Summary
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Americans can now sign up for health insurance plans under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) until 15 August. The extension will give Americans who lost health coverage during the pandemic more time to sign up, and allow more Americans to take advantage of new federal subsidies to reduce insurance premiums granted via the coronavirus relief package.
- The Boulder police identified the 10 victims of yesterday’s mass shooting at a grocery store. The victims were Denny Strong, Neven Stanisic, Rikki Olds, Tralona Bartkowiak, Teri Leiker, Officer Eric Talley, Suzanne Fountain, Kevin Mahoney, Lynn Murray and Jody Waters. Their ages ranged from 20 to 65.
- The shooting suspect has been charged with 10 counts of first-degree murder, the Boulder police chief said. Law enforcement officials identified the suspect as 21-year-old Ahmad Alissa. Court documents showed Alissa purchased an assault rifle less than a week before the shooting.
- Joe Biden called for a new assault weapons ban in response to the Boulder shooting. The president also called on the Senate to immediately pass the two background checks bill that the House approved earlier this month. “I don’t need to wait another minute, let alone an hour, to take common-sense steps that will save lives in the future,” Biden said. “This is not and should not be a partisan issue. It is an American issue.”
- But it remains unlikely that gun regulations can pass the evenly divided Senate. Asked this afternoon whether he believes he has the political capital to get gun restrictions passed by Congress, Biden said, “I don’t know. I haven’t done any counting yet.”
- The Senate confirmed Shalanda Young as the deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget. Young will immediately step in as acting director of the agency, and many Democrats have called on Biden to nominate the longtime Hill staffer as the full-time OMB director, after Neera Tanden was forced to withdraw her nomination over controversial tweets.
– Joan E Greve and Maanvi Singh
Updated
Administration extends enrollment period for Affordable Care Act though 15 August
Americans can now sign up for health insurance plans under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) until 15 August. The window to sign up for insurance through the program normally closes on 15 February, but the Department of Health and Human Services has initially moved the deadline to May, before extending it to the summer.
The extension will give Americans who lost health coverage during the pandemic more time to sign up, and allow more Americans to take advantage of new federal subsidies to reduce insurance premiums granted via the coronavirus relief package.
“The Biden Administration is giving the American people the chance they need to find an affordable health care plan that works for them,” said HHS secretary Xavier Becerra.
Asked about the push from senators Tammy Duckworth and Mazie Hirono for Joe Biden to appoint more AAPI to his administration, and the senators’ pledge to vote against Biden nominees until the president pays heed, Biden dodged:
“We have the most diverse cabinet in history. We have a lot of Asian Americans that are in the cabinet and in sub-cabinet levels,” he said, according to the White House press pool reports.
Both senators said they’d oppose non-diverse nominees until Biden addresses the lack of AAPI representation in the cabinet.
Updated
Illinois city approves first reparations program for Black residents
Jewel Wicker reports:
An Illinois city has become the first in America to embark upon a reparations program for its Black residents after its local council approved the implementation of its first such initiative to tackle the legacy of slavery.
Late on Monday night aldermen in Evanston – a suburban community in Chicago – voted to approve the Local Reparations Restorative Housing Program, a $400,000 housing grant program
Designed to address the inequality gap and ongoing impact of slavery on African Americans in the city, Evanston’s reparations program will be funded with sales taxes on recreational marijuana. Under this plan, up to $10m of the sales tax would go towards reparations over the next decade.
Spearheaded by alderman Rue Simmons, the program was developed alongside the city’s equity and empowerment commission in 2019. It is believed to be the first reparation program with guaranteed funding.
The housing grant will award eligible residents up to $25,000, which can be used for a “home down payment or closing cost assistance within the city; [to] help pay for repairs, improvements or modernizations of an Evanston property; or [to] help pay down mortgage principal, interest or late penalties on Evanston property,” according to a memo obtained by the Chicago Tribune.
The memo said applicants must have “origins in any of the Black racial and ethnic groups of Africa” and have been a resident or direct descendant of a resident of Evanston between 1919-1969. The newspaper notes that applicants who have experienced housing discrimination as a result of the city’s policies after 1969 are also eligible.
Simmons told the Guardian last year that the initiative represents the “hope that we will have a fair opportunity to live to our highest and best potential, and enjoy the same livability as the average white resident in Evanston”.
“It means that there is an opportunity coming for us to bridge the gap of discrimination that has and continues to keep black residents oppressed,” she continued.
Read more:
‘We don’t live in a safe world’: Boulder in shock and disbelief over shooting
Josiah Hesse reports:
Following the shooting in a Boulder, Colorado, grocery store on Monday, leaving 10 dead including a police officer, the community of this liberal mountain town are in a state of shock and disbelief, experiencing the all-too-common identity crisis experienced by so many American cities in the wake of a mass shooting.
“I’ve called this community home for most of my life, and I’ve shopped at that King Soopers many times,” Colorado’s governor, Jared Polis, said Tuesday morning during a press conference.
“Boulder is a small community, and we’re all looking at the list wondering if we know people. These were folks who started their day with a morning paper, cup of coffee, perhaps getting their kids ready, maybe making last minute spring break plans, none of them expected that this would be their last day here, on the planet. A simple run for milk and eggs led to a complete tragedy.”
Both nationally and in Colorado, Boulder has a reputation for being a progressive utopia, characterized by hippie communes of the 1970s and 80s, the Allen Ginsberg-founded Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, and ground-zero for the ultramarathon running world. Those who live there often speak of the “Boulder bubble”, as though it’s a world free of the social ailments that plague the rest of the nation.
“Many of the shootings across the country have been in places people would like to think are safe, but when these tragedies hit close to home it threatens your feeling of safety,” said Jamie Beachy, directory of the Center for Contemplative Chaplaincy at Naropa University, in Boulder. “For some people, this will be very destabilizing for some time to come. We don’t live in a safe world when it comes to gun violence, and Boulder is not set apart from that.”
Read more:
Republicans have gotten increasingly irate over some Democrats’ suggestion that they eliminate the filibuster in order to get gun control measures and other progressive legislation passed.
Earlier today, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell said the filibuster, which has a long history of being used by segregationists to block civil rights and anti-lynching legislation, had “no racial history at all. None. There’s no dispute among historians.”
As my colleague and fellow live blogger Joan E Greve explained in a recent story:
The modern-day Senate filibuster came into existence in the early 20th century, and it was later embraced by segregationists to prevent the passage of civil rights legislation.
“When the founders conceived of the Senate, they did imagine for it to be different from the House. It’s not clear that they imagined for it to have a supermajority requirement,” said Molly Reynolds, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution. “If they wanted it to have a supermajority requirement, they could have put one into place.”
While eliminating the filibuster was previously rejected out of hand by Democratic leadership, some of the most prominent members of the party have come to champion the idea. Speaking at the funeral of the civil rights icon John Lewis last July, Barack Obama emphasized the need to strengthen voting rights, saying, “And if all this takes eliminating the filibuster, another Jim Crow relic, in order to secure the God-given rights of every American, then that’s what we should do.”
Earlier, while he was touring the James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute in Columbus, Biden was asked if he thinks he has the political capital to get gun control measures passed through the Senate.
“I hope so,” he said, his fingers crossed per the White House press pool report.
.@POTUS crosses his fingers as he's asked about the possibility of gun control legislation, during a tour of the James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute in Columbus, Ohio. pic.twitter.com/qMZ3soPuGJ
— Doug Mills (@dougmillsnyt) March 23, 2021
Passing gun control measures had been a major campaign talking point for Biden, but until now – the administration hadn’t made it a major focus, choosing to tackle immigration and the pandemic response first.
