After Hours: After passing a bill to keep the government running, the House stalled last night when liberal Democrats staged a revolt against President Biden’s $1 trillion infrastructure bill. The leadership plans to take it up again today.

  The reason for the progressive stall is Biden’s second, roughly $3.5 trillion package that proposes to expand Medicare, combat climate change and beef up federal safety-net programs, all financed with tax increases on wealthier Americans and corporations. Democratic moderates including  Sens. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia say that’s  too much money so the progressives in the House blocked the smaller infrastructure bill those senators need. 

  Biden’s infrastructure bill would expand high-speed internet access, devote $110 billion for roads and bridges and other projects as well as $25 billion for airports and Amtrak passenger rail service. It would also begin the shift toward electric vehicles with new charging stations and improving the electricity grid to support them.

  But progressives refused to go along without also getting into the bigger social policy bill their agenda of paid family leave, universal prekindergarten, Medicare expansion, and measures to fight climate change.

 The moderates want to take a big bite out of Biden’s larger, $3.5 trillion bill. Manchin told reporters last night, “I’m trying to make sure they understand that I’m at 1.5 trillion.” 

Jagged Little Pill: The drug giant Merck announced that it has developed the first antiviral pill for Covid that could cut hospitalizations and deaths by half when given to high-risk patients early in their infections.

  The drug called molnupiravir, and others likely to follow, could become major tools in fighting the coronavirus pandemic. “I think it will translate into many thousands of lives being saved worldwide, where there’s less access to monoclonal antibodies, and in this country, too,” Dr. Robert Shafer, an infectious disease at Stanford University, told The NY Times.

On Target: In a stunning revelation, more than half of police killings in the United States are not reported as such, according to a new statistical study by researchers at the University of Washington.

  The researchers compared death certificates with public reports, finding that  about 55 percent of fatal encounters with cops between 1980 and 2018 were listed as some other cause of death. They say that medical examiners appear to be bowing to police pressure to hide the true cause.

  The study found that during a period in which nearly 31,000 Americans were killed by the police, more than 17,000 of them were not listed in official statistics as killings by police.  It also found that black people were 3.5 times as likely to be killed by the police as white Americans.

  Dr. Christopher Murray of the University of Washington told The NY Times that, “I think the big takeaway is that most people in public health tend to take vital statistics for the US and other countries as the absolute truth, and it turns out, as we show, the vital statistics are missing more than half of the police violence deaths.” 

Beach Reading: A stretch of sand in Manhattan Beach, California known as “Bruce’s Beach” has been given back to descendants of the black couple from whom the land was stolen.

  Gov. Gavin Newsom yesterday signed a law giving the property back to the family.

  More than 100 years ago, Charles and Willa Bruce ran a beachfront resort where black people could go in an otherwise segregated area. In 1924 the City of Manhattan Beach seized the property in the name of creating a public park which they never built. The clear intent was to drive black people away from the beach.

  As debate stretched on over decades about whether the Bruce family should be compensated, or the property restored to family ownership, opponents argued that people who were not alive at the time should not have to pay for the wrongs of the past.

  LA County Supervisor Janice Hahn said, “The law was used to steal this property 100 years ago, and the law today will give it back.”

The Spin Rack: The US Postal Service starting today is executing a plan to slow the delivery of mail. Most affected will be parts of Florida and Texas as well as Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, and Arizona. Up to 40 percent of first class mail could take five days to arrive. — The North Carolina Courage professional women’s soccer team fired head coach Paul Riley after several former players accused him of sexual coercion. — A surge of healthcare workers in New York have been vaccinated since they were required to do so to keep their jobs. — Smith & Wesson, the gun company located in Massachusetts since before the Civil War, announced it will move its headquarters to Tennessee after legislators in the Bay State proposed strict new gun control laws. 

The Obit Page: Tommy Kirk, who starred as Travis Coates in the 1957 film “Old Yeller,” about a boy who has to shoot his beloved dog that’s gone mad with rabies. You couldn’t leave the theater with dry eyes. Kirk was 79. 

Shaken, Not Stirred: The James Bond franchise is releasing what is expected to be its fifth and last feature starring Daniel Craig as 007. Despite the plot on screen, what Bond is trying to do in “No Time to Die” is revive the movie business that has been devastated by the global pandemic.

  The movie companies need people to buy tickets and go to theaters because the revenue can’t nearly be matched by streaming services. The LA Times reports that in the 4^th quarter, starting today, Hollywood is featuring theater openings of comedies, horror pics, dramas, thrillers, musicals, comic-book superhero movies.

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