Last Call For The Blue Dogs Bite Back

It's not just Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema who understand that they can exercise all the demands they want to when all 50 Democratic senators have to vote, and need 10 Republicans to pass a filibuster. There are plenty of Blue Dog Dem senators waiting in the wings with agendas of their own on upcoming spending bills...and how to pay for them.

“At some point we’ve got to start paying for things,” said Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), who caucuses with the Democrats and is worried higher interest rates could become an albatross on the economy. “It’s got to be paid for. It’s just a question of who pays. Are we going to pay or our kids going to pay?”

Democrats — and Republicans, at least until Donald Trump left office — have shrugged off oceans of red ink over the past year as the U.S. confronted its worst public health crisis in a century. In just 12 months, Congress will have spent nearly $6 trillion fighting the virus and staving off economic free fall.

With an endpoint potentially coming into view, however, some moderate Democrats say it’s time for Congress to recover some semblance of fiscal pragmatism. That means Biden’s next major legislative priority can’t simply rack up more debt in a bid to remodel America’s crumbling physical infrastructure. And that could make things a lot tougher for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

“Some of it needs to be paid for,” said Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), who suggested an “all of the above” strategy for paying for an infrastructure package that includes spending cuts and raising new revenues.

“You’re going to remind me of this [later] when none of it’s paid for,” he deadpanned, “but I do think some of it needs to be paid for.”

Generating new revenue for infrastructure typically involves a debate about raising the federal gas tax, an idea so politically toxic that it’s been stagnant since 1993 and already repudiated by the Biden administration. Other ideas include charging fees based on the number of miles traveled, which raises privacy concerns with some politicians, or perhaps embracing unrelated tax increases on the wealthy to raise money for roads, rails and public transportation.

House Budget Chair John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) said Democrats are working under the “assumption” they’ll pay for at least some of an infrastructure measure, but he dismissed the idea that they could cover the entire cost.

“I think that’s unrealistic, given what everyone assumes the size of this is going to be,” Yarmuth said, noting that talks are ongoing.

Biden and top Democrats say they are committed to bringing Republicans on board for their plan. That bipartisan coordination would ensure the GOP helps carry the bill and sell it with the public.

But many senior Democrats are skeptical after such fierce opposition to Biden's coronavirus plan. They don’t trust GOP leaders to be serious in the process, and they're already in discussions about again using the budget reconciliation process to muscle through Biden’s next big bill on a party-line vote, sidestepping the risk of a Republican filibuster.

 

If even Jon Tester, Angus King, and Kentucky's only Democrat, John Yarmuth are sounding straight-up like Republican spending scolds, it's going to be a grim journey ahead for badly needed infrastructure spending, even if things do go to budget reconciliation and around the GOP roadblock.

Don't expect much from this as far as becoming law.

Have A Merrick New Year

For all the sturn und drang, 20 Republican senators voted to confirm Merrick Garland as the next Attorney General.

The Senate has confirmed President Joe Biden’s pick for attorney general, Judge Merrick Garland, by a vote of 70-30.

The victory for Garland, 68, came almost five years after his failed nomination to the Supreme Court by President Barack Obama in 2016. The Senate, then under Republican control, denied Garland a hearing or vote.

Garland, who has been a judge on the powerful D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals since 1997, received the support of every Democrat and 20 Republicans. Several potential GOP presidential hopefuls voted against Garland’s confirmation, including Sens. Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Tom Cotton of Arkansas.

Garland encountered little resistance at his confirmation hearing last month, although Republicans pressed him to promise that he would not interfere with an ongoing special counsel investigation into the origins of the FBI probe of alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Garland said he saw no reason to disturb former Attorney General William Barr’s appointment of longtime federal prosecutor John Durham to oversee that review, but the nominee declined to explicitly commit to allowing Durham to complete his work. Republicans also urged Garland to ensure no political intervention in an ongoing inquiry that the U.S. attorney in Delaware is conducting into the tax and business affairs of Biden’s son, Hunter.

While Republicans were generally friendly to Garland at his hearing and insisted their resistance to his confirmation to the Supreme Court was based on concerns unrelated to him personally, some later indicated that he had been too vague and evasive in his answers.

On immigration policy, for instance, Garland was essentially mum. He said he wasn’t familiar with questions about whether illegal border-crossing should remain a crime, even though it was an issue debated at some length during last year’s Democratic presidential primary.

Despite some GOP skepticism, Garland won support from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and the Judiciary Committee's top Republican, Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley.

