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      Biden accused of U-turn over Egypt’s human rights abuses

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      “It’s a hostage negotiation and it has been all along,” said Sherif Mansour, describing the arrest of his cousin Reda Abdel-Rahman by Egyptian security forces last August as an attempt to intimidate Mansour into silence.Abdel-Rahman has been imprisoned without trial for nine months. Mansour, an outspoken human rights advocate in Washington with the Committee to Protect Journalists, has since learned that he and his father are listed on the same charge sheet, all accused of joining a terrorist group and spreading “false news”.Mansour is one of a growing number of activists, dissidents and analysts angry at the US administration’s suddenly warm relations with Egypt. They point to Egyptian officials’ escalating threats against critics living in exile in the US, including arresting their family members or contacts in Egypt, many of whom are imprisoned like Abdel-Rahman on spurious charges.Twelve members of Mansour’s family have been detained and interrogated by Egyptian security agents since Abdel-Rahman’s detention.“They ask about us, when we last spoke to them, what we spoke about,” Mansour said. “They go through their phones – and if they don’t provide passwords they’re beaten in order to find anything that connects them to us, including Facebook conversations.“It’s why we haven’t been in touch: I’ve stopped talking to my family in order not to give them any reason to harass them,” he said.Joe Biden and the Egyptian president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, held their first official call in late May, four months after Biden took office. As a candidate, Biden promised that there would be “no blank checks” for the man Donald Trump once addressed as “my favourite dictator”. Yet when they spoke, the two leaders discussed human rights in terms of a “constructive dialogue” and “reaffirmed their commitment to a strong and productive US-Egypt partnership”, according to the White House.This followed Egyptian mediation of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, including a recent rare public visit by the Egyptian intelligence chief, Abbas Kamel, to Tel Aviv and Ramallah, and Israel’s foreign minister, Gabi Ashkenazi, travelling to Cairo – the first visit by an Israeli foreign minister in 13 years.HA Hellyer, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace thinktank, said: “The latest crisis in the Palestinian occupied territories and the Israeli bombardment reminded DC of a very clear and present reality: that there is no capital in the region that has direct and workable relations with the Israelis and the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank other than Cairo.”Biden’s administration capped his warm exchange with the Egyptian president with a decision to request $1.38bn (£1bn) in annual military aid for Egypt – the maximum amount possible.A coalition of human rights groups expressed “strong disappointment” at the administration’s decision. “President Biden campaigned on ‘no more blank checks’ for Egypt’s regime, but requesting the same amount the United States has provided annually since 1987 despite Egypt’s deteriorating human rights record is, effectively, another blank check,” they said.Mansour agreed. “They abandoned the rhetoric calling publicly on Egypt to respect human rights by agreeing to this ‘constructive dialogue’,” he said. “It makes my blood boil to hear this term in many ways. Not just because it’s a repetition of what we as Egyptians, and the United States, have heard from all previous dictators, but it also underscores how naive and timid this administration is when it comes to Egypt.”Since coming to power in a military coup in 2013, Sisi has overseen the broadest crackdown on dissent and free speech in Egypt’s recent history. Tens of thousands remain behind bars for their political views or for activities as benign as a Facebook comment; Egypt’s prisons are at double their capacity, according to Amnesty International.The Freedom Initiative, a Washington-based human rights organisation founded by the Egyptian-American activist Mohamed Soltan, has tracked the increasing numbers of arrests of family members of outspoken Egyptians in exile abroad. It said that threatening phone calls and even physical intimidation were now regularly used against Egyptian dissidents worldwide.“They said they could hire someone here in the States to go after me,” said Aly Hussin Mahdy, an influencer and dissident now in exile in the US. Mahdy described how his family members were detained earlier this year as a way to stop him speaking out against the Egyptian government on social media; his father remains in detention. The threats against Mahdy escalated to menacing phone calls from someone purporting to be an Egyptian intelligence agent after he openly discussed his family members’ arrests.The Freedom Initiative described what it termed “hostage-taking tactics” involving five American citizens whose families were detained in Egypt in order to silence their activism in the US. In addition, it found more than a dozen cases of US citizens or residents whose close relatives were detained in Egypt last year, although it believes the true number to be far higher.It added that one US citizen was warned against speaking to US lawmakers on their release from detention in Egypt, and told that doing so would result in harm to their family.Yet US law contains mechanisms to curb cooperation with countries that threaten US citizens and dissidents abroad. These include the Leahy law, which stops the US funding foreign security forces that violate human rights; the Global Magnitsky Act, which allows the government to sanction human rights abusers and prevent them from entering the US; and the “Khashoggi ban”, curbing visas for those engaged in anti-dissident activities.The White House did not initially respond when contacted for comment on this issue. The secretary of state, Antony Blinken, told a congressional hearing this week that “I think we’ve seen some progress in some areas” of human rights in Egypt, but that “when it comes to freedom of expression, when it comes to civil society, there are very significant problems that we need to address directly with our Egyptian partners – and we are. So we hope and expect to see progress there.”US-based activists expressed disappointment at lawmakers’ reluctance to employ sanctions against Egyptian officials, who they say more than qualify for punitive measures.“The fact that Egypt feels it can get away with taking citizens hostage, and so far it did, will continue to be a stain on the Biden administration,” said Mansour. More

