Tag Archives : Build House

4 in critical condition following lightning strike near White House

Four people were injured in a lightning blast that struck near the White House in Washington, D.C, on Thursday night during a severe thunderstorm in the nation’s capitol.

DC Fire and EMS tweeted around 7:17 p.m. the lightning struck near Lafayette Park NW, which is about 36 feet from the White House.

Around 7:50 p.m., DC Fire and EMS tweeted firefighters and emergency personnel responded to the scene and transported the patients, two adult males and two adult females, who are in critical condition, to local hospitals.

A press conference will be held by emergency personnel at 8:30 p.m. near Lafayette Park.

Thunderstorms had moved into the D.C. area towards the evening after a sweltering hot day forced air up into the atmosphere.

Source: TEST FEED1

Twitter slams Musk countersuit: 'Factually inaccurate, legally insufficient, and commercially irrelevant'

Twitter slammed a countersuit Thursday filed by Elon Musk in a Delaware court, calling the claims from the SpaceX and Tesla CEO “factually inaccurate” and “legally insufficient” amid the legal fight over an abandoned acquisition deal.

In court documents filed in the Delaware Chancery Court, Twitter pushed back against Musk’s argument that he was duped into purchasing the social media company based on false data and was stonewalled by the company as he sought information on fake bot accounts.

Twitter’s legal team said that interpretation was “imagined in an effort to escape a merger agreement that Musk no longer found attractive once the stock market—and along with it, his massive personal wealth—declined in value.”

“Musk simultaneously and incoherently asserts that Twitter breached the merger agreement by stonewalling his information requests,” Twitter’s attorneys write. “As explained below and will be demonstrated at trial, the Counterclaims are factually inaccurate, legally insufficient, and commercially irrelevant.”

After purchasing a large share of Twitter in April, Musk announced he would purchase the company and take it private for $54.20 a share, or $44 billion, vowing to stand up for free speech on the social media platform and eliminate fake bot accounts.

Twitter ultimately agreed and entered negotiations with the world’s richest man, but Musk in July dropped his bid to purchase the company, saying he was not provided accurate data about the fake and spam accounts.

Twitter promptly sued, arguing it had given Musk access to a “firehose” of raw data about the bot accounts, which it estimated were at five percent or less of total users.

Musk’s countersuit to Twitter was filed confidentially at the end of July, accusing Twitter of changing the number of daily active users before the deal was expected to go through. He also repeated claims they did not share accurate information about bot accounts and rebuffed his request for accurate information.

The countersuit from the Tesla and SpaceX CEO will be made public on Friday, the Associated Press reported.

Twitter responded to 227 paragraph claims from Musk, which were shared in the responding documents released on Thursday.

The company’s attorneys deny all of the allegations from Musk, refuting them at every turn and insisting the claims were fabricated or “distorted” because Musk did not want to complete the acquisition deal.

According to the paragraph claims, Musk insists that Twitter’s “algorithm is fundamentally flawed in a way that compounds the false or spam account problem,” which he says is a major concern for the spread of misinformation, free speech and Twitter’s financial health.

He also argues Twitter’s board was incompetent to solve the issue, hence why he wanted to purchase the company and take it private.

In other claims, Musk says he could also improve Twitter by moving the revenue model of the company away from advertisements and more toward subscriptions and other monetization platforms and methods.

But his concern about the bot accounts ultimately led to the scrapped deal. His lawyers shared a messaging conversation in March he had with Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, in which Musk writes he is “sick” of fake bots, and Agrawal responds agrees that “we should be catching this stuff.”

Yet, Musk claims, he was disappointed that Agrawal “could not explain basic questions about the basis for Twitter’s disclosures” on a user engagement metric and that Twitter itself had a “meager” process in counting the number of active bots.

Musk says Twitter never provided a “true firehouse” of data and stonewalled his attempts to get the accurate numbers.

“Musk did not see the use in further meetings because until Twitter could provide data verifying its representations, there was nothing productive to discuss,” his attorneys write, according to the court documents.

