Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer wants infrastructure. He wants it bad enough that he’s threatening the Senate’s August recess. “We have already made excellent progress towards our goals of rebuilding our nation’s infrastructure, confronting the threat of climate change, and investing in American families,” he wrote in a letter to Senate Democrats Friday.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, normally relatively press-shy and preferring to handle her own image-making (for better or much, much worse), has apparently decided she needs to bolster her reputation as a serious lawmaker. She also wants to make explicit the narrative she’s been anxious to set about herself as the inheritor of John McCain’s legacy. She, or her PR flack, got the Associated Press’ Lisa Mascaro and Nicholas Riccardi to bite.
The “Trump Train” vigilantes who endangered a Biden campaign bus in Texas last fall are going to have to answer for their actions in court. A White House staffer, a former Texas state representative and two Biden campaign staff are suing the Trumpers involved, alleging that they violated the Ku Klux Klan Act in a coordinated and illegal act of political intimidation.
Against the recommendation of an independent advisory committee, the Food and Drug Administration approved a new therapy for Alzheimer’s disease earlier this month. The drug, aducanumab, will be sold by Massachusetts-based company Biogen under the name Aduhelm. The drug will be sold at an expected annual cost of $56,000—Per. Patient.
It’s been a helluva a century so far, huh? With a brief eight-year hiatus, during which Republicans got ever worse, it has been an unrelentingly awful reality, with the last four years being nearly unbearable. It’s better with the former guy gone, but it’s still pretty awful. Republicans have no bottom. They have seemingly just one intention right now: make life as hellish as possible for the rest of the world.
Fifteen months of a global pandemic (and the resulting lockdowns) have created a second public health pandemic: domestic violence. The American Journal of Emergency Medicine along with the United Nations group U.N. Women report horrifying increases in reported incidents of domestic violence—300% in Hubei, China; 25% in Argentina, 30% in Cyprus, 33% in Singapore, and 50% in Brazil. The U.S.
In what is a ridiculously long overdue proposal, President Joe Biden is advocating doubling the size of the IRS, adding tens of thousands of new workers over the next decade in order to help achieve another of his goals: upping enforcement and getting tax scofflaws to pay up. That would come with an increase in funding to the IRS by $80 billion, and the return on that could be more than $700 billion in revenue in the next decade.
In what is a ridiculously long overdue proposal, President Joe Biden is advocating doubling the size of the IRS, adding tens of thousands of new workers over the next decade in order to help achieve another of his goals: upping enforcement and getting tax scofflaws to pay up. That would come with an increase in funding to the IRS by $80 billion, and the return on that could be more than $700 billion in revenue in the next decade.
Both Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Republican leader Mitch McConnell strategized this week with their conferences on the filibuster, and both had as their focus the two problem children of the Democrats: Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy was slightly less bombastic than the last time he testified in front of a House oversight committee, when he declared he was going to be in this job for “a long time. Get used to me.” He was marginally less obnoxious on Thursday, when he testified before the House Appropriations subcommittee on financial service. He even attempted contrition, sort of.
Michigan Democratic Rep. Brenda Lawrence, a former U.S.
Sen. Tina Smith, the first-term Democrat from Minnesota, became the most recent Senate convert to ending the filibuster. “I believe that the filibuster should be abolished in all cases, not just for any particular piece of legislation,” Smith told the Star Tribune.
Who needs Republicans like Sen.
The Senate voted Thursday afternoon to begin debate on President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief plan with the assistance of Vice President Kamala Harris to make the vote 51-50. Yes, Republicans unanimously opposed even moving forward on providing essential aid to the American people to get out of this pandemic.
Meanwhile, Republican Sen.
Senate Republicans are openly plotting how to make passing vital COVID-19 relief—which is still supported by 77% of all voters, including 59% of Republicans—complete hell for Democrats. That includes Sen. Ron Genius Johnson of Wisconsin proposing they extend the voting for “days on end.
“What’s the interest of the Arizona RNC in keeping, say, the out-of-precinct ballot disqualification rules on the books?” Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked Michael Carvin, the lawyer arguing before the Supreme Court Tuesday on behalf of Arizona Republicans that two of the state’s voter suppression laws should be upheld. He answered truthfully: “Because it puts us at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats. Politics is a zero-sum game.
