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      Joe Manchin and the filibuster: Politics Weekly Extra

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      Jonathan Freedland and Prof Sarah Binder discuss why two Democratic senators are proving a thorn in Joe Biden’s side

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      President Biden is facing some barriers in passing his rather ambitious agenda, namely senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. Both are refusing to toe the party line on abolishing the filibuster and on issues such as voting rights. So, which side is most likely to win out? Sarah Binder, professor of political science at George Washington University, brings us up to speed on what is happening. Watch some of the campaign adverts by Joe Manchin mentioned by Prof Binder Listen to the first episode of Comfort Eating with Grace Dent Send us your questions and feedback to podcasts@theguardian.com Help support the Guardian by going to gu.com/supportpodcasts More

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      Manchin’s blocking bid is no shock, say disgruntled West Virginia Democrats

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      West Virginia senator Joe Manchin has emerged as one of the biggest stumbling blocks to the passing of Joe Biden’s ambitious domestic agenda, declaring he will vote against a key voting rights bill and also blocking reform of the filibuster – a rule that at the moment allows Republicans to kill Democrat legislation.Yet Manchin is no Republican. He is a key member of Biden’s party, and in a 50-50 Senate his vote is the lynchpin of political power and crucial for passing Biden’s plans. Yet Manchin is seen by many Democrats as sabotaging his own president’s efforts to be a transformational leader who can help the US recover from the pandemic in the same way Roosevelt helped America recover from the Great Depression.To many people outside West Virginia, Manchin’s behavior is a mystery: how does someone take such a stand against their own side? But for many West Virginian Democrats Manchin’s tactics and those of his state West Virginia Democratic party leadership are no surprise at all.In fact, examining West Virginia’s Democratic politics shows that Manchin’s undermining of Biden’s efforts, especially around voting rights, should have been entirely expected.Manchin’s opposition to the For the People Act, a bill that aims to expand voting rights and reduce the influence of money in US elections, has angered Black Americans across the country. But earlier this year, West Virginia’s all-white Democratic party leaders submitted a draft affirmative action plan to the national party without input or approval from a newly formed affirmative action committee, a group whose membership includes women, people of color and people with disabilities.Affirmative action committee co-chair Hollis Lewis said moving the plan forward without any input from the committee – or any Black Americans at all – was unacceptable for communities of color in the state. “As a Black West Virginian, this is a slap in the face,” he said.Lewis linked Manchin’s stance against the national voting rights bill to the Democratic fight over the affirmative action plan in West Virginia, saying it showed he and party leaders in his state would rather maintain control than work to empower traditionally marginalized people.“These two incidents happened the very same week – and they parallel each other,” said Lewis. “You’re making a decision based on how you feel about something that’s not necessarily going to affect you.”In numerous interviews, West Virginia Democrats and people of color described a party at odds with their needs and belief and in thrall to Manchin’s power and conservatism.Mary Ann Claytor, an affirmative action committee member and 2020 candidate for state auditor, said she felt ignored by West Virginia’s party leadership when she won her primary race. Claytor, who is Black, says a county-level leader told her in confidence that members of party leadership said they didn’t think a Black, working-class woman could win an election in West Virginia.In an interview with the Guardian, Claytor said Manchin’s decisions in the Senate plus West Virginia’s state party politics are indicative of an issue that extends beyond race: a resistance by Democratic power structures in West Virginia to bring working-class people, women or any marginalized group into the party.“We hear a lot about how progressives can’t win,” she said. “They kept putting people down. Like, ‘Oh, they’re not going to win. [Manchin] is the only person going to win, because he has that much money in his war chest.’”Manchin’s office rejected an interview request for this article. Multiple interview requests sent to the West Virginia Democratic party leadership went unanswered.Critics say the state party and power-brokering Democrats such as Manchin are quick to dismiss the loyalty Black Americans have consistently put forth in supporting Democratic candidates. “They want the power concentrated where it’s at,” Peshka Calloway, a Black organizer for Democratic issues and a US army veteran, said of the WVDP leadership.A native of Parkersburg, West Virginia, Calloway was working for Planned Parenthood when Manchin unexpectedly showed up at an NAACP state conference she was attending in 2018. She confronted him afterwards about whether he would support former President Trump’s nomination of supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh, a controversial candidate because of views on abortion and historical allegations of sexual assault.“How are you voting on Kavanaugh?” she asked. “I hope it’s a no because I’m a survivor of military sexual assault, and what I’m hearing about him is absolutely disgusting.” Manchin replied that he “was facing a hard decision” and would do his best.Two months later, he was the only Democrat in the Senate who voted to appoint Kavanaugh.Natalie Cline sees the Democratic party as excluding working-class constituents in the state. Cline secured the Democratic nomination for the US House of Representatives in 2020, when she won her primary race with 74% of the vote. She identifies as a “true blue Democrat” and grew up in a working-class family where both of her grandfathers had union jobs.After winning her primary, she said the state party offered her campaign no support or publicity despite endorsements from well-known names such as Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang and actors Debra Messing and Rosie O’Donnell.“I can’t tell you how many times I would send emails to the state party and say: ‘Can you please share this information? We need people to watch’ – to no response.”Cline now believes that promoting inclusion within the party puts a target on a candidate’s back: seek to make good on the Democratic promise of being a “big-tent” party and get shut out by Manchin and his state party.One of the most baffling moments from her campaign and a sign, she said, of party’s disconnect with working-class people, came when the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) simultaneously endorsed Manchin and her opponent – a Republican who months later would vote to restrict individuals’ rights to unionize.“I didn’t feel that they [the Democratic party] cared. If they cared, they would be yelling and screaming,” she said. “They would have called the UMWA out on it. But heaven forbid they do that, because that might jeopardize Manchin’s endorsement.”David Fryson, who retired this year as a vice-president at West Virginia University, said the decline of the WVDP can be traced back to 1996. Before Manchin was senator, he lost his gubernatorial primary to Charlotte Pritt, an environmentalist hailed as a forward-thinking Democrat. Instead of throwing his weight behind Pritt, Manchin actively campaigned for Pritt’s Republican opponent, Cecil Underwood, who went on to win.Manchin’s embrace of conservatism continued. In 2012, he was listed as the only Democratic senator to serve as a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), a conservative nonprofit that focuses on reducing business regulations, weakening labor unions, loosening environmental conservation efforts and restricting voting rights.“What I’m trying to do, in my little way, is convince the Democrats to be careful going down the rabbit hole with with Joe Manchin,” said Fryson. “He will end up … doing to the national Democratic party what he’s done to the West Virginia Democratic Party. And he’s already doing it.” More

