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      Mitch McConnell’s viral Black voter comments cause widespread furor

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      Mitch McConnell’s viral Black voter comments cause widespread furorRepublican Senate minority leader’s comments came after party members blocked voting rights bill and changes to filibuster rule00:33Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has sparked widespread outrage by appearing to refer to African Americans and Americans as two separate groups in comments about Black voters that have since gone viral.Republican voter suppression is rampant. Manchin and Sinema are complicit now | Moira DoneganRead moreThe Kentucky Republican was speaking after Republican senators once again blocked Democrats’ voting rights legislation on Capitol Hill on Wednesday evening.Speaking to reporters after the bill failed and the Senate rejected a change to the filibuster rule that could facilitate its passage, McConnell was asked for his message to voters in minority communities who are concerned that voting restrictions being enacted in many states will keep them from the ballot box without new federal laws.“The concern is misplaced, because if you look at the statistics, African American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans,” McConnell said.In fact, studies indicate that voting restrictions, like those passed by 19 states in the past year, disproportionately impact voters of color.Democratic Illinois congressman Bobby Rush swiftly called out McConnell’s comment, saying in a tweet: “African Americans ARE Americans. #MitchPlease”One of Rush’s Democratic colleagues, Diana DeGette of Colorado, echoed that assessment, describing McConnell’s comment as “disgusting”. “African-American voters ARE AMERICANS & to suggest otherwise is about as racist as it gets,” DeGette said in a tweet.African Americans ARE Americans. #MitchPlease https://t.co/N3dSsQ9Jqn pic.twitter.com/SRnTTVJdJ4— Bobby L. Rush (@RepBobbyRush) January 20, 2022
      Former Kentucky state senator Charles Booker, who is campaigning for the US senate against Republican Rand Paul, tweeted: “I am no less American than Mitch McConnell” and also said: “I need you to understand that this is who Mitch McConnell is. Being Black doesn’t make you less of an American, no matter what this craven man thinks.”Pastor and activist Talbert Swan quipped that he “can’t qwhite put my finger on” what distinction McConnell might be drawing, tweeting: “I wonder what’s the difference he sees between ‘African-American voters’ and ‘Americans.’”And Malcolm Kenyatta, a Democratic Senate candidate in Pennsylvania, argued that McConnell’s words were not a slip of the tongue but were instead an accurate reflection of the Republican party’s mindset toward Black voters.“Mitch McConnell’s comments suggesting African Americans aren’t fully American wasn’t a Freudian slip – it was a dog whistle. The same one he has blown for years,” Kenyatta said.Mitch McConnell’s comments suggesting African Americans aren’t fully American wasn’t a Freudian slip — it was a dog whistle. The same one he has blown for years.— Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta (@malcolmkenyatta) January 20, 2022
      TopicsUS SenateRepublicansRaceUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Democrats fail to advance voting rights law as Senate holdouts defend filibuster

