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      US Senate panel close to approving ‘mother of all sanctions’ against Russia

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      US Senate panel close to approving ‘mother of all sanctions’ against RussiaNegotiations for package of sanctions against Putin ‘on the one-yard line’, says Bob Menendez of foreign relations committee

      Opinion: Russia’s phony war is playing out as surreal theatre
      The leaders of the Senate foreign relations committee said on Sunday they were on the verge of approving “the mother of all sanctions” against Vladimir Putin, warning there would be no appeasement as the Russian president contemplates an invasion of Ukraine.UK to bring in measures to allow for tougher sanctions on Russia, says TrussRead more“We cannot have a Munich moment again,” the panel’s Democratic chair, Bob Menendez of New Jersey, told CNN’s State of the Union, referring to the 1938 agreement by which allies ceded parts of Czechoslovakia to Hitler, believing it would stave off war.“Putin will not stop if he believes the west will not respond,” Menendez said. “We saw what he did in 2008 in Georgia, we saw what he did in 2014 in pursuit of Crimea. He will not stop.”Menendez said he believed bipartisan negotiations for severe sanctions were “on the one-yard line”, despite disagreements with Republicans over whether measures should be imposed before or after any Russian invasion. The UK government promised to ramp up sanctions against Putin and his associates.Tensions on the Ukraine border continued to escalate with Reuters reporting the Russian military build-up included supplies of blood in anticipation of casualties. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, told Fox News Sunday: “Putin has a lot of options available to him if he wants to further invade Ukraine, and he can execute some of those options imminently. It could happen really, honestly, at any time.”Seeking to show bipartisan resolve, Menendez gave CNN a joint interview with his committee’s ranking Republican, James Risch of Wisconsin.Menendez said: “There is an incredible bipartisan resolve for support of Ukraine, and an incredibly strong bipartisan resolve to have severe consequences for Russia if it invades, and in some cases for what it has already done.“We are building on the legislation that both Senator Risch wrote independently, and I wrote, which I called the mother of all sanctions. It’s to include a variety of elements, massive sanctions against the most significant Russian banks, crippling to their economy, Russia sovereign debt. These are sanctions beyond any that we have ever levied before.”Risch said talks had been a “24 hour-a-day effort for the last several days” in an attempt to reach agreement over sanctions timing and content, and that he was optimistic.“That’s a work in progress,” Risch said, when pressed over discussions about pre-emptive sanctions or measures to be taken in the event of an invasion. “[But] I’m more than cautiously optimistic that when we get back to DC tomorrow that we’re going to be moving forward.”Menendez said he believed western allies did not have to wait to start penalising Putin.“There are some sanctions that could take place up front because of what Russia has already done, cyber attacks on Ukraine, false flag operations, the efforts to undermine the Ukrainian government internally,” he said.“But then the devastating sanctions that ultimately would crush Russia’s economy, and the continuing lethal aid that we are going to send, means Putin has to decide how many body bags of Russian sons are going to return to Russia.“The sanctions we’re talking about would come later on if he invades, some sanctions would come up front for what has been done already, but the lethal aid will travel no matter what.”Risch criticized the stance of several far-right figures, including the Fox News host Tucker Carlson and the Kentucky congressman Thomas Massie, who have questioned why the US is backing Ukraine and opposing Russia. Carlson said “it makes sense” that Putin “just wants to keep his western border secure” by opposing moves by Ukraine to join Nato.“We side always with countries that are democracies, and certainly there isn’t going to be a truce committed in that regard,” Risch said.“But the people who were saying that we shouldn’t be engaged in this at all are going to be singing a very different tune when they go to fill up their car with gas, if indeed there is an invasion. There are going to be sanctions that are going to be crippling to Russia, it is going to cripple their oil production. And as we all know, Russia is simply a gas station that is thinly disguised masquerading as a country. It is going to have a devastating effect on the economy around the world.”UK ready to commit extra forces to Nato allies as Russia tension mountsRead moreOn NBC’s Meet the Press, Dick Durbin, co-chair of the Senate Ukraine caucus, addressed concerns aired by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday that growing rhetoric over the crisis was causing panic and destabilising his country’s economy.His comments followed a call with Joe Biden that Ukraine officials said “did not go well”.“Any decision about the future of Ukraine will be made by Ukraine,” said Durbin, an Illinois Democrat. “It won’t be made in Moscow or in Washington, in the European Union or in Belarus. It’s their future and their fate and their decision as far as that is concerned.”The caucus co-chair, Republican Rob Portman of Ohio, who is also on the foreign relations committee, told NBC he believed Putin had underestimated the unity of Nato and others.“One thing Vladimir Putin has done successfully is he has strengthened the transatlantic alliance and countries around the world who are looking at this and saying, ‘We cannot let this stand, we cannot let this happen’,” Portman said.“For the first time in nearly 80 years we could have a major and very bloody conflict in Europe unless we stand up together and push back, and so far so good.”TopicsUkraineRussiaUS foreign policyUS national securityUS militaryBiden administrationUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Supreme court: Stephen Breyer ‘did not want to die on bench’, says brother

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      Supreme court: Stephen Breyer ‘did not want to die on bench’, says brotherPressure campaign was fired by fear of repeat of disaster when Republicans replaced Ruth Bader Ginsburg

