US Politics

It’s been less than a month since rightwing insurrectionists stormed the Capitol building in a deadly riot incited by the former president and his false claims of mass voter fraud. In the riot’s wake, many prominent Republicans have tried to distance themselves from the attackers and those who spurred them on. “The mob was fed lies,” said the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell. “They were provoked by the president and other powerful people.”Those “other powerful people” were powerful members of the Republican party and leading voices in conservative media, who are now either claiming we simply need to move on for the sake of healing, or saying that actually, the riot was the left’s fault. But while some Republicans are positioning themselves as honest and reasonable by condemning the riot and recognizing that it was sparked by lies about voter fraud, their party’s actions and policy priorities tell a very different story. Because as our nation remains rocked by an attack on the heart of our democracy, Republicans are using the same baseless lies that fueled it to push a staggering number of laws to scale back voting rights.A new report from the Brennan Center for Justice shows just how effectively Republicans have been talking out of both sides of their mouths, at once decrying the violence over false allegations of election rigging, and at the same time using false allegations of voter fraud to make it harder for people to vote. In 2021 legislative sessions (which six states haven’t even yet begun), lawmakers in 28 states have pushed a whopping 106 bills that would restrict voting access – and we’re not even a month into the year. According to the Brennan Center, that’s three times the number of restrictive voting laws that were introduced by 3 February last year. These laws are clearly responsive to widespread conspiracy theories on the right – conspiracy theories started by the Republican party and the former president.Each one of these 106 bills aims to make voting harder, either by scaling back vote-by-mail, imposing stricter voter identification laws, limiting policies that successfully registered large numbers of voters, or allowing states to more easily and aggressively purge their voter rolls.None of these laws actually correct an existing problem – because, as we learned through a great many court cases brought by the Trump administration, there simply was no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. And there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud in elections before that one, either.So why, then, would Republicans waste their time and taxpayer dollars so aggressively battling a problem that doesn’t exist? It’s because Republicans do have a voting problem – or rather, a voter problem. Many of their policies aren’t actually that popular, and the more eligible voters turn out for elections, the less Republicans win. Their clearest path to staying in power is limiting the number of people who are able to cast a ballot – and particularly limiting the number of Democrats: people of color (and Black people in particular), people in cities and college students. The sharper members of the Republican party rely on claims of “election security” and voter fraud to justify limiting what is perhaps the most sacred duty of any individual living in a democracy. The duller just flat-out admit that making it easier for people to vote would hurt the Republicans. Former president Donald Trump, for example, told Fox & Friends that Democratic appeals for wider use of absentee ballots and vote-by-mail would cause “levels of voting that, if you ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again”.Republicans trying to restrict voting rights is not new – the conservative justices of the US supreme court even sided with them in overturning key provisions of the Voting Rights Act, which is why so many new anti-voting laws have flooded the nation in recent years.But the context after the Capitol riot is different: Republicans now cannot deny the serious, deadly and democracy-threatening costs of exploiting lies about voting fraud to the advantage of Republican politicians. And yet, across the nation, they’re choosing to do it anyway. Until they drop this dangerous farce and quit using the big election fraud lie to strip Americans of our right to vote, no one should believe a word they say about defending democracy, admonishing those who physically attacked it, or aspiring to national healing.It’s not all bad news on the voting front, though. Appalled by conservative malfeasance, newly emboldened by the success of mail-in voting during Covid, and heartened by hard-won wins in Georgia, more Democrats are latching on to what leaders and organizers like Stacey Abrams have been doing for years: fighting for expanded voting rights. Legislators in 35 states have introduced a total of 406 bills that would make voting easier for more people. The most common new laws seek to expand mail-in and early voting, methods of casting a ballot that enable far more people to participate in the democratic process – people who are ill, elderly or disabled and find it challenging to vote in person; people who work demanding