 

Yep. Even Mitch voted for him after denying even a vote for his Supreme Court nomination.  After all, Garland will only stick around for several years, not a lifetime on SCOTUS. Mitch got his win. He can afford to give Garland the silver medal here, just to remind everyone who's really in charge of Washington right now as long as the filibuster remains.

 

The Greene Bad Deal

House Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene, leader of the Q-Nutjob Caucus of the GOP, keeps calling for votes to adjourn the House for the day and doing it on a near daily basis in order to purely disrupt the process of Nancy Pelosi and the Dems doing the business of the people. 

It was cute the first few times when she kept constantly bringing up resolutions to impeach Joe Biden, but now her Republican colleagues are getting sick and tired of the motions since Greene has been kicked off all committee assignments for, you know, being a racist conspiracy theory terrorist white supremacist seditionist and essentially has nothing to do but to cast votes, and they're increasingly voting against her to make the point she needs to shut the hell up and go away.

 

Forty House Republicans on Wednesday voted against Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s latest motion to adjourn, yet another sign her party is growing increasingly frustrated with the Georgia Republican’s procedural delay tactics.

That figure was more than double the 18 Republicans who voted against her motion last week to end House business for the day.

Some of those Republicans who have bucked Greene and GOP leaders have correctly predicted that the number of “no” votes will only grow as Greene continues to force more of these votes.

They’ve complained that these unexpected votes, which do not appear on the House schedule, have disrupted constituent meetings and congressional hearings and have no purpose other than gumming up the floor.

“I’m just tired of it. We’re doing this every day, and there’s no point. So I’m just done playing,” Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), a Greene critic, told The Hill last week.

Like the other futile Greene votes, Wednesday’s motion to adjourn failed, by a roll call of 149-235.

But most Republicans — nearly 150 on this vote — still stuck with Greene, who began deploying these procedural tactics after Democrats voted last month to strip her of her two committee assignments over offensive social media posts.

Greene on Wednesday said she was trying to stop Congress from passing President Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package, a “massive woke progressive Democrat wish list.” And she issued a warning that Republicans who crossed her would be seen as siding with the Democratic stimulus.

"We should do everything to stop it. Pay attention if Rs vote to adjourn. Or with the Dems,” Greene tweeted. 

At this point, Greene only exists in Congress to stop it from doing anything, and threatening her caucus if they don't obey her.

She is the Republican party. And House Rules Committee chair David Cicilline has had enough.

After Greene, a Georgia Republican, tried Wednesday to stall the lower chamber's final vote on President Joe Biden's $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package by forcing a motion to adjourn, Representative David Cicilline (D-R.I.) said he will propose a rule change to ensure it doesn't happen again.

"I'm dead serious," he told reporters.

The rule would mean a member can do a motion to adjourn only if the representative is a member of a committee. Greene was stripped of her committee assignments by House Democrats last month after some of her controversial social media posts resurfaced. In them, she promoted QAnon and other conspiracy theories and advocated violence against Democratic leaders.

"He's trying to come up with a solution for the repeated attempts made by one of his colleagues to go home early from work and disrupt the important work Congress has to do. He plans to discuss this further with leadership and the Rules Committee," said Cicilline's press secretary, Matt Handverger.

Asked about Cicilline's proposal, Greene told Newsweek: "Do you mean Rep. Mussolini? Not only did Democrats unilaterally strip away my committees, now they want to remove any powers I have to represent my district. The Democrats run the House of Hypocrites with tyrannical control."

 

Mussolini! Boy, what a kneeslapper!

Seriously, all this cartoon villain has is outrage. It's all performative nonsense, and she is all the GOP has right now.

Last Call For Look For The Union Label

The House just passed major legislation designed to expand and empower unions, and yes, it got several Republican votes.

With no major labor reform since the 1930s, Democrats are seizing on the opportunity to strengthen workers' rights -- including their ability to unionize.

On Tuesday, the House of Representatives passed the PRO (Protect the Right to Organize) Act, the most pro-worker labor reform in decades, according to the bill’s sponsors, by a vote of 225-206. Though it faces an uphill battle in the 50/50 split Senate, President Joe Biden has said that labor reform is one of his administration’s top priorities.

As a Presidential candidate, Biden stressed that he’d be “the most pro-union president you’ve ever seen.” Last week, while Amazon workers gathered in Alabama to vote to unionize, Biden called it “a vitally important choice.”

"As America grapples with the deadly pandemic, the economic crisis and the reckoning on race — what it reveals is the deep disparities that still exist in our country,” Biden said on Twitter. “I urge Congress to send [the PRO Act] to my desk so we can summon a new wave of worker power and create an economy that works for everyone.”

