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GOP seeks a Russia reboot with Senate sanctions vote

After spending four years on the defensive about Donald Trump’s often-conciliatory posture toward Moscow, Republicans are hoping for their own Russia reset this week.

Their vehicle for that pivot is an imminent Senate vote on sanctions for a Russia-to-Germany gas pipeline. With the Biden administration vehemently opposed to the sanctions, the debate gives GOP senators an opening to squeeze centrist Democrats and those in competitive reelection races this fall who are eager to show they’re tough on Russia.

More broadly, though, Republicans see an opportunity to turn the page on an era that found them struggling to defend the former president’s periodic coziness with Vladimir Putin’s government amid Russia’s documented meddling in the 2016 election.

What won’t happen, however, is an outright win for the GOP. The White House is aggressively pushing Democrats to reject Sen. Ted Cruz’s bill financially walloping the pipeline known as Nord Stream 2, and Democrats are expected to block the legislation as soon as Thursday.

But Republicans are eager to leverage the issue to their political advantage as President Joe Biden navigates delicate talks with Russia over its military buildup on the border with Ukraine.

Democrats have “just spent an enormous amount of political capital holding all their people together who do not want to be in that position” of opposing the sanctions, said Sen. Jim Risch of Idaho, the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee. “I mean, this absolutely doesn’t make sense.”

Biden and his national-security deputies contend Cruz’s bill would undercut their push for unity with European allies against Russia’s aggression, in Ukraine and elsewhere. Yet the administration’s lobbying against the Cruz bill, paired with Democrats’ counter-proposal to it, strikes Republicans as frantic maneuvering to prevent an embarrassing loss.

And the GOP’s approach is backed by top Ukrainian officials, including President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has publicly urged senators to back Cruz’s legislation. (Ukraine has long opposed the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which circumvents its territory, worrying that the energy project would strengthen Moscow’s footing in Europe.)

Cruz crowed that “the White House is scrambling. They are trying very hard to put political pressure on Democrats.” The conservative Texan, who has been leading the pipeline sanctions push for months, added that the forceful Biden administration response comes after Democrats “spent five years with Donald Trump as president screaming, ‘Russia Russia Russia.’”

Indeed, the Biden administration is working hard to ensure that there are as few Democratic defections as possible on the sanctions vote. Senior State Department officials briefed on-the-fence Democrats on Monday night, and a trio of officials from the Defense, State and Treasury departments came to the Capitol on Wednesday to persuade senators and aides. The State Department also blasted out a memo on the matter to Senate offices.

The Biden administration’s arguments appear to be resonating with Democrats, even those who have been the most vocal about the need to sanction Nord Stream 2. Nearly all Democrats have thus far resisted Cruz’s approach, citing the need to allow Biden to engage in diplomacy with the Kremlin over concerns that it will move to re-invade Ukraine in the coming days.

Democrats have also accused Cruz of abusing the Senate’s rules in order to force a debate on his sanctions package. The Texas Republican secured a vote on his bill as part of an agreement last month with Democratic leaders after Cruz held up quick confirmation of dozens of Biden’s ambassador nominees.

The Biden administration faced bipartisan criticism last year when it decided to waive mandatory sanctions on the pipeline out of a desire to repair relations with Germany, which supports the project as a means to bolster its natural gas resources. But the new German government has since changed its position on the issue, agreeing to hold off on final certification of Nord Stream 2 while Putin threatens an invasion of Ukraine.

Democrats had previously backed sanctions on the pipeline but now contend that the circumstances surrounding the issue have changed, requiring a shift on their part as well.

In response to Cruz’s gambit, a large group of Democratic senators unveiled legislation on Wednesday that would impose biting sanctions on Russia — including on Nord Stream 2 — if Moscow invades its neighbor. The plan, Democrats say, preserves Biden’s ability to use the not-yet-operational pipeline as leverage to convince Putin to back down.

“That’s the first and foremost reason I did it,” Senate Foreign Relations Chair Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), who introduced the counter-proposal on Wednesday, said in an interview. “We face an immediate challenge — the potential of Russia invading. So which is the better course to deter Russia?”

The clash between the two legislative courses on Russia may not break along easy party lines this week. Democrats warn that Cruz’s bill would splinter the U.S. from European allies, undermining Biden’s push for trans-Atlantic unity in the face of Russia’s aggression. They say Cruz is rooting for Biden to fail and hoping to prop up his own presidential ambitions.

Yet even as Republicans blast the Menendez-led effort as a bid for political cover designed to give Democrats an opportunity to oppose Cruz’s bill while maintaining a tough posture toward Russia, some of them could end up voting for it. Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) is among those in the GOP expressing openness to the severe sanctions prescribed in Menendez’s bill, which lawmakers believe would be justified if Russia invades Ukraine.

“You might get 95 senators voting for that, maybe 99,” added Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), a top Foreign Relations Committee member, said of the Menendez proposal, which is backed by Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. “There’s a view that that’s being used for cover on the Cruz vote, which I don’t see it as that.”

Republicans would prefer to keep the focus on Democrats who have backed away from Cruz’s bill, noting that nearly all senators previously supported the exact sanctions outlined in the legislation.

“At this point, the only thing that’s changed is that instead of a Republican in the White House, there’s a Democrat in the White House,” Cruz said. “And an awful lot of Senate Democrats right now seem perfectly willing to put partisan loyalty above national security.”

The Senate GOP campaign arm is already using the vote to squeeze vulnerable Democrats who are up for reelection this year.

At least one of those Democrats, Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, plans to support Cruz’s bill. But it’s unclear if more Democrats will join her, and Republicans are conceding that it’s unlikely they’ll secure the requisite 60 votes for passage.

Go to Source: Politico

White House departures send tremors through environmental community

The resignations of two high-profile White House environmental officials have rattled activists who fear President Joe Biden will fail to deliver on his promises to tackle the pollution plaguing minority and low-income communities.

The abrupt exits of Cecilia Martinez and David Kieve from the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality within days of each other have sparked alarm among environmental justice experts, who had already been frustrated by what they see as the administration’s lack of progress in fulfilling Biden’s promises to fix historic environmental and economic problems.

Biden has put environmental justice — the movement to alleviate the pollution that takes a disproportionately heavy toll on communities of color and low-income and rural areas — at the top of his administration’s green agenda alongside battling climate change. His focus on the issue won praise from many communities that have long felt overlooked by the nation’s environmental regulators, though many advocates are growing impatient because they said the Biden administration has yet to take action on major initiatives.