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      in US Politics

      Can this new voting system fix America’s ugliest elections?

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      Marti Allen-Cummings, an activist, community board member and drag artist running for a New York city council seat in northern Manhattan, lights up when they speak about their competition. “I really hope that we have set the tone for other council races on how to build coalition and friendship with other candidates,” they said.With one candidate, Allen-Cummings cleaned up a park in the district last September. With another, they handed out PPE and campaign literature on the street. “Hey,” they would tell voters passing by. “Nice to meet you. Check out our platforms. There’s ranked-choice voting, so at the end of the day you can support both of us.”This is what proponents of ranked-choice voting (RCV) had promised. Under the voting system, voters can rank a number of candidates for each race – in New York City, up to five for every citywide contest. If none wins an outright majority in the first round of counting, the last-place candidate is eliminated, and their second-place votes are then counted, a process that continues until someone earns at least 50% of the votes plus one. The upcoming mayoral race – which is already heated ahead of November – will be one of the biggest tests for the system in the US.RCV, which New York City passed in 2019, offers many benefits, advocates say, like eliminating costly and low-turnout runoffs, allowing voters to choose their favorite candidate without fear of wasting their vote, and ensuring that the winner has majority support. For those reasons, the bipartisan reform has become increasingly popular in the past decade. As of recently, it’s how Maine and Alaska vote for president, how Republicans in Virginia choose their candidate for governor, and the way to elect school boards in Cambridge, Massachusetts, municipal judges in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and mayors in cities across Utah. In total, nearly 10 million voters in the US now use RCV.But does it also lead to more civil campaigns?Though civility is difficult to measure, researchers have taken two approaches. The first is to analyze how the candidates speak to and about their competition. In the mayoral debates studied, candidates under RCV “substituted negative or neutral words for more positive words”. The second approach is to ask the voters themselves, and those in New Mexico and California seem to agree: RCV campaigns are significantly less negative.But voters’ impressions are often unreliable, and RCV has never been used in a city so large, diverse and known for mudslinging as New York.In last week’s mayoral debate, Andrew Yang, the tech entrepreneur and former presidential candidate, turned to another frontrunner, Eric Adams. “We all know that you’ve been investigated for corruption everywhere you’ve gone,” Yang said. “You’ve achieved the rare trifecta of corruption investigations.”Another candidate, Scott Stringer, said to Yang: “As your consultants have told you time and time again, they admit you are an empty vessel. I actually don’t think you are an empty vessel. I think you are a Republican who continues to focus on the issues that will not bring back the economy.”But it’s not just the mayoral candidates. Though city council races aren’t as uniformly positive as Allen-Cummings’ enthusiasm would suggest, the most aggressive attacks haven’t come from the candidates.