The PRO Act would strengthen workers’ right to strike for better wages and working conditions, strengthen safeguards to ensure that workers can hold fair union elections, and allow the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to impose fines against bosses who violate workers’ rights.

The House passed a version of the bill last year, but it was dead on arrival in the Republican-controlled Senate. This time, Republicans are all but certain to filibuster the legislation that many major business groups oppose. The Chamber of Commerce says it would “destabilize America’s workplaces and impose a long list of dangerous changes to labor law.”

The PRO Act will never survive the filibuster, but the point is to bury the lie that Republicans are the party of the "working class" or even the white working class by making Senate Republicans vote to kill the strongest labor union laws since the New Deal.

Ideally of course it's supposed to make Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema flip on getting rid of the filibuster, too.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

The terrorist attack on the US Capitol on January 6th was just that: a terrorist attack. The Justice Department under Joe Biden is treating it as such, with the gravity of accusing white supremacist domestic terrorist militia Oath Keepers and founder Stewart Rhodes of directing an attempted insurrection to slaughter Congress in order to install Donald Trump into power.

U.S. prosecutors alleged Monday that Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes was in direct contact before, during and immediately after the Jan. 6 Capitol breach with members since charged with plotting to prevent Congress from confirming the results of the 2020 presidential election.

In a late-night court filing, prosecutors alleged that Rhodes directed the right-wing anti-government group to rally during the riot to the southeast steps of the Capitol, after which several members forcibly entered the east side of the building.

Prosecutors said they had recovered a chat called “DC OP: Jan 6 21” on the encrypted Signal messaging app that “shows that individuals, including those alleged to have conspired with [others], were actively planning to use force and violence.”

Prosecutors said chat participants included Rhodes — identified only as “Person One” in the filing but whom prosecutors named in earlier court papers — and two charged Oath Keepers members: Jessica Watkins, 38, an Ohio leader, and Kelly Meggs, 52, of Florida.

U.S. authorities have charged Watkins, Meggs and eight other people who appear to be members or associates of the Oath Keepers, alleging a wider conspiracy to obstruct Congress amid rioting that led to five deaths and assaults on about 140 police officers. Charges have been brought against more than 300 defendants, but prosecutors led by the U.S. attorney’s office for Washington have not publicly charged anyone other than alleged rioters.

In the court filing, prosecutors said Rhodes, Watkins, Meggs and “regional Oath Keeper leaders from multiple states across the country” discussed plans in the chat for members and affiliates to come to Washington for events on Jan. 5 and 6 to “provide security to speakers and VIPs.”

Prosecutors said they found “no discussion of forcibly entering the Capitol until January 6.”

But they said the chat messages, combined with Rhodes’s previous statements, “all show that the co-conspirators joined together to stop Congress’s certification of the Electoral College vote, and they were prepared to use violence, if necessary, to effect this purpose.

Who knows if they will be able to get convictions, but god I hope these assholes go to prison for a long damn time.

Retribution Execution, Con't

State GOP party machines are purging the insufficiently loyal to their golden calf Trump, as Idaho GOP lawmakers are set to run Republican Attorney General Lawrence Wasden out of Boise on a rail and claim the powers -- and funding -- of his office for themselves.

When the Texas attorney general sued to invalidate Joe Biden’s presidential victory in some states despite no evidence of widespread fraud, many said it had no chance.

But among Republicans, particularly in ultra-conservative Idaho, it was a fealty test to Donald Trump, and nearly every top-level Republican in Idaho indicated their support. The exception? Attorney General Lawrence Wasden, who declined to join 17 other GOP attorneys general in the legal action in December. He cited his respect for states rights and said he wouldn’t appreciate others meddling in Idaho elections.

It was the last straw for a Republican-dominated Legislature long frustrated by Wasden. Now, lawmakers are trying to significantly defund his office by removing the attorney general as the primary defender of state agencies. If the effort succeeds, opponents say, it would essentially create a slush fund for political allies and Republican lawyers, costing the state millions of dollars in legal fees and possibly more if it loses in court.

It’s another example of the GOP turning on its own elected officials deemed not sufficiently pro-Trump or who are seen as straying from conservative orthodoxy.

In Georgia, the Legislature is considering election legislation that could restrict the role of the GOP secretary of state, who angered many Republicans by certifying Biden’s win. And Republican lawmakers in states like Ohio and Idaho have tried to blunt the emergency power of a GOP governor over COVID-19 restrictions.

But the conservative anger at Wasden had been building before Trump and the pandemic.

“What strikes me is that Wasden seems less partisan in his actions than what we see from other state attorneys general,” said Jaclyn Kettler, a Boise State University political scientist. “It can be a challenge if you’re not perceived as a strong party player.”

