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Senate Democrats are finally poised to take majority control of their committees, but with the filibuster still decidedly un-nuked and Joe Manchin still very much Joe Manchin, there’s only so much they’ll be able to accomplish unless something changes.
- Senate Obstruction Leader Mitch McConnell backed down from his absurd demand that the Senate organizing resolution include language that would prevent Democrats from abolishing the filibuster, after Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) both publicly reaffirmed they’d never kill it. The good news: Democrats didn’t make any concessions here—Manchin and Sinema just reiterated the garbage positions they already held. The bad news: Manchin and Sinema (Sanchin? Minchema?) evidently haven’t begun to rethink that stance, even after McConnell brought filibuster abuse to new lows in preventing Democrats from taking control of the Senate.
- It’s not impossible that they’ll change their minds, if and when Republicans use the 60-vote threshold to block every item on President Biden’s agenda. Sen. John Tester (D-MT), who’s currently in favor of keeping the filibuster, has stated what we warmly invite Jyrsten Sinechin (hmm, nope) to copy and paste into their own press releases: “I feel pretty damn strongly, but I will also tell you this: I am here to get things done. If all that happens is filibuster after filibuster, roadblock after roadblock, then my opinion may change.” Joe Biden expressed a similar view during the campaign last year, with a solid SAT word: “I think it’s going to depend on how obstreperous they become.”
- Spoiler: They will obstreperous us all into the sun. Democrats are already preparing to circumvent the filibuster on the few bills they can: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told senators on Tuesday that they could vote next week on using budget reconciliation to pass Biden’s $1.9 trillion relief package, paving the way for it to pass with a simple majority. Democratic leaders have also reintroduced legislation to raise the minimum wage to $15 by 2025 (which is also in the stimulus package, but just in case), and could pass that with reconciliation, too.
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But on most urgent issues like climate change, voting reforms, and civil rights expansions, reconciliation alone can’t save us.
- Biden can make a certain amount of headway on his climate change agenda through executive action, and plans to kick that off on Wednesday with orders that include the first step in a ban on new oil and gas leases on federal land. Schumer thinks Democrats could pass some climate plans through reconciliation, and has called on Biden to declare a climate emergency, which would give the administration more flexibility to take action without Congress signing off. But that move would be met with court challenges (like Trump’s border wall, only important, and Republican judges don’t like him), and also isn’t a substitute for a functional legislative branch. As troubling new research on the acceleration of global ice loss drives home, we can’t afford to half-ass this one.
- With or without the filibuster, Joe Manchin will be in a unique position to define the scope of Biden’s climate response, as chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Manchin represents the heart of coal country and has a vested interest in West Virginia’s fossil fuel industry, and while he’s supportive of climate policies that create jobs in West Virginia, he might be an obstacle to a major piece of Biden’s climate plan requiring congressional approval: A set of requirements on power plants to eliminate carbon emissions by 2035. Introducing Crooked Media’s new fund to bribe Joe Manchin to let Democrats save the planet: Get Manch or Die Frying.
Executive actions and reconciliation bills can get some big things done, but for the kinds of sweeping overhauls the Biden administration has rightly promised to stave off disaster, reinforce our democracy, and improve peoples’ lives, Democrats will need to do a little steamrolling. The best time to nuke the filibuster was probably last week; the next-best time is as soon as humanly possible.
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On today's What A Day (the podcast), Akilah and Gideon cover the effectiveness of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines against the new coronavirus strains, and Gov. Gavin Newsom's (D-CA) buckwild decision to lift stay-at-home orders in California. Then they talk through some alarming new climate change news, and Joe Biden's early efforts to confront the crisis. Check out to "Life With The Fast Strains," wherever you get your pods →
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Today in What The Fuck Happened on January 6: Maj. Gen. William Walker, the commander of the DC National Guard, said the Pentagon restricted his authority ahead of the attack on the Capitol. Local commanders usually have the power to take military action to save lives or prevent major property damage in urgent situations, but for some mysterious/treasonous reason, the Pentagon stripped Walker of that power ahead of January 6, meaning he couldn’t immediately roll out troops when the Capitol Police chief called him in a panic. Acting Capitol Police chief Yogananda Pittman, meanwhile, told lawmakers on Tuesday that Capitol Police knew what was coming and failed to prevent it: “We knew that militia groups and white supremacists organizations would be attending...We knew that there was a strong potential for violence and that Congress was the target...we did not do enough.” Pittman also confirmed that the Capitol Police Board declined a request for National Guard troops two days before the attack, and after the Capitol was breached, delayed for more than an hour before agreeing to call guardsmen in.