“The status quo of hostile campaigning is so deep that, even if it’s not necessarily the campaign itself [doing it], we’ve seen outside groups and independent expenditures being used to do that,” says Elizabeth Adams, a candidate in district 33 in Brooklyn who says she’s done RCV trainings and flyering with the three other female candidates in the race.Elizabeth Adams points to February’s special election in Queens, the first time RCV was used in the city. Leading up to election day, voters received mailers about Moumita Ahmed, a candidate endorsed by Bernie Sanders. The literature, sent by an outside group supported by billionaire real estate tycoon and Trump supporter Stephen Ross, accused her of “endangering our children” (advocating for cuts to the New York police department budget) and celebrating the loss of 25,000 Queens jobs (supporting Amazon’s decision to pull its HQ2 campus from Long Island City).On Twitter, Ahmed accused another candidate, Jim Gennaro, of orchestrating the attacks through a former staff member. Gennaro denied the allegations, but Ahmed was unimpressed. “Your amateurish, childlike behavior is not what voters deserve during a pandemic and certainly isn’t going to help you given ranked-choice voting,” she tweeted.Certainly, this special election, held in the dead of winter and with only 7% turnout and roughly 6,700 votes cast total, isn’t necessarily reflective of the city’s wider political dynamic. However, it does prove an important point: RCV means nothing if a candidate gets a majority on the first round.That’s what happened in the 24th district, with Gennaro taking nearly 60% of the vote and Ahmed finishing in second place with about 16%. However, even a modest initial lead is almost always insurmountable; 96% of candidates who are winning after the first round eventually win outright, according to data from FairVote, a non-partisan organization that promotes election reforms, including RCV.That fact raises a question: Instead of disappearing, will the city’s mudslinging just be outsourced to independent expenditure groups, which have already spent at least $15.7m on the primaries alone, 10 times what was spent in the 2017 cycle?“I am concerned about that,” says Deb Otis, a Senior Research Analyst at FairVote. “But I think over time, the independent expenditure groups in New York City will adjust to the reality of rank choice voting. They wouldn’t want their preferred candidate to be perceived as going negative.”New York City does have robust campaign finance transparency laws, which prohibit outside groups from coordinating with campaigns and require them to disclose their top donors. As for the candidates, going negative is a complicated decision based on a number of factors, like their position in the race, momentum, fundraising and public perception.Plus, there may be races that have more contenders than there are slots on the ranked choice ballot. In that case, one campaign may form alliances with a few others but has little incentive to play nice with the rest of the field.Still, RCV enjoys considerable support from the candidates, at least rhetorically. A spokesperson from the Yang campaign, which recommends that voters rank Kathryn Garcia as their No 2, said that he has supported RCV since he ran for president and that it encourages a “big tent” approach.Dianne Morales, the executive director of a non-profit based in the Bronx, also supports RCV, which “makes it possible for mayoral candidates like myself, a woman of color candidate for NYC mayor who has never run for office before, to level the playing field against career politicians and gives voters real choice in electing leaders”.However, as much as Allen-Cummings and Adams voice their support for RCV, Allen-Cummings hasn’t publicly declared their second-place choice, and Adams recommends only that voters rank women first through fourth in her race.But, a single election reform can only accomplish so much, and what RCV proponents promised was only that campaigning would become more civil.“I don’t see ranked-choice voting as the issue,” says Ahmed, who’s already noticed some candidates in her race cooperating more than they did in the February special election. For RCV to reach its full potential, she says, the city must enforce stricter term limits and prohibit spending by political action committees.“You can’t change the way human beings are going to operate,” says Ahmed. “So I think negative campaigning will always exist.”However, Allen-Cummings suggests otherwise. “I’ve laid out with all the candidates, like, ‘Let’s work together, let’s have fun together, and let’s help our neighbors,’” they say. “And for the most part, they’ve been on board with that.” More