Wasden, who was elected Idaho’s top lawyer in 2003, has called some legislation from conservative lawmakers unconstitutional. The state has paid over $3 million in legal fees since 1995 — some of it after ignoring his advice and losing court challenges.

He warned that a proposed fetal pain abortion law would likely be found unconstitutional 2011. Lawmakers passed it anyway and lost a lawsuit in 2013, forcing the state to pay out $137,000.

Last year, Wasden said a law preventing transgender people from changing the gender on their birth certificates wouldn’t hold up. Lawmakers still pushed forward, and a few months later, a judge rejected it.

He’s also angered Republicans by defending state-owned land and a constitutional mandate to maximize profit from logging, grazing and mining leases on that land to benefit schoolchildren. That can mean higher prices for those industries in mostly rural Idaho.

Legislation that passed the House on Monday would prevent Wasden from representing Idaho’s interest in state lands. Another bill allows agencies to hire private attorneys.

A third bill would prevent Wasden from investigating price gouging at the gas pump. It follows a $1.5 million settlement he reached with gas retailers in November after determining they gouged customers early in the pandemic.

The House also rejected Wasden’s $28 million budget request last week, so it will likely be cut before another vote.

Wasden, who is serving his fifth term, declined to comment on the legislation.

 

Republicans would rather destroy a member of their own party and the office they hold than be seen as insufficiently loyal to the false god they worship. 

They are all cultists, and dangerous ones at that.

StupidiNews!

• House Democrats are expected to vote today on and pass the Senate version of the American Rescue Plan and get it to President Biden's desk to be signed into law this week.
• GOP Sen. Marco Rubio is leading a bipartisan effort to make Daylights Savings Time permanent, avoiding clock changes and making the time from March through November the default.
• The United Nations Security Council is considering various measures against Myanmar's military junta as diplomats continue talks over what action the global community should take.
• White House picks for the Federal Trade Commission and National Council of Economic Advisors, are being seen as a strong signal to expand antitrust actions against Google, Amazon and Facebook.
• The COVID-19 pandemic cut US traffic congestion by 73% in 2020, Americans spent on average the equivalent of three entire days less in the car last year.

Last Call For Fleeing The Shinking Ship, Con't

With Missouri Sen. Roy Blount's announcement this week, five Republican senators have now announced their retirement ahead of 2022 contests, and that means Democrats have the opportunity to pick them off as votes who no longer need to fear Republican primary cultists, and to take those seats in 20 months.

This is not the way Republicans wanted to begin the year.

Missouri’s Roy Blunt on Monday became the fifth Republican senator to announce he will not seek reelection, a retirement wave that portends an ugly campaign season next year and gives Democrats fresh hope in preserving their razor-thin Senate majority.

History suggests Republicans are still well-positioned to reclaim at least one chamber of Congress next year. But officials in both parties agree that the surge of GOP departures will make the Republicans’ challenge more difficult in the Senate.

“Any time you lose an incumbent, it’s bad news,” said Republican strategist Rick Tyler, who briefly worked for failed Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin nearly a decade ago. “Missouri’s not necessarily a safe state for Republicans. Democrats have won there.”

The 71-year-old Blunt’s exit is a reminder of how the nation’s politics have shifted since the rise of Donald Trump. Blunt and his retiring GOP colleagues from Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Alabama represent an old guard who fought for conservative policies but sometimes resisted the deeply personal attacks and uneven governance that dominated the Trump era.

Their departures will leave a void likely to be filled by a new generation of Republicans more willing to embrace Trumpism — or by Democrats.

Several Missouri Republicans are expected to seek the nomination to replace Blunt, but none will be more divisive than former Gov. Eric Greitens, who resigned in 2018 amid the fallout of a sex scandal and ethics investigation. Missouri’s Republican base has since rallied behind him, believing he was unfairly prosecuted.

Greitens was considering running for the GOP nomination even before Blunt’s announcement. He is expected to announce his candidacy as soon as Tuesday morning.

Two leading Missouri Democrats, former Sen. Claire McCaskill and 2016 Senate candidate Jason Kander, both said they would not run for the open seat.

 

Greitens in, McCaskill out. Should be a hell of a fight, but can Democrats convince people to vote for them instead of even worse Republicans?

GOP Going After Gupta

Having collected Neera Tanden as a trophy, Republicans are eager to take out yet another Asian-American from Joe Biden's cabinet, this time they are after Deputy Attorney General nominee Vanita Gupta, who like Tanden has been a long-time activist foe of the GOP before joining the Biden team. The difference this time is that Gupta has far more allies.