jobs, or several jobs, or jobs without predictable schedules, and don’t get the first Tuesday in November off of work; people who are caring for small children or the elderly or the infirm and can’t easily sneak away to stand in line for what can turn into hours. Other proposed laws would make it easier for citizens to register to vote, allowing same-day, online, or automatic registration so no one shows up on election day only to learn that, despite being a US citizen, they can’t cast a ballot. And still other laws would allow people who have served time and paid their debt to society to regain their right to vote.It’s easy for anyone to say all the right things about valuing democracy, especially in the aftermath of a stunning attack on it. But words are free. The real question is what both parties are actually doing to strengthen American democracy and ensure that all American citizens have a say in our governance. And while Democrats are pushing for expansion, Republicans are using the same dangerous lies that caused an anti-democratic insurrection on 6 January in the service of their own anti-democratic policies. The visuals aren’t as shocking. But the damage to the nation is just as severe. More

Sign up for the Guardian’s First Thing newsletterWhile the US Senate has temporarily averted a showdown over its so-called filibuster rule, the issue appears likely to resurface, as the wafer-thin Democratic majority endeavors to pass Joe Biden’s legislative agenda into law – and Republicans try to stop them. Here’s what you need to know:What is the filibuster? There is a movie version, in which an impassioned senator holds the floor by speaking at marathon length to block or force an issue – and a much more common version, lodged deep in the parliamentary weeds. The latter, less cinematic version, is the current focus.So what’s the gist?The filibuster is a way for a relatively small group of senators to block some action by the majority. The filibuster rule allows a minority of 41 senators (out of 100 total) to prevent a vote on most species of legislation.Whether you see that capability as an important safeguard against the tyranny of the majority, or a guarantee of institutional paralysis, likely corresponds with your party identity and who controls the Senate at the time.For progressives, what is the strongest argument in favor of keeping the filibuster?The legislative filibuster has been used by Democrats in recent years to block funding for Donald Trump’s border wall project, to protect unemployment benefits and to stop Republicans from restricting abortion access.Also, some Democrats fear that if there is no filibuster, Republicans will, next time they hold the Senate majority, pass horrifying laws, for example to restrict voting access, encourage environmental despoilment, reward Wall Street, curtail reproductive rights – who knows.Why are so many influential Democrats calling for an end to the filibuster?Democrats say Republicans have abused it serially, forcing their minority vision on the entire country with narrow-minded parliamentary tactics and blocking policies the people support, such as gun control.Abolishing the filibuster rule would theoretically allow Democrats to finally get some things done while they hold power: immigration reform, climate legislation, voter protections, racial justice legislation, and so on.Would ending the filibuster really work?Ending the filibuster in 2021 may not net Democrats the legislative victories they dream of. Because they hold only very slight majorities in both houses, Democrats would need to maintain a unified caucus to take advantage of a Senate sans filibuster. And that would mean only passing legislation that the most centrist senators agree with. So, it’s complicated.Should the Senate really get rid of the filibuster?There are risks, definitely, but many top Democrats have concluded that the time is nigh, because Senate Republicans led by Mitch McConnell have grown so relentlessly obstructionist that Democrats are powerless to enact policy even after they win elections. A study by the Center for American Progress found that Republicans have used the filibuster roughly twice as often as Democrats to prevent the other side from passing legislation.Basically, it’s down to the last straw. Democrats have put McConnell on notice that if Republicans continue trying to block everything that fairly elected Democrats would like to do, it’s bye-bye filibuster.“It’s going to depend on how obstreperous they become,” Biden told reporters last summer. “But I think you’re going to just have to take a look at it.”But couldn’t Republicans just block any effort to end the filibuster … with a filibuster?No. In a paradox best left alone, the power of the filibuster may be exorcised by a straight majority vote. Note that as of January 2021, the Democrats might not even be able to muster such a majority, despite controlling the Senate, with some centrists (and Bernie Sanders) wanting to keep the filibuster. So maybe Democrats would not be able abolish the filibuster even if they tried. For now. But that could change.Wouldn’t scrapping the filibuster violate hallowed history?On the contrary. The filibuster has a generally ignominious history, with some moments of glory. It’s not in the constitution and it emerged in its current form only through the exigencies of wartime a century ago. Since then, the filibuster has prominently been used to prop up racially discriminatory Jim Crow laws.Two of the most famous uses of the movie-version filibuster mentioned above were by the segregationist senator Strom Thurmond, who in 1957 held the Senate floor for more than 24 hours in an attempt to block civil rights legislation – and who mounted a sequel filibuster to sequel legislation in 1964.