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      in Elections

      US Capitol attack report finds intelligence, military and police failings

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      A Senate investigation of the 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol has uncovered broad government, military and law enforcement failings before the violent attack, including a breakdown within multiple intelligence agencies and a lack of training and preparation for Capitol police officers who were quickly overwhelmed by the rioters.The Senate report released on Tuesday is the first – and possibly the last – bipartisan review of how hundreds of supporters of the former president Donald Trump were able to violently push past security lines and break into the Capitol that day, interrupting the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory.It includes new details about the police officers on the front lines who suffered chemical burns, brain injuries and broken bones and who told senators that they were left with no direction when command systems broke down. It recommends immediate changes to give the Capitol police chief more authority, to provide better planning and equipment for law enforcement and to streamline intelligence-gathering among federal agencies.As a bipartisan effort, the report does not delve into the root causes of the attack, including Trump’s role as he called for his supporters to “fight like hell” to overturn his election defeat that day. It does not call the attack an insurrection, even though it was. And it comes two weeks after Republicans blocked a bipartisan, independent commission that would investigate the insurrection more broadly.“This report is important in the fact that it allows us to make some immediate improvements to the security situation here in the Capitol,” said Michigan senator Gary Peters, the chairman of the homeland security and governmental affairs committee, which conducted the investigation along with the Senate rules committee. “But it does not answer some of the bigger questions that we need to face, quite frankly, as a country and as a democracy.”The House passed legislation in May to create a commission that would be modelled after a panel that investigated the 9/11 terrorist attack two decades ago. But it failed to get the 60 Senate votes needed to advance, with many Republicans pointing to the Senate report as sufficient.The top Republican on the rules panel, the Missouri senator Roy Blunt, has opposed the commission, arguing that investigation would take too long. He said the recommendations made in the Senate could be implemented faster, including legislation that he and the Minnesota Democratic senator Amy Klobuchar, the rules committee chair, intend to introduce soon that would give the chief of Capitol police more authority to request assistance from the National Guard.The Senate report recounts how the guard was delayed for hours on 6 January as officials in multiple agencies took bureaucratic steps to release the troops. It details hours of calls between officials in the Capitol and the Pentagon and as the then chief of the Capitol police, Steven Sund, desperately begged for help.It finds that the Pentagon spent hours “mission planning” and seeking layers of approvals as rioters were overwhelming and brutally beating Capitol police. It also states that the Department of Defense’s response was “informed by” criticism of its heavy-handed response to protests in the summer of 2020 after the death of George Floyd at the hands of police.The senators are heavily critical of the Capitol police board, a three-member panel that includes the heads of security for the House and Senate and the architect of the Capitol. The board is now required to approve requests by the police chief, even in urgent situations. The report recommends that its members “regularly review the policies and procedures” after senators found that none of the board members on 6 January understood their own authority or could detail the statutory requirements for requesting National Guard assistance.Two of the three members of the board, the House and Senate sergeants-at-arms, were pushed out in the days after the attack. Sund also resigned under pressure.Congress needed to change the law and give the police chief more authority “immediately”, Klobuchar said.The report recommends a consolidated intelligence unit within the Capitol police after widespread failures from multiple agencies that did not predict the attack even though insurrectionists were planning it openly on the internet. The police’s intelligence unit “knew about social media posts calling for violence at the Capitol on 6 January, including a plot to breach the Capitol, the online sharing of maps of the Capitol complex’s tunnel systems, and other specific threats of violence”, the report says, but agents did not properly inform leadership of everything they had found.The senators also criticise the FBI and the homeland security department for downplaying online threats and for not issuing formal intelligence bulletins that help law enforcement plan.In a response to the report, the Capitol police acknowledged the need for improvements, some of which they said they were already making. “Law enforcement agencies across the country rely on intelligence, and the quality of that intelligence can mean the difference between life and death,” the statement said.During the attack, the report says, Capitol police were heavily compromised by multiple failures – bad intelligence, poor planning, faulty equipment and a lack of leadership. The force’s incident command system “broke down during the attack”, leaving officers on the front lines without orders. There were no functional incident commanders, and some senior officers were fighting instead of giving orders. “USCP leadership never took control of the radio system to communicate orders to frontline officers,” the investigation found.“I was horrified that no deputy chief or above was on the radio or helping us,” one officer told the committee in an anonymous statement. “For hours the screams on the radio were horrific, the sights were unimaginable and there was a complete loss of control … For hours no chief or above took command and control. Officers were begging and pleading for help for medical triage.”The acting chief of police, Yogananda Pittman, who replaced Sund after his resignation, told the committees that the lack of communication resulted from “incident commanders being overwhelmed and engaging with rioters, rather than issuing orders over the radio”.The committee’s interviews with police officers detail what one officer said was “absolutely brutal” abuse from Trump’s supporters as they ran over them and broke into the building. They described hearing racial slurs and seeing Nazi salutes. One officer trying to evacuate the Senate said he had stopped several men in full tactical gear who said: “You better get out of our way, boy, or we’ll go through you to get [the Senators].’”The insurrectionists told police officers they would kill them, and then the members of Congress. One officer said he had a “tangible fear” that he might not make it home alive.At the same time, the senators acknowledge the officers’ bravery, noting that one officer told them: “The officers inside all behaved admirably and heroically and, even outnumbered, went on the offensive and took the Capitol back.” More