Two decades ago, a former rodeo cowboy went undercover in Tulia, Texas. He targeted dozens of Black residents and accused them of selling small amounts of cocaine. He lied on the stand. Some defendants received sentences of decades in prison on his word alone.

The Lone Star State’s attorney general named the former rodeo cowboy as lawman of the year. But not long after, a young attorney weeks into her job at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund flew down to Texas, where she launched a campaign to fight for the defendants’ freedom and eventually secured a multimillion-dollar settlement.

On Tuesday, that civil rights lawyer, Vanita Gupta, will appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee for her confirmation hearing for the No. 3 position in the Justice Department. The former Texas attorney general who named that racist informant “lawman of the year,” Republican Sen. John Cornyn, will be on the other side of the dais. And he’ll probably have some questions about law enforcement and race.

It doesn’t take much imagination to see why Gupta, President Joe Biden’s nominee for associate attorney general, is drawing the ire of some Republican senators. Biden’s nominees for attorney general and deputy attorney general ― Merrick Garland and Lisa Monaco, respectively ― are both white and have spent their careers predominately on the bench and in law enforcement. Gupta, the daughter of immigrants from India, built her career as a civil rights advocate, the type of background that has doomed Justice Department nominees as recently as 2014.

Unsurprisingly, some GOP senators have signaled that they plan to attack and oppose Gupta. They’ll claim it’s because they “back the blue.” The only problem? “The blue” backs Gupta.

Policing leaders, as HuffPost first reported last month, have pushed back on the baseless “law and order”-style attacks that a D.C. conservative group launched against Gupta. Her nomination is supported by the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, the Major County Sheriffs of America, the Major Cities Chiefs Association, the National Sheriffs’ Association and even the National Fraternal Order of Police, which endorsed Donald Trump twice.

Gupta has received even more support from top law enforcement officials in recent days. In a letter obtained by HuffPost, Democratic attorneys general from 22 states wrote that Gupta was “guided by a commitment to public safety,” had “worked to build partnerships across the political spectrum,” and “has a long history of working with law enforcement agencies, elected leaders, correctional officials, and advocates from many different viewpoints to build support for policies that will make our criminal justice system more just.” They also wrote that Gupta was a “smart, honest lawyer who would serve the Attorney General and the U.S. government with shared focus and mission: equal justice under the law.”

 

It will be far harder to sink Gupta because unlike Tanden, she hasn't been going after Democratic Blue Dogs like Joe Manchin, who was more than happy to personally destroy her out of spite (and Tanden going after Manchin's daughter, a former drugmaker CEO who was responsible for jacking up the price of EpiPens.)

 

We'll see how ugly this gets, but odds are very good that Gupta has 50 votes and will be confirmed like her soon-to-be boss, Merrick Garland.

 

Where's My Forty Acres And A Mule, Con't

Biden's American Rescue Plan contains billions for aid to Black, Latino, Asian and Indigenous farmers, who have been utterly crushed by the Trump Depression and by the Great Recession before that...and by American history before that.

A little-known element of President Biden’s massive stimulus relief package would pay billions of dollars to disadvantaged farmers — benefiting Black farmers in a way that some experts say no legislation has since the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Of the $10.4 billion in the American Rescue Plan that will support agriculture, approximately half would go to disadvantaged farmers, according to estimates from the Farm Bureau, an industry organization. About a quarter of disadvantaged farmers are Black. The money would provide debt relief as well as grants, training, education and other forms of assistance aimed at acquiring land.

While it’s a fraction of the $1.9 trillion bill that passed in the Senate on Saturday, advocates say it still represents a step toward righting a wrong after a century of mistreatment of Black farmers by the government and others. Some say it is a form of reparations for African Americans who have suffered a long history of racial oppression.

“This is the most significant piece of legislation with respect to the arc of Black land ownership in this country,” said Tracy Lloyd McCurty, executive director of the Black Belt Justice Center, which provides legal representation to Black farmers.

 

Historically, Black farmers have all been rendered extinct by powerful white farm interests.

Black farmers in America have lost more than 12 million acres of farmland over the past century, mostly since the 1950s, a result of what agricultural experts and advocates for Black farmers say is a combination of systemic racism, biased government policy, and social and business practices that have denied African Americans equitable access to markets.

