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      How Manchin and Sinema’s status as Senate holdouts is proving lucrative

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      How Manchin and Sinema’s status as Senate holdouts is proving lucrativeThe Democratic senators have received a flood of money from conservative donors, leading some to raise concerns of corruption Two Democratic senators threatening to derail Joe Biden’s agenda have been condemned by anti-corruption watchdogs for accepting a flood of money from Republican and corporate donors.Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema present the last hurdle to the US president’s social spending and climate package after it was passed by Democrats in the House of Representatives earlier this month.Having already pressured colleagues to cut the cost of the Build Back Better plan in half, the conservative duo continue to raise concerns about its $1.75tn price tag and sprawling ambition.Manchin and Sinema’s status as holdouts in a Senate evenly divided between 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans has guaranteed outsized influence and attention. It also appears to be lucrative.Republicans continue to stymie Democrats on voting rights. Will anything change?Read moreIn September, Sinema received a cheque from Stanley Hubbard, a billionaire Republican donor who is considering a similar contribution to Manchin because of their work to reduce the bill’s price tag, the New York Times reported this week. “Those are two good people – Manchin and Sinema – and I think we need more of those in the Democratic party,” Hubbard was quoted as saying.The newspaper also revealed Manchin, of West Virginia, and Sinema, of Arizona, travelled to an $18m mansion in Dallas for a summer fundraiser attended by Republican and big business donors who have praised their efforts to pare down the Build Back Better bill.Manchin, for example, opposed popular provisions such as paid family leave and a clean electricity programme that would boost wind and solar power while phasing out coal and gas, while Sinema rejected an increase of personal and corporate income tax rates. Their stances have not gone unnoticed by Wall Street and wealthy conservatives.The $3.3m raised by Manchin’s campaign in the first nine months of this year was more than 14 times his haul at the equivalent stage last year, the New York Times added, while the $2.6m taken in by Sinema’s campaign was two and a half times what she netted over the same period in 2020.Such sums, which include contributions from political action committees and donors linked to the finance and pharmaceutical industries, have raised ethical concerns over whether Democrats Manchin and Sinema are being unduly influenced.Kyle Herrig, president of Accountable.US, a non-partisan watchdog that targets government corruption, said: “What else but industry money could explain the manufactured excuses for resisting Build Back Better considering it remains extremely popular, is fully paid for, and would cut costs and taxes for most everyday people in Arizona and West Virginia?“Corporate interests and billionaires have done very well even during the pandemic and don’t need more special treatment. Senators Sinema and Manchin have a chance they may not get again to help so many regular families and seniors get ahead for a change, so why squander it over complaints from a handful of rich interests that exploit tax loopholes and ship jobs overseas?”Accountable.US said its own tracking of corporate activity found that Manchin had taken more than $1.5m and Sinema nearly $1m from corporate interests opposed to the Build Back Better plan as of September. It added that Sinema abandoned prior support for lowering prescription drug prices after a deluge of money from the pharmaceutical industry in the third quarter.Such patterns have angered grassroots activists who say Sinema’s positions are out of sync with the stated needs and views of her own constituents in Arizona.Stephany Spaulding, a spokesperson for Just Democracy, a coalition of more than 40 civil rights and social justice groups, said in response to the New York Times article: “Senator Sinema’s approval ratings among her base have plummeted in recent months and this donor report shows why. She’s busy chasing out-of-state corporate dollars instead of fighting for her constituents’ needs.“Crucial policies like infrastructure, Build Back Better, Medicaid expansion and voting rights are all incredibly popular, but once again she’s demonstrated how frail her commitment to Black and brown Arizonans is.”The House approved the Build Back Better legislation 220-213 as every Democrat but one backed it, overcoming unanimous Republican opposition. After a brief Thanksgiving hiatus it heads to the Senate, where changes are certain as moderates and progressives wrangle over its cost and scope.Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, told reporters on Sunday: “The House did a very strong bill. Everyone knows that Manchin and Sinema have their concerns, but we’re going to try to negotiate with them and get a very strong, bold bill out of the Senate which will then go back to the House and pass.”Manchin is facing pressure to support a provision that would grant four weeks of paid family and medical leave, bringing America into alignment with most western industrial democracies. Sinema’s priorities and red lines have been harder to discern, a source of frustration in its own right.Some observers were unsurprised that the senators are attracting cash from the right. Jordan Libowitz, communications director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew), said: “It’s not unusual for megadonors to occasionally cross party lines with their donations. For some, this is hedging their bets, for others, rewarding a politician who came through on an issue they care about.