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      Joe Manchin: the Democrat who holds the fate of Biden’s agenda in his hands

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      Five months after taking office, Joe Biden’s legislative agenda from infrastructure to voting rights is essentially hanging in the balance of one Democratic senator: Joe Manchin of West Virginia.The Democrat-controlled Senate passed a flurry of measures in the early days of the administration, including the $1.9tn coronavirus stimulus package and a nearly quarter-trillion-dollar bill to improve American competitiveness with China.But that burst of legislating dramatically slowed last week as the Senate prepared to consider a series of Democratic priorities crucial to Biden’s vision and the White House’s hopes for meaningful policy achievements before the 2022 midterm elections.The faltering efforts stem from Democrats’ razor-thin majority in the 50-50 Senate, which, in allowing any senator to hold up legislation, has thrust Manchin, the most conservative Senate Democrat, into the center of relevance in the nation’s capital and a position of almost unique power.The political dynamics mean Manchin now commands huge influence over Biden’s agenda, setting the stage for a collision between Democrats eager to use their majority to pass sweeping legislation, and his determination to restore bipartisanship to a divided Senate.“Senator Manchin’s influence there is shaping the agenda for the Democrats,” said Sarah Binder, professor of political science at George Washington University. “He’s the crux – he’s everything around which the majority depends.”The hand-wringing over Manchin’s power will only intensify in the coming weeks as Senate Democrats turn their attention to an infrastructure package and an expansive voting rights bill, known as For the People Act, opposed by Manchin for being too partisan.Manchin, a rarity as a pro-coal and anti-abortion Democrat, has already warned Biden and the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, that he would oppose any legislation if they did not first work to compromise with Republicans.“Senate Democrats must avoid the temptation to abandon our Republican colleagues on important national issues,” Manchin wrote in a recent Washington Post op-ed, in a throwback to a bygone era of collegiality in the Senate.Manchin often describes himself as having learned to legislate with “common sense” from watching small-town officials navigate local politics, even before he was twice elected governor of West Virginia first in 2004, and then in 2008 with nearly 70% of the vote.He is considered to most take after his uncle, Antonio James Manchin, an entertaining politician who became something of an icon in West Virginia politics after he rid the state’s countryside of thousands of rusting junked cars and old tyres.But the younger Manchin, who grew up in the small mining town of Farmington, built his own bonds with constituents when he cut short a 2006 trip to cheer on the West Virginia University Mountaineers at the Sugar Bowl in Atlanta, when a mine disaster struck back home.Now Manchin is the only Democrat who holds statewide office in West Virginia, a notable anomaly in a state where its rural working-class voters, who once backed Democrats for their strong trade union ties, have shifted sharply to the right.And after he held on to his Senate seat in 2018 in the steepest re-election challenge of his career, Manchin credited his survival to the strength of trust he built with voters through his compromise-seeking approach in the Senate.But in a hyper-partisan Washington, especially with Republicans committed to blocking Biden’s agenda, the chances of compromise materializing are slim.The bipartisan negotiations on infrastructure between Biden and the Senate Republican Shelley Moore Capito, for instance, collapsed on Tuesday after four weeks of talks failed to reconcile wide differences on size, scope and financing of the package.Meanwhile, on the voting rights bill, even moderate Republicans are united with the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, in refusing to engage in discussions on a measure they describe as a partisan power grab by Democrats but which many voting rights advocates describe as a vital defense of American democracy.The political landscape in the Senate means Democrats are likely to have little choice but to try to ram through legislation by destroying the filibuster rule – essentially a supermajority requirement – and pass them on a simple majority, party-line vote.Yet, here again there is a roadblock in the way: Manchin.Manchin believes that ending the filibuster would destroy the Senate and has repeatedly vowed to protect the procedural rule, invoking how his predecessor, Senator Robert Byrd, told him the chamber was supposed to force consensus.The Manchin-shaped hurdle for Biden’s agenda is delighting Republicans but exasperating Democrats, who say they can’t understand what he wants. “Can’t we just give West Virginia a new airport?” one Democratic leadership source said, illustrating the frustration.Manchin’s approach to moderating Democrats’ legislative ambitions is motivated in some part by the increasingly Republican nature of the state he represents, according to a source close to the senator.Trump won West Virginia in the 2020 election, and white voters without a college degree, the main demographic of Trump’s base, made up 69% of registered voters, according to census data – the highest anywhere in the country.“It’s among the deepest, reddest states in the country,” said William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “So when Senator Manchin says, ‘If I can’t go home to West Virginia and explain it to my folks, I can’t be for it,’ he means that.”Democrats have mostly taken a hands-off approach with Manchin, mindful that his vote remains the only bulwark between a Democratic-controlled Senate, and a Republican-controlled one.But mostly, they just know that even if their patience is about ready to expire, there is ultimately little they can do. 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      Burrito economics: Republican claims about price rises are so much hot air | Robert Reich

