US Politics

The 10 Republican House representatives who voted to impeach Donald Trump are all being targeted by a well-funded new political group largely funded by supporters of the former president.America Strong Pac has launched a website which features all 10 of the Republican rebels, whose vote angered Trump and his legion of loyal followers who still hold immense power in the party despite his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden.“Remove the 10 pretenders,” the group’s website states.The 10 Republicans joined with Democrats to approve one article of impeachment against Trump, charging the president with “incitement of insurrection” for his actions around the 6 January storming of the Capitol by a mob of his supporters. Trump was later acquitted in a Senate trial.The news is the latest salvo in an ongoing fight in the Republican party as it seeks to come to terms with Trump’s ousting. Trump’s grip on the party remains firm and there is much outright hostility to the few senior politicians who criticize him or vote against his wishes.America Strong’s treasurer is Jack Mantua, who was the Trump campaign’s executive director of strategic coalitions, and Bill White, a Georgia businessman and prolific Trump fundraiser, has been helping to line up potential donors for the organization, according to the Axios news website.A particular target of the group is Wyoming congresswoman Liz Cheney, who was ousted from her senior leadership position in the House after thundering criticism of Trump’s actions around the 6 January attack in which five people died.Cheney has said that keeping Trump out of office in the future is one of her main aims, but she now faces several Republican primary challengers for her seat. White told Axios that America Strong would be monitoring her “permanently” in the future in a bid to rid her from the party.“Liz Cheney betrayed us,” said a short 30 second video ad on the website. More

First it was tighter restrictions on voting. Then stringent limits on abortion. Then a relaxation of gun laws. And that was just May.Texas, a state famed for its independent streak and doing everything bigger, is staking an early claim as the bulwark of Republican opposition to Joe Biden’s administration. It is a mirror image of the previous four years when California, the only state more populous than Texas, emerged as the bastion of Democratic resistance to Donald Trump’s agenda.The defiance of California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, and then attorney general, Xavier Becerra, in filing more than a hundred lawsuits against the Trump administration over gun control, immigration and other issues was seen as a ray of hope for liberals during some dark years.Now the shoe is on the other foot. Texas – which sued Barack Obama’s administration 48 times during his two terms – became thefirst state to file a suit against Biden’s White House in January, just two days after he took office, successfully blocking a freeze on deportations.Ken Paxton, the state’s attorney general, has since unleashed a barrage of legal challenges regarding everything from environmental regulations to funding for a healthcare program to tax policy under Biden’s coronavirus relief package.It was also Texas that led a lawsuit in January seeking to overturn the presidential election results in four battleground states that Donald Trump lost. The effort was thrown out by the supreme court but helped establish Texas as a voice of dissent in the Biden era.“I think this is going to be home base for the Republican reactionary forces,” said Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota. “Federalism in America turns out to be an enclave for increasingly ideological politics and, especially when the out party in Washington is looking for hope and new ideas, they’re turning to these ideological enclaves at the state level.”There is an important difference from the California example, however. The Golden State might have produced Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan but has since become overwhelmingly Democratic: Biden won it with 11m votes to Trump’s 6m. In Texas, however, the Republican advantage has been eroding since George W Bush was president: Trump gained 5.9m votes to Biden’s 5.3m.Jacobs added: “You look at the growing numbers of American ‘immigrants’ coming from California to Texas, the growing number of educated voters who tend to vote Democrat and the potential Latino vote, particularly in the main urban areas, and how long Texas remains a stronghold for the Republican party is something that’s been debated for some time.“You’re seeing this hard-right move in Texas, but it’s not clear that Texas is going to remain hard right.”Republicans’ current domination of the state government, however, is enabling them to embrace Trumpian politics while the going is still good. Like their colleagues in other state houses, party officials in Texas have exploited Trump’s baseless claims of fraud to justify new rules in the name of election security.Proposed legislation includes expanding what poll watchers are allowed to do, creating an oath for people who volunteer to help voters who need assistance, and establishing criminal penalties for election officials for sending mail ballot applications. Activists say the measures will make it harder for poor people and people of colour to vote. The measures failed to pass on Sunday before a midnight deadline, after Democrats staged a walkout. However, governor Greg Abbott has vowed to bring the bill back at a special session. Abbott recently signed a law that bans abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected, possibly