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Setback for Biden as Democrats delay vote on sweeping investment plan
US politicsSetback for Biden as Democrats delay vote on sweeping investment planModerates want more details before reconciliation bill advancesPelosi signals she has votes to pass bipartisan infrastructure bill Lauren Gambino in Washington and Adam Gabbatt in New YorkFri 5 Nov 2021 16.43 EDTFirst published on Fri 5 Nov 2021 09.27 EDTDemocrats on Friday once again postponed a vote on the centerpiece of Joe Biden’s economic vision, after lobbying by the president and House leaders failed to persuade a small group of moderates to support the spending package without delay.Despite the setback, the House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said she planned to plow ahead on the bipartisan infrastructure bill, another key pillar of the president’s legislative agenda, indicating she had the votes to overcome resistance from progressives who want to pass it in tandem with the social policy and climate mitigation spending package.“We had hoped to be able to bring both bills to the floor today,” Pelosi said at an impromptu news conference on Friday, after a day of frenzied negotiations appeared unlikely to break an impasse over Biden’s agenda.But Pelosi insisted the House was on the cusp of breakthrough that would not only send the infrastructure bill to Biden’s desk, notching a much-needed victory, but would move the party a “major step” closer to approving the social policy package.“We’re in the best place ever, today, to be able to go forward,” she said.A plan to advance both Biden’s social and environmental spending package and a smaller bipartisan public works measure was upended amid pushback from moderates demanding an official accounting of the spending bill.As tensions escalated, Pelosi proposed a new strategy, announcing in a letter to Democrats that the House would hold two votes on Friday: one on the infrastructure measure and a procedural vote related to the spending package.But that plan was thrown into jeopardy by progressives, who had for months said they would not vote for the infrastructure bill without a simultaneous vote on the spending package. That position derailed two previous attempts to advance the infrastructure bill first.The scrambled timeline deflated hopes of giving Biden a much-needed legislative accomplishment after months of false starts and electoral setbacks this week.Biden and party leaders have worked furiously to reach a consensus on the spending bill, which seeks to combat the climate crisis while reforming healthcare, education and immigration, all paid for by raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans and on corporations. With razor-thin majorities, they need the support of every Democratic senator and nearly every House Democrat.Centrist lawmakers want to see an independent cost analysis from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office before voting on the $1.85tn package – which could take several days or even weeks.In a statement, Washington congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, signaled that her members had not softened their position on advancing the bills together.“If our six colleagues still want to wait for a CBO score, we would agree to give them that time – after which point we can vote on both bills together,” she said.Biden urges ‘every House member’ to support agenda ‘right now’ as crucial vote nears – liveRead moreNegotiations have seen the initial Biden spending proposal nearly halved from $3.5tn, with many provisions pared back or dropped entirely.Touting a strong monthly jobs report on Friday, Biden implored House Democrats to “vote yes on both these bills right now”, arguing both pieces of legislation were critical to economic recovery.“Passing these bills will say clearly to the American people, ‘We hear your voices, we’re going to invest in your hopes,” Biden said.After his remarks, the president said he was returning to the Oval Office to “make some calls” to lawmakers.Pelosi worked furiously on Thursday to pave the way for a vote before lawmakers leave Washington for a week-long recess, whipping members on the House floor and keeping them late into the night in an effort to shore up support for legislation which runs to more than 2,000 pages.Democrats suffered a series of stinging electoral setbacks this week, including losing the governorship of Virginia and being run to the wire in New Jersey.Major legislative victories will, leaders hope, help regain momentum and improve electoral prospects ahead of next year’s midterm elections.With unified Republican opposition, House Democrats can lose no more than three votes. If passed, the spending bill will go to the 50-50 Senate, where it will face new challenges. Two centrist Democrats, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, have already thwarted many proposals and are expected to have further objections.House passage of the $1.2tn infrastructure bill to upgrade roads, bridges, waterways and broadband, which has already passed the Senate with the support of 19 Republicans, would send the measure to the president’s desk.The $1.85tn spending package would provide large numbers of Americans with assistance to pay for healthcare, raising children and caring for elderly people at home. There would be lower prescription drug costs and a new hearing aid benefit for older Americans, and the package would provide some $555bn in tax breaks encouraging cleaner energy and electric vehicles, the largest US commitment to tackling climate change.House Democrats have added other key provisions, including a new paid family leave program and work permits for immigrants.Much of the cost would be covered with higher taxes on those earning more than $400,000 a year and a 5% surtax on those making more than $10m. Large corporations would face a new 15% minimum tax.