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      Democrats fail to advance voting rights law as Senate holdouts defend filibusterSweeping protections for voters, already passed by House and backed by Biden, fail to clear 60-vote procedural hurdle Senate Democrats failed again to pass sweeping new voting protections on Wednesday, in what may be the most brutal blow yet to efforts to strengthen protections for voters at a perilous moment for US democracy.Just as they have done four other times in recent months, all 50 Republicans united in their opposition to the measure. They relied on the filibuster, a Senate rule that requires 60 votes to advance legislation to a final vote.Bernie Sanders suggests he may support primary challengers against Manchin and SinemaRead moreDespite heavy pressure from Joe Biden and fellow Democrats, two senators, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, have dug in defending the measure, preventing Democrats from getting rid of it.In a rebuke to Biden, Sinema gave a speech on the Senate floor last week making it clear she would not support changes to the filibuster. Manchin has also consistently made his support clear. “I will not vote to eliminate or weaken the filibuster. The filibuster plays an important role in protecting our democracy from the transitory passions of the majority and respecting the input of the minority in the Senate,” he said in a speech on Wednesday.Their opposition set up a showdown as the ultimately doomed bill was taken up for discussion on Wednesday. Late in the evening, Republicans used the filibuster to vote to end debate on the bill, effectively blocking it from advancing. Immediately afterwards, Democrats moved to hold a vote to try and change the filibuster rules anyway. The effort failed 52-48, with Manchin and Sinema voting with all 50 Republicans to preserve the filibuster. Sinema loudly said “aye” when it was her turn to vote in favor of preserving the filibuster changes.“I am profoundly disappointed that the United States Senate has failed to stand up for our democracy. I am disappointed — but I am not deterred,” Biden said in a statement.“Our Administration will continue to fight to pass federal legislation to secure the right to vote. We will not stop fighting against the anti-voter legislation that Republican legislatures continue to push at the state level—and to champion and support state and local elected officials who work to enact pro-voter legislation,” Kamala Harris said in a separate statement.“Isn’t protecting voting rights, the most fundamental wellspring of this democracy, more important than a rule?” Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, said just before the vote on the filibuster change.Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia said Democrats were seeking to restore a “talking filibuster”, where senators have to hold the floor of the US senate to prevent a vote on legislation.“We’re going to take up a rules reform proposal that will not blow up the senate,” he said on the Senate floor Wednesday evening. “It switches the secret filibuster into a public filibuster. It makes both parties work on the floor to get the kind of extended public debate we joined together to seek.”Senator Angus King of Maine, who once defended the filibuster, said the process that was in place was a “second cousin once removed of the filibuster”.“I’d venture to say if we had the rules we have today, we wouldn’t have the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act,” he said.Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, described Wednesday as “in all likelihood, the most important day in the history of the Senate.” He said the Democratic proposal was just “smoke and mirrors”, and accused Democrats of undertaking a plot to “to break the Senate”.The voting rights measure has failed before, but Wednesday marks the first time they have taken a formal vote on changing the filibuster. Its likely failure marks a profound setback for Biden’s presidential agenda. The president spent an enormous amount of political capital in recent weeks pressuring Manchin and Sinema to support rule changes to the filibuster, giving a speech in Atlanta and traveling to Capitol Hill to try to get support. In stirring remarks just before the vote on the voting rights bill, Raphael Warnock, a Democrat from Georgia, said senators could not praise the legacy of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr while voting against voting rights. “You cannot remember MLK and dismember his legacy at the same time,” Warnock said. “I will not sit quietly while some make Dr King a victim of identity theft.”“Those of us who are students of Dr King, I know I have, often wonder ‘what would I have done if I was alive during the civil rights movement?’ I know that we all would like to think we had a fraction, just a small fraction of the courage it took for John Lewis to cross that Edmund Pettus Bridge,” he said. “Well, for those of us who serve in the United States Senate in this moment, in this moral moment, we do not have to wonder … we don’t have to wonder what we would have done. I submit that what we would have done back then we are doing right now. History is watching us.”The bill that failed on Wednesday, Freedom to Vote: John R Lewis Act, combined two major voting rights bills into a single mega bill.It would have set a national baseline for election access, guaranteeing 15 days of early voting as well as online voter registration. It protected local election officials from harassment and partisan interference in their jobs and curbed gerrymandering, the severe distortion of partisan district lines. It also restored a key piece of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that required places with a history of voting discrimination to get their changes approved by either the justice department or a federal court in Washington before they go into effect.The bill’s failure comes as states across the US have waged an aggressive effort to restrict voting access after the 2020 election, which saw record turnout. In total, 19 states have passed 34 bills that restrict voting access, making it harder to request and return a mail-in ballot, among other measures, even though there was no evidence of fraud, either in mail-in voting or otherwise, in 2020.Many of those efforts are obviously aimed at Black and other minority voters who helped Democrats win in 2020, activists say. As state legislatures reconvene, Republican lawmakers are proposing even more new restrictions.At the same time, Republicans in state legislatures are redrawing electoral districts at the state legislative and congressional level to virtually guarantee their re-election for the next decade. Seeing Democratic gains in traditionally Republican districts, Republicans have redrawn the lines to simply make many districts uncompetitive for the next decade, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.It’s a strategy that has blunted the growing power of Black, Hispanic and Asian voters in places like the suburbs, which are rapidly diversifying. In North Carolina, for example, Republicans lowered the Black voting age population of a district long represented by GK Butterfield, a former judge who is Black. It will be harder for Black voters in that district to elect their candidate of choice and Butterfield has since announced he is retiring from Congress.There is also growing concern about what experts call election subversion – efforts to inject more partisanship into election administration and counting votes.Republicans are passing laws that give them more partisan control over key administrative roles and Trump allies who have embraced the myth of a stolen election are running for secretary of state in places such as Georgia, Michigan, Arizona and Nevada – a perch from which they could exert enormous unilateral control over election rules.Civil rights groups have waged an aggressive campaign, privately and publicly, trying to get Manchin and Sinema to support a filibuster change. “Let’s be honest, every voter suppression bill passed in the 19 states across the country has been passed by Republicans alone. If one party can dismantle our democracy on its own, the other party should muster the courage to safeguard it,” Derrick Johnson, the president and CEO of the NAACP, wrote in a letter to senators.TopicsUS voting rightsThe fight to voteUS SenateUS politicsDemocratsJoe ManchinnewsReuse this content More

