Summary
- Kamala Harris, who took her first foreign trip as vice-president this week as an emissary for the administration on immigration and the conditions at the US-Mexico border, called her trip a “success”. She has drawn sharp criticism for telling migrants at the border, “do not come”. The White House has defended her comments, which advocates pointed out violated the rights of people to come to the border seeking asylum.
- The White House, lawmakers and voting rights advocates are still in talks with Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat who has said won’t support the For the People voting rights bill. Manchin has also obstinately refused to ax the filibuster, slashing Democrats’ hopes of protecting voting rights as Republican-led states race to enact suppression laws ahead of the next elections.
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A bipartisan Senate review of the 6 January Capitol insurrection found that intelligence failures left police officers vulnerable. “Communications were chaotic, sporadic, and, according to many front-line officers, non-existent,” the report said.
- Joe Biden abandoned negotiations with Republicans on an infrastructure bill. Biden informed Republican senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, who has been the senate Republican liaison on infrastructure, “that the latest offer from her group did not, in his view, meet the essential needs of our country”. The president will now focus on working with a bipartisan group led by Republican senator Mitt Romney to develop a compromise package.
Updated
Former Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe has won the Democratic primary to retake his old seat.
The AP just called the race in his favor.
McAuliffe is set to face off against Trump-backed Republican businessman Glenn Youngkin in the state’s gubernatorial election this year. The race will be closely watched. The party that holds the White House tends to lose the gubernatorial elections in Virginia – but McAuliffe bucked that trend in 2013, become the first candidate from the president’s party to win the state’s governorship in 40 years.
Updated
Throughout her trip, Harris been getting questions about why she didn’t visit the US-Mexico border.
She said today that she plans to, and has visited the border before. But, she said, “Let’s talk about what’s going on in the places that are causing the issue at the border,” she said. “I think it’s shortsighted for any of us who are in the business of problem-solving to suggest we’re only going to respond to the reaction as opposed to addressing the cause.”
Harris also announced a $130m investment “that we are going to dedicate to the labor reform movement here in Mexico”.
She and Biden, she added, “are proud of the fact that we will be the most pro-union administration”.
The investment will go to help strengthen labor standards in Mexico, address worker safety and child labor, the vice-president said.
Updated
Kamala Harris speaks in Mexico City, reflecting on her trip
Harris, who took her first foreign trip as vice-president this week to Guatemala and Mexico City, said the trip was a “success”. She was there as an emissary for the administration on immigration and the conditions at the US-Mexico border.
Earlier today, she met with the Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to discuss efforts to combat human trafficking and manage migration, as well as economic goals. Yesterday, she stirred up criticism and controversy after she told undocumented migrants to “not come” to the US.
“If we are to address the issues that address the southern Border of the United States,” she said, “we have to have the ability to address the root causes of why people leave.”
“I want to be very clear that the problem at the border in large part, if not entirely, stems from the problems in these countries,” she said, referring to Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and other countries that migrants are fleeing.
Updated
Senate passes bipartisan bill to counter China's economic rise
The Senate has passed a bipartisan bill designed to boost US competitiveness with China, 68-32.
The legislation includes massive investment in American semiconductor manufacturing, robotics research, quantum computing and other technology – in an effort to counter China’s rise as an economic and geopolitical power. It includes $10bn over five years to create regional tech hubs in rural areas, and it requires that iron, steel and other products used in American infrastructure projects are manufactured domestically.
It’s a rare bill that was supported by both majority leader Chuck Schumer and minority leader Mitch McConnell – demonstrating that one-upping China can unite lawmakers across party lines.
The bill will still need to pass through the House before it becomes law – and it may face some resistance there from lawmakers concerned that it focuses too much on investing in emerging technologies, rather than research and technology to address climate change, cybersecurity and other pressing issues.
The Senate confirmed Biden’s first two judicial nominees today, with some Republican support.
The appointments are the first step for Biden in working to rebalance the courts after Republicans during the Trump administration raced to appoint more than 220 conservative judges, including three supreme court justices.
“I want to convey my sincere gratitude to the Senate for confirming Julien X Neals as a judge for the US district court for the district of New Jersey and Regina M Rodriguez as a judge for the US district court for the district of Colorado, both with bipartisan support,” Biden said in a statement.
Biden and Democrats have made it a big priority to appoint even more nominees in the coming weeks, with the goal of confirming “the most judges by July of the first year of a president’s first term in over 50 years”, Biden said.
Updated
Bill Cassidy, a Republican senator of Louisiana, was one of the members of the moderate bipartisan group working on a new infrastructure proposal.
.@POTUS just called to discuss infrastructure. I brought up flood resiliency and energy provisions that would benefit Louisiana as well as the rest of our nation. Strongly support @SenCapito's efforts. Any infrastructure package should and must be bipartisan.
— U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy, M.D. (@SenBillCassidy) June 8, 2021
Biden spoke with him, as well as Democrats Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona today, in hopes of reaching a deal even as he travels to Europe this week for the G7 summit.
“The president said that he would be in contact with members of the group by phone while in Europe,” Psaki said.
Updated
A group of moderate lawmakers led Republican Mitt Romney, of Utah, had been working on an alternative bipartisan plan. Biden will keep working with this group, in hopes of getting a deal through, Psaki said.
That group hopes to win over 20 centrists to back a compromised plan – one that could cost about half of Biden’s most recent $1.7tn proposal. The plan could be closer to what Biden and most Democrats have backed than the proposal that Capito brought.
A major point of contention in the $928bn Republican offer that Biden rejected was that it avoided new spending by dipping into coronavirus relief funds. While Democrats would prefer to raise the corporate tax rate, Republicans have rejected the tactic.
Updated
Biden reaches impasse with Republican senators on infrastructure
According to press secretary Jen Psaki, the president’s efforts to negotiate a bipartisan infrastructure plan that is “responsive to the country’s pressing infrastructure needs” has hit an impasse.
Biden informed Republican senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, who has been the senate Republican liaison on infrastructure, “that the latest offer from her group did not, in his view, meet the essential needs of our country to restore our roads and bridges, prepare us for our clean energy future, and create jobs”, Psaki said in a statement. “While he was willing to reduce his plan by more than $1 trillion, the Republican group had increased their proposed new investments by only $150 billion.”
Capito signaled that she didn’t have much more to offer in terms of a plan that Republicans and Democrats could get behind. “While I appreciate President Biden’s willingness to devote so much time and effort to these negotiations, he ultimately chose not to accept the very robust and targeted infrastructure package, and instead, end our discussions,” she said.
Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said Democrats are also working on a plan to pass an infrastructure measure via the reconciliation process, which would circumvent the need for bipartisan agreement.
Updated
Even though Senator Joe Manchin faces pressure for his refusal to back a sweeping voting bill, there was a calm atmosphere when he met with several of the US’ leading civil rights groups on Tuesday to discuss the bill.
“It was entirely constructive. It wasn’t tense in the least. Look, if there was going to be a tense meeting ever, this one was set up to be that. But it wasn’t,” Damon Hewitt, the president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, told the Guardian. “This relationship that we are continuing to build is bigger, so we were committed to this not being a tense, bombthrowing meeting.”
Manchin too said the meeting was constructive, though he remained unmoved.
“I don’t think anybody changed positions on that. We’re just learning where everybody’s coming from,” he said.
The meeting underscores the enormous power Manchin has over the future on major civil rights bills, as well as virtually every other element of the Democratic agenda. Advocates must seek a way to show Manchin the urgency of acting without alienating them from their cause.
Chuck Schumer, the senate majority leader, has pledged there will be a vote on the For the People Act at the end of June. He said Tuesday there could be changes to the bill before then – a tacit acknowledgment the current bill may be unfeasible given Manchin’s objections. Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, said Tuesday Democrats were expecting Manchin to provide a specific list of his qualms with the bill.
Asked whether Manchin understood the urgent need to act on voting rights now, Hewitt said: “Urgency, I’m not sure if he connects with because he’s on a different clock. His clock is the long game.”
“People may say he’s angling for this or that, what he can get for his state. Maybe some of that is true, I don’t know. But he came across as deeply principled. That he believes what he says and he says what he believes. And we may just simply disagree,” he added.
Updated
Republican West Virginia Senator Shelley Moore Capito is saying that Joe Biden has ended infrastructure negotiations with Republicans.
This comes after press secretary Jen Psaki said today that “the train is moving on several tracks” regarding the negotiations.
Here is Capito’s statement:
Sen. Capito: “I spoke with the president this afternoon, and he ended our infrastructure negotiations.” pic.twitter.com/xQN6fzMrOR
— Nicholas Wu (@nicholaswu12) June 8, 2021
Actress and activist Alyssa Milano is considering running for Congress in 2024, in a bid to flip a Republican stronghold in California blue, the Hill is reporting.
Milano said she splits her time between Ventura county and Truckee in California’s 4th congressional district, which has been represented by Republican Tom McClintock since he was first elected in 2008.
“It’s going to take someone with, I think, name recognition and deep pockets to be able to run against McClintock, and so I’m considering it,” Milano told the Hill. “I’m basically gathering information right now, speaking to different consultants, speaking to the community.”
Vice-President Kamala Harris will host all 24 female senators for dinner next week, bringing back what were once regular bipartisan get-togethers, Politico reports.
The quarterly dinners were started by former Democratic Maryland Senator Barbara Mikulski and Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, according to Politico, hosted at the home of a different senator every six week, with each lawmaker bringing a different dish.
Supposedly, however, the dinners became less regular after Mikulski retired in 2017 - and with the aggressive campaigning against former Republican New Hampshire Senator Kelly Ayotte in 2016 and Republican Maine Senator Susan Collins in 2020.
Adding to tensions, in 2020, a record four femaleDemocratic senators were running against each other for president - Harris, New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.
“The sisterhood has certainly faded,” an unnamed source told Politico.
Updated
Today so far
It’s been a lively morning and we have more news to bring you in the coming hours, so do stay tuned. Here are the main developments of the day in US political news so far.
- Vice president Kamala Harris is coming in for some criticism from progressives and others both on the likely effectiveness of her visit to Guatemala and Mexico this week and attempts to tackle the “root causes” of migration from the region to the US, and her blunt message yesterday aimed at migrants telling them simply: “Do not come”. White House press sec Jen Psaki defended Harris at the briefing today.
- The White House is still putting a brave face on the gut-punch by Joe Manchin in his West Virginia op-ed saying he wouldn’t support either the For the People voting rights Act legislation stuck in Congress or busting the filibuster to get more Biden bills through. Psaki said folks were encouraged by talks today between Manchin and civil rights leaders.
- This despite those talks not yielding any concrete agreement, compromise or shift in positions, apparently.
- The first – and possibly the last – bipartisan review into the 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol uncovered failings on all fronts before the attack as well as breakdowns between intelligence agencies and a lack of preparation by the Capitol police.
Updated
White House press secretary Jen Psaki received multiple questions about Vice-President Kamala Harris and her first foreign trip. To recap, Harris has received some criticism for bluntly telling migrants “do not come” to the US and then for not visiting the border.
Psaki reiterated that Harris’s assignment “was to work with countries and leaders within the northern triangle to address root causes, to address corruption, to make sure we’re working together to address humanitarian concerns.”
“I think at some point she may go to the border, we’ll see,” Psaki said. “But she’s in the northern triangle now to have discussions with leaders, with community leaders, with civil society leaders, with the embassy on how we can work together.”
Psaki acknowledged a critical tweet from progressive Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that pointed out that seeking asylum at the US border is “a 100% legal method of arrival”.
“What the vice president was simply conveying is that there’s more work to be done, that we don’t have these systems in place yet, that it’s still a dangerous journey, as we’ve said many times from here and from many forums before,” Psaki said. “We need more time to get the work done to get asylum processing to where it should be.”
Much of the backlash over Harris’s comments over not visiting the border have come from Republicans. Psaki addressed this, saying, “we’re not taking advice from former President Trump, or most of the Republicans who are criticizing us on this, given that they were all sitting there while we created this problem that we walked into at the border and the movement of migration that has been growing in the last year,” she said.
A reporter asked about some progressives referring to Joe Manchin as the “new Mitch McConnell”.
Jen Psaki responded: “We’ll leave the name-calling to others.”
Updated
In today’s White House press briefing, White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked about voting rights legislation, in light of senator Joe Manchin and his weekend oped about his decision not to vote for the For The People Act.
In response to a question about whether Joe Biden would push for pursuing the John Lewis Act before the For The People Act, she responded, “I think he is quite open to what Democratic leadership feels is the viable path forward.”
She followed up by saying it was “encouraging” to see Manchin meet with civil rights leaders this morning, and reiterated the administration’s support for voting rights legislation.
“We will continue to press for federal action to move forward on a bill that the president would love to sign into law,” Psaki said. “We certainly know we cannot do that with a magic wand, that is not how democracy works, for good reason. But the president also signed this executive action early on, a very expansive and powerful executive action, because he didn’t want to delay a moment in ensuring that we were taking more steps to assist states to modernize vote.gov, to increase federal employees’ access to voting, to analyze barriers to voting for people.”
Manchin: 'I don't think anybody changed positions' on voting rights legislation
West Virginia senator Joe Manchin left his meeting with civil rights leaders unmoved on his decision to oppose the sweeping For the People Act, but called the conversation constructive.
“We had a constructive conversation. I think everybody pretty much knows the importance of what we’re doing,” Manchin said. “And I think I’m very much concerned about our democracy, protecting people’s voting rights.”
Civil rights leaders that met with Manchin - NAACP President Derrick Johnson, the Rev Al Sharpton, National Urban League President Marc Morial, National Council of Negro Women President Johnnetta Cole, Lawyers’ Committee President Damon Hewitt, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights interim President Wade Henderson and the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation President Melanie Campbell - were measured in their response. The readout from the meeting read:
In a very constructive meeting today, national civil rights leaders met with Senator Manchin to share our policy priorities and concerns related to voting rights and police reform. Specifically, the groups expressed their collective views on the need for Congress to pass both the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, and the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.
The two voting rights bills are a top priority and essential to protect the freedom to vote. There continues to be an unprecedented partisan wave of state legislative proposals that are aimed at denying the right to vote — particularly for Black and Brown people. The leaders also conveyed to Senator Manchin that a minority of senators must not be able to abuse the filibuster to impede much needed progress. Congress must act so all Americans have meaningful access to the ballot.
NAACP President @DerrickNAACP on his meeting with @Sen_JoeManchin,
— Eva McKend (@evamckend) June 8, 2021
"Our meeting today with Senator Manchin was productive and insightful. We focused on finding common ground and building a relationship, and I believe we achieved that goal." pic.twitter.com/xxXrv0xaQU
Updated
Vice-President Kamala Harris, who has been taking some criticism for her blunt speech in Guatemala to Central American migrants to “do not come” to US, is now getting some backlash from Republicans for an NBC interview she did on this same trip.
Reminder: Joe Biden tasked Harris in March with efforts to stem migration at the US-Mexican border. On her first foreign trip, NBC’s Lester Holt asked if she had any plans to visit the border.
“At some point, you know, we are going to the border,” Harris said. “We’ve been to the border. So this whole, this whole, this whole thing about the border. We’ve been to the border. We’ve been to the border.”
“You haven’t been to the border,” Holt responded.
“I, and I haven’t been to Europe. And I mean, I don’t - I don’t understand the point that you’re making,” Harris said with a laugh.
“We have to deal with what's happening at the border.”@VP Kamala Harris spoke exclusively with @LesterHoltNBC on her first trip overseas, how the administration is addressing the immigration crisis, and if she plans to visit the southern border herself. pic.twitter.com/sA4We7peeR
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) June 8, 2021
Harris has maintained that her focus is on
“the root causes of migration.”
“I care about this and I care about what’s happening at the border. I’m in Guatemala because my focus is dealing with the root causes of migration,” Harris said. “There may be some who think that that is not important, but it is my firm belief that if we care about what’s happening at the border, we better care about the root causes and address them.”
LESTER HOLT: You haven't been to the border.
— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) June 8, 2021
KAMALA HARRIS: And I haven't been to Europe. pic.twitter.com/Vj6M261Nx3
Updated
Vice-President Kamala Harris is in Mexico now, meeting with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
President Lopez Obrador shows Vice President Harris a Diego Rivera mural at the national palace. Asked if he will do more about border enforcement, Lopez Obrador said “We will touch on that subject but always addressing the fundamental root causes” pic.twitter.com/URiJdWaUM9
— Tamara Keith (@tamarakeithNPR) June 8, 2021
Reminder that the Senate report on the Capitol attack comes just weeks after Republicans blocked efforts to establish a bipartisan, 9/11-style commission to investigate the events of 6 January.
SCHUMER says of Joint Cmte report on Jan 6th: "The report did not investigate, report on, or hardly make any reference to the actual cause, the actual impetus for the attack on January 6.”
— Frank Thorp V (@frankthorp) June 8, 2021
Says it "has strengthened the argument for an independent commission on January the 6th."
MCONNELL then said: "Today's report is one of the many reasons I'm confident in the ability of existing investigations to uncover all actionable facts about the events of January 6. I'll continue to support these efforts over any that seek to politicize the process..."
— Frank Thorp V (@frankthorp) June 8, 2021
Senate report on US Capitol attack finds broad failings
The first – and possibly the last – bipartisan review into the 6 January attack on the US Capitol uncovered failings on all fronts before the attack as well as breakdowns between intelligence agencies and a lack of preparation by the Capitol police.
Senate Homeland report on Jan. 6 out today details how calls for violence on social media weren't deemed credible by intel agencies ahead of the deadly riot https://t.co/GSmgYGOlvY pic.twitter.com/8xIfNEVpim
— Cristiano Lima (@viaCristiano) June 8, 2021
“This report is important in the fact that it allows us to make some immediate improvements to the security situation here in the Capitol,” said Michigan senator Gary Peters, the chairman of the homeland security and governmental affairs committee, which conducted the investigation along with the Senate rules committee. “But it does not answer some of the bigger questions that we need to face, quite frankly, as a country and as a democracy.”
Read more about the report’s findings here:
Joseph Blount Jr, president and CEO of the Colonial Pipeline Company, is testifying before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee about the ransomware attack last month that knocked out gas delivery up and down the East Coast.
The Justice Department announced yesterday that it recovered $2.3m of the roughly $4.4m that the company paid in a cryptocurrency ransom to a gang of criminal hackers known as DarkSide.
Colonial Pipeline CEO Joseph Blount confirms in Senate testimony that investigators believe DarkSide hackers infiltrated the company's IT systems through a legacy VPN system "not intended to be in use."
— Dustin Volz (@dnvolz) June 8, 2021
He adds: "We are deeply sorry for the impact that this attack had."
HSGAC RM Rob Portman: When did you pay the ransom?
— Eric Geller (@ericgeller) June 8, 2021
Blount: We made the decision to negotiate on the evening of May 7, the day of the hack. But we didn’t make the payment until May 8.
Tom Carper: What’s the most important advice you can offer to other companies?
— Eric Geller (@ericgeller) June 8, 2021
Blount: Look at your defenses, have an emergency response plan, and be transparent with the authorities.
It appears the meeting between Joe Manchin and civil rights leaders has come to an end.
MANCHIN speaks to reporters post meeting w civil rts leaders:
— Mike DeBonis (@mikedebonis) June 8, 2021
"constructive conversation"
"very much concerned about our democracy"
"just an excellent meeting"
Did anyone changed their views?
"No, I don't think anyone changed positions."
Manchin would not answer two direct questions:
— Mike DeBonis (@mikedebonis) June 8, 2021
-whether he'd vote to at least start debate on S.1
-whether he's spoken to Biden in recent days
In more voting rights news: following the Sunday oped in which Democratic senator Joe Manchin committed against voting for the For The People Act, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is saying the House will move on the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.
Pelosi says the House will move on the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, a proposal pushed by Manchin but stands little chance of passing the Senate. She says it won’t be ready til the fall. “It is not a substitute for H.R. 1.”
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) June 8, 2021
Some recap: the For The People Act would ensure automatic and same-day registration, place limits on gerrymandering and restore voting rights for felons. The John Lewis Act, named after the late Georgia Democratic congressman, would reauthorize voting protections established in the civil rights era but eliminated by the supreme court in 2013.
Manchin said he would support the John Lewis Act. His major concern with the For The People Act is that it was not bipartisan.
Pelosi made clear that the John Lewis Act is not a substitute for the For The People Act.
.@SpeakerPelosi tells Democrats in a new letter that the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act "must be passed, but it will not be ready until the fall, and it is not a substitute for H.R. 1." pic.twitter.com/uBYmRTN3sR
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) June 8, 2021
Former President Barack Obama went on CNN last night to criticize how Republicans have been “cowed into accepting” a series of positions that “would be unrecognizable and unacceptable even five years ago or a decade ago”.
In an interview with Anderson Cooper, Obama spoke of the 6 January attack on the US Capitol: “Suddenly you have large portions of the elected Congress going along with the falsehood that there were problems with the election.”
He expressed disappointment in Republican elected officials, saying that he understood that while it was politically difficult to go against the lies and conspiracy theories being peddled among their base, it was the right thing to do.
“I didn’t expect that there would be so few people who would say, ‘I don’t mind losing my office because this is too important. America is too important. Our democracy is too important’,” Obama said. “We didn’t see that.”
“I’m still the hope and change guy,” Obama said. “My hope is the tides will turn, but that does require each of us to understand that this experiment in democracy is not self-executing. It doesn’t happen just automatically. It happens because each successive generation says ‘these values, these truths, we hold self-evident. This is important. We’re going to invest in it and sacrifice for it, even when it’s not politically convenient’.”
Vice-President Kamala Harris travels to Mexico today to meet with the country’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. But Harris is already drawing some criticism on her first official foreign trip.
In Guatemala yesterday, Harris was blunt in telling would-be migrants “do not come” to the US border.
This is disappointing to see.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 7, 2021
First, seeking asylum at any US border is a 100% legal method of arrival.
Second, the US spent decades contributing to regime change and destabilization in Latin America. We can’t help set someone’s house on fire and then blame them for fleeing. https://t.co/vADyh5H0bw
Her spokeswoman, Symone Sanders, appeared to try to soften that statement today:
Vice President Harris spox @SymoneSanders46: “The President and Vice President have been clear in dissuading people from making the dangerous and treacherous journey to the U.S./Mexico border."
— Craig Caplan (@CraigCaplan) June 8, 2021
VP spox Sanders: "We encourage those who do want to come to the US to do so legally and seek legal immigration options in their home countries. The Vice President is committed to addressing the root causes of migration, which also addresses why migrants are coming to our border.”
— Craig Caplan (@CraigCaplan) June 8, 2021
The Guardian’s Julian Borger looks into some other questions raised by the measures Harris announced in Guatemala:
Updated
Manchin to meet with Black civil rights leaders about voting rights
Hello, live blog readers. Hope you’re all doing well.
Two days after publishing an op ed on why he won’t vote for voting rights legislation for which he was a key vote, Democratic West Virginia senator Joe Manchin will meet with critics on the left today.
Black and civil rights leaders have long fought against what many Democrats have categorized as Republican efforts to restrict voter access in communities of color.
A Hill person familiar tells me Joe Manchin's previously reported Tuesday meeting w/ NAACP on HR1 will now also include
— Astead (@AsteadWesley) June 7, 2021
Al Sharpton, Sherrilyn Ifill of NAACP LDF, Urban League prez Marc Morial, and a couple more. A full court press
And they’re not happy.
Please tell me Manchin wasn’t singing “We Shall Overcome” the same day he published an OpEd about why he won’t vote to defend the voting rights civil rights leaders fought & died for. This is why West Virginians are holding #MoralMonday March on Manchin's office next Monday 6/14.
— Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II (@RevDrBarber) June 8, 2021
Manchin’s decision leave Democrats scrambling on what to do next on the For the People Act, which would ensure automatic and same-day registration, place limits on gerrymandering and restore voting rights for felons.
It comes as Joe Biden said he would “fight like heck” for voting protections, putting Vice-President Kamala Harris in charge of the White House’s efforts.
Our voting rights reporter Sam Levine takes a deeper look at the impact of Manchin’s decision here:
