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      Democrats press ahead with move to discipline extremist congresswoman

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      Democrats in the US House of Representatives moved forward on Thursday with ousting the extremist congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia from the committees she was assigned to, over incendiary statements she made before entering Congress.
      The move is the latest development in Congress members’ attempts to deal with Greene, who has been a stated supporter of the QAnon myth, for years pushing such unfounded conspiracy theories and lies that included racist and antisemitic tropes.
      A vote on Greene’s committee seats was due to take place on Thursday. Democrats, who have the majority in the House, could strip her of her positions without Republican votes.
      A day earlier, the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, the top congressional Republican, declined to take action against Greene, despite wider pressure from members of Congress to push some kind of punitive measure for uncovered past statements and social media posts.
      These included supporting the assassination of Democratic members of Congress, denying that the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US ever happened, and perpetuating the myth that the Parkland, Florida, school shooting in 2018 was faked.
      In a private meeting with her colleagues on Wednesday night, Greene received a standing ovation for apologizing for her association with QAnon.
      Democrats nevertheless took steps to remove the Georgia congresswoman from her positions on the House budget and education and labor committees, respectively.
      Greene addressed her past statements under the threat of losing a significant proportion of her legislative power. She stressed that she now believed “school shootings are absolutely real”, that they should be taken seriously, and that “9/11 absolutely happened”.
      She portrayed her descent into conspiracy theories as a misguided period in her life that was over when she realized the falseness of the movement.
      “I never once during my entire campaign said QAnon. I never once said any of the things that I am being accused of today during my campaign,” Greene said. Up until her Thursday speech, Greene did not deny any of her past statements and avoided having to publicly address them directly.
      In December, after she was elected, Greene praised a tweet promoting the QAnon movement.
      Democrats have been pushing for Greene to either be expelled from Congress or severely punished if she should stay. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican minority leader, has called Greene’s past comments “looney lies”.
      In arguing that Greene should lose her assignments, Democrats pointed to the now former congressman Steve King of Iowa, a Republican, who lost his committee assignments after associating with neo-Nazis and making racist statements for years.
      On Thursday, the House rules committee chairman, Jim McGovern, a Democrat, argued that Greene was not entitled to her committee postings.
      “Serving on a committee is not a right, it is a privilege and when someone encourages violence against a member they should lose that privilege,” McGovern said.
      After Greene’s speech, McGovern signaled that it was insufficient.
      “I stand here today still deeply, deeply troubled and offended by the things that she has posted and said and still not apologized for,” McGovern said.
      Republicans largely refrained from defending Greene’s previous comments directly and instead argued that taking away her committee appointments would establish a slippery slope.
      Congressman Austin Scott of Georgia, a Republican, skeptically asked during a floor speech whether Democrats would stop with Greene if successful.
      “We know better. We know better,” Scott said of his Republican colleagues.
      Tom Cole of Oklahoma, McGovern’s Republican counterpart on the rules committee, argued that taking away Greene’s committees “opens up troubling questions about how we judge future members of Congress”. More

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      'I shouldn’t have to justify how I exist': Democrat Mauree Turner on being boxed in by identity

