Good afternoon. Here are the top stories so far today.
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What happened today:
- Biden swipes at Manchin and Sinema. President Joe Biden indirectly blamed Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona on Monday for delaying progress on his sprawling infrastructure and social spending plans. "I was able to close the deal with 99% of my party," Biden said, laughing and holding up two fingers. "Two. Two people." He added, "We'll get it done."
- Facebook, Instagram down for hours. Users reported having issues accessing Facebook apps like Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Facebook itself on Monday. The problems began at around 11:45 a.m. ET. Facebook said it was "working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible." However, the apps were still down hours later. Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg's net worth is shedding billions.
- Hollywood union authorizes strike. The 60,000-strong International Association of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) union voted to authorize a strike on Monday. It comes amid claims of "excessively unsafe and harmful working hours" and "unlivable wages." In a statement, President Matthew Loeb addressed the studios, saying, "If they want to avoid a strike, they will return to the bargaining table and make us a reasonable offer."
- Elon's back at it. The dogecoin spinoff shiba inu coin jumped 30% Monday following a tweet from Elon Musk. The Tesla boss tweeted a photo of his shiba inu pup, Floki, causing #SHIB to trend on Twitter. The altcoin has jumped nearly 8,000% in a year, Coinbase data show.
- Andrew Yang goes independent. Former Democratic presidential and New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Yang is a Democrat no more, he declared in a blog post on Monday. He is creating a third party called "The Forward Party." In a new book, Yang describes what he sees as an increasingly dangerous state of decline caused by the "duopoly" of Democrats and Republicans as the two major political parties in the US.
That's all for now. See you tomorrow.