The Associated Press contributed reporting
TopicsUS politicsDemocratsJoe BidenHouse of RepresentativesUS healthcareUS CongressNancy PelosinewsReuse this content More - in US Politics
If Americans can’t have basic things like childcare, our democracy is a sham | David Sirota and Andrew Perez
OpinionUS politicsIf Americans can’t have basic things like childcare, our democracy is a shamDavid Sirota and Andrew PerezCorporate influence and corruption defines American politics. No wonder most think the country is headed in the wrong direction Fri 5 Nov 2021 06.22 EDTLast modified on Fri 5 Nov 2021 13.28 EDTIn 2014, Northwestern and Princeton researchers published a report statistically documenting how lawmakers do not listen or care about what most voters want, and instead mostly care about serving their big donors. Coupled with additional research documenting the discrepancy between donor and voter preferences, they bluntly concluded that the “preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically nonsignificant impact upon public policy”.Seven years later, America is witnessing a very public and explicit illustration of this situation in real time – and the country seems pretty ticked off about it, in the lead-up to Tuesday’s off-year elections and in advance of the upcoming midterms next year.Over the last few weeks, Joe Biden and Democratic lawmakers have been making headlines agreeing to whittle down their social spending reconciliation bill at the demand of corporate donors and their congressional puppets.The specific initiatives being cut or watered down in the Biden agenda bill share two traits: 1) They would require the wealthy and powerful to sacrifice a bit of their wealth and power and 2) They are quite literally the most popular proposals among rank-and-file voters.New polling demonstrates the silencing effect that systemic corruption is having on voter preferences:
82% of registered voters support adding dental and vision benefits to Medicare – and this is voters’ “top priority” for Democrats’ social spending bill, according to survey data from Morning Consult. Conservative Democratic senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona have pushed to keep these benefits out of the bill, following an aggressive lobbying campaign by health insurers who enjoy massive profits from the privatized Medicare Advantage program.
Another top priority for voters is allowing Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices, with 72% saying they support the idea, according to Morning Consult. Sinema and a few House Democrats backed by the pharmaceutical industry managed to block the party’s original drug pricing measure from being put into the reconciliation bill. On Tuesday, Democrats announced they had reached a deal on a drug pricing plan, which Politico described as “far weaker” than Democrats’ promised legislation. One industry analyst said the deal “seems designed to let legislators claim an achievement while granting pharma protection”.
The poll also found that 70% of voters support including paid family and medical leave for new parents in Democrats’ spending bill. Manchin has demanded this item be cut.
After railing against the Republicans’ 2017 tax law for years, Democrats have largely refused to raise taxes on corporations and the wealthy, and their final bill may even end up being a net tax cut for the rich. This, even though Biden’s own pollsters found that raising taxing on the wealthy was “the most popular of more than 30 economic proposals” they tested during the 2020 presidential campaign.
The flip side of all this also appears to be true – Democrats have protected initiatives to enrich powerful corporations, even though some of those measures aren’t very popular. One example: subsidies for health insurance plans purchased on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace that shower money on for-profit insurers. Morning Consult reports that extending new ACA premium tax credits passed by Democrats in March “is the lowest-ranking of all the health measures included in the poll”.The results of this latest middle finger to voter preferences? New polling data shows that almost three-quarters of Americans now think the country is headed in the wrong direction.Taken together, this is the democracy crisis thrumming underneath all the media noise – the day-to-day erosion of democracy by corporations that use a system of legalized bribery to buy public policy, which then erodes Americans’ faith in their government. And yet this erosion does not get discussed in a media-directed democracy discourse that focuses almost exclusively on the 6 January insurrection or Republican efforts to deny election results and limit voting.This is what my 2006 book called the “hostile takeover”: the conquest of democratic institutions by moneyed interests, to the point where “the world’s greatest democracy” routinely rejects the commonsense policies that the vast majority of voters want and that every other high-income country has already adopted.The hostile takeover is not just the rejection of the most popular policies – it is also the media discourse itself. The Washington press is constantly portraying industry-sponsored opponents of majoritarian policies as “moderates” or “centrists” and depicting supporters of those policies as fringe lunatics who refuse to be reasonable and compromise.Meanwhile, there is a pervasive omertà that silences most media discussion of the corporate influence and corruption that so obviously defines American politics – and there is scant mention that the “moderate” obstructionists are bankrolled by the industries lobbying to kill the popular policies that Americans want.There is some encouraging proof that more and more Americans innately understand the kleptocratic nature of their government, and want explicit accountability journalism to uncover it. Also mildly encouraging is the impact of that reporting in the reconciliation bill battle: Democrats tried to get rid of all the drug pricing provisions, but were successfully shamed into adding at least a few of the (pathetically weak) provisions back in after independent media aggressively exposed the pharma ties of key lawmakers.It’s not a huge victory and not worthy of some effusive celebration of Democrats because the provisions are watered down and a betrayal of the party’s promise to do something a lot better. But it’s a minimal proof-of-concept win.It may at least get the idea of Medicare negotiating drug prices into law for the first time. And as important, it shows that when there is a robust press willing to challenge power, the government can be forced – kicking and screaming – to respond, or at least pretend to respond.It’s going to take a whole lot more of that kind of reporting and a whole lot more movement pressure to secure real wins and beat back the hostile takeover.The silver lining here is that at least that takeover is now explicit. The polls showing what people want compared to what’s being excised from the reconciliation bill make this part of the democracy crisis impossible to deny – and ending that denial is a prerequisite for achieving something better.
