 A couple of weeks ago on the show, we talked about Joe Manchin's dirty deal. Now for those of you unfamiliar with what that is, essentially in an effort to get Manchin to support the Inflation Reduction Act, Democratic Party leadership promised Joe Manchin that they would include a provision within the next must pass budget bill that would allow for accelerated permitting of fossil fuel projects, including the Mountain Valley Pipeline, which he's trying to get passed in his home state of Virginia. Now the reason why they wanted to include this in must pass legislation is because they know that you can't get members of Congress, especially progressives, to vote for it unless they were forced to do that. So as a result, Manchin was trying to get this passed and there was growing opposition from progressives, from activists, but also from Republicans who didn't like Joe Manchin's provision because they thought that his permitting provision wasn't as good, wasn't a big enough giveaway to fossil fuel donors. So he held a press conference essentially condemning everyone, progressives, Republicans for engaging in what he called revenge politics, which was incredibly petulant. And today we are learning that he is officially taking the L and progressives and environmental activists. And to be fair, Republicans to have one because Bloomberg's Eric Wasson tweets out, Senator Manchin throws in the towel, asks Schumer to remove energy permitting from the spending bill, doesn't have the votes. In other words, we won. So to be clear, the reason why he's asking for this provision to be removed from the spending bill is because if it's in there and he knows there aren't enough votes for it to pass, then he gets blamed for shutting down the government. So he doesn't want to bear that burden. So as a result, he's taking the L and he's withdrawing this provision or asking Schumer to withdraw this provision. So this is really, really encouraging news. And almost immediately after we got this news, Bernie Sanders put out a video celebrating the death of this provision and essentially commending activists for putting pressure on Democrats to kill this. I want to thank the many hundreds of environmental and social justice organizations who stood up and said to Senator Manchin, your idea of increasing carbon emissions in the midst of the climate crisis that we're facing is absolutely absurd. So I'm delighted that that provision was withdrawn from the continuing resolution. What we have got to do now is increase our efforts significantly to build sustainable energy systems and move aggressively on energy efficiency. My congratulations to all who helped to defeat this terrible proposal. You love to see it. And to be clear, Bernie Sanders is right here. Yes, there were congressional Democrats who exerted pressure on Joe Manchin and Democratic Party leadership, progressives in Congress in the house specifically, they sent a letter to Pelosi saying that they don't want this to be included to must pass legislation, though not necessarily saying that we're not going to vote for it. But there were some individuals like Bernie Sanders who were committed to voting against it. There were Republicans who weren't committed to supporting this because they didn't think that Manchin's permitting provision went far enough, as I stated. But ultimately, this is a win for activists who exerted nonstop pressure on Democratic Party leadership, who protested, who put their bodies on the line to make it be heard that they are not going to tolerate this. So this is a win. I want to make that very clear. However, it's not over. It's over for now, but the battle is simply postponed. As Common Dreams explains, neither Schumer nor Manchin gave any indication they are fully giving up on the effort with the West Virginians saying that it is unfortunate that members of the United States Senate are allowing politics to put the energy security of our nation at risk. Oh, sure. Quote a failed vote on something as critical as comprehensive permitting reform only serves to embolden leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin, who wished to see America fall Manchin added, for that reason, and my firmly held belief that we should never come to the brink of a government shutdown of her politics. I have asked Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to remove the permitting language from the continuing resolution we will vote on this evening. Schumer, for his part, blamed Republicans who want permitting policy to go even further in favor of polluters. So I think that politically it's smart for Schumer to place blame on Republicans, even if they don't necessarily deserve the credit. But you don't want to give them a win ahead of an election. You don't want to say that they stopped this Democrat bill from passing, right? So I understand and expect Schumer to do that. I just love the framing from Joe Manchin. Oh, well, to not include my provision to not support this provision because of politics, we're emboldening the likes of Vladimir Putin. Okay, but if they supported it, then they'd be emboldening your donors who funded you and supported you. And what I love is that Manchin was so desperate that he enlisted the support of the fossil fuel industry, including CEOs to exert pressure to lobby Congress to get this passed. But it still wasn't enough. It's still failed. So I'm genuinely a little bit surprised that this is the way that this whole thing ended. But either way, it's a great victory. And even if it comes back up in the future, I'm going to take this dub for now because it's great to see Joe Manchin have a loss because he's kind of been dictating the terms of every single piece of legislation over the last couple of years. So to see him finally taken L, you love to see it. You just love to see it.