      Biden poised to appoint first Black female justice
      01:03Stephen Breyer, the supreme court justice who announced his retirement this week, “did not want to die on the bench”.White House burns Wicker for criticising Biden supreme court pickRead moreSo his brother, the federal judge Charles Breyer, told the Washington Post at the end of a momentous week in US politics.Democrats, meanwhile, rejected Republican complaints that Joe Biden’s pledge to nominate the first Black woman to the court meant he was prioritising politics over qualifications, or endorsing racially based affirmative action, or that the new justice would be too liberal.The Democratic chair of the Senate judiciary committee hinted at claims some criticism may be racially motivated, saying he hoped Republicans were not “doing it for personal reasons”.Breyer’s decision to step down, at 83, gives Biden the chance to nominate a liberal replacement. The pick will not alter the balance of the court, which conservatives dominate 6-3 after Donald Trump capitalised on ruthless Republican tactics to install three justices in four years.But progressives campaigned to convince Breyer to quit, many citing what happened when Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on the court in September 2020. Republicans who held the Senate confirmed her replacement – the hardline Catholic Amy Coney Barrett, nominated after Trump promised to pick a woman – before the November election.Democrats should be able to confirm Biden’s pick without Republican votes but they face losing the Senate in November. With that in mind, the campaign to convince Breyer picked up speed. Breyer spoke about how the court should not be politicised but one activist, Brian Fallon of Demand Justice, told the Post: “You have to view this as a political fight. It’s not a legal fight.”Charles Breyer told the Post his brother “was aware of this campaign. I think what impressed him was not the campaign but the logic of the campaign.“And he thought he should take into account the fact that this was an opportunity for a Democratic president – and he was appointed by a Democratic president [Bill Clinton] – to fill his position with someone who is like-minded. He did not want to die on the bench.”On Sunday, Dick Durbin of Illinois, chair of the Senate judiciary committee, told NBC’s Meet the Press: “I didn’t feel that external pressure was really helpful at all. [Breyer] had to make this decision. It is an important and timely decision in his life as to the right moment. And I didn’t want to push him, and I didn’t.”But a congressman who campaigned for Breyer to retire, Mondaire Jones of New York, told the Post that though “people adore Ruth Bader Ginsburg … the fact is, due to decisions or non-decisions around retirement, made by her, we got Amy Coney Barrett.”The Post said the White House did not pressure Breyer.“None of the justices want to be told when to leave,” Charles Breyer said. “They want to decide themselves. And that, I think, the president and others recognised. It actually worked out.”Republicans have signaled a willingness to make life uncomfortable for Biden’s nominee – as revenge for what happened to Brett Kavanaugh.Trump’s second pick, replacing the retiring Anthony Kennedy, faced accusations of sexual assault. He vehemently denied them. Democrats prominently including Kamala Harris, then a California senator, vehemently attacked him. Harris is now vice-president, presiding over the 50-50 Senate with a vote to confirm Biden’s pick.On Friday, the Republican senator Roger Wicker told Mississippi radio the Kavanaugh confirmation was “one of the most disgraceful, shameful things and completely untruthful things that [Democrats have] ever, ever done”.Wicker also predicted that Biden’s nominee would get no Republican votes. He said so in part because the GOP expects a more progressive choice than Breyer, who Wicker called a “nice, stately liberal”. But Wicker also complained about “affirmative racial discrimination [for] someone who is the beneficiary of this sort of quota”, at a time when the court seems poised to rule such practices unconstitutional.The White House reminded Wicker of his unquestioning support for Barrett.Speaking to ABC’s This Week, Durbin said Republicans should “recall that it was Ronald Reagan who announced that he was going to appoint a woman to the supreme court, and he did, Sandra Day O’Connor, and it was Donald Trump who announced that he was going to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg with a woman nominee as well.“African American women, if they have achieved the level of success in the practice of law and jurisprudence, they’ve done it against great odds. They’re extraordinary people … they’re all going to face the same close scrutiny.US supreme court will hear challenge to affirmative action in college admissionRead more“… I just hope that those who are critical of the president’s selection aren’t doing it for personal reasons.”Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican senator, told Fox News Sunday Republicans would probably not support Biden’s pick “because I’ve seen dozens of his nominees to the lower courts and they’ve almost to person been leftwing ideologues”.Cotton also complained about Democrats’ treatment of Clarence Thomas, who was accused of sexual harassment in a stormy confirmation process, Biden playing a leading role as a senator from Delaware, in 1991.Most expect Democrats to move quickly. Durbin told NBC: “A great deal depends on the nominee. If the person has been before the committee seeking approval for a circuit court, then the committee knows quite a bit about that person.“If there are no new developments for someone who’s been before the committee in the previous year or two, it makes a real difference.”A leading contender, Ketanji Brown Jackson, was confirmed to the DC appeals court last June with Republican support. She replaced Merrick Garland, Biden’s attorney general who was nominated to the supreme court by Barack Obama in 2016 but blocked by Republicans.“I can just say this,” Durbin said. “It’s going to be fair, it’s going to be deliberate and we’re going to be timely about it too. This is a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the land. We should take it seriously.”TopicsUS supreme courtUS constitution and civil libertiesLaw (US)US politicsBiden administrationJoe BidenDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

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      ‘We have to fight back’: can Joe Biden recover before the midterms?

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      ‘We have to fight back’: can Joe Biden recover before the midterms? As the president seeks to reset course, a booming economy and receding pandemic reveal encouraging signsSnow fell lightly as Joe Biden stared into the wooded hollow where, just hours before he arrived in Pittsburgh, a half-century old bridge had collapsed. It was a dramatic illustration of what had brought the president to the City of Bridges: his urgent drive to rebuild crumbling US infrastructure.Silicon Holler: Ro Khanna says big tech can help heal the US heartlandRead moreLast year, Biden signed a $1tn infrastructure bill, an achievement that eluded his most recent predecessors and one he was eager to champion after legislative setbacks.“There are another 3,300 bridges here in Pennsylvania, some of which are just as old and just as in decrepit a condition as that one was,” Biden said later, in a speech at a manufacturing research and development center. Funding in the infrastructure law would help repair the Pittsburgh bridge and “thousands of other bridges across the country”.“We’ve got to move,” he said. “The next time, we don’t need headlines saying that someone was killed.”The visit to Pittsburgh was the beginning of an effort by the White House to change the narrative of Biden’s presidency, as he shifts from an inaugural year mired in legislative battles to elections that will determine control of Congress. The new approach was a recognition of a stalled agenda, an unyielding pandemic, rising inflation and flagging popularity.Yet the week brought a much-needed burst of good news, a reminder that the electoral landscape may look very different come November.The supreme court justice Stephen Breyer announced his retirement, giving Biden the opportunity to name his replacement. The commerce department reported that the US economy grew last year at its fastest pace since 1984. US households began receiving free coronavirus tests from the government. And suddenly, after months of gridlock, the administration is optimistic Congress will pass a plan aimed at making the US more competitive against China.Democratic strategists, progressive activists and former party officials welcomed Biden’s use of the bully pulpit, urging him to seize such momentum by touting economic success and drawing sharp contrasts with Republicans.“In the districts, people can’t tell you a thing that’s in Build Back Better but they can tell you to the penny how much a tank of gas is,” said Chuck Rocha, a progressive Democratic strategist. “They can also tell you what their relief check meant to them.”“We just have to not be afraid to beat our chest as Democrats,” he said.‘Toast in the midterms?’Historical patterns suggest Republicans are well-positioned to win the House and possibly the Senate in November. The party that holds the White House typically loses seats during its first midterm elections, the extent of such losses often correlating with a president’s popularity.Biden will use time away from Washington to build support for his legislative priorities while highlighting what his administration has accomplished: a poverty reducing coronavirus stimulus package, the infrastructure law, full vaccination of more than 210 million Americans.Strategists say his travels may remind Americans why they voted for him.Biden began his presidency with high approval ratings and broad public confidence in his ability to confront the pandemic. But the national mood darkened, sending Biden’s popularity spiraling, including among Black, Latino, female and young voters – core segments of his coalition. A survey by Pew Research this week found the president’s approval rating down to 41%, from a high of 59% in April.“We need to get Biden’s approval numbers up or else we’re toast in the midterms,” warned Lanae Erickson, senior vice-president at the moderate think tank Third Way.Disappointment with Biden’s handling of the pandemic is a key factor weighing down such ratings. Now that vaccines have proven effective, including against fast-spreading variants like Omicron, Erickson said voters want to hear the White House strategy for living with the virus.“Right now people are hearing a lot of ‘Stay home, stay safe’ from Democrats. But people are tired of staying home,” she said. “We have to be the party that’s talking about getting people back to work.”Biden’s relatively infrequent travel during his first year in office was partly due to the pandemic. But he was also grounded by negotiations on Capitol Hill. In September, the White House canceled a trip to Chicago so Biden could hammer out a deal on his domestic spending package, only to see such efforts collapse soon after.This month, Biden’s visit to Capitol Hill to pressure Democrats to pass voting rights protections was forestalled by Senator Kyrsten Sinema, who declared her opposition to changing the filibuster, thereby dooming the legislation, in a speech just before the president’s arrival.Pittsburgh bridge collapses hours before Biden’s infrastructure speech in cityRead moreBiden appeared to acknowledge that his involvement with negotiations on Capitol Hill hurt his standing with voters, who wanted to see him govern more like a commander-in-chief. Defending his reputation as a bipartisan dealmaker, built over 36 years in the Senate, Biden conceded that the role of president required a different type of engagement.“The public doesn’t want me to be the ‘president-senator,’” he told reporters this month. “They want me to be the president and let senators be senators.”The retirement of Justice Breyer immediately put a spotlight on one of the most consequential responsibilities of any presidency: filling a vacancy on the supreme court. At a press conference this week, Biden said he would draw up a list of candidates based on his promise to nominate a Black woman.Stefanie Brown James, co-founder and executive director of the Collective Pac, which aims to build Black electoral power, said the assurance “felt monumental”, particularly after the disappointments on domestic spending and voting rights.Though the replacement would do little to shift the ideological composition of the court, after three Trump-era appointments created a conservative supermajority, James said appointing a Black woman would “right a historic wrong”.Antjuan Seawright, a South Carolina Democratic strategist, said the chance for Biden to add a woman of color could be a “galvanizing” moment for Democrats, a reminder to supporters Biden can still deliver on his promises.“The president won because of our votes, Black voters, the most consequential and loyal voting bloc in the country,” Seawright said. “And so this is going to remind them of the net worth of their vote and why it’s important to keep showing up.”‘Look people in the eye’A natural retail politician with a zeal for campaigning, Biden lamented that he had so few opportunities to “look people in the eye” in his first year as president.On Tuesday, he stepped out of the White House to visit a boutique that opened during the pandemic, purchasing a necklace for his wife and a coffee mug featuring the face of Kamala Harris, his vice-president. The excursion also included a stop for ice-cream, where he posed with employees after greeting US Marines.On Wednesday, Biden bantered with the General Motors chief executive, Mary Barra, about the speed of a new electric vehicle, during a White House roundtable with the heads of major US companies.“I’m looking for a job, Mary,” quipped the president, a car enthusiast, after Barra told him the vehicle went from “zero to 60 in three seconds”.Next week, Biden will travel to New York to discuss plans for combatting gun crime with Mayor Eric Adams, after the fatal shooting of two police officers. The White House has sought to elevate efforts to combat rising violent crime as Republicans attempt to portray the country as lawless. Centrist Democrats believe Adams, a retired NYPD captain who campaigned on a promise to reduce crime, offers a model for how the party can beat back such attacks.The White House insists the president hasn’t given up on passing Biden’s Build Back Better agenda or voting protections, but is scaling back his involvement – and his ambitions. Activists and progressives are pressing him to ramp up use of his executive authority.Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, president of NextGen America, a youth voting organization, said canceling student debt was one of the “most basic and critical” steps Biden could take to deliver for young people. She said the issue was a top priority for voters under 35, and would help fulfil a promise to reduce the racial wealth gap.Biden has expressed doubt whether he has the legal authority to enact widespread student loan forgiveness. In December, he extended a moratorium on student loan payments put in place by the Trump administration in the early days of the pandemic.“Young folks overwhelmingly supported the Biden administration and now it’s up to the Biden administration to support young people,” Tzintzún Ramirez said. “We understand they can’t pass every single policy but on student debt they hold the power to make it happen.”‘Best messenger’If Biden’s standing slips further, his visits could become a political headache for Democrats in battleground states.American muckrakers: Peter Schweizer, James O’Keefe and a rightwing full court pressRead moreOn Friday, a leading Democratic contender in the Pennsylvania governor’s race was noticeably absent from Biden’s Pittsburgh event, citing a scheduling conflict. Earlier in the month, Stacey Abrams, the leading Democratic candidate for governor in Georgia, also cited a scheduling conflict for her absence at Biden’s Atlanta speech on voting rights, which was boycotted by some civil rights groups. Beto O’Rourke said he was “not interested” in help from the president or any national politician in his bid to become governor of Texas.Ed Rendell, a former governor of Pennsylvania, said Biden was still the “best messenger to motivate our rank-and-file Democrats” in battleground states.But Rendell said the time for bipartisan backslapping had passed. Biden’s message to voters, he said, must be clear: Republicans, not Democrats, are squarely to blame for his stalled agenda.“We have to fight back with the weapons at our disposal,” Rendell said. “We’d rather negotiate peace … but we’re not going to fight with a hand tied behind our back.”TopicsJoe BidenBiden administrationUS politicsUS midterm elections 2022DemocratsUS CongressUS SenatefeaturesReuse this content More