David Sirota is a Guardian US columnist and an award-winning investigative journalist. He is an editor-at-large at Jacobin, and the founder of the Daily Poster. He served as Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign speechwriter
Andrew Perez is a senior editor at the Daily Poster and a co-founder of the Democratic Policy Center
This article was originally published in the Daily Poster, a grassroots-funded investigative news outlet
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Trump DoJ official Jeffrey Clark to testify before Capitol attack committee
US Capitol attackTrump DoJ official Jeffrey Clark to testify before Capitol attack committeeEx-acting head of DoJ civil division was proponent of Trump’s false claim that Joe Biden’s election victory was result of fraud Guardian staff and agenciesThu 4 Nov 2021 18.32 EDTA former senior Department of Justice official will testify on Friday before the congressional committee investigating the Capitol insurrection by extremist supporters of Donald Trump, a congressional aide familiar with the inquiry has said.Last week, the House of Representatives select committee delayed testimony by Jeffrey Clark because he had retained a new lawyer.Clark did not immediately respond to requests from Reuters for comment. The congressional aide spoke on condition of anonymity.Giuliani investigators home in on 2019 plan to advance Ukraine interests in USRead moreClark, the former acting head of the DoJ’s civil division, was a proponent Trump’s false claims that Joe Biden’s victory in the November election was the result of fraud.On 13 October, the committee announced it had issued a subpoena to Clark asking him to produce records and testify at a deposition by 29 October.In announcing it had subpoenaed Clark, the panel said it needed to understand all the details about efforts inside the previous administration to amplify misinformation about election results.In January, the DoJ’s inspector general announced his office was launching an investigation into whether Clark plotted to oust then acting attorney general Jeff Rosen so he could take over the department and help pursue Trump’s baseless claims by opening an investigation into voter fraud in Georgia.A US Senate judiciary committee report found Clark also drafted a letter he wanted Rosen to approve which urged Georgia to convene a special legislative session to investigate voter fraud claims.Clark’s plan ultimately failed after senior department leaders threatened to resign in protest, the Senate investigation found.Meanwhile, former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and other top aides subpoenaed by the committee have defied orders to produce relevant documents and give testimony.Four Trump aides targeted by the select committee – Meadows, deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino, strategist Steve Bannon and defense department aide Kash Patel resisted the orders – under the influence of Trump, sources told the Guardian last month.The House later voted to hold Bannon in criminal contempt of Congress and federal prosecutors are weighing the case.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More
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Russian source for Steele’s Trump dossier arrested by US authorities
Trump-Russia investigationRussian source for Steele’s Trump dossier arrested by US authoritiesFive-page indictment released by justice department accuses analyst Igor Danchenko of lying to FBI Luke HardingThu 4 Nov 2021 15.34 EDTLast modified on Thu 4 Nov 2021 16.33 EDTA Russian analyst who was the main source for Christopher Steele’s dossier on Donald Trump and Moscow has been arrested by US authorities, the justice department said on Thursday.Igor Danchenko now faces charges as part of the investigation by John Durham, the special counsel appointed by the Trump administration to examine the origins of the FBI’s investigation into links between the Trump campaign and Russia.Danchenko collected much of the intelligence behind Steele’s dossier during three trips to Russia in summer and autumn 2016. He was the chief source behind its most incendiary allegation: that Trump was compromised