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Jeff Zucker and the boys in the bubble “If you aren’t making news, you aren’t governing,” Matt Gaetz, the scandal-plagued Florida congressman, writes in his memoir Firebrand. As Jay Caruso reports in our February cover story, the ultra-loyal Trumpist and inveterate controversy-seeker grew up in the house used to film The Truman Show. Given that Gaetz embodies the blurring of the lines between reality and fiction, entertainment and politics, performance and action, that biographical detail is almost too good to be true. But how much of an outlier is Gaetz, really?

Congresswoman Terri Sewell hasn't been deterred by court injunctions against President Biden's vaccine mandates; instead, the Democratic representative for Alabama's 7th district has instituted her own. Only vaccinated persons may meet in-person with Representative Sewell or her staff, according to an email obtained by The Spectator. Representative Sewell's scheduler recently sent out an offer for congressional staffers to nab some free peanuts from Alabama. For those not in the know, congressional offices regularly receive free promotional products from their state and share or trade with other offices. A note at the bottom of the "FREE SNACKS" email, however, suggests the unvaccinated might not be able to get their hands on those tasty peanuts.

Normalcy 2.0 Normalcy, as casual observers of the 2020 election will know, is a popular proposition. A new poll reaffirms the American people’s hunger for getting back to they way things were. According to a Monmouth survey published Monday, 70 percent of Americans agree that “it’s time to accept that Covid is here to stay and we just need to get on with our lives.” Among Republicans, 89 percent agree with the statement. Among independents, the figure is 71 percent. And among Democrats, it is 47 percent. On one level, the Biden administration appears to sense which way the wind is blowing. Omicron was met with panicked resignation in the White House.

Congress gets busy You may not have stuck to all of your New Year’s resolutions, but you probably got more done than Congress in January. The first month of 2022 wasn’t exactly productive for the legislative branch. The Democrats’ election law push was over before it had begun, while discussions of what, if anything might, the party might be able to glue together, wave around and call “Build Back Better” got nowhere. But developments both at home and overseas mean Capitol Hill faces a far busier February. First on the agenda is Russian sanctions. Senate Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Bob Menendez and Jim Risch, the ranking Republican on the committee, are leading a bipartisan team working on various sets of measures to counter whatever Vladimir Putin does next.

President Biden must not be feline optimistic about his paltry poll numbers, particularly after his landmark Build Back Better Act died on the Senate floor. But he’s finally delivered on one campaign promise: he’s got a cat. The First Family circulated pictures of Willow, a two-year-old gray and white short-haired tabby cat, on Friday morning. According to Politico, Willow first met Jill Biden “when she jumped on stage and interrupted her remarks during a 2020 campaign stop.” The New York Times reports that "Willow is named after the first lady’s hometown, Willow Grove, Pennsylvania." The cat hails from western Pennsylvania, which could prove useful for the Democrats as they try to claw back some credibility in the run-up to the midterms.

Another perfect call? Joe Biden spoke to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky yesterday. The White House read of the phone call suggested an unremarkable conversation. According to the official summary, Biden reaffirmed US commitments to Ukraine, noted previous support America had offered and discussed with Zelensky efforts to find a diplomatic solution to the present crisis. A Ukrainian official’s account of the call paints a very different picture. CNN reports that, according to the senior official, the call “did not go well.” They described a “long and frank” conversation in which Zelensky and Biden found themselves at odds with one another over the threat of imminent invasion.

The retirement of Stephen Breyer is a rare piece of good news for Joe Biden. With the president and his team busy deciding which black woman they will pick to replace the court’s oldest justice and the senior member of its liberal wing, it’s not hard to see where the story ends. This may be the first time a president has had to get a Supreme Court nomination through a 50-50 Senate, but surely even this White House will manage to get the job done. But the politics of the nomination process are less predictable than its outcome. It’s not hard to see the political upside for the president. A disunited party might rally around Biden’s pick while the nomination process could remind them who the real enemy is.

Long live the gerontocracy: Nancy Pelosi will seek reelection in 2022. The House speaker, who turns eighty-two in March, announced her move in a Twitter video. “While we have made progress much more needs to be done to improve people’s lives,” Pelosi said. “Our democracy is at his because of assaults on the truth, the assault on the US Capitol and the state-by-state assault on voting rights.” “This election is crucial: nothing less is at stake than our democracy,” the speaker continued. “But as we say: we don’t agonize, we organize! And that is why I am running for re-election to Congress and respectfully seek your support.

Nikki Fried, Florida’s commissioner of agriculture and Democratic candidate for the state’s governorship, recently compared Governor Ron DeSantis to Hitler. Fried’s deplorable comparison, sadly, was right in line with an erratic gubernatorial campaign laced with desperation and idiocy. Fried has attempted to position herself as Florida’s savior from the supposedly despotically inclined DeSantis. The problem for her — and for anyone who runs against DeSantis for that matter — is that over the course of the pandemic the incumbent has become an extremely popular political superstar. An increasing number of Floridians want him to continue transforming the state as he sees fit.