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      Legal scholars publish letter calling for Stephen Breyer to retire from supreme court

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      A group of 18 legal academics has issued an extraordinary joint letter urging the US supreme court justice Stephen Breyer to retire so that Joe Biden can name his successor.The intervention came after Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader in the Senate, warned that Biden would not get a supreme court nominee confirmed in 2024 if Republicans regain control of the chamber and a vacancy arises.With conservatives holding a 6-3 majority on the court, progressive activists have been calling for the liberal Breyer, who at 82 is the oldest member on the bench, to step down this year while Democrats narrowly control the Senate.“It is time for Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer to announce his intent to retire,” the legal scholars say in a statement. “Breyer is a remarkable jurist, but with future control of a closely divided Senate uncertain, it is best for the country that President Biden have the opportunity to nominate a successor without delay.”The signatories include Niko Bowie of Harvard Law School, Erwin Chemerinsky and David Singh Grewal of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law; Daniel Morales of the University of Houston Law Center; Samuel Moyn of Yale Law School, Zephyr Teachout of Fordham University; and Miranda Yaver of Oberlin College.The statement was released by Demand Justice, a progressive group mounting a concerted campaign to make Breyer consider his position, with everything from reproductive rights to voting rights and gun control potentially at stake.This week it is among 13 liberal groups, including Black Lives Matter, the Sunrise Movement and Women’s March, publishing an advertisement in prominent media outlets. It says: “Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer should immediately announce his intent to retire from the bench.“With future control of a closely divided Senate uncertain, President Biden must have the opportunity to nominate a successor without delay and fulfill his pledge to put the first Black woman on the Supreme Court.”The ad concludes: “If Breyer were replaced by an additional ultra-conservative justice, an even further-right Supreme Court would leave our democracy and the rights of marginalized communities at even greater risk. For the good of the country, now is the time to step aside.”While serving as majority leader, McConnell blocked Barack Obama from filling a vacancy left by the death of the conservative justice Antonin Scalia in February 2016, contending that it would be inappropriate to confirm a supreme court nominee during a presidential election year.McConnell and his fellow Senate Republicans refused to consider Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, who now serves as Biden’s attorney general. That enabled Donald Trump, the winner of the November 2016 election, to appoint the conservative justice Neil Gorsuch in 2017.Democrats accused McConnell of hypocrisy last year when he allowed the Senate to confirm Trump’s conservative nominee Amy Coney Barrett to replace the liberal justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died in September, about six weeks before the 2020 presidential election.Christopher Kang, co-founder and chief counsel of Demand Justice, told the Guardian’s Politics Weekly Extra podcast: “I think certainly that looking back, and even at the time, a lot of people thought that the prudent thing for Justice Ginsburg to do to ensure her legacy would have been to retire.“I think this is the same conversation that a lot of progressives are having right now with respect to Justice Breyer, who is one of those three Democratic-appointed justices on the supreme court. He’s 82 years old. He could retire and we believe he should retire now and make way for the first Black woman to serve on the supreme court.Kang, who served in the Obama White House, added: “But it’s challenging because supreme court justices are nominated right now for life and the decision when to retire is completely up to them.“I was not part of the decision-making process at the time with respect to whether or not to reach out to Justice Ginsburg. I understand that the White House chose at the time not to do that but I think certainly looking at the impact of what happened, we could be in a very different place.” More