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      The US senate presents a long-term threat to US democracy | Thomas Zimmer

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      The US senate presents a long-term threat to US democracyThomas ZimmerThe so-called ‘world’s greatest deliberative body’ is deliberately and inherently undemocratic Enabled by Democratic senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, a united front of US Senate Republicans dealt American democracy a massive blow last week by blocking the Freedom to Vote: John R Lewis Act. The US Senate: a place where desperately needed federal voting rights legislation goes to die – a spectacle unworthy of what Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin called “the world’s greatest deliberative body”.Raskin was referring to the Senate’s reputation not necessarily in an affirmative, but in an aspirational way: he wanted to issue a challenge to the senators to live up to this glorious notion. Nevertheless, the mythical idea of the Senate as “the world’s greatest deliberative body” is widely held among the country’s political elite – the kind of American exceptionalism that still very much warps the perspective on US history and politics.What we really need to grapple with is the fact that the current situation is not just a disgraceful aberration from the Senate’s supposedly noble past and true character. In some fundamental ways, the Senate is working as intended. It has always been one of the most powerful undemocratic distortions in the political system – and not by accident, but because that’s what it was designed to be.So far, much of the attention has focused on the filibuster as the most blatantly undemocratic tool of obstruction. It is true that the frequency of filibuster use has increased dramatically in recent years. Still, what Republicans did last week was well in line with the longer-term historical norm. The filibuster has consistently been an instrument of white Christian domination: during the 20th century, it was used predominantly to block civil rights legislation and measures such as anti-lynching bills.Since the filibuster was not part of the Senate’s original design and only came to be by accident in the early 19th century, it is tempting to portray it as the real culprit – a stain on an otherwise admirable institution. Let’s remember, however, that just like the electoral college, the Senate was always intended to be a layer of insulation between those in power and the people – which is why senators were initially appointed by state legislatures. The senate was supposed to help stave off what many of the founders saw as the “threat” of too much democracy. So, what we see today is not just an institution hijacked by a radicalized Republican party (although it is that too) – but an institution badly in need of structural reform that should go well beyond getting rid of the filibuster.In the current political situation, reforming the Senate, just like protecting voting rights, is considered a “partisan” idea – and it is, but only because democracy itself has become a partisan issue. Of the two major parties, only the Democratic party is a democratic party.Let’s be specific about how undemocratic an institution this is – something that is best captured in numbers: in the current 50:50 Senate, Democratic senators represent 40 million more voters; by about 2040, 70% of the country will be represented by just 30 senators, while less than one-third of the electorate will get to determine 70 out of 100 members of the Senate.The issue of disproportionate representation is deeply intertwined with the problem of white Christian patriarchal rule. The Senate privileges conservative white voters who dominate in small, less populous states; it is biased towards white people, with or without the filibuster. Here are two more numbers everyone should know: out of about 2,000 US senators in the country’s history, 11 have been Black. More than 150 years since the civil war, more than half a century since the civil rights legislation of the 1960s – 11 Black senators. And to date, 58 women have served in the Senate. More than a century since Congress passed the 19th amendment, finally granting women the right to vote – 58 female senators. Whenever someone says the Senate is “the world’s greatest deliberative body”, remember that it is deliberately and inherently undemocratic – an anti-democratic distortion that stands in the way of America finally realizing the promise of multiracial, pluralistic democracy.The legislation Republicans are blocking in the Senate is the minimum needed to resist the state-level authoritarian onslaught on the system. But beyond such immediate measures, a more structural approach to democracy reform is required – and Congress’s upper chamber needs to be at the center of those debates. America can have the Senate in its present form or liberal democracy, but probably not both.The good news is that serious reform is eminently possible. There certainly is no filibuster requirement in the US constitution, and there are ways to alleviate the Senate’s anti-democratic character – by adding DC and Puerto Rico as states, for instance. The tension between white male elite rule and aspirations of true democracy has always shaped the American project – it is inherent in the nation’s founding documents and its political system. The existing institutional order is in conflict with the promise that all people deserve to participate as equals in a democratic polity – and that situation requires a decision.“The world’s greatest deliberative body”? If it were true, it would be quite the indictment of the world’s other deliberative chambers. Let’s abandon such vestiges of mythical exceptionalism that make it harder to acknowledge the anti-democratic threats and deficiencies in American politics and culture. The fact that a shrinking minority of white conservatives is consistently being enabled to hold on to power against the will of the majority of voters is destined to cause a massive legitimacy crisis. And unless the system is properly democratized, it is only going to get worse.