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      in US Politics

      American democracy is fighting for its life – and Republicans don’t care | Robert Reich

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      On Sunday, the West Virginia senator Joe Manchin announced in an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail that he opposes the For the People Act. He also opposes ending the filibuster.An op-ed in the most prominent state newspaper is about as non-negotiable a position a senator can assert.It was a direct thumb-in-your-eye response to President Biden’s thinly veiled criticism of Manchin last Tuesday in Tulsa, where Biden explained why he was having difficulty getting passage of what was supposed to be his highest priority – new voting rights legislation that would supersede a raft of new voter suppression laws in Republican-dominated states, using Trump’s baseless claim of voter fraud as pretext.“I hear all the folks on TV saying, ‘Why doesn’t Biden get this done?’” Biden asked rhetorically in Tulsa. “Well, because Biden only has a majority of effectively four votes in the House, and a tie in the Senate, with two members of the Senate who vote more with my Republican friends. But we’re not giving up.”Everyone knew he was referring to Manchin, as well as Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema, another Democratic holdout.Manchin’s very public repudiation of Biden on Sunday could mean the end of the For the People Act. That opens the way for Republican states to continue their shameless campaign of voter suppression – very possibly giving Republicans a victory in the 2022 midterm elections and entrenching Republican rule for a generation.As it is, registered Republicans make up only about 25% of the American electorate, and that percentage appears to be shrinking in the wake of Trump’s malodorous exit.But because rural Republican states like Wyoming (with 574,000 inhabitants) get two senators just as do urban ones like California (with nearly 40 million), and because Republican states have gerrymandered districts that elect House members to give them an estimated 19 extra seats over what they would have without gerrymandering, the scales were already tipped.Then came the post-Trump deluge of state laws making it harder for likely Democrats to vote, and easier for Republican state legislatures to manipulate voting tallies.Manchin says he supports extending the John Lewis Voting Rights Act to all 50 states. That’s small comfort.The original 1965 Voting Rights Act was struck down by the supreme court in 2013, on the dubious logic that it was no longer needed because states with a history of suppressing Black votes no longer did so. (Note that within 24 hours of the ruling, Texas announced it would implement a strict photo ID law, and Mississippi and Alabama soon followed.)The efficacy of a new national Voting Rights Act would depend on an activist justice department willing to block state changes in voting laws that suppress votes and on an activist supreme court willing to uphold such justice department decisions. Don’t bet on either. We know what happened to the justice department under Trump, and we know what’s happened to the supreme court.Besides, a new Voting Rights Act wouldn’t be able to roll back the most recent round of voter suppression laws from Republican states.Without Manchin, then, the For the People Act is probably dead, unless Biden can convince one Republican senator to join Senate Democrats in supporting it – like, say, Utah’s Mitt Romney, who has publicly rebuked Trump for lying about the 2020 election and has something of a reputation for being an institutionalist who cares about American democracy.Yet given Trump’s continuing hold over the shrinking Republican party, any Republican senator who joined with the Democrats in supporting the For the People Act would probably be ending their political career. Profiles in courage make good copy for political obituaries and memorials.I’m afraid history will show that, in this shameful era, Republican senators were more united in their opposition to voting rights than Democratic senators were in their support for them.The future of American democracy needs better odds. More