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      When 27-year-old Mauree Turner sat down at Holy Rollers, the queer-owned vegan Donut Shop in Oklahoma City in July 2020, it was under strange circumstances. First, Turner, who uses non-binary pronouns, had just won Oklahoma’s 88th district by a mere 228 votes. Second, sitting opposite, was the man they had just beaten.Before being elected to office, Turner spent their days doing the behind-the-scenes gruntwork of community organizing as a regional field director with the ACLU: planning workshops, leading trainings on college campuses, coordinating with dozens of volunteers.Jason Dunnington, on the other hand, was a three-term Democratic incumbent in a Republican-led state legislature whose progressive policy proposals struggled in Oklahoma’s Republican-led House. His readiness to compromise with Republicans made many view him as a moderate.“I wanted to sit down and just kind of talk about everything that had happened,” Turner tells me. “But I also wanted to know what I was getting into.”The two are a microcosm of a growing national trend. Left-leaning Democrats with strong community connections are increasingly defeating moderate incumbents with targeted, progressive policy ideas and transparent grassroots campaigns. But in an election year rife with ideological and strategic clashes between Democrats, two political opponents chatting over coffee feels like an outlier.I would have absolutely loved it if I could have been elected and brought in to do this work the same as any white manTurner is diplomatic when speaking of Dunnington, who was kind enough to give detailed handover notes to help their transition. He also offered to endorse Turner after his own defeat – despite efforts from the Republican candidate, Kelly Barlean, to bag his endorsement. But ultimately, Turner believes his loss was the result of marginalized voters wanting more than rhetorical allyship.“When you’re an ally and you do not have that shared lived experience, you are willing to continuously [compromise] the most vulnerable people for whatever piece of legislation gets passed at the end of the day. And I think a lot of people saw that. A lot of people feel it,” Turner says.It is a bit of a surprise that Turner, the first Muslim and non-binary person to to be elected to the state legislature in Oklahoma, even sat down for this interview.Following their win in November, Turner went from doing interviews every other day, to stopping almost completely, because of a media relationship that was too often intrusive and reductive.“People ask you to put yourself in this box continuously. ‘Are you genderqueer or are you non-binary or are you fluid?’ And I’m just like, why? I just got to exist before all of this,” explains Turner, with a half-smirk, when we talk in December.Our interview is by Zoom, but Turner is sitting in their newly christened office surrounded by – well, not much. The bookshelf is completely empty, the walls are blank – the most decorative things visible are the official government seal stitched into Turner’s black leather wingback chair, and Turner’s own deep rose-colored hijab, which they adjust from time to time, absent-mindedly.“People have asked me to justify what it means to be Muslim and queer. I shouldn’t have to justify how I exist. That was really jarring for me – having to sit through a series of interviews where people ask you those probing and prodding questions continuously,” Turner adds.The experience left a lasting impression. At one point, Turner was so physically exhausted from interviews, they thought they had Covid-19. “I would have absolutely loved it if I could have been elected and brought in to do this work the same as any white man.” jokes Turner. “I just want to come in [and say] these are my skills, I want to do this work, and then want to move on.”Turner – who hired laid off and furloughed people in Oklahoma for their campaign, and sent out handwritten postcards to residents – notes that most headlines about their win described them as “first Muslim” or “first non-binary”. Turner accepts and celebrates that the win is historic but finds it frustrating that a fraction of the coverage explored the range of issues they ran and won on.Still, Turner recognizes its power. Reminiscent of the Obama “hair like mine” moment, two eight-year-old Black girls who received Turner’s campaign flyer by mail got in contact asking for new fliers because Turner “looked like them”.Turner obliged, delivering the flyers personally. “It is important for people to be able to see themselves in policy,” Turner explains. Luckily, they had more than enough flyers.“Black families – you do one thing and it’s in the newspaper and they’re like, ‘give me 20 copies!’ So of course, I have all the runoffs at my house” says Turner smiling widely, chuckling at the idea of mailing campaign flyers as gifts for relatives over the holiday season.Growing up in Oklahoma, Turner was a self-described “latchkey kid”. The town they grew up in was small, almost entirely walkable, the kind of place where “everybody knows everybody – [and] everybody’s business”. Their mother worked two or three jobs at time, but there was always a sibling or a neighbor to keep an eye on things.“We knew all of our neighbors. My mom, when she was home, was outside talking to the neighbors. And that’s something you don’t see too much any more,” Turner recalls.They eventually left home to study veterinary medicine at Oklahoma State University, a passion that grew out of spending time around pets and farm animals when they were younger – Turner’s grandfather was “an old school cowboy”.Their time at Oklahoma state inadvertently served as Turner’s most formative years as a young organizer and activist, altering their career path. After graduating, Turner continued and expanded their activism working for the ACLU allowing Turner to immerse themself in some of the state’s most significant social justice issues. Now, Turner will have the chance to prioritize those same issues for Oklahoma’s most vulnerable families.If Oklahoma were its own country, its incarceration rate would be higher than every other nation in the world, including El Salvador, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Oklahoma City’s police department ranks second for police killings in the United States per capita according to most recent data from the Mapping Police Violence database.People have asked me to justify what it means to be Muslim and queer. I shouldn’t have to justify how I existTurner, whose own father was incarcerated throughout their childhood, has major plans for the criminal justice reform in the legislature.Despite consistently looking for employment since being released from prison more than a decade ago, Turner’s father wasn’t able to secure stable employment until about two years ago.“Oklahoma does this really bang-up job of keeping people incarcerated long after they leave prison,” says Turner. “We make it so hard for people to actually reintegrate, whether that’s being able to understand when you can register to vote again or whether that’s banning the box so people can find a job to be able to pay for their families and to be able to pay for themselves.”That’s why Turner’s vision for criminal justice legislation involves improving the lives of people post-incarceration, addressing things like employment support and training, alleviating the economic burden of parole and probation, and improving reentry programs.“There are some barriers to re-entry programs around Oklahoma – and it’s like, if I was at the place that I needed to be to get into a re-entry program, I wouldn’t need a re-entry program,” they say, exasperated, adding. “We know drugs are in our prisons and jails and you’re telling me that I need to be completely sober to enter into this re-entry program?”Turner’s mother’s experience is also a touchstone for their policy. As a child, Turner’s mother worked an administrative job during the day, a warehouse job overnight, and a part-time job at a beauty supply store on the weekends. She made breakfast for Turner and their siblings before school on the morning she had time. After school, Turner saw her for a brief period before she left for her overnight job. And still she struggled to make ends meet.“Working yourself into an early grave just to scrape by? That’s not the Oklahoma I want to create, that’s not what I want my nieces or my nephews to grow up in,” Turner explains.But it is still the reality for Turner’s mother, who currently works two jobs. Turner supports a living wage of at least $15 an hour. They concede that the state’s Republican-led legislature might limit the wage increase to 10 or 12 dollars, but Turner is unperturbed:“That was one of my motivations for running; we need more community organizers in office,” Turner recalls. “We need the folks who are continuously filling the gaps that our government leaves [to run for office] for us to be able to be in the position to change it with policy.” More