“Ultimately, money follows power. Manchin and Sinema look to be the deciding votes on major legislation, so it really isn’t surprising that people from the other side of the aisle will be trying to win influence with them.”But others described it as an indictment of the influence of money in politics. Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “It’s an outrage. Candidates are in such a hunger for amassing large campaign war chests that they’re going to provide privileged access to the very interests are supposed to be regulating.”He added: “The appearance of what’s going on here – lavish public fundraising events – is a dagger through the trust and legitimacy of American democracy. It just captures the worst fears that Americans have that politicians are up for sale. And I think that public perception is toxic.”Manchin and Sinema’s offices did not respond to requests for comment.TopicsUS SenateUS politicsJoe ManchinnewsReuse this content More

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      Joe Lieberman on Biden, Trump and centrism: ‘It’s a strategy for making democracy work’

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      Joe Lieberman on Biden, Trump and centrism: ‘It’s a strategy for making democracy work’The Democratic ex-senator preaches a deeply unfashionable gospel of compromise in a country paralysed by civil war A friend once joked to Joe Lieberman, former senator and vice-presidential nominee, that the Democratic party was like his appendix: it was there but not doing much for him.“It’s a funny line,” he says by phone from his law office in New York, “but the truth is that it’s more than that because I feel good physically when the Democrats do well – in my terms – and I do get pain when they go off and do things that I don’t agree with.”Lieberman may be in for a world of pain now. The other Joe – also 79, also a Democratic ex-senator – was expected to share his centrist convictions as US president. Instead Joe Biden as president has surprised friends and foes alike with the scale, scope and audacity of his multi-trillion-dollar agenda.The Democratic party itself has moved left over the past decade, making it an increasingly awkward fit for Lieberman, who voted for George W Bush’s Iraq war, endorsed Republican John McCain over Barack Obama for president and is still close friends with South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, the quintessential Republican apologist for Donald Trump.So it was that in a recent appearance on C-Span to promote his new book, The Centrist Solution, Lieberman was assailed by a caller from Oregon over his “archaic” views and policies that “have done nothing for the poor and the working class”. Another, from Connecticut, upbraided him for the prolonged wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the deregulation of Wall Street and a crime bill that “put so many Black and Brown people in this country in jail”.Yet he remains unbowed and undeterred by political currents. Lieberman, co-chair of No Labels, a group focused on bipartisanship, continues to preach a deeply unfashionable gospel of compromise working across the aisle in a country that seems paralysed by a cold civil war.When he joined the Senate in 1989, he recalls, a typical vote would see around 40 conservatives on one side, 40 liberal on the other, and 20 that were an unpredictable mix. By the time he left in 2013, there was no Democrat with a more conservative voting record than any Republican, and no Republican with a more liberal voting record than any Democrat.He attributes the polarisation to the gerrymandering of congressional districts, which makes incumbents risk averse, the increasing influence of money in politics – “they expect you to do ideologically what they want you to do” – and the partisanship of both cable news and social media, which encourages politicians to play to their echo chambers.Lieberman recounts from his Senate experience: “We would want to be able to go home at election time and say, ‘My friends, here’s what I got done for us’. But now people tend to want to go home and say, ‘Oh, here’s what I tried to do except for those bastards in the other party’. That’s a really vicious cycle that takes the country nowhere. The public, certainly the broad middle, is sick of all this.”This disaffection, Lieberman believes, helps explain why, in 2016, millions of Americans decided to blow it all up by electing an outsider, celebrity businessman Trump. Evidently it did not work as Washington became more poisonous and polarised than ever.Does the “centre ground” mean anything any more when one party, the Republicans, has veered into far right extremism, for example by embracing Trump’s “big lie” about a stolen election and failing to condemn the 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol?Lieberman’s answer will strike some as out of touch and trafficking in false equivalence: “The divisive forces in both of our two major parties have moved further away from the centre. But I believe those more extreme segments of both parties are in the minority in both parties.”