Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer argued Democrats have an obligation to do everything possible to pass voting rights legislation, despite the high likelihood of failure because of Republican filibustering.
“If Republicans choose to continue their filibuster of voting rights legislation, we must consider and vote on the rule changes that are appropriate and necessary to restore the Senate and make voting rights legislation possible,” Schumer said in his floor speech.
.@SenSchumer: "If Republicans choose...their filibuster of voting rights legislation we must consider and vote on the rule changes that are appropriate and necessary to restore the Senate and make voting rights legislation possible." pic.twitter.com/gbmNQZKMS9
But as of now, Schumer does not have the votes necessary to change the filibuster, as Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema remain opposed to doing so.
Because of the 50-50 split between Democrats and Republicans in the Senate, Schumer needs the support of every member of his caucus to reform the filibuster.
The Senate officially took up Democrats’ voting rights bill, which passed the House in a party-line vote last week. The proposal is expected to fail in the Senate after Democrats Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema made it clear that they would not support changing the filibuster to allow for the bill’s passage.
Despite the bill’s likely failure, Chuck Schumer said the Senate would vote on the legislation “win, lose or draw”. “Members of this chamber were elected to debate and to vote, especially on an issue as vital to the beating heart of our democracy as voting rights,” the majority leader said in a floor speech. “The public is entitled to know where each senator stands on an issue as sacrosanct as defending our democracy.”
Secretary of state Antony Blinken is traveling to Kyiv this week, amid heightened concerns of a potential Russian invasion of Ukraine. Blinken will meet with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy before traveling on to Berlin to discuss potential responses to Russian aggression. “We’re now at a stage where Russia at any time could launch an attack on Ukraine,” White House spokesperson, Jen Psaki, said.
The White House launched the “beta” version of its website to order free at-home coronavirus tests. The site, CovidTests.gov, includes a link to a US Postal Service form that allows Americans to request four tests to be shipped to their homes. The site will officially launch tomorrow morning, the White House said.
Two more House Democrats announced they will not seek reelection in November. The announcements from Jim Langevin and Jerry McNerney bring the total number of retirements among House Democrats to 28, as the party braces for the possibility of widespread losses in the midterm elections.
The US congressional committee investigating the Capitol attack has issued a blitz of subpoenas to some of Donald Trump’s top lawyers – including Rudy Giuliani. Subpoenas went out to Giuliani and his associate Boris Epshteyn, as well as Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis, who all defended Trump’s baseless voter fraud claims as he attempted to overturn the election result.
More than 1,200 students in Oakland, California, signed a petition saying they would stay home starting today over coronavirus safety concerns. The protest is one of several student-led efforts around the country, indicating growing frustrations amid public school children even as the Biden administration and state governments push to keep campuses open amid the latest pandemic surge.
US Capitol attack committee subpoenas Rudy Giuliani and other Trump lawyers
Hugo Lowell
The US congressional committee investigating the Capitol attack has issued a blitz of subpoenas to some of Donald Trump’s top lawyers – including Rudy Giuliani – as it examines whether the former president oversaw a criminal conspiracy on 6 January 2021.
The House panel subpoenaed four of Trump’s legal team on Tuesday: the former president’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and his associate Boris Epshteyn, as well as Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis, who all defended Trump’s baseless voter fraud claims as he attempted to overturn the election result.
Congressman Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the select committee, said in a statement that the panel issued the subpoenas to the four Trump lawyers because they were “in direct contact with the former president about attempts to stop the counting of electoral votes”.
The move by the select committee amounts to another dramatic escalation in the investigation, as the orders compel Trump’s lawyers to produce documents and testimony, suggesting the panel believes the lawyers may have acted unlawfully.
In its most aggressive move, the select committee ordered Giuliani to testify under oath about his communications with Trump and Republican members of Congress regarding strategies for delaying or overturning the election results.