Discrimination started a century ago with a series of federal Homestead Acts that offered mainly White settlers deeply subsidized land. Since then, local U.S. Department of Agriculture offices charged with distributing loans have frequently been found to deny Black farmers access to credit and to ignore or delay loan applications. Many Black farmers don’t have clear title to their land, which makes them ineligible for certain USDA loans to purchase livestock or cover the cost of planting, and they have seldom benefited from subsidy payments or trade mitigation compensation — almost all of President Donald Trump’s $28 billion bailout for those affected by the China trade war went to White farmers.

Today, the average farm operated by an African American is about 100 acres, compared with the national average of about 440 acres, according to the last farm census. The Center for American Progress found that in 2017, the average full-time White farmer brought in $17,190 in farm income, while the average full-time Black farmer made just $2,408.

Many civil rights advocates say the USDA’s own practices have resulted in the loss of land and generational wealth for Black families.

“For generations, socially disadvantaged farmers have struggled to fully succeed due to systemic discrimination and a cycle of debt,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in a statement Saturday. “On top of the economic pain caused by the pandemic, farmers from socially disadvantaged communities are dealing with a disproportionate share of Covid-19 infection rates, hospitalizations, death and economic hurt.”

Of the 3.4 million farmers in the United States today, only 45,000 are Black, according to the USDA, down from 1 million a century ago. Black farmland ownership peaked in 1910 at 16 to 19 million acres, about 14 percent of total agricultural land, according to the Census of Agriculture. A century later, 90 percent of that land had been lost. White farmers now account for 98 percent of the acres, according to USDA data.

 

Read that again.

98% of farmland in America is owned by white farmers.

Ninety-eight percent.

Last Call For Vaccination Nation, Con't

CDC head Dr. Rochelle Walensky offered new COVID-19 agency guidance on Monday for small gatherings of fully-vaccinated people, saying that masks should still be considered a precaution even if you are vaccinated and are around others who are vaccinated as well.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday issued long-awaited advice to Americans fully vaccinated against Covid-19, freeing them to take some liberties that the unvaccinated should not, including gathering indoors in small groups without precautions while still adhering to masking and distancing in public spaces.

The agency offered good news to grandparents who have refrained from seeing children and grandchildren for the past year, saying that vaccinated people may visit indoors with unvaccinated people from a single household so long as no one among the unvaccinated is at risk for severe disease if infected with the coronavirus.

In practice, that means fully vaccinated grandparents may visit unvaccinated healthy adult children and healthy grandchildren of the same household without masks or physical distancing. But the visit should be local — the agency still does not recommend travel for any American, vaccinated or not.

The agency’s recommendations arrived as state officials move to reopen businesses and schools amid a drop in virus cases and deaths. Federal health officials repeatedly have warned against loosening restrictions too quickly, including lifting mask mandates, fearing that the moves may set the stage for a fourth surge of infections and deaths. According to a New York Times database, the seven-day average of new cases was more than 58,700, as of Sunday, a level that remains near the peaks reported last summer.

“With more and more people getting vaccinated, each day we are starting to turn a corner, and as more Americans are vaccinated, a growing body of evidence now tells us that there are some activities that fully vaccinated people can resume at low risk to themselves,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the C.D.C. director, said at a White House news conference on Monday.

But, she added, “While we work to quickly vaccinate people more and more each day, we have to see this through.”

The new advice is couched in caveats and leaves room for amendments as new data become available. The guidance is a “first step,” Dr. Walensky said. “It is not our final destination.”

The agency did not rule out the possibility that fully vaccinated individuals might develop asymptomatic infections and spread the virus inadvertently to others, and urged those who are vaccinated to continue practicing certain precautions.

 

In other words, even if the vaccine is fully rolled out to everyone tomorrow, the reality is that masks will still be necessary for some. And with the fact that a third of Americans are still refusing the vaccine, it may be a long time before we return to any semblance of normality. 

Things are getting better, but we're still seeing 50,000+ cases per week, back where we were during the July 4th spike. We have a long road to go still, but now we have a path to get there.

That simply wasn't possibly under Trump. Never forget that.

Getting Busted On The Filibuster

House Democratic Majority Whip Jim Clyburn is straight-up calling out Dem Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, saying they will be responsible for the failure of the For The People voting rights act to pass the Senate if they allow the filibuster to remain and Republicans to kill it.

One of the most powerful Democrats in Washington has issued a frank warning to members of his own party, saying they need to find a way to pass major voting rights legislation or they will lose control of Congress.

The comments from Jim Clyburn, the House majority whip, came days after the House of Representatives approved a sweeping voting rights bill that would enact some of the most dramatic expansions of the right to vote since the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Even though Democrats also control the US Senate, the bill is unlikely to pass the chamber because of a procedural rule, the filibuster, that requires 60 votes to advance legislation.