“For generations, the filibuster was used as a tool to block progress on racial justice,” Senator Elizabeth Warren, who is eager to bin the filibuster, told the National Action Network in 2019. “And in recent years, it’s been used by the far right as a tool to block progress on everything.”Who else hates the filibuster?In a separate address at the funeral of the civil rights leader representative John Lewis in 2020, Barack Obama laid the filibuster on the chopping block.“Once we pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, we should keep marching,” Obama said, referring to a bill to stop minority disenfranchisement. “And if all this takes eliminating the filibuster – another Jim Crow relic – in order to secure the God-given rights of every American, then that’s what we should do.”Which party pioneered filibuster abuse?The who-started-it argument about killing the filibuster revolves around federal judicial nominees and whether they could be filibustered.In brief, the Democrats were first to filibuster a federal judge nominee, in response to a loathed George W Bush pick who at the time was taken to be so uniquely unacceptable as to warrant unusual measures.Years later, McConnell adopted the strategy on steroids, blocking an army of Obama-nominated judges. In response, the Democrats in 2013 killed the filibuster for executive nominees below the level of supreme court justice.In 2017, to begin cramming the supreme court with what would turn out to be three Donald Trump justices, McConnell killed what was left of the judicial filibuster. Only the legislative filibuster remains, and it’s on life support.Will the gentleman yield his time?Thought you’d never ask. More

Sign up for the Guardian’s First Thing newsletterJoe Biden rose to power by promising bold action to confront the numerous crises facing the United States – namely the coronavirus pandemic, a struggling economy and the climate emergency. Over his first two weeks in office, the new president has signed a series of executive orders aimed at following through on those promises.Biden has already mandated mask-wearing on federal property and enacted stricter coronavirus testing requirements for those traveling into the United States. The president has also used the power of the executive pen to increase food stamp benefits and halt new oil and gas leases on public lands. Biden’s early actions have attracted praise from some of the most progressive members of the Democratic party, including the congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.But much of what Biden has promised, including a massive coronavirus relief package, cannot be done through executive action. Instead, Democrats will need to get their legislation through Congress, as the party clings to the slimmest of majorities in the House and the Senate.During his campaign, Biden promised to compromise with congressional Republicans in the spirit of bipartisan unity, but some of the president’s allies are already urging him to abandon that goal and instead advance his agenda by relying solely on Democratic support.Those Democrats argue that the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, has already made clear he intends to obstruct Biden’s agenda, and thus the new president should not waste precious time by trying to win over Republicans in Congress.Three progressive groups – Justice Democrats, the Sunrise Movement and New Deal Strategies – released a memo earlier this month entitled What To Do When Republicans Block Biden, which advised the president against watering down his $1.9tn coronavirus relief bill to attract bipartisan support.“We hope 10 Senate Republicans will support it, but are not holding our breath,” the groups said. “Biden has chosen to reject austerity politics. We hope that he will continue to stick to that approach, and go big always.”Hours after Biden was sworn in, McConnell signaled he intended to maximize Republicans’ power in the evenly divided Senate, where the vice-president, Kamala Harris, can provide a tie-breaking vote for Democrats. “The people intentionally entrusted both political parties with significant power to shape our nation’s direction,” McConnell said in a floor speech. “May we work together to honor that trust.”The filibusterMuch of the debate over Democrats’ strategy in the Senate comes down to the filibuster, a legislative mechanism that effectively allows the chamber’s minority to block bills unless they have the support of 60 members. With the filibuster in place, bills must have a supermajority level of support to make it through the Senate.A number of liberal commentators have pushed for the elimination of the filibuster, noting that it was not created by the framers of the constitution. The modern-day Senate filibuster came into existence in the early 20th century, and it was later embraced by segregationists to prevent the passage of civil rights legislation.