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It's Friday. We made it. Rest in peace Jessica Walter. And let's go Hawkeyes. This is the Power Up newsletter. Thanks for waking up with us – see you on Monday. |
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The policies FILIBUSTER WATCH: President Biden signaled that he's open to making fundamental changes to the 60-vote requirement to advance most legislation in order to get key parts of his agenda muscled through the narrowly-divided Senate chamber. Biden has previously backed changing the filibuster rule to requiring senators seeking to hold up a bill to make their case against it from the Senate floor. But on Thursday, Biden – who insisted the filibuster is being “abused in a gigantic way” – went even further, telling reporters he had an “open mind about dealing with certain things that are just elemental to the functioning of our democracy, like the right to vote." Biden was asked about comments from Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), who has proposed making a limited exception to the filibuster rule for voting or civil rights legislation.
- In his words: “It used to be, you had to stand there and talk and talk and talk and talk until you collapsed. And guess what? People got tired of talking and tired of collapsing. Filibusters broke down and were able to break the filibuster, get a vote.”
- Red line: “If we have to, if there’s complete lockdown and chaos as a consequence of the filibuster, then we’ll have to go beyond what I’m talking about,” said Biden, who later added that he believed the filibuster was a relic of the Jim Crow era.
To do any of this, Biden will likely need the help of Sen. Jeff Merkley.
 Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) announces the introduction of S.1., the ‘For the People’ Act, outside the U.S. Capitol March 17, 2021 in Washington. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images) |
The Oregon Democrat has had individual conversations with every member of the Democratic caucus about the issue, he told Power Up in an interview. While he would not divulge details from his private conversations with Democratic colleagues still resistant to even making changes to the filibuster, he stressed that he always includes one point in “every one of those conversations": That Senate Minority Leader Mitch "McConnell got rid of the filibuster on Republican priorities.”
- “The press frames this as filibuster versus no filibuster, and just lets McConnell off the hook completely,” Merkley added, referring to the various times McConnell triggered the so-called “nuclear option” to bypass the filibuster when he was majority leader.
- “McConnell carved out the Supreme Court and tax cuts for the rich for the filibuster — should we carve out essential things?” Merkley floated.
Merkley took an interest in the filibuster when he first arrived in the Senate in 2009 after quickly learning how much partisan gridlock and dysfunction there was in his new workplace – which he perceived as a big change from a more productive chamber the last time Merkley was in Washington, as an intern for in 1976 for Sen. Mark Hatfield, a moderate Republican from Oregon. For the last decade, he's been leading discussions to come up with changes to the Senate rules and says that the Democratic caucus has made a “big shift” lately with regards to the procedural maneuver “because we've seen that the tool is now a minority veto wielded by McConnell.” M
- “McConnell has said that the filibuster should not obstruct us from getting our Republican objectives done and we will get rid of it – and he did that,” Merkley noted. “And [Democratic] members are aware of that and our grass roots is aware of that, which means that they do not find any validity in our giving an excuse that we can't act on something because of McConnell.”
Reality check: Senate Democrats still lack the votes to change the rules to make any kind of changes to the filibuster.
- But Merkley said that the caucus needs to first have a group discussion as to what their legislative priorities will be before they can move forward with making any potential exceptions to the filibuster for Democrats's legislative priorities. Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) has yet to decide what bills will be put on the floor.
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At the White House ADDITIONAL TAKEAWAYS FROM BIDEN’S FIRST PRESSER, per our colleagues John Wagner, Colby Itkowitz, Felicia Sonmez, Amy B Wang and Cleve R. Wootson Jr.
- Biden doubled his vaccination goal to 200 million by the end of his first 100 days.
- Biden was defensive about his immigration policies, framing the decision to accept migrants as a moral one. “Rolling back the policies of separating children from their mothers? I make no apology for that. Rolling back the policies of ‘Remain in Mexico,’ sitting on the edge of the Rio Grande in a muddy circumstance with not enough to eat? I make no apologies for that,” Biden said.