In the Senate, Republicans made clear that gun control legislation wouldn’t have their support. With the chamber divided 50-50 between Republicans and Democrats, any measure would fail as it runs up against the 60 vote threshold needed to overcome a filibuster.
Agreements against gun control included the following, from senator John Kennedy:
Hours after America's second mass shooting in a week, Sen. John Kennedy downplays the gun problem by noting that "we have a lot of drunk drivers in America that kill a lot of people. We ought to try to combat that too ... the answer is not to get rid of all sober drivers." pic.twitter.com/BvqhNvuWRJ
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 23, 2021
It’s... pretty hard to get a driver’s license, harder than getting a gun.
Getting vaccinated and following public health guidelines are patriotic duties, Biden said.
“We need all Americans to keep washing their hands, stay socially distanced, wearing their masks,” he said. “Get vaccinated, when it’s your turn. It’s a patriotic responsibility.
“After a long dark year, we can show once again, that we are the United States of America, that there’s nothing we have cannot do if we do it together,” he said.
Updated
Joe Biden promotes his American Rescue Plan in Ohio, on ACA anniversary
The president is promoting his administration’s coronavirus rescue plan at a hospital in Columbus, on the anniversary of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) being signed into law.
The administration also announced today that Americans can now sign up for insurance through the ACA until 15 August. The Biden admin had already extended the enrollment period until 15 May, so that the millions of Americans who’d lost employer-provided health insurance coverage could still get coverage. The coronavirus relief package that Biden signed into law this month also expanded insurance subsidies for people who earn between 100 and 400% of the poverty level.
“Millions of families will be able to sleep a little more soundly at night, because they don’t have to worry about losing everything if they get sick,” Biden said in Ohio. “A few clicks, and a short conversation that’s all it takes to start seeing these benefits, increased coverage and lower premiums.”
All Georgia residents, 16 and older, will be eligible for Covid-19 vaccines starting this Thursday.
The state’s governor Brian Kemp announced the news just two weeks after the state expanded vaccine eligibility to cover everyone aged 55 and older. Georgia will join only a handful of states, including Texas, Alaska and Mississippi, that have expanded vaccine access to the general adult population.
About 11% of Georgia’s population has been fully vaccinated, and more than 19% have received at least one dose.
In Colorado, where residents remember a long history of mass shootings, the Boulder shooting has been traumatizing, said Colorado attorney general Phil Weiser.
“Columbine is still feeling the effects,” said Weiser on CNN, referring to the 1999 high school massacre that killed 15. Supervisors and family of the shooting have been “retraumatized based on what happened yesterday – because that’s how trauma works,” he added. “Colorado is suffering.”
As historian Kathleen Belew noted, the suspect in the Boulder shootings was born days before Columbine. “That’s how long we’ve failed to take action,” Belew said.
The Boulder suspect was born three days before the Columbine shooting. That's how long we've failed to take action.
— Kathleen Belew (@kathleen_belew) March 23, 2021
Updated
Today so far
That’s it from me today. My west coast colleague, Maanvi Singh, will take over the blog for the next few hours.
Here’s where the day stands so far:
- The Boulder police identified the 10 victims of yesterday’s mass shooting at a grocery store. The victims were Denny Strong, Neven Stanisic, Rikki Olds, Tralona Bartkowiak, Teri Leiker, Officer Eric Talley, Suzanne Fountain, Kevin Mahoney, Lynn Murray and Jody Waters. Their ages ranged from 20 to 65.
- The shooting suspect has been charged with ten counts of first-degree murder, the Boulder police chief said. Law enforcement officials identified the suspect as 21-year-old Ahmad Alissa. Court documents showed Alissa purchased an assault rifle less than a week before the shooting.
- Joe Biden called for a new assaults weapons ban in response to the Boulder shooting. The president also called on the Senate to immediately pass the two background checks bill that the House approved earlier this month. “I don’t need to wait another minute, let alone an hour, to take common-sense steps that will save lives in the future,” Biden said. “This is not and should not be a partisan issue. It is an American issue.”
- But it remains unlikely that gun regulations can pass the evenly divided Senate. Asked this afternoon whether he believes he has the political capital to get gun restrictions passed by Congress, Biden said, “I don’t know. I haven’t done any counting yet.”
- The Senate confirmed Shalanda Young as the deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget. Young will immediately step in as acting director of the agency, and many Democrats have called on Biden to nominate the longtime Hill staffer as the full-time OMB director, after Neera Tanden was forced to withdraw her nomination over controversial tweets.
Maanvi will have more coming up, so stay tuned.
Joe Biden plans to release his initial 2022 spending requests next week, with a plan to release a full budget proposal in the coming months, according to Bloomberg News.
Bloomberg reports:
The document will include Biden’s discretionary funding priorities, broken down by agency with some additional details within them, the Office of Management and Budget said. ...
Biden will separately propose additional spending on infrastructure, clean energy and other domestic policy issues. Those measures could cost roughly $3 trillion.
‘Our priority is to provide Congress with early information about the president’s discretionary funding priorities, which is what they need to begin the appropriations process,’ OMB spokesman Rob Friedlander said.
Biden’s initial request will not include plans for raising revenues, which is why, an agency official said, the Biden administration is shying away from calling the document a ‘skinny budget’ or ‘budget blueprint,’ the terms typically used to describe a new president’s initial funding requests.
Biden’s full budget will be released ‘later this spring,’ Friedlander said, and will ‘show how his full agenda of investments and tax reforms fits together in a fiscally and economically responsible plan to address the overlapping crises we face.’
Biden’s proposal is meant to help guide congressional negotiations over the budget, but his plan is likely to face intense opposition from Republicans in Congress, who have already raised complaints that the president’s infrastructure plan is too expansive.
A daughter of one of the victims of the Boulder shooting reflected on her loss in a moving Twitter tribute to him.
Erika Mahoney, the daughter of 61-year-old Kevin Mahoney, said she was “heartbroken” to learn that her father was one of the 10 victims in the shooting.
I am heartbroken to announce that my Dad, my hero, Kevin Mahoney, was killed in the King Soopers shooting in my hometown of Boulder, CO. My dad represents all things Love. I'm so thankful he could walk me down the aisle last summer. pic.twitter.com/SLS2bdm5Hc
— Erika Mahoney (@MahoneyEb) March 23, 2021
“I am heartbroken to announce that my Dad, my hero, Kevin Mahoney, was killed in the King Soopers shooting in my hometown of Boulder, CO,” Mahoney said in her Twitter post. “My dad represents all things love. I’m so thankful he could walk me down the aisle last summer.”
Mahoney expressed appreciation to the Boulder police department for “being so kind through this painful tragedy”.
“I am now pregnant. I know he wants me to be strong for his granddaughter,” Mahoney said. “I love you forever Dad. You are always with me.”
Former congressman Beto O’Rourke, who has repeatedly called for stricter gun regulations since a 2019 shooting in his hometown of El Paso claimed 23 lives, offered his condolences to Mahoney.
I am sorry for your loss Erika. Sending love to you and your family from El Paso.
— Beto O'Rourke (@BetoORourke) March 23, 2021
Updated
After arriving in Columbus this afternoon, Joe Biden answered a question from a reporter who asked whether he believed he has the political capital to get gun restrictions passed through Congress.
“I hope so,” the president replied, according to a pool report. “I don’t know. I haven’t done any counting yet.”