as early as six weeks – before many women even know they are pregnant. “The life of every unborn child with a heartbeat will be saved from the ravages of abortion,” he declared.This week a bill that would let Texans carry concealed handguns without any permit passed the state legislature and headed to the desk of Abbott, who has promised to sign it. The move was cheered by the National Rifle Association and Ted Cruz, a Texas senator, who tweeted: “This is excellent news for law-abiding, second-amendment loving Texans.”The Texas Democratic party argues that such policies are the work of one Republican faction, not all of it, and out of step with the wishes of the population and that Republicans will be punished in next year’s midterm elections.Luke Warford, its chief strategy officer, argues this makes the situation different from California during the Trump years. “The California Democratic party and their elected officials are probably doing stuff that’s in line with what the population of California supports and believes,” he said by phone from Austin, the state capital.“All this stuff the Texas Republicans are doing right now is not wildly popular. It’s not in line with the populace writ large. I understand the right wing of the party’s logic in trying to drum up their base and be Trump version 2.0 but I think they’re going to pay for it in [midterm elections in] 2022. When we look at the Republican party of Texas, we see fragmentation.”Warford points to the example of February’s winter storm that killed 111 people and caused one of the biggest power blackouts in American history, when more than 4 million customers lost heat. “Texans are dying in their home and we just had an entire legislative session where they didn’t meaningfully address that. It wasn’t a priority.”He also dismissed Texas Republicans’ attempts to sue the Biden administration as “performative”, adding: “It’s good for a fundraising email and to be able to beat your chest and say, ‘I stood up to the administration’, but I think they’re not going to be successful in a lot of those instances.“The reality is that Texans are not looking at the Biden administration being like, ‘They’re terrible, let’s stand up to them’. I think they’re looking at the Biden administration being like, ‘We all got vaccinated and we all got cheques. This is pretty good. Why are our Republican leaders screaming about them?’”Texas has its fair share of Trump cheerleaders. Cruz has swallowed his pride to become a loyal devotee, while his Senate colleague John Cornyn recently questioned whether Biden is “really in charge”. Dan Patrick, the Texas lieutenant governor, offered up to $1m for evidence of voter fraud after Trump’s defeat. Louie Gohmert, a US congressman from Texas, downplayed the 6 January riot at the US Capitol.And next month Dallas in Texas hosts a spin-off from the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), a staunchly pro-Trump gathering, under the banner “America UnCanceled”.But the vast state, which like California borders Mexico, faces stiff competition for the crown of Republican government in exile. Florida is Trump’s adopted home and its governor, Ron DeSantis, has gained a higher profile than Abbott as a rightwing populist who might himself run for president.Bill Whalen, a former media consultant for California politicians including former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, said: “Governor Jerry Brown got very vocal with Trump, especially on climate change stuff, but Newsom took it to a whole other level when he came into office, I think at one point calling himself the leader of the resistance.“That was about Gavin Newsom having White House aspirations. I look at Florida now because I see DeSantis doing the same as Newsom, really trying to put himself as the vanguard of his party and the lead voice of opposition. I see Florida being held up by its governor as the anti-Biden, anti-Democratic model.”But Texas does retain one advantage, at least for now. Whalen, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, added: “Florida is still a swing state. As much as Democrats would like to talk about Texas being a swing state, it’s not there right now.” More

Dr Anthony Fauci, the top infectious diseases expert in the US, has warned it is too early to declare victory against Covid-19 as cases fall in the country to the lowest rates since last June.“We don’t want to declare victory prematurely because we still have a ways to go,” Fauci told the Guardian in an interview. “But the more and more people that can get vaccinated, as a community, the community will be safer and safer.”The Memorial Holiday weekend marks the unofficial start of summer in the US, and for the at least 50% of the adult population that is fully vaccinated, it could usher in a season of maskless barbecues and trips to the beach.Daily coronavirus cases have dropped 53% since 1 May, according to Johns Hopkins University data, but the rates are still high in the unvaccinated population and cases are growing globally. Already there have been more global cases in 2021 than in all of 2020, according to Johns Hopkins University data.“As long as there is some degree of activity throughout the world, there’s always a danger of variants emerging and diminishing somewhat the effectiveness of our vaccines,” said Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (Niaid).The US has been under pressure to provide greater aid in global vaccine efforts and has in recent weeks committed to donate 80m vaccines in addition to the $4bn donation its pledged to Covax, the global vaccine-sharing scheme. Fauci said more help could be on the way.