“When the founders conceived of the Senate, they did imagine for it to be different from the House. It’s not clear that they imagined for it to have a supermajority requirement,” said Molly Reynolds, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution. “If they wanted it to have a supermajority requirement, they could have put one into place.”While eliminating the filibuster was previously rejected out of hand by Democratic leadership, some of the most prominent members of the party have come to champion the idea. Speaking at the funeral of the civil rights icon John Lewis last July, Barack Obama emphasized the need to strengthen voting rights, saying, “And if all this takes eliminating the filibuster, another Jim Crow relic, in order to secure the God-given rights of every American, then that’s what we should do.”We have a roadmap as to how [McConnell] has operated in the past, which is to be a one-man blockadeBut the new president is not among those Democrats who have called for eliminating the Senate filibuster. Biden said of the filibuster last summer, “I think it’s going to depend on how obstreperous [Republicans] become, and if they become that way.” He added, “I have not supported the elimination of the filibuster because it has been used as often to protect rights I care about as the other way around, but you’re going to have to take a look at it.”Asked last week about Biden’s view on the filibuster, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, told reporters that the president’s position “has not changed”. Two moderate Democrats in the Senate, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, have also signaled they do not support scrapping the filibuster.Some liberal strategists say Biden need not wait to see how McConnell will handle his presidency, given how the Republican leader oversaw the Senate when his party held the majority. After Democrats took control of the House in the 2018 elections, McConnell served as the self-proclaimed “Grim Reaper”, blocking any progressive legislation from being taken up in the Senate.“We have a roadmap as to how [McConnell] has operated in the past, which is to be a one-man blockade,” said Stephen Spaulding, a senior counsel at Common Cause, a liberal government reform group. “He will abuse the filibuster rule to demand supermajority votes on nearly every piece of the majority’s agenda. I think we can anticipate that.”With that in mind, some Democrats are pushing Biden and the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, to cut to the chase and eliminate the filibuster now. Given that the president’s party usually loses House seats in the midterm elections, Democrats may have just two years to enact major progressive policies before they lose full control of Congress.However, such a strategy could alienate some of the centrist voters who helped Biden win in November, particularly given the president’s repeated calls for unity and bipartisanship.“I think that Joe Biden has to make the effort. He ran on the idea that he was a unifier, so he needs to make the overtures,” said the conservative commentator Tara Setmayer. “But don’t get hung up because we already know that Mitch McConnell is about to dust off the playbook from the beginning of the Obama years, and all they did was obstruct.”Democrats have discussed the possibility of using a budgetary mechanism called reconciliation to advance their agenda, specifically a coronavirus relief bill. If Democrats use reconciliation, they can pass the relief bill with just 51 votes in the Senate. However, reconciliation would require Democrats to work within a very narrow framework to craft the bill, and it is possible some of the bill’s provisions would be thrown out as a result.“It’s a circuitous way to doing legislative business,” Spaulding said. “If you’re doing this just to do it via majority, frankly you should be looking at the Senate rules and not trying to necessarily go through this laborious process if you don’t have to.”As Washington grows increasingly pessimistic about the odds of Congress reaching a bipartisan agreement on a coronavirus relief bill, the elimination of the Senate filibuster seems more and more likely. The legislative mechanism may become a necessary casualty to provide aid to Americans suffering through a once-in-a-century crisis.“I don’t think the American people are going to have patience for that level of obstruction like we saw during Obama’s term,” Setmayer said. “The country is in too desperate of a position for those types of political squabbles.” More

For nearly a month, Mitch McConnell and his Senate Republicans have waged the parliamentary equivalent of a guerrilla war. Having lost the Georgia runoffs and with them the Senate, McConnell has still managed to stymie formal reorganization of the chamber. In an already sulfurous political landscape, the filibuster – the need for super-majorities of 60 votes to pass legislation – looms once again as a flashpoint.