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      Biden marks a year as president and says he has ‘probably outperformed’ – live

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      Key events

      Show

      4.29pm EST

      16:29

      Biden expresses confidence in passing ‘big chunks’ of Build Back Better

      4.21pm EST

      16:21

      Biden: ‘I didn’t overpromise. I have probably outperformed’

      4.05pm EST

      16:05

      Biden holds press conference to mark one year in office

      3.48pm EST

      15:48

      Manchin’s filibuster speech set to clash with Biden’s press conference

      1.00pm EST

      13:00

      Today so far

      11.30am EST

      11:30

      Biden to hold press conference amid struggles to pass voting rights bill

      10.25am EST

      10:25

      Manchin to deliver floor speech on voting rights and filibuster reform

      Live feed

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      4.47pm EST

      16:47

      Joe Biden confirmed the Build Back Better Act will likely have to be separated into multiple bills in order to get some of its components passed.
      “It’s clear to me that we’re going to have to probably break it up,” the president said.
      Biden noted that Joe Manchin, who announced his opposition to the spending package last month, supports some of the bill’s key provisions, such as establishing universal access to free prekindergarten.
      “I think we can break the package up, get as much as we can now and come back and fight for the rest later,” Biden said.

      4.37pm EST

      16:37

      Joe Biden was asked whether he believes the threatened sanctions against Russia will be enough to prevent Vladimir Putin from approving an invasion of Ukraine, when such economic measures have not proven effective with the Russian president in the past.
      “He’s never seen sanctions like the ones I’ve promised will be imposed if he moves,” the president replied.
      Biden noted he has had “frank discussions” with Putin in recent weeks, as fears have intensified over a potential invasion of Ukraine.
      The US president said that, if Putin moves forward with a full-scale invasion, it will be a “disaster” for the Russian economy.
      “Russia will be held accountable if it invades,” Biden said.

      4.29pm EST

      16:29

      Biden expresses confidence in passing ‘big chunks’ of Build Back Better

      A reporter asked Joe Biden whether he needed to be more realistic in his legislative goals and and scale down his priorities in order to get something passed.
      The president said he did not believe he needed to scale down his goals, arguing his agenda is largely popular with the American people.
      “We just have to make the case of what we’re for and what the other team’s not for,” Biden said, underscoring the need for Democrats to contrast their priorities with those of Republicans.
      However, in response to a follow-up question, Biden seemed to acknowledge that the Build Back Better Act may need to be broken up into several pieces to get passed.
      “I’m confident we can get pieces, big chunks of the Build Back Better law signed into law,” Biden said.
      Joe Manchin announced last month that he would not support the $1.75tn spending package, which represents the centerpiece of Biden’s economic agenda.
      But the president and Democratic congressional leaders have indicated they are not giving up on the proposal.

      4.21pm EST

      16:21

      Biden: ‘I didn’t overpromise. I have probably outperformed’

      Joe Biden is now taking questions from reporters, after delivering some prepared remarks about the coronavirus pandemic and the US economy.
      A journalist asked the president whether he believes he promised too much to voters, considering Democrats’ failure to pass a voting rights bill or the Build Back Better Act since he took office.
      “I didn’t overpromise. I have probably outperformed what anybody thought would happen,” Biden replied.
      The president insisted his administration had made “enormous progress” over the past year, but he acknowledged that the year had not seen much bipartisanship.
      Condemning the obstructionist tactics of the opposing party, Biden said he had not succeeded in convincing “my Republican friends to get in the game”.

      Updated
      at 4.50pm EST

      4.16pm EST

      16:16

      Joe Biden said coronavirus will not disappear anytime soon, but he expressed confidence that the situation in the US will continue to improve in the months ahead.