As students stage walkouts over a lack of high-quality masks and coronavirus tests, the Biden administration today announced that it has distributed that last of its $122bn Covid-19 relief funding for schools from the American Rescue Plan.
“I am proud that, with the approval of these plans, states have 100% of their funds and robust plans to help schools remain open and help students thrive,” said Education Secretary Miguel Cardona.
Cardona also echoed calls from Joe Biden to keep public schools open. “We know what it takes to keep our schools open safely for in-person learning, and these funds will help us achieve that goal,” he said.
But students in Oakland and around the country are alleging that resources have not been distributed equitably, and moreover, in the face of the highly-transmissible Omicron variant, students and teachers who are immunocompromised or live with elderly or immunocompromised family members still feel unsafe attending class in person.
Safety concerns and mandated quarantines for exposed students are among the reasons the Los Angeles Unified School District recorded 130,000 student absences last week with only a 66.8% attendance rate.
Oakland students walkout over Covid safety concerns
More than 1,200 students in Oakland, California, signed a petition saying they would stay home starting today until administrators offer virtual learning options, and if that wasn’t possible, at least provide more KN95 or N95 masks and weekly testing for students. On Tuesday, three district school campuses were closed because students and teachers, in solidarity, stayed home.
At a news conference today, Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) spokesperson John Sasaki said that attendance numbers wouldn’t be available until tomorrow, but the district was expecting more than a thousand students to stay home. The district said it is providing free tests and masks, and had implemented other safety protocols including air purifiers, but students and teachers have alleged inequities in the distribution of resources between schools in more and less wealthy neighborhoods.
In recent weeks, students in New York City, suburbs of New Jersey and Washington, have launched protests and petitions as well, demanding virtual learning options amid the latest, Omicron-fueled wave of the coronavirus pandemic. Districts meanwhile have faced immense pressures from parents and politicians to keep school campuses open as the US enters its third year of the pandemic.
Students and teachers around the US have complained of inconsistency in schools’ coronavirus policies and a chaotic return from winter break. Last week, students from several New York City schools walked out demanding virtual learning options, and a video of hundreds of masked, Brooklyn Technical High students filing out of class went viral.
“I think the number one emotion I feel is just frustrated,” Favour Akingbemi, 17, a senior at Washington Preparatory high school in South LA, told the Guardian earlier this month. Nearly three of Akingbemi’s four high school years have been defined by Covid-19. “It’s upsetting that we’re still stuck in this pandemic,” she said.
The US supreme court on Tuesday considered whether the city of Boston violated the free speech of a Christian group which sought to fly a flag in front of city hall.
The justices seemed to have little doubt that Boston was wrong to refuse to fly the banner, which was described as a Christian flag.
Three flagpoles stand outside Boston city hall. The US flag and the Massachusetts state flag are permanent fixtures. The third pole is usually reserved for the Boston flag but the city has allowed groups to use it while holding events in front of the building.
Flags that have been flown include the LGBTQ+ pride flag and those of different nations.
In 2017, Harold Shurtleff, the founder of Camp Constitution, a volunteer group that aims “to enhance the understanding of the country’s Judeo-Christian heritage”, applied to have a white flag with a red cross on a blue square flown during an event featuring “short speeches by some local clergy focusing on Boston’s history”, court documents say.
The city denied the application and shortly afterwards published rules saying it would deny flags that support “discrimination, prejudice or religious movements”.
Shurtleff sued, saying the city violated his free speech by denying him and Camp Constitution access to the flagpole, which he argues is a public forum.
The city argued that the flagpole is government speech and that to fly religious flags from it would constitute an unconstitutional endorsement of religion.
In court documents, lawyers for Shurtleff argue that the city long exercised little control over who could use the flagpole, sometimes approving applications without looking at the flags that would be raised.
Before Shurtleff’s application, over a decade, the city approved 284 flag-raising events without denying any.
Once the supreme court announced it would be taking up Shurtleff’s case, Boston said it would no longer accept applications to fly flags in front of city hall.