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- Mitch McConnell joined nearly all GOP senators in supporting a failed motion to declare Trump’s post-presidency impeachment trial unconstitutional, after personally ensuring the trial wouldn’t begin until after Trump left office. So that’s...a no on voting to convict, then?
- The Senate has confirmed Anthony Blinken as secretary of state. If he has received any of our frantic emails, Blinken’s first order of business will be getting to the bottom of Mike Pompeo’s redacted pizza toppings. #Pizzagate #NotThatPizzagate #TheRealPizzagate
- Joe Biden has upped the administration’s 100-day vaccination goal to 1.5 million shots per day and aims to purchase another 200 million vaccine doses to increase the available supply by 50 percent. Federal allocations of doses to states will increase by about 16 percent next week.
- On his first call with Vladimir Putin, Biden confronted him over the Solarwinds cyber attack, Russian bounties on U.S. troops in Afghanistan, the poisoning of Alexei Navalny, and Moscow’s interference in the 2020 election. Biden then got off the phone and drop-kicked Fox News reporter Peter Doocy.
- Everybody stay calm but Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) was hospitalized on Tuesday evening “out of an abundance of caution” after he reported not feeling well.
- Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-8kun) repeatedly liked Facebook posts and comments advocating for the executions of prominent Democrats in 2018 and 2019. Okey-dokey!
- Major internet outages hit the East Coast on Tuesday, just in case anybody momentarily felt like they had nothing left to lose.
- The Campaign Against Corporate Complicity, a new liberal watchdog group, will track the hiring of Trump’s former top aides so the rest of us can focus on booing.
- Thousands of farmers protesting India’s new agricultural laws drove tractors into New Delhi and clashed with police on Tuesday, in the latest day of ongoing, nationwide protests.
- Uh, Kellyanne Conway allegedly fleeted a topless photo of her teenage daughter. The Campaign Against Corporate Complicity: Sex Crimes Division.
- Twitter has banned the My Pillow guy for amplifying misinformation, like his claim that a story about him having dated Jane Krakowski was somehow humiliating for him.
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Moderna and Pfizer reported that their vaccines are still effective against the new, more contagious coronavirus variants, but slightly less so against the South African strain, which might be better at dodging antibodies in the bloodstream. On Monday, Joe Biden banned travel to the U.S. from South Africa effective Saturday, in addition to reimposing travel bans from European countries. New mutant strains are still being reported: Health officials have announced the first U.S. case of a variant first identified in Brazil, and California reported hundreds of cases of its own homegrown, fast-spreading strain—on the same day Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) lifted the state’s stay-at-home orders. The early news about existing vaccines’ efficacy against the new mutations is overwhelmingly good, and both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines use mRNA technology that can be quickly updated when necessary. Our biggest challenge will still be employing the tools we already have to control the spread in the meantime.
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Joe Biden has ordered the Justice Department to end its contracts with private prisons, as part of a slew of executive actions to promote racial equity.
The Justice Department has rescinded the Trump-era “zero tolerance” immigration rule that resulted in thousands of family separations—a mostly symbolic move, but pretty good as symbols go, and it will still impact the prosecutions of single adults who crossed the border illegally.
Regeneron announced that its antibody drug reduced coronavirus infections by half in people at high risk, suggesting it could be used to temporarily protect against the virus.
Biden is set to reopen ACA marketplaces and reverse Trump-era barriers to joining Medicaid, possibly as soon as Thursday.
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