      Thomas Zimmer is a historian and DAAD visiting professor at Georgetown University, where he focuses on the history of democracy and its discontents in the United States.
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      Sanders: ‘anti-democratic’ Republicans to blame for Biden woes, not just Manchin and Sinema

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      Sanders: ‘anti-democratic’ Republicans to blame for Biden woes, not just Manchin and SinemaSenator confirms he will campaign against moderate Democrats if they face primary challenges

      Robert Reich: Manchin and Sinema are all about their egos
      Bernie Sanders on Sunday sought to turn fire aimed by Democrats at two of their own, Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, onto Republican senators he said were “pushing an anti-democratic agenda”.Kyrsten Sinema: Arizona Democrats censure senator for voting rights failureRead more“Republicans are laughing all the way to election day,” the Vermont senator told CNN’s State of the Union. “They have not had to cast one bloody vote which shows us where they’re at.”But the Vermont progressive also confirmed that he will campaign against Manchin and Sinema, both Democrats, should they face viable primary challengers.Manchin, from West Virginia, and Sinema, from Arizona, have blocked Democratic priorities including the Build Back Better spending plan and, this week, voting rights reform.Their refusal to contemplate reform to the filibuster, the rule which requires 60-vote majorities for most legislation, meant two voting rights bills in answer to Republican attacks on voting in states were always doomed to fail.On Saturday, Sinema was formally censured by her state party. Sanders said he supported that move. He also confirmed his threat to campaign against Sinema and Manchin in 2024.“If there was strong candidates prepared to stand up for working families who understand that the Democratic party has got to be the party of working people, taking on big money interests, if both candidates were there in Arizona and West Virginia, yes, I would be happy to support them.”But, Sanders insisted, “it’s not only those two. It is 50 Republicans who have been adamant about not only pushing an anti-democratic agenda but also opposing our efforts to try to lower the cost of prescription drugs, trying to expand Medicare … to improve the disaster situation in home healthcare, in childcare, to address the existential threat of climate change. “You’ve got 50 Republicans who don’t want to do anything except criticise the president and then you have, sadly enough, two Democrats who choose to work with Republicans rather than the president, and it will sabotage the president’s effort to address the needs of working families in this country.”Speaking to NBC’s Meet the Press, Sanders insisted the Biden administration made “a great start”, in part with a Covid relief bill passed with just 50 votes and the casting vote of Vice-President Kamala Harris, but was now bogged down thanks in large part to Manchin and Sinema.“The president and the Democratic Congress,” Sanders said, “… looked at the economic crisis that was caused by Covid. We passed the American Rescue Plan … and we also passed along the way the strongest infrastructure bill that has been passed since Dwight D Eisenhower … We were off to a great start. “And then I will tell you exactly what happened. Fifty members of the Republican party decided that they were going to be obstructionist … and then you had two United States senators joining them, Mr Manchin and Senator Sinema. “For five months now there have been negotiations behind closed doors trying to get these two Democratic senators on board. That strategy, in my view, has failed. It has failed dismally. We saw it last week in terms of the Voting Rights Act. We now need a new direction.”Asked if he was frustrated, Sanders told CNN he was.But, he insisted, “we need to start voting. We need to bring important pieces of legislation that impact the lives of working families right onto the floor of the Senate. And Republicans want to vote against lowering the cost of climate change, home healthcare, whatever it may be. And if the Democrats want to join them, let the American people see what’s happening. “Then we can pick up the pieces and pass legislation.”Abolishing the filibuster won’t lead to a ‘tyranny of the majority’. It’s quite the opposite Read moreSome Democrats advocate splitting Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan into separate bills, in order to pass what they can.Sanders conceded that most such legislation will not pass, given Republican obstruction and the machinations of Manchin and Sinema. Bringing bills to the floor, he conceded, would really be about electoral politics ahead of midterms this year in which Republicans expect to take back the House and possibly the Senate, and the presidential contest in two years’ time.“Once we know where people are at,” he said, “then we can say, ‘All right, look, we have 50 votes here, we have just one vote here, 49 votes here. “But what has bothered me very much is Republicans are laughing all the way to election day. They have not had to cast one bloody vote, or two, which shows us where they’re at. And we’ve got to change.”TopicsBernie SandersUS SenateUS CongressDemocratsBiden administrationUS politicsUS domestic policynewsReuse this content More