In an interview with the Guardian this week, Clyburn called out two moderate Democratic senators, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, who have opposed getting rid of the filibuster. Republicans across the country are advancing sweeping measures to curtail voting rights and letting expansive voting rights legislation die would harm Democrats, Clyburn said.

“There’s no way under the sun that in 2021 that we are going to allow the filibuster to be used to deny voting rights. That just ain’t gonna happen. That would be catastrophic,” he said. “If Manchin and Sinema enjoy being in the majority, they had better figure out a way to get around the filibuster when it comes to voting and civil rights.”

Clyburn issued that warning ahead of the 56th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, the day in 1965 when law enforcement officers brutally beat voting rights activists in Selma, Alabama.

Clyburn and other House Democrats have been hoping the early days of Joe Biden’s administration will be marked by passage of a bill named after the late congressman John Lewis of Georgia, a civil rights hero who was nearly killed on Bloody Sunday. That measure would restore a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, gutted by the supreme court in 2013, that required places with a history of voting discrimination to get election changes cleared by the federal government before they took effect.

“Here we are talking about the Voting Rights Act he worked so hard for and that’s named in his honor and they’re going to filibuster it to death? That ain’t gonna happen,” Clyburn said.

For his part, Joe Manchin seems to think the For The People Act can somehow be passed through budget reconciliation. 

Manchin (D-W.Va.) has previously supported efforts to require senators to filibuster by talking on the chamber floor in order to hold up a bill, an idea he raised on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“If you want to make it a little bit more painful, make him stand there and talk,” Manchin said. “I'm willing to look at any way we can, but I'm not willing to take away the involvement of the minority.”

However, Manchin did not rule out using the budget reconciliation process to pass a voting rights bill with a simple majority, keeping the door open to a potential workaround for Democrats to push through a voting overhaul while preserving the filibuster. The House on Wednesday narrowly passed a sweeping package of election-related reforms, a proposal they've given the symbolically important designation of H.R. 1.

It's not clear how Manchin envisioned that H.R. 1 could potentially be passed through reconciliation, as it is not budget-related, and Democrats' proposed minimum wage increase was tripped up by the process' strict rules and left on the cutting-room floor.

But Manchin said Democrats need to meaningfully engage with Republicans before going down that path, which they utilized late last week to pass a $1.9 trillion Covid relief package without a single GOP Senate vote.

“I'm not willing to go into reconciliation until we at least get bipartisanship or get working together or allow the Senate to do its job,” Manchin said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

I don't know what Manchin is on, but there's not going to be a single Republican senator to vote for expanding voting rights in any fashion.  He's out of his damn mind. He also thinks he'll get 60 votes on a major new infrastructure bill -- as long as Joe Biden raises trillions in taxes to pay for it -- and that Republicans will agree to it.

And as for Sinema, well, who knows?

Cuomo's #MeToo Moment, Con't

NY Dem Gov. Andrew Cuomo says there's "no way" he will resign with "unproven" multiple sexual harassment allegations, saying calls for his resignation from state lawmakers are "undemocratic".

In a potentially crippling defection in Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s efforts to maintain control amid a sexual harassment scandal, the powerful Democratic leader of the New York State Senate declared on Sunday that the governor should resign “for the good of the state.”

The stinging rebuke from the Senate leader, Andrea Stewart-Cousins — along with a similar sentiment from the Assembly speaker, Carl E. Heastie, who questioned the “governor’s ability to continue to lead this state” — suggested that Mr. Cuomo, a third-term Democrat, had lost his party’s support in the State Capitol, and cast doubt on his ability to withstand the political fallout.

Once hailed as a pandemic hero and potential presidential contender, the governor has seen his political future spiral downward over eight perilous days in the wake of a New York Times report about Charlotte Bennett, a former aide to Mr. Cuomo.

In a series of interviews with The Times, Ms. Bennett, 25, said that Mr. Cuomo, 63, had asked her invasive personal questions last spring about her sex life, including whether she had slept with older men, and whether she thought age made a difference in relationships.

Ms. Bennett is one of five women who have come forward in recent days with allegations of sexual harassment or inappropriate behavior against Mr. Cuomo, with one predating his tenure as governor.

Mr. Cuomo, however, was adamantly resisting calls for his resignation, arguing he was elected by the people, not “by politicians.”

“I’m not going to resign because of allegations,” the governor said, calling the notion “anti-democratic,” and a violation of the due process clause of the Constitution. “There is no way I resign.”

The governor’s statements on Sunday afternoon came not long after Ms. Stewart-Cousins had informed Mr. Cuomo in a phone call that she was about to call for him to step down, according to a person with knowledge of the conversation; the governor then quickly convened his own news conference to pre-empt her announcement.