In its rebuttal, Twitter said Musk submitted no evidence that their data was inaccurate and said he displayed no verifiable data himself to prove that, as he claimed, 10 percent of the platform’s users are bots.

Twitter also says the merger agreement did not contain a “single reference to fake or spam accounts” and so Musk did not have the “right to walk away from the deal.”

“Musk’s Counterclaims, based as they are on distortion, misrepresentation, and outright deception, change nothing,” they wrote.

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Reuters journalists go on 24-hour strike over contract negotiations

Over 300 Thomson Reuters journalists began a 24-hour strike Thursday, according to the workers’ union, citing low wage increases over the last two years.

“More than 300 @Reuters journalists across the United States are stopping work today for a 24-hour walkout. We do not take this decision lightly, but we’re prepared to avail ourselves of all our legal rights to secure the contract we deserve,” the Reuters NewsGuild union posted Thursday.

The union union alleges that the news organization had offered zero wage increases since 2020, as journalists “worked the frontlines of the pandemic and in conflict zones,” and ponied up a mere 1 percent increase after protests.

“1% general wage increase during nearly double-digit inflation? Thomson Reuters is worth $50 BLN. The pandemic has been good for Thomson Reuters. … The billionaires behind Reuters can afford to do better,” a video accompanying the NewsGuild announcement reads.

A spokesperson for Reuters told The Hill in a statement Thursday that the company is “fully committed to constructive negotiations” with the union.

“These conversations are ongoing and we will continue to work with the Guild committee to settle on mutually agreeable terms,” the spokesperson added.

According to the union, Reuters journalists from seven bureaus are participating in the “No Contract, No News” walkout — Washington, D.C., New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago and Boston — and are represented by the NewsGuild of New York. Some reporters are picketing in Times Square, outside Reuters’s U.S. headquarters.

“We have extensive contingency plans in place that will minimize this brief disruption and are confident that we will deliver the highest quality of service to all our customers,” the Reuters spokesperson said of the strike.

The strike coincides with the release of Reuter’s quarterly earnings. The news organization reported “better-than-expected second quarter profits.”  

San Francisco reporter Katie Paul shared the strike announcement, writing, “There’s simply no justification for an effective pay cut when the company is doing so well.”

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Taxes emerge as major sticking point with Sinema

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) is not yet on board with the sweeping tax reform and climate package that Senate Democrats hope to vote on this weekend and wants to make changes to the bill to soften the tax hit on manufacturers, according to sources familiar with the negotiations.  

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) is gambling that he can win Sinema over to support the bill by the time senators vote on proceeding to the budget reconciliation package sometime Saturday afternoon.  

Sinema wants to exempt U.S. manufacturing companies from the 15 percent corporate minimum tax that Schumer and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) agreed to ahead of unveiling the Inflation Reduction Act last week, according to multiple people familiar with issue.  

That’s a tough problem to solve because the 15 percent corporate minimum tax is the biggest revenue generating proposal in the package, raising an estimated $313 billion over ten years.  

Exempting manufacturing companies from the book minimum tax would cost about $45 billion over ten years, according to one of the lower Senate estimates being floated. Book is a tax accounting term that in effect would make it harder for companies to avoid declaring profit and therefore increase what they would pay in taxes.

Sinema also opposes closing the so-called carried interest loophole that allows asset managers to pay a 20 percent capital gains tax rate on income earned from advising on profitable investments.  

And she wants $5 billion in drought resiliency funding for her home state, according to a Democratic senator. Politico first reported Sinema’s demand for drought resiliency money.  

“She’s not there yet,” said one person familiar with the negotiations, who cited her objections to the corporate minimum tax and closing the carried interest loophole.   

Sinema declined to answer reporters’ questions when she emerged from her Capitol basement hideaway Thursday afternoon.  

A spokeswoman for Sinema declined to comment on any of the details of the negotiations, saying that her boss would wait for the Senate parliamentarian to completely review the legislation.  

Schumer told colleagues they will vote on a motion to proceed to the budget reconciliation package Saturday, a sign that he feels optimistic about working out a deal with Sinema.  