during a trip to Moscow in November 2013 for the Miss Universe beauty pageant.Trump has vehemently denied the claim. Last summer, however, a report by the Senate intelligence committee said that the FSB spy agency presided over a network of secret cameras inside the Ritz-Carlton hotel where Trump stayed, including in guest bedrooms. An FSB intelligence officer was permanently on site, it said.Trump in Moscow: what happened at Miss Universe in 2013Read moreThe five-page indictment released on Thursday accuses Danchenko of lying repeatedly to the FBI when interviewed in 2017 – a criminal offense. These include over his dealings with an unnamed US PR executive with close links to the Democrats. The executive’s information found its way into some of the dossier’s memos, a fact Danchenko allegedly concealed.The FBI further accuses Danchenko of making up a conversation with Sergei Millian, a Russian American property broker with links to Trump, who appears in the dossier as “source D”. He appears to have been credited by Danchenko with the claim that Trump watched sex workers perform “golden showers” by urinating on each other at the hotel. In 2019, the special counsel Robert Mueller said no criminal wrongdoing had taken place between the Trump campaign and Moscow. But Mueller noted that there were multiple contacts in 2016 between Russian spies and Trump aides. The Kremlin had run a “sweeping and systemic” operation to help Trump win, Mueller said.Trump’s justice department claimed the former president was the victim of a witch-hunt. It repeatedly cited the dossier as evidence that the FBI’s investigation into Trump’s relations with Russia was biased and unfair. But the FBI investigation began independently from the dossier, after it emerged Moscow had hacked thousands of Democratic party emails.Democrats believe Durham’s inquiries to be politically driven. But so far the Biden administration has not tried to stop him. Danchenko is the third person, and second in a two-month span, to face indictment with five separate counts on Thursday of lying. In September cybersecurity lawyer, Michael Sussmann was also accused of lying to the FBI.Speaking to the Guardian in October, Danchenko, who is based in Washington DC, defended his work on the dossier. “I stand by it,” he said. He said he did not resile from explosive allegations that Trump may have been secretly filmed with sex workers during his Moscow trip. “I got it right,” he declared.He said the “salacious” material in the dossier formed a small part of a 35-page document. The allegation would be “amusing”, he said, were it not for the fact that any covert FSB recording might be used for blackmail purposes. Trump’s false ‘Russian spy’ claims put me in danger, says Steele dossier sourceRead moreThe bipartisan report by the Senate intelligence committee was dismissive of Steele’s dossier, but corroborated key elements in it. It laid out multiple contacts between Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager who features in the dossier, and Konstantin Kilimnik, described as a Russian intelligence officer. Speaking last year Danchenko said a campaign against him by leading Republicans was designed to deflect from the damaging Senate report. It included claims – which he denies – he was a Russian spy. “I think they thought I would be an easy target to discredit the dossier. By doubling down on this they would be able to discredit the whole Russia investigation,” he said.During his interviews with the FBI, Danchenko appeared to downplay the reliability of his own information – a point seized upon by Republican commentators. According to the justice department inspector general, Michael Horowitz, Danchenko told the bureau his work with sub-sources in Russia amounted to “hearsay” and “conversation had with friends over beers”. Statements about Trump’s sexual activities were “jest”, he said. A lawyer for Danchenko had no immediate comment.TopicsTrump-Russia investigationTrump administrationRussiaDonald TrumpEuropeUS politicsFBInewsReuse this content More
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Republicans continue to stymie Democrats on voting rights. Will anything change?
