Morning Reads: Did Andrew Cuomo Cut a Shady Deal With the GOP?

Good morning! Today marks the 41st anniversary of Spiro Agnew’s resignation from the US vice presidency. His departure came after pleading no contest to criminal charges of tax evasion — part of a negotiated deal arising from a bribery scandal during his time as governor of Maryland.

Big deal, if true –> Iraqi officials say Islamic State leader Abu Bakr Baghdadi was seriously wounded in a US airstrike on Sunday, but the Pentagon says it has “no immediate information on such an attack or on the militant leader being injured,” according to the AP. ALSO: On Sunday’s Face the Nation, Barack Obama said that he was doubling the number of US troops in Iraq as part of a “new phase” in the campaign against IS, but insisted they would not take part in combat operations.

Post-mortem –> The WaPo’s Matea Gold reports that progressive messaging about the influence of a handful of wealthy donors in the 2014 midterms failed to move voters to the polls, despite the public’s disgust with the flood of money in politics.

Backroom deal –> Frederick Dicker reports for the NY Post that a leading member of the New York GOP claims that “the state’s most powerful Republican secretly worked for months to help Democratic Gov. Cuomo win re-election — in exchange for Cuomo’s promise not to aid Senate Democrats in their Long Island races.”

Demoted –> Pope Francis’ ideological conflict with conservative American church leaders continues, as the pontiff announced the removal of Cardinal Raymond Burke, the Vatican’s highest-ranking American, from the Catholic church’s highest court, demoting him to a ceremonial position. Burke has been an outspoken critic of the pope’s softer approach to hot-button social issues. Nolan Feeney has the details at Time.

Wish list –> Shaila Dewan reports for the NYT that police departments are preparing wish lists of property to be seized under civil forfeiture laws, which allow “the government, without ever securing a conviction or even filing a criminal charge, to seize property suspected of having ties to crime.”

Big Coal –> Dan Zegart and Kevin Grandia report for Salon that the coal industry, buoyed by Republicans’ midterm gains, is launching a “worldwide PR campaign and messaging blitz called ‘Advanced Energy for Life’ (AEfL) that is designed to shift the focus from coal’s leading role in pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to what AEfL calls ‘energy poverty.'”

Related –> Now that they control the Senate, Jeff Spross reports for ThinkProgress that Republicans are vowing to dismantle the EPA’s new rules on carbon emissions from power plants. AND: HuffPo’s Kate Sheppard reports that a new study suggests that conservative climate change deniers aren’t really reacting to the science. Rather, they reject the science because they see the solutions as being inherently liberal.

Not listening –> Federal Communications Commission Chair Tom Wheeler’s proposed plan to establish a tiered Internet has been the subject of unprecedented public feedback, but Mary Alice Crim and Candace Clement of the media reform group Free Press write for Other Words that the FCC commissioners are going out of their way to avoid engaging with their constituents — attending industry conventions instead of public hearings. BUT: On Monday, President Obama called on the FCC to classify the Internet as a utility and guarantee Net neutrality. Jacob Kastrenakes reports for The Verge.

“The outcast” –> At The New Yorker, Rachel Aviv tells the remarkable story of a man who became a pariah in his tight-knit Hasidic community in Brooklyn after he exposed child abuse among religious leaders that was going unpunished in the community’s closed system of justice.

It’s all about us –> A study in The Lancet finds that, “during October, there were 21,037,331 tweets about Ebola in the US, compared with 13,480 about Ebola in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone combined.”

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