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      US House poised to approve Joe Biden's $1.9tn Covid relief plan

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      Sign up for the Guardian’s First Thing newsletterThe House of Representatives is poised to give final approval to Joe Biden’s sweeping $1.9tn coronavirus stimulus and relief plan, a giant aid package the president has said is critical for lifting the US out of the pandemic and reviving its battered economy.If passed by the House on Wednesday, as Democratic leaders expect, the first major legislative initiative of Biden’s presidency will rush assistance to families struggling under a year-long public health crisis and provide the most generous expansion of aid to low-income Americans in a generation.It will send direct payments of up to $1,400 to most Americans, expand aid to state, local and tribal governments, provide federal subsidies for those struggling to afford health insurance, housing and food and deliver money to boost Covid-19 vaccine distribution and testing and to safely reopen schools.Economists predict that as one of the largest emergency rescue packages in American history, the American Rescue Plan (ARP) will accelerate economic recovery, boosting growth to levels not seen in recent decades and dramatically reducing numbers living in poverty.According to one estimate, the ARP could cut child poverty by as much as half, through an expansion of a tax credit for families with children that many Democrats want to make permanent.House Democrats, who hold a slim majority, were confident the measure would pass on Wednesday morning, despite changes made in the Senate that threatened to alienate some progressives.The New York congressman Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic Caucus chair, said he was “110% confident” of success. Once passed by the House, the bill will be sent to Biden for signature.The Senate passed the bill on Saturday in a 50-49 vote, Democrats overcoming unified Republican opposition and a last-minute objection by Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a member of their own party.The package before the House on Wednesday was narrower than Biden’s initial proposal, which included progressive priorities subsequently either stripped out or scaled back to appease moderates like Manchin, who echoed Republicans with concerns that the infusion of aid was too big in an economy showing signs of revival.A provision to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour was deemed inadmissible under a budget process Democrats used to bypass Republican opposition.The Senate-approved version tightens eligibility for stimulus checks and restructures a proposal for unemployment benefits that Biden hoped to raise to $400 a week. Under the new plan, unemployment benefits will remain at $300 a week but will be extended through the beginning of September, rather than August. The first $10,200 of supplements from 2020 will be made tax-free.Though disappointed with some of the amendments, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, called them “relatively minor concessions” and said the overall package remained “truly progressive and bold”.Republicans say the plan is excessive and mismatched to the economic and public health outlook, as more Americans are vaccinated and states move to reopen businesses and schools. They have also revived concerns the package will grow the national debt, worries they set aside under Donald Trump.“We know for sure that it includes provisions that are not targeted, they’re not temporary, they’re not related to Covid and it didn’t have to be this way,” said the Wyoming congresswoman Liz Cheney, House Republican Conference chair. “We could have had a bill that was a fraction of the cost of this one, it could have gotten bipartisan approval and support.”The extraordinary price tag is just shy of the $2.2tn coronavirus relief bill signed into law by Donald Trump at the onset of the pandemic last March. It will be the sixth spending bill Congress has enacted to address the devastation wrought by the twin public health and economic crises, and is poised to be the first to pass without bipartisan support despite Biden’s campaign promise to work with Republicans.Yet the lack of consensus in Washington belies its popularity with voters across the political spectrum and local and state officials of both parties. Encouraged by polling that shows broad public support for the bill, Biden and Democrats have argued that the plan is bipartisan.Final passage of the bill will come a day before Biden is due to deliver his first primetime speech on Thursday, marking the first anniversary after the introduction of sweeping public health measures to try to control the spread of the Covid-19 virus that has killed nearly 525,000 Americans and battered the economy.Although vaccine distribution is ramping up dramatically and the economy is showing some signs of improvement, Democrats say the recovery is precarious and uneven, and that low-income Americans still need help. Millions of Americans remain unemployed with the poorest hit hardest.“This not only gets us to the other side of this crisis, it really starts healing the wounds that have been caused by this crisis,” said Steny Hoyer, the House Democratic majority leader.After Biden signs the bill into law, he and other top officials will continue to promote the plan to the American public, part of a push by the new administration to ensure Democrats receive credit for an economic recovery ahead of the 2022 congressional midterm elections.“We certainly recognize that we can’t just sign a bill,” the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, told reporters on Tuesday. “We will need to do some work and use our best voices, including the president, the vice-president and others, to communicate to the American people the benefits of this package.”In a departure from his predecessor, Biden’s signature will not appear on the memo line of the stimulus checks sent to Americans, Psaki said. “This is not about him,” she added. “This is about the American people getting relief.” More