It seems unlikely that the Senate can pass the two background checks bills that the House approved earlier this month, given that the upper chamber is evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans.
Some Republicans have said they are open to narrow legislation on gun regulations, but the House-approved bills appear to be a non-starter for the Senate minority.
Senator Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat of Illinois, told CNN that she will be voting against Joe Biden’s nominees until the president commits to appointing more Asian-American officials to key positions.
Tammy Duckworth just told me she’s voting NO on Biden nominees until President makes commitment/ appoints AAPI picks to key executive branch positions. She said found it “insulting” that a senior WH aide last night pointed to Harris’ South Asian roots when asked about AAPI picks
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) March 23, 2021
Axios reported earlier today that Duckworth and one of her Senate colleagues, Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, confronted a senior administration official yesterday about the lack of Asian-American nominees.
Axios wrote:
[Duckworth and Hirono] leveled the complaint to deputy chief of staff Jen O’Malley Dillon during a Zoom call between the White House and the Senate Democratic Caucus.
Hours earlier, Biden finalized the permanent secretaries of the 15 executive departments when the Senate confirmed former Boston Mayor Marty Walsh as Labor secretary.
Duckworth noted that the Cabinet lacks a single AAPI member, according to four Senate Democratic aides briefed on the call. Hirono backed her up.
The senators’ complaints come as the nation has witnessed a rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans. Six of the eight victims in last week’s Atlanta shooting were also Asian women, raising concerns of a potential hate crime.
Duckworth’s threat could have serious implications for Biden’s ability to get his nominees confirmed, given that the Senate is evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans.
A key member of the legal team that sought to steal the 2020 election for Donald Trump is defending herself against a billion-dollar defamation lawsuit by arguing that “no reasonable person” could have mistaken her wild claims about election fraud last November as statements of fact.
In a motion to dismiss a complaint by the large US-based voting machine company Dominion, lawyers for Sidney Powell argued that elaborate conspiracies she laid out on television and radio last November while simultaneously suing to overturn election results in four states constituted legally protected first amendment speech.
“No reasonable person would conclude that the statements were truly statements of fact,” argued lawyers for Powell, a former federal prosecutor from Texas who caught Trump’s attention through her involvement in the defense of his former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Thousands of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol on 6 January in an effort to stop the certification of an election they considered invalid, killing a police officer in violent clashes in which four others died.
But lawyers for Powell argued her false statements about election fraud in the months preceding the Capitol insurrection were unmistakably not presented as true facts.
“It was clear to reasonable persons that Powell’s claims were her opinions and legal theories on a matter of utmost public concern,” her legal motion says.
The filing brought expressions of disbelief from Trump critics.
“This is her defense. Wow,” tweeted the Republican representative Adam Kinzinger.
“Bad argument!” tweeted Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen. “[Powell] should have gone with an insanity defense due to #TrumpDerangementSyndrome.”
Senate confirms Shalanda Young as deputy OMB director
The Senate has confirmed Shalanda Young as the next deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, in a vote of 63-37.
Young, a longtime Hill staffer, had attracted the praise of lawmakers of both parties, and 13 Senate Republicans, along with every Democratic senator, supported her nomination.
Confirmed, 63-37: Executive Calendar #32 Shalanda D. Young to be Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget @OMBPress
— Senate Cloakroom (@SenateCloakroom) March 23, 2021
Young has been named as a potential nominee to lead the OMB, after Neera Tanden was forced to withdraw her nomination due to bipartisan opposition over her past tweets.
Young will serve as the acting OMB director for now, and Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, told reporters today that there was no update on who Joe Biden will nominate to lead the agency.
If Young were nominated and confirmed to lead OMB, she would be the first Black woman to serve as the agency’s director.
Updated
A powerful and political message from former first lady Michelle Obama.
She has tweeted a pointed post aimed at Republican legislators who are busy trying to pass voting restrictions based on spurious claims about system abuse, which usually disproportionately affect minority voters, while shunning gun safety measures.
Obama tweeted: “I’m heartbroken by these recent tragedies of gun violence, and I just keep thinking about all the leaders who won’t take a stand to save lives and yet line up to pass bills that make it harder for us to vote.”
I’m heartbroken by these recent tragedies of gun violence, and I just keep thinking about all the leaders who won’t take a stand to save lives and yet line up to pass bills that make it harder for us to vote.
— Michelle Obama (@MichelleObama) March 23, 2021
White House press secretary Jen Psaki spoke with reporters on Air Force One as Joe Biden traveled to Columbus, Ohio, this afternoon.
Psaki said she did not yet have any update to provide on whether the president would travel to Boulder, Colorado, after a mass shooting there claimed 10 lives yesterday.
Asked whether Biden was considering executive action to address gun violence, the press secretary said the president is considering a number of options right now.
“There’s an ongoing process, and I think we feel we have to work on multiple channels at the same time,” Psaki said.
Updated
Boulder shooting suspect bought assault rifle just days ago
Police have identified a 21-year-old man as the suspect who opened fire inside a crowded Colorado supermarket yesterday, and court documents showed that he purchased an assault rifle less than a week before the attack that killed 10 people, including a police officer.
Supermarket employees told investigators that Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa shot an elderly man multiple times outside the Boulder grocery store before going inside, according to the documents, according to The Associated Press. Another person was found shot in a vehicle next to a car registered to suspect’s brother.
The news agency further reports:
The documents did not say where the gun was purchased. Authorities said Alissa was from the Denver suburb of Arvada and that he engaged in a shootout with police Monday afternoon inside the store.
The suspect was being treated at a hospital and was expected to be booked into the county jail later in the day on murder charges.
Investigators have not established a motive, but authorities believe he was the only shooter, Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty said.
A law enforcement official briefed on the shooting told The Associated Press that the gunman used an AR-15 rifle, a lightweight semiautomatic rifle.
Officials were trying to trace the weapon. The official was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke to AP on condition of anonymity.
The suspect’s family told investigators they believed Alissa was suffering some type of mental illness, including delusions.
One of the most conservative Democrats in Congress, West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, has not been slow to point out that he doesn’t support a bill that’s already successfully passed in the House and expands background checks to almost all gun sales.
Representatives voted to approve two bills earlier in March. One extends the window for background checks before a gun is sold and the other extends background checks to all sales and transfers, with exceptions for family members, an immediate threat or a temporary hunting agreement.
The Hill reports:
“What the House passed? Not at all,” Manchin said, when asked if he supports the legislation.
Manchin suggested he wanted a bill that provided a bigger carve-out for private sales between individuals who know each other.
“I come from a gun culture. I’m a law-abiding gun owner,” Manchin said, adding that he supports “basically saying that commercial transactions should be background checked. You don’t know a person.”
“If I know a person, no,” Manchin said.
Manchin and Senator Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) previously offered legislation to expand background checks to all commercial sales, including those at gun shows or on the internet. Of the GOP senators who supported the bill in 2013, only two are still in the Senate: Toomey and Senator Susan Collins (Maine).
Collins still supports the proposal. Majority leader Chuck Schumer has vowed to put the House bill on the floor for a vote. However, it’s unlikely Democrats would be able to get 60 votes, since that requires the support of 10 Republicans.
Toomey said he didn’t think “the House has passed anything that can pass the Senate.”
Today so far
Here’s where the day stands so far:
- The Boulder police identified the 10 victims of yesterday’s mass shooting at a grocery store. The victims were Denny Strong, Neven Stanisic, Rikki Olds, Tralona Bartkowiak, Teri Leiker, Officer Eric Talley, Suzanne Fountain, Kevin Mahoney, Lynn Murray and Jody Waters. Their ages ranged from 20 to 65.