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      Why Republicans won’t agree to Biden’s big plans and why he should ignore them | Robert Reich

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      If there were ever a time for bold government, it is now. Covid, joblessness, poverty, raging inequality and our last chance to preserve the planet are together creating an existential inflection point.Fortunately for America and the world, Donald Trump is gone, and Joe Biden has big plans for helping Americans survive Covid and then restructuring the economy, rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure and creating millions of green jobs.But Republicans in Congress don’t want to go along. Why not?Mitch McConnell and others say America can’t afford it. “We just passed a program with over $900bn in it,” groused Senator Mitt Romney, the most liberal of the bunch.Rubbish. We can’t afford not to. Fighting Covid will require far more money. People are hurting.Besides, with the economy in the doldrums it’s no time to worry about the national debt. The best way to reduce the debt as a share of the economy is to get the economy growing again.The real reason Republicans want to block Biden is they fear his plans will workRepairing ageing infrastructure and building a new energy-efficient one will make the economy grow even faster over the long term – further reducing the debt’s share.No one in their right mind should worry that public spending will “crowd out” private investment. If you hadn’t noticed, borrowing is especially cheap right now. Money is sloshing around the world, in search of borrowers.It’s hard to take Republican concerns about debt seriously when just four years ago they had zero qualms about enacting one of the largest tax cuts in history, largely for big corporations and the super-wealthy.If they really don’t want to add to the debt, there’s another alternative. They can support a tax on super-wealthy Americans.The total wealth of America’s 660 billionaires has grown by a staggering $1.1tn since the start of the pandemic, a 40% increase. They alone could finance almost all of Biden’s Covid relief package and still be as rich as they were before the pandemic. So why not a temporary emergency Covid wealth tax?The real reason Republicans want to block Biden is they fear his plans will work.It would be the Republican’s worst nightmare: all the anti-government claptrap they’ve been selling since Ronald Reagan will be revealed as nonsense.Government isn’t the problem and never was. Bad government is the problem, and Americans have just had four years of it. Biden’s success would put into sharp relief Trump and Republicans’ utter failures on Covid, jobs, poverty, inequality and climate change, and everything else.Biden and the Democrats would reap the political rewards in 2022 and beyond. Democrats might even capture the presidency and Congress for a generation. After FDR rescued America, the Republican party went dark for two decades.Trumpian Republicans in Congress have an even more diabolical motive for blocking Biden. They figure if Americans remain in perpetual crises and ever-deepening fear, they’ll lose faith in democracy itself.This would open the way for another strongman demagogue in 2024 – if not Trump, a Trump-impersonator like Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley or Donald Trump Jr.The worst-kept secret in Washington is Biden doesn’t really need RepublicansIf Biden is successful, Americans’ faith in democracy might begin to rebound – marking the end of the nation’s flirtation with fascism. If he helps build a new economy of green jobs with good wages, even Trump’s angry white working-class base might come around.The worst-kept secret in Washington is Biden doesn’t really need Republicans, anyway. With their razor-thin majorities in both houses of Congress, Democrats can enact Biden’s plans without a single Republican vote.The worry is Biden wants to demonstrate “bipartisan cooperation” and may try so hard to get some Republican votes that his plans get diluted to the point where Republicans get what they want: failure.Biden should forget bipartisanship. Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans didn’t give a hoot about bipartisanship when they and Trump were in power.If Republicans try to stonewall Biden’s Covid relief plan, Biden and the Democrats should go it alone through a maneuver called “reconciliation”, allowing a simple majority to pass budget legislation.If Republicans try to block anything else, Biden should scrap the filibuster – which now requires 60 senators to end debate. The filibuster isn’t in the constitution. It’s anti-democratic, giving a minority of senators the power to block the majority. It was rarely used for most of the nation’s history.The filibuster can be ended by a simple majority vote, meaning Democrats have the power to scrap it. Biden will have to twist the arms of a few recalcitrant Democrats, but that’s what presidential leadership often requires.The multiple crises engulfing America are huge. The window of opportunity for addressing them is small. If ever there was a time for boldness, it is now. More

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      Explainer: what is the filibuster and why do some Democrats want to get rid of it?

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      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

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      Biden promised bold action. Will his efforts to compromise get in the way?

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      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

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      Kill Switch review: how the Senate filibuster props up Republican power

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      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

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      Biden says Congress needs to 'act now' on $1.9tn Covid relief proposal

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      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