The Senate could kick off floor consideration of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan as soon as Wednesday, and not a moment too soon for the millions of people who could see the unemployment insurance end March 14. The Senate is going to move forward with a bill that doesn’t include a hike in the minimum wage to $15 an hour.
The House turned to work on the COVID-19 relief package Friday—President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan, an ambitious response to try to restore the nation’s physical and economic health following a year of pandemic and a year of callous negligence from Donald Trump and Senate Republicans. That negligence looks more and more like a deliberate effort by Republicans to further what seems to be their only guiding principle these days: white supremacy.
The Biden administration is ending Medicaid work requirements the previous occupiers of the executive branch foisted on the nation’s working poor. Two weeks ago, President Joe Biden signed an executive order instructing officials at the Department of Health and Human Services to remove barriers to Medicaid, and that’s just what they are doing.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the poster child of good government, somehow survived four years of direct and concentrated assault and is poised to rebuild and get to work saving people’s economic lives again.
President Biden tapped Rohit Chopra to lead the agency.
More than 200 judges have been embedded in the federal judiciary by outgoing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump.
Following the House’s 232-197 vote to impeach Donald Trump (again), this time for inciting an insurrection, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke at the engrossment ceremony during which the articles were signed. Trump has now officially made history as the most impeached president and for having gained the most votes for impeachment from members of his own party. Congratulations, Donald. You’re singular.
Donald Trump has always been obsessed with his place in history. It’s now cemented: no other occupant of the Oval Office achieved the distinction of being impeached twice for high crimes and misdemeanors. The vote was 232-197. Ten Republicans joined Democrats in making this historic action bipartisan.
While the House of Representatives was in the process of voting to direct Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment and relieve the nation of the burden of Donald Trump, Pence was rejecting the effort in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
As more and more detail emerges about the events in the nation’s capital Wednesday, it becomes clearer that this was a planned revolt and that it was organized within the Republican establishment. So much so that the Republican Association of Attorneys General (RAGA)—the chief Republican law enforcement officers for their states—used its dark money group to help organize the mob.
The Washington Post has been reporting on the economic devastation to individual lives because of the pandemic for months, covering stories of individual people and families whose livelihoods have been destroyed by the pandemic. The paper continues that series this week, but adds eye-popping and infuriating context from an analysis of the unemployment system from the states that publicly share information.
The Washington Post has been reporting on the economic devastation to individual lives because of the pandemic for months, covering stories of individual people and families whose livelihoods have been destroyed by the pandemic. The paper continues that series this week, but adds eye-popping and infuriating context from an analysis of the unemployment system from the states that publicly share information.
Last month, in a report that got kind of lost in the ongoing coup efforts of Donald Trump and his pet Republicans, the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) inspector general (IG) office issued a scathing report on the agency’s performance during the pandemic. It’s not good. The inspector general is estimating that 27,724 eligible recipients have not received payments owed to them to the tune of $52.1 million.
There’s a reason they call these things “cozy mysteries,” the literary fluff that has consumed an awful lot of my non-working hours this awful, awful year. Epitomized by Agatha Christie, these are low-stakes stories, light on the violence, heavy on atmosphere and just simply pleasant distractions. Most 21st-century efforts aren’t as clever as Christie, are easier to figure out, but still provide the kind of escape 2020 has demanded.
The prolonged temper tantrum from the squatter in the Oval Office has mucked up critical aid to workers on unemployment, but the Labor Department has released guidance that assures they won’t be cheated out of two weeks of unemployment insurance (UI). Trump delayed signing the bill resuming federal UI supplements of $300/week until the day after those payments expired, leaving millions of people in limbo not knowing if the delay was going to end their UI.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is as good an example of the depth and breadth of damage Donald Trump has done to the government as any. Under him, Secretary Sonny Perdue gutted the USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS) and National Institute of Food and Agriculture, splitting the agencies up and ripping hundreds of jobs out of Washington, D.C. and forcing employees to either relocate to Kansas City or quit.