The fight to voteUS SenateRepublicans continue to stymie Democrats on voting rights. Will anything change?Republicans filibuster Democratic efforts to pass billMove escalates pressure on Senator Joe Manchin The fight to vote is supported byAbout this contentSam Levine in New YorkThu 4 Nov 2021 10.00 EDTLast modified on Thu 4 Nov 2021 11.55 EDTHello, and happy Thursday,No, it’s not deja vu: Senate Republicans once again used the filibuster on Wednesday to stymie Democratic efforts to pass a significant voting rights bill. It’s the fourth time it’s happened this year, the most recent coming just two weeks ago.But Democrats and other voting rights advocates hope that this time is different.They never really expected 10 Republicans to sign on to the bill and advance it. Instead, they hoped to use the vote as a final chance to show the West Virginia senator Joe Manchin and Arizona senator Kyrsten Sinema, two of the staunchest filibuster defenders, that there is no hope of passing a voting rights bill while the filibuster remains in place.Democrats’ stinging Virginia defeat raises stark questions for Biden’s tenureRead moreIt’s a development that significantly escalates pressure on Manchin specifically. The voting rights bill that Republicans blocked in late October was one he personally helped write and sought GOP input on. The measure Republicans blocked on Wednesday, which would have restored a critical provision of the Voting Rights Act, is one he supports. Manchin has said that “inaction is not an option” on voting rights. But now Republicans have made it clear that while the filibuster remains in place, inaction is the only option.Sign up for the Guardian’s Fight to Vote newsletterSo where do things go from here? To start, I think we’ll begin to see a lot more explicit language from Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, about changing the rules of the filibuster. While Schumer has repeatedly said “all options are on the table” when it comes to voting rights, he’s stopped short of outlining specific changes he’d like to see or calling out Manchin and Sinema specifically. It’s only recently that Schumer has begun to talk about the need “to restore the Senate as the world’s greatest deliberative body”. I expect we’ll also see some increased pressure from the White House.Schumer continued that rhetoric on Wednesday after the filibuster. He described it as a “low, low point” in the history of the Senate, and questioned whether some of Congress’s greatest legislative accomplishments would have been able to overcome the filibuster if they had been proposed in today’s Senate.Per a senior Dem aide, Schumer met with King, Kaine and Tester earlier today to talk about next steps on voting rights and to have “family discussions” with their colleagues about how to “restore the Senate” and find a pathway forward on the legislation.— Marianne LeVine (@marianne_levine) November 3, 2021
But will this be enough to sway Manchin and Sinema? I’ve written before about why I’m cautiously optimistic they will come around on voting rights. Manchin didn’t seem to be budging after Wednesday’s vote.“We’ve got Lisa Murkowski, we just need nine more,” Manchin said, according to Politico. “We need other people to be talking to each other and find a pathway forward. It can’t just be one or two people talking to both sides.”But as Democrats get mired in negotiations over the infrastructure bill, it may be harder to pressure their two holdouts. Biden said during a town hall in late October that it would be hard to deal with the filibuster while infrastructure negotiations were ongoing.In any case, the next few weeks will be critical in determining whether Democrats can actually protect access to the ballot box.Readers’ questionsPlease continue to write to me each week with your questions about elections and voting at sam.levine@theguardian.com or DM me on twitter at @srl and I’ll try to answer as many as I can.Also worth watching …
I spoke with election officials across the country about the wave of threats and harassment they’ve seen over the last year
Republicans in North Carolina and Ohio are pushing maps that would give them an extreme partisan advantage for the next decade.
TopicsUS SenateThe fight to voteRepublicansDemocratsUS politicsJoe ManchinnewsReuse this content More - in US Politics
Senate Republicans again block key voting rights bill
The fight to voteUS voting rightsSenate Republicans again block key voting rights bill John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act blocked in SenateBill’s failure likely to increase calls to end contentious filibuster The fight to vote is supported byAbout this contentSam Levine in New YorkWed 3 Nov 2021 16.10 EDTFirst published on Wed 3 Nov 2021 15.27 EDTRepublicans in the US Senate again blocked a significant voting rights bill from advancing on Wednesday, a move many see as a breaking point in the push to get rid of the filibuster, the Senate rule that requires 60 votes to advance most legislation.Democrats suffer disastrous night in Virginia and a tight race in New Jersey – liveRead moreThe bill – the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act – is one of two major pieces of voting rights legislation Democrats are championing in Congress in an effort to fend off attempts across the US by Republicans to erode easy access to the vote. Those efforts often most affect communities of color.The measure, approved by the US House in August, would have implemented a formula at the heart of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that required certain places, where there was repeated evidence of voting discrimination over the last 25 years, to get any voting changes pre-cleared by the federal government.The US supreme court