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      House Republicans are blaming Democrats for the rise in Chipotle burrito prices.You heard me right. The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) issued a statement on Wednesday claiming that Chipotle’s recent decision to raise prices on their burritos and other menu products by about 4% was caused by Democrats.“Democrats’ socialist stimulus bill caused a labor shortage and now burrito lovers everywhere are footing the bill,” said an NRCC spokesman, Mike Berg.It seems Republicans have finally found an issue to run on in the 2022 midterm elections. Apparently Dr Seuss and Mr Potato Head weren’t gaining enough traction.The GOP’s tortured logic is that the unemployment benefits in the American Rescue Plan have caused workers to stay home rather than seek employment, resulting in labor shortages that have forced employers like Chipotle to increase wages, which has required them to raise their prices.Hence, Chipotle’s more expensive burrito.This isn’t just loony economics. It’s dangerously loony economics because it might be believed, leading to all sorts of stupid public policies.Start with the notion that $300 per week in federal unemployment benefits is keeping Americans from working.Since fewer than 30% of jobless workers qualify for state unemployment benefits, the claim is that legions of workers have chosen to become couch potatoes and collect $15,000 a year rather than get a job.Republicans have found an issue to run on. Apparently Dr Seuss and Mr Potato Head weren’t gaining enough tractionI challenge one Republican lawmaker to live on $15,000 a year.In fact, evidence suggests that workers who are holding back from re-entering the job market don’t have childcare or are still concerned about their health during the pandemic.Besides, if employers want additional workers, they can do what they necessarily do for anything they want more of but can’t obtain at its current price – pay more.It’s called capitalism. Republicans should bone up on it.When Chipotle wanted to attract more workers, it raised its average wage to $15 an hour. That comes to around $30,000 a year per worker – still too little to live on but double the federal unemployment benefit.Oh, and there’s no reason to suppose this wage hike forced Chipotle to raise the prices of its burrito. The company had other options.Chipotle’s executives are among the best paid in America. Its chief executive, Brian Niccol, raked in $38m last year – which happens to be 2,898 times more than the typical Chipotle employee. All Chipotle’s top executives got whopping pay increases.So it would have been possible for Chipotle to avoid raising its burrito prices by – dare I say? – paying its executives less. But Chipotle decided otherwise.I’m not going to second-guess Chipotle’s business decision – nor should the NRCC.By the way, I keep hearing Republican lawmakers say the GOP is the “party of the working class”. If that’s so, it ought to celebrate when hourly workers get a raise instead of howling about it.Everyone ought to celebrate when those at the bottom get higher wages.The typical American worker hasn’t had a real raise in four decades. Income inequality is out of control. Wealth inequality is into the stratosphere (where Jeff Bezos is heading, apparently).If wages at the bottom rise because employers need to pay more to get the workers they need, that’s not a problem. It’s a victory.Instead of complaining about a so-called “labor shortage”, Republicans ought to be complaining about the shortage of jobs paying a living wage.Don’t hold your breath, or your burrito. More

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      Joe Biden’s reforming agenda at risk of dying a slow death in Congress

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      Joe Biden’s first hundred days surpassed progressive expectations with the scope of their ambition. His second hundred days are being mugged by reality: the one that says Washington DC is a place where dreams go to die.A once-in-a-generation investment in infrastructure and the climate crisis has hit a wall. Reforms on gun safety, immigration and police brutality are in limbo. Legislation to expand voting rights and reduce the influence of money in politics appears doomed.The stalled agenda reflects Republican obstruction, Democratic disunity and the inherent messiness of “sausage-making” on Capitol Hill. But it also shines a light on taken-for-granted structures of American government and democracy that many argue are no longer fit for purpose because they favor gridlock and militate against sweeping change.“The American system of government is a beta form of democracy,” said Ezra Levin, a former congressional staffer who is co-executive director of the grassroots movement Indivisible. “We have a presidential system that hasn’t really substantially been updated since the 19th century.