The CEQ departures prompted three members of Biden’s White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council, including its co-chair, to write to White House chief of staff Ron Klain on Monday asking him to explain how the administration plans to fulfill its environmental justice goals. The letter, revealed exclusively to POLITICO, requested that the White House install an environmental justice expert in the Climate Policy Office led by chief domestic climate adviser Gina McCarthy to elevate the effort across its projects and programs.

“It was a big blow to being able to believe in the administration’s seriousness to its commitment of environmental justice,” Maria Lopez-Nuñez, a member of the advisory council and deputy director at Newark, N.J.-based Ironbound Community Corporation, said of the recent departures. “I have a lot of questions about what’s going on.”

The CEQ officials were the main point of contact with the administration for activists and members of that advisory council. Now only one of three officials focused on environmental justice at CEQ remains. The two CEQ departures also come ahead of a key deadline for unveiling one of the administration’s most-anticipated tools: an environmental justice scorecard that would track the administration’s progress toward its goals, as well as critical guidance for agencies to implement environmental justice initiatives.

Biden’s White House was always too short-staffed to achieve its ambitious environmental justice goals, according to activists and community organizers who’ve been most frustrated about the lack of progress on the president’s Justice40 Initiative, which aims to steer 40 percent of federal benefits to communities that face the heaviest burdens from pollution. They saw the administration’s environmental justice agenda falling victim to that portfolio being siloed within the CEQ which, despite being chaired by environmental justice ally Brenda Mallory, has historically been a resource-starved entity with little authority of its own.

“We’re concerned about the work staying on track,” said Dana Johnson, senior director of strategy and federal policy with WE ACT for Environmental Justice.

One of the writers of the letter to Klain, Beverly Wright, who runs the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, said McCarthy’s office does not appear to prioritize environmental justice and the departures were an “obvious” blow.

“Everybody that environmental justice people were connected with are gone,” she said. “I’m speechless.”

Martinez declined to comment on her resignation, and attempts to contact Kieve were not successful.

A White House spokesperson defended the staffing levels, and said it was a priority for all the White House environmental staff. “Environmental Justice is integrated into the all of government approach in addressing the climate crisis that the President and this administration have championed. Everyone from Gina and [her deputy] Ali [Zaidi] on down work on environmental justice,” the spokesperson said.

The White House Office of Management and Budget and CEQ are nearing their self-imposed February deadline to publish a scorecard evaluating the administration’s record on improving outcomes in environmental justice communities — a key accountability measure for ensuring Biden lives up to his pledges, Johnson said.

Getting that across the finish line will be more challenging after Friday’s exit by Martinez, who spearheaded the CEQ’s environmental justice efforts, and Monday’s departure by Kieve, who focused on outreach to environmental groups.

Martinez’s position was new, part of the effort by Biden to fulfill his promises made to Black, Latino and other people of color who helped deliver him the presidency last November.

“What’s going on in D.C. right now is very bothersome to me. Black people — now I can’t speak for anyone else — we’re kind of feeling like we’ve been thrown under the bus,” Wright said, adding that environmental justice “priorities have not been pushed higher to the top, and I think there’s some obstruction there.”

Several advisory council members and other environmental justice activists said the recent departures leave Corey Solow, Martinez’s deputy, as the last remaining White House official with environmental justice as their primary responsibility. To honor Biden’s vows to voters, he’ll need to devote more resources, time and results, they said.

“Corey is the only one left,” said Harold Mitchell Jr., executive director of ReGenesis Community Development Corp. and advisory council member who had just finished a call discussing the council’s meeting scheduled for next week.

The White House pushed back against charges that it devoted scant staff to environmental justice. A White House spokesperson said Mallory, the head of CEQ, is invested in the topic and that just at that body “there are numerous people working on environmental justice issues,” and the administration would soon announce new hires.

“Our work on Environmental Justice and Justice 40 doesn’t revolve on any singular staffer — it’s integrated in the all of government approach the President has championed and we look forward to announcing at some point soon additional personnel who will continue the great work that David and Cecilia have done in the first year of the administration,” the spokesperson said in a written statement.

Advocates said the anticipated CEQ guidance to agencies for assessing environmental justice priorities and implementing Justice40 has been slow to arrive. They worry agencies will push ahead with their own interpretations of the strategy, which could be problematic since their previous status quo approaches were not seen as benefiting many marginalized communities. Without clear guidance from CEQ, they say history risks repeating itself.

“My concern is that either each agency will do its own thing or they might not do anything — they might do the same old thing that they’ve always done,” said Ana Baptista, an associate director of the Tishman Environment and Design Center at The New School in New York City and an advisory council member.

How agencies interpret environmental justice initiatives could vary wildly because the Biden administration has not defined its most central terms, including whether the 40 percent of targeted “benefits” refer to actual spending, or even what constitutes “disadvantaged community.”

The White House spokesperson told POLITICO that a preliminary version of a long-anticipated environmental justice screening tool designed to fill in those blanks would launch soon. The spokesperson said that the tool “will be continuously updated and refined based on feedback and research” and “will improve the consistency — across the Federal government — of how agencies implement programs and initiatives,” including identifying disadvantaged communities.

Advisory council members also have pushed agencies to more clearly explain how they are evaluating the environmental justice components of 21 programs identified for a pilot phase of Justice40. Agencies reviewing those programs were supposed to submit progress reports to the Office of Management and Budget last month, but none of the findings have been made public, said Rachel Cleetus, climate and energy policy director with the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Baptista said she wants agency assumptions of what constitutes achieving equity, justice and other goals released for external review.

Rep. Donald McEachin (D-Va.), who has championed the issue in Congress and helped write Biden’s campaign platform on the topic, praised Martinez and her office for steering the federal government in a clearer environmental justice direction.

“She was really the architect, if you will, for getting the White House in a position where we could talk about [environmental justice] as an issue, where we could talk about Justice40,” he told POLITICO. “Because of her a lot has gone well. I think there’s still some things that need to be hammered out and worked out.”

Go to Source: Politico

Georgia’s voting rights advocates ask Biden: Where have you been?

