Crooked Media - What A Day: Kyrsten dunce

Every last Senate Republican filibustered a motion to even debate legislation to protect American democracy from its slide into the Trumpian abyss, and in lieu of changing the rule that enabled the GOP's obstruction, Democrats have vowed to keep fighting very hard after a quick two-week break.
 

• Here’s a bird’s-eye view of what just happened: The 50 Democratic senators who support some iteration of the For The People Act represent 43 million more Americans than the 50 GOP senators who oppose it, so naturally just 41 Republicans (who represent a mere 21 percent of the country) were needed to block any consideration of the very bill meant to correct that antidemocratic imbalance, which 68 percent of the country supports. Another functional day for the world's greatest deliberative body.
   
• Ahead of the vote on Tuesday, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) announced that he would vote yes to advance S. 1 (and ultimately replace it with his modified version), but did not commit to supporting a change to the rules when Republicans predictably blocked the motion to open debate on the bill. Back in 2011, Manchin cosponsored a measure that would have eliminated the filibuster on motions to proceed to debate, so maybe he’ll take this convenient opportunity to...do that? Maybe? After the Senate takes another vacation?
   
• The legislation would still go nowhere unless Democrats also eliminated the larger filibuster to actually pass it, and Manchin isn’t the only vocal holdout there. On Monday evening, the Washington Post published an incoherent op-ed by Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) on her undiminished affection for the filibuster, which boils down to the core thesis, “the Senate not being able to accomplish the priorities of a majority of voters is good, actually.” This is a nice breakdown of just how messy Sinema’s argument is, if you’re in the market for a bulging forehead vein.

In Sinema’s defense, it can be tough to cobble together a strong rationalization for a position that makes no fucking sense.
 

• As Sen. Raphael Warnock (R-GA) put it on Tuesday, “What could be more hypocritical and cynical than invoking minority rights in the Senate as a pretext for preventing debate about how to preserve minority rights in the society?” While Sinema pretends to fret about what kind of antidemocratic havoc a GOP Senate majority might wreak without the filibuster, Republicans in red states have gone ahead and wreaked that same havoc at the state level—and Senate Democrats can’t even force a debate over stopping it without cobbling together an increasingly unattainable supermajority.
   
• So now what? Democrats plan to negotiate a new bill based on Manchin’s proposed S. 1 compromise, demonstrate once again that there are not 10 Republicans willing to vote for it, and then circle back to filibuster reform. House Democrats also hope to have the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act ready by the August recess. In preparation for a scenario in which no national reforms pass in time for the midterms, the super PAC Priorities USA has pledged $20 million towards challenging voter-suppression laws in court and educating voters about the new restrictions. 

Republicans’ first filibuster of the For The People Act didn’t end the fight for voting rights legislation—it put a spotlight on the broken institutions and antidemocratic forces that make that fight so important. It’s on Democrats to find a way to codify free and fair elections, and it’s on all of us to prepare to haul ass in the event that they fail.

The White House has acknowledged that the country looks unlikely to meet President Biden’s goal of vaccinating 70 percent of the adult population by July 4, but it’s mostly Gen Z that’s slowing us down: 70 percent of Americans over age 27 will be vaccinated by that weekend, according to White House coronavirus czar Jeff Zients. The Biden administration has turned its attention to raising vaccination rates among teens in a race against the worrisome Delta variant that’s on track to become predominant in the U.S. within weeks. The variant already accounts for 20.6 percent of new cases, and it’s begun fueling new upticks in transmission and hospitalizations in several poorly-vaccinated states, particularly in the south.

• Attorney General Merrick Garland said he won’t pursue a broad investigation of the Trump administration’s abuses of the Justice Department, and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) said he’s been getting pushback from the Biden administration over his anticorruption efforts, including the push to de-Trumpify DOJ, but maybe doing nothing will fix everything?
   

• Four Saudis who helped murder journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 had received paramilitary training in the U.S. the previous year, in a partnership approved by the State Department. 
   
• A federal judge has dismissed most claims against Trump-administration officials in the forceful removal of protesters from Lafayette Square, ruling that civil rights groups’ allegations that federal officials conspired to enable Donald Trump’s upside-down-Bible photo-op were too speculative.
   
• About a third of Americans still think President Biden only won the election because of voter fraud, according to a new Monmouth poll. Seems bad!
   
• Almost 900 Secret Service employees tested positive for coronavirus between March 2020 and March 2021. More than half of them worked in the special agent division, which is responsible for protecting the president and vice president, even when they're, say, COVID-positive in a sealed SUV.
   
• The Teamsters have announced a coordinated push to organize Amazon warehouses across the country, the most ambitious national effort yet to unionize the company.
   
• Georgia election officials in two counties that Trump sued have recovered legal fees from the plaintiffs, in a warning to future filers of bullshit election lawsuits.
   
• Britney Spears has been quietly fighting to end her conservatorship for years, according to court records. Spears sought to remove her father as conservator as early as 2014, citing a long list of grievances. 
   
• Australia’s biblical mouse problem has reached a prison in New South Wales, forcing a mass evacuation.
   
• If a court clears the way for Virginia to take down a Confederate statue in Richmond, the state will remove a 134-year-old time capsule from the statue's base, which may or not contain a photo of Abraham Lincoln in his coffin, which may or may not have been stolen by the crew of National Treasure 3 since this news broke.

As Senate Republicans geared up to block debate on voting rights protections with a party-line vote, bipartisan infrastructure negotiations continued to trundle on into the void. White House officials met with Senate negotiators on Tuesday, leaving without a clear breakthrough days before the July 4 recess, and evidently hitting a wall on how to fund the bipartisan proposal. Progressives like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) have continued to insist that they won’t vote for that deal unless it’s sure to be followed by a much broader reconciliation bill: “We're not going to have an infrastructure package that, when the train leaves the station, child care is left on the platform, along with clean energy.” A group of White House officials will meet with Democratic leaders on Wednesday to discuss both the bipartisan talks underway, and the plan to pass a party-line bill.

In just the first few months of 2021, nine states passed abortion bans, and several more could soon join them. But there are also more subtle and nefarious restrictions on the horizon – bills that will push abortion out of reach without explicitly banning it. Sign the ACLU’s petition and demand safe access to abortion now.

So far, South Carolina has enacted a six-week ban that's already been blocked in court. Arkansas's Governor signed a total ban, which the ACLU will challenge in court before it goes into effect. And other states could quickly follow suit.

Meanwhile, Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Kentucky, Montana, and Oklahoma are working to restrict access to mifepristone – a safe and effective medication used for early abortion and miscarriage care for which we're also fighting at the federal level to ensure access. 

This has long been the strategy of anti-abortion extremists: Chip away at access state by state until abortion is a right in name only.

The ACLU, along with partner organizations, are fighting back in courts and legislatures every day. Our litigation work spans from Ohio to North Carolina to Guam and we will not be stopping any time soon. Join the ACLU in this fight today. Click here to sign our petition.

Connecticut has officially become the 19th state to legalize recreational marijuana, and the fifth to do so this year. 

Massachusetts has hit its goal of fully vaccinating 4.1 million residents. 

California is poised to enact a $5.2 billion program to fully pay off the unpaid rent of lower-income renters who were hit hard by the pandemic.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that he’ll support an effort to remove the prosecution of sexual assaults from the military chain of command.