Two lower courts decided in favor of the city but those decisions could be overturned by a supreme court controlled 6-3 by conservative justices.
Furthermore, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Biden justice department have filed briefs siding with Camp Constitution, saying the flagpole has been used essentially as a public forum.
‘It’s a tough time’: why is Biden one of the most unpopular US presidents?
Lauren Gambino
Joe Biden ends his first year in office at a particularly bleak moment for a US president who promised competency and normalcy.
Much of his domestic agenda is stalled on Capitol Hill, impeded by members of his own party. The virus is once again raging out of control: daily infections of Covid-19 have soared to record levels, hospitalizing more Americans than at any previous point during the pandemic. The administration’s vaccine-or-testing mandate for large employers was blocked by the supreme court’s conservative supermajority. Inflation is at a nearly 40-year high. Diplomatic talks have so far failed to pull Russia back from the brink of war with Ukraine.
After winning more votes than any presidential candidate in American history, Biden is now – just 12 months later – one of the country’s most unpopular presidents.
For months, Biden’s approval ratings have languished in the mid to low 40s, with an average approval rating of 42%. A Quinnipiac poll released last week found him at a dire 33%, which the White House has dismissed as an outlier. Nevertheless, among his modern predecessors, only Donald Trump fared worse at this point in their presidencies.
The puzzle of Biden’s unpopularity has many pieces, pollsters and political analysts say. How much of it is within his control is difficult to say.
Biden came to office with lofty ambitions: he promised to lift the threat of deadly virus and to usher in a new era of responsive governance and bipartisanship in Washington. One year into his presidency, Biden remains confronted by an unabating pandemic, a nation still very much divided and a Republican party that continues to embrace the “big lie” that Donald Trump won the 2020 election.
That’s it from me today. My west coast colleague, Maanvi Singh, will take over the blog for the next few hours.
Here’s where the day stands so far:
The Senate officially took up Democrats’ voting rights bill, which passed the House in a party-line vote last week. The proposal is expected to fail in the Senate after Democrats Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema made it clear that they would not support changing the filibuster to allow for the bill’s passage.
Despite the bill’s likely failure, Chuck Schumer said the Senate would vote on the legislation “win, lose or draw”. “Members of this chamber were elected to debate and to vote, especially on an issue as vital to the beating heart of our democracy as voting rights,” the majority leader said in a floor speech. “The public is entitled to know where each senator stands on an issue as sacrosanct as defending our democracy.”
Secretary of state Antony Blinken is traveling to Kyiv this week, amid heightened concerns of a potential Russian invasion of Ukraine. Blinken will meet with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy before traveling on to Berlin to discuss potential responses to Russian aggression. “We’re now at a stage where Russia at any time could launch an attack on Ukraine,” White House spokesperson, Jen Psaki, said.
The White House launched the “beta” version of its website to order free at-home coronavirus tests. The site, CovidTests.gov, includes a link to a US Postal Service form that allows Americans to request four tests to be shipped to their homes. The site will officially launch tomorrow morning, the White House said.
Two more House Democrats announced they will not seek reelection in November. The announcements from Jim Langevin and Jerry McNerney bring the total number of retirements among House Democrats to 28, as the party braces for the possibility of widespread losses in the midterm elections.
White House launches 'beta' version of website to order Covid tests
The Biden administration has launched the “beta” version of its website to order free, at-home coronavirus tests.
The site, CovidTests.gov, includes a link to a US Postal Service form that allows Americans to request four tests to be shipped to their homes.
White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, said the site will officially launch tomorrow morning and noted there may be some glitches until then.
“CovidTests.gov is in the beta phase right now, which is a standard part of the process typically as it’s being kind of tested,” Psaki said at her daily briefing.
“Every website launch, in our view, comes with risk. We can’t guarantee there won’t be a bug or two, but the best tech teams across the administration and the postal service are working hard to make this a success.”