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      in US Politics

      Defamation to Georgia voting: the top Trump legal cases

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      When Donald Trump was president, his lawyers repeatedly claimed that presidential immunity shielded him from civil litigation unrelated to his official duties, among other legal actions. Court after court rejected that position, with various judges ruling “no one is above the law” – though his numerous appeals delayed litigation.Trump is out of the White House, paving the way for legal action against him to continue in earnest. Here are some of the top legal proceedings involving Trump.Manhattan grand juryOn 25 May, the Washington Post reported that Manhattan prosecutors had “convened the grand jury that is expected to decide whether to indict former president Donald Trump, other executives at his company or the business itself, should prosecutors present the panel with criminal charges”.Vance’s office is exploring whether the valuation of any real estate in his company was gamed to cheat insurers or banks, and whether any value manipulation enabled illegal tax breaks. The New York attorney general has also intensified its inquiry from a civil investigation, saying: “We are now actively investigating the Trump Organization in a criminal capacity, along with the Manhattan DA.”E Jean CarrollAdvice columnist E Jean Carroll, who has alleged that Trump raped her in the mid-1990s, sued him in November 2019 after he denied the allegations. Trump claimed that Carroll had fabricated the allegation to sell her book, and remarked: “She’s not my type.”The US Department of Justice, which is representing Trump, had claimed that he should be considered a regular federal employee and that his statements fell within the parameters of his employment. As such, the DoJ contended, Trump was protected by the “Federal Tort Claims Act” – meaning its lawyers could represent him.The judge in the case did not agree that Trump was a regular federal worker, nor that these statements were part of his work. The DoJ appealed against this ruling before Biden assumed office. Roberta Kaplan, who represents Carroll, said they are “confident” the appeals court will rule in their favor and that the case will ultimately be set for trial.Summer ZervosFormer Apprentice contestant Summer Zervos claimed in October 2016 that Trump groped her. Trump, who was on the campaign trail at the time of these allegations, said that her claims were false and fabricated. Zervos filed suit against him in 2017, saying his denials defamed her.Trump had tried to halt the case, citing presidential protection from the legal action. Trump’s legal team appealed to New York’s highest court after suffering prior legal defeats related to the immunity issue. On 30 March, the court ultimately rejected this appeal, saying “the issues presented have become moot” given that he is no longer president. This enables Zervos’s lawsuit to proceed.Georgia votingAccording to multiple reports, Georgia prosecutors are investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn the state’s 2020 election results. Fani Willis, Fulton county district attorney, asked state officials to preserve documents, such as documentation involving Trump’s call to Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, urging him to “find” more ballots in his favor.The letter said that “particular care” needed to be “given to set aside and preserve those that may be evidence of attempts to influence the actions of persons who were administering that election”, Reuters quoted the 10 February correspondence as saying. More

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      in Elections

      Kamala Harris tells migrants 'do not come' during talks in Guatemala – video

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      The US vice-president, Kamala Harris, said she had held ‘robust’ talks with the Guatemalan president, Alejandro Giammattei, as she sought to find ways of deterring undocumented immigration from Central America to the United States. Speaking during a news conference with Giammattei, Harris delivered a blunt message to people thinking of making the dangerous journey north: ‘Do not come’

      Kamala Harris faces doubts over retooled US policy in Central America
      Kamala Harris takes on a new role as she heads on her first overseas trip More