In other words, Adam Jentleson’s book is perfectly timed and aptly subtitled. Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy is an authoritative and well-documented plea for abolishing a 19th-century relic used to thwart the majority’s agenda.
As Jentleson makes clear, the filibuster was first wielded by an agrarian and slave-holding south in opposition to the north’s burgeoning manufacturing economy – and modernity itself. A century on, in the 1960s, the filibuster became synonymous with Jim Crow, segregation and the malignant doctrine of separate but equal.
A 54-day filibuster of the 1964 Civil Rights Act refocused the nation on the jagged legacy of slavery, a full 101 years after Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. In a century and a half, so much and so little had changed.
In Jentleson’s telling, John Calhoun stands as progenitor of the filibuster. As a senator from South Carolina in the 1840s, he sought to gag voices supporting the abolition of slavery. Constricting debate was one way to do it. Calhoun had also been vice-president to John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson. He saw slavery as more than just an evil to be tolerated. As Jentleson notes, to Calhoun, slavery was “a good. A positive good.”
Calhoun also believed states could secede from the union. For that, he earned the ire of Jackson, a fellow slave-owner. Jackson reportedly said: “John Calhoun, if you secede from my nation, I will secede your head from the rest of your body.” Old Hickory was an ex-general as well as a president.
Jentleson draws a line from Calhoun to McConnell via Richard Russell, a segregationist Georgia senator and Democrat who served from 1933 to 1971. Russell once said: “Any southern white man worth a pinch of salt would give his all to maintain white supremacy.” One of the Senate’s three office buildings is named after him.
As for the Senate’s current minority leader, Kill Switch reminds the reader of an earlier McConnell quote: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” A dubious distinction, but one Donald Trump would instead come to hold.
Jentleson is not a dispassionate observer. An avowed Democrat, he was once deputy chief of staff to Harry Reid. As Democratic leader in the Senate for a decade, Reid, an ex-boxer from Nevada, frequently sparred with McConnell. Reid’s legacy includes the Affordable Care Act and scrapping the filibuster for nominations to lower federal courts and the executive branch.
Picking up where Reid left off, McConnell ended the filibuster for supreme court confirmations. Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett have him to thank for their jobs, not just Trump.
“With the flick of a wrist,” Jentleson writes, McConnell had gone “nuclear himself”.
These days, the author hangs his hat at Democracy Forward, a political non-profit chaired by a Democratic super-lawyer, Marc Elias, which includes on its board John Podesta, a veteran of the Clinton and Obama White Houses. Ron Klain, now Joe Biden’s chief of staff, was once treasurer. The group’s targets have included Ivanka Trump and her alleged ethics violations.
Kill Switch can become myopic when it points the finger elsewhere. For example, the book takes Republicans to task for attempting in 2013 to block the confirmation of Mel Watt, a longtime North Carolina congressman, to run the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), a financial regulator. But Jentleson makes no mention of Watt’s lapses.
Watt sought to slash funding for the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) – after it cleared him over allegations he diluted consumer protection legislation in exchange for campaign contributions. For his efforts, the liberal-leaning Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington branded Watt’s conduct “disgraceful”.
In 2018, furthermore, reports surfaced of Watt being investigated for sexual harassment. More than a year later, the FHFA reached a settlement.
Jentleson can also make too much out of race and ethnicity, interconnected realms strewn with pitfalls and landmines. He asserts that of the Senate’s current members of color, only two are Republican: Tim Scott of South Carolina, an African American, and Marco Rubio of Florida, whose parents came from Cuba. But Rubio self-identifies as both white and Hispanic.
Book embed
In the beginning, senators relied on the filibuster to block civil rights and labor legislation. Now it’s the new normal, wielded by Democrats and Republicans alike. Not much legislating gets done. When the Republican party is home to a congresswoman who muses about Jewish laser beams deployed to “clear space or something for high speed rail”, as a colleague put it, finding common ground is unlikely.