Other Senate Democrats also feel optimistic. But they’re also anxious the talks could fall apart at the last minute.  

The corporate minimum tax that’s emerging as the biggest obstacle is also a big revenue generator in the bill. Establishing a carveout for manufacturers would substantially reduce how much money from the bill would go toward reducing the federal deficit, which is a major priority of Manchin’s.  

Sinema is coming under heavy pressure from business leaders in Arizona to oppose the corporate minimum tax.  

“In the face of record-high inflation, supply chain backlogs and a major labor crunch, now is not the time to hammer manufacturers with new taxes,” said Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry President Danny Seiden.  

“Arizona job creators will continue to urge lawmakers to reject this manufacturers tax and instead focus on policies that encourage job growth and strengthen our state and economic competitiveness,” he said.  

The Schumer-Manchin deal would establish a 15 percent minimum tax for corporations with more than $1 billion in annual profits, though it would exempt green-energy and microchip manufacturing tax credits from getting wiped out by that minimum tax threshold.  

Republicans say the Democrats’ proposal would hit manufacturing companies especially hard by superseding former President Trump’s 2017 Tax Credits and Jobs Act, which allows a company to fully expense capital expenditures for a given year.   

Full expensing under the Tax Credits and Jobs Act is due to phase out over the next four years.  

Sinema told the Arizona Chamber of Commerce in April that she would be “unwilling to support any tax policies that would put a break on … economic growth, or stall business and personal growth for America’s industries.”  

She made clear to senior White House officials and Senate Democratic colleagues early during the negotiations over the budget reconciliation bill that she would not support increasing the 21 percent corporate tax rate, a key achievement of the 2017 tax reform law.  

“The entire country knows that I am opposed to raising the corporate income tax. That was true yesterday and it is true today,” Sinema told the Arizona Chamber of Commerce earlier this year.  

Republican critics of the Schumer-Manchin deal say that implementing a minimum tax rate that prevented full and immediate expensing of capital expenditures will effectively increase taxes on many corporations. 

Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), who worked closely with Sinema in drafting last year’s $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law, warned in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal that it would “essentially” place a “tax on manufacturing.”  

He pointed out that the bipartisan Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that nearly 50 percent of the new tax would hit manufacturers.  

“Imposing this new tax on U.S. companies, and restricting certain U.S. manufacturers from writing off investment costs immediately, would make America less competitive and drive investments and jobs overseas,” he warned.  

Sinema’s request for $5 billion in drought resiliency funding could also imperil passage of the bill depending on how it’s structured, especially if it means Arizona will get more water from the Colorado River.  

Guaranteeing access to more water to lower-basin states such as Arizona, Nevada and California would come at the expense of upper-basin states such as Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico.  

“We are facing historic drought in Colorado. The state has had the worst wildfires in our state’s history. There is very little water in the Colorado River. And I think it would be great if we could do something on drought but it has to be something that meaningfully improves the situation in Colorado and in the upper basin of the Colorado River,” said Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), who is up for reelection in November. 

He said any drought resiliency language must be provide an “enduring solution to the problem, otherwise it’s not worth doing,” 

Senate Democratic senators are hopeful that Schumer can work the same magic he did with Manchin and persuade Sinema to support the bill. But they aren’t making any predictions about how she’ll vote Saturday afternoon when the Senate considers whether to begin debate.   

“You’ll have to ask her. I have a very optimistic feeling about it but that’s her call,” said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.).  

Source: TEST FEED1

FEC draft says Google plan to keep campaign emails out of spam is lawful

The Federal Elections Commission (FEC) said in a draft opinion published Wednesday that Google’s proposed plan to help keep campaign emails out of spam folders does not violate federal campaign finance law.

In the draft opinion, FEC lawyers said that Google’s plan to offer a pilot program to test new Gmail design features, which include allowing campaign emails to bypass automated spam detection.

“The Commission concludes that the proposed pilot program would be permissible under the Act and Commission regulations and would not result in the making of a prohibited inkind contribution,” the letter read.

The FEC will vote on the draft on Aug. 11, according to commissioner Sean Cooksey. It must vote to adopt the opinion in order for Google to move forward with the plan.