“The majority, I’d say, in the Republican party is centre right and in the Democratic party is centre left, and it’s quite possible for them to make their way to the centre and negotiate and come up with centrist solutions. In the book, I’ve tried very hard to distinguish centrism from moderation. Centrism is not an ideology. It’s a strategy for making democracy work.”He continues: “It takes leaders who are willing to work together across party lines to get something done and, if that doesn’t work, it takes voters who I think are in the majority, certainly the plurality, to demand at election time that the candidates they vote for will work across party lines.”To many bruised by years of Washington gridlock, this will sound naive.Lieberman’s support for the 60-vote filibuster, a Senate procedural rule, as one of the last remaining incentives to bipartisanship is out of touch with a new generation of progressives who regard filibuster reform as essential to protecting voting rights and democracy itself.But he does allow the possibility that the two-system party might no longer be fit for purpose – and that the long awaited, much derided case for a viable third party might become irresistible.“If one could imagine the Republicans nominating Donald Trump again the president and the Democrats – assuming for a moment that Joe Biden doesn’t run again – nominate somebody further to the left, which is possible as a result of Democratic primaries, wow, there’s going to be a big space in the middle open and somebody will take it,” he says.“The conditions now are unprecedented in American history. The degree of partisanship and the degree of effective control of the political system by minorities to the right and left in both parties really may open the door to a successful third party campaign for president, perhaps as early as 2024.”Lieberman has reason to be a student of third party candidacies. In 2000 Ralph Nader’s Green Party polled at less than 3% but was widely blamed for depriving Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore and running mate Lieberman of critical votes in their narrow defeat by Bush and Dick Cheney.The losing vice-presidential candidate himself, however, is philosophical: “I never blamed Nader because he had the legal right to do what he did and there was some interesting post-election polling that surprisingly indicated that the Nader vote would have divided between Bush and Gore.”He describes the supreme court’s ruling in favor of Bush in the disputed election as a “miscarriage of justice”, however. A Gore-Lieberman administration is now one of the great historical what-ifs, an alternate timeline that could have shaped the 21st century very differently.For example, Lieberman points out, Bush oversaw a big and unnecessary tax cut that put America back in deficit territory after three surpluses in a row under Bill Clinton. “I’m confident that President Gore would have felt a responsibility to go into Afghanistan, from which we were attacked [on 11 September 2001], but would he have gone into Iraq? I doubt it. That would have changed history a lot.”“The other major change would have been obviously that Al Gore was the leading American champion for doing something about climate change. We would have pushed through some reactions to climate change which would have put us in a better, safer situation now.”Criticized for his resistance to withdrawing from Iraq, Lieberman lost a Democratic primary election for his seat in Connecticut in 2006 only to win election as an independent. Two years later, he again marched to the beat of his own drum by endorsing his old friend McCain, a Republican senator for Arizona, rather than Democratic senator Obama, the first African American nominee of a major party.He insists: “Surprisingly, neither Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, both of whom I really knew well, ever asked me for my support. McCain did and I thought, what the hell? He’s my friend, totally capable of being president, and so I don’t regret at all supporting him.”“We had great areas of agreement on foreign and defense policy but we disagreed a lot. I consider myself a centre left Democrat. He’s a conservative Republican but a maverick so he broke on climate change, he broke for a while on campaign finance reform.”It later emerged that McCain had wanted Lieberman as his running mate, believing the country ready for a bipartisan ticket, only to be persuaded by his staff to go for the inexperienced, rabble rousing Sarah Palin instead. Another crossroads of history. McCain later admitted it had been a mistake.Lieberman, the nearly man for a second time, comments: “If McCain had been able to have me as his running mate, I have confidence that we would have done better than he did with Governor Palin. But it’s hard to say that we would have won. Obama was just walking on the mountaintop at that point and Bush 43 was unpopular and the economy was in bad shape, so people really wanted a change.“And not only was Obama a change in party but he was African American. It was a breakthrough moment for America. I think a lot of people voting for him felt not only that he was the change and capable but that we were going to prove again what we are as a country. So it was an extraordinary moment.”The close friendship between Lieberman, McCain, who died in 2018, and another senator, Graham of South Carolina, saw them dubbed “the three Amigos”. But where McCain evidently loathed Trump, Graham has defended the former president’s indefensible actions while enjoying his hospitality on the golf course. Does Lieberman ever call him and say, snap out of it?“Well, we talk a lot. Lindsey will always try, by his nature, to be where he feels he can be effective and so you’ve watched him sometimes be quite close to Trump and at other times be critical. We remain friends. I have nothing negative to say about him because he is my friend but I do think that his great skill ultimately – and I watched it while I was in the Senate – is to be a bridge builder, a bipartisan centrist problem solver.“At the right moment he will be, I hope, part of the sort of restoration of the Republican party in which he grew up and where his really dear friend – and mine, of course – John McCain was ultimately the nominee. That’s the Republican party Lindsey most naturally fits into.”It is a party that can still be saved, Lieberman insists. “I don’t think Trump is going to win in 2024 and Republicans who are not tied to him will see that increasingly and people will challenge him, including some who will go back to the regular conservative Republican party, not the party that was so extreme and nasty and willing to ignore the law of the United States.“I don’t know who it will be. A lot of people are looking at taking him on. It will take some guts. There’s something brewing out there. So, am I optimistic that the more mainstream centrist elements in the Republican party will take over again? I am.”For their part, Republicans have condemned Biden for campaigning as a centrist but governing as what they perceive as a radical who pushed a $1.9tn coronavirus relief bill, $1.2tn infrastructure deal and $1.75tn social and climate spending package.Lieberman, who worked with him in the Senate for 24 years, says: “The squad, the further left in the Democratic party, seems to be having influence that is taking him, at least in public perception, further to the left than I certainly thought he was and I’m confident he is now.“It may be understandable because we’ve just come through an unprecedented crisis because of the pandemic and he wanted to do everything he could to get us back on track. So the bills he supported were bigger than any I ever voted for or that he voted for in the 24 years. But I think we we saw him at his natural best on the bipartisan infrastructure reform bill that just passed and he signed.”Ever hopeful, Lieberman notes that the president defied progressives by nominating Jerome Powell for a second term as chair of the Federal Reserve. He adds: “Biden is solid. He sees the world realistically and he knows he can’t be Roosevelt or Lyndon Johnson now in part because he doesn’t have the great Democratic majorities that they had.“And the country, thank God, is not where it was in the Depression, as bad as the pandemic was. The old Joe, which is the real Joe, will be dominant in the next three years of his presidency.”TopicsUS newsThe US politics sketchUS politicsRepublicansDemocratsUS SenateanalysisReuse this content More

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      ‘Corporate’ Senate Democrats imperil the Build Back Better plan, says Tlaib

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      ‘Corporate’ Senate Democrats imperil the Build Back Better plan, says TlaibHouse progressive warns such Democrats are influenced by donors who ‘don’t have the best interests of the American people in mind’ “Corporate” Democrats in the Senate imperil Joe Biden’s Build Back Better Act, a leading House progressive warned – but not just Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, the targets of most leftwing ire.Such Democrats, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan said, are influenced by donors who “don’t have the best interests of the American people in mind”.Republicans’ vilification of Trump critics is ‘ruining’ the US, says governorRead moreAt the same time, the New York Times reported that Manchin and Sinema are increasingly receiving money from corporate and conservative donors.The president’s domestic spending package is worth $1.75tn and seeks to increase spending on social programs and healthcare and to combat the climate crisis.After months of negotiation, and after Biden signed into law a $1.2tn bipartisan infrastructure bill, the House of Representatives passed Build Back Better on Friday.There was no Republican support and there will be none in the Senate. That gives Manchin of West Virginia and Sinema of Arizona huge influence, in a chamber split 50-50 and controlled by the vote of Vice-President Kamala Harris.The two senators have already pressured the Democrats to cut the cost of the spending plan in half.Tlaib is one of the first Muslim women in Congress, representing the third-poorest congressional district.In an interview broadcast on Sunday, she told Axios she was “fearful” that “corporate Dems” would “guide this agenda. It’s gonna be the people that are gonna continue to profit off of human suffering.“I know that they’ve been influenced and guided by folks that don’t have the best interests of the American people in mind.”Tlaib said she was referring to Manchin and Sinema, “but I think there are some others that … have issues with the prescription drug negotiations there.