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Senate Republicans are poised to filibuster the bill to create a bipartisan January 6 commission, even after Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) specifically asked them not to.
- Just three Republicans have come out in in favor of investigating a deadly attack on their own workplace, setting up the first filibuster of the new Congress and suggesting that Republicans might not intend to wield the rule as the unifying, coalition-building mechanism we all thought it was.
- The family of fallen Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick met with a number of GOP senators ahead of the vote on Thursday, urging them to back the independent commission. Evidently nervous that his members might have some sort of human reaction to this, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell reportedly asked certain Republicans to vote against the bill as a “personal favor” to him. A master class in ghoulishness.
- Manchin took one last swing at shaming a radicalized party into putting the country ahead of the midterm elections, saying in a statement, “There is no excuse for any Republican to vote against this commission since Democrats have agreed to everything they asked for.” Asked if he was ready to reform the filibuster given their determination to block it anyway, Manchin lost the plot: “I’m not ready to destroy our government, no.” The next time a bloodthirsty mob storms the Capitol in an attempt to literally destroy our government, let us hope that they remember the intact Senate filibuster, and respectfully withdraw.
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While Republicans graciously demonstrated the futility of making concessions to bad-faith negotiators, bipartisan talks on the American Jobs Plan continued to limp forward.
- As of Wednesday, the White House was reportedly open to extending negotiations past the unofficial Memorial Day deadline, giving Republicans another week or two to put forward a workable compromise before moving forward with a party-line reconciliation vote. On Thursday, Republicans delivered a strong argument for simply calling it a day, introducing a counter-proposal that calls for just $257 billion in new spending—the Thin Watermelon of infrastructure packages.
- The less time Biden spends trying to find common ground with Republicans who’ll turn around and block his agenda anyway, the more time he can spend negotiating with Democrats! More than 150 House Democrats from across the party spectrum have launched an effort to pressure Biden to include an expansion of Medicare—one of his campaign promises—in his infrastructure package. Lawmakers are pushing to lower the eligibility age from 65 to 60, and expand Medicare benefits to cover dental, vision, and hearing.
If Republicans will block an investigation into an attempt to overthrow the government—after effectively neutering the commission anyway, in their accommodated demands—Democrats have no reason to keep going through the motions of bipartisan outreach on anything else. Time to end the filibuster, pass Biden’s agenda, and coup-proof the electoral system before the next mob shows up.
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Speaking of coup-proofing, civil-rights groups and democracy-reform advocates are getting worried that Democrats aren’t quite worried enough. Activists generally feel that Democratic leaders have expressed the right personal commitments to passing election reforms (see: Chuck “failure is not an option” Schumer), but aren’t confident that they have a plan to get through to Joe Manchin, or to create the kind of public pressure campaign that could get through to Joe Manchin. And while President Biden thinks the wave of voter-suppression laws is alarming, a senior White House official told The Atlantic that the administration thinks the best way to combat GOP attacks on democracy is to hold onto the House and Senate in 2022, and that the best way to do that is to pass the agenda Biden ran on, rather than sounding alarms or putting Joe Manchin in a headlock. With all due respect, why the fuck not both? Help keep the pressure on by giving your senators a call: votesaveamerica.com/forthepeople.
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- Authorities are still trying to determine the motive of the San Jose, CA, shooter who killed nine colleagues on Wednesday, but witnesses said he seemed to specifically target his victims. The gunman had a history of domestic violence, as mass shooters very often do, and had been questioned by law enforcement over how much he hated his workplaces.
- Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn have been investigating whether Ukrainian officials tried to interfere in the 2020 election, including using Rudy Giuliani as a disinformation megaphone.
- Facebook will stop removing posts claiming that COVID-19 was man-made, since a very different theory that a natural virus escaped from a lab has become more mainstream.
- Pennsylvania lawmakers have advanced a bill that would require anyone who had a miscarriage or an abortion to pay for a death certificate and fill out an intrusive form, along with two bills restricting abortion. There’s misogynistic cruelty, and then there’s whatever this is.
- While making the case for his jobs plan in Cleveland, OH, Biden pulled out a list of Republicans who have bragged about the latest coronavirus relief package in spite of voting against it. Get their asses, Joseph.
- The CDC has given Celebrity Cruises permission to start cruising from Florida in June, but Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) is threatening to block the company from resuming service if it complies with CDC recommendations and requires passengers to be vaccinated.
- Amy Cooper, the Central Park Karen who will not let this story to die, has sued her former employer for...racial and gender discrimination. The lawsuit alleges that Cooper was “characterized as a privileged white female ‘Karen’” because of the company’s public statements, one of the Karen-est claims in U.S. legal history.
- Amazon warehouse workers will now have access to cramped, dystopian Sanity Boxes, in lieu of higher wages or better working conditions.
- Ohio has announced its first Vax-a-Million lottery winner, whose parents thought she was being pranked.
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Climate activists just landed a series of blows against Big Oil in rapid succession. In the U.S., Chevron shareholders voted in favor of a proposal for the company to cut emissions from the end-use of its fuels, and a small, activist hedge fund won two seats on the board of Exxon Mobil. On Wednesday, a Dutch court ruled that Royal Dutch Shell must slash its carbon emissions by 45 percent by 2030, in line with global climate goals. That’s the first ruling of its kind, and it could pave the way for similar cases to force reductions of fossil fuel production in other countries. It’s a good moment for some urgency: The International Energy Agency said last week that the world needs to stop drilling for fossil fuels immediately to prevent a climate catastrophe.
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California has launched the biggest vaccination incentive lottery yet, with 10 vaxxed residents to win $1.5 million apiece.
Initial unemployment claims fell for a fourth straight week, and are down nearly 60 percent from the week before Biden took office.
Dayton and Detroit have become the latest cities to pass Community Control Over Police Surveillance (CCOPS) laws, which give residents a meaningful say in whether and how local police use surveillance tech.
Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Chris Murphy (D-CT) have introduced a bill that would allow college athletes to unionize. (It doesn’t stand much of a chance in the current Congress, but it marks another shift in the debate over college athletes’ rights.)
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