“We are discussing right now at various levels about how we might be able to up production to get vaccine doses from the companies that are already making them for us, get more doses that will be able to be distributed to lower- and middle-income countries,” Fauci said.At the same time, the US must address the issues stopping its people from getting vaccinated. Part of this group is strongly opposed to the vaccine but there is also a portion of the unvaccinated population that hasn’t been able to get the shot because of lack of access to information or transportation or concerns about missing work because paid sick leave is not guaranteed in the US.Fauci said this too is something the US is focusing its efforts on as Joe Biden’s administration seeks to get a first dose of the vaccine to 70% of the US adult population by 4 July.This month, the White House deployed more vaccination resources to underserved areas and mobile clinics and supported an effort by ride-share companies to offer free trips for people getting vaccinated. In April, Biden called for all employers to provide paid time off for employees to get vaccinated and made a tax credit for small and medium-sized businesses to offer paid leave for employees to get the shot and to recover from any side-effects they might experience after.“Today, in our current day, the accessibility and the convenience of getting a vaccine is really rather striking,” Fauci said.But until the overwhelming majority of Americans have been vaccinated, the Covid-19 risk is still high in the US.As of Friday, 59.1% of Americans 12 and older had received their first dose of the vaccine and 47.4% were fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC).“We cannot abandon public health measures when you still have a degree of viral activity in the broad community in the United States,” Fauci said. “Although we’re down to less than 30,000 infections per day that’s still a lot of infections per day.”The national death rate among the unvaccinated population is roughly the same as it was in late March, according to a Washington Post data analysis published this month. The adjusted hospitalization rate is as high as it was in late February, though cases are declining, according to the analysis.Tara Kirk Sell, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said in the next few months, coronavirus could spread out of hand among unvaccinated people.“Unfortunately these groups of people who are anti-vax or who will end up being susceptible to the disease are going to be in pockets,” Sell said. “It’s not going to be evenly distributed through the population.”Earlier this month, the CDC released an optimistic report which said in a best case scenario, Covid-19 infections could be driven to low levels by July if the vast majority of people get vaccinated and take other precautions, such as wearing masks and social distancing.The CDC report was not a forecast, but a set of scenarios created by six independent research teams using data through 27 March. The modeling does not include what could happen if there was a new, more dangerous variant.Sell expects things will be better this summer, but warned that autumn is still an unknown.“I think we should be humble about what our certainty is about how things will unfold,” Sell said. ”There have been a lot of curveballs.”In the meantime, clinicians like Dr Michelle Chester, who administered the first Covid-19 vaccine in the US outside a clinical trial, are pushing to get vaccinations in as many people as possible.“I’m happy with the numbers but we need to do more because there is still a huge number of people that are still not vaccinated,” said Chester, director of employee health services at Northwell Health, the healthcare system which has treated more hospitalized Covid-19 patients than anywhere in the US.Northwell Health has vaccination sites operating for people 12 and older in the greater New York City area. Some are open 24 hours a day to ensure people with difficult work schedules can find time to get the vaccine.“The more that we can get people vaccinated, the less we have to worry about the virus in a sense of it affecting those individuals who maybe cannot get the vaccine for medical reasons,” Chester said. “We’re protecting them.”Chester said there is still “a long way to go”, but she expects for her family, at least, a more normal summer than last year.“My husband is vaccinated, my daughter couldn’t wait to get her vaccine,” Chester said. “I feel very comfortable that my family is protected and I want that same level of comfort everyone else because I just want to get back to normal.” More

Texas Republican have failed in their efforts to push through one of the most restrictive voting measures in the US after Democrats walked out of the House at the last minute, leaving the bill languishing ahead of a midnight deadline.The exodus came at the instruction of Chris Turner, the House Democratic chairman, who told colleagues at 10.35pm to “take your key and leave the chamber discreetly”, referring to the key that locks the voting mechanism on their desks, the Washington Post reported.Democrat state representative Jessica González said after the walkout: “We decided to come together and say we weren’t going to take it.” She said she objected to the bill’s content and the way it was crafted with no input from her party. “We needed to be part of the process. Cutting us out completely – I mean this law will affect every single voter in Texas.”Fellow Democrat Carl Sherman said: “We’ve said for so many years that we want more people to participate in our democracy. And