He told reporters that his remarks were directed at “some legislators who suggest that I resign.”

Undeterred, Ms. Stewart-Cousins fired back, releasing her statement not long after Mr. Cuomo concluded his news conference.

“We need to govern without daily distraction,” said Ms. Stewart-Cousins, citing the allegations of sexual harassment and a “toxic work environment,” and his handling of the state’s nursing homes during the pandemic. “Governor Cuomo must resign.”

Ms. Stewart-Cousins is the most prominent New York State official to call for Mr. Cuomo’s resignation, and her statement carries significance: Her Senate would be the jury for any impeachment trial of the governor, if such an action were passed by the Assembly.

It also carries symbolic weight: In 2008, when Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned during a prostitution scandal, his decision was partially precipitated by a loss of support from Albany’s legislative leaders.

Mr. Heastie did not call for Mr. Cuomo to resign, but suggested that it was time for him “to seriously consider whether he can effectively meet the needs of the people of New York.”

 

I don't think he can effectively meet the needs of anyone other than Andrew Cuomo.

 

Donald Trump decided to tough it out and he stayed in power after dozens of harassment claims, and then voters removed him. I'd hope New York voters would do the same, but frankly I think that should it become clear Cuomo will be impeached and removed, he'll step down well before an election.

We'll see what happens, but every day Cuomo stays in office is another day it becomes increasingly impossible to punish Republicans for their wrongdoing.

StupidiNews!

• French lawmaker and billionaire Olivier Dassault has died in a helicopter crash at age 69, the newspaper and aerospace group owner's death was mourned as "a great loss" by President Macron.
• Several powerful explosions rocked a military camp in the city of Bata in Equatorial Guinea according to government news sources, officials say it may be a possible armory explosion.
• Trade unions in Myanmar are calling for a "total strike" as a party member of the deposed National League for Democracy party died in military junta custody over the weekend.
• A Saudi oil site was attacked early Monday, sending Brent Sea Crude oil prices above $70 and to their highest level since 2018.
• Microsoft is warning organizations to patch vulnerabilities in the email servers, saying that as many as 30,000 corporate domains could already be compromised by hackers.
  

Last Call For America Goes Viral, Con't

Nearly 70% of Americans approve of President Joe Biden's handling of COVID-19 so far in a new ABC News poll as the administration is rolling out tens of millions of vaccine doses per week now, but Americans are split on two specific topics: reopening schools to in-class learning, and the difficulty of getting the vaccine for those who want it.

A new ABC News/Ipsos poll finds that even as American concern about the coronavirus wanes, most believe public health restrictions, like mask mandates or limits on public gatherings, are being loosened too quickly. However, opinions on re-opening schools and businesses are more mixed, reflecting the public’s desire to return to a semblance of normalcy. As the country navigates the hoped-for end of the pandemic, two-thirds of the American public continue to approve of the way Joe Biden is handling the coronavirus response. 

Two-thirds (68%) of Americans approve of Biden’s handling of the pandemic.
Support for Biden breaks clearly along partisan lines with virtually all Democrats (98%) approving compared to only a third (35%) of Republicans. However, that compares favorably to the last ABC/Ipsos poll asking about former President Trump’s handling of the pandemic when 79% Republicans approved compared to only 4% of Democrats.

Concern about being infected with the coronavirus is down from last fall. However, most Americans believe public health restrictions are being lifted too quickly, reflecting continued support for measures to limit the pandemic. 

Just under three-quarters (72%) of Americans are very or somewhat concerned about being infected with the coronavirus, down from 78% in October and 89% in April of 2020. 

A majority of Americans say that mask mandates (56%) and restrictions on public gatherings (50%) are being loosened too quickly. The remainder are split roughly equally between believing these rules are being relaxed at the right pace or too slowly. 

Attitudes on re-opening schools and businesses are more split with roughly a third on each believing it is happening too quickly, at the right pace, or too slowly. 

Over a quarter of American adults (28%) report receiving at least one dose of the vaccine. Another 15% have tried to schedule an appointment but have not been able to receive a shot yet. 

Among those who have or have tried to get the vaccine, about half (48%) describe the process of finding and registering for the vaccine appointment to be very or somewhat difficult.

 

Republicans politicizing the pandemic from day one has greatly harmed the country, hurt students, teachers, business owners, workers, you name it. I still don't expect the majority of Republicans to admit to getting the vaccine, ever.

But they will. Like Trump, they'll do it, and never tell anyone, and then lie about it.