The FEC’s draft comes after several GOP lawmakers alleged that the tech giant is politically biased against Republicans following a study published by North Carolina State University researchers. The study found that Gmail sent 77 percent of right-wing candidate emails to spam in 2020, while 10 percent of left-wing candidate emails were marked the same.

In response, several Republican leaders called for action. In June, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel claimed that delivery of the committee’s emails to Gmail inboxes was nearly 0 percent near the end of every month. In late July, she quote-tweeted the same post saying that the problem was still persisting.

“They’ve done this at the end of every month for 8 months in a row now,” she said.

Following the pilot program’s proposal, the National Republican Senatorial Committee is reportedly seeking signatures from senators on a letter addressed to Google, stating that the program is “unacceptable,” according to the Washington Post.

The Democratic National Committee has also spoken out against the pilot program, writing in a letter to the FEC Wednesday that the program will “undermine the Commission’s stated goal to protect political donors from deceptive solicitations by increasing the likelihood that such solicitations will reach donors’ inboxes.”

“With Google’s spam filter removed, participating committees will be incentivized to employ the abusive fundraising tactics that Google’s spam filters would have otherwise caught, with the knowledge that this behavior will not be curtailed, but rather rewarded,” the letter, from DNC executive director Sam Cornale, read. “Donors will be harmed, and confidence in our democracy and its leaders will be undermined.”

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Energy & Environment — Schumer sets up reconciliation vote

A reconciliation vote is coming, stipulations in the Democrats’ EV tax credits may make it hard for vehicles to qualify and Manchin joins Republicans in voting against Biden permitting regulations. 

This is Overnight Energy & Environment, your source for the latest news focused on energy, the environment and beyond. For The Hill, we’re Rachel Frazin and Zack Budryk. Someone forward you this newsletter? Subscribe here. 

Climate, tax bill could pass this weekend 

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced that the Senate will begin consideration of a $740 billion budget reconciliation package that would reform the tax code and tackle climate change on Saturday afternoon, setting up a weekend of around-the-clock votes.   

“For the information of Senators, the Senate will next convene on Saturday at noon. The next vote will be at 12:30 p.m. on Saturday, on a motion to discharge a nomination. We expect to vote on the motion to proceed to the reconciliation legislation on Saturday afternoon,” Schumer announced on the floor. 

We’re in for a long weekend: If a majority of senators vote to proceed to the legislation, they will then debate for up to 20 hours before holding an open-ended series of votes, known as a vote-a-rama, before a final up-or-down vote, which is now expected Sunday or perhaps early Monday morning.  

The announcement signals that Schumer expects Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) to vote with all 49 other members of the Senate Democratic Caucus to proceed to the legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, which would spend $369 billion on an energy and climate program and spend more than $300 billion to reduce the deficit.   

The Congressional Budget Office estimates the legislation will reduce the deficit by roughly $100 billion over the next decade.   

Sinema is still negotiating to make changes to the legislation, according to people familiar with the discussion, but it appears Schumer is optimistic he can strike a deal with her before the package comes to final vote on the floor.   

Read more here from The Hill’s Alexander Bolton.  

Fine print could kneecap EV tax credits 

Democrats’ push to boost electric vehicles could be hobbled by some of the protectionist supply chain provisions they included as requirements to get electric vehicle tax credits.  

The credits were included as part of the climate deal reached between Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), even after Manchin had expressed some skepticism about them.  

In order for consumers to receive the full $7,500 for the purchase of a new electric vehicle, a portion of the minerals in that vehicle’s batteries will need to be extracted or refined from countries with free trade agreements with the United States. 

Part of the credit is also tied to a percentage of battery components being manufactured in North America  

Experts and industry players have indicated that these provisions — particularly the critical minerals piece — represents a high bar and may hamper electric vehicle adoption in the short term.   

John Bozzella, president and CEO of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, said companies are working to bring more of their supply chain to the U.S. but that “it’s also a change that doesn’t happen overnight.”  