ATLANTA — LaTosha Brown is one of the many Southern organizers who turned Georgia blue in 2020 for the first time in nearly 30 years. But on Tuesday, she didn’t want President Joe Biden in the state.

After working 70 hours a week, leading bus tours across the state and rallying voters to the polls last year, Brown, who co-founded Black Voters Matter, said she was fed up with the Democrats she helped elect. As Biden called on the Senate to get rid of the filibuster in order to pass voting rights and elections legislation in Atlanta on Tuesday, she stayed away.

“So you come into Georgia, and what?” said Brown, who is based in Atlanta. “It’s taken a year to talk about, ‘we gonna put away the filibuster.’ There’s all kinds of energy and momentum I think has been squandered.”

As Brown sees it, she helped give Democrats power but, one year later, she and other Black voters are worse off when it comes to their ability to vote. There is frustration evident in her voice as she explains how voting rights still does not seem like a priority for the administration.

“It makes the work harder for us,” Brown said. “What am I supposed to go back and tell people?….How do I convince them to turn out again?”

Brown’s skepticism exemplified the political thicket Biden entered when he touched down in Atlanta on Tuesday to give his latest speech on the need to protect democracy, pass election reforms and, if necessary, revise the Senate’s rules. After months of inaction, those who have been demanding his help increasingly doubt he can deliver.

A number of groups boycotted Biden’s speech. And the state’s most high-profile voting rights activist — gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams — didn’t show either, citing an unspecified scheduling conflict.

Biden’s speech, delivered at the Atlanta University Center Consortium on a brisk afternoon, served not only to put a spotlight on the onslaught of state Republican voting laws restricting ballot access but to keep the very Democratic base that Brown says is disillusioned, engaged.

The president, who served more than 30 years in a Senate that’s now become a thorn in his side, continued to push back against anti-democratic forces led by his predecessor. A self-described “institutionalist,” he condemned the chamber he once served in as a “shell of its former self” and warned that the “threat to our democracy is so grave” that it warranted “getting rid of the filibuster” if voting rights legislation is unable to pass any other way.

Biden appealed to national lawmakers’ sense of history and reminded the public that he’s “so damn old” he was alive and starting college in 1963 when Fannie Lou Hamer was pulled off a bus, jailed and beaten, after registering voters in Mississippi. He asked national and state lawmakers how they would want to be remembered as they face the same questions their predecessors faced, whether it be in the aftermath of Bloody Sunday in Selma or during Lyndon B. Johnson’s passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. It appeared, at times, as if Biden was also posing the question to himself.

“I ask every elected official in America, how do you want to be remembered? Consequential moments in history, they present a choice,” Biden said. “Do you want to be on the side of Dr. King or George Wallace? You want to be on the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? You want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis? This is the moment to decide to defend our elections, to defend our democracy.”

Those who did show up to watch Biden speak said they were eager to hear him and Vice President Kamala Harris make their case. In interviews with a dozen attendees, including organizers, city council members, students and civil rights leaders, two things were repeated: A desire for Biden to lay out a plan for passage of the two bills before the Senate and an unabashed, persistent and vocal endorsement of changing or eliminating the filibuster.

“I wish they would have done it sooner but I’m glad they’re doing it now,” said Melanie Campbell, who joined a virtual meeting with White House officials and other civil rights leaders last week. Campbell and other leading Black women organizers had asked for Harris and Biden to come to Georgia.

Some attendees argued that Biden was not the hurdle. “We all need to remember that FDR and LBJ had significant majorities in Congress. The Senate is the problem, not the president, and unfortunately, until we change the composition of the Senate, advancing civil rights is going to be an uphill battle,” said Neil Makhija, executive director of the national South Asian civic organization IMPACT, who attended the Atlanta speech.

But, for others, skepticism was not too far below the surface. Gerald Riggs, a member of the Atlanta NAACP, offered a warning similar to Brown’s as he mingled with other local organizers, elected officials and operatives who were waiting for BIden.

“We mobilized way too many people to the polls with the promise of the passage of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the George Floyd Justice and policing act, neither of which have been moved on,” Riggs said. “So I’m speaking for all of the activists that I mobilized and the voters that we mobilized. They want to hear about that. No more excuses.”

The White House has repeatedly defended the sequencing of Biden’s agenda, noting that he entered the Oval Office at an unprecedented time as a global pandemic raged and Americans were suffering from an economic downturn. Aides also note that attacks on democracy and the protection of voting rights is the reason Biden launched his campaign while arguing that Biden’s been far from shy about the threats confronting the country.

Biden’s speech came two days into the Georgia state legislature’s new session as Republicans sought to expand on the bill they passed last year that was spurred by former President Donald Trump’s lies of a stolen election. This time, some Republicans are pushing a measure to ban drop boxes for absentee ballots altogether.

Tuesday morning, inside Georgia’s state house, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, outlined his own proposals for federal elections legislation — which include amending the Constitution to require “citizens-only voting” and national voter ID laws — while accusing Biden of pushing for a “federal elections takeover.” Baoky Vu, a Republican who was pushed out of his position on the DeKalb County board of elections and censured by his local party for opposing his party’s restrictive election laws, said he supports Raffensperger’s reelection bid. But he also continues to worry about the voting bills passed in Georgia last year.

“This is a step by step, deliberate attempt at undermining the institutions of democracy itself,” Vu said of the dynamic in Georgia and across the country. “That’s why I think it’s so critical to have people focus on what can be done at the federal level.”

While some Georgia Democrats were happy to see the president put a spotlight on those laws, others were curious as to why Biden wasn’t elsewhere. Among the scores of local Georgia Democrats who chose not to show up on Tuesday was Erick Allen, candidate for lieutenant governor and chair of the Cobb County delegation in the state house.

“I think it is appropriate to make this your first stop to honor the legacy of the work of John Lewis, considering this is the John Lewis Voting Rights Act they’re trying to get passed,” said Allen. “But I think there are other places that need to be hearing this message to put pressure on their senators to get this done. Georgia gave him the Senate majority. So we’ve done as much as we can do on this.”

“If you’re going to come to Georgia, you need to also announce that the next time the tires of Air Force One hit the ground, it’s going to be in Arizona and then in West Virginia,” Allen continued, referencing the home states of the two Senate Democrats most resistant to changing the filibuster rules: Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.)