The Biden administration has already ordered 1bn free at-home coronavirus tests to be distributed to Americans as the country confronts the highly transmissible Omicron variant.
William Barr, Donald Trump’s second attorney general and perceived hatchet man until he split from the former president over his lies about election fraud, has a book deal.
William Barr’s book. Photograph: AP
The publisher of One Damn Thing After Another, due out on 8 March, Harper Collins, promised a “vivid and forthright” read on Barr’s long career in the law and conservative politics, in which he was first attorney general under George HW Bush.
“Barr takes readers behind the scenes during seminal moments of the Bush administration in the 1990s, from the LA riots to Pan Am 103 and Iran Contra,” the publisher said.
“With the Trump administration, Barr faced an unrelenting barrage of issues, such as Russiagate, the opioid epidemic, Chinese espionage, big tech, the Covid outbreak, civil unrest, the first impeachment, and the 2020 election fallout.”
Barr stoked rage on the left when he was seen to be running interference for Trump during the investigation of Russian election meddling and links between Trump and Moscow, his handling of Robert Mueller’s report prompting protest from the special counsel himself.
Barr was also present during many flashpoints of the Trump administration, including walking at the president’s side when in the high summer of 2020 he marched across Lafayette Square, cleared of protesters against racism and police brutality, to stage a photo op at a historic church.
Barr split from Trump, and ultimately resigned, as the president refused to admit defeat by Joe Biden in the 2020 election. Angry scenes between the two men have been reported in other books, including bestsellers by Bob Woodward and Robert Costaof the Washington Post and Jon Karlof ABC News.
Barr stoked Trump’s rage by telling the Associated Press he had not seen evidence of “fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election”.
He was out of office amid the culmination of Trump’s concerted attempt to overturn his defeat, around the deadly Capitol riot of 6 January.
On 7 January 2021, Barr condemned Trump for “orchestrating a mob to pressure Congress” and said: “The president’s conduct yesterday was a betrayal of his office and supporters.”
The same day, the Guardian published a look at the state of the Department of Justice after Barr’s second stint in the chair.
Vanita Gupta, a former head of the DoJ’s civil rights division, said: “The morale and the reputation of the department has been gutted because of undue political influence on the decisions of career staff.
“… The department needs to be rebuilt by new leadership committed at every turn to decisions made on the law and on the facts, and not on what the president wants.”
Senate Democrats are expected to meet this evening to discuss possible changes to chamber rules, although it remains unlikely that any proposal can attract the support of Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.
Among their multiple options to defang the 60-vote requirement to get most bills through the Senate, Democrats are leaning toward voting on the revival of the so-called ‘talking filibuster’ to the Senate, according to several people familiar with the situation.
The talking filibuster would, after lengthy debate, require a simple majority to advance any bill toward final passage. Democrats have also discussed a carveout from the filibuster for voting and elections reform, but that idea appears to be getting less traction.
Texas officials are having trouble providing third party groups with enough paper voter registration forms, citing a paper shortage, according to KUT, Austin’s NPR station.
Texas is one of eight states in the US that does not allow voters to register online. Citing supply chain shortages, the Texas secretary of state’s office now says it does not have enough paper to for voter registration applications. Texas’ voter registration for its 1 March primary is 31 January.
“The fact is we simply don’t have the supply to honor every single request for free applications,” Sam Taylor, a spokesman for the Texas SoS’ office, told KUT.
The secretary of state’s office has had to limit the number of registration applications it can give our per request to 1,000 to 2,000 forms.
Grace Chimene, the president of the Texas chapter of the League of Women Voters, a civic action group, said the shortage has made it harder to register voters at naturalization ceremonies, according to KUT. The group registers about 30,000 people at such ceremonies in Houston alone, she told the outlet.
Chimene also told KUT that the secretary of state’s office had advised her to seek out donations instead of relying on forms from her office.
The problem comes after several reports that counties were denying high percentages of requests for mail-in ballots under a new Texas law.