Whether the filibuster is abolished or modified remains to be seen. Although only a simple majority is needed to end it, it appears safe for now. Two Democrats have voiced opposition to changing the rules and the president is OK with the status quo.
If the Democrats can bypass the filibuster through reconciliation, a process used for budgeting that relies upon a simple majority, calls to end the filibuster will likely soften. If not, expect the filibuster to remain front and center heading into the 2022 midterms. Keep Kill Switch close at hand.
Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy, is published by Liveright Publishing Corporation More

Sign up for the Guardian’s First Thing newsletterThe Democratic representative Cori Bush said she is moving her office away from that of Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene due to safety concerns after Greene and her staff berated her and refused to wear masks.“I’ve worked fast food. I’ve worked in childcare. I’ve worked in healthcare. I’ve never been in a work environment like this before,” Bush said in an interview with MSNBC’s Joy Reid on Friday evening.Earlier in the day, Bush, a freshman representative from Missouri, had said in a statement that staff working for Greene, the newly elected Georgia congresswoman who supports the pro-Trump, antisemitic and racist QAnon conspiracy theory, had yelled after her in the underground tunnel connected to congressional office buildings: “Stop inciting violence with Black Lives Matter”.Bush told MSNBC she is moving her office, “not because I’m scared” of Greene, “because I am here to do a job for the people of St​ Louis”.“What I cannot do is continue to look over my shoulder wondering if a white supremacist in Congress, by the name of Marjorie Taylor Greene … is conspiring against us,” she said.Calls for Greene to be expelled from Congress or be censured have grown in recent days, amid reports that she has endorsed calls for violence against political opponents. In past social media posts uncovered by CNN, Greene indicated support for executing Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. In a 2018 Facebook post reported by MediaMatters, she echoed conspiracy theories that the wildfires that ravaged California that year were caused by a laser from space triggered by a group of Democratic politicians and companies for financial gain. And in a 2019 confrontation with survivors of the Parkland mass shooting documented on tape, she appeared to accost the students and later echoed conspiracy claims that mass shooting survivors and family members of victims are “crisis actors” and the attacks that killed their loved ones were staged as a plot to pass gun control laws.Greene has accused Bush of leading a “terrorist mob” because she was a prominent Black Lives Matter activist.The incident between Bush and Greene occurred on 13 January, and is a sign of growing strife in Congress following the pro-Trump riot that left at least five people dead. With Donald Trump facing an impeachment trial in the Senate for inciting the violence, many Republican leaders have avoided taking a clear stance against colleagues who egged on or encouraged the riot.[embedded content]The House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, is reportedly planning to meet with Greene on Monday to discuss her altercation with Bush. Still, the California Democrat Jimmy Gomez earlier this week announced plans to introduce a resolution to oust Greene as a rebuke of her calls for violence against lawmakers. Survivors of the Parkland shooting have also called on representatives to censure Greene, and March for Our Lives – the student-led gun violence prevention advocacy group that formed in the aftermath of Parkland, issued a one-word statement directed at Greene: “Resign”.The non-governmental Republican Jewish Coalition said on Friday it is working with lawmakers “regarding next steps in this matter” and noted that it opposed Greene’s 2020 election because “she repeatedly used offensive language in long online video diatribes” and “promoted bizarre political conspiracy theories”.Two-thirds of Congress would have to vote to expel Greene, which is unlikely to happen given that Republicans control slightly under half the seats.Greene is not the only first-term Republican member-facing scrutiny: Lauren Boebert of Colorado was warned that she could face criminal penalties if she carries out her publicly stated desire to bring her Glock into Congress.Several Republicans have complained about the metal detectors installed at the Capitol following the deadly attack earlier this month. The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, announced fines for members ignoring metal detectors or refusing to wear face masks amid the pandemic.Reacting to video that Greene released following Bush’s allegations, Bush said: “She had the audacity to be walking through this space on her phone showing people that she was not going to adhere to the rules of the House,” Bush said. “Put your mask on.” More

