All 50 Senate Republicans, as expected, have filibustered the Freedom to Vote Act. Was a 49-51 vote; (with Schumer changing his vote to no in order to be able to bring it up later)
Schumer, speaking after the vote, says it’s “ludicrous” that republicans argue the federal government has no role in regulating elections
Schumer says he’s prepared to bring up the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act as soon as next week
“Democrats unanimously upheld the importance of the [right to vote] and Republicans, sadly, failed to do so. So we’re not going to give up. We’re not going to be deterred. And there’s still a lot of work to do. And I think it’s a really sad day,” @VP told us after the failed vote
@VP More @vp: "Sadly, we have seen these moments before. I'd like to think that we have evolved and we did not have to return to debate, and in this situation, fail, as a body to even move forward with protections for the right to vote. So we're not going to give up."
@VP So a couple of observations...
As I wrote earlier this month, the bill (despite some messaging around it) wouldn't be a one-stop fix (particularly re: election subversion) and, crucially, wouldn't have been been able to be implemented in time for 2022 businessinsider.com/congress-is-po…
@VP But regardless of implementation challenges with a bill of this size, it (and its predecessor, the For the People Act) became key, concrete federal agenda items for activists & advocates to fully rally around. Will be interesting to see where the dynamics go from here
@VP This is also a critical moment for relations between the White House and voting rights/democracy reform activists, who are increasingly frustrated with the gap between Biden's words on this topic and his silence on reforming the filibuster businessinsider.com/activists-hope…
@VP The last line of this NAACP statement sums up the current dynamic: "Don't forget that Black voters landed a victory for this president and this Congress, so don't fail us again. The White House and Congress must work together to find a path forward..."
What makes this a key turning point moment for many progressives is that this bill had Manchin's buy-in & they gave him an opportunity to find 10 GOP votes
Now that that didn't happen, they say it's pedal to the medal and time to do something abt the filibuster
"There are activists across this country who have been working...to deliver a trifecta to the Democratic Party, and they did it, and it was really hard," @importantmeagan said on a press call yesterday. "That cannot happen every 2 to 4 years. The president must get in the game."
Of course, as @ThorningMichael notes, Dems could have gone a different route and tried to work with Republicans on something from the start. But they inherited HR1/S1 from the last Congress and went with that — the FTVA was really an intraparty compromise
BUT that too would have little chance of success — the 2 parties couldn't be farther apart on this issue, Senate Republicans definitely don't see voting/elections as a major priority (in either direction), and it wouldn't be enough for activists/progressives to rally around
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
House Oversight is holding a hearing on the Maricopa County/Cyber Ninjas "audit" at 10 AM today
Witnesses include county supervisors Jack Sellers & Bill Gates, election experts @GRamachandran03 and @beckerdavidj, and fmr AZ SOS/Senate liaison Ken Bennett oversight.house.gov/legislation/he…
Hearing is starting now — Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan was invited but is not appearing to testify
Rep. Raskin on the version of the independent state legislature doctrine advanced last fall/winter: "It has no basis, and it's made up"
In the full 6-page John Eastman pre-Jan 6 memo obtained by @charliearchy, he imagines “Trump electors” in 6 states sending dueling slates of electors to Pence, deems the electoral count act unconstitutional, and then games out ways the EC could go to Trump businessinsider.com/memo-details-h…
@charliearchy Eastman says that Pence should assert "the authority to determine which slates are valid", which he says "under the 12th Amendment, and the Adams and Jefferson precedents, is his alone (anything in the Electoral Count Act to the contrary is therefore unconstitutional)."
@charliearchy The memo ends: "BOLD, Certainly. But this Election was Stolen by a strategic Democrat plan to systematically flout existing election laws for partisan advantage; we’re no longer playing by Queensbury Rules, therefore" Pence should go by the 12th Amendment documentcloud.org/documents/2106…
Breed seems to undercut the logic behind the mask mandate: “Like sip and drink, that's just not realistic. At a restaurant, same thing, I’m leaving my mask down while I’m enjoying my food. People are not doing that. So that’s just not realistic, you all know it’s not realistic"
Breed says at the end of the clip: "When I take a picture, as I do in any case or do an interview, yes I take my mask off when I take a picture. I don't need to — I'm vaccinated. I don't need to wear a mask and take a picture every time..But at the same time, I'm being careful.."
Breed at the end of the clip: "When the spirit moves you because you are watching history in the making, Bay Area royalty perform...I'm not going to turn around and look for where my mask is or look to make sure I'm picking up a drink, I'm just going to let the spirit move me"
@thisisinsider@DecisionDeskHQ Another #CARecall winner: CA election officials and ballot pre-processing! 8.2 million votes (estimated 3/5 of the total cast) on the first ballot question in a little over an hour after polls close — pretty amazing for an almost-all vote by mail election businessinsider.com/california-gov…
.@SenAmyKlobuchar at voting rights rally after introducing the Freedom to Vote Act: “We are here to declare that democracy is alive and strong.”
.@SenJeffMerkley slammed his GOP colleagues, from whom Manchin is trying to marshall support for this bill: “What is wrong with our Republican senators that they won’t defend the freedom to vote?” Says they’re “all about the manipulation of elections.”
.@ChrisVanHollen speaking out in favor of eliminating the filibuster
Good morning from the Senate, where the group of 8 Senate Dems who have spent the last several weeks working on a revised voting/democracy reform bill are set to unveil their final product, called the Freedom to Vote Act, a slimmed-down HR1/S1 cnn.com/2021/09/14/pol…
While the text of the bill is not yet out, it reportedly *does* include a voter ID req, Election Day as a holiday, automatic/same-day registration, a floor for required early voting/no-excuse absentee + anti-gerrymandering and campaign finance provisions cnn.com/2021/09/14/pol…
^Needless to say, it'll be a very, very heavy lift to get any Republicans on board with the broad of strokes of this proposal, despite the presence of (what I expect) is a non-strict, non-photo ID requirement for voting