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      Republicans move to block inquiry into Trump DoJ’s secret data seizure

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      Top Republicans are moving to block a Senate inquiry into the Trump justice department’s secret seizure of data from Democrats to hunt down leaks of classified information, fearing a close investigation could damage the former president.Trump, who is facing a mounting crisis of legal problems and political criticism, still wields huge power among Republicans, and has hinted recently at a return run for the White House.In fiery remarks, the Republican Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, criticized the rapidly expanding congressional inquiries as unnecessary and accused Democrats of embarking on “politically motivated investigations”.“I am confident that the existing inquiry will uncover the truth,” said McConnell. “There is no need for a partisan circus here in Congress.”The forceful pushback from McConnell shows his alarm about the latest aggressive move by Democrats to engage in retrospective oversight that could expose Trump for misusing the vast power of the federal government to pursue his political enemies.It also means Republicans are certain to lock arms to block subpoenas against Trump justice department officials, including former attorneys general Bill Barr and Jeff Sessions. Democrats need at least one Republican member for subpoenas because of the even split between Democrats and Republicans on the panel.Chuck Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate judiciary committee, suggested he would offer no such support. “Investigations into members of Congress and staff are nothing new, especially for classified leaks,” he said.The Republican criticism came as Democrats have stepped up investigations into the justice department for secretly seizing in 2018 data belonging to two Democrats on the House intelligence committee – and some of Trump’s fiercest critics.In the Senate, the judiciary committee chair, Dick Durbin, demanded in a letter that the attorney general, Merrick Garland, deliver a briefing and respond to a raft of questions into the seizures by 28 June. And the House judiciary committee chair, Jerry Nadler, said his panel would launch an investigation into the “coordinated effort by the Trump administration to target President Trump’s political opposition” as he weighed hauling in Barr and Sessions.The parallel investigations showed Democrats’ determination to seize the momentum, even as Republicans started rallying in opposition – for largely the same reasons that governed their motivation to sink a 9/11-style commission to examine the Capitol attack.Democrats also said that they would press ahead with their investigations concurrently with the justice department inspector general, Michael Horowitz, whose office last week opened a separate inquiry.“I do think there has to be a congressional role to supplement whatever DoJ doesn’t turn over,” the congressman Eric Swalwell, one of the two House Democrats who had his records seized, told the Guardian.But in only requesting Garland’s appearance before the Senate judiciary committee – and not Barr or Sessions – Democrats revealed the power Senate Republicans wield to obstruct measures they fear could anger Trump and his base ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.The political roadblocks being laid down by Senate Republicans mean the most meaningful congressional investigation into the Trump justice department targeting Democrats is likely to come from the House judiciary committee.On account of Democrats’ majority in the House, Nadler does not suffer from the same problems besetting his colleagues in the Senate, and retains the ability to subpoena Barr and Sessions without Republican support.The judiciary committee did not outline concrete steps for their investigation. But Nadler intends to keep the threat of subpoenas hanging over the Trump attorneys general as he ratchets up pressure over the coming weeks, said a source familiar with the matter.The twin investigations by House and Senate Democrats follow the referral from the deputy attorney general, Lisa Mascaro, to the inspector general to launch a review, according to a senior justice department official.The inspector general probe came after the New York Times reported that the Trump administration used grand jury subpoenas to force Apple and one other service provider to turn over data tied to Democrats on the House intelligence committee.Although investigations into leaks of classified information are routine, the use of subpoenas to extract data on accounts belonging to serving members of Congress is near-unprecedented outside corruption investigations.Justice department investigators gained access to, among others, the records of Adam Schiff, then the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee and now its chairman; Swalwell; and the family members of lawmakers and aides. More