Joe Biden said on Friday that Congress needs to “act now” on his $1.9tn Covid-19 relief proposal, even without Republican support, adding that most economists believe additional economic stimulus is needed.“We have to act now,” the president told reporters at the White House. “There is an overwhelming consensus among economists … that this is a unique moment and the cost of inaction is high.”Biden later said he supported passing Covid-19 relief with or without Republican help.“I support passing Covid relief with support from Republicans, if we can get it. But the Covid relief has to pass with no ifs, ands or buts,” Biden said.This suggests that even as Biden has stressed the importance of bipartisanship and reaching out to moderate Republican lawmakers, his tolerance for opposition has its limits.Biden spoke as Democrats who lead the US Senate and House of Representatives prepared to take the first steps next week toward delivering fresh assistance to Americans and businesses reeling from a pandemic that has killed more than 433,000 people.Congress enacted $4tn in Covid-19 relief last year.On Thursday, the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, said the sharply divided chamber would begin work on robust legislation next week, despite misgivings among Republicans and some Democrats about the size of Biden’s proposal.With the 100-seat Senate split 50-50 and Kamala Harris, the vice-president, wielding the tie-breaking vote, Democrats are preparing to use a parliamentary tool called “reconciliation” that would allow the chamber to approve Covid-19 relief with a simple majority. Because of Senate rules, legislation usually requires 60 votes to pass in the chamber.“There is no time for any delays,” Biden said on Friday. “We could end up with 4m fewer jobs this year … It could take a year longer to return to full employment if we don’t act and don’t act now.“The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, predicted on Thursday that both chambers of Congress would be ready to move forward through reconciliation by the end of next week. More

The decision by US president Joe Biden to refund the UN population fund, UNFPA, offers “a ray of hope for millions of people around the world”, said the agency’s executive director.
Dr Natalia Kanem said the announcement on Thursday would have an “enormous” impact on the agency’s work, particularly as the world continues to grapple with the coronavirus pandemic.
In 2017, the Trump administration halted funding to the UNFPA, claiming it supported coercive abortion and involuntary sterilisation – claims strongly denied by the agency.
The US was one of the agency’s largest funders. In 2016, it provided $69m (£50m) to support its work in more than 150 countries.
“Ending funding to UNFPA has become a political football, far removed from the tragic reality it leads to on the ground. Women’s bodies are not political bargaining chips, and their right to plan their pregnancies, give birth safely and live free from violence should be something we can all agree on,” said Kanem.
She added that the pandemic had hit particularly hard the vulnerable communities in which the UNFPA works. “US support will be instrumental in helping us build back better and fairer.”
US secretary of state Antony Blinken said his department would appropriate $32.5m to support the UNFPA this year.
“UNFPA’s work is essential to the health and wellbeing of women around the world and directly supports the safety and prosperity of communities around the globe, especially in the context of the global Covid-19 pandemic,” he said.
Blinken also confirmed that the US would withdraw its support for the “Geneva Consensus Declaration” – an anti-abortion policy introduced last year by the then secretary of state Mike Pompeo, and signed by more than 30 countries, including Brazil, Hungary and Uganda.