- Biden said he has “no idea” whether the Republican Party will exist in 2024.
- Biden, 78, plans to seek reelection in 2024 with Vice President Harris as his running mate.
“‘Oh God I miss him’: Biden keeps returning to Trump as a cause of nation’s troubles,” by Ashley Parker: “Biden has repeatedly joked that he is the rare Irishman who doesn’t hold grudges. But Biden’s frequent invocation Thursday on Trump felt decidedly personal,” our colleague Ashley Parker reports.
- At the news conference, “the current president mentioned the former one by name 10 times, and on more than half a dozen different occasions, sometimes in response to Trump-specific questions and other times unprompted.”
- “The president’s repeated references to Trump represented a stark departure from Biden and his team’s unofficial mantra of not elevating the 45th president and engaging with him whenever possible … Yet on Thursday, Biden seemed open — even eager at times — to discuss his predecessor.”
| His predecessor's response: |
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P.S. “Biden is set to travel to Pittsburgh next week to unveil the next phase of his economic agenda, a pair of infrastructure packages that could cost between $3 trillion and $4 trillion,” the New York Times’s Jim Tankersley reports. |
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Outside the Beltway 🚨GEORGIA ENACTS VOTER RESTRICTION LAW: Gov. Brian Kemp (R-Ga.) signed into law a sweeping voting measure that "proponents said is necessary to shore up confidence in the state’s elections but that critics countered will lead to longer lines, partisan control of elections and more difficult procedures for voters trying to cast their ballots by mail,” our colleagues Amy Gardner and Amy B Wang report.
- “The new law imposes new identification requirements for those casting ballots by mail; curtails the use of drop boxes for absentee ballots; allows electors to challenge the eligibility of an unlimited number of voters and requires counties to hold hearings on such challenges within 10 days; makes it a crime for third-party groups to hand out food and water to voters standing in line; blocks the use of mobile voting vans; and prevents local governments from directly accepting grants from the private sector.”
- “The law also strips authority from the secretary of state, making him a nonvoting member of the State Election Board, and allows lawmakers to initiate takeovers of local election boards.”
- It’s not just Georgia. “In 43 states across the country, GOP lawmakers have proposed at least 250 laws that would limit mail, early in-person and Election Day voting with such constraints as stricter ID requirements, limited hours or narrower eligibility to vote absentee.”
| Democratic state Rep. Park Cannon was arrested by state troopers as she knocked on the governor’s door to observe the bill signing, cutting short Kemp’s news conference:  |
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In the agencies U.S. COVID RESPONSE SQUANDERED MONEY AND LIVES: Research papers released at a Brookings Institution conference this week concluded that “the United States squandered both money and lives in its response to the coronavirus pandemic, and it could have avoided nearly 400,000 deaths with a more effective health strategy and trimmed federal spending by hundreds of billions of dollars,” Reuters’s Howard Schneider reports. How?
- Better health response: Widespread adoption of “mask, social distancing, and testing protocols while awaiting a vaccine.”
- Better economic response: “Spending on programs such as unemployment compensation and public heath was exactly what was called for,” University of California, Berkeley economics professor Christine Romer said, but other aspects, particularly the generous one-time payments to families, were “largely ineffective and wasteful.”
VACCINATION DISPARITIES: “D.C. officials have struggled for months to narrow the gap in vaccination rates between the city’s most affluent neighborhoods and those hit hardest by the coronavirus — prioritizing certain Zip codes, launching clinics at churches and apartment complexes and reaching out door-to-door,” our colleagues Lola Fadulu and Michael Brice-Saddler report. “But stark disparities remain.”
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The investigations SCOOP👀: “The New York attorney general’s office has partnered with Manhattan’s district attorney to investigate Stephen K. Bannon for the alleged fundraising scam that prompted his federal pardon in the waning hours of Trump’s presidency,” our colleague Shayna Jacobs reports.
- “The move adds prosecutorial firepower to a criminal case widely seen as an attempted end-run around the former president’s bid to protect a political ally.”
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In the media WEEKEND REEEADS:
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