“Nobody designing a democracy today would create as many veto points as we have and nobody, including the original founders, would have developed a system like the Senate filibuster where theoretically senators representing 11% of the population can veto legislation that is wildly popular.”Much has been written about Biden’s prospects of emulating Franklin D Roosevelt (FDR) and Lyndon B Johnson (LBJ) with a transformational presidency and eclipse Barack Obama by throwing caution to the winds. The excitement only grew with the passage of a $1.9tn coronavirus relief package in March.But that, it transpires, was the exception not the rule. The Democrats’ progressive wing is becoming increasingly frustrated as other promises go unrealised, fearing an all-too-familiar pattern of hopes dashed and dreams deferred that will only feed anti-Washington resentment.Ro Khanna, a congressman from California who was a co-chair of Senator Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign, told the Associated Press: “There’s a lot of anxiety. It’s a question really for President Biden: what kind of president does he want to be?”Joe Biden won a fairly significant personal victory but the 2020 elections were hardly a victory for the Democratic party as a wholeThe first problem is that Biden does not have a Roosevelt-like majority in Congress. Democrats have only a wafer-thin advantage in the House of Representatives. The Senate is evenly divided between 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans, giving Vice-President Kamala Harris the tie-breaker vote. It is hardly a recipe for revolution.Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington, said: “There was always the brute fact that the Democrats had the slimmest margin in the House of Representatives they’ve enjoyed since the 1940s and you can’t get any closer in the Senate than a tie broken by the vice-president.“So the fact of the matter is that Joe Biden won a fairly significant personal victory but the 2020 elections were hardly a victory for the Democratic party as a whole. Anything but. So I really had to shake my head and chuckle when I read all of those early comparisons to FDR and LBJ.”The balance of power leaves Biden’s entire legislative agenda subject to the whims of any individual senator. He got a taste of this last weekend when Joe Manchin, a conservative Democrat from West Virginia, declared his opposition to the For the People Act, a voting rights bill that many activists regard as crucial to protecting democracy and a direct response to restrictive new voting laws being passed in Republican-led states.In a newspaper column, Manchin described the bill as the “wrong piece of legislation to bring our country together” and a barrier to Senate bipartisanship. This was despite polls showing clear support for it in his home state. His stand provoked anger among progressives and prompted civil rights leaders to meet Manchin on Tuesday.Mondale Robinson, founder of the Black Male Voter Project, a member of the Just Democracy coalition, said: “There is nothing partisan about this. What’s partisan is what’s happened since 2020 where you have Republican state legislatures proposing bills and enacting laws that will restrict Black and brown people all over this country from being able to participate in our democracy.“That’s sad to me. especially because some of the Black men that we talk to voted for the first time in 2020 in ways that are no longer legal in some of the states in this country, simply because Republicans saw that if they allow people to vote by mail or use drop boxes, which are some of the most secure ways to vote, they lose elections.”Manchin has also joined the Democratic senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona in publicly refusing to end the filibuster, a procedural rule that requires 60 votes to advance most legislation, meaning that at least 10 Republicans would need to cross party lines to help Democrats achieve their priorities. Some senators propose reducing the voting threshold to 51.Activists increasingly regard blowing up the filibuster as essential and fundamental. Robinson added: “The fact that Joe Biden has been more progressive than I thought is a testament to him understanding the moment and I feel like some other elected officials aren’t reading the tea leaves. Roosevelt had a majority that Joe Biden can only dream for and we don’t have those majorities right now.What our lawmaking process does is make it all but impossible to enact sweeping, comprehensive change“So what it all leads back to is a need to eliminate the filibuster. We need to continue to make it clear to Senator Manchin he has a choice to do something or do nothing, and then someone has to press upon him that history will remember those choices.”America’s founding fathers constructed a government of checks and balances that guarded against rash action: a chief executive, a bicameral Congress with veto power, an independent judiciary. Washington mythology held that they invented the filibuster to guard against the tyranny of the majority but this has repeatedly been debunked by scholars who say it was created by mistake and first used in 1837.William Howell, a political scientist at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago, said: “The framers didn’t create the filibuster. It’s excessive even by their standards.“What our lawmaking process does generally, and what the filibuster does in particular, is make it all but impossible to enact sweeping, comprehensive change. It leaves in its wake pervasive gridlock and sporadic opportunity to make incremental changes and that’s about it.”Every major piece of legislation successfully enacted over the past decade has circumvented the filibuster through a process called budget reconciliation, Howell noted. This tool may allow Democrats to go it alone with the American Jobs Plan, which would invest heavily in bridges, railways and roads, “soft” infrastructure such as caregiving and clean energy.Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democratic senator for Rhode Island, tweeted that he is “nervous” about Congress doing too little to address the climate crisis. “We must get Senate Dems unified on climate on a real reconciliation bill, lest we get sucked into ‘bipartisanship’ mud where we fail on climate,” he wrote.The filibuster is hardly the only design fault. It comes on top of a Senate that is deeply unrepresentative because each state gets two seats, no matter the size of its population. That means small, predominantly white states carry as much heft as huge, racially diverse states such as California. An effort to make the District of Columbia the 51st state would begin to redress the balance but Manchin has again vowed opposition.Levin, the Indivisible organiser, said: “The 50 Democratic senators represent 41 million more Americans than the 50 Republican senators. I think anybody objectively looking at how legislation is passed in this country has to come away with the conclusion that we are not set up to tackle 21st-century problems with a 19th-century democracy.”I don’t think it’s fair to say that an op-ed from a single senator dictates the future of that legislationDespite these headwinds, Levin is not giving up on Biden’s progressive project, pointing out that Democratic presidents have been here before. In 1964, under Johnson, the Civil Rights Act passed the Senate after overcoming a 54-day filibuster, and the following year the Voting Rights Act took more than a month of full Senate debate to escape the threat.“Neither of those things were passed with the snap of a finger,” he said. “It is fair to say the For the People Act is a tough fight. I don’t think it’s fair to say that an op-ed from a single senator dictates the future of that legislation. It’s always easy to be cynical about these things but there’s reason to hope. There are very real pathways forward to get this done.”Groups supporting the legislation intend to press ahead with a $30m campaign pressing Democratic senators to rewrite filibuster rules and pass the bill. Manchin has talked about supporting another voting bill, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, but activists insist that both pieces of legislation are needed.LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter, said: “What we are seeing is that, as America becomes younger and more diverse, the reality is we currently do not have a political infrastructure that can support the kind of democracy that is laid out in the constitution where people have free and fair access to the ballot.“We need the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act as a step closer to strengthening our democracy and protecting those elements that have literally been fought and won through protest, through giving of lives.” More

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      Pelosi urges Senate Democrats to back voting rights bill and ‘save democracy’

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      Nancy Pelosi is urging congressional Democrats not to abandon their marquee voting-rights legislation in favor of a narrower bill, as the House speaker attempts to stave off opposition to the embattled measure from members of the party in the Senate.Pelosi said on a caucus call on Thursday that Democrats needed to prioritize HR1 – the sweeping election reform bill known as the For the People Act – to save American democracy, according to a source familiar with the matter.The legislation is teetering on the brink of collapse in the Senate after Joe Manchin, a key conservative Democrat, said he would not back the bill, nor vote to eliminate the filibuster rule that would ease its passage.But Pelosi said on the call that she was holding out hope that Senate Democrats could persuade Manchin to support the measure and force the legislation through.“I have not given up on Manchin,” Pelosi told her colleagues, according to the source.The rare, personal move from Pelosi to influence events in the Senate reflects the deep alarm among Democratic leadership about the rapidly diminishing chances of the bill passing into law in the wake of Manchin’s announcement.It also marks the second time in three days that Pelosi reiterated her position, after pressing the issue in a letter to her Democratic colleagues on Tuesday.“We are at an urgent moment because of the Republican assault on our democracy,” Pelosi said in the letter, adding that the legislation “must become law in order to respect the sanctity of the vote, which is the basis of our democracy”.In the national struggle for voting rights, Democrats have rested their hopes for rolling back dozens of new voter restrictions passed by Republican state legislatures to limit early and mail-in voting, and empower partisan poll watchers, on HR1.The 818-page bill would expand ballot access and tighten controls on campaign spending. It would also end the president’s exemption from conflict-of-interest rules, which allowed Donald Trump to maintain businesses that profited off his presidency.Manchin has said instead that he would support the passage of a narrower election reform bill, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would restore federal oversight over state-level election law struck down by the supreme court in 2013.But Pelosi noted sharply in her letter that the John Lewis bill was “not a substitute” for HR1, and stressed it would not be ready until after the summer as it undergoes intensive vetting to prepare for expected legal challenges.The John Lewis bill also faces further hurdles after the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, condemned the measure as Democratic power grab, all but ensuring it will be defeated by an expected Republican filibuster.The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, has vowed to force a vote on House-passed HR1 towards the end of June, but with Manchin’s vow to oppose the measure, the prospects of its passage in the Senate now appear all but impossible.Pelosi has remained undeterred. “HR1 must be passed now,” she said in the letter. More

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      Watchdog investigates seizure of Democrats’ phone data by Trump DoJ