- The shooting suspect has been charged with ten counts of first-degree murder, the Boulder police chief said. Law enforcement officials identified the suspect as 21-year-old Ahmad Alissa.
- Joe Biden called for a new assaults weapons ban in response to the Boulder shooting. The president also called on the Senate to immediately pass the two background checks bill that the House approved earlier this month. “I don’t need to wait another minute, let alone an hour, to take common-sense steps that will save lives in the future,” Biden said at the White House moments ago. “This is not and should not be a partisan issue. It is an American issue.”
The blog will have more coming up, so stay tuned.
Joe Biden is now en route to Columbus, Ohio, for a trip aimed at highlighting some of the benefits of the coronavirus relief package.
The president did not respond to reporters’ shouted questions about visiting Colorado as he made his way to Marine One.
After delivering his brief remarks on the Boulder shooting at the White House, Biden told reporters that he would have more information later on introducing new gun control legislation in Congress.
Joe Biden called on the Senate to pass the two background checks bills that the Democratic-controlled House approved earlier this month.
The bills would help close loopholes in the background checks system used before purchases of firearms.
But it’s unclear whether the bills can make it through the evenly divided Senate, given Republicans’ general opposition to gun restrictions.
Biden also called on Congress to pass another assault weapons ban, but such legislation would likely face even more Republican opposition.
The president noted that he worked on the original assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004, when he was a senator from Delaware in the 1990’s.
Biden calls for assault weapons ban after Boulder shooting
Joe Biden delivered brief remarks on yesterday’s shooting in Boulder, Colorado, which claimed the lives of 10 people.
The president said he had been briefed by the attorney general and the director of the FBI on the situation. He also remains in close contact with state and local law enforcement to receive updates on the investigation.
Biden said he would not speculate on the shooter’s motivation, but he pledged to use “all the resources at my disposal to keep the American people safe”.
The president expressed his condolences to the families of the 10 victims, whose “futures were stolen from them”.
“Our hearts go out to the survivors who had to flee for their lives,” Biden said. “The consequences of all this are deeper than I suspect we know.”
President Biden says Senate should "immediately pass" two House bills closing loopholes in firearm background checks: "This is not and should not be a partisan issue. This is an American issue. It will save lives, American lives. We have to act." https://t.co/RRG9ImW8JW pic.twitter.com/EiUneq2JMP
— CBS News (@CBSNews) March 23, 2021
Biden also expressed his “deepest thanks to the heroic police and other first responders,” who were called to the scene of the shooting.
“I commend the exceptional bravery of Officer Eric Talley,” Biden said, referring to the police officer who died in the shooting. “That’s the definition of an American hero.”
Shifting to the need for stricter gun regulations, Biden called on Congress to close the loopholes in the background checks system and once again ban assault weapons. He specifically urged the Senate to pass the two background checks bills that the House approved earlier this month.
“I don’t need to wait another minute, let alone an hour, to take common-sense steps that will save lives in the future,” Biden said. “This is not and should not be a partisan issue. It is an American issue.”
Updated
The White House has released Joe Biden’s formal proclamation calling on government flags to be lowered to half-staff in honor of the Boulder shooting victims.
The president said the flags, which were raised just yesterday after the Atlanta shooting last week, will remain at half-staff until Saturday at sunset.
The proclamation says:
As a mark of respect for the victims of the senseless acts of violence perpetrated on March 22, 2021, in Boulder, Colorado, by the authority vested in me as President of the United States by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, I hereby order that the flag of the United States shall be flown at half-staff at the White House and upon all public buildings and grounds, at all military posts and naval stations, and on all naval vessels of the Federal Government in the District of Columbia and throughout the United States and its Territories and possessions until sunset, March 27, 2021. I also direct that the flag shall be flown at half-staff for the same length of time at all United States embassies, legations, consular offices, and other facilities abroad, including all military facilities and naval vessels and stations.
Obama calls for action on gun violence after Boulder shooting
Barack Obama has released a statement on the mass shooting in Boulder, Colorado, calling on lawmakers to take action to prevent such tragedies in the future.
The former Democratic president expressed condolences to the families affected by the supermarket shooting, which claimed 10 lives yesterday.
A once-in-a-century pandemic cannot be the only thing that slows mass shootings in this country. It’s time for leaders everywhere to listen to the American people when they say enough is enough. pic.twitter.com/7MEJ87Is3E
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) March 23, 2021
“We should be able to buy groceries without fear. We should be able to go to school, or go out with our friends, or worship together without mentally planning our escape if someone shows up with a gun,” Obama said. “But in America, we can’t.”
The former president added, “A once-in-a-century pandemic cannot be the only thing that slows mass shootings in this country. ... It’s time for leaders everywhere to listen to the American people when they say enough is enough -- because this is a normal we can no longer afford.”
Joe Biden is expected to deliver brief remarks on the shooting in just a few minutes, before leaving for a trip to Ohio.
Updated
Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, has pledged to bring legislation for universal background checks on gun purchases to the Senate floor.
“This unrelenting epidemic of gun violence steals innocent lives with alarming regularity in America,” Schumer said. “I will bring universal background checks legislation to the Senate floor.”
My heart goes out to the people of Boulder and the families of those who lost their lives.
— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) March 23, 2021
This unrelenting epidemic of gun violence steals innocent lives with alarming regularity in America.
I will bring universal background checks legislation to the Senate floor
The Democratic-controlled House passed two background checks bills earlier this month, but it’s unclear whether those proposals can pass the evenly divided Senate.
With the Senate filibuster in place, Democrats need to convince 10 of their Republican colleagues to support the bills in order to get them passed.
That will likely be a rather difficult task for Democrats. If the bills fail to pass, Schumer may face increased pressure to eliminate the filibuster, although he currently does not have the votes to do so.
House speaker Nancy Pelosi demanded that lawmakers take action to confront gun violence, after a shooting in Boulder resulted in 10 deaths.
“The hearts of all Americans are with the Boulder community and loved ones of those killed in yesterday’s horrific shooting, including a Boulder police officer. We offer our prayers to all those impacted and our gratitude to the heroic first responders,” the Democratic speaker said in a statement.
The hearts of all Americans are with the Boulder community and loved ones of those killed in yesterday’s horrific shooting. Enough is enough. We must act to #EndGunViolence.https://t.co/XbhLuyRH8X
— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) March 23, 2021
Pelosi noted that, earlier this month, House Democrats passed two bills aimed at expanding background checks before gun purchases. It’s unclear whether those bills can make it through the evenly divided Senate.
“Too many families in too many places are being forced to endure this unfathomable pain and anguish. Action is needed now to prevent this scourge from continuing to ravage our communities,” Pelosi said.
“While we await further information on the details of this heinous crime, we continue to stand with victims, families and young people across the country saying, ‘Enough is enough.’”
Former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton offered her condolences to the families of the 10 victims in the Boulder shooting.
“Getting back to normal in America cannot mean getting back to regular mass shootings,” Clinton said in a tweet. “We simply can’t let this continue to be who we are.”
Getting back to normal in America cannot mean getting back to regular mass shootings.
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) March 23, 2021
My heart goes out to the 10 families grieving in Colorado today.
We simply can't let this continue to be who we are.
2020 was an usually quiet year for mass shootings in America, as much of the country was subject to restrictions on gatherings in order to limit the spread of coronavirus.
But with many states starting to relax restrictions as vaccinations increase, gun safety advocates have warned the country could see a rise in mass shootings.