      CBS News
      (@CBSNews)
      President Biden: “COVID-19 is not going to give up and it’s not gonna go away immediately. But I’m not going to give up and accept things as they are now. Some people may call what’s happening now the ‘new normal.’ I call it a job not yet finished. It will get better.” pic.twitter.com/4MqDerL3H4

      January 19, 2022

      “I’m not going to give up and accept things as they are now. Some people may call what’s happening now the ‘new normal.’ I call it a job not yet finished,” Biden said.
      “It will get better. We’re moving toward a time when Covid-19 won’t disrupt our daily lives, where Covid-19 won’t be a crisis but something to protect against and a threat. Look, we’re not there yet, but we will get there.”
      Biden’s remarks come as the Omicron variant causes a surge in cases of coronavirus in the US, putting more pressure on hospitals and resulting in high demand for tests.

      4.10pm EST

      16:10

      While touting the successes of his first year in office, Joe Biden acknowledged that many Americans remain unhappy with the state of the nation.
      “For all this progress, I know there’s a lot of frustration and fatigue in this country. And we know why: Covid-19,” Biden said.
      The president said he understood Americans are tired nearly two years into the pandemic, but he emphasized the US now has the tools to save lives and keep the economy open — vaccines, tests and masks.
      Nodding to criticism that the White House should have made coronavirus tests more widely available sooner, Biden said, “Should we have done more testing earlier? Yes. But we’re doing more now.”

      4.05pm EST

      16:05

      Biden holds press conference to mark one year in office

      Joe Biden has now appeared at the podium to kick off his press conference, which comes on the eve of the one-year anniversary of his inauguration.
      “It’s been a year of challenges, but it’s also been a year of enormous progress,” the president said.
      Biden touted his administration’s success in boosting coronavirus vaccination rates and lowering the US unemployment rate, despite widespread criticism of Democrats’ failure to pass a voting rights bill or their Build Back Better Act.
      Biden is expected to deliver prepared remarks for about 10 minutes before taking questions from reporters. Stay tuned.

      3.48pm EST

      15:48

      Manchin’s filibuster speech set to clash with Biden’s press conference

      Joe Manchin will deliver his Senate floor speech on voting rights and filibuster reform at 4.30pm ET, his office just confirmed in a statement.
      Given that timing, it is quite likely that Manchin will be speaking as Joe Biden holds his press conference, which is scheduled to begin at 4pm ET.
      So while Biden is trying to tout the successes of his first year in office, Manchin will simultaneously be taking the podium on the Senate floor and likely eliminating any hope of passing voting rights legislation in the near future.
      It should be an eventful afternoon, to say the least. Stay tuned.

      3.36pm EST

      15:36

      Tim Scott, a Republican of South Carolina, criticized Joe Biden for comparing the voting restrictions enacted in the past year to the racist policies of the Jim Crow era.
      Scott, the only Black Republican member of the Senate, said the issue of voting rights is “really important to all Americans but specifically important to Americans from the Deep South who happen to look like me”.
      “As I listened to the president talk about the importance of stopping what he characterized as ‘Jim Crow 2.0’, I felt frustration and irritation rising in my soul,” Scott said. “I am so thankful, thankful that we are not living in those days.”

      CSPAN
      (@cspan)
      Sen. @CoryBooker: “Don’t lecture me about Jim Crow. I know this is not 1965. That’s what makes me so outraged. It’s 2022. And they’re blatantly removing polling places from the counties where Blacks and Latinos are overrepresented. I’m not making that up. That is a fact.” pic.twitter.com/JtwxQMZtpE

      January 19, 2022

      After Scott spoke, Cory Booker, another one of the three Black members of the Senate, stepped up to the podium to denounce the voting restrictions and their disproportionate impact on minority voters.
      “Don’t lecture me about Jim Crow. I know this is not 1965. That’s what makes me so outraged. It’s 2022,” said Booker, a Democrat of New Jersey.
      “And they’re blatantly removing more polling places from the counties where Blacks and Latinos are overrepresented. I’m not making that up. That is a fact.”

      3.09pm EST

      15:09

      The Senate debate over voting rights and filibuster reform has been going on for hours now, and the chamber may not wrap up its work today until 9pm or 10pm ET, per PBS NewsHour.