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      Nancy Pelosi hails 'historic' Covid relief bill as House prepares to vote

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      The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has hailed the massive $1.9tn Covid relief bill as “historic” and “transformative” as the House stood poised to give the legislation final approval with a vote on Wednesday morning.Joe Biden, who will mark a year since the pandemic brought shutdowns across the nation with a primetime speech on Thursday, has said he will sign the bill as soon as it lands on his desk.The House vote on the bill, which includes checks for most American households, comes after the Senate passed a modestly reworked version of the package on Saturday and will clinch Biden’s most significant early legislative achievement.“It’s a remarkable, historic, transformative piece of legislation, which goes a very long way to crushing the virus and solving our economic crisis,” Pelosi said during a press conference with senior Democrats on Tuesday afternoon, who took turns extolling what they said was the historic nature of the legislation and its impact on reducing poverty in America. “I’m so excited, I just can’t hide it,” she added.Several Democratic leaders compared it to the passage of the Affordable Care Act, saying the plan would not only “crush” the virus and the economic fallout but would look forward to tackle longstanding racial and gender inequalities in the economy.Smiling under her mask, Pelosi expressed full confidence that Democrats had the votes to pass the bill.Asked about possible defections from progressive members disappointed that the Senate had narrowed a version of the bill, initially proposed by Biden and passed by the House, Pelosi shook her head and said “no” repeatedly. The bill would head to Biden’s desk after the vote on Wednesday, she said.Besides the fresh round of stimulus checks, the bill also extends emergency jobless benefits to early September, instead of 14 March. It spends huge amounts on Covid-19 vaccines, testing and treatments, while also aiding state and local governments and schools, assisting small businesses and providing major expansions of tax breaks and programs for lower- and middle-income families.Progressives suffered setbacks, especially the Senate’s removal of a gradual minimum wage increase to $15 hourly by 2025. But the measure carries so many Democratic priorities that final passage was not in doubt, despite the party’s narrow 10-vote House majority.Meanwhile a hefty majority of Americans – 70% – say they are in favor of the coronavirus relief package. Only a third of Americans said the legislation is too costly, according to a poll from Pew research.Biden has said he will not be attaching his signature to the $1,400 relief checks that are expected to be mailed soon, a break with his predecessor who last year had “President Donald J Trump” printed on the economic impact payments approved by Congress.The next round of paper checks will bear the signature of a career official at the treasury department’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service, the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, said at a Tuesday briefing.Psaki said the goal was to get the payments out quickly instead of branding them as coming from Biden.“This is not about him, this is about the American people getting relief,” Psaki said. More

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      Biden to Sign Order Meant to Make Voting Easier

