted that the Trump administration’s ban order had faced several court challenges. The order was blocked by judicial rulings. Asked whether the Biden administration still intends to ban TikTok or WeChat, one senior administration official said: “All the mobile apps named in the revoked executive orders are eligible for evaluation under the process we’ve outlined.” “The administration is extremely committed to ensure protection of Americans’ data from foreign at-risk apps across the board … including large and popular apps. I think there are a wide range of actions that can be negotiated or imposed to ensure Americans’ data can be comprehensively protected,” another senior administration official told reporters Wednesday. Both officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to preview the new executive order.

If you’re big in MAGA world, comedian Chris James has probably pranked you. He joins the latest episode of Fever Dreams and shares which of his targets wanted to fight him.

“He has so much trauma that he cannot deal with stillness, face himself, or sit alone with his shit.”

The silly idea that a fictional character’s statements reflect an author’s actual beliefs is spreading.

In 1973, she made history at the Academy Awards, appearing in place of Marlon Brando, declining his statuette and making a speech about Native American rights. She has been speaking out ever since

When remembered and represented, the ravages wreaked by the chronic condition can function either as warning (“never again”) or as temptation (“great again”). Memorialization alone, therefore, is no guarantee against regression. There is not yet a permanent cure.

Tilly, the 2-year-old Border Collie who was ejected from a car Sunday during a crash, has been found. He was found on a sheep farm, where he had apparently taken up the role of sheep herder. According to Tilly's owner, he has lost some weight since Sunday's crash and is now drinking lots of water but is otherwise healthy.

Stevens’ attorney, Vincent White, a partner at White, Hilferty and Albanese, says the incident shows T-Mobile sided with Stevens’ male colleague over her. “T-Mobile chose to stand with a man who had a history of violence in the workplace over a woman who was a high performer at the company for seven years,” he said in a statement. “Caitlyn Stevens’ personal life had nothing to do with store operations, while threatening coworkers with violence hinders the productivity and well-being of the entire workplace.”

The IRS has opened an investigation into apparently leaked tax documents showing that ultra-rich Americans like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Tesla CEO Elon Musk and business tycoon Warren Buffett paid very little or no taxes, while Democrats seized on the report to further their call for higher taxes on the wealthy.

The mayoral hopeful has been staying overnight and keeping late-night and early-morning hours in the government building where he and his staff work, according to POLITICO’s recent observations.

The driver ran over a family of five, killing four of them and seriously injuring the other in a deliberate attack, Canadian police say.

President Biden on Monday announced that the Department of Justice (DOJ) will continue to defend a law that excludes Puerto Ricans from the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program, while calling on Congress to extend eligibility to the U.S. territory's residents. Biden said the Justice Department will be adhering to its practice of defending the constitutionality of federal law in the legal challenge against a provision in the Social Security Act that excludes Puerto Rico residents from the program, which provides income for low-income citizens with disabilities.

This afternoon, the New York Times published an article making a surprising claim about exobiology: that watermelons had been discovered on Mars.

As the world knows, the FDA approved Biogen’s anti-amyloid antibody today, surely the first marketed drug whose Phase III trial was stopped for futility. I think this is one of the worst FDA decisions I have ever seen, because – like the advisory committee that reviewed the application, and like the FDA’s own statisticians – I don’t believe that Biogen really demonstrated efficacy. No problem apparently. The agency seems to have approved it based on its demonstrated ability to clear beta-amyloid, and is asking Biogen to run a confirmatory trial to show efficacy. They will be absolutely overjoyed to do that, of course, because the whole time that’s going, they will be selling the first drug that (in theory) targets the etiology of Alzheimer’s. The backed-up demand is going to be gigantic, and Biogen is going to make enormous amounts of money. They have nine years, as it turns out, to get this trial done, and I feel safe in predicting that it’s going to take alllll niiiiine loooong sloooow years to get this done. Why shouldn’t it? The company certainly showed no interest whatsoever, not even a twitch, in running a confirmatory trial before this, so why should they hop to running one while the drug is selling? I continue to think that odds are quite good, and certainly unacceptably so for Biogen, that the drug will turn out in the end to have no real effect on Alzheimer’s patients at all. I’ve been dreading a decision like this for a long time.

In response to calls for a boycott of Israel from the Palestinian labor movement, longshore workers in Oakland, California, last week refused to unload cargo from an Israeli shipping operator.

“Typical birthday party attendees do not expect the hired clown or magician to start electrocuting and incapacitating people,” she wrote.

The bill, known as HR1, is a top priority for Democrats and is viewed by many in the party as the antidote to a wave of Republican-backed laws being passed on the state level that restrict people's ability to vote. It touches on almost every aspect of voting and was already passed by the House. But Manchin threw a wrench into the works Sunday when he said he would oppose the bill. That effectively dooms the measure in a narrowly divided Senate where it is universally opposed by Republicans. His decision sent voting rights groups and members of his own party scrambling for options, raising the prospect that no voting legislation would pass Congress to address what experts say is the greatest attack on voting rights in generation. Manchin has said “inaction is not an option” when it comes to voting rights. But he has exasperated fellow Democrats and voting rights groups by insisting his support for any legislation would be contingent on some Republicans voting for it as well. He also opposes eliminating the 60-vote requirement to break a filibuster, a step that would allow Democrats to pass the legislation without Republican votes.

This is all to say, "Indiana Jones Doesn't Matter" isn't annoying because it's "wrong"—Indiana Jones is not directly responsible for a Nazi regiment being struck down by the wrath of God, this is true—but because it's emblematic of the type of I-must-be-smarter-than-the-movie criticism that's ruining the way we talk about movies. It's almost designed to miss the point. It's the film-as-riddle mindset that first formed alongside the birth of the internet, but really crystalized into something insidious somewhere between the mid-point of Lost and the exact moment Inception cut to black. "Indiana Jones Doesn't Matter" is the personification of the idea films and television shows are something to be solved instead of felt; that stories are static objects made of ones-and-zeroes and to remove the flawed piece of data sends the whole thing crumbling. (Thus making you The Internet's Smartest Boi that day.) But movies are, in Roger Ebert's words, "machines that generate empathy"; whether it's a quiet character study or a globe-trotting adventure, the joy comes from living another life for a few hours. That is the result of character, not plot, and Indiana Jones is the type of character whose arc is supposed to have holes.