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      in US Politics

      Democratic splits grow as key senator Manchin says no to voting rights bill

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      Growing fissures in Democratic ranks were evident on Monday over West Virginia senator Joe Manchin’s public opposition to the For the People Act, a sweeping measure to protect voting rights that are under assault from Republicans in numerous states – and also his stance against scrapping the filibuster.The filibuster is the rule under which the Senate minority, currently the Republicans, has the power to thwart the majority’s will on most legislation.Manchin is a centrist Democrat, but one progressive congressman called him “the new Mitch McConnell”, for helping the Republican Senate leader in his quest to stop progress on the Democrats’ agenda at all costs.In a column for the Charleston Gazette-Mail on Sunday, Manchin said he opposed the For the People Act, or HR1, which currently has no Republican support in the Senate, because “partisan voting legislation will destroy the already weakening binds of our democracy”.He also reiterated his support of the filibuster, under which 60 votes are needed to pass most legislation. The Senate is split 50-50 between the two parties and controlled by Democrats only through Kamala Harris’s casting vote as vice-president.Anger over Manchin’s stand was particularly fierce among African Americans, a key constituency in elections which gave Democrats control of the White House and Congress and subsequently a key target of Republican efforts to restrict ballot access in Florida, Georgia, Texas and elsewhere.Mondaire Jones, a New York congressman, referred to the era of racial segregation in the US south when he said: “Manchin’s op-ed might as well be titled, ‘Why I’ll vote to preserve Jim Crow.’”The writer Jemele Hill elaborated: “This is so on brand for this country. Record number of black voters show up to save this democracy, only for white supremacy to be upheld by a cowardly, power-hungry white dude. Joe Manchin is a clown.”Speaking to CNN on Monday, congressman Jamaal Bowman of New York called Manchin “the new Mitch McConnell”.“Mitch McConnell during [Barack] Obama’s presidency said he would do everything in his power to stop Obama,” he said.“He’s also repeated that now, during the Biden presidency, by saying he would do everything in his power to stop President Biden. And now Joe Manchin is doing everything in his power to stop democracy and stop our work for the people, that work that the people sent us here to do.”Manchin has in fact voted with Biden most of the time so far, and has said he backs the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which would restore ballot protections gutted by the US supreme court in 2013.Asked if it was fair to attack Manchin so stringently, Bowman said: “HR1 has popularity in West Virginia and across the country. Well over 65% of the American people support HR1, and well over 50% of Republicans support HR1.“The American people sent us to Washington to do a job. Just a few weeks ago, we had a bipartisan piece of legislation looking to form a commission to study the 6 January insurrection, the first attack on our Capitol since the War of 1812. It was a bipartisan piece of legislation, and it did not pass. Why? Because of the filibuster, and because the majority of Republicans are focused much more on obstruction.”A study by the Center for American Progress found that Republicans have used filibusters roughly twice as often as Democrats to stop legislation.Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader and New York Democrat, has said he will bring the For the People Act up for a vote this month. At the outset of a new legislative session on Monday, he appealed for Democrats to stick together.“I want to be clear that the next few weeks will be hard and will test our resolve as a Congress and a conference,” Schumer wrote to colleagues, as reported by the Hill. “The American people gave us a Democratic Senate to produce big and bold action on the major issues confronting us. And that is what we will do.”As the influential Punchbowl News put it on Monday morning, however: “Any legislative strategy that involves dumping the filibuster and then passing a bill is going to fail. That much is clear. If you don’t get that by now, we don’t know how to help you.”Unlike his fellow centrist and filibuster supporter, Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, Manchin voted for the 6 January commission, which would have investigated an event which Donald Trump incited in service of his lie that the 2020 election was “stolen” and he won, not Joe Biden.On Monday, Trump backed Manchin in his support for the filibuster, telling Fox Business: “It’s a very important thing. Otherwise you’re going to be packing the courts, you’re going to be doing all sorts of very bad things that were unthinkable.”The former president’s words were not without attendant irony.In July 2017, faced with the failure of attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Trump famously tweeted against the filibuster rule: “Republican Senate must get rid of 60 vote NOW! It is killing the R Party, allows 8 Dems to control country. 200 Bills sit in Senate. A JOKE!”McConnell, then Senate majority leader, refused to budge. Now that he is the Senate minority leader, McConnell is still immovable. More