struck down a previous version of the formula in 2013, saying it was outdated, a widely criticized ruling that civil rights groups say opened the door to voting discrimination.There was never any serious prospect of the bill passing – only one Republican senator, Lisa Murkowski, supported it. The vote in the Senate was 50-49 in favor of advancing the bill.But Wednesday’s vote was targeted towards Senator Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat who supports the filibuster, showing him that passing voting rights legislation is not possible while the filibuster remains in place.Many Democrats hope it will be the final straw for Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, an Arizona Democrat, who is also a staunch defender of the filibuster. Republicans have successfully filibustered voting rights bill three times already this year, including once just two weeks ago.Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, said Wednesday’s filibuster was a “low, low point in the history of this body”.He continued to suggest Democrats would consider options for getting rid of the filibuster, saying they would “explore whatever path” was needed to restore the Senate to its status as a deliberative body. He said the gears of Congress’s upper chamber had “ossified” and that Democrats were committed to continuing to push forward on voting rights “even if it means going at it alone”.Nineteen states enacted nearly three dozen laws that make it harder to vote between January and the end of September, according to a tally by the Brennan Center for Justice. While the John Lewis bill would not necessarily have blocked all of them, it would have required some states, including Florida, Georgia and Texas, to get their policies reviewed before they were implemented.“For the fourth time this year, Republicans have filibustered federal voting rights legislation. Whether it’s the original version of the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, the substitute amendment backed by Senator Murkowski, or other good faith legislative efforts to forge compromise and deliver on federal voting rights legislation, it’s crystal clear that Senator Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans will weaponize the filibuster to block progress,” said Eli Zupnik, a spokesman for Fix Our Senate, which supports getting rid of the filibuster. “Our question now to President Biden and Senate Democrats is this: what are you going to do about it?” .There is increasing urgency for Democrats to pass both the John Lewis measure and the Freedom to Vote Act, the other major voting rights legislation that aims to outlaw excessive partisan gerrymandering and would require early voting, no-excuse mail-in voting, as well as automatic and same-day registration.Sign up for the Guardian’s Fight to Vote newsletterState lawmakers are quickly passing new electoral districts that weaken the votes of minority voters and are distorted to lock in partisan advantages for the next decade. Democrats are also largely expected to lose control of the US House of Representatives next November.Democrats have already started to escalate the pressure.Joe Biden gave a strong public endorsement of changing the rule last month for voting rights legislation “and maybe more”. But it’s unclear whether Manchin and Sinema, who have largely stymied Democratic ambitions in Congress so far, will budge. Manchin has indicated he does not support a filibuster carve out for voting rights legislation.Civil rights groups have been pressing Democrats for months to get rid of the filibuster to pass voting reforms, publicly voicing their frustration that the White House isn’t putting enough political muscle behind the issue. Dozens of activists, including the son of Martin Luther King Jr were arrested outside the White House demonstrating ahead of the vote on Wednesday.“Don’t take the Black vote for granted. Don’t torpedo our democracy. Our future depends on the restoration of voting rights for all,” said Derrick Johnson, the president and CEO of the NAACP. “Those who made campaign promises to the Black community must use any means possible to ensure that this Congress gets it done. The urgency of this issue cannot be overstated. We are watching.”“We have had moments of bipartisanship on voting rights in our nation’s history, but sadly, this is not one of them. The only way to protect the freedom to vote is to end the filibuster,” said Sean Eldridge, the president of Stand Up America, and one of the people arrested on Wednesday.“The King family and civil rights leaders from across the country came to the White House today because President Biden has the largest soapbox on the planet, and we’re asking him to use it to protect voting rights before it’s too late.”TopicsUS voting rightsThe fight to voteUS politicsUS SenatenewsReuse this content More
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Biden plays up positives but frustrations apparent after Cop26 talks
