Vox Sentences - 10 senators make a deal

10 moderate senators reach a trillion-dollar compromise on infrastructure; vaccines and climate change are on the docket at the annual G7 summit.

Tonight's Sentences was written by Gregory Svirnovskiy.

Ten senators reach a bipartisan infrastructure deal

Alex Wong/Getty Images

• A group of five Democratic and five Republican senators say they have reached an agreement on an alternative infrastructure deal to President Joe Biden’s American Jobs Plan. It’s fully paid for, and would require no new tax increase. [CNBC / Jacob Pramuk]

• The group of senators is composed of Democrats Kyrsten Sinema, Joe Manchin, Jeanne Shaheen, Mark Warner, and John Tester. Republicans Mitt Romney, Rob Portman, Lisa Murkowski, Bill Cassidy, and Susan Collins round out the list. [WSJ / Andrew Duehren and Kristina Peterson]

• The package would spend $1.2 trillion over eight years, and is complete with $579 billion in new spending, just over half of the new money in Biden’s initial proposal. But it would only focus on traditional definitions of infrastructure and has its share of skeptics. [CNN / Ryan Nobles] 

   

• Progressive Democrats argue the new money in the bipartisan proposal is inadequate and worry that if the compromise package were to pass, it would sap the moderate will to move on a larger package later in the year, sacrificing central Democrat priorities. [The Hill / Alexander Bolton]

   

• Climate change is one of them. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) tweeted his concern that earth-saving measures would be left out of a streamlined infrastructure package: “We need a big climate bill — and fast — to stay in nature’s 1.5 degrees C safe zone,” he tweeted Thursday. [Twitter / Sheldon Whitehouse]

The G7 summit begins Friday

• The annual G7 summit kicked off Friday in Cornwall, England, with leaders from some of the world's largest economies gathering to discuss China, climate change, and an equitable Covid-19 recovery plan for the world. [Axios / Erin Doherty] 
  
  

• Perhaps the biggest news to emerge so far is a promise on vaccines. The G7 leaders are expected to pledge to donate 1 billion Covid vaccines to lower-income countries through the United Nations’ Covax program, with the United States contributing 500 million of those doses. [Al Jazeera]
  
  

• The summit is Biden’s first stop on a week-long tour of Europe, his first foreign trip as president. When the summit was last held two years ago, the rest of the G7 was dealing with President Trump, who operated with an isolationist mandate. Biden’s message: America is back. [CNN / Nada Bashir and Nadine Schmidt] 
  
  

• But European allies are worried Biden could be replaced by Trump or someone like him as soon as the next election cycle, and cite "mixed signals" from Biden's foreign policy. [Reuters / Andrea Shalal, Humeyra Pamuk, and Robin Emmott]
  
  

• And some advocacy groups are decrying the G7’s push for 1 billion vaccine donations as a “drop in the ocean,” saying the countries should be donating up to 11 billion doses to the world’s neediest populations and following Biden's lead in supporting an intellectual waiver for Covid-19 inoculations. [Al Jazeera]

President Trump’s Justice Department accessed the personal data of congressional Democrats while looking to find the sources of leaks at the beginning of his administration. [Washington Post / Matt Zapotosky and Karoun Demirjian]

• Calling himself the victim of a “deep-state conspiracy,” outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is signaling what his approach to politics will be once he is officially out of office and back in the Knesset opposition. [Associated Press / Josef Federman]

   

• Iran’s general election is set for June 18. Here are the key issues. [Al Jazeera / Saeid Golkar]
  

• As votes in Peru's presidential election continue to be counted, socialist teacher Pedro Castillo is pulling further ahead of opponent Keiko Fujimori. [Reuters]

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