But it wasn’t just Biden’s presence but Abrams’ absence that created buzz at Tuesday’s event. Standing in line for security, a number of city council members and local Democratic officials wondered aloud to each other why the Georgia gubernatorial candidate wasn’t in attendance.

“It’s all over the news,” said one woman.

Abrams would later put out a statement highlighting that she and Biden had connected on the phone in the morning and had a conversation that “reaffirmed” their “shared commitment to the American project of freedom and democracy.”

For the activists watching, talk of who or who not was in attendance was a distraction, ultimately, from the large question: Just what would come next? Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the NAACP, praised Biden for his “powerful words” but said he had “not prioritized voting rights protections the same way he prioritized other policy issues like BBB, infrastructure bill or Covid relief.” It was time, he said, for the president to recalibrate the focus.

“The use of the bully pulpit is something that every president utilizes to build momentum for policy initiatives. But he did that today. But until we actually have a bill on his desk, ready for signature, there’s still much more work to get done.”

Go to Source: Politico

‘I’m tired of being quiet’: Biden and Harris make forceful push for voting rights

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday delivered back-to-back speeches in the nation’s epicenter of the civil rights movement, urging Congress to pass voting rights legislation at a moment they deemed a turning point for democracy.

Speaking at the Atlanta University Center Consortium, on the grounds of two historically Black colleges — Clark Atlanta University and Morehouse College — Harris called on the Senate to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, aimed at restoring key parts of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and the For the People Act, intended to expand ballot access, among other provisions.

“The assault on our freedom to vote will be felt by every American in every community in every political party. And if we stand idly by, our entire nation will pay the price for generations to come,” Harris said, warning that it is uncertain when there will be another opportunity to pass the legislation. “As Dr. King said, the battle is in our hands. And today, the battle is in the hands of the leaders of the American people, those in particular that the American people sent to the United States Senate.”

The vice president, who was tapped to lead the administration’s push on election reform legislation, talked about Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy of fighting for the right to vote, and that of Lewis, the Georgia congressman and civil rights icon who died in 2020.

Biden took the stage second and followed with a pointed message for GOP lawmakers, at the state and federal level. Often using Georgia as an example, he condemned Republican-led laws “designed to suppress your vote, to subvert our elections.”

“The goal of the former president and his allies is to disenfranchise anyone who votes against them. Simple as that. The facts won’t matter. Your vote won’t matter. They’ll just decide what they want, and then do it. That’s the kind of power you see in totalitarian states. Not in democracies,” Biden said, warning that “the battle for the soul of America is not over.”

The president called on the GOP to join Democrats in supporting the voting and elections reform bills, reminding Republicans that reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act has historically been done through bipartisan agreement. “I’ve been having these quiet conversations with members of Congress for the last two months,” the president said. “I’m tired of being quiet.”

Tuesday’s speeches from Biden and Harris are timed up with Senate Democrats’ moves on the Hill, as Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is expected to force another vote on an elections reform bill as soon as this week. If Republicans block the bill as expected, Schumer has repeatedly said he would launch a movement to change the filibuster rules by Jan. 17, Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Some Senate Republicans are currently negotiating with a small number of Democrats in the upper chamber about potential changes to the Electoral Count Act, an 1887 law that lays out the process for certifying the presidential election results. The White House has said Republican cooperation on such changes would not dissuade their larger effort.

While Biden made clear Tuesday that the only way to protect the right to vote and ensure election security was to pass the two bills, he acknowledged the strong Republican opposition standing in the way. He said he supports changing Senate rules, describing the filibuster as “weaponized” and “abused.”

“Sadly, the United States Senate, designed to be the world’s greatest deliberative body, has been rendered a shell of its former self. It gives me no satisfaction in saying that. As an institutionalist, as a man who was honored to serve in the Senate,” Biden said. “But as an institutionalist, I believe the threat to our democracy is so grave that we must find a way to pass these voting rights bills. Debate them. Vote. Let the majority prevail. And if that bare minimum is blocked, we have no option but to change the Senate rules, including getting rid of the filibuster for this.”

His remarks on Tuesday could be considered a second act to his fiery speech on the anniversary of Jan. 6, in which he tore into former President Donald Trump and his allies for holding “a dagger at the throat of America” and implored Americans to “stand for the rule of law, to preserve the flame of democracy, to keep the promise of America alive.”

Biden’s and Harris’ audience was a mix of base voters and activists on the ground in Georgia, as well as Democratic lawmakers in the Senate. Civil rights leaders including Rainbow PUSH Coalition founder Rev. Jesse Jackson, National Action Network founder Rev. Al Sharpton, National Urban League President Marc Morial and NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson attended the remarks in person, though a number of voting rights activists declined to attend Tuesday’s speeches. Georgia gubernatorial candidate and voting rights activist Stacey Abrams was also not in attendance, citing a scheduling conflict.

The president is working to rally support from moderates in his party like Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and others who have not committed to supporting the president’s notion to change Senate rules.

“The question is, where will the institution of the United States senate stand? Every senator, Democrat, Republican and independent will have to declare where they stand — not just for the moment but for the ages,” Biden said during his speech. “History has never been kind to those who sided with voter suppression over voters’ rights, and it will be less kind for those who side with election subversion.”

Go to Source: Politico

Biden health team weighs new mask distribution plan

Biden administration health officials are weighing whether to offer high quality masks, which could include KN95 or N95s, to all Americans, as the Omicron variant fuels a record surge of Covid-19, three people with knowledge of the deliberations told POLITICO.

The internal discussions come amid growing calls for the government to make the more protective masks more easily accessible, and as evidence mounts that the cloth masks many have relied on throughout the pandemic are less effective at protecting against the more transmissible Omicron variant.

The administration has so far resisted recommending that everyone shift to wearing the N95s or KN95s typically worn by health care workers, even with Covid-19 cases hitting new highs. Masking guidance has been a longstanding friction point between President Joe Biden and Republican governors going back to before he was sworn into office.

But some administration officials, led by Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, have advocated in the last week for launching an initiative to hand out better-quality masks to all who want them, said two people with knowledge of the deliberations, who were not authorized to speak publicly.

The White House has also fielded increasingly urgent pleas from outside allies such as Céline Gounder, an infectious disease specialist and former Covid-19 adviser to the Biden transition, to set up such a program. Within the last week, a group of health experts — including three former advisers to the Biden transition — publicly outlined a new Covid-19 response strategy that included making N95s or KN95s “readily available to all U.S. residents for free or very low cost.”