Cop26Biden plays up positives but frustrations apparent after Cop26 talksTrip to Glasgow was heavy on dire warnings but light on deep emissions cuts – and ended with him blaming China and Russia Oliver Milman@olliemilmanWed 3 Nov 2021 08.07 EDTLast modified on Wed 3 Nov 2021 11.05 EDTJoe Biden returned to the US in the pre-dawn gloom on Wednesday to a climate agenda still held in frustrating limbo by Congress, following his high-profile cameo at crunch UN climate talks in Scotland that was heavy on dire warnings but light on deep cuts to planet-heating emissions.Nuclear arms hawks give bureaucratic mauling to Biden vow to curb arsenalRead moreThe US president had aimed to arrive in Glasgow for the Cop26 summit with historic climate legislation in hand, which he could use to brandish at world leaders who still harbor resentments over four turbulent years of Donald Trump, where the climate crisis was variously ignored and mocked.Instead, the intransigence of Senator Joe Manchin, a centrist Democrat and leading beneficiary of fossil fuel industry largesse, has left the landmark climate bill pared back and not voted upon, its fate left uncertain throughout Biden’s trip.In Glasgow, Biden vowed America will “lead by the power of our example”, but was the target of activist protests over oil and gas leases issued back home, while leaders of several major emitters either did not show up or failed to submit vastly improved emissions reduction plans.Biden ended his time in Scotland by ladling blame upon China for not taking the climate emergency seriously.“The most important thing the president needed to do was reassure the rest of the world that the US is back in addressing this global crisis,” said Christy Goldfuss, an environment adviser to Barack Obama and now a policy expert at the Center for American Progress.“But we have to have some humility, we have ground to make up. We can’t reclaim the mantle of leadership until the US can deliver on its commitments. Every Democrat, apart from one senator, supports climate action. That is untenable and everyone understands that.”Biden has sought to play up the positives of his time at Cop26, where he has left negotiators to thrash out a deal aimed at averting disastrous global heating of beyond 1.5C. “I can’t think of any two days where more has been accomplished on climate,” he said.The highlights include a global pledge, led by the US and European Union, to slash methane, a potent greenhouse gas, by 30% by 2030, based on last year’s levels. More than 100 countries, including six of the 10 largest emitters of methane, have signed on to the agreement to cut methane, which is spewed out by oil and gas drilling operations and agriculture and is about 80 times more powerful in trapping heat than carbon dioxide.Biden backed this move with new regulations rolled out by the US Environment Protection Agency to cut methane emissions by about 75% from hundreds of thousands of oil and gas wells. “The pledge to cut methane is the single biggest and fastest bite out of today’s warming,” said Durwood Zaelke, president of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development.There was also a sweeping accord, which Biden vowed to support with billions of dollars, to end deforestation within a decade. The pact encompasses 85% of the world’s forests, vital for biodiversity and to soak up excess carbon from the atmosphere, and is backed by Brazil, Russia and China, countries often reluctant to make such promises.But the US was clearly piqued at how little the relentless diplomacy of John Kerry, Biden’s climate envoy, had done to extract deeper emissions cuts from leading carbon polluters. Neither Russia’s Vladimir Putin nor China’s Xi Jinping, who both offered barely improved new targets at the talks, traveled to Glasgow. Biden’s frustration bubbled over as he prepared to depart on Tuesday.“The fact that China is trying assert a new role in the world as a world leader, not showing up? Come on,” Biden said. “It’s just a gigantic issue and they’ve walked away. How do you do that and claim to have any leadership now? Same with Putin in Russia: his tundra is burning. Literally his tundra is burning. He has serious, serious climate problems and he’s mum on his willingness to do anything.”The blame placed at Cop upon China, which is now the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, comes amid frayed US-China relations on several fronts. The Global Times, a newspaper run by China’s Communist party, said in an editorial that Washington’s attitude had made it “impossible for China to see any potential to have fair negotiation amid the tensions”.Goldfuss said: “The blame game is not something the US should be really playing right now given we have so much work to do ourselves.”Back home, Biden has acknowledged his presidency will probably be defined by the proposed reconciliation bill that contains $555bn in climate measures. The White House says the legislation would bring the country close to the president’s goal of cutting emissions in half this decade and help curb disastrous climate breakdown that is already unleashing severe heatwaves, floods and drought at home and around the world.The far-reaching legislation needs every Democratic vote to pass the Senate but West Virginia’s Manchin has questioned its scope, said it is filled with “gimmicks” and has already ensured that a centerpiece plan to phase out fossil fuels from the American electricity grid was axed from the bill.Democrats continue to fret over the fate of the bill, with a vote that could take place as early as this week, with Biden saying he is “confident we will get it done”. But climate campaigners say the president could do more without the help of Congress to stem the flow of fossil fuels that are causing the climate crisis.The opening week of Cop26 saw Biden’s administration announce it will sell off oil and gas drilling leases across 730,000 acres of the US west, with a further auction of 80m offshore acres of the Gulf of Mexico, an area larger than the UK, set to commence later this month. The International Energy Agency has said that no new fossil fuel projects can commence if the world is to keep to the agreed 1.5C warming limit.“With all eyes on Glasgow this week, the Biden administration seems to be turning its back on reality and throwing climate leadership into the toilet,” said Jeremy Nichols, climate and energy program director for WildEarth Guardians.TopicsCop26Joe BidenUS politicsDemocratsJohn KerryUS foreign policynewsReuse this content More