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyBiden to Sign Order Meant to Make Voting EasierThe executive order is relatively limited in scope. It calls upon officials at federal agencies to study and potentially expand access to voter registration materials.President Biden at the White House on Saturday.Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesMarch 7, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETWASHINGTON — President Biden is expected to sign an executive order on Sunday that directs the government to take steps to make voting easier, marking the 56th anniversary of the Bloody Sunday march in Selma, Ala., which swiftly turned voting rights into a national cause.The multipart order is aimed at using the far-flung reach of federal agencies to help people register to vote and to encourage Americans to go to the polls on Election Day. In a prepared speech for the Martin and Coretta King Unity Breakfast on Sunday, Mr. Biden will argue that such actions are still necessary despite the progress of the last half-century.“The legacy of the march in Selma is that while nothing can stop a free people from exercising their most sacred power as citizens, there are those who will do everything they can to take that power away,” Mr. Biden will say, according to the prepared remarks.“Every eligible voter should be able to vote and have it counted,” he plans to say. “If you have the best ideas, you have nothing to hide. Let more people vote.”The president’s actions come in the wake of his predecessor’s monthslong assault on the voting process during the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 riot that erupted at the U.S. Capitol after that predecessor, Donald J. Trump, repeatedly sought to overturn the election results.The executive order is relatively limited in scope. It calls upon officials at federal agencies to study and potentially expand access to voter registration materials, especially for those with disabilities, incarcerated people and other historically underserved groups.It also orders a modernization of the federally run Vote.gov website to ensure that it provides the most up-to-date information about voting and elections.But the order does not directly address efforts by many Republican-led state legislatures to restrict voting, including measures that would roll back the mail voting that was established in many states during the pandemic.Mr. Biden has said that he supports H.R. 1, a far-reaching voter rights bill that passed the House last week. It would weaken restrictive state voter identification laws, require automatic voter registration, expand mail-in voting and early voting, make it more difficult to eliminate voters from the rolls and restore voting rights to former felons.That legislation faces a difficult challenge in the evenly divided Senate, where Republican opposition appears to make it highly unlikely that it can win the support of the 60 senators required to send it to Mr. Biden’s desk.In the meantime, a senior administration official said Mr. Biden’s executive order was meant to show that the president was doing what he could.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Top House Democrat Jim Clyburn: 'No way we'd let filibuster deny voting rights'

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      One of the most powerful Democrats in Washington has issued a frank warning to members of his own party, saying they need to find a way to pass major voting rights legislation or they will lose control of Congress.The comments from Jim Clyburn, the House majority whip, came days after the House of Representatives approved a sweeping voting rights bill that would enact some of the most dramatic expansions of the right to vote since the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Even though Democrats also control the US Senate, the bill is unlikely to pass the chamber because of a procedural rule, the filibuster, that requires 60 votes to advance legislation.In an interview with the Guardian this week, Clyburn called out two moderate Democratic senators, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, who have opposed getting rid of the filibuster. Republicans across the country are advancing sweeping measures to curtail voting rights and letting expansive voting rights legislation die would harm Democrats, Clyburn said.“There’s no way under the sun that in 2021 that we are going to allow the filibuster to be used to deny voting rights. That just ain’t gonna happen. That would be catastrophic,” he said. “If Manchin and Sinema enjoy being in the majority, they had better figure out a way to get around the filibuster when it comes to voting and civil rights.”If Manchin and Sinema enjoy being in the majority, they had better figure out a way to get around the filibuster when it comes to voting and civil rightsClyburn issued that warning ahead of the 56th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, the day in 1965 when law enforcement officers brutally beat voting rights activists in Selma, Alabama.Clyburn and other House Democrats have been hoping the early days of Joe Biden’s administration will be marked by passage of a bill named after the late congressman John Lewis of Georgia, a civil rights hero who was nearly killed on Bloody Sunday. That measure would restore a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, gutted by the supreme court in 2013, that required places with a history of voting discrimination to get election changes cleared by the federal government before they took effect.“Here we are talking about the Voting Rights Act he worked so hard for and that’s named in his honor and they’re going to filibuster it to death? That ain’t gonna happen,” Clyburn said.But the likelihood of that bill becoming law is doubtful under current procedures. Democrats expect Republicans to find a reason to filibuster it after its expected passage through the House of Representatives and consideration in the Senate. Thus Clyburn is calling for some kind of workaround of the filibuster in the current legislative climate, in which the Senate is split 50-50 and use of the legislative obstructing mechanism is all too common.“I’m not going to say that you must get rid of the filibuster. I would say you would do well to develop a Manchin-Sinema rule on getting around the filibuster as it relates to race and civil rights,” Clyburn said.Clyburn said he has not discussed changing the filibuster with Biden, who has expressed support for keeping the filibuster in place.The reality of their slim majority and the regularity of legislation dying through filibuster has caused Democrats to opt to pass the Biden administration’s Covid relief package through a budgetary process called reconciliation, which is not subject to the filibuster-proof 60-vote threshold. Clyburn wants to see the same thing with civil rights.“You can’t filibuster the budget,” Clyburn said. “That’s why we have reconciliation rules. We need to have civil and voting rights reconciliation. That should have had reconciliation permission a long, long time ago.”He noted: “If the headlines were to read that the John R Lewis Voting Rights Act was filibustered to death it would be catastrophic.”Clyburn’s comments underscore the difficulty the federal government has in moving any bill because of arcane legislative roadblocks. Broadly popular proposals like a minimum wage increase or a voting rights bill seem dead on arrival. And that has left veteran Senate Democrats skeptical that even a bill protecting Americans’ rights to vote has a chance. First, the filibuster would have to go, and that seems unlikely at the moment.“The short-term prospects of doing away with the filibuster seem remote just because there aren’t the votes to do that,” said Luke Albee, a former chief of staff to the Democratic senators Mark Warner of Virginia and Pat Leahy of Vermont. “My gut is it will take six months, eight months, a year of total obstructionism on the Republican side for senators who are skeptical now of getting rid of the filibuster to at least have a more open mind about it.”Albee also said it was possible that a Voting Rights Act could face strong Republican opposition, despite Clyburn’s confidence.“There’s no one that hopes it passes more than me but I just worry it’s a toxic environment,” Albee added. More

