News
January 12, 2022 – 6:00 pm (ET)
CNN, – January 12, 2022
The House select committee investigating the January 6 riot is asking Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, to voluntarily provide information to the panel, including details about former President Donald Trump’s state of mind during the Capitol attack and in the weeks after, according to a new letter released Wednesday.
Chuck Schumer will bring elections and voting legislation to the Senate floor in the coming days, using existing congressional rules to evade an initial GOP filibuster.
The House will imminently pass a bill containing both sweeping federal elections reform and beefed up Voting Right Act provisions. Because the bill will be sent to the Senate as a “message” from the House, it will not be subject to an initial filibuster by the GOP and will be debated on the floor.
Instead, the Senate will confront its raging debate over the filibuster when Majority Leader Schumer moves to shut down debate.
“The Senate will finally debate voting rights legislation, and then every senator will be faced with a choice of whether or not to pass the legislation to protect our democracy,” Schumer wrote in a memo, obtained by POLITICO, to Senate Democrats.
Schumer’s missive comes amid a torrent of activity among Senate Democrats to pass legislation cracking down on gerrymandering, making campaign finance reforms and creating national standards for early voting. President Joe Biden will attend a special caucus meeting with Senate Democrats Thursday as the party struggles over how and whether to weaken the filibuster to pass elections reform. And senators are furiously lobbying Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) to back off their opposition to weakening the 60-vote requirement.
MSNBC – January 12, 2022
MSNBC,
Associated Press, January 12, 2022 – 3:00 pm (ET)
https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-business-nevada-barack-obama-harry-reid-9a12e3fc2196e36cedcd2cb5b5da01d7
CNN, January 12, 2022 – 10:30 am (ET)
https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/12/politics/biden-voting-rights-legislative-legacy/index.html
Politico, January 12, 2022 – 11:00 am (ET)
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/01/12/mcconnell-successor-three-johns-race-526920
When Mitch McConnell steps down as Senate GOP leader, which won’t happen anytime soon, John is sure to replace him.
The question confronting Senate Republicans now is: Which John?
The decision by Senate Minority Whip John Thune to run for reelection sets up an intricate shuffle among a trio of Republicans named John to succeed McConnell. There’s Thune the South Dakotan, McConnell’s current deputy, as well as former whip John Cornyn of Texas, the two favorites to succeed the GOP leader. Then there’s John Barrasso, the No. 3 Senate GOP leader whom Republicans believe is likely to ascend to the whip job first as Cornyn and Thune compete to succeed McConnell.
“They’re all named John, aren’t they?” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.). “Wow.”
McConnell confirmed Tuesday he’ll seek to remain party leader after this fall’s midterms, no surprise given his goal of surpassing the late Sen. Mike Mansfield’s record for leadership longevity a year from now. Thune’s pursuit of a fourth term, however, has left the Senate GOP newly abuzz over who might take the reins post-McConnell, since political trajectories can change in an instant in the Senate.
MSNBC – January 12, 2022
Former Sen. Harry Reid will lie in state at the U.S. Capitol as colleagues and friends pay tribute to a hardscrabble Democrat who rose from poverty in a dusty Nevada mining town to the most powerful position in the U.S. Senate.
Reid will be honored Wednesday in the Capitol Rotunda during a ceremony closed to the public under COVID-19 protocols. He died last month at 82 after a four-year battle with pancreatic cancer.
The longest-serving Nevadan in Congress and the Senate majority leader alongside two presidents, Reid helmed the chamber during one of its more consequential legislative sessions — securing the economic recovery bill during the Great Recession and President Barack Obama’s landmark health care law.
President Joe Biden called Reid a “great American,” one who “looked at the challenges of the world and believed it was within our capacity to do good, to do right.”
It took a year for Joe Biden to make an irrevocable bet that puts the credibility of his presidency on the line. If his bid now to change Senate rules to pass voting rights legislation fails, he’ll lose more than just the bills he sees as vital to saving democracy. His drained political capital could spell the end of the entire domestic, legislative phase of his administration.
Biden’s speech on the issue Tuesday, delivered amid the symbolism of the civil rights movement in Atlanta, was remarkable for its boldness. The President who ran as a unifier put forward a blunt good versus evil argument, suggesting that opponents to his plan are akin to segregationists.
“The right to vote and have that vote count, it is democracy’s threshold liberty. Without it, nothing is possible. But with it, anything is possible,” Biden said in one of the most important moments of his presidency.
Democrats cannot pass two stalled voting rights bills on their own owing to the opposition of Senate Republicans who won’t even allow them to come up for debate. To evade their obstruction, Biden must find a way to persuade all 50 Democratic senators to at least amend the filibuster — a device that means major legislation effectively needs 60 votes to pass.
Senators on Tuesday demanded clear answers from the Biden administration health officials on the state of the resurging pandemic and the government’s short- and long-term plans for combating it. They mostly got jargon.
In contrast to previous oversight hearings on the Biden administration’s Covid-19 response, Democrats on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee raised sharp questions and complaints about widespread “confusion and frustration” around who should isolate and for how long after a Covid exposure or diagnosis, or where and when to get tested.
“We want the Biden team to take advantage of the opportunity to speak directly to those frustrations and anxieties,” a senior Democratic aide told POLITICO heading into the hearing.
The question: What is current CDC guidance on quarantine and isolation?
What they said: Centers for Disease Control Director Rochelle Walensky spent several minutes walking lawmakers through her agency’s recently-amended guidelines for Covid infections, which critics have called confusing and contradictory,
“If they are exposed and completely boosted, they do not need to stay home, but they should get a test at day five,” Walensky said. “So by five days after your symptoms — if you’re feeling better, if your fever is better, if your cough and sore throat are better, then on day six you can go out, but you have to wear a mask and you have to wear a mask reliably.”
On Tuesday, President Joe Biden took his most aggressive stance on the filibuster yet, stressing his support for a carveout in the Senate’s rules to pass voting rights legislation.
“The next few days, when these bills come to a vote, will mark a turning point in this nation’s history,” Biden said during a speech in Atlanta. “The issue is: Will we choose democracy over autocracy, light over shadow, justice over injustice? I know where I stand.”
While Biden’s strong statement of support for filibuster reform was a notable sign of the president — and his party’s — evolution on the issue, it’s unlikely to change Democrats’ difficult legislative reality.
Early in his presidency, Biden was hesitant to push for an exception to the rules around the filibuster, a mechanism by which a senator can block essentially any legislation unable to receive 60 votes in its favor. But he’s changed his mind in the face of Republican opposition to voting rights legislation, including the Freedom to Vote Act, which Democrats hope to pass this month. With the filibuster intact, the GOP will be able to block that bill, just as they have blocked other Democratic priorities, from legislation to investigate the January 6 insurrection to efforts to bolster unions.
Democrats need every member of their narrow 50-person majority on board to pass a Senate rules change. But Biden’s new embrace of filibuster reforms is not expected to sway moderates like Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), who have been resistant for months. Less than 24 hours before Biden’s speech, Manchin told CNN he didn’t approve of passing any of Democrats’ current reform proposals, which include the carveout Biden advocated for on Tuesday, along party lines.