      Lisa Desjardins
      (@LisaDNews)
      For Senate watchers, consensus in talking with Dem senators and Dem leadership sources is that tonight is heading toward a 9p/10p end time. (As always it’s fluid, who knows, etc.)

      January 19, 2022

      2.46pm EST

      14:46

      The Senate debate over Democrats’ voting rights bill and their suggested changes to the filibuster continues, with Republicans denouncing their colleagues’ proposals.
      Thom Tillis, a Republican of North Carolina, pledged that he would leave the Senate if his party ever amended the filibuster — or rather the legislative filibuster, as Republicans already eliminated the filibuster for supreme court nominees.

      CSPAN
      (@cspan)
      .@SenThomTillis: “The day that Republicans change the rules for the filibuster is the day I resign from the Senate.” pic.twitter.com/f38byD2vqE

      January 19, 2022

      “The day that Republicans change the rues for the filibuster is the day I resign from the Senate,” Tillis said.
      “And I believe that I have a number of members on my side of the aisle that would never do it. So you don’t have to worry about the argument, ‘If you don’t change it now, they’ll just change it when they hit the trifecta.’ It’s not going to happen.”
      It will be interesting to see if those comments ever come back to haunt Tillis.

      2.22pm EST

      14:22

      Joe Biden held a virtual meeting today with some of the senators who traveled to Ukraine over the weekend to meet with the country’s president and discuss concerns over a potential Russian invasion.
      “President Biden and the senators exchanged views on the best ways the United States can continue to work closely with our allies and partners in support of Ukraine, including both ongoing diplomacy to try to resolve the current crisis and deterrence measures,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement.
      “President Biden commended the strong history of support for Ukraine from both sides of the aisle, and agreed to keep working closely with Congress as the Administration prepares to impose significant consequences in response to further Russian aggression against Ukraine.”
      Secretary of state Antony Blinken is also in Ukraine today, meeting with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy before traveling to Geneva for talks with Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, on Friday.
      Blinken has warned that Russia could take “further aggressive action” against Ukraine “at any moment,” the Guardian’s Luke Harding and Andrew Roth report:

      2.04pm EST

      14:04

      Joanna Walters

      The US Supreme Court has issued a very unusual statement. Not about any of the high-stakes cases the bench is considering, however, but about coronavirus, masks – the wearing of – and a report of a disagreement between liberal-leaning Sonia Sotomayor and conservative-leaning Neil Gorsuch over what can be a life-or-death issue. More

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      Louisiana Senate candidate goes viral for smoking marijuana in campaign ad

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      Louisiana Senate candidate goes viral for smoking marijuana in campaign adDemocrat Gary Chambers Jr smokes blunt in video in effort to ‘destigmatize’ use and raise awareness about racial justice A US Senate candidate from Louisiana has shared a campaign video in which he smokes marijuana in an effort to “destigmatize” its use and raise awareness about racial justice.Gary Chambers Jr, a 37-year-old Democrat and social justice advocate from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is shown seated outdoors in a chair, taking puffs from a blunt.“My first campaign ad, ‘37 Seconds.’ #JustLikeMe,” Chambers tweeted on Tuesday in a caption for the ad, which has spread widely on social media. In it, he recites arrest statistics of Black Americans and marijuana possession.“Every 37 seconds, someone is arrested for possession of marijuana. Since 2010, police have arrested an estimated 7.3 million Americans for violating marijuana laws,” Chambers says, to the sound effect of a ticking clock. “Black people are four times more likely to be arrested for marijuana laws than white people.”He adds: “States waste $3.7bn enforcing marijuana laws every year. Most of the people police are arresting aren’t dealers, but rather people with small amounts of pot, just like me.”Writing about the campaign video, Chambers said:“I hope this ad works not only to destigmatize the use of marijuana, but also forces a new conversation that creates the pathway to legalize this beneficial drug, and forgive those who were arrested due to outdated ideology.”In a statement to CNN, he elaborated that it was “long past due that politicians stop pretending to be better or different than the people they represent”, adding: “Some parts of the country are fighting opioid addictions and creating millionaires and better schools from the marijuana industry. Others are creating felonies and destroyed families. I can’t stand for that.’”According to Chambers’ campaign, the ad was shot over the weekend in New Orleans, a city that just recently passed a law to decriminalize marijuana possession. The city council also added a blanket pardon for marijuana possession convictions dating back to 2010, which the council members said would apply to about 10,000 old cases.Last June, the Louisiana governor, John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, signed a bill into law that reduces the penalty for possessing small amounts of marijuana, and at the beginning of this month lawmakers legalized the “smokable” form of medical marijuana under certain conditions.Chambers is seeking to challenge Republican senator John Kennedy, a staunch conservative and Donald Trump ally, in November’s all-party primary.TopicsLouisianaRaceUS politicsUS SenatenewsReuse this content More