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      Biden to name antitrust researcher Lina Khan to top trade commission post – report

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      Joe Biden reportedly plans to name Lina Khan, an antitrust researcher who has focused on the immense market power of big tech, as chair of the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), a key win for progressives who have pushed for tougher laws to tackle monopolies and growing corporate power.The Senate confirmed Khan as a commissioner to the FTC earlier on Tuesday, with strong bipartisan support. Biden intends to tap her as chair of the commission, sources told Reuters, a decision that follows the selection of fellow progressive and big tech critic Tim Wu to join the National Economic Council.The appointment comes as the federal government and groups of states have issued an array of lawsuits and investigations into the tech giants. The FTC has sued Facebook and is investigating Amazon while the justice department has sued Alphabet’s Google.Khan is highly respected by progressive antitrust thinkers who have pushed for tougher antitrust laws or at least tougher enforcement of existing law.She most recently taught at Columbia Law School, but was on the staff of the House judiciary committee’s antitrust panel, and helped write a report that sharply criticized Amazon, Apple Facebook and Alphabet for allegedly abusing their dominance.In 2017, she wrote a highly regarded article, “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox”, for the Yale Law Journal which argued that the traditional antitrust focus on price was inadequate to identify antitrust harms done by Amazon.Progressive civil rights organization Color of Change applauded the decision, saying it signaled “a long-awaited commitment to antitrust reform from the federal government”.“It’s clear these tech corporations are unable to adequately self-regulate, because they continue to operate on broken business models that prioritize growth and profit above Black lives and the integrity of our democracy,” said Rashad Robinson, president of Color of Change. “Government intervention is necessary to check their outsized power and end this era of corporate greed and monopolization.”Many conservative groups also approved of the choice, including advocacy group the Internet Accountability Project (IAP), which said the vote was “testament to the sea change in opinion on the right for antitrust modernization and enforcement”.“Big tech brought this on themselves with their abusive, censorial and anticompetitive behavior,” the group said. “The era of unchecked big tech monopoly power is over.”US Senator Elizabeth Warren tweeted that the administration’s selection of Khan was “tremendous news”.“With chair Khan at the helm, we have a huge opportunity to make big, structural change by reviving antitrust enforcement and fighting monopolies that threaten our economy, our society, and our democracy,” Warren said in a separate statement.In addition to antitrust, the FTC investigates allegations of deceptive advertising. On that front, Khan will join an agency which is painfully adapting to a unanimous supreme court ruling from April which said the agency could not use a particular part of its statute, 13(b), to demand consumers get restitution from deceptive companies but can only ask for an injunction. Congress is considering a legislative fix.Khan previously worked at the FTC as a legal adviser to Commissioner Rohit Chopra, Biden’s pick to be director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.Reuters contributed to this report More

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      McConnell: ‘Highly unlikely’ I would let Biden fill supreme court seat in 2024