it just seems that’s not the case.”Governor Greg Abbott said the failure of the legislation was “deeply disappointing and concerning” but vowed to bring it back at a special session at an unspecified date.Republicans showed restraint in criticising Democrats for the move. Republican state representative Briscoe Cain, who carried the bill in the House, said: “I am disappointed that some members decided to break quorum. We all know what that meant. I understand why they were doing it, but we all took an oath to Texans that we would be here to do our jobs.”Less than 24 hours earlier, the bill seemed all but guaranteed to reach Abbott’s desk. The bill had passed in the Senate on party lines around 6am on Sunday, after eight hours of questioning by Democrats who had virtually no path to stop it. However, a Democrat walkout prevented a quorum in the House.In closed-door negotiations, Republicans added language to Senate Bill 7 that could make it easier for a judge to overturn an election. They also pushed back the start of Sunday voting, when many Black churchgoers go to the polls. The measure would also eliminate drive-thru voting and 24-hour polling centers, both of which Harris county, a Democratic stronghold, introduced last year.Critics say such measures suppress turnout among minorities likely to vote Democratic. On Sunday morning Hakeem Jeffries of New York, a member of Democratic leadership in the US House, called SB7 “shameful”.“Republicans clearly in Texas and throughout the country want to make it harder to vote and easier to steal an election,” he told CNN’s State of the Union. “That’s the only way that I can interpret the voter suppression epidemic that we see working its way from Georgia to Arizona to Texas and all across the country.”At a press conference held by the Texas Democratic party, national figures including former congressman Beto O’Rourke, former housing secretary Julián Castro and his brother Joaquin Castro, a serving congressman, sought to raise the alarm.“This is gonna make it harder for the average Texan to get out and cast their ballot whether they’re Republican or Democrat,” said Julián Castro. “But it is clearly aimed at people of colour, at Black and Hispanic Texas.“The Republican party is running scared because they know that this state is changing. Senate Bill 7 is an attempt by the Republican party to hold on to their power at the expense of everybody else. And we can’t let it stand.”Michael McCaul, a senior US House Republican from Texas, told CNN he thought the law “may be more of an optics issue, restoring confidence with the American people. In my state you actually do believe that there was tremendous fraud.”There was not. Texas has only one pending voter fraud case arising from the 2020 election. Nonetheless it is the last big battleground in Republican efforts to tighten voting laws, driven by Donald Trump’s lie that the presidential election was stolen. Joe Biden on Saturday compared the Texas bill to election changes in Georgia and Arizona, as “an assault on democracy”.Since Trump’s defeat, at least 14 states have enacted restrictive voting laws, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. It has counted nearly 400 bills nationwide.The vote in the Texas Senate came a short time after a final version of the bill was made public. Republicans suspended rules that normally prohibit taking a vote on a bill that has not been posted for 24 hours. Democrats protested.The bill would empower partisan poll watchers by allowing more access to polling places and threatening criminal penalties against officials who restrict their movement. Another provision allows a judge to void an election outcome if the number of fraudulent votes could change the result, regardless of whether it was proved that fraud affected the outcome.Election officials would face penalties including felony charges for sending mail voting applications to people who did not request one. The Texas District and County Attorneys Association counted at least 16 new, expanded or enhanced crimes.Republicans are also moving to prohibit Sunday voting before 1pm, which critics call an attack on “souls to the polls”, a get-out-the-vote tactic used by Black congregations nationwide and dating back to the civil rights movement. Asked why Sunday voting couldn’t begin sooner, Texas Republican Bryan Hughes said: “Election workers want to go to church too.”Colin Allred, a US representative from Dallas, told the press conference Sunday was “one of the darkest days” for democracy in America. “This isn’t legislation,” he said. “It’s discrimination.”Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic majority leader in the US Senate, has said he will bring the For the People Act, a federal measure to protect voting rights, to the floor next month. But it has little chance of beating the filibuster, the 60-vote threshold needed to overcome the Republican minority. More