The Biden administration is in the process of developing a website where Americans will be able to request at-home rapid tests the federal government is purchasing. White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Monday that people will be able to begin ordering the tests “later this month.”

“I told the White House Covid Response Team that they should provide N95 and KN95 masks through the website too,” Gounder told POLITICO.

Others, including former Trump-era Surgeon General Jerome Adams, have made similar proposals to the administration.

The White House is also facing rising pressure in light of a memo published by Congress’ attending physician telling lawmakers and staff that “surgical masks, cloth face masks and gaiter masks must be replaced by the more protective KN95 or N95 masks.” And people who interact with Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris or their spouses are supposed to wear an N95 mask.

The White House declined to comment.

Murthy and others in favor of distributing masks to the public have pushed for a decision as soon as Thursday, when Biden is slated to deliver an address on the state of the pandemic response.

Yet it remains unclear how the administration would implement such a plan and how long it would take to get up and running.

Jeff Zients, the White House Covid-19 response coordinator, is still “vetting” the idea and has not yet officially signed off on it, according to a person familiar with the conversations.

Among the details under debate are how exactly the government would make the masks available, as well as how to ensure that stockpiling supplies to give out to the public does not create mask shortages for hospitals and other health providers. Public health experts say the cost of more effective masks is also a barrier to use by low-income Americans.

The administration last spring distributed 25 million masks to community health centers, food pantries and soup kitchens in a bid to slow the spread among some of the nation’s poorest and most vulnerable Americans. But those were cloth masks, and the initiative ran for only a few months — making it a fraction of the size required for a sustained, national mask distribution program.

There is also uncertainty among some about how significant a difference distributing the more protective masks would make in the predominantly Republican areas of the country that are least vaccinated and most vulnerable to severe illness — especially given the politicization of masks and the resistance among conservatives to wearing them.

The highly protective N95 and KN95 masks have become far easier for people to find compared to earlier in the pandemic, when severe shortages prompted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to hold off on recommending people use them for fear that health care workers would be unable to get them.

The CDC has yet to revise that guidance, though The Washington Post reported on Monday that the agency is now considering recommending people wear N95s or KN95s if they can do so consistently. CDC declined to comment when asked about the report.

Despite the wider availability, health experts still argue the government should be making the process smoother, especially as the nation enters its third year of the pandemic with the virus raging uncontrolled. It is still too difficult to find masks for reasonable prices, those critics say, and even tougher to figure out whether they are legitimate or counterfeit — persistent problems that they argue the administration has yet to prioritize fixing.

“The real challenge always comes back to, can they pull it off (logistically and supply wise) and is the upside of success for them greater than the risk of failure politically,” Adams said. “And recently the strategy seems to be push as much as you can off on the individual and take on only as much responsibility as you absolutely have to from a governmental perspective.”

Yet amid heightened concern over the strain on hospitals and disruption of essential services, the case for sending higher quality masks to Americans has become particularly acute during the Omicron wave, according to Abraar Karan, an infectious diseases fellow at Stanford University.

“What may end up happening is nothing happens, the surge passes, and then we’re left again for like the fifth or sixth time to say, ‘Well, are we really going to need these in the future? Is there any point in doing this now?’ And every time we said that, we have still had a use for it in the future,” Karan said.

Go to Source: Politico

King family: ‘Difficult decision’ to attend Biden’s voting rights speech

Martin Luther King III and his wife Arndrea Waters King acknowledged Tuesday that it was a “difficult decision” for them to attend President Joe Biden’s upcoming speech on voting rights, an event several high-profile activists are skipping because of what they say is the White House’s inaction on the issue.

“We certainly understand the frustration of our local partners here in Georgia,” Arndrea Waters King told MSNBC in an interview. “It’s been a long year of a lot of things not being done, and we stand and we share that frustration.”

Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are scheduled to speak Tuesday afternoon at the Atlanta University Center Consortium — on the campuses of two historically Black colleges, Clark Atlanta University and Morehouse College — where they will push for the passage of two federal voting rights bills that remain stalled in the Senate.

Many civil rights leaders will appear in person for Biden’s and Harris’ remarks, including Rainbow PUSH Coalition founder Rev. Jesse Jackson, National Action Network founder Rev. Al Sharpton, National Urban League President Marc Morial, and NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson.

But a number of voting rights activists have declined to attend Biden’s speech, which the White House has underscored as evidence of the president’s commitment to reforming the nation’s voting laws following the one-year anniversary of the Capitol insurrection and in advance of the 2022 midterm elections.

“We’re beyond speeches. We’re beyond events,” Black Voters Matter co-founder LaTosha Brown told Atlanta’s NPR station. “We don’t need any more photo ops. We need action,” former Georgia NAACP President James Woodall told The New York Times.

Spokespeople for the White House did not immediately return an email seeking comment on the criticism from Black activists.

Even Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams — one of the nation’s preeminent voting rights advocates and a Democratic Party star — will not attend Biden’s speech, citing a scheduling issue. Spokesperson Seth Bringman said in a statement that Abrams “has a conflict and expressed her support” for the event already.

On Tuesday morning, the Kings said they had “been in communication” with the activists boycotting the event, including Black Voters Matter co-founder Cliff Albright. “We certainly share his position and understand their frustration. And they also expressed that they understand our position in coming to the table and expressing these frustrations directly to the president,” Arndrea Waters King said.

Martin Luther King III, the eldest son of late civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, also suggested he was disappointed by how little the White House had accomplished to counter a wave of voting restrictions passed by several Republican state legislatures in the aftermath of the 2020 election.

“I don’t even understand how anybody would be against expanding and protecting the right to vote and preserving democracy,” Martin Luther King III said. “It’s a very sad position … where we are right now. And absolutely, I think that a lot of this should have already been done.”

Myah Ward contributed to this report.

Go to Source: Politico

‘We are going right to the belly of the beast:’ Biden takes on Georgia

Fresh off a high-profile speech in which he warned that a dagger had been placed at the throat of American democracy, President Joe Biden will travel to the state that White House officials view as “ground zero” for Republican-led election suppression efforts.

Biden will speak in Georgia on Tuesday. In his remarks, he is expected to not only echo the themes of his address on the anniversary of the Jan. 6 insurrection but to expand on his endorsement of a filibuster carveout to pass voting rights legislation in the Senate.