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      The Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, said on Monday it was “highly unlikely” he would allow Joe Biden to fill a supreme court vacancy arising in 2024, the year of the next presidential election, if Republicans regained control of the chamber.“I think it’s highly unlikely – in fact, no, I don’t think either party, if it were different from the president, would confirm a supreme court nominee in the middle of an election,” McConnell told Hugh Hewitt, a conservative radio host.McConnell blocked Barack Obama from filling a vacancy in 2016, denying Merrick Garland, now attorney general, even a hearing after he was nominated to fill the seat vacated by the death of Antonin Scalia.McConnell said that was because no new justice should be seated in an election year – a position he reversed with alacrity in 2020, on the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg two months before polling day.Ginsburg, a liberal lion, was replaced by the conservative Amy Coney Barrett, tipping the court 6-3 to the right. Major cases are coming up on abortion rights, gun control, affirmative action and more.McConnell claimed then, and repeated to Hewitt, that no new justice should be seated in an election year when the White House and the Senate are controlled by different parties.“I think in the middle of a presidential election,” McConnell said, “if you have a Senate of the opposite party of the president, you have to go back to the 1880s to find the last time a vacancy was filled.“So I think it’s highly unlikely. In fact, no, I don’t think either party if it controlled, if it were different from the president would confirm a supreme court nominee in the middle of an election. What was different in 2020 was we were of the same party as the president. And that’s why we went ahead with it.”Asked what would happen if a vacancy arose in 2023 with Republicans in control of the Senate, McConnell said: “We’ll have to wait and see what happens.”He also said keeping Scalia’s seat open – to be filled under Donald Trump by Neil Gorsuch – “is the single most consequential thing I’ve done in my time as majority leader of the Senate”.McConnell’s hardball tactics have contributed to his status as a hate figure among progressives. On Monday, much online reaction to his remarks focused on beseeching Stephen Breyer, a liberal and at 82 the oldest justice on the current court, to retire while Biden is in the White House and Democrats hold the Senate.Rick Hasen, a professor of law and political science at the University of California, Irvine, said: “Exactly as I wrote last week. McConnell will NOT fill a Breyer seat if he’s majority leader, even if he has to wait two years with the seat open.”Jeet Heer, a columnist for the Nation, wrote: “Can someone send this to USA supreme court justice Stephen Breyer. Thanks!”The conservative hold on the court was strengthened in 2018 when Anthony Kennedy, often a swing vote on civil rights issues, stepped down and was replaced by Brett Kavanaugh, once an official in the White House of George W Bush.Kavanaugh faced and denied allegations of sexual assault during a stormy confirmation but McConnell said he was “stronger than mule piss” in support and the process was duly completed.Breyer, appointed by Bill Clinton in 1994, has shown little inclination to follow Kennedy’s example and step aside for a younger justice.Last month, he angered some on the left by telling high school and middle school students the key to working with conservatives was to talk to them more.Among progressives, support is growing for countering conservative dominance of the court by increasing the number of justices. Republicans are stringently opposed.McConnell told Hewitt he wanted to give Breyer “a shout out, though, because he joined what Justice Ginsburg said in 2019, that nine is the right number for the supreme court, and I admire him for that. I think even the liberal justices on the supreme court have made it clear that court packing is a terrible idea.”The number of justices on the court is not fixed in the constitution. More

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      Manchin faces growing pressure from Democrats over Biden agenda

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      Joe Manchin, the conservative Democratic West Virginia senator whose defiance over the filibuster rule threatens to stall Joe Biden’s domestic legislative agenda, found himself under pressure from both wings of his party on Sunday.Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, adopted a conciliatory approach on CNN’s State of the Union show, offering a novel interpretation of Manchin’s assertion a week earlier that he would refuse to support Biden’s flagship For the People voting rights act, or vote to end the filibuster that would allow it to pass.“I don’t give up on Joe Manchin. I think he left the door open, I think it’s ajar [and] I’m not giving up,” she said, offering an olive branch following harsh criticism from other Democrats.“He has certain concerns about the legislation that we may be able to come to terms on. We have to make this fight for our democracy. It isn’t about Democrats or Republicans, it’s not about partisanship, it’s about patriotism so we must pass it.”Later in the same show, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive congresswoman from New York, assailed Manchin for clinging to what she said he saw as “the romanticism of bipartisanship” and an era of Republicanism “that simply does not exist any more”.“We have the influence of big money [donors] that impacts both parties in Congress and I believe that that old way of politics has absolutely an influence in Joe Manchin’s thinking, and the way he navigates the body,” Ocasio-Cortez said.“You have the Koch brothers and associated organizations really doing victory laps about Joe Manchin’s opposition to [ending the] the filibuster.”The contrasting approaches to the Manchin problem underscore the growing rift in the Democratic party. It controls the White House and House of Representatives but appears increasingly unable to progress key elements of Biden’s agenda, including voting rights, a $1.7tn infrastructure plan, racial justice efforts and gun reforms, through the Senate.There, seats are divided 50-50 and the Democrats have a tie-breaking vote in the vice-president, Kamala Harris, but the filibuster rule means the minority party can block much legislation that does not have the support of at least 60 members.Colleagues have urged Manchin to support efforts to end or restructure the Senate filibuster, but he is not in favor.Ocasio-Cortez said Democrats now faced “a fork in the road”.“Do we settle for much less and an infrastructure package that has been largely designed by Republicans in order to get 60 votes, or can we really transform this country, create millions of union jobs, revamp our power grid, get bridges fixed and schools rebuilt with 51 or 50 Democratic votes?” she said. More