US Senate 33 , CD3 DFL

Biden hampered by lack of confirmations

President Biden is facing a convergence of challenges without a full complement of agency leaders who would typically oversee efforts on the ground to address them.

The administration is searching for solutions to the growing border crisis, but the president has yet to nominate officials to lead Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) — three key components of the immigration system.

Biden’s trip to Georgia on Friday after a gunman killed eight people, most of whom were Asian, came amid the absence of a nominee to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), which typically assists with investigating such incidents. Continue reading.

GOP picks fight over states’ rights in coronavirus relief

Republicans are aiming to stir up a legal battle over Biden’s pandemic relief bill, targeting a provision in the American Rescue Plan they say is an unconstitutional infringement on states’ ability to devise their own tax policies.

A provision in the bill that forbids states from using billions in aid to offset any tax cuts they might implement has sparked a backlash from Republican lawmakers and state attorneys general. Their criticisms could lay the groundwork for a court battle over states’ rights and government overreach akin to the Supreme Court case over the fate of ObamaCare.

This time, the GOP appears to be framing the issue as the Biden administration getting in the way of state and local leaders cutting taxes for their own residents. Continue reading.

How Marco Rubio turned the Senate Intel Committee into a Trump defensive team

When Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) took over as acting chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in the spring of 2020, he refocused the committee’s long-running investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Rubio turned the committee away from dispassionately investigating the myriad connections between the Kremlin and Donald Trump’s campaign into a Republican defense line between the compromised former president and the American public. Instead, Rubio aligned the committee with the Trump Administration itself, politicizing intelligence, downplaying Russian interference, white-washing Trump-Kremlin contacts and purposely deflecting attention from Russia to China.

Soon, Rubio publicly sparred with the committee vice chairman, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), over how much to reveal to the people before the 2020 election. They issued a heavily redacted fifth and final 950-page volume of the committee’s work on Aug. 18, just 77 days before Election Day. Continue reading.

In Restricting Early Voting, the Right Sees a New ‘Center of Gravity’

Donald Trump is no longer center stage. But many conservative activists are finding that the best way to raise money and keep voters engaged is to make his biggest fabrication their top priority.

For more than a decade, the Susan B. Anthony List and the American Principles Project have pursued cultural and policy priorities from the social conservative playbook, one backing laws to ban abortion once a fetal heartbeat could be detected and the other opposing civil rights protections for L.G.B.T.Q. people. From their shared offices in suburban Virginia, they and their affiliated committees spent more than $20 million on elections last year.

But after Donald J. Trump lost his bid for a second term and convinced millions of Americans that nonexistent fraud was to blame, the two groups found that many of their donors were thinking of throwing in the towel. Why, donors argued, should they give any money if Democrats were going to game the system to their advantage, recalled Frank Cannon, the senior strategist for both groups.

“‘Before I give you any money for anything at all, tell me how this is going to be solved,’” Mr. Cannon said, summarizing his conversations. He and other conservative activists — many with no background in election law — didn’t take long to come up with an answer, which was to make rolling back access to voting the “center of gravity in the party,” as he put it. Continue reading.

Tina Smith’s Fight for Affordable Child Care

For the past year, Minnesota Senator Tina Smith alongside Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has fought to bring economic relief to child care providers. The pandemic has shown us just how crucial affordable, accessible child care is. As schools shut down and students returned home, essential workers still had to report to work; and quality child care was a part of keeping their children cared for and safe.

Even before the pandemic, affordable child care was scarce across Minnesota and the country. As an article from MinnPost explained, “The economics of the industry cause providers to get paid very little while tuition costs for families can be enormous.” In April of 2020, Smith and Warren began their fight for child care bailout.

In the 2020 fiscal year, the federal government gave $8.7 billion to states, territories and tribes for the Child Care and Development Block Grant. Through Smith and Warren’s dedication, the new stimulus package will give roughly $15 billion more to that program, plus another $24 billion for child care “stabilization funding” and another $1 billion for the Head Start program.