Caroline Kennedy, the only surviving child of President John F Kennedy, is reportedly in line to be announced as the next US ambassador to Australia.US-based news website Axios, citing “people familiar with the matter” reported: “Caroline Kennedy is in line to be US ambassador to Australia”, while the AP said the US president, Joe Biden, was “giving serious consideration” to nominating Kennedy to a high-profile ambassadorial role in Asia.Kennedy was formerly the US ambassador to Japan during the Obama administration.The White House declined to comment.Kennedy, a scion of one of America’s most high-profile political families, threw her support behind Biden relatively early in the crowded 2020 Democratic primary process.Along with her uncle, senator Ted Kennedy, she also offered a critical early endorsement to Obama in his 2008 run for the White House.Caroline, born in 1957, is the only surviving child of the former president Kennedy and his wife Jacqueline. She was only five when her father was assassinated in Dallas in November 1963.It was the first of a series of tragedies for the privileged but ill-fated US family. A brother, Patrick, died in infancy in 1963. Her uncle Robert Kennedy was assassinated in 1968, and another brother, John, died in a plane crash in 1999.Axios has reported that Biden was considering another Kennedy, Ted Kennedy’s widow, Vicki, for an ambassadorial posting in western Europe.Australia’s previous ambassador to Australia, Arthur Culvahouse Jr, finished his appointment with the end of the Trump presidency in January this year.Before his appointment, the post was vacant for nearly two and a half years after Obama appointee John Berry departed.The US mission to Australia is currently headed by chargé d’affaires Michael Goldman.Biden is expected to soon announce his first major tranche of political ambassadorial nominations, according to White House officials.The AP has previously reported he is expected to nominate former senior state department official Nicholas Burns to serve in China, Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti in India, former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel in Japan, and former deputy secretary of state Tom Nides to Israel.Ken Salazar, a former colleague of Biden’s in the Senate and Obama-era interior department secretary, is a candidate for the Mexico ambassadorship.Cindy McCain, the widow of Republican senator John McCain and a longtime friend of the president and first lady, Jill Biden, is under consideration for an ambassadorial position, including leading the UN World Food Program.With AP More

Former Obama adviser Ben Rhodes has travelled the world looking for clues to how the US came to elect Donald Trump and he found parallels everywhere. But is there a way of stopping it from happening again?

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When Donald Trump won the US election in 2016 it upturned the assumptions of many in America about who was electable to the highest office in the land. It seemed obvious to many that Trump would lose to Hillary Clinton and yet he won a stunning victory. For the former Obama aide Ben Rhodes it was a moment to take stock and search for clues as to how it could have happened. He tells Anushka Asthana that his quest took him around the world to countries that had elected their own ‘strongman’ leaders. He asks what lessons can be learned to avoid another Trump-style presidency? More

Texas Democrats called Sunday “one of the darkest days” for American democracy, after Republicans pushed one of the most restrictive voting measures in the US to the cusp of law, rushing the bill through the state Senate in the middle of the night.Senate Bill 7 was passed on party lines around 6am, after eight hours of questioning by Democrats who had virtually no path to stop it. It was due to receive a vote in the House later on Sunday before reaching Governor Greg Abbott, who was expected to sign it.In closed-door negotiations, Republicans added language that could make it easier for a judge to overturn an election. They also pushed back the start of Sunday voting, when many Black churchgoers go to the polls. The measure would also eliminate drive-thru voting and 24-hour polling centers, both of which Harris county, a Democratic stronghold, introduced last year.Critics say such measures suppress turnout among minorities likely to vote Democratic. On Sunday morning Hakeem Jeffries of New York, a member of Democratic leadership in the US House, called SB7 “shameful”.“Republicans clearly in Texas and throughout the country want to make it harder to vote and easier to steal an election,” he told CNN’s State of the Union. “That’s the only way that I can interpret the voter suppression epidemic that we see working its way from Georgia to Arizona to Texas and all across the country.”At a press conference held by the Texas Democratic party, national figures including former congressman Beto O’Rourke, former housing secretary Julián Castro and his brother Joaquin Castro, a serving congressman, sought to raise the alarm.“This is gonna make it harder for the average Texan to get out and cast their ballot whether they’re Republican or Democrat,” said Julián Castro. “But it is clearly aimed at people of colour, at Black and Hispanic Texas.“The Republican party is running scared because they know that this state is changing. Senate Bill 7 is an attempt by the Republican party to hold on to their power at the expense of everybody else. And we can’t let it stand.”Michael McCaul, a senior US House Republican from Texas, told CNN he thought the law “may be more of an optics issue, restoring confidence with the American people. In my state you actually do believe that there was tremendous fraud.”There was not. Texas has only one pending voter fraud case arising from the 2020 election. Nonetheless it is the last big battleground in Republican efforts to tighten voting laws, driven by Donald Trump’s lie that the presidential election was stolen. Joe Biden on Saturday compared the Texas bill to election changes in Georgia and Arizona, as “an assault on democracy”.Since Trump’s defeat, at least 14 states have enacted restrictive voting laws, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. It has counted nearly 400 bills nationwide.The vote in the Texas Senate came a short time after a final version of the