The speeches and related meetings from Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are part of the administration’s offensive to beat back GOP efforts to both restrict voting access and seed skepticism of America’s electoral system.

“We are doubling down, kicking it into another gear, we are going right to the belly of the beast, or ground zero, for voter suppression, voter subversion and obstruction,” said Cedric Richmond, White House senior adviser and director of the Office of Public Engagement.

Biden’s trip comes as Senate Democrats are readying a push to debate and vote on changes to the chamber’s rules in the hopes of advancing voting rights and elections legislation. In his speech, aides said, Biden is expected to unequivocally back that effort, expanding on his ABC News interview over the holiday break in which he endorsed a carveout to the filibuster for voting rights legislation.

“It’s really about the fact that there’s a vote coming up,” said Richmond. “The Senate leader has voiced his plan. We supported his plan, and we’re going to use the White House to try to galvanize the votes.”

Despite the renewed push by the White House, major hurdles remain in the form of Senate Democrats not yet willing to make changes to the filibuster rules. Richmond said that Biden continues to talk to lawmakers one-on-one and with the group of senators spearheading talk of how to get the voting and elections reform bills passed. “He’s been working the phones on voting rights,” he added.

Biden’s trip to Atlanta comes as voting rights advocates and allied lawmakers have called on him to be more forceful and consistent.

Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) said he hopes that both Biden and Harris will “speak emphatically about the need for filibuster reform” and has made his desire known to the White House. Johnson did not ask the White House for any reassurances, but said he expects Biden to be direct in his comments about the need to change the filibuster.

Biden’s speech on the anniversary of Jan. 6, “didn’t pull any punches,” Johnson said. “And I look forward to him doing the same thing on filibuster reform, being just as direct and straightforward and clear in his speech in Atlanta next week, as he was in speaking about the insurrection…and who was who was responsible for it.”

In his address on at the Capitol this week, Biden began to lay out his case for the dire need to save a democracy under threat by Trump and GOP allies as they perpetuate lies of election fraud and attempt to install loyalists — some of whom have pledged to question future certifications — into key positions of power overseeing elections.

Richmond said Biden’s address on Jan. 6 was a “down payment” as the president builds the case to the public that the foundations of the country’s democracy are under assault.

It’s not the first time Biden has called for Congress to pass such legislation. Last June, he traveled to Tulsa, Oklahoma on the anniversary of the Tulsa Massacre and vowed to “fight like heck” against voting restrictions being passed by GOP-led state legislatures. A month later, he gave an address at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia declaring, “the 21st century Jim Crow assault is real.”

But despite the repeated pushes, the Senate has not been able to move either the Freedom to Vote Act or the John Lewis Voting Rights Act — the first of which expands access to the ballot and shields election officials; the second restores key sections of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

“Each time when it doesn’t happen we amplify it more,” Richmond said of pushing for action in the Senate.

As Biden’s other top agenda item — a massive social spending and climate bill — has stalled out, Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) said the legislative “vacuum is quickly being filled” by voting rights.

“I don’t think there is a Democrat in the country that wanted Build Back Better to pass by Christmas more than I did,” Casey said. “But the primacy of voting rights now has to supersede everything else we do. I think we found out toward the end of the year that it’s very difficult to have two parallel tracks to two big issues. And sometimes you have to prioritize and you have to sequence.”

Casey described the next push for voting and elections bills “as important a body of work as any of us will ever do.”

With Democrats preparing to take up the bills in earnest, Senate Republicans led by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell expressed openness to changing the Electoral Count Act of 1887, which establishes the process for the certification of presidential elections. Democrats, including the White House, deemed that narrower focus to be wholly insufficient and an attempt to distract from more comprehensive reforms. Meanwhile, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) says he will support some changes to Senate rules, but not elimination or carve outs of the legislative filibuster. Manchin, along with other centrist hold-out Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), is also holding talks with a bipartisan group of senators on options for fortifying the Electoral Count Act.

Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), a White House confidant and the third-ranking House Democrat, took offense to Manchin’s argument that changes to Senate rules should be bipartisan, saying “we just don’t have enough Democrats who are in touch with the history of this country, or they’d stop saying some of this foolishness.”

“I am, as you know, a Black person, descended of people who were given the vote by the 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution. The 15th amendment was not a bipartisan vote, it was a single party vote that gave Black people the right to vote,” said Clyburn. “Manchin and others need to stop saying that because that gives me great pain for somebody to imply that the 15th Amendment of the United States Constitution is not legitimate because it did not have bipartisan buy-in.”

Asked about the desire by some Democrats like Manchin and Sinema to get support from across the aisle, Richmond said it would be unrealistic to expect Republicans to come along when they’ve voted against the bills to date.

“These bills being passed in all of these Republican legislatures to restrict the right to vote, to put obstacles in the way of the right to vote to subvert the vote, all of those have been done on a partisan basis with Republican-only votes,” Richmond said. “And so to think that that same party that is doing that on a partisan basis would come along in the Congress and vote to safeguard from them, may not be realistic.”

Manchin’s office declined to comment.

For Georgia Democrats, the debate around the passage of election reforms is particularly acute as Republicans in the state have ushered in a host of changes. The remade political landscape — twin Senate victories last year a day before the Capitol insurrection in Washington that breathed new life into Biden’s agenda — has combined to raise the stakes.

Rep. Nikema Williams (D-Ga.), who has been in touch with the White House ahead of the visit, said she expects Biden to provide specifics about how he plans to move the issue forward.

“I think coming to Atlanta, coming to the 5th Congressional District, I am sitting in the seat that was once held by Congressman John Lewis,” Williams said. “We’re the cradle of the civil rights movement. You don’t come to Atlanta just for another speech. This is about action.”

It couldn’t come soon enough for Democrats in her state. Most notably, a 2021 Georgia law backed by the GOP and signed after Biden’s victory, among other things, curbs absentee voting drop boxes to early voting sites, requires additional ID for absentee voting and allows state takeovers of county elections.

Now, GOP lawmakers in Georgia are pushing to go even further, with proposals to nix voting touchscreen machines and expand probes into voter fraud, among other bills being offered for the coming legislative session.

Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux (D-Ga.), noted that her own races have been deeply impacted by GOP-led changes to the voting rolls. In 2018, one-third of the absentee ballots thrown out in the state were in Gwinnett County, the suburban county northeast of Atlanta where her district is based. Bourdeaux brought litigation around the issues that eventually contributed to statewide legal challenges, in addition to devoting a plank of her campaign to voter protection.

Asked what she wants to hear from Biden on Tuesday, Bourdeaux said the president should commit to creating a carve out in the filibuster to get the Freedom to Vote Act on and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act advanced. And she argued it would take nothing short of a full push from Biden himself to make that happen.

“The president has a lot of levers. And I think him coming out very strongly for that is a very important first step,” Bourdeaux said. “But beyond that, he’s the one who’s going to have to lean on the senators to break the filibuster in this way. Step one is making a very strong commitment to that action.”

Go to Source: Politico

Harris hires a new comms director, Jamal Simmons

Jamal Simmons, a veteran communications aide in Democratic circles, has been tapped to be Vice President Kamala Harris’ communications director, a White House official has confirmed.

An announcement is expected Thursday, according to the official. An official start date is unclear.

The move comes after the top two aides in Harris’ press and communications operation, Symone Sanders and Ashley Etienne, left the office in December. The vice president’s office has begun retooling after a year filled with scrutiny on Harris that neither the White House or her office were really prepared for, officials have acknowledged.

Simmons has been a mainstay of Democratic politics and a semi-regular presence on cable news. News of his hiring was first reported by The Hill.

Go to Source: Politico

Ex-Trumpers set to plot how to try and take down Trump

A group of former Trump administration officials are banding together in an effort to block their former boss from entering office again.

The meeting of the group, announced by former White House press secretary and chief of staff to the first lady Stephanie Grisham, is scheduled for next week where they will discuss how to “try and stop” former President Donald Trump and the “kind of violence and rhetoric that has been talked about and continues to divide our country.” In an interview with CNN on the morning of Jan. 6, Grisham said about 15 former Trump administration officials — some she said, who ranked higher than her — have held informal discussions and plan to meet in person.

“I think that there were a few of us who, again, have been sitting back watching him continue to manipulate and spread this big lie and continue to harm our country,” Grisham told CNN. “And [we] started some informal chats and then started throwing around ideas of what we could do, how we could formalize it.”

While Grisham did not name members of the group, POLITICO can confirm former Department of Homeland Security chief of staff Miles Taylor, who was revealed to be the author of “Anonymous”; former national security official Olivia Troye; and Trump’s one-time, short-lived communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, are involved. None offered additional details on the group, but POLITICO confirmed an invitation was sent out to other former officials to participate as well. Grisham said next week’s meeting will be both in person and via Zoom.

“I just think that it will be important for people in this country who are still supporting him to hear from people who actually worked with him day in, day out, worked with a lot of people in his inner circle. We’re not going to just talk about the former president. We’re going to talk about the people who are surrounding him still now and who they really are,” Grisham said on CNN. “You can still be proud of his policies, you can still be behind a lot of the America First policies that he implemented, which I am, but it doesn’t have to be him. It just doesn’t have to be this man who has caused such chaos and destruction in the country.”

It’s unclear if the gathering of Trump alums next week will result in the formation of a formal political entity. If it does, it would be the latest addition to a constellation of “Never Trump” groups focused on speaking out against Trump, Trumpism and his falsehoods about the 2020 election. Last June, Taylor co-founded Renew America Movement, a group to support candidates across the political spectrum that identify as being in favor of reforms to strengthen democracy.

Despite their efforts, Trump remains the most popular figure in the Republican Party, and according to a recent USA TODAY/Suffolk Poll, a majority of Republicans, 58 percent, believe Joe Biden was not legitimately elected president — undoubtedly fueled by Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud.

A spokesperson for the former president did not immediately return a request for comment.

On Wednesday, Grisham met with the select House committee investigating Jan. 6 and told reporters she “cooperated fully.” She was one of the first Trump officials to resign as a result of the former president’s response to the riots on Capitol Hill, and since leaving her post as chief of staff to the first lady, wrote a tell-all book about her experience serving in the administration.

Grisham told CNN she hopes to travel the country to speak to Trump supporters in an effort to help them understand “who he is.”

“This man is a master manipulator. He gets people to do his bidding. I was one of them. And I want people who believe in him now to talk to me. And I want to explain who he really is,” Grisham said. “So I’m really hoping for a good fight in 2022. I’m ready to roll up my sleeves and do what I can.”

Go to Source: Politico

‘Shocked and stunned and horrified’: How Joe Biden processed Jan. 6

As rioters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, threatening the lives of Vice President Mike Pence, lawmakers, and police there, most of then-President-elect Joe Biden’s senior advisers were isolated from their boss.

Covid precautions had forced them to scatter in Washington and elsewhere across the country. And so they watched mostly separately on television as the pro-Donald Trump mob raged through the Capitol on a mission to overturn the lawfully cast votes of the electorate that had resulted in their boss’ win.

Biden White House officials, lawmakers and close presidential allies in interviews describe a chaotic day, filled with phone calls and last-minute audibles as they fine-tuned the speech he would give from 100 miles away. They quickly internalized that the day would have a lasting imprint on their work: from the remarks Biden gave that day to the agenda he would go on to pursue once in office.

“What flowed from him on the 6th was something he was speaking to for a long, long time. It was not a difficult thing to bring together,” Mike Donilon, a senior adviser to the president, recalled in an interview with POLITICO. “I believe — I think he believes — that there was a through-line and that the threat that he saw when he announced at the time — that everything that made America America was at stake.”

“What we believe, what we stood for, our democracy, was all on the line,” he added.

While much of the focus has been on how Trump’s White House and members of Congress spent the day, little is known about how Biden and his team processed, in real time, the riot that was taking place. The day, like many during the transition, was supposed to be a fairly quiet one for Biden, with an event scheduled before a Covid-safe audience of journalists at The Queen music hall, a short drive from his Wilmington, Del., house.

Biden spent the morning at home, preparing to talk about the economy — a speech that ultimately would be scrapped and replaced by the one about the crisis at the Capitol. He was with his wife, future first lady Jill Biden. They had the TV on in the background to monitor the election certification process in Congress.