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      Where egos dare: Manchin and Sinema show how Senate spotlight corrupts

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      Where egos dare: Manchin and Sinema show how Senate spotlight corruptsRobert ReichThe two Democratic senators chose to wreck American democracy, simply to feed their sense of their own importance What can possibly explain Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema’s decision to sink voting rights protections? Why did they create a false narrative that the legislation had to be “bipartisan” when everyone, themselves included, knew bipartisanship was impossible?Arizona Democrats censure Kyrsten Sinema for voting rights failureRead moreWhy did they say they couldn’t support changing Senate filibuster rules when only last month they voted for an exception to the filibuster that allowed debt ceiling legislation to pass with only Democratic votes?Why did they co-sponsor voting rights legislation and then vote to kill the very same legislation? Why did Manchin vote for the “talking filibuster” in 2011 yet vote against it now?Part of the answer to all these questions can be found in the giant wads of corporate cash flowing into their campaign coffers. But if you want the whole answer, you need also to look at the single biggest factor affecting almost all national politicians I’ve dealt with: ego. Manchin’s and Sinema’s are now among the biggest.Before February of last year, almost no one outside West Virginia had heard of Manchin and almost no one outside Arizona (and probably few within it) had ever heard of Sinema. Now, they’re notorious. They’re Washington celebrities. Their photos grace every major news outlet in America.This sort of attention is addictive. Once it seeps into the bloodstream, it becomes an all-consuming force. I’ve known politicians who have become permanently and irrevocably intoxicated.I’m not talking simply about power, although that’s certainly part of it. I’m talking about narcissism – the primal force driving so much of modern America but whose essence is concentrated in certain places such as Wall Street, Hollywood and the United States Senate.Once addicted, the pathologically narcissistic politician can become petty in the extreme, taking every slight as a deep personal insult. I’m told Manchin asked Joe Biden’s staff not to blame him for the delay of Build Back Better and was then infuriated when Biden suggested Manchin bore some of the responsibility. I’m also told that if Biden wants to restart negotiations with Manchin on Build Back Better, he’s got to rename it because Manchin is so angry he won’t vote for anything going by that name.The Senate is not the world’s greatest deliberative body but it is the world’s greatest stew of egos battling for attention. Every senator believes he or she has what it takes to be president. Most believe they’re far more competent than whoever occupies the Oval Office.Yet out of 100 senators, only a handful are chosen for interviews on the Sunday talk shows and very few get a realistic shot at the presidency. The result is intense competition for attention.Again and again, I’ve watched worthy legislation sink because particular senators didn’t feel they were getting enough credit, or enough personal attention from a president, or insufficient press attention, or unwanted press attention, or that another senator (sometimes from the same party) was getting too much attention.Several people on the Hill who have watched Sinema at close range since she became a senator tell me she relished all the attention she got when she gave her very theatrical thumbs down to increasing the minimum wage, and since then has thrilled at her national celebrity as a spoiler.Biden prides himself on having been a member of the senatorial “club” for many years before ascending to the presidency and argued during the 2020 campaign that this familiarity would give him an advantage in dealing with his former colleagues. But it may be working against him. Senators don’t want clubby familiarity from a president. They want a president to shine the national spotlight on them.Lindsey Graham, reverse ferret: how John McCain’s spaniel became Trump’s poodleRead moreSome senators get so whacky in the national spotlight that they can’t function without it. Trump had that effect on Republicans. Before Trump, Lindsey Graham was almost a normal human being. Then Trump directed a huge amp of national attention Graham’s way, transmogrifying the senator into a bizarro creature who’d say anything Trump wanted to keep the attention coming.Not all senators are egomaniacs, of course. Most lie on an ego spectrum ranging from mildly inflated to pathological.Manchin and Sinema are near the extreme. Once they got a taste of the national spotlight, they couldn’t let go. They must have figured that the only way they could keep the spotlight focused on themselves was by threatening to do what they finally did last week: shafting American democracy.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
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      Arizona Democrats censure Kyrsten Sinema for voting rights failure