bill was made public. Republicans suspended rules that normally prohibit taking a vote on a bill that has not been posted for 24 hours. Democrats protested.The bill would empower partisan poll watchers by allowing more access to polling places and threatening criminal penalties against officials who restrict their movement. Another provision allows a judge to void an election outcome if the number of fraudulent votes could change the result, regardless of whether it was proved that fraud affected the outcome.Election officials would face penalties including felony charges for sending mail voting applications to people who did not request one. The Texas District and County Attorneys Association counted at least 16 new, expanded or enhanced crimes.Republicans are also moving to prohibit Sunday voting before 1pm, which critics call an attack on “souls to the polls”, a get-out-the-vote tactic used by Black congregations nationwide and dating back to the civil rights movement. Asked why Sunday voting couldn’t begin sooner, Texas Republican Bryan Hughes said: “Election workers want to go to church too.”State representative Nicole Collier, chair of the Texas Legislative Black Caucus, was one of three Democrats picked to negotiate the final bill. None signed it. She said she saw a draft around 11pm on Friday which was different than one received earlier and was asked to sign the next morning.Colin Allred, a US representative from Dallas, told the press conference Sunday was “one of the darkest days” for democracy in America.“This isn’t legislation,” he said. “It’s discrimination.”Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic majority leader in the US Senate, has said he will bring the For the People Act, a federal measure to protect voting rights, to the floor next month. But it has little chance of beating the filibuster, the 60-vote threshold needed to overcome the Republican minority.In an emotional appeal in support of the For the People Act, O’Rourke cited the example of civil rights legislation under President Lyndon Johnson, a Texan, in the 1960s.Calling the new federal bill “a Voting Rights Act for our day”, he said passing it would “protect the sanctity of the ballot box and make sure that no state legislature can keep us from voting. So I hope after this good fight is fought in Texas, that we direct all of our energy and all of our focus on our friends in Washington DC, who like they did in 1965 can save American democracy.”With centrist Democrats Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona opposed to filibuster reform, that seems unlikely. More

Negotiations with Joe Biden over a potentially massive infrastructure investment package are inching forward even though disagreements remain over the size and scope of such legislation, Republican senator Shelley Moore Capito said on Sunday.“I think we can get to real compromise, absolutely, because we’re both still in the game,” Capito told Fox News Sunday.Capito leads a group of six Republicans in regular contact with Biden and White House aides over a bill the administration wants to move through Congress promptly.The Republicans have proposed $928bn to improve roads, bridges and other traditional infrastructure projects. Much of the funding would come from money already enacted into law for other purposes.The administration’s latest offer in negotiations is for $1.7tn and would include spending on projects that go beyond traditional infrastructure, such as homecare for the elderly.The transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, told ABC’s This Week: “There’s movement in the right direction, but a lot of concern … We need to make investments over and above what would have happened anyway.” He also highlighted the need for using the infrastructure bill to address climate change and indicated opposition to shifting Covid-19 relief money to infrastructure accounts.Capito said that following a White House meeting which Republicans viewed as productive, Biden aides stepped away from some ideas Republicans pushed.“We have had some back and forth with the staff that sort of pulled back a little bit but I think we’re smoothing out those edges,” said the West Virginia senator, whose state stands to benefit significantly from infrastructure investment.Republicans continued to balk at raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations to help finance the projects.“I’m not going to vote to overturn those,” Capito said when asked about rolling back some tax cuts enacted during the Trump administration.She also held the line against including new funding for projects that go beyond physical infrastructure, saying those could be considered in other measures.Talks are expected to continue this week even though Congress is on a break, with the Senate returning on 7 June. When lawmakers return to Washington, Biden will be under pressure from Democrats to sidestep Republicans if talks do not show signs of significant progress.Buttigieg told CNN’s State of the Union there needed to be a clear direction on the infrastructure bill. “The president keeps saying ‘Inaction is not an option’ and time is not unlimited here,” he said.The New York Democratic senator Kirsten Gillibrand told CNN: “I think waiting any longer for Republicans to do the right thing is a misstep … I would go forward.”The Senate could use the “reconciliation” process that requires only a simple majority to advance legislation, instead of the usual 60-vote threshold. The Senate is split 50-50 with Vice-President Kamala Harris having the power to break deadlocks.It is not clear if all Democrats would go along with such a process. More