“And so I can’t say it’s just those two. They seem to be leading the fight, but I wouldn’t be surprised if folks are hiding behind them.”Manchin has spoken regularly, mostly painting the spending plan as too expensive. Sinema is less vocal but on Friday she gave an interview to ABC15, an Arizona station.Saying she was “a workhorse, not a show horse”, she said she welcomed progressive criticism.“I appreciate the first amendment,” she said. “So I appreciate when folks are willing to tell me they agree with me or disagree with me. If they want to protest, if they want to offer things, all of that is welcome.“So I guess my message to folks would be keep telling me what you think. I appreciate it. And I’m going to keep doing the work and delivering results for Arizonans.”Sinema said she would not “bend to political pressure from any party or any group”.In terms of financial pressure, the New York Times reported on Sunday that Manchin and Sinema were attracting support from “conservative-leaning donors and business executives”.Kenneth Langone, a Wall Street billionaire, usually gives to Republicans but has praised Manchin and promised to fundraise for him.Langone told the Times: “My political contributions have always been in support of candidates who are willing to stand tall on principle, even when that means defying their own party or the press.”Stanley Hubbard, a billonaire Republican donor who has given to Sinema, said: “Those are two good people – Manchin and Sinema – and I think we need more of those in the Democratic party.”TopicsRashida TlaibDemocratsUS SenateUS CongressUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      US legislation banning ‘forever chemicals’ far from certain as Senate fight looms

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      US legislation banning ‘forever chemicals’ far from certain as Senate fight loomsDespite mounting evidence of the chemicals’ toxicity, a similar bill that passed the House was filibustered in the Senate Bipartisan legislation introduced this week in Congress would ban PFAS “forever chemicals” in US food packaging and significantly reduce exposure to the highly toxic compounds, supporters say, but its passage is far from certain as a fight with industry allies in the Senate looms.‘Forever chemicals’: the hidden threat from the toxic PFAS on your shelfRead morePFAS are a class of compounds that are used across dozens of industries to make products resistant to water, heat, stains and grease. The chemicals are especially common in food packaging because they repel grease and liquid, which prevents paper products from disintegrating.They get their nickname because of their immense longevity in the environment.“We cannot continue to be poisoned by these chemicals,” said Michigan Democratic congresswoman Debbie Dingell, who introduced the bill in the House. “Chemical manufacturers are going to try to get senators to stop PFAS from being banned, but there’s enough data that shows that it’s a threat to people … so we need to do something.”Researchers have found PFAS are frequently used in sandwich wrappers, paper straws, baking papers, carryout containers and molded fiber products like “clam shells”. The chemicals have been detected in products from a range of businesses, including fast food restaurants like McDonald’s, Subway and Chipotle; grocery chains like Whole Foods; and independent restaurants and grocers that use packaging products marketed as “green”.PFAS are also commonly applied to nonstick aluminum wrap and in bulk plastic containers used to store flavorings. Studies show that the chemicals can leach from packaging into food and are linked to cancer, liver disease, kidney problems, decreased immunity, birth defects and other serious health problems.“People don’t realize that the chemicals are coming in contact with food that they’re eating and that’s a way that PFAS is getting into their bodies,” Dingell said.Despite mounting evidence of the chemicals’ toxicity over the last 10 years, a similar bill that passed the House last legislative session was filibustered in the Senate, though it’s unclear who killed it because Senate rules allow members to anonymously filibuster.PFAS manufacturers have spent heavily on lobbying and campaign contributions in recent years, and public health advocates say industry’s efforts have paid off. Last session, chemical company allies in the GOP defeated about 100 other pieces of legislation designed to reign in the chemicals’ use, and Donald Trump had promised to veto any that made it through.“It’s the dark and invisible hand of big money in politics,” said Erik Olson, a lobbyist for the Natural Resources Defense Council, which supports the new proposed ban.Among industry allies who have opposed PFAS legislation is Senator Jim Inhofe, who sits on the environmental committee and has received at least $60,000 from PFAS producers, including $14,000 last session that was donated as legislation was referred to committee.Senate armed forces committee member Thom Tillis last session cast the deciding vote against legislation that would have helped hold PFAS manufacturers accountable for pollution around military bases. Chemical giants DuPont and Honeywell donated to his campaign in the days after the vote.Advocates say they expect similar opposition this time around, despite growing public pressure to act.