“The United States is re-engaging multilaterally to protect and promote the human rights of all women and girls, consistent with the longstanding global consensus on gender equality and sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights,” said Blinken. More

Donald Trump was cultivated as a Russian asset over 40 years and proved so willing to parrot anti-western propaganda that there were celebrations in Moscow, a former KGB spy has told the Guardian.Yuri Shvets, posted to Washington by the Soviet Union in the 1980s, compares the former US president to “the Cambridge five”, the British spy ring that passed secrets to Moscow during the second world war and early cold war.Now 67, Shvets is a key source for American Kompromat, a new book by journalist Craig Unger, whose previous works include House of Trump, House of Putin. The book also explores the former president’s relationship with the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.“This is an example where people were recruited when they were just students and then they rose to important positions; something like that was happening with Trump,” Shvets said by phone on Monday from his home in Virginia.Shvets, a KGB major, had a cover job as a correspondent in Washington for the Russian news agency Tass during the 1980s. He moved to the US permanently in 1993 and gained American citizenship. He works as a corporate security investigator and was a partner of Alexander Litvinenko, who was assassinated in London in 2006.Unger describes how Trump first appeared on the Russians’ radar in 1977 when he married his first wife, Ivana Zelnickova, a Czech model. Trump became the target of a spying operation overseen by Czechoslovakia’s intelligence service in cooperation with the KGB.Three years later Trump opened his first big property development, the Grand Hyatt New York hotel near Grand Central station. Trump bought 200 television sets for the hotel from Semyon Kislin, a Soviet émigré who co-owned Joy-Lud electronics on Fifth Avenue.According to Shvets, Joy-Lud was controlled by the KGB and Kislin worked as a so-called “spotter agent” who identified Trump, a young businessman on the rise, as a potential asset. Kislin denies that he had a relationship with the KGB.Then, in 1987, Trump and Ivana visited Moscow and St Petersburg for the first time. Shvets said he was fed by KGB talking points and flattered by KGB operatives who floated the idea that he should go into the politics.The ex-major recalled: “For the KGB, it was a charm offensive. They had collected a lot of information on his personality so they knew who he was personally. The feeling was that he was extremely vulnerable intellectually, and psychologically, and he was prone to flattery.“This is what they exploited. They played the game as if they were immensely impressed by his personality and believed this is the guy who should be the president of the United States one day: it is people like him who could change the world. They fed him these so-called active measures soundbites and it happened. So it was a big achievement for the KGB active measures at the time.”Soon after he returned to the US, Trump began exploring a run for the Republican nomination for president and even held a campaign rally in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. On 1 September, he took out a full-page advert in the New York Times, Washington Post and Boston Globe headlined: “There’s nothing wrong with America’s Foreign Defense Policy that a little backbone can’t cure.”The ad offered some highly unorthodox opinions in Ronald Reagan’s cold war America, accusing ally Japan of exploiting the US and expressing scepticism about US participation in Nato. It took the form of an open letter to the American people “on why America should stop paying to defend countries that can afford to defend themselves”.The bizarre intervention was cause for astonishment and jubilation in Russia. A few days later Shvets, who had returned home by now, was at the headquarters of the KGB’s first chief directorate in Yasenevo when he received a cable celebrating the ad as a successful “active measure” executed by a new KGB asset.“It was unprecedented. I am pretty well familiar with KGB active measures starting in the early 70s and 80s, and then afterwards with Russia active measures, and I haven’t heard anything like that or anything similar – until Trump became the president of this country – because it was just silly. It was hard to believe that somebody would publish it under his name and that it will impress real serious people in the west but it did and, finally, this guy became the president.”Trump’s election win in 2016 was again welcomed by Moscow. Special counsel Robert Mueller did not establish a conspiracy between members of the Trump campaign and the Russians. But the Moscow Project, an initiative of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, found the Trump campaign and transition team had at least 272 known contacts and at least 38 known meetings with Russia-linked operatives.Shvets, who has carried out his own investigation, said: “For me, the Mueller report was a big disappointment because people expected that it will be a thorough investigation of all ties between Trump and Moscow, when in fact what we got was an investigation of just crime-related issues. There were no counterintelligence aspects of the relationship between Trump and Moscow.”He added: “This is what basically we decided to correct. So I did my investigation and then got together with Craig. So we believe that his book will pick up where Mueller left off.”Unger, the author of seven books and a former contributing editor for Vanity Fair magazine, said of Trump: “He was an asset. It was not this grand, ingenious plan that we’re going to develop this guy and 40 years later he’ll be president. At the time it started, which was around 1980, the Russians were trying to recruit like crazy and going after dozens and dozens of people.”“Trump was the perfect target in a lot of ways: his vanity, narcissism made him a natural target to recruit. He was cultivated over a 40-year period, right up through his election.” More