Those warnings have become reality in the past week, with shootings in Atlanta and Boulder collectively claiming 18 lives.
Joe Biden had previously ordered that White House flags be flown at half-staff for the victims of the Atlanta shooting.
The flags were to remain at half-staff for the eight victims of that shooting until Monday at sunset.
As the sun was about to set in Washington yesterday, a shooter attacked a grocery store in Boulder, Colorado, leaving 10 people dead. The flags will now be lowered for the victims of that tragedy.
Biden orders White House flags flown at half-staff for Boulder shooting victims
Joe Biden has ordered that all White House flags be flown at half-staff to honor the 10 victims of yesterday’s shooting in Boulder, Colorado.
The White House also said in a new statement that the president will deliver brief remarks on the shooting this afternoon, before leaving for a trip to Ohio.
“He has been receiving regular updates and will continue to be briefed throughout the morning,” the White House said.
Speaking at the swearing-in ceremony of CIA Director William Burns this morning, Kamala Harris described the attack as “baffling”.
“It’s 10 people, going about their day living their lives, not bothering anybody. A police officer who is performing his duties, and with great courage and heroism,” the vice-president said.
The press conference in Boulder has now concluded, and the Senate judiciary committee’s hearing on gun violence continues.
Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat of Connecticut, opened his remarks at the hearing by calling for action to prevent future tragedies like those in Atlanta and Boulder.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal in gun violence hearing: "Thoughts and prayers cannot save the eight victims in Atlanta, or the 10 last night, including a brave police officer...Thoughts and prayers must lead to action." https://t.co/5NcJqzM67O pic.twitter.com/2b6kOka2m0
— CBS News (@CBSNews) March 23, 2021
Blumenthal said that the horror of these shootings was “unsurprising” because of the inaction of lawmakers on gun regulations.
“Inaction has made this horror completely predictable,” Blumenthal said. “Inaction by this Congress makes us complicit.
He added, “Thoughts and prayers cannot save the eight victims in Atlanta, or the 10 last night, including a brave police officer. ... Thoughts and prayers must lead to action.”
Here are the names of the 10 victims of the Boulder grocery store shooting, as read at this morning’s press conference:
- Denny Strong, 20.
- Neven Stanisic, 23.
- Rikki Olds, 25.
- Tralona Bartkowiak, 49.
- Teri Leiker, 51.
- Eric Talley, 51.
- Suzanne Fountain, 59.
- Kevin Mahoney, 61.
- Lynn Murray, 62.
-
Jody Waters, 65.
Maris Herold, the Boulder police chief, noted that she lives three blocks away from the grocery store where the shooting occurred.
Herold said she had officer Eric Talley and his family in her office two weeks ago to give an award to one of his sons. The chief described Talley, who died in yesterday’s shooting, as the best example of a police officer.
“He had a profession before this, but he felt a higher calling,” Herold said of Talley.
Boulder officials said the shooting suspect was in the hospital but was expected to soon be released.
Maris Herold, the Boulder police chief, previously said 21-year-old Ahmad Alissa has been charged with 10 counts of first-degree murder in connection to the shooting.
Officials later added that Alissa suffered a through-and-through gunshot wound to the leg.
Updated
The ages of the 10 Boulder shooting victims, who have now all been identified, range from 20 to 65.
Maris Herold, the Boulder police chief, said the victims were 20, 23, 25, 49, 51, 51, 59, 61, 62 and 65.
Herold had already confirmed that Eric Talley, a 51-year-old Boulder police officer, was among the victims.
The mayor of Boulder, Sam Weaver, said the city was now focused on mourning the loss of 10 community members in yesterday’s shooting.
Weaver said the Boulder community must work together to ensure that such violent acts do not happen in the future.
“We will work to build a future where tragedies like this live in a distant and unimaginable past,” Weaver said.
Congressman Joe Neguse, who represents Boulder in the House, said that the loss of 10 lives in yesterday’s shooting should inspire change in America.
“This cannot be our new normal. We should be able to feel safe in our grocery stores,” the Democratic congressman said. “We need to see a change because we have lost far too many lives.”
Neguse expressed faith in the strength and resilience of the Boulder community as it mourns the loss of 10 neighbors.
Congressman Joe Neguse, who represents Boulder in the House of Representatives, thanked law enforcement officials for their response to the supermarket shooting.
“It has been a devastating 24 hours for Boulder and for this state,” the Democratic congressman said at this morning’s press conference.
“We are heartbroken, absolutely heartbroken for the pain and the anguish that so many in our community and across our state are experiencing today.”
Jared Polis, the Democratic governor of Colorado, pledged to bring justice on behalf of the 10 victims of the supermarket shooting.
“There’s a full investigation underway,” Polis said. “The eyes of the nation are on Boulder.”
Maris Herold, the Boulder police chief, identified the shooting suspect as 21-year-old Ahmad Alissa. He has been charged with 10 counts of murder in the first degree.
Updated
Boulder police identifies 10 victims of supermarket shooting
Maris Herold, the Boulder police chief, is now holding a press conference on the supermarket shooting that left 10 people dead.
Herold identified the 10 victims, whose families have already been notified of their deaths.
The police chief added that a suspect has been charged with 10 counts of murder in the first degree in connection to the shooting.
Herold then turned the microphone over to Jared Polis, the Democratic governor of Colorado.
“My heart aches today,” Polis said.
A spokesperson for the Democrats on the Senate judiciary committee reflected on the panel holding a hearing on gun violence less than a day after a shooting claimed 10 lives in Boulder, Colorado.
It's not "timely" that the Senate is having a hearing on gun violence prevention tomorrow. That's not the point. The point is that gun violence is so common in this country, we can schedule a hearing on a random date and it ends up within a week of two mass shootings.
— Jenna Valle-Riestra (@Jenna_VR) March 23, 2021
“It’s not ‘timely’ that the Senate is having a hearing on gun violence prevention tomorrow. That’s not the point,” Jenna Valle-Riestra, the press secretary for judiciary committee Democrats, said yesterday.
“The point is that gun violence is so common in this country, we can schedule a hearing on a random date and it ends up within a week of two mass shootings.”
Since committee chairman Dick Durbin announced this hearing last week, shootings have occurred in Boulder and Atlanta, which collectively claimed 18 lives.
Senate judiciary committee holds hearing on gun violence
The Senate judiciary committee is now holding a hearing on gun violence, less than a day after the latest mass shooting in America.
The Democratic chairman of the committee, Dick Durbin, noted that two such shootings -- one in Atlanta and one in Boulder -- have occurred since he announced the panel would hold this hearing last week.
Durbin asked for a moment of silence for the shootings in Atlanta and Boulder, but he also requested “a moment of action” to address gun violence in America.
“We are Senate leaders. What are we doing? What are we doing other than reflecting and praying?” Durbin said.
After recording a year with the lowest level of public mass shootings in over a decade, the United States suffered its second such incident in less than a week on Monday night with a shooting at a Colorado grocery store that killed 10, including one police officer.
Gun safety advocates called for immediate action by Congress to address the resurgent national epidemic as the country emerges from a year of lockdowns and social distancing sparked by the coronavirus pandemics.
“This is the moment to make our stand. NOW,” tweeted senator Chris Murphy from Connecticut, where a shooter killed 26 people at an elementary school in 2012.
A male suspect was arrested at the scene, a King Soopers grocery store in Boulder, Colorado. Police did not name the suspect or describe a motive in a news conference Monday night.