“I don’t think the chemical or food packaging industries are retreating even though there’s mounting evidence that there’s a lot of the chemical in food packaging,” Olson said. “Clearly there’s a big problem with an evenly divided Senate and the opportunity to filibuster.”Even if Congress fails to pass the ban, similar legislation has been enacted in seven states, including in California, New York and Vermont, though most only prohibit the chemicals’ use in paper products, not plastic. Several other state legislatures are considering similar bills, which advocates say is putting pressure on industry to stop using the chemicals.Companies like Chipotle, Freshii, McDonald’s, Panera Bread, Sweetgreen, Trader Joe’s, Wendy’s and Whole Foods have committed to stop using packaging with the chemicals. But Olson said PFAS in food packaging “is an issue that’s not going away”, even if legislation fails again.“Until we get toxic forever chemicals out of our food supply, there will continue to be mounting pressure to move legislation,” he said.TopicsUS CongressUS politicsHealthUS SenateHouse of RepresentativesnewsReuse this content More

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      ‘Professor or comrade?’ Republicans go full red scare on Soviet-born Biden pick

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      ‘Professor or comrade?’ Republicans go full red scare on Soviet-born Biden pickSenator asks Saule Omarova, nominated to be comptroller of the currency, if he should call her ‘professor or comrade’

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      Three decades have passed since their hero, Ronald Reagan, went to Berlin to exhort Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall!”, the Soviet Union collapsed and America claimed victory in the cold war.Paul Gosar retweets same video aimed at AOC after House censures him – reportRead moreFor Republicans in Washington, however, these appear to be mere historical footnotes. On Thursday they dusted off the “red scare” playbook to portray Joe Biden’s choice to run one of the agencies that oversees the banking industry as a dangerous communist.Saule Omarova, 55, was nominated in September to be America’s next comptroller of the currency. If confirmed, she would be the first woman and person of colour in the role in its 158-year-history.Omarova was born in Kazakhstan when it was part of the Soviet Union and moved to the US in 1991. For John Kennedy of Louisiana, a member of the Senate banking committee, this was like a red rag to a bull.Questioning whether Omarova was still a member of communist youth organisations, Kennedy said: “I don’t mean any disrespect: I don’t know whether to call you professor or comrade.”The remark prompted gasps in the hearing room on Capitol Hill.Omarova replied, slowly and firmly: “Senator, I’m not a communist. I do not subscribe to that ideology. I could not choose where I was born.“I do not remember joining any Facebook group that subscribes to that ideology. I would never knowingly join any such group. There is no record of me actually participating in any Marxist or communist discussions of any kind.”Omarova then told how her family suffered under the communist regime.“I grew up without knowing half of my family. My grandmother herself escaped death twice under the Stalin regime. This is what’s seared in my mind. That’s who I am. I remember that history. I came to this country. I’m proud to be an American and this is why I’m here today, Senator.”Omarova has worked mainly as a lawyer and most recently as a law professor at Cornell University. She has testified often as an expert witness on financial regulation and even worked briefly in the administration of George W Bush.But in a letter to Omarova after she was nominated, Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania requested a copy of a graduation paper she wrote about Karl Marx when she was an undergraduate at Moscow State University – “in the original Russian” .At Thursday’s hearing, Toomey noted that Omarova has written several academic papers that propose sweeping changes to the banking system.“Taken in totality, her ideas do amount to a socialist manifesto for American financial services,” he said.The attacks, echoed by rightwing media, earned rebuke from the Democratic chairman of the committee, Sherrod Brown of Ohio.He said: “Senate Republicans have a formula. Start with a passing and inaccurate reference to her academic work, distort the substance beyond recognition, mix in words – Marx, Lenin, communism. End with insinuations about Professor Omarova loyalties to her chosen country.“That’s how Republicans turn a qualified woman into a Marxist boogeyman … Now we know what happens when Trumpism meets McCarthyism.”This was a reference to the 1950s “red scare”, when the Republican senator Joseph McCarthy, of Wisconsin, insisted hundreds of communists had infiltrated the US government, pursuing a witch-hunt that reached into the army and Hollywood.On Thursday, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts added: “This is a vicious smear campaign, coordinated by Republicans who are doing the bidding of the large banks.“Sexism, racism, pages straight out of Joe McCarthy’s 1950s red scare tactics … welcome to Washington in 2021.”TopicsUS politicsUS SenateBiden administrationnewsReuse this content More