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      Schumer insists Senate will vote on voting rights bill ‘win, lose or draw’ – live

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      Key events

      Show

      4.39pm EST

      16:39

      White House launches ‘beta’ version of website to order Covid tests

      4.15pm EST

      16:15

      Trump’s attorney general Barr to publish book

      2.08pm EST

      14:08

      Psaki: Russia attack on Ukraine could come ‘at any time’

      1.45pm EST

      13:45

      Two more Democrats will retire

      1.30pm EST

      13:30

      Today so far

      12.46pm EST

      12:46

      Senate will vote on voting rights ‘win, lose or draw,’ Schumer says

      12.28pm EST

      12:28

      Schumer files cloture on Democrats’ voting rights bill

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      1.08pm EST

      13:08

      Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer argued Democrats have an obligation to do everything possible to pass voting rights legislation, despite the high likelihood of failure because of Republican filibustering.
      “If Republicans choose to continue their filibuster of voting rights legislation, we must consider and vote on the rule changes that are appropriate and necessary to restore the Senate and make voting rights legislation possible,” Schumer said in his floor speech.

      CSPAN
      (@cspan)
      .@SenSchumer: “If Republicans choose…their filibuster of voting rights legislation we must consider and vote on the rule changes that are appropriate and necessary to restore the Senate and make voting rights legislation possible.” pic.twitter.com/gbmNQZKMS9

      January 18, 2022

      But as of now, Schumer does not have the votes necessary to change the filibuster, as Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema remain opposed to doing so.
      Because of the 50-50 split between Democrats and Republicans in the Senate, Schumer needs the support of every member of his caucus to reform the filibuster.

      4.39pm EST

      16:39

      White House launches ‘beta’ version of website to order Covid tests

      The Biden administration has launched the “beta” version of its website to order free, at-home coronavirus tests.
      The site, CovidTests.gov, includes a link to a US Postal Service form that allows Americans to request four tests to be shipped to their homes.
      White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, said the site will officially launch tomorrow morning and noted there may be some glitches until then.
      “CovidTests.gov is in the beta phase right now, which is a standard part of the process typically as it’s being kind of tested,” Psaki said at her daily briefing.
      “Every website launch, in our view, comes with risk. We can’t guarantee there won’t be a bug or two, but the best tech teams across the administration and the postal service are working hard to make this a success.”
      The Biden administration has already ordered 1bn free at-home coronavirus tests to be distributed to Americans as the country confronts the highly transmissible Omicron variant.

      Updated
      at 4.48pm EST

      4.15pm EST

      16:15

      Trump’s attorney general Barr to publish book

      Martin Pengelly

      William Barr, Donald Trump’s second attorney general and perceived hatchet man until he split from the former president over his lies about election fraud, has a book deal. More

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      Corporate sedition is more damaging to America than the Capitol attack | Robert Reich