“This is a tragedy and a nightmare for Boulder county, and in response, we have cooperation and assistance from local, state and federal authorities,” said Boulder county district attorney Michael Dougherty.
The Colorado attack brought the week’s death toll from mass public shootings to 18, after a gunman killed eight people at three Atlanta-area massage parlors last Tuesday. Six of the victims were women of Asian descent, and that attack produced a national demand for reckoning with discrimination and violence directed at Asian Americans.
Gun sales surged during the pandemic, leading to fears of a return of mass gun violence after coronavirus restrictions eased. Those fears appear to have been fulfilled in March.
Boulder shooting is 'absolutely baffling,' Harris says
Kamala Harris just answered a question about the Boulder shooting, while presiding over the swearing-in ceremony of CIA Director William Burns.
“It’s absolutely baffling,” the vice-president said at the White House moments ago.
“It’s 10 people, going about their day living their lives, not bothering anybody. A police officer who is performing his duties, and with great courage and heroism.”
The Boulder police chief has confirmed that one of the shooting victims was Eric Talley, 51, who had been with the city’s police department since 2010.
Updated
This is Joan Greve in Washington, taking over for Martin Belam.
The Boulder police department will soon hold a press conference on the supermarket shooting that left 10 people dead yesterday.
The attack came less than a week after a gunman in Atlanta killed eight people, including six Asian women, at three spas in the city.
The back-to-back shootings will almost certainly increase pressure on Democrats to pass stricter gun regulations, now that their party controls both chambers of Congress.
But with an evenly divided Senate, it’s unclear whether any gun control bills can make it to Joe Biden’s desk.
The blog will be following the press conference when it gets underway, so stay tuned.
A new outside report found that Facebook has allowed groups many tied to QAnon, boogaloo and militia movements to glorify violence during the 2020 election and in the weeks leading up to the deadly riots on the US Capitol in January.
Avaaz, a nonprofit advocacy group that says it seeks to protect democracies from misinformation, identified 267 pages and groups on Facebook that it says spread violence-glorifying material during the 2020 election to a combined following of 32 million users.
Barbara Ortutay for the Associated Press writes that the report found more than two-thirds of the groups and pages had names that aligned with several domestic extremist movements.
The first, boogaloo, promotes a second US civil war and the breakdown of modern society. The second is the antisemitic QAnon conspiracy. The rest are various anti-government militias. Since 2020 Facebook claims to have largely banned them.
But despite what Avaaz called “clear violations” of Facebook’s policies, it found that 119 of these pages and groups were still active on the platform as of March 18 and had just under 27 million followers.
Facebook acknowledged that its policy enforcement “isn’t perfect,” but said the report distorts its work against violent extremism and misinformation. The company said in a statement that it has done more than any other internet company to stanch the flow of harmful material, citing its bans of “nearly 900 militarized social movements” and the removal of tens of thousands of QAnon pages, groups, and accounts. It added that it is always improving its efforts against misinformation.
According to the report, the social network provided a “fertile ground” for misinformation and toxicity that contributed to radicalizing millions of Americans, helping create the conditions in which the storming of the Capitol became a reality.
On Thursday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai are slated to testify before Congress about extremism and misinformation on their platforms.
Republican lawmakers in more than 25 US states have advanced legislation banning transgender children from certain sports teams and limiting their access to gender-affirming healthcare.
Trans youth represent just a fraction of the US population – recent estimates suggest they make up 0.7% to 2% of youth. But conservative lawmakers have introduced more than 80 bills regulating their lives in the first three months of 2021, the highest-ever number of anti-trans legislative proposals filed in a single year.
The volume of bills, which have spread in nearly every region of the country, and the coordinated campaigns behind some of them, suggests trans kids’ lives have become a central focus of the GOP culture war following the 2020 presidential election.
“They are acting like we aren’t humans, that we don’t deserve the same things as them,” said Kris Wilka, a 13-year-old football player and trans boy in South Dakota, where lawmakers have passed legislation that would prohibit trans students from playing on the sports teams that correspond with their gender.
“Trans rights have been turned into a wedge issue,” said Jules Gill-Peterson, professor of gender, sexuality, and women’s studies at the University of Pittsburgh, who has researched the history of trans children in the US.
“The Republican party is hardly interested in defending women’s sports. This is a purely calculated political play,” Gill-Peterson said. “And it’s really easy to use children as a political football, because we don’t grant children the privilege to speak for themselves and defend their own interests.”
The bills have largely focused on two issues: sports and healthcare. The sports bills seek to ban trans kids from competing on teams that correspond with their gender. The healthcare bills block their access to gender-affirming medical treatments, and in some cases and criminalize doctors and parents who support them.
Read more of Sam Levin’s report here: How trans children became ‘a political football’ for the Republican party
Biden to give speech on health insurance costs during Ohio visit
President Joe Biden will showcase health insurance cost cuts in a speech in Ohio today. He’s out and about to promte that the Covid-19 relief law pumps up “Obamacare” premium subsidies to address longstanding problems of affordability, particularly for people with solid middle-class incomes. More taxpayer assistance means, in effect, that consumers who buy their own policies through HealthCare.gov will pay hundreds of dollars less out of their own pockets.
Alexandra Jaffe and Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar write for the Associated Press that Biden’s speech in Columbus, the capital of a political battleground state, is part of a mini-blitz by the White House. Health Secretary Xavier Becerra will echo Biden’s comments Tuesday in Carson City, Nevada, and join a Florida-themed Zoom event. Second gentleman Douglas Emhoff will pitch the relief bill in Omaha, Nebraska.
The Covid-19 legislation cuts premiums paid by a hypothetical 64-year-old making $58,000 from $1,075 a month to about $413, based on Congressional Budget Office estimates. A 45-year-old making $19,300 would pay zero in premiums as compared with about $67 on average before the law. People who have even a brief spell of unemployment this year can get a standard plan for zero premium and reduced copays and deductibles.
New and existing customers will be able to take advantage of the savings starting 1 April by going to HealthCare.gov. States that run their own health insurance markets will offer the same enhanced assistance, although timetables for implementation may vary.
Biden has opened a special sign-up period for uninsured people to get coverage through HealthCare.gov through May 15, and the early response has been strong. By spreading the word about the higher subsidies, the White House is hoping to super-charge enrollment. But the 11 million people who already have private plans through the health law will also benefit.
“The ACA is over a decade old and this is literally the first time that Democrats have been successful at improving it,” said analyst Larry Levitt of the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. “Democrats have succeeded politically by selling the ACA’s protections for preexisting conditions, but affordability has always been a challenge. And now Democrats have successfully improved the premium help available under the law.”
Stephen Collinson at CNN devotes his analysis piece this morning to Donald Trump’s 2022 influence, writing:
The former President’s effort to turn 2022 polls into a personal revenge mission and to replenish his personality cult got a big boost Monday when a comrade-in-arms, Rep Mo Brooks, launched an Alabama US Senate run.
Brooks is the latest Republican to seek to leverage his efforts to thwart a democratic election as a springboard for higher office. He led a push in the House to block the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory after telling Trump supporters at the “Stop the Steal” rally that turned into the Capitol insurrection on 6 January: “Today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass.”
He built the foundation for his run on proven falsehoods. “In 2020, America suffered the worst voter fraud and election theft in history,” Brooks said, claiming no other candidate for the US Senate had stood as strongly as he had alongside Trump. Channeling his hero, he slammed “weak-kneed RINOs,” the “fake news media” and “radical socialists.”