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      Biden's no LBJ but he must protect voting rights. What else is the presidency for? | Robert Reich

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      In 1963, when the newly sworn in Lyndon Baines Johnson was advised against using his limited political capital on the controversial issue of civil and voting rights for Black Americans, he responded: “Well, what the hell’s the presidency for?”The US is again approaching a crucial decision point on the most fundamental right of all in a democracy: the right to vote. The result will either be the biggest advance since LBJ’s landmark civil rights and voting rights acts of 1964 and 1965, or the biggest setback since the end of Reconstruction and start of Jim Crow in the 1870s.The decisive factor will be President Joe Biden.On one side are Republicans, who control most state legislatures and are using false claims of election fraud to enact an avalanche of voting restrictions on everything from early voting and voting by mail to voter IDs. They also plan to gerrymander their way back to a US House of Representatives majority.After losing the Senate and the presidency, they’re determined to win back power by rigging the rules against Democrats, disproportionately Black and brown voters. As a lawyer for the Arizona Republican party put it baldly before the supreme court, without such restrictions Republicans are “at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats”.On the other side are congressional Democrats, advancing the most significant democracy reform legislation since LBJ – a sprawling 791-page For the People Act, establishing national standards for federal elections.The proposed law mandates automatic registration of new voters, voting by mail and at least 15 days of early voting. It bans restrictive voter ID laws and purges of voter rolls, changes studies suggest would increase voter participation, especially by racial minorities. It also requires that congressional redistricting be done by independent commissions and creates a system of public financing for congressional campaigns.The legislation sailed through the House last week, on a party line vote. The showdown will occur in the Senate, where Republicans are determined to kill it. Although Democrats possess a razor-thin majority, the bill doesn’t stand a chance unless Democrats can overcome two big obstacles.The first is the filibuster, requiring 60 votes to pass regular legislation. Notably, the filibuster is not in the constitution and not even in law. It’s a rule that has historically been used against civil rights and voting rights bills, as it was in the 1960s when LBJ narrowly overcame it.Democrats can – and must – finally end the filibuster now, with their 51-vote majority.But if they try, they face a second obstacle. Two Democrats – Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona – have said they won’t vote to end the filibuster, presumably because they want to preserve their centrist image and appeal to Republicans in their states. A few other Democrats are lukewarm to the idea.Well, I’m sorry. The stakes are too high. If Democrats fail to enact the For the People Act, Republicans will send voting rights into retreat for decades. There’s no excuse for Manchin and Sinema or any other Senate Democrat letting Republicans pull America backwards towards Jim Crow.And no reason Biden should let them. It’s time for him to assert the kind of leadership LBJ asserted more than a half-century ago on civil and voting rights.Johnson used every tool at his disposal, described by the journalist Mary McGrory as “an incredible, potent mixture of persuasion, badgering, flattery, threats, reminders of past favors and future advantages”.He warned the Georgia senator Richard Russell, a dedicated segregationist: “Dick, I love you and I owe you. But … I’m going to run over you if you challenge me on this civil rights bill.” He demanded his allies join him in pressuring holdouts. Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, later Johnson’s vice-president, recalled: “The president grabbed me by my shoulder and damn near broke my arm.”Historians say Johnson’s importuning, bribing and threatening may have shifted the votes of close to a dozen senators, breaking the longest filibuster in history and clearing the way for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965.We are once again at a crucial juncture for civil rights and voting rights that could shape America for a half-century or more. Joe Biden is not LBJ, and the times are different from the mid-1960s. But the stakes are as high.Biden must wield the power of the presidency to make senators fall in line with the larger goals of the nation. Otherwise, as LBJ asked, “what the hell’s the presidency for?” More