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      Corporate sedition is more damaging to America than the Capitol attackRobert ReichKyrsten Sinema receives millions from business and opposes progressive priorities. Republicans who voted to overturn an election still bag big bucks. Whose side are CEOs on? Capitalism and democracy are compatible only if democracy is in the driver’s seat.The US supreme court to Americans: tough luck if you get Covid at work | Robert ReichRead moreThat’s why I took some comfort just after the attack on the Capitol when many big corporations solemnly pledged they’d no longer finance the campaigns of the 147 lawmakers who voted to overturn election results.Well, those days are over. Turns out they were over the moment the public stopped paying attention.A report published last week by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington shows that over the past year, 717 companies and industry groups have donated more than $18m to 143 of those seditious lawmakers. Businesses that pledged to stop or pause their donations have given nearly $2.4m directly to their campaigns or political action committees (Pacs).But there’s a deeper issue here. The whole question of whether corporations do or don’t bankroll the seditionist caucus is a distraction from a much larger problem.The tsunami of money now flowing from corporations into the swamp of American politics is larger than ever. And this money – bankrolling almost all politicians and financing attacks on their opponents – is undermining American democracy as much as did the 147 seditionist members of Congress. Maybe more.The Democratic senator Kyrsten Sinema – whose vocal opposition to any change in the filibuster is on the verge of dooming voting rights – received almost $2m in campaign donations in 2021 even though she is not up for re-election until 2024. Most of it came from corporate donors outside Arizona, some of which have a history of donating largely to Republicans.Has the money influenced Sinema? You decide. Besides sandbagging voting rights, she voted down the $15 minimum wage increase, opposed tax increases on corporations and the wealthy and stalled on drug price reform – policies supported by a majority of Democratic senators as well as a majority of Arizonans.Over the last four decades, corporate Pac spending on congressional elections has more than quadrupled, even adjusting for inflation.Labor unions no longer provide a counterweight. Forty years ago, union Pacs contributed about as much as corporate Pacs. Now, corporations are outspending labor by more than three to one.According to a landmark study published in 2014 by the Princeton professor Martin Gilens and Northwestern professor Benjamin Page, the preferences of the typical American have no influence at all on legislation emerging from Congress.Gilens and Page analyzed 1,799 policy issues in detail, determining the relative influence of economic elites, business groups, mass-based interest groups and average citizens. Their conclusion: “The preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.” Lawmakers mainly listen to the policy demands of big business and wealthy individuals – those with the most lobbying prowess and deepest pockets to bankroll campaigns and promote their views.It’s probably far worse now. Gilens and Page’s data came from the period 1981 to 2002: before the supreme court opened the floodgates to big money in the Citizens United case, before Super Pacs, before “dark money” and before the Wall Street bailout.The corporate return on this mountain of money has been significant. Over the last 40 years, corporate tax rates have plunged. Regulatory protections for consumers, workers and the environment have been defanged. Antitrust has become so ineffectual that many big corporations face little or no competition.Corporations have fought off safety nets and public investments that are common in other advanced nations (most recently, Build Back Better). They’ve attacked labor laws, reducing the portion of private-sector workers belonging to a union from a third 40 years ago to just over 6% now.They’ve collected hundreds of billions in federal subsidies, bailouts, loan guarantees and sole-source contracts. Corporate welfare for big pharma, big oil, big tech, big ag, the largest military contractors and biggest banks now dwarfs the amount of welfare for people.The profits of big corporations just reached a 70-year high, even during a pandemic. The ratio of CEO pay in large companies to average workers has ballooned from 20-to-1 in the 1960s, to 320-to-1 now.Meanwhile, most Americans are going nowhere. The typical worker’s wage is only a bit higher today than it was 40 years ago, when adjusted for inflation.But the biggest casualty is public trust in democracy.In 1964, just 29% of voters believed government was “run by a few big interests looking out for themselves”. By 2013, 79% of Americans believed it.Corporate donations to seditious lawmakers are nothing compared with this 40-year record of corporate sedition.A large portion of the American public has become so frustrated and cynical about democracy they are willing to believe blatant lies of a self-described strongman, and willing to support a political party that no longer believes in democracy.As I said at the outset, capitalism is compatible with democracy only if democracy is in the driver’s seat. But the absence of democracy doesn’t strengthen capitalism. It fuels despotism.The true meaning of 6 January: we must answer Trump’s neofascism with hope | Robert ReichRead moreDespotism is bad for capitalism. Despots don’t respect property rights. They don’t honor the rule of law. They are arbitrary and unpredictable. All of this harms the owners of capital. Despotism also invites civil strife and conflict, which destabilize a society and an economy.My message to every CEO in America: you need democracy, but you’re actively undermining it.It’s time for you to join the pro-democracy movement. Get solidly behind voting rights. Actively lobby for the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.Use your lopsidedly large power in American democracy to protect American democracy – and do it soon. Otherwise, we may lose what’s left of it.
      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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      Sinema says no to filibuster reform and scuttles Democrats’ voting rights hopes