As activity began, starting with a rally attended by then-President Donald Trump that soon moved over to the Capital, Biden’s top advisers couldn’t believe what they were seeing: breached barriers and rioters pushing their way through throngs of police officers. But in those moments, one of them said they also felt determined to get the president-elect on the phone with senior staff to make sure he was tracking every angle of the disorder that was unfolding. Everyone was aligned on the magnitude of the day.

On a quiet road near the president-elect’s house, the small pool of reporters assigned to cover the Biden transition event in downtown Wilmington were waiting in an idling bus. One by one, they pulled up clips of clashes between rioters and police. “Was that blood?” one recalled asking the others.

Biden’s own entourage decided to just get the cars and go to The Queen, knowing he would need to address the events. After the press bus rolled up to the venue, they saw the now-iconic video and images of officer Eugene Goodman luring an angry mob away from the Senate floor entrance. But it was still difficult to process the full scope of what was happening across Washington.

After feeling isolated most of the morning in her Washington, D.C., home, Kate Bedingfield, then Biden’s communications director and deputy campaign manager, got on a call with other senior staff and the president-elect. On the call, Biden told them he felt it was important for people to hear from the incoming president. He wanted to convey that “this is not who we are, and that the defense of democracy is really woven into the fabric of our country,” said Bedingfiled, now White House communications director.

“I remember the president being both shocked and stunned and horrified by the images that we were seeing in the Capitol, but also very clear eyed and resolute about wanting to speak to this,” Bedingfield said. Biden and his staff discussed structuring the themes of the speech he would be giving that day around the core message of his presidential campaign — the “battle for the soul of the nation.”

“We were sort of seeing it play out in an almost unimaginable way on screen in front of us that day,” Bedingfield added. “He really wanted to call it out and to speak to it directly. And he felt that in the void of presidential leadership that we were seeing that day from his predecessor, that it was incredibly important for him to speak to the country about what was happening.”

Biden was initially briefed on the phone by Ron Klain, a longtime adviser who would become his White House chief of staff. He left his house about 2:20 p.m. and arrived at The Queen minutes later. By that time things had escalated significantly and he went right into the hold to keep watching. Then, he went dark.

He huddled with advisers as his U.S. Secret Service detail flanked the small stage. With him were Annie Tomasini, then the traveling chief of staff who is now director of oval office operations; Bruce Reed, longtime adviser and a top policy guru in the White House; personal aide Stephen Goepfert; and Ashley Williams, now deputy director of oval office operations. They were later joined in person by Klain, and Biden spoke by phone with others including Donilon, Bedingfield and Cedric Richmond, another senior adviser who at the time was still a member of Congress and later joined the White House.

It wasn’t until after 4 p.m. that he would finally address the public, with aides offering last-minute heads up to press that the president had been mulling over his words.

“There was always an argument [that the 2020 election] was much more about an economic case, or a case about health care, or a case about wealthy folks having too much say; there was a whole debate in the party and the country,” Donilon said. “And a lot of people didn’t think the soul of America argument was really at the center of the debate.”

When Biden appeared, he was dressed in a blue suit and tie. He walked slowly to the podium alone, taking off a black mask and apologizing not just for the delay, but for the reason he was so late. He would speak for roughly eight minutes in total, saying that American democracy was under unprecedented assault — “unlike anything we’ve seen in modern times.”

Watching the scenes at the Capitol, which he called the “citadel of liberty,” Biden said he was reminded of a line from former President Abraham Lincoln’s annual address to Congress in 1962, during the Civil War: “We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.”

“The work of the moment and the work of the next four years must be the restoration of democracy, of decency, of honor, of respect, the rule of law,” he added. “Just plain, simple decency.”

Biden was back home before 5 p.m., as the Capitol complex was still being cleared. He continued to watch the events with the incoming first lady. The sergeant at arms declared the building secure just after 5:30 p.m, and Biden continued to speak over the phone with a wide range of people, including advisers and elected officials.

Aides say at no point were they worried the vote would not be certified, citing lawmakers, staff and police in Congress who worked expeditiously to carry it out. Congress finally certified the election in the early morning hours of Jan. 7.

Two weeks after the riot, Biden would expand on the themes of his Jan. 6 speech, saying in his inaugural address that the mob came to take down democracy, but it failed that day and would fail each time it happened again.

Late in the process of drafting his inaugural speech, advisers said he’d added a line about the country being in a moment where citizens had an obligation to defend the truth, ensuring that false and dangerous revisionist history doesn’t overtake actual events.

“That we had an obligation as a country to stand up for the truth,” is how Donilon puts it.

White House officials contend Biden’s work to date has been informed by the events of Jan. 6—designed to demonstrate to Americans and the world that democracy can still succeed and function effectively. But Democratic lawmakers say the ultimate test will be whether Biden and Congress can pass protections for voting and the election system threatened on that day.

As the anniversary of the riots approaches, Biden has taken more concrete steps towards that goal. In December, after nearly a year of pressure from civil rights advocates and some top House leaders, he endorsed a filibuster carveout to allow for a pathway to passage of voting rights restoration and elections legislation that would shield officials and expand ballot access.

Activists still want more. Rev. Al Sharpton, president of the National Action Network, said that in the president’s speech on the Jan. 6 anniversary, Biden “ought to say that the same spirit that led people to a physical insurrection on the Capitol is now being actualized in 19 states that have changed election laws based on a big lie because there was no need to change election laws in those state.”

“He ought to connect the spirit of people that stormed the Capitol to people that will go back to states rights to break down the union,” added Sharpton.

Biden understands that shielding voting protections and the elections process is foundational to preserving that democracy, White House aides say. On Tuesday, Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will give speeches in Atlanta to press the urgent need to pass voting rights legislation and prevent partisan state officials from undermining the vote counting processes, officials said. And in the interview, Donilon vowed that the president “will get that done.”

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who had a lengthy conversation with Biden before the holiday break, said he expects the president’s speech on Jan. 6, to be the public face of what will then become a “one-on-one campaign that he and others in the White House will be doing” to reach Democratic senators ahead of a mid-January vote.

“He’s got to puncture the big lie, but also offer the antidote to the big lie,” said Kaine, referring to Trump’s lies about the 2020 election being stolen. “And I think the antidote is [to] guarantee more people convenient participation, protect the systems that implement elections, and then carry out the electoral count to make sure that people can trust them.”

“This will be as big as the vote on the Voting Rights Act of 1965,” Kaine said. “And I think Joe Biden knows that.”

Go to Source: Politico