Former Missouri Gov Eric Greitens, who also fanned false claims about election fraud, and who had resigned amid allegations of sexual and campaign misconduct, announced a bid for the seat of retiring Sen Roy Blunt.
Trump on Monday endorsed GOP Rep Jody Hice for Georgia secretary of state – after attacking the incumbent, Brad Raffensperger, who had stood firm against Trump’s pressure on local officials to rig vote counts.
Read more here: CNN – Trump’s army takes aim at 2022 touting his election lies
There’s plenty of unfinished business left over from the Trump era, including the work of oversight investigations, as the Washington Post reports this morning:
Across the government, at least nine key oversight investigations were impeded by clashes with the White House or political appointees, people familiar with inspector general offices and public documents show.
Long-anticipated reports were released only this month on two senior Trump officials. One found evidence that Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao may have misused her position by repeatedly deploying her staff on personal business. A second concluded that former White House physician Ronny Jackson bullied his staff and drank on the job.
The timing meant their damaging disclosures emerged only after the former president left office and Jackson, a former Navy rear admiral, was elected to Congress from Texas.
Tensions between federal watchdogs and the administration they monitor are not uncommon. But 11 inspectors general or their senior aides who served under Trump, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal government deliberations, said hostility to oversight reached unprecedented levels during his time in office.
The result, they said, was that government hid wrongdoing from the public and important reforms to improve government efficiency were ignored. With Trump now out of office, advocates for government accountability predict other damaging revelations may only now begin to emerge.
“IGs under Trump faced an angry, account-settling president who had no compunction about removing those who threatened to reveal bad things about him,” said Gordon Heddell, a former inspector general at the Defense and Labor departments who served under Republican and Democratic presidents.
Read more here: Washington Post – Trump officials hindered at least nine key oversight probes, watchdogs said. Some may finally be released in coming months
Biden administration releases video of conditions for children inside crowded migrant detention facilities
ABC News have what they are touting as an exclusive first look at video footage released by the Biden administration of conditions inside crowded migrant detention facilities. They report:
The videos – shot last week and released Tuesday by US Customs and Border Protection – show living conditions inside a processing facility in El Paso, Texas, and a holding facility in Donna, Texas, where unaccompanied children and other migrants, including families, are being held while they await transfer to other federal agencies better suited to address their needs.
In the government-sanctioned photos and videos, children arriving at the Donna facility wear masks as they have their temperatures checked and receive health scans. One photo shows a child in a playpen, being watched over by a contracted caretaker.
The nearly four-minute video from Donna then depicts a crowded but orderly facility, with children packed into enclosures and sleeping on mats on floors. The video also shows shelves from inside the facility stocked with items including linens, diapers, food, water and hand sanitizer.
You can view it here: ABC News – Biden administration releases video from inside crowded migrant detention facilities
Marty Walsh was confirmed as Joe Biden’s new Labor secretary yesterday. He’s just been tweeting his thanks to the city of Boston where he has been mayor for seven years.
Boston is more than my hometown. It's my heart, and serving you for the last seven years has been the honor of my life.
— Marty Walsh (@MartyJWalsh) March 23, 2021
That's why I want to say thank you — for everything.
Boston is the city where my immigrant family found our American Dream. It’s where a whole community helped me beat childhood cancer. And it’s where I dedicated my life to public service.
— Marty Walsh (@MartyJWalsh) March 23, 2021
In turn, you trusted me to serve the city that's given me so much.
David Agren reports for us from Mexico City as senior US officials arrive in for talks over migrants:
Joe Biden took office promising to put a friendlier face on US immigration policy. He put an end to a scheme requiring asylum seekers to remain in Mexico, promised to restore the US asylum system and pledged to spend $4bn on addressing the root causes of migration in Central America.
But as ever-increasing numbers of unaccompanied minors arrive at the US southern border and create a domestic political crisis for the US president, he is turning to a tactic used by his predecessors – including Donald Trump: outsourcing immigration enforcement to Mexico.
Trump pressured Mexico into deploying its newly formed national guard to its border with Guatemala in June 2019, having threatened escalating tariffs on Mexican imports.
Analysts see something similar happening again in Mexico – but this time with more promises of cooperation on issues such as sharing Covid-19 vaccines, rather than threats of economic catastrophe.
“I don’t see why Biden would have to change a foreign policy [on migration] when it’s worked for the US,” said Javier Urbano, coordinator of the migration affairs program at the Iberoamerican University in Mexico City.
“Whether we like it or not, what Donald Trump achieved was a certain type of control from the United States over Mexico’s border migration policy with Central America,” he added. “If this policy works to significantly reduce migration, why should they change strategy?”
Senior US diplomats will travel to Mexico City for talks on Tuesday on stemming the flow of Central American migrants.
The US border tsar and former ambassador to Mexico, Roberta Jacobson, and the national security council director for the western hemisphere, Juan González, say their meeting was “to develop an effective and humane plan of action to manage migration”, according to a statement from the White House.
“The main topic will be cooperation on development in Central America and southern Mexico, in addition to joint effort on secure, orderly and regular migration,” tweeted Roberto Velasco Álvarez, undersecretary for North America in the Mexican foreign ministry.
Read more of David Agren’s report from Mexico City here: Joe Biden strikes new tone but Mexico remains US’s wall against migrants
Mitch McConnell, who was accused of laying waste to bipartisan co-operation in the Senate when he blocked a supreme court pick by Barack Obama then changed the rules to hurry through three picks for Donald Trump, has said that if Democrats do away with the filibuster, they will “turn the Senate into a sort of nuclear winter”.
The Republican minority leader, who himself invoked the “nuclear option” to change the rule for supreme court justices in 2017, was speaking to the Ruthless podcast in an episode released on Tuesday.
Eyeing major legislation on voting rights, gun control, infrastructure and more, Democrats who control the White House and Congress are pressuring leaders to reform or abolish the Senate filibuster rule, by which a minority of just 41 out of 100 senators is able to block most legislation.
Joe Biden saw his $1.9tn coronavirus relief package pass earlier this month by budget reconciliation, a narrowly applied process that sidesteps the filibuster rule and allows for passage by a simple majority. He is reportedly considering further major steps by that route, although key priorities such as voting rights could not advance through reconciliation.
But Biden has indicated he may be open to some change to the filibuster.
McConnell is not.
“I think if they destroy the essence of the Senate, the legislative filibuster, they will find a Senate that will not function,” said the Kentucky Republican, who took his own nuclear option six years after then Democratic majority leader Harry Reid made such a move on lower-court appointments and executive branch nominees, to bypass Republican obstruction.
“It takes unanimous consent to turn the lights on here,” McConnell said. “And I think they would leave an angry 50 senators not interested in being cooperative on even the simplest things.”
Democrats in the 50-50 Senate, which is controlled by the vote of Vice-President Kamala Harris, might well retort to McConnell that Republicans have shown precious little interest in co-operation on anything for many years. The Covid relief bill did not attract a single Republican vote.
There’s another hurdle to the Biden agenda – and that is the Senate filibuster. Burgess Everett and James Arkin write for Politico this morning on how it is already a focus of the midterm election campaign:
In three of the most competitive Senate races, Democratic candidates are already campaigning on killing the Senate’s 60-vote requirement for most bills, placing the chamber’s arcane rules at the forefront of the nascent 2022 midterms. Those reform-minded Democrats are running on voting rights legislation, a minimum wage increase and background checks for gun purchases, arguing that they’re only possible through a simple majority vote in the Senate.