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      Kyrsten Sinema: Arizona Democrats censure senator for voting rights failureDemocrat opposed move to carve voting rights issues out of filibuster and thereby overcome GOP opposition

      Republican resistance to Trump rings hollow on voting rights
      The Arizona Democratic party has formally censured Kyrsten Sinema, the US senator whose opposition to filibuster reform helped sink attempts to protect voting rights.The three lessons for the voting rights struggle from the latest Senate setback | Steve PhillipsRead moreIn a statement on Saturday the Arizona party chair, Raquel Terán, said: “While we take no pleasure in this announcement, the ADP executive board has decided to formally censure Senator Sinema as a result of her failure to do whatever it takes to ensure the health of our democracy.”The attempt to pass voting rights legislation died in the Senate this week, a huge blow to Joe Biden and his party in a year which finishes with midterm elections in which Republicans are expected to prosper.Sinema supported two bills but they were blocked by Republicans after hours of emotional and at times deeply personal debate over voting rights, racism and the fragility of American democracy.Republicans were able to block the bills because Sinema and another moderate Democrat, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, opposed a move to carve voting rights issues out of the filibuster, the Senate rule by which most legislation requires 60 votes to progress.Saying she opposed reform because the filibuster protected the rights of the minority, Sinema said in a floor speech she was “committed to doing my part to avoid toxic political rhetoric, to build bridges, to forge common ground, and to achieve lasting results for Arizona and this country”.Critics pointed out that no only do Republicans in the 50-50 Senate represent millions fewer Americans than Democrats, but the GOP itself was recently happy to change filibuster rules to require only a simple majority to confirm supreme court justices.Donald Trump was therefore able to nominate three hardline conservatives to a court which had already gutted federal voting rights protections.Since that supreme court decision, in 2013, and at a growing pace since Trump refused to concede defeat in 2020, Republican state governments have passed laws which critics say are meant to make it harder for communities which lean Democratic, particularly Black voters, to cast their ballots.Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, stoked uproar this week when, after the failure of the Democratic voting rights push, he said: “The concern is misplaced, because if you look at the statistics, African American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans.”Diana DeGette, a Democratic representative from Colorado, said: “African American voters ARE AMERICANS and to suggest otherwise is about as racist as it gets.”00:33Other Republican measures, critics say, will make it easier for the GOP to overturn results.In her statement on Saturday, Terán said: “The Arizona Democratic party is a diverse coalition with plenty of room for policy disagreements.“However, on the matter of the filibuster and the urgency to protect voting rights, we have been crystal clear in the choice between an archaic legislative norm and protecting Arizonans rights to vote. We choose the latter and we always will.”Terán praised Sinema’s role in passing Covid relief and a bipartisan infrastructure bill, key parts of Biden’s agenda. But she also highlighted Republican attempts to audit and overturn Trump’s defeat in Arizona and election laws being passed nationwide.“The ramifications of failing to pass federal legislation that protects [the] right to vote are too large and far reaching,” she said.A spokeswoman for Sinema said: “During three terms in the US House, and now in the Senate, Kyrsten has always promised Arizonans she would be an independent voice for the state – not for either political party. She’s delivered for Arizonans and has always been honest about where she stands.”Nonetheless, the senator has suffered significant blowback.Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator and leading progressive, said this week he could back primary challengers to Manchin and Sinema in 2024. Sinema also saw Emily’s List, a powerful abortion rights group, withhold its endorsement.In a statement, Emily’s List president Laphonza Butler said: “We believe the decision by Senator Sinema is not only a blow to voting rights and our electoral system but also to the work of all the partners who supported her victory and her constituents who tried to communicate the importance of this bill.”A Democratic fundraising juggernaut, Emily’s List was Sinema’s top political donor in her 2018 Senate race, according to opensecrets.org.Another abortion rights group, Naral Pro-Choice America, said it would only endorse senators “who support changing the Senate rules to pass the critical legislation that will protect voting rights”.Who is Kyrsten Sinema? Friends and foes ponder an Arizona Senate enigmaRead moreArizona’s other Democratic senator, Mark Kelly, was on Saturday fundraising off his decision to support filibuster reform on voting rights matters, which he said was “a tough one – but [the] right one for Arizona and our country”. The effects of censure by a state party are debatable. In Arizona, the Republican John McCain was censured in 2014 for what his state party deemed too liberal a voting record. The senator and 2008 presidential nominee took it in his stride, as part of his public image as a political maverick.Sinema won the Arizona Senate seat vacated by Jeff Flake, an anti-Trump conservative, and also presents herself as unbound by traditional political codes.Last year, Chuck Coughlin, a former Republican operative in the state, told the Guardian Sinema was a “pragmatist” who “understands that if she is to succeed in Arizona, she must succeed in this lane”.However, Saundra Cole, a Democrat who once campaigned for Sinema, said: “She’s not John McCain. She’s not a maverick. I didn’t agree with him on many things but at least we knew where he stood.”TopicsArizonaUS SenateUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Abolishing the filibuster won’t lead to a ‘tyranny of the majority’. It’s quite the opposite

