Vox Sentences - The moderate holdouts

Moderate Democrats are holding out on the budget bill, to Pelosi’s chagrin; Turkey is refusing to accept Afghan refugees. 

Tonight's Sentences was written by Gabby Birenbaum.

Do Dems have the votes?

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• For months, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has maintained that House passage of the infrastructure bill is contingent on advancing Democrats’ $3.5 trillion budget bill. But a group of nine moderates, who are holding their votes on the budget hostage, are causing headaches for Pelosi and House leadership. [Vox / Andrew Prokop]
• Thus far, the group’s leader, Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), has continued to say that he will settle for nothing less than a standalone vote on the infrastructure bill, and that he has enough votes in his moderate bloc to fail the budget advancement. [Axios / Erin Doherty]
• Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA), the chair of the Rules Committee, told caucus members that they “have to vote for the goddamn rule,” to cheers and applause, also noting that passing infrastructure today is irrelevant because the new spending would not go into effect until October 1 anyway. [Politico / Heather Ferris, Sarah Caygle, and Nicholas Wu]
• Pelosi can only afford to lose three votes, giving the moderates unusual leverage. They were expected to fold by now, though Pelosi has offered a concession guaranteeing an infrastructure vote on September 27 in exchange for advancing a rule on the budget. [Washington Post / Tony Romm]
• The deal is as yet unfinalized. But Pelosi reportedly still wants a vote tonight, and has been hashing out the details with Gottheimer and the other moderates in meetings in House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD)’s office after she and Hoyer had harsh words for the moderates in a closed-door meeting last night. [Politico / Heather Caygle, Sarah Ferris, Nicholas Wu, and Anthony Adragna]
• Moderates’ ploy to pass infrastructure now and the budget later compromises the policies in the budget. Progressives were disappointed in the scope of the infrastructure bill, and are using the budget to target additional priorities. If moderates have already passed infrastructure, they could have free rein to water down the budget bill. [Intelligencer / Ed Kilgore]
• Pelosi and prominent House chairs have urged the moderates not to waste the Democrats’ narrow window of having full control of Congress and the White House with infighting, particularly as it relates to process instead of policy. [AP / Lisa Mascaro and Kevin Freking]

Turkey denies Afghan refugees

• Turkey is planning to extend its border wall and keep out refugees, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan saying that Afghan refugees who have crossed all of Iran to arrive at the Turkish border are the rest of Europe’s responsibility. [Reuters]
• Erdogan told the president of the European Council that the European Union "cannot expect Turkey to undertake international responsibilities of other countries," saying a restart is needed on 2016 migrant negotiations. [Daily Sabah]
• As Afghanistan was falling to the Taliban, thousands of Afghans left the country every week to cross Iran in hopes of admission into Turkey, where they have been met with crackdowns. The political appetite in Turkey for refugees post-Syria, as in the rest of Europe, has been negative, particularly as the Turkish economy has faltered. [NYT / Carlotta Gall]
• Turkey is hoping to use the situation as leverage with both the Taliban and the rest of Europe. A working relationship with the Taliban could be key to Turkey’s ability to use Afghanistan as a means of influencing China, Russia, and Iran. [Jerusalem Post / Seth J. Frantzman]
• The situation is being made even more complex by a new Taliban policy, announced today, of no longer allowing Afghan nationals to go to Kabul airport and leave the country. [Washington Post / Rachel Pannett, Ellen Francis, and Adam Taylor]

Kathy Hochul is now officially the governor of New York. [CNN / Gregory Krieg]

• California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) is hoping that campaigning against leading Republican recall candidate Larry Elder will help him turn out enough Democratic voters to hold on to the governorship. [Sacramento Bee / Sophia Bollag]
• As extreme heat kills grain crops, the prices for corn and wheat are rising. [WSJ / Kirk Maltais]
• With the US struggling to meet an August 31 deadline for evacuations from Afghanistan, CIA Director William Burns met with the Taliban’s leader. [AP / Nomaan Merchant, Rahim Faiez, and Joseph Krauss]

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"We cannot squander this majority and this Democratic White House by not passing what we need to do. Right now, we have an opportunity to pass something so substantial for our country, so transformative we haven’t seen anything like it."

[House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, on why her caucus members needs to vote for the rule to advance both the budget bill and the infrastructure bill]

The World Wide Web is kept interconnected through hyperlinks. But what happens when those hyperlinks stop working? Researchers say hyperlinks are dying at an alarming rate, and it could signal trouble for journalists, historians, and academics. Clare Stanton (@clare_stanton) at the Library Innovation Lab at Harvard Law School joins Recode Daily to explain. [Spotify]

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