GOP Slams Biden’s ‘Unlawful’ Border Actions After Supporting Similar Trump Moves

Republicans eagerly supported Donald Trump when he circumvented Congress on the border wall. Now they say Joe Biden can’t do the same.

Republicans this week accused President Joe Biden of violating federal law after he froze funding for border wall construction between the U.S. and Mexico, an impediment they say is needed to stop the growing influx of migrants there.

Sens. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) and Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), joined by 38 other GOP senators, wrote a letter to the Government Accountability Office on Wednesday calling Biden’s executive order halting construction a “blatant violation of federal law and infringe(s) on Congress’s constitutional power of the purse.”

The lawmakers cited the Impoundment Control Act, a 1974 law aimed at preventing executive branch officials from unilaterally substituting their own funding decisions for those of Congress. Continue reading.

Senate confirms Marty Walsh as Biden’s Labor secretary

The Senate on Monday confirmed Boston Mayor Marty Walsh to lead President Biden’s Labor Department — the final Cabinet official who can be confirmed, for now.

Senators voted 68-29 on Walsh’s nomination, after he easily cleared a procedural hurdle late last week.

Walsh is likely the final Cabinet pick Biden will get confirmed before the Senate takes a two-week break. Continue reading.

Russian company ‘suspending its investments’ in Kentucky project pushed by McConnell: report

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) suffered a major economic defeat in Kentucky as a Russian company founded by oligarch Oleg Deripaska pulled its financing.

“According to a Bloomberg report, Rusal, the formerly blacklisted Russian company with a major stake in the 10-figure project, is suspending its investments while it awaits word that its U.S. partners have raised the necessary funds. So far the company has sunk at least $65 million in the proposed mill, to be built by Unity Aluminum, previously known as Braidy Industries,” WUKY-TV reported Thursday. “The news is only the latest twist for the troubled project, which has been plagued by fundraising questions and the ouster of the CEO formerly overseeing the venture. Rusal’s involvement has been controversial from the start, after it was revealed that the company had been subject to sanctions.”

In 2019, The Washington Post reported how McConnell blocked a bill to keep sanctions in place on the company. Continue reading.

Ron Johnson’s misleading citation of data to back his ‘concern’ about BLM protesters

“Out of 7,750 protests last summer associated with BLM and Antifa, 570 turned into violent riots that killed 25 people and caused $1- $2 billion of property damage. That’s why I would have been more concerned.”

— Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), in a statement, March 13

Johnson has come under fire for telling a conservative news radio show that he “never felt threatened” by the pro-Trump mob that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, but he would have been concerned if the mob had been made up of Black Lives Matter or antifa protesters. Referring to Trump supporters, he said: “I knew those are people that love this country, that truly respect law enforcement, would never do anything to break the law.”

We will leave the political commentary to others. We are interested in the facts that Johnson used to document his concern after the uproar started.

While he did not identify the source of his information in his statement, in a March 15 Wall Street Journal op-ed defending his remarks, Johnson confirmed that first set of numbers came from a study by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project(ACLED), a nonprofit data collection, analysis and crisis mapping project. The property damage figures are from a different source. Continue reading.

Ted Cruz flattened for complaining about voting rights bill after trying to ‘overthrow’ an election

Perhaps the worst person to lead the crusade against the John Lewis Voting Rights Act would be those members who contested the results of the 2020 election using false “voter fraud” rumors.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) took to Fox News to blast his displeasure about the voting rights bill, saying that it would “threaten our democracy.”

Cruz claimed that “the first bill” proposed by Democrats was HR1, which is false. The number, HR1 is given to the House Speaker for bills she wants to highlight. It doesn’t mean it is the first actual bill. The first bill that Democrats passed was HR 335, “To provide for an exception to a limitation against appointment of persons as Secretary of Defense within seven years of relief from active duty as a regular commissioned officer of the Armed Forces.” It was passed on Jan. 22. The second, HR 1319 was the stimulus bill that Cruz and all other Republicans opposed. Continue reading.

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: