U.S. Government & governance August 2021-December 2022

See also
House Select Committee January 6 Attack Investigation
U.S. Economy July 2021-2024
U.S. elections primaries & campaign
Donald Trump September 2022-

27-29 December
Heather Cox Richardson December 29, 2022
Today, President Joe Biden signed into law the bipartisan year-end omnibus funding bill passed by the House and the Senate before lawmakers left town.
The $1.7 trillion measure addresses key goals of both parties. It funds the military and domestic programs. It funds public health and science, invests in law enforcement, and funds programs to prevent violence against women. It funds veterans’ services, and it provides assistance to Ukraine in its struggle to protect itself against Russia’s invasion. It updates the Electoral Count Act to prevent a president from trying to overturn a presidential election, as former president Trump did.
Biden and the Democrats are trying to show that the government can produce popular results for the American people. They are joined in that effort by Republicans who recognize that, for all their talk about liberty, their constituents want to see the government address their concerns. …
This cooperation to pass popular legislation is an important shift in American politics.
Why 2022 was a very good year
By Jonathan Alter
(WaPo) It’s unclear how much credit Biden deserves… But the results are plain: the Chips and Science Act, which includes huge investments to check China with development of a domestic semiconductor industry; a modest gun safety bill (the first in nearly 30 years); codification of same-sex-marriage rights; confirmation of the nation’s first Black female Supreme Court justice; the Inflation Reduction Act’s $370 billion investment in clean energy, which analysts view as a tipping point toward moving beyond fossil fuels; and an omnibus budget bill with job-creating investments in defense, health and education.
Even when things seemed to go badly in 2022, there were silver linings. The Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision striking down a woman’s right to choose provoked a strong reaction against it, first in an August referendum in red Kansas and then across the country in November. The year ended up better for reproductive rights than seemed likely when a leaked draft of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.’s opinion was published in May.
Of course, to paraphrase Shakespeare, all’s not well just because the year ends well. Inflation is down but not necessarily out. Even if the economy stabilizes, the new year might bring a stalemate in the Ukraine war, a Supreme Court decision ending affirmative action and a debt ceiling crisis — as well as the usual unexpected events.
The 10 best things Joe Biden did in 2022
By Marc A. Thiessen
10. He acted to prevent a crippling national rail strike
9. He is sending B-52s to Australia to counter China
8. He launched a “full-court press” against China’s domestic semiconductor industry
7. He signed the first bipartisan gun legislation in decades
6. He secured extradition of the terrorist charged with bombing Pan Am Flight 103, which killed 190 Americans
5. He kept Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on the U.S. list of foreign terrorist organizations
4. He won support for Finland and Sweden to join NATO
3. He killed al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri
2. He declared the United States will defend Taiwan
1. He saved Ukraine

Heather Cox Richardson: December 23, 2022
Today, by a vote of 225 to 201, the House passed the 4,155-page omnibus spending bill necessary to fund the government through September 30, 2023. The Senate passed it yesterday by a bipartisan vote of 68–29, and President Joe Biden has said he will sign it as soon as it gets to his desk.
The measure invests in education, childcare, and healthcare, giving boosts to the National Institute of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and investing in mental health programs. It addresses the opioid crisis and invests in food security programs and in housing and heating assistance programs. It invests in the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Park Service and makes a historic investment in the National Science Foundation. It raises the pay for members of the armed forces, and it invests in state and local law enforcement. It will also provide supplemental funding of about $45 billion for Ukraine aid and $41 billion for disaster relief. It reforms the Electoral Count Act to prevent a plan like that hatched by former president Donald Trump and his cronies to overturn an election, and it funds prosecutions stemming from the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The measure establishes nondefense discretionary spending at about $773 billion, an increase of about $68 billion, or 6%. It increases defense spending to $858 billion, an increase of about 10%. Defense funding is about $45 billion more than Biden had requested, reflecting the depletion of military stores in Ukraine.
Senators Patrick J. Leahy (D-VT) and Richard C. Shelby (R-AL) and Representative Rosa L. DeLauro (D-CT) hammered out the bill over months of negotiations. Leahy and Shelby are the two most senior members of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and both are retiring at the end of this session. …
House Republicans refused to participate in the negotiations, tipping their hand to just how disorganized they are right now. House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) insisted that the measure should wait until the Republicans take control of the House in 11 days. This reflects the determination of far-right extremists in the party to hold government funding hostage in order to get concessions from the Democrats.

29 September
Heather Cox Richardson September 29, 2022
Today the Senate approved a short-term extension of government funding to prevent a shutdown. The deal funds the government until December 16 and also provides about $12 billion in aid to Ukraine as it fights off Russia’s invasion. The House is expected to pass the measure tomorrow.
Behind this measure is a potential nightmare scenario. MAGA Republicans have already threatened to refuse to fund the government unless President Joe Biden and the Democrats reverse all their policies. If Republicans take control of either the House or the Senate—or both—in the midterms, they have the potential to throw the government into default, something that has never happened before. …
Congress has raised the debt ceiling more than 100 times since it first went into effect, including 18 times under Ronald Reagan, and indeed, the Republicans raised it three times under former president Donald Trump. But when they had to raise it almost exactly a year ago under Biden, Republicans refused.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned then that a default “could trigger a spike in interest rates, a steep drop in stock prices and other financial turmoil. Our current economic recovery would reverse into recession, with billions of dollars of growth and millions of jobs lost.” It would jeopardize the status of the U.S. dollar as the international reserve currency. Financial services firm Moody’s Analytics warned that a default would cost up to 6 million jobs, create an unemployment rate of nearly 9%, and wipe out $15 trillion in household wealth.
And yet, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who had voted to raise or suspend the debt ceiling 32 times in his career, said, “There is no chance, no chance the Republican conference will…help Democrats…resume ramming through partisan socialism.” His stand was in part because it was not clear he had the votes he needed to support an increase, even though establishment Republicans like McConnell were quite aware of the damage a default would create.
With the Republican Party controlled by its MAGA members, it is not clear that a Republican-dominated House or Senate would allow the government to pay its bills. The ranking member of the House Budget Committee, Representative Jason Smith of Missouri, told Alayna Treene of Axios that he thinks the Republican should use the debt ceiling as leverage to “reverse” the administration’s “radical” policies. He indicated he would like the Republicans to pass a bill tying a higher debt ceiling to the destruction of all the Democrats’ policies and dare Biden to reject it. “Surely he wouldn’t default,” Smith said.
Senate approves government funding extension to avert shutdown

24 August
Cities Funding Abortion Access Battle State Leaders Against It
As Democratic-leaning urban areas take pro-choice stances, conservative state governments are turning on their largest population centers
(Bloomberg CityLab) The tussle between cities and states over the use of municipal funds to maintain access to abortion or restrict those supporting the procedure underscores the raging national debate around the issue.

9-14 August
As Right-Wing Rhetoric Escalates, So Do Threats and Violence
Both threats of political violence and actual attacks have become a steady reality of American life. Experts blame dehumanizing and apocalyptic language
(NYT) The armed attack this week on an F.B.I. office in Ohio by a supporter of former President Donald J. Trump who was enraged by the bureau’s search of Mr. Trump’s private residence in Florida was one of the most disturbing episodes of right-wing political violence in recent months.
But it was hardly the only one.
In the year and a half since a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol, threats of political violence and actual attacks have become a steady reality of American life, affecting school board officials, election workers, flight attendants, librarians and even members of Congress, often with few headlines and little reaction from politicians.
Several right-wing or Republican figures reacted to the search of Mar-a-Lago not only with demands to dismantle the F.B.I., but also with warnings that the action had triggered “war.”
F.B.I. Search Ignited Violent Rhetoric on the Far Right
Some pro-Trump media figures reacted to the search at Mar-a-Lago with talk of ‘war,’ the clearest outburst of such language since the days leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
The Mar-a-Lago raid brings the United States a step closer to civil war
By Stephen Marche, author of The Next Civil War
The left should recognize the situation it finds itself in. Nearly half of their country no longer believes that equality under the law is as important as their own party controlling the machinery of government. And their response to any law enforcement that opposes their partisan interests is increasingly violent and vengeful. They can either live in a functional democracy or the United States, but not both. The time for choosing is coming sooner than anybody expects.
An ex-president in jail is an entirely plausible scenario at this point. But even people who have craved that comeuppance since the moment Mr. Trump descended an escalator to the applause of a hired audience should take a deep breath and ask themselves: What will the fallout be? Is it worth it?
For many on the left, this moment is just too sweet not to relish. The Mar-a-Lago raid is the part in the gangster movie where the Feds break through the door, and all the impunity comes to an end. But what is so hard to explain to people on the left about the peril America finds itself in is that the right feels every bit as besieged and desperate as people on the left do.
At the most recent Conservative Political Action Conference, a banner displayed a terrifying motto: “We are all domestic terrorists.” That same conference featured a sort of performance art piece: an actor playing a Jan. 6 rioter in prison clothes weeping in a cell. House Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene came by to comfort him. Whether or not this self-pity is justified hardly matters; they sense themselves to be political prisoners. …
Other countries have jailed presidents before, of course. Israel, France and South Korea have all convicted former leaders. But none of those other countries had court systems in the middle of a legitimacy crisis as the U.S. Supreme Court is now. … The U.S. has come to the point where it no longer has good options. If the DOJ doesn’t indict Mr. Trump, they risk destroying the rule of law. If they do indict Mr. Trump, they risk destroying the country.

12 August
House passes Inflation Reduction Act, sending climate and health bill to Biden
The successful vote Friday marked the end of a debate that spanned more than a year and a half, at times pitting Democrats against each other over the final major component of the president’s agenda.
House Democrats on Friday approved a sprawling bill to lower prescription drug costs, address global warming, raise taxes on some billion-dollar corporations and reduce the federal deficit, sending to President Biden the long-delayed, last component of his economic agenda in time for this year’s elections.

Heather Cox Richardson August 9, 2022
Today, President Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 into law. The new measure will provide $52.7 billion in subsidies to semiconductor production in the U.S. and invest in science and technology.

27 July
Former Republicans and Democrats form new third U.S. political party
By Tim Reid
The new party is being formed by a merger of three political groups that have emerged in recent years as a reaction to America’s increasingly polarized and gridlocked political system. The leaders cited a Gallup poll last year showing a record two-thirds of Americans believe a third party is needed.
(Reuters) – Dozens of former Republican and Democratic officials announced on Wednesday a new national political third party to appeal to millions of voters they say are dismayed with what they see as America’s dysfunctional two-party system.
The new party, called Forward and whose creation was first reported by Reuters, will initially be co-chaired by former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang and Christine Todd Whitman, the former Republican governor of New Jersey. They hope the party will become a viable alternative to the Republican and Democratic parties that dominate U.S. politics, founding members told Reuters.
Party leaders will hold a series of events in two dozen cities this autumn to roll out its platform and attract support. They will host an official launch in Houston on Sept. 24 and the party’s first national convention in a major U.S. city next summer.

15 July
Who cut checks to Manchin last quarter
Manchin, who chairs the Senate Energy Committee, has long been a top recipient of campaign contributions from the energy sector, and last quarter’s campaign finance data shows that trend has continued.
Sen. Joe Manchin’s rejection of Democratic plans to forge ahead with a reconciliation package centered around climate and tax reform ahead of the August recess prompted anger and shock from Democratic colleagues and activists alike.
— While the West Virginia Democrat negotiated behind closed doors with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to find agreement on a skinnier party-line bill, Manchin continued to rake in thousands from executives and corporations whose industries could be altered or who, as billionaires, could face higher taxes under such a package, according to a campaign finance report filed today.
… Manchin also took in more than $19,000 from political action committees belonging to fossil fuel or energy companies and their trade groups
Manchin’s offer to Dems: Take a health care deal or try again later
His move leaves a slimmed-down bill as the only guaranteed option for Democrats who have long hoped for far more expansive legislation.
12 July
Gerrymander U.S.A.
In Texas’ new political map, the 13th Congressional District stretches about 450 miles from Denton, a fast-growing, multiracial city near Dallas, to sparsely populated rural towns along the western border of the state’s panhandle.
(NYT Opinion) In Congress, districts are represented by a single person, which is harmful in two ways: First, it’s hard to see how one person can adequately represent three-quarters of a million people. Second, even though representatives are supposed to look out for all their constituents, the reality of our politics means most people who didn’t vote for the winner will feel unrepresented entirely.
The solution: proportional multimember districts. When districts are larger and contain three or even five members, they can more accurately capture the true shape of the electorate and let everyone’s voice be heard. And if the candidates are chosen through ranked-choice voting, then Republicans, Democrats and even third parties can win representation in Congress in rough proportion to their vote share. It’s no longer a zero-sum game that leaves out millions of Americans.
Manchin’s offer to Dems: Take a health care deal or try again later
His move leaves a slimmed-down bill as the only guaranteed option for Democrats who have long hoped for far more expansive legislation.

14 June
Leave Joe Biden Alone
Biden’s been a good president, but Republicans want to impeach him and some Democrats want to replace him.
By Tom Nichols
(The Atlantic) I think he’s done a pretty good job, especially given the fact that he’s dealing with a pandemic, revelations about an attempted American coup d’état, and an economic slowdown over which he had no control.
Oh, and by the way: He’s also managed (so far) to head off World War III and a possible nuclear conflict. We seem to forget that this is Job One for every American president, but while we’re griping about the gas prices (over which Biden also has no control), the Russians are replaying the Eastern Front against 40 million Ukrainians and also threatening NATO. It’s been reassuring to have a steady hand in charge of our foreign policy. …
My suspicion is that the full weight of our foreign and domestic crises has not broken through the self-absorption and solipsism of not only our political parties but the American public. We are just not capable of understanding that at home, we are inches away from the meltdown of our constitutional system of government, and abroad, we are one errant cruise missile away from a nuclear crisis

27 April
‘Manchinema’
Congress is back. Does President Biden’s agenda still have a chance?
By David Leonhardt and Ian Prasad Philbrick
Congress is back. Does President Biden’s agenda still have a chance?
(NYT The Morning Newsletter) Congress has returned to Washington after a recess, and Democrats are trying to come up with a slimmed-down version of President Biden’s domestic agenda that they can pass in coming weeks. If they succeed, they have the potential to slow climate change, reduce drug prices for millions of Americans and raise taxes on the wealthy.
But the basic challenge in passing a bill is unchanged. The party cannot afford to lose even a single Democratic vote in the Senate, and two senators — Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona — have publicly objected to parts of the agenda. Congressional Republicans remain unanimously opposed to any bill as has often been the case during recent Democratic presidencies.
Many Democrats are desperate to pass a bill. They understand that their control of Congress and the White House gives them a rare opportunity to pass ambitious domestic policies. They also know that a failure to pass legislation would make the party look incompetent and potentially aggravate the usual midterm losses that the president’s party suffers.
… The Senate will be in session until Memorial Day weekend, and Democratic leaders and White House officials are quietly trying to negotiate a bill.
If they can succeed, the final version would likely resemble what Manchin has sketched out in recent weeks: tax increase that are large enough to reduce the deficit (and, he hopes, reduce inflation); a measure to reduce prescription-drug prices; and spending to expand the use of clean energy and lower the cost of health insurance.

1 March
State of the Union Live Updates: Biden Gets Tough on Russia and Promotes Plan for Economy
Mr. Biden said Vladimir Putin would “pay a price” for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Of his economic plans, he said, “I have another way to fight inflation: Lower your costs, not your wages.”
Biden Revives Old Unity Theme to Reset Presidency
By Ed Kilgore
As expected, President Joe Biden began his first official State of the Union Address by discussing the Russian aggression in Ukraine, devoting the first 13 minutes of his speech to the subject. Biden played it very straight. Despite the sub-strain of Republican admiration and even empathy for Vladimir Putin (exemplified by Biden’s predecessor), the president chose to depict Americans as completely united. “[Putin] thought he could divide us at home in this chamber and this nation and he thought he could divide us in Europe as well, but Putin was wrong,” Biden said. “We are ready. We are united and that is what we did. We stayed united.”

Biden steps to State of the Union lectern at fraught moment
By ZEKE MILLER and COLLEEN LONG
(AP) — Facing disquiet at home and danger abroad, President Joe Biden will deliver his first State of the Union address at a precipitous moment for the nation, aiming to navigate the country out a pandemic, reboot his stalled domestic agenda and confront Russia’s aggression.
Biden will take the speaker’s rostrum as Americans are frustrated with his performance as president. A February AP-NORC poll found that more people disapproved than approved of how Biden is handling his job as president, 55% to 44%. That’s down from a 60% favorable rating last July.
White House officials acknowledge that the mood of the country is “sour,” citing the lingering pandemic and inflation as sources of blame. Biden, in his speech, will highlight the progress from a year ago — with the majority of the country now vaccinated and millions more people at work — but also acknowledge that the job is not yet done, a recognition of American discontent.
Biden aides say they believe the national psyche is a “trailing indicator” and will improve with time. But time is running short for the president, who needs to salvage his first-term agenda to revive the political fortunes of his party ahead of November’s midterm elections.
As part of his pitch to voters, Biden will aim to resurrect components of the legislation, but with a new emphasis on how proposals like extending the child tax credit and bringing down child care costs could bring relief to families as prices rise. He was also set to lay out how his climate change proposals would cut costs for lower- and middle-income families and create new jobs.

Heather Cox Richardson: January 18, 2022
First, voting rights: Today, the Senate began to debate the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act to protect voting rights. Not a single Republican spoke up for the bill. All 48 Democrats and the 2 Independents who caucus with them —who together represent 40.5 million more people than the 50 Republicans do— support the voting rights bill, but two senators, Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), do not support a carve-out for the voting rights bill so that it can avoid a filibuster by the Republicans.
That is, by demanding a supermajority to pass the bill, Republicans can stop the Democrats from passing voting rights measures that are so popular that, as Jane Mayer outlined in a March 2021 New Yorker article based initially on a leaked phone call, Republicans’ own polls told them they could not convince voters to oppose them, so they had better rely on the filibuster.
Sinema, Manchin slammed as Senate begins voting bill debate
(AP) — Facing stark criticism from civil rights leaders, senators return to Capitol Hill under intense pressure to change their rules and break a Republican filibuster that has hopelessly stalled voting legislation.
The Senate is set to launch debate Tuesday on the voting bill with attention focused intently on two pivotal Democrats — Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia — who were singled out with a barrage of criticism during Martin Luther King Jr. Day events for their refusal to change what civil rights leaders call the “Jim Crow filibuster.”
The House has passed the package, but the legislation is stalled in the Senate, opposed by Republicans. With a 50-50 split, Democrats have a narrow Senate majority — Vice President Kamala Harris can break a tie — but they lack the 60 votes needed to overcome the GOP filibuster.
Once reluctant to change Senate rules, President Joe Biden used the King holiday to pressure senators to do just that. But the push from the White House, including Biden’s blistering speech last week in Atlanta comparing opponents to segregationists, is seen as too late, coming as the president ends his first year in office with his popularity sagging.

17 January
Trump’s Arizona project shows the dire threat to American democracy
(WaPo) Those of us who sit up nights worrying about the next few years — not that our favored candidates might lose, but that the stage is being set for a collapse of our democracy — can easily be accused of getting too worked up over minor problems and the utterances of a few kooks. And maybe we are; the future is always uncertain.
But if you look at a place such as Arizona — where the fate of U.S. democracy could well be decided — it’s hard not to feel afraid.

12 January
A Plan to Fix the Electoral Count Act Is Taking Shape
By Ed Kilgore
(New York) Even as Democrats and Republicans wrangle over the obstruction of the former’s voting rights legislation by the latter, quiet discussions have been under way on a possible bipartisan fix for the Electoral Count Act of 1887, the arcane and confusing statute that enabled last year’s attempted election coup by Donald Trump. These discussions are very unlikely to reach fruition until Congress has dealt definitively with voting rights (likely by failed Democratic efforts to break a Republican filibuster or convince Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to support a filibuster reform), which could take a while.
A new plan to ‘Trump-proof’ the 2024 election quietly comes together
If Republicans succeed in blocking Democratic efforts to protect voting rights this week, as expected, the push to defend democracy will be anything but dead. That’s because another important proposal to prevent a stolen 2024 election is coming together in the Senate.
In coming weeks, it will be introduced by King and others, including Sens. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.). This will be well after the voting rights debate, so it doesn’t defuse energy toward that paramount goal.
“It’s very important to emphasize that this is not a solution to the voting rights issues being raised across the country,” King said of the bill.
The bill seeks to block every pathway to a subverted election that Trump’s corruption exposed. There are three main ones. First, Trump pressured GOP state legislatures to appoint rogue presidential electors in defiance of state popular votes.
Second, Trump got dozens of congressional Republicans to try to invalidate electors legitimately appointed by swing states. Third, Trump pressed his vice president to abuse his largely ceremonial role to declare legitimate electors invalid.

4 January
The next US civil war is already here – we just refuse to see it
The right has recognized that the system is in collapse, and it has a plan: violence and solidarity with treasonous far-right factions
By Stephen Marche
(The Guardian) The United States today is, once again, headed for civil war, and, once again, it cannot bear to face it. The political problems are both structural and immediate, the crisis both longstanding and accelerating. The American political system has become so overwhelmed by anger that even the most basic tasks of government are increasingly impossible.
The legal system grows less legitimate by the day. Trust in government at all levels is in freefall, or, like Congress, with approval ratings hovering around 20%, cannot fall any lower. Right now, elected sheriffs openly promote resistance to federal authority. Right now, militias train and arm themselves in preparation for the fall of the Republic. Right now, doctrines of a radical, unachievable, messianic freedom spread across the internet, on talk radio, on cable television, in the malls.
The consequences of the breakdown of the American system is only now beginning to be felt. January 6 wasn’t a wake-up call; it was a rallying cry.
From the Capitol to the city council: How extremism in the U.S. shifted after Jan. 6
(NBC) Domestic extremist groups ranging from the QAnon conspiracy movement and the Proud Boys to militia organizations and avowed white nationalists have re-emerged in recent months, frequently trying to effect change at the local level.  But it’s not just the strategy that has shifted. Most far-right domestic extremist movements have also adapted their infrastructure and messaging, according to a report by the Digital Forensic Research Lab at the Atlantic Council, a nonprofit international affairs think tank.
That analysis, which tracked violent domestic extremism and political violence since Jan. 6 via news reports and known extremist networks, found that despite an initial decline, domestic extremist groups have evolved and resurfaced, encouraging local action while recruiting and spreading their messages through culture-war debates including vaccines, race and education.

3 January
The Republican Party Is Succeeding Because We Are Not a True Democracy
Jedediah Britton-Purdy, professor of constitutional law at Columbia, is writing a book about American democracy — and how to save it.
(NYT) The Jan. 6 attack would not have happened in a genuine democracy.
The attack was the most acute symptom — so far — of the political crisis that Donald Trump incited by refusing to admit defeat in the 2020 election. But the roots of the crisis run deep into the undemocratic features of our constitutional system.
The arcane scheme that Mr. Trump’s lawyers hatched to disrupt congressional certification of the vote and perhaps persuade Republican state legislatures to overturn Joe Biden’s victory in states like Pennsylvania was conceivable only because the Electoral College splinters presidential elections into separate contests in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia and skews the totals toward small states. In a simple system of majority rule, Mr. Biden’s thumping margin of more than seven million votes would have been the last word. For that matter, so would Hillary Clinton’s national margin of nearly three million votes in 2016: Mr. Trump would not have had a 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue address in which to barricade himself in 2020.
Would Mr. Trump’s big lie about election fraud have sent the rioters to the Capitol anyway, even without his lawyers and fixers trying to overturn the results? Maybe. But there would have been no constitutional machinery to jam. And even the big lie received a huge constitutional assist. Thanks to the Electoral College, Mr. Trump could have tied Mr. Biden and forced the election into the House of Representatives by flipping just 43,000 votes in three close states, a gap narrow enough that any number of toxic fables can claim to bridge it.
The risk of a coup in the next US election is greater now than it ever was under Trump
Laurence H Tribe
Republicans are busy undermining the next election. But giving up on democracy isn’t an option. We must fight back, and here’s how
(The Guardian) …for those of us who have continued to investigate the sources and facets of the assault on constitutional democracy, a sobering realization has become unavoidable: our country, and the legal and political institutions that prevent it from descending into despotism, are in even greater peril today than they were at the time of last November’s election.
That assault began in the runup to the 2020 election, when Trump and his cultlike followers spread the corrosive view that American elections had become inherently untrustworthy as demographic changes broadened the eligible electorate and thus that any outcome other than victory for Trump would necessarily be the result of fraud and must therefore be rejected by all means necessary.
With each passing day, more details about the means Trump’s team devised to undo the results of the November 2020 election have cascaded into public view, even though Republicans in Congress have made concerted efforts to obstruct the work of the special House committee created to uncover the sources of the attempted coup and the ensuing insurrection.

2021

15 December
Is the U.S. ready for its 51st state? Puerto Rico’s bid gains momentum on its streets and in Congress
An island that’s endured hurricanes, a pandemic and economic upheaval now increasingly wants political equality, and federal legislation and lawsuits offer different paths to get it

10 December
Greg Sargent: The damage done by Joe Manchin is likely to get much worse
(WaPo) Sen. Joe Manchin III’s opposition to seriously reforming or ending the filibuster threatens to inflict over time. It won’t just constrain passage of the Democratic agenda. It could also constrain efforts to protect and reform our political system and institutions at a moment of generational urgency.
The window for a once-in-a-generation set of political reforms, such as those implemented after Watergate, is rapidly closing. It’s not clear when it will open again.
Manchin knows Republicans will never, ever support anything remotely meaningful in protecting democracy. Yet he remains the public face of the idea that democracy reform must be done only in a bipartisan fashion, or not at all.
Yes, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) is also a holdout, as are a few other moderates. But get Manchin, and the others would surely follow.
Without Manchin, the possibility of a filibuster suspension to protect democracy with Democrat-only legislation is off the table, putting us in an impossible bind.

27 November
(Politico) In a pair of analyses, WaPo’s Dan Balz and NYT’s Nate Cohn set the table for a painful election year ahead for Biden — whether Build Back Better passes or not. Balz contrasts Biden’s promises coming into office with how they’ve played out; Cohn takes a longer historical view:
Biden’s challenge, gamble and wish set the table for the 2022 elections
“The first [pledge],” Balz writes, “was to tame the coronavirus pandemic and deal with its effects on the economy. The second was to persuade Congress to enact the most sweeping domestic policy initiatives in generations. The third was to unify the country the best he could. … As December approaches, none of these goals has been fully accomplished, and that shapes the political environment heading into next year’s midterm elections, which could dramatically affect his presidency.”
The Disconnect Between Biden’s Popular Policies and His Unpopularity
Voters often punish a president for pushing an unpopular agenda. But President Biden has been learning that they rarely reward a president for enacting legislation.
Cohn examines the gap between Biden’s popular policies and his low approval ratings: “The disconnect,” he writes, “is a little hard to understand. After all, voters do care about the issues…. But if voters often punish a president for pushing unpopular policies, they rarely seem to reward a president for enacting legislation. Instead, voters seem to reward presidents for presiding over peace and prosperity — in a word, normalcy.”

22 November
U.S. listed as a ‘backsliding’ democracy for first time in report by European think tank
(WaPo)…the International IDEA’s Global State of Democracy 2021 report released Monday by the Stockholm-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, said “The United States, the bastion of global democracy, fell victim to authoritarian tendencies itself, and was knocked down a significant number of steps on the democratic scale,”
The study, which analyzed trends from 2020 to 2021, found that more than a quarter of the world’s population now lives in democratically backsliding countries, which International IDEA defines as nations seeing a gradual decline in the quality of their democracy.
The report’s U.S. assessment centered on developments during President Donald Trump’s administration. It called Trump’s factually baseless questioning of the legitimacy of the 2020 election results a “historic turning point” that “undermined fundamental trust in the electoral process” and culminated in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Trump’s tactics had “spillover effects, including in Brazil, Mexico, Myanmar and Peru, among others,” the report concluded.

15 November
Biden signs infrastructure bill, promoting benefits for Americans.
Some of the first bursts of spending will go toward areas that Mr. Biden prioritized in negotiations, like tens of billions of dollars to improve access to broadband internet and to replace hazardous lead drinking pipes nationwide.
(NYT) While the bill stopped short of realizing his full-scale ambitions for overhauling America’s transportation and energy systems, Mr. Biden pointed to it as evidence that lawmakers could work across party lines to solve problems in Washington.
He also said it would better position the United States to compete against China and other nations vying for dominance of 21st century emerging industries.
The Infrastructure Bill May Not Be So Historic After All
(Governing.com) Transportation experts say that much of the funds in Biden’s big bill just go towards highways and a carbon-intensive status quo.
The bill signed into law today includes $550 billion in new spending. The rest of it is made up of routine reauthorizations of energy, water, aviation, and surface transportation programs.
Biden is selling the act as a historic federal infrastructure investment, and Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg emphasizes the progressive aspects of the bill. But it is state and local officials like Crowley who will actually determine how it is allocated.

10 November
The Hatch Act report is damning — of more than Trump’s White House
(WaPo editorial) A federal investigation has now confirmed what the whole country saw for itself: President Donald Trump’s tenure was a parade of violations of the Hatch Act, the law that prohibits mixing governing with campaigning. The report is damning, not only of the previous administration but also of today’s toothless enforcement regime.
The problem is, there is only one avenue for punishment of political appointees under the Hatch Act: The president of the United States must impose it. And, in this case, the president of the United States was condoning, and possibly directing, the misconduct.
This week’s report is blistering, yet its material effect on the previous administration will be next to nil. An employee who has already left the job can’t be fired or demoted and, in any case, the OSC can only recommend such discipline.

27 October
Garland vs. Bannon Is Bidenism vs. Trumpism
Whether or not the Attorney General prosecutes the former White House strategist, polls suggest that provocation is proving more politically effective than probity.
By David Rohde

What is wrong with this picture?
Former President Donald Trump will be able to retain the ownership of his newly launched social media venture even if he chooses to make another White House run or is convicted by prosecutors who are looking into his business dealings.

Heather Cox Richardson: October 15, 2021
And so, here we are. Republicans are trying to regain control of the government by making sure their opponents can’t vote, while Democrats are trying to level a badly tilted playing field. If the Democrats do not succeed in passing a voting rights law, we can expect America to become a one-party state that, at best, will look much like the American South did between 1876 and 1964.
Our nation will no longer be a democracy.
Yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) told his colleagues that on Monday evening he plans to bring up the Freedom to Vote Act and to try to get it through the Senate.
Republicans are dead set against voting rights laws. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has called voting reform “a solution in search of a problem,” driven by “coordinated lies about commonsense election laws that various states have passed.”
Are the 33 election laws 19 states have passed to restrict the vote really “commonsense election laws”?
… Appalled at the violence playing out on the streets and then again on the evening news, lawmakers in 1965 passed the Voting Rights Act. It required that states with a history of discrimination get preapproval from the Department of Justice to change state election laws. The measure passed on a bipartisan basis.
But the impulse to expand voting rights in America would face a backlash in 1986, when Reagan Republicans realized they were in danger of losing control of the government and thus losing the 1986 tax cuts. Republicans began to talk of cutting down black voting under a “ballot integrity” initiative in 1986, and new voter restrictions in Florida paid off in the 2000 election, when Republican George W. Bush won by a handful of votes there after many more votes had been suppressed.
… the elevation of biracial Democrat Barack Obama to the White House in 2008 prompted a new level of attacks on the electoral system. The Supreme Court in the 2010 Citizens United decision permitted a flood of corporate money to flow into the electoral system, and then, in the 2013 Shelby v. Holder decision, it gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
With Justice Department preclearance out of the way, states promptly began to pass discriminatory election laws. In 2021, in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, the Supreme Court said such laws were not prohibited, thus greenlighting the new election laws passed by Republican-dominated states after voters choose Democrat Joe Biden in 2020.

8 October
The debt drama that masked a brutal power struggle: Schumer vs. McConnell
The GOP leader “knows exactly what he’s doing,” one lieutenant said. And the Democratic leader won’t give in. That’s life in a 50-50 Senate.
(Politico) The majority and minority leader are perpetually angling for advantage in the longest-running 50-50 Senate in U.S. history, and their cage match over how to raise the debt ceiling is just the latest bout since McConnell refused to let the chamber organize after Schumer took over. Their ice-cold relationship lacks the sizzle of McConnell’s tiffs with former Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid — but McConnell is using increasingly hardline tactics to make Schumer’s life more difficult, given the chamber’s close margin and the tension among the disparate ideological wings in his rival’s party.

Heather Cox Richardson October 3, 2021
Yesterday, people rallied at more than 600 marches across the country to demonstrate their opposition to Texas’s new restrictions on abortion rights.
Today, the Washington Post broke the story [the Pandora Papers] that the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) obtained more than 11.9 million financial records including emails, spreadsheets, contracts, and so on, that reveal a vast international network of financial schemes to hide money from taxation, investigators, creditors, and citizens.
Those marching yesterday for women’s lives and their constitutional right to abortion were not commenting on the secret web of global finance that lets autocrats hide the enormous wealth they have taken from their people. But they were indeed commenting on governance, in particular whether a majority of the people, or a minority kept in power by passionate extremists, should run our country.

Why Republicans Are Still Recounting Votes
The point of the so-called audits is not so much to delegitimize the past election as it is to normalize unnecessary reviews of future ones—including, perhaps, a 2024 race in which Trump’s name may be on the ballot.
By Jelani Cobb
(The New Yorker 11 October issue) Trump’s defeat, by more than seven million votes, was taken to be a sign that the most anti-democratic forces he represented would also be vanquished. The failed January 6th insurrection, which he encouraged and which sent his own Vice-President scrambling to escape a mob threatening to lynch him, seemed a fitting epitaph for his Presidency, and for the malice and the chaos that it engendered. His own incompetence had proved a great asset to American democracy. Since his loss, however, more efficient actors have stepped up to do his bidding.

Heather Cox Richardson October 1, 2021
I continue to maintain that the issue right now is not Democrats’ negotiations over the infrastructure bills —regardless of how they turn out— but that Republican lawmakers are actively working to undermine our democracy.
Biden urges Democrats to compromise, have patience as he tries to revive economic agenda
the president acknowledged the infrastructure package “ain’t going to happen” until Democrats reached agreement over their second tax-and-spending bill. That measure remains shrouded in uncertainty, as centrists including Sens. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) labor to cut it back dramatically.
(WaPo) President Biden attempted to quell an internal Democratic rebellion on Friday, pleading with lawmakers to compromise and stay patient as he tried to revive a $1.2 trillion infrastructure proposal and salvage his broader economic agenda from imminent collapse.
Biden made the overture during a rare meeting on Capitol Hill in the midst of an intense, acrimonious fight over two pieces of legislation that Democrats were struggling to untangle. The first bill would fix the nation’s roads, bridges, pipes, ports and Internet connections. A second package would authorize roughly $3.5 trillion to expand Medicare, combat climate change and boost a wide array of federal aid programs.
Centrist lawmakers began Friday by reiterating their belief that the House should vote immediately on the infrastructure package, which already passed the Senate on an overwhelmingly bipartisan basis. And liberal-leaning Democrats signaled they did not plan to budge in their opposition, continuing to use the public-works spending proposal as leverage in a broader fight over the rest of Biden’s economic vision.
For these left-leaning lawmakers, their chief concern is the fate of their roughly $3.5 trillion package that includes a range of benefits for millions of Americans, including universal prekindergarten and new tax aid for low-income families. Manchin and Sinema have opposed the price tag and policy scope of the still-forming bill, troubling liberals, who feel that the duo would simply walk away from it as soon as they secure new infrastructure spending. To prevent that possibility, liberals have held up the public-works measure while Democrats and the White House pursue a deal.

Fareed Zakaria: The U.S. economy continues to soar while American politics craters
(WaPo)) The unmistakable winner of the past decade has been what Ruchir Sharma termed “the comeback nation” in an insightful Foreign Affairs essay. The United States recovered steadily from the 2008 crisis and never looked back — even accounting for the pandemic-induced recession. Today, amid talk of decline, most Americans would be shocked to hear that their country has about the same share of global GDP as it did 40 years ago — 25 percent. Its companies dominate the world like never before. Seven of the top 10 companies in the world by market capitalization are American. The United States continues to lead in most of the industries of the future, from biotechnology to nanotechnology to artificial intelligence. The dollar is dominant as a global reserve currency like no other in history, being used in almost 90 percent of international transactions. And it has the healthiest demographics of any of the world’s five biggest economies, thanks to immigration.
But that is not what it looks like in Washington. America’s weakness is its politics. Despite our extraordinary structural advantages, our political leaders cannot pay our national credit card bills without high drama. They are struggling with infrastructure spending that the past three presidents have advocated as urgent and that a hefty majority of the public supports. Congress has not passed a regular budget in 25 years. Hundreds of key posts in the administration lie vacant, with dozensheld hostage by senators on unrelated issues. And one of our two major parties — goaded on by its demagogic leader — is busy seeking to disrupt the set of institutions, laws and norms that ensure free and fair elections, setting the country up for a massive political crisis in 2024.

29 September
Democrats Move to Avert Fiscal Crisis, Separating Debt and Spending Bills
The House was set to move on Wednesday on a bill to increase the debt limit, while the Senate prepared a separate spending bill to keep the government funded past a Thursday deadline. (3pm)

Bloomberg Politics: With Democrats in control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, U.S. President Joe Biden decided to go big.
The result was an economic agenda that topped $4 trillion and included at least something for both the progressive and centrist wings of his party.
But keeping ideologically disparate Democratic lawmakers on board through the Congressional process was always going to be tough. This week has underscored how tough, and the degree to which success — even on a much smaller package — is far from assured.
Gripped by infighting, Democrats have hit a wall in their high-stakes effort to simultaneously avert a government shutdown at midnight tomorrow, avoid a debt default next month and advance Biden’s agenda. Markets are increasingly rattled

Heather Cox Richardson September 29, 2021
We are coming down to the wire for the Senate to pass the Freedom to Vote Act.
It creates a national standard for voting rules and tries to stop voter suppression, modernizes voter registration, and replaces old, paperless voting machines with new ones that have a voter-verified paper trail. It slows the flood of money into our elections and ends partisan gerrymandering. It establishes strict rules for post-election audits.
This defense of voting is popular. A Data for Progress poll found that 70% of likely voters support the act. That number includes 85% of self-identified Democrats, 67% of Independents, and 54% of Republicans.
…every day that goes by brings us closer to having gerrymandered district lines hardened into place before the 2022 election. Indeed, the stonewalling by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) of Democratic attempts to lift the debt ceiling is wasting time that otherwise would be given to the voting rights bill.

Heather Cox Richardson September 28, 2021
It is hard to escape the conclusion that McConnell is deliberately running out Congress’s clock, and it is hard to ignore that the big item on the Senate’s agenda is the Freedom to Vote Act, which Senators Joe Manchin (D-WV), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Raphael Warnock (D-GA), Jon Tester (D-MT), Tim Kaine (D-VA), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Alex Padilla (D-CA), and Angus King (I-ME) have worked to hammer out in place of the voting rights bills passed by the House.

Heather Cox Richardson September 25, 2021
The profound disagreement between the Republicans and the Democrats over the role of government has led to a profound crisis in our democracy. Democrats’ argument that the government should work for ordinary Americans is popular, so popular that Republicans have apparently given up convincing voters their way is better. Through voter suppression, gerrymandering, the filibuster, and the Electoral College, and now with new election laws in 18 states, they have guaranteed that they will retain control no matter what voters actually want. Their determination to keep Democrats from power has made them abandon democracy.
For their part, Democrats are trying to protect the voting rights at the heart of our democracy, believing that if all eligible Americans can vote, they will back a government that works for the people.

22 September
Democrats Face Uncertain Path To Avoid Fiscal Calamity
(NPR) Democrats in Washington are working against a rapidly approaching deadline to end a standoff with Republicans that could force a partial government shutdown and a panic over the nation’s credit rating.
Leaders chose to tie an extension of the federal borrowing limit to a bill to extend routine government funding that runs out at the end of the September. Republicans have insisted for months they will not support that plan, meaning a shutdown and default could be imminent.
The confrontation comes as Democrats are also struggling to manage serious rifts within their own party over a roughly $3.5 trillion spending plan that contains the bulk of President Biden’s agenda.
Biden called nearly two dozen Democrats to meet Wednesday at the White House as the fate of all three measures remains in doubt.

16 September
Is the US headed for another Civil War?
William G. Gale and Darrell M. West
(Brookings) …we believe there are several forces pushing many to imagine the unthinkable.
Hot-button issues: Racial equity, gun control, abortion, election legitimacy, climate change, vaccines, masks—the list goes on. Cultural, economic, and political issues generate outrage and hostility. We already are seeing “border wars” via federalism, with individual states passing major legislation that differs considerably from that in other places. As an illustration, a new Texas law virtually outlaws abortions after six weeks of pregnancy (a time at which many women do not even know they are pregnant), while other states continue to uphold the 1973 Roe v. Wade framework and a clear majority of Americans support legalized abortion.
High levels of inequality and polarization: These hot-button issues are driven in part by the widespread and interrelated divisions that burden the country. Separated by ideology, race, gender, living standards, and opportunities for education and economic advancement, different groups have dramatically different views about public policy and American society. There can be large variations in opinions, depending on the issues.

13 September
Filibuster reform is coming—here’s how
Seven ideas for change
Mel Barnes, Norman Eisen, Jeffrey A. Mandell, and Norman Ornstein
(Brookings) In the America of 2021, a seemingly unstoppable force has met an apparently immovable object. Across the nation, state officials are acting with brazen impunity in curtailing voting rights. At best nakedly partisan, and at worst openly racist, legislators are proposing and passing, and some governors are signing, statutes that will strip the ballot from millions, seize the power to overturn election outcomes those partisans don’t like, and potentially tilt the political playing field for decades to come.^[1] No wonder President Biden has declared it the “most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War.”^[2 ]
Federal legislation could prevent this by establishing reasonable best practices for voter registration and early voting, and by barring the worst of the provisions.[3] But that is where the immovable object comes in. Despite majorities in both houses of Congress that have expressed support for voting rights legislation, the Senate filibuster stands in the way.9 (See Democrats Unite Behind Voting Rights Bill as It Faces a Senate Roadblock.

2 September
Joe Manchin Has Put Biden’s Presidency in Mortal Danger The mercurial senator calls for a “pause” when Democrats desperately need to move fast.
By Jonathan Chait
The sequence of Manchin’s negotiations is especially likely to provoke distrust. He helped create a demand for a fast infrastructure vote, which necessitates the scramble to speed up the second bill. Indeed, the most reasonable demand House moderates have is not to be forced to vote for a larger bill than Manchin ultimately agrees to. The whole process hinges on Manchin figuring out what level of taxes and spending he can accept, and allowing House Democrats to negotiate on that basis. His insistence on waiting freezes everything in place.
The danger is that this pause sets off a cycle of failure. … Delay creates the impression of dysfunction, making Biden and Congress less popular, in turn reducing the popularity of any bill they pass, in turn making Congress more reluctant to support it. Even if Manchin doesn’t want to destroy Biden’s presidency, he may do so by setting off a vortex of failure he loses the ability to escape.

24 August
Bloomberg CityLab: While states like Georgia and Kansas are enacting laws that justice advocates say will restrict voting rights for marginalized groups, at least 25 states have pushed through legislation to expand voter access – with hundreds more bills pending across 49 states. Virginia, for example, passed its own version of the national Voting Rights Act, and California recently expanded mail-in voting.
The States Making Voting Easier — While Georgia moves to restrict voting rights, Virginia and California offer models for legislation that expands ballot accessibility
In Congress, meanwhile, there is a push to pass the recently introduced and updated John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would restore protections against voter discrimination under the increasingly hollowed Voting Rights Act of 1965

10-11 August
Senate Passes $3.5 Trillion Budget Plan, Advancing Sweeping Safety Net Expansion
The blueprint, which would expand Medicaid, provide free preschool and community college, and fund climate change programs, passed along party lines and faces an arduous path ahead.
(NYT) The blueprint, which could set in motion the largest expansion of the federal safety net in nearly six decades, faces a difficult road ahead as Democrats seek to flesh it out and turn it into law, one that will require their progressive and moderate wings to hold together with virtually no votes to spare.

Big win for $1T infrastructure bill: Dems, GOP come together
(AP) — With a robust vote after weeks of fits and starts, the Senate approved a $1 trillion infrastructure plan for states coast to coast on Tuesday, as a rare coalition of Democrats and Republicans joined together to overcome skeptics and deliver a cornerstone of President Joe Biden’s agenda.
“Today, we proved that democracy can still work,” Biden declared at the White House, noting that the 69-30 vote included even Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.
The overwhelming tally provided fresh momentum for the first phase of Biden’s “Build Back Better” priorities, now heading to the House. A sizable number of lawmakers showed they were willing to set aside partisan pressures, at least for a moment, eager to send billions to their states for rebuilding roads, broadband internet, water pipes and the public works systems that underpin much of American life.

5 August
David Brooks: The Biden Approach Is Working
If all you knew about politics was what goes on in the media circus, you’d have to say the progressives have the better argument. Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene — healthy bipartisan compromise seems completely hopeless with this crew.
But underneath that circus, there has always been another layer of politics — led by people who are not as ratings-driven, but are more governance-driven. So over the past 20 years or so, while the circus has been at full roar, Congress has continued to pass bipartisan legislation: the Every Student Succeeds rewrite of federal K-12 education policy, the Obama budget compromise of 2013, the Trump criminal justice reform law of 2018, the FAST infrastructure act, the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2020, the Trump-era ban on surprise billing in health care. In June the Senate passed, 68 to 32, the United States Innovation and Competition Act of 2021, which would devote roughly $250 billion to scientific projects.
Matthew Yglesias and Simon Bazelon call this the “Secret Congress” — the everyday business of governing that works precisely because it isn’t on cable TV.

1 August
Heather Cox Richardson August 1, 2021
Now, in 2021, we seem to be headed back to the one-party society Moses fought. In response to record voter turnout in the 2020 election, 18 states have passed 30 new laws that make it harder to vote. At the same time, Republican-dominated legislatures are gathering into their own hands the power to override the voters. [See Brennan Center: The Great Vote Suppression Campaign of 2021]
… Public schools are also under attack, with Republicans threatening to cut funding to schools that require masks to stop the spread of coronavirus or that teach “divisive concepts” that make students uncomfortable, usually topics that involve race.
Republican lawmakers have proposed attaching funding to students rather than to schools, enabling parents to use tax dollars to enroll their children in private schools.

Opinion: Yet another reason we need fewer political appointees
Jennifer Rubin
How did the United States get so dangerously behind on cybersecurity? From China’s hack of the Office of Personnel Management to the SolarWinds attack to the shutdown of Colonial Pipeline due to ransomware, bad actors have regularly sliced through meager U.S. defenses. Should such an attack breach our power grid, the damage could be devastating.
The Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security and Emergency Response (CESER) might not be well-known, but it is a critical entity within the Energy Department that is in charge of responding to natural and man-made emergencies impacting our power, … Thanks to the previous administration, the head of the office is a political position.
[Energy Secretary] Granholm found someone to run the office: Puesh M. Kumar, who has years of private- and public-sector experience. He is the sort of person one would want running the agency regardless of party — and to continue running it even when administrations change hands. And if he does leave, the position certainly should not remain vacant as the confirmation process drags on for months. … As Granholm explained, “Since CESER was established, about half its existence has been without leadership because it is a political position.” If you really want to elevate the position and the work CESER does, it should look like other emergency response entities where key posts are filled by career experts.