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      Sanders' minimum-wage effort looks doomed as Covid bill hits roadblocks

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      A fiery speech and last-ditch effort by Bernie Sanders to secure a place for a federal minimum wage hike in the $1.9tn coronavirus relief package appeared as good as doomed on Friday, following a day that saw the flagship legislation hit grinding delays in the Senate.Senate leaders and moderate Democratic senator Joe Manchin struck a deal late on Friday over emergency jobless benefits, breaking a nine-hour logjam that had stalled the bill.The compromise, announced by the West Virginia lawmaker and a Democratic aide, seemed to clear the way for the Senate to begin a climactic, marathon series of votes and, eventually, approval of the sweeping legislation.The Senate next faced votes on a pile of amendments that were likely to last overnight, mostly on Republican proposals that are virtually certain to fail.More significantly, the jobless benefits agreement suggested it was just a matter of time until the Senate passes the bill. That would send it back to the House, which was expected to give it final congressional approval before whisking it to Biden for his signature.Progress on the bill slowed to a crawl on Friday afternoon, signaling that the legislation might not pass until the weekend, with Republicans still expected to introduce many amendments, all of which must see votes.Despite delays, the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, said the chamber would finish its work.“The Senate is going to take a lot of votes. But we are going to power through and finish this bill, however long it takes,” Schumer said. “The American people are counting on us and our nation depends on it.”A job in the United States of America should lift you out of poverty, not keep you in itIf, as expected, the Senate passes the bill, it will then have to return to the Democratic-controlled House for final approval before being forwarded to Biden.Earlier on Friday, Sanders had, almost certainly in vain, implored Congress to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour within this piece of legislation, calling it “disgraceful” that lawmakers have allowed tens of millions of American workers to live on “starvation wages”.“Nobody in America can survive on $7.25 an hour, $9 an hour or $12 an hour,” he said. “We need an economy in which all of our workers earn at least a living wage … A job in the United States of America should lift you out of poverty, not keep you in it.”Last week, the Senate parliamentarian determined that a provision raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour was inadmissible under the rules of a special budgetary procedure Democrats are using to pass the $1.9tn coronavirus relief bill on a party-line vote.Sanders, backed by many progressives in the House, has called on Democrats to “ignore” the decision.During his remarks, Sanders also made a forceful case for enacting the relief bill, which is expected to pass with only Democratic support.“This is a bill which will answer a profound question: are we living in a democratic society where the US Congress will respond to the needs of working families rather than just the wealthy and large corporations and their lobbyists?” he said.Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) gives forceful speech on his proposed amendment to raise the federal minimum wage to $15/hour:“This is a bill which will answer a profound question: Are we living in a democratic society … ?” pic.twitter.com/qrz4LjQFWq— The Recount (@therecount) March 5, 2021
      Debate, voting on amendments, and backroom horse-trading began in earnest on Friday, a day after the vice-president, Kamala Harris, broke a Senate tie to allow the chamber to take up the bill.Following Sanders’ speech, eight Democrats joined all Republicans to vote against the minimum wage proposal, suggesting that progressives vowing to continue the effort in coming months will face a difficult fight.The 8 senators:• Joe Manchin (West Va. )• Jon Tester (Mt.)• Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.)• Angus King (Maine)• Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.)• Tom Carper (Del.)• Chris Coons (Del.)• Maggie Hassan (N.H.) https://t.co/uEd1famnIv— Axios (@axios) March 5, 2021
      Though Sanders’ amendment was poised for defeat, the vote remained open as Democrats scrambled to hammer out a deal on unemployment benefits.The version of the relief bill passed by the House provides $400 weekly emergency unemployment benefits – on top of regular state payments – through August.But in a compromise with moderates revealed earlier on Friday, Senate Democrats said that would be reduced to $300 weekly but extended until early October. The plan, sponsored by Senator Tom Carper of Delaware, would also reduce taxes on unemployment benefits by making $10,200 of individuals’ benefits tax exempt. The White House also said it supported the amendment.But by midday, lawmakers said Manchin was ready to support a less generous Republican version. That led to hours of talks involving White House aides, top Senate Democrats and Manchin as the party tried finding a way to salvage its unemployment aid package.The compromise announced Friday night would provide $300 weekly, with the final check paid on 6 September, and includes the tax break on benefits.The day’s lengthy standoff underscored the headaches confronting party leaders over the next two years and the tensions between progressives and centrists as they try moving their agenda through the Congress with their slender majorities.With power in the Senate split 50-50 between the two parties, just one Democratic defection is needed to block legislation or stall voting along the way if no Republicans cross the aisle.“I feel bad for Joe Manchin. I hope the Geneva Convention applies to him,” said the No 2 Senate Republican, John Thune of South Dakota, to reporters.The overall bill, aimed at battling the killer virus and nursing the staggered economy back to health, will provide direct payments of up to $1,400 to most Americans.There is also money for Covid-19 vaccines and testing, aid to state and local governments, help for schools and the airline industry, tax breaks for lower-earners and families with children, and subsidies for health insurance.Despite deep political polarization and staunch Republican opposition, the legislation has garnered broad public appeal.Apoll by Monmouth University found that 62% of Americans approve of the stimulus package, including more than three in 10 Republicans.That is something Republicans hope to erode, by portraying the bill as too big and representing wasteful public spending for a pandemic that’s almost over. Biden and federal health experts this week, however, told states rushing to ditch mask mandates and reopen businesses completely that the move was premature and they risked creating a fourth deadly surge of disease. More

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      The only Republican to vote in favor of George Floyd bill said it was an accident

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      When the US House of Representatives tallied up lawmakers’ votes on Wednesday for the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, all but a single Republican had opposed the bill.No, that Republican representative was not taking a stand against the tide of his party. Instead, he says now, his fingers slipped.“I accidentally pressed the wrong voting button and realized it too late,” wrote Lance Gooden, a Republican representative from Texas who is known to be a staunch conservative and supporter of Donald Trump, in a tweet that has since been deleted. “I have changed the official record to reflect my opposition to the partisan George Floyd Policing Act.”As the votes were still being cast, three of Gooden’s Republican colleagues tried to change his vote while it was still being counted, but the House clerks rejected the change, and the bill went on to pass 220-212.Gooden said on Twitter that he had since changed the official voting record to reflect a “no” vote, though it ultimately does not change the outcome of the bill’s passage.“I have arguably the most conservative/America First voting record in Congress! Of course I wouldn’t support the radical left’s, Anti-Police Act,” Gooden wrote on Twitter.The act, which was passed with the support of all but two Democratic representatives, is the most ambitious police reform legislation in decades. The sweeping bill covers a ban on chokeholds and “qualified immunity” for law enforcement, which would make it easier to prosecute instances of police misconduct, as well as national standards for police accountability.The bill is named in honor of George Floyd, who was killed by police in Minneapolis in May and whose death sparked nationwide protests for racial justice and against police brutality. Jury selection begins next week in the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former officer facing murder charges over Floyd’s killing.A similar bill was passed by the House last year but was never taken up by the Senate, which was controlled by Republicans at the time. Even though Democrats now have a slim advantage in the Senate, the bill would require 60 votes to pass, which would entail getting the support of 10 Republican senators – an unlikely prospect.Gooden is not the first lawmaker to accidentally vote in favor of a bill – in fact the lawmaker is, in a way, lucky that his vote was not the tie-breaker for the legislation.In 2012, a Democratic state representative in North Carolina accidentally voted “yes” for a bill that legalized fracking in the state, according to the Washington Post. Meanwhile, a Democrat representative in Montana helped keep a bill that would have expanded Medicaid coverage off the floor with an accidental vote. More