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      The US justice department’s internal watchdog launched an investigation on Friday after revelations that former president Donald Trump’s administration secretly seized phone data from at least two House Democrats as part of an aggressive leaks inquiry related to the Russia investigation into Trump’s conduct.Democrats in Congress called the seizures a “shocking” abuse of power, while the White House labeled the revelations “appalling”.The announcement by the DoJ inspector general, Michael Horowitz, came shortly after the deputy attorney general, Lisa Monaco, made the request on Friday morning.Horowitz said he would examine whether the data turned over by Apple followed department policy and “whether any such uses, or the investigations, were based upon improper considerations”.It was revealed late on Thursday that the US justice department under Trump had taken data from the accounts of at least two members of the House of Representatives intelligence committee in 2018 as part of an aggressive crackdown on leaks related to the Russia investigation and other national security matters, according to a committee official and two people familiar with the investigation.Prosecutors from the previous president’s DoJ subpoenaed Apple for the data, according to the people, who were granted anonymity to discuss the secret seizures first reported by the New York Times.The records of at least 12 people connected to the intelligence panel were eventually shared, including the chairman, Adam Schiff, who was then the top Democrat on the committee.The California Democratic congressman Eric Swalwell was the second member, according to spokeswoman Natalie Edelstein. The records of aides, former aides and family members were also siezed, including one who was a minor, according to the committee official.Apple informed the committee last month that their records had been shared, but did not give extensive detail. The committee is aware, though, that metadata from the accounts was turned over, the official said.The records do not contain any other content from the devices, like photos, messages or emails, one of the other people said. The third person said that Apple complied with the subpoena, providing the information to the DoJ, and did not immediately notify the members of Congress or the committee about the disclosure.While the justice department routinely conducts investigations of leaked information, including classified intelligence, opening such an investigation into members of Congress is extraordinarily rare.Schiff tweeted: “Trump repeatedly demanded the DoJ go after his political enemies. It’s clear his demands didn’t fall on deaf ears. This baseless investigation, while now closed, is yet another example of Trump’s corrupt weaponization of justice. And how much he imperiled our democracy.”Trump repeatedly demanded the DOJ go after his political enemies.It’s clear his demands didn’t fall on deaf ears. This baseless investigation, while now closed, is yet another example of Trump’s corrupt weaponization of justice.And how much he imperiled our democracy.— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) June 11, 2021
      The disclosures, as first reported by the New York Times, raise questions about what the department’s justification was for spying on another branch of government and whether it was done for political reasons.The Trump administration’s attempt to secretly gain access to data of individual members of Congress and others connected to the panel came as the president was fuming publicly and privately over investigations – in Congress and by the special counsel Robert Mueller – into his campaign’s ties to Russia. Trump called the probes a “witch-hunt”, regularly criticized Schiff and other Democrats on Twitter and repeatedly dismissed as “fake news” leaks he found personally harmful to his agenda. As the investigations swirled around him, he demanded loyalty from a justice department he often regarded as his personal law firm.The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said in a statement that “these actions appear to be yet another egregious assault on our democracy” waged by the former president.“The news about the politicization of the Trump administration justice department is harrowing,” she said.Schiff, now the panel’s chair, also confirmed in a statement on Thursday evening that the DoJ had informed the committee in May that the investigation was closed. Still, he said: “I believe more answers are needed, which is why I believe the inspector general should investigate this and other cases that suggest the weaponization of law enforcement by a corrupt president.”The justice department told the intelligence panel then that the matter had not transferred to any other entity or investigative body, the committee official said, and the department confirmed that to the committee again on Thursday.The panel has continued to seek additional information, but the department has not been forthcoming in a timely manner, including on questions such as whether the investigation was properly predicated and whether it only targeted Democrats, the committee official said.It is unclear why Trump’s justice department would have targeted a minor as part of the investigation. Another Democrat on the intelligence panel, the Illinois representative Mike Quigley, said he did not find it even “remotely surprising” that Trump went after committee members’ records during the Russia investigation.“From my first days as part of the Russia investigation, I expected that eventually, someone would attempt this – I just wasn’t sure if it would be a hostile government or my own,” Quigley said.And the Florida congresswoman Val Demings, an impeachment manager in Trump’s first Senate trial, and who is now challenging Republican Florida Senator Marco Rubio for his seat, tweeted: “It is outrageous but not surprising. We have a former president with no regard for the rule of law or for those who enforce the laws.” More