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      Sinema says no to filibuster reform and scuttles Democrats’ voting rights hopesArizona senator says she will not support filibuster changesSinema’s floor speech condemned by voting rights activists Kyrsten Sinema publicly and bluntly reaffirmed she would not support any change to the filibuster rules on Thursday, effectively killing her party’s hope of passing the most sweeping voting rights protections in a generation.Sinema speaks out against filibuster reform after House sends voting rights bill to Senate – liveRead moreSinema took to the Senate floor around noon on Thursday and said she would not support any changes to the filibuster, the Senate rule that requires 60 votes to advance legislation.“While I continue to support these [voting rights] bills, I will not support separate actions that worsen the underlying disease of division infecting our country,” said Sinema, a first-term Democrat from Arizona.“We must address the disease itself, the disease of division, to protect our democracy, and it cannot be achieved by one party alone. It cannot be achieved solely by the federal government. The response requires something greater and, yes, more difficult than what the Senate is discussing today.”Sinema’s speech comes at an extremely perilous moment for US democracy. Republican lawmakers in 19 states have enacted 34 new laws, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, that impose new voting restrictions. They have also passed a slew of bills that seek to inject more partisan control into election administration and the counting of votes, an unprecedented trend experts are deeply concerned about and call election subversion. Many of those measures have been passed in state legislatures on simple majority, party-line votes.For months, Sinema and fellow Democrat Joe Manchin have staunchly defended the filibuster, which stands as the major hurdle to voting rights reform. No Republicans support either the voting rights bills or changing the rules of the filibuster, so Democrats cannot do anything unless both senators are on board.Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader in the Senate, has pledged a vote on the measure and rule changes by Monday, a public holiday to celebrate the civil rights leader Martin Luther King.The opposition is also a major blow to Joe Biden, who gave a speech in Atlanta on Tuesday calling on Democrats to support the bill. Sinema gave the speech about an hour before Biden traveled to the Capitol to meet Democrats to urge them to support rule changes.“I hope we can get this done but I’m not sure,” Biden said after his meeting with Democrats on Thursday.“Like every other major civil rights bill that came along, if we miss the first time, we can come back and try it a second time. We missed this time. We missed this time,” he added.Manchin released his own statement on Thursday afternoon confirming he would not vote to change the filibuster.“For those who believe that bipartisanship is impossible, we have proven them wrong. Ending the filibuster would be the easy way out. I cannot support such a perilous course for this nation when elected leaders are sent to Washington to unite our country by putting politics and party aside,” he said.The White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, said the White House would continue to fight for voting rights legislation, but declined to offer any specifics. “We’re gonna keep fighting until the votes are had,” she said.Civil rights leaders quickly denounced Sinema after her speech on Thursday.“History will remember Senator Sinema unkindly. While she remains stubborn in her ‘optimism’, black and brown Americans are losing their right to vote,” said Martin Luther King III, the son of the civil rights leader. “She’s siding with the legacy of Bull Connor and George Wallace instead of the legacy of my father and all those who fought to make real our democracy.”“Arizonans value leaders who can compromise and work across the aisle, but let me be clear: the filibuster is non-negotiable. Indivisibles, like myself, worked tooth-and-nail to get Sinema elected in 2018 – we made calls, registered voters and knocked on doors in the 120F weather,” said Signa Oliver, an activist with the Arizona chapter of Indivisible, a grassroots group.“We know the weight of this trifecta, and we will not sit idly by as Sinema lets our hard work and the prospect of a better country for all wither so she can be branded a bipartisan leader.”Jared Huffman, a Democratic congressman from California, tweeted: “Shame on you.”Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, praised Sinema’s speech as an act of “political courage” that could “save the Senate as an institution”, according to the Associated Press.For months, Democrats have championed two bills, the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. The former measure would overhaul federal election rules to set baseline requirements for voter access. It would require 15 days of early voting, as well as same-day and automatic registration. It also includes provisions that make it harder to remove election officials without justification, and would make it easier for voters to go to court to ensure their votes aren’t thrown out.The latter bill would require states where there is repeated evidence of recent voting discrimination to get changes approved by the federal government before they go into effect. It updates and restores a provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, that was struck down by the supreme court in 2013.The US House passed a mega-bill on Thursday morning that combined both of those measures into a single bill. It was a procedural move to allow the Senate to quickly hear and debate the measure.TopicsUS SenateThe fight to voteUS voting rightsDemocratsUS politicsUS CongressJoe BidennewsReuse this content More