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      Abolishing the filibuster won’t lead to a ‘tyranny of the majority’. It’s quite the opposite Jan-Werner MüllerWhat defenders of the filibuster want is minority rule – and a government unable to deliver anything meaningful to its people On Joe Manchin’s US Senate website, you can click on “Help from Joe”. American democracy (not to speak of another Joe) desperately needed his help this week. What it got instead was notes cribbed from constitutional law 101, selective and self-serving worship of a distant deity known as “the Founders”, and sanctimonious invocations of bipartisanship.The battle to secure free and fair conditions for voting through a simple Senate majority seems lost for the moment; and Republicans – who call for bipartisanship only when they happen to be in the minority – are gloating. But we should not move on so quickly. Otherwise, like dirt, the deeply misleading claims about the filibuster preventing a “tyranny of the majority”, advanced by Manchin and commentators thinking the point of politics is moderation for its own sake, might come to stick.Republican voter suppression is rampant. Manchin and Sinema are complicit now | Moira DoneganRead moreThe authors of the US constitution did indeed fear a tyranny of the majority. And they were agitated by the thought of decisions taken without proper deliberation; after all, even these men of the Enlightenment could not shake longstanding prejudices about the great unwashed masses falling victim to their “passions wresting the sceptre from reason”, as James Madison put it (adding for good measure that “had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates; every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob”.)Yet the framers worried no less about a tyranny of the minority. While they built in plenty of checks and balances, they did not seek to give veto powers to a minority within the Senate. After all, the latter was already through other designs the place for what Jefferson called a “natural aristocracy” to cogitate and deliberate. The chamber was not directly elected by the people before 1913, but both before and after, it has had an inbuilt bias for minorities, since every state, no matter how small, gets two senators. Never mind the filibuster: we have long been in a situation where Republicans can rule without a majority of the country behind them (for instance, by ramming through appointments to the US supreme court).Politicians like their constitutional legacies a la carte: what better than having the imperative to preserve your personal power be directly deduced from the wisdom of the framers? Yet an honest reckoning with history must face up to the fact that much we take to be indispensable for democracy was not only unforeseen in the 18th century, but positively abhorrent to the men meeting in Philadelphia.Most important, the Framers sought to avoid the very thing that today makes Manchin’s calls for consensus an act of bad faith: political parties, and an uncompromising spirit of partisanship (or what the Founders called “faction”) in particular. Evidently, Manchin himself does not quite believe in deliberation; why else have a huge placard with big, shouting letters next to him while delivering his speech? And just as evident: were he really so concerned about policies always having “input from all corners of the country”, why not require unanimity? If 51 can constitute a tyranny of the majority, why can’t 60?Biden asks what Republicans are for, and what McConnell wants, but the answer has been obvious for a decade or so: make his presidency fail. After all, the present minority leader honed his dark arts of political destruction during the Obama years. Of course, there is nothing wrong with an opposition opposing. In fact, that’s its job: it is supposed to offer a systematic alternative to what those who gained a majority are trying to do and hold those in power accountable. But that’s really as far as it goes, when it comes to what Manchin calls “the opportunity for the minority to participate”.A minority should have its say – but a majority must get its way. To enact what you have been empowered to enact does not mean, as Manchin puts it, “abandoning our Republican colleagues on important national issues”. It means not abandoning the people who put their trust in your ability actually to get stuff done.What defenders of the filibuster want is for the minority de facto to hold power. A supermajority requirement is not somehow neutral. It means opting for the status quo in a political system that its defenders, from the ancient Athenians onwards, always admired for its capacity to learn and innovate. Innovation does not mean you rush headlong into things – again, ancient prejudices echo when Manchin associates abolishing the filibuster with encouraging “volatility”, “haste” and “transitory passion”.The Trump tax cuts were the most rushed legislation in recent years; the measure was as incomprehensible to many senators voting for it as it was a delight for the lobbyists who had written it. Conversely, laws to reduce gun violence have been debated for years and have enormous, well-considered support among the supposedly fickle and irrational people – and yet something like the bipartisan Manchin-Toomey Bill, agreed after the Sandy Hook massacre, died in a political institution that makes some more equal than others.Plenty of historians have pointed out the use of the filibuster to preserve white supremacy. But even if the filibuster were not what Obama called a “Jim Crow relic”, the willful misunderstanding of legitimate minority input as minority rule is unacceptable: it disrespects the majority of citizens. There is no evidence that it leads to more bipartisanship; and there is no reason to believe that, as the master of mixing the maximum number of metaphors from West Virginia says, its end would “pour fuel on to the fire of political whiplash and dysfunction that is tearing this nation apart”.Even if one is not particularly concerned with the finer points of democratic theory (such as: if you get fewer votes, you lose the election), one should find the filibuster unacceptable because it disables government. As Biden keeps saying, democracy has to deliver for citizens. A system that turns into what Francis Fukuyama – not exactly a raving lefty radical – calls a vetocracy cannot do so.
      Jan-Werner Mueller teaches at Princeton and is a Guardian US columnist. His most recent book is Democracy Rules
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