If Democrats can expand their 50-seat majority by two or three seats, moderate Sens Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema will no longer hold so much sway in a caucus increasingly interested in gutting the chamber’s supermajority threshold once and for all.
“I would be surprised if there’s anyone in any of these [competitive] states... that would support maintaining the filibuster,” said Democratic Pennsylvania Lt Gov John Fetterman, who is pursuing his party’s nomination for a Senate seat up for grabs next year. “Getting rid of the filibuster is as close to a litmus test for our party as I can describe.”
It’s basically impossible in 2022 for Democrats to pick up 10 seats and secure a filibuster-proof majority, given the Senate’s current 50-50 split and their limited number of pick-up opportunities across the country. But snatching open seats in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin or North Carolina next fall while holding on elsewhere is a plausible way for Democrats to squash the legislative filibuster in 2023, provided they hold their House majority as well.
Read more here: Politico – Killing the filibuster becomes new ‘litmus test’ for Democratic candidates
One threat to Biden’s agenda is legal action from states over his federal plans. Alexandra Villarreal in Austin reports for us today on how Texas is attempting to derail progressive policies:
Just two days after Joe Biden’s inaufuration, Texas filed the first major lawsuit against Biden’s administration, successfully blocking a 100-day deportation moratorium that the governor, Greg Abbott, chided as an “attempt to grant blanket amnesty” to immigrants.
Far from a one-off burst of hostility, that incendiary case marked a return to Texas politicians’ tried and true playbook of weaponizing the courts to derail progressive policies, a tactic that’s proven surprisingly potent amid ideological warfare with the feds.
“They’ve been successful at, like, causing uncertainty,” said Katie Keith, associate research professor for the Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University. “And making a mess of things that I think other folks feel are otherwise settled.”
The state’s leadership leaned heavily on the judiciary under Barack Obama’s administration, which they sued at least 48 times, the Texas Tribune reported, tackling issues as disparate and all-encompassing as immigration, environmental regulations and voting rights.
Then, in the aftermath of last year’s presidential election, Paxton went so far as to challenge 20m votes in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in a far-fetched attempt to overturn Donald Trump’s defeat. And right now, Texas is spearheading yet another existential threat to the Affordable Care Act in the supreme court, even as Biden urges the justices to preserve Obama’s signature healthcare law.
Because of the high stakes, these cases often capture national attention, and Texas’s ambitious current and former attorneys general have shown a willingness to trade resources and time for newspaper quotes and TV interviews. The court battles give key players such as Paxton a platform “to demonstrate that they are fighters and they’re looking out for their voters”, said Keith E Whittington, a professor of politics at Princeton University.
“These kinds of lawsuits have become very high-profile events” and allow those involved to “grandstand and send a political message to constituents about all the hard work you’re doing to oppose the administration that they don’t like”, Whittington said.
Texas’s judicial activism is part of a larger partisan gambit that’s been going on for years. Politicians undo or delay federal policies they find unfavorable or overreaching, while strategically framing the narrative in the press.
“They are good opportunities to really try to influence the messaging about how particular policies or particular laws are understood, and what the potential problems with them are,” Whittington said.
Read more of Alexandra Villarreal’s report here: Texas ramps up efforts to derail progressive policies
Here’s how Jeff Stein and Tyler Pager at the Washington Post have reported on the Biden infrastructure plans overnight, writing:
If pursued, the infrastructure and jobs bill could help define Biden’s presidency. The president has faced intense pressure, including from some Democrats, to scale back his domestic policy ambitions and work with congressional Republicans on more incremental legislation following his $1.9 trillion covid relief plan, which every Republican voted against.
Doing so, however, would require Biden to jettison many of his most consequential 2020 presidential campaign promises, while also frustrating much of his base and Democratic Party leadership. Introducing a new $3 trillion package, which is expected to include tax increases to offset spending, is sure to frustrate Republicans, setting up another acrimonious legislative fight. But it gives the president a chance to cement a domestic policy agenda beyond the emergency response to the pandemic.
“The country has not had a real infrastructure bill since Dwight Eisenhower set up the highway system. This could do more for American manufacturing and blue-collar jobs than anything else,” said former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell, a proponent of infrastructure spending. “It’s crucial not just for Biden’s legacy but for the legacy of the American government in the next decade. It’s a seminal moment for the country.”
Read more here: Washington Post – White House prepares massive infrastructure bill with universal pre-K, free community college, climate measures
With the $1.9tn Covid stimulus bill in the rear-view mirror, the Biden administration is now looking ahead to his next spending priority – a $3tn infrastructure bill which Democrats hope will make a significant change to life in the US. Jim Tankersley reports overnight for the New York Times:
Administration officials caution that details remain in flux. But the enormous scope of the proposal highlights the aggressive approach the Biden administration wants to take as it tries to harness the power of the federal government to make the economy more equitable, address climate change, and improve American manufacturing and high-technology industries in an escalating battle with China.
Biden’s advisers plan to recommend that the effort be broken into pieces, with Congress tackling infrastructure before turning to a second package that would include more people-focused proposals, like free community college, universal prekindergarten and a national paid leave program.
Some White House officials believe the focus of the first package may be more appealing to Republicans, business leaders and many moderate Senate Democrats, given the longstanding bipartisan push in Washington for an infrastructure bill.
That plan would spend heavily on clean energy deployment and the development of other “high-growth industries of the future” like 5G telecommunications. It includes money for rural broadband, advanced training for millions of workers, and one million affordable and energy-efficient housing units. Documents suggest it will include nearly $1 trillion in spending on the construction of roads, bridges, rail lines, ports, electric vehicle charging stations, and improvements to the electric grid and other parts of the power sector.
Read more here: New York Times – Biden team prepares $3 trillion in new spending for the economy
Welcome to our live coverage of US politics for Tuesday. Here’s a catch-up on where we are, and what we might expect to see today:
- The Biden administration is pushing forward plans for a $3tn infrastructure bill which they hope will mark a leap forward for climate change action, education, transport and reducing inequality in the US, according to reports in the New York Times.
- The president will be travelling to Columbus, Ohio today, where he will tour the James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute. He’ll speak at 4.50pm (2050 GMT)
- On coronavirus, Dr Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that the US could see “another avoidable surge” if Americans are not vigilant about limiting the virus’ spread.
- AstraZeneca may have provided an incomplete view of efficacy data on its Covid-19 vaccine from a large-scale trial in the United States, a US health agency has said, in a fresh setback for the drug.
- More than 42.5 million people have now been fully vaccinated against Covid in the US.
- On immigration, the Biden administration announced a team of senior officials will travel to Mexico and Guatemala, to meet with foreign leaders about the recent increase in migrants arriving at the US-Mexican border.
- House Democrat Henry Cuellar released photos showing crowded conditions at a facility for migrant children in Texas.
- Multiple people, including a police officer, were killed in a mass shooting at a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado.
- One of the Atlanta shooting victim’s husband says police held him in handcuffs for hours after the event. Mario Gonzalez’s accusation would mean he was detained after images of suspect released and authorities captured him.
- The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on reducing gun violence at 10am – this was scheduled before yesterday’s events in Colorado.
- Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Fed Chair Jerome Powell will testify before the House Financial Services Committee on the coronavirus response at noon.
- The Senate voted to confirm Boston mayor Marty Walsh as labor secretary.
- Prosecutors dropped all charges but one against Lakota activist Nick Tilsen in connection to the Mount Rushmore demonstration he led prior to a visit by Donald Trump last year.
- There’s no formal Jen Psaki press briefing today, but she’ll be on Air Force One with the media for Biden’s trip.