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      Texas business leaders reluctant to take sides in heated voting rights battle

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      After Democrats derailed one of Texas’s most restrictive voting bills at the 11th hour – all but guaranteeing yet another partisan showdown in the near future – business leaders in the state have gone eerily silent as they plot their next steps.“Now would be a good time for them to say something like, ‘We’re glad it was defeated, we’re hoping that this does not move forward into a special session’,” said Cliff Albright, co-founder and executive director of the Black Voters Matter Fund.“They can actually be proactive.”With a whopping 49 restrictive voting bills, Texas led a countrywide charge to undermine voter access, even as voting rights advocates warned the proposals amounted to a new version of Jim Crow and would disproportionately disenfranchise voters of color.The targeted attack on voting rights sparked national outrage, including among the local business community, until Democratic lawmakers walked out of the Texas House to block Senate Bill 7 – one of the most controversial, far-reaching measures.But their last-minute maneuver has already set the stage for legislative overtime, rendering celebrations premature and forcing risk-averse corporate executives to consider whether they’ll re-enlist in the fight for round two.“If the fight is still ongoing, I think most businesses are gonna hold their fire, for lack of a better term, until they understand whether or not this thing is gonna come back – and in what form, and at what pace,” said Nathan Ryan, co-founder and CEO of Blue Sky Partners, which is part of the Fair Elections Texas coalition of business and civic leaders.Though timing remains unclear, Texas’ Republican governor Greg Abbott has expressed his intention to reconvene the state legislature for a special session, forcing lawmakers to address so-called “election integrity” after SB7’s failure.The sweeping legislation threatened public officials with state jail felonies for soliciting or distributing unrequested vote-by-mail applications, banned 24-hour and drive-thru voting, and made it easier to overturn an election, among other provisions.Already, Texas has earned the unenviable title as the hardest place to vote in the United States. Further obstacles to the polls could prove disastrous for the state’s economy, in part by making it harder to recruit workers, cutting into productive work time, alienating major events or conferences and deterring would-be tourists.“I certainly know, when I make my travel plans, if I was thinking about going to Texas, I wouldn’t want to go,” Albright said.By 2025, measures restricting voter access would cause Texas to shed an estimated $14.7bn in annual gross product and more than 73,000 jobs from lower earnings, employment losses and reduced household purchasing power.An additional $16.7bn and 149,644 jobs would be lost from hits to tourism and economic development, according to economic research and analysis firm The Perryman Group.That financial blowback would persist for decades, with a cumulative drop in gross product in the trillions by 2045. It would also slice tax revenue, costing state and local entities billions.“Voter suppression is bad for business. Period. It’s bad for business, it’s bad for the economy,” Albright said.During the regular session, corporate giants and local businesses alike waded into the political debate to make rare public remarks discouraging attempts to roll back voting rights.In a letter by Fair Elections Texas, dozens of coalition members – including American Airlines, Microsoft, HP, Salesforce, Etsy and Patagonia – urged elected officials to “oppose any changes that would restrict eligible voters’ access to the ballot”.“We wanted to make a strong statement against any kind of legislation that would make voting less convenient, and cause lower turnout as a result,” Ryan said.Separately, Dell Technologies lambasted state lawmakers for trying to silence citizens’ voices, while American Airlines “strongly opposed” Texas’s restrictive voting bills.“At American, we believe we should break down barriers to diversity, equity and inclusion in our society – not create them,” the Fort Worth-based airline said in a statement.Texas’s Republican leaders hit back with bitter barbs that verged on intimidation, questioning companies’ understanding of the legislation and hinting at retaliation.“They need to stay out of politics, especially when they have no clue what they’re talking about,” Abbott said.“They might come down the street next session, have a bill they want us to pass for them. Good luck!” Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick added.Those incendiary comments likely influenced companies that ultimately decided against speaking out – and may have even chilled activism among some that had already made statements, Albright said.But “it’s not like these businesses just have to be completely intimidated by these threats coming from these governors, right?” he added. “’Cause at the end of the day, these governors need these businesses.”As company executives stare down the near-inevitability of a special session, Ryan believes the appetite remains to push back against voting restrictions.Part of that boils down to the potential for financial losses if a measure such as SB7 becomes law. But it’s also about safeguarding their employees and community members.“Companies don’t see this as Democratic party vs. Republican party. They truly do see this as small ‘d’ democratic,” Ryan said. “It’s the main civil right in our country.” More