“A likely result of this bill (as currently constructed) is that a significant number of consumers will not be able to take advantage of this credit in the early years when it is needed the most,” Bozzella said in a statement.  

Electric vehicles have been a central component of Democratic plans to combat climate change, and EV tax credits were included in various iterations of President Biden’s Build Back Better package.  

The specifics: The Manchin-Schumer bill gives tax credits worth up to $7,500 to consumers to incentivize the purchase of new EVs, but half of those credits — amounting to $3,750 — is dependent on where the minerals in its batteries come from.  

The legislation mandates that 40 percent of the value of the minerals used in the electric vehicles’ batteries are extracted or processed in countries where the U.S. has a free trade agreement, and that ratchets up over time.  

For 2024, it increases to 50 percent, and 80 percent of the minerals used must come from these countries by 2027.

Does anybody actually benefit right away? An auto industry source told The Hill they believe there are currently no electric vehicles on the market that meet this requirement.  

The U.S. has free trade agreements with some major mineral producers like Australia and Chile, but doesn’t have any such agreement with other major producers like China, Russia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  

“The numbers that they quote in there are very high and very soon,” said Morgan Bazilian, a public policy professor at the Colorado School of Mines. 

“Will those targets become a hindrance or an obstacle to the adoption of electric vehicles with those targets? Yes, if they are adhered to precisely and exactly,” he said. 

Read more about the tax credits here. 

COMMUNITIES AT RISK 

Communities near 23 sterilization facilities across the U.S. have increased risks of cancer due to the facilities’ emissions of a toxic chemical, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said this week.  

The EPA said on Wednesday that emissions from the facilities are creating a risk of at least one additional cancer case per 10,000 people exposed.  

The facilities on the EPA’s list are located in 13 different states and Puerto Rico. Some are in mid-sized cities like Richmond, Va., and Memphis, Tenn. 

The facilities use a chemical called ethylene oxide, which causes cancer, according to the EPA. Exposure to the substance has been linked to white blood cell cancers including types of lymphoma and leukemia as well as increased breast cancer risks in women.  

The substance is used as a sterilizing agent and commonly used on medical equipment in particular. The EPA says that for some devices, the chemical is the only safe and effective sterilizing method available, but that the federal government is working to reduce its emissions and find alternatives. 

Read more about the announcement here.  

GOP holds vote to nix Biden environmental rule 

In a Republican-led push, the Senate on Thursday voted in favor of reversing a Biden administration rule that sought to strengthen environmental reviews.

The legislation passed 50-47, with Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) joining Republicans in voting for it.  

Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska.) introduced the resolution in mid-July with the co-sponsorship of every Senate Republican. The Alaska senator explicitly framed the resolution as an effort to put Senate Democrats on record.

“There won’t be any hiding from this vote. It will be very interesting to see who my Democratic colleagues stand with. I know who I stand for: the men and women who build our country,” he said in a statement last month.

Wait…how did Republicans get a vote? Most Republican priorities are not brought to the Senate floor, as Democrats hold the majority. In fact, most partisan legislation is prevented by the filibuster, which blocks most measures that cannot get 60 votes.

However, Thursday’s vote used a special process called the Congressional Review Act (CRA), which is specifically used to undo regulations put forward by the federal government.  

The CRA operates under different rules than a typical vote. A petition signed by just 30 senators can discharge a CRA resolution for Senate consideration. CRA resolutions are also not subject to a filibuster.  

Yet, the resolution still faces an uphill battle, both in the House and at the White House. CRA resolutions also require the president’s signature, and President Biden is unlikely to sign a resolution undoing the actions of his own administration. 

Often these resolutions are used to undo midnight regulations from prior administrations. Democrats used such measures in 2021 to undo three Trump-era rules.   

The reconciliation rub: The resolution comes as Manchin separately pushes for permitting reform changes that advocates fear could weaken the environmental review process in favor of speeding up infrastructure projects.  

Manchin made a deal with Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) to pass such measures in exchange for his support on a major climate and tax bill.  

Read more about the vote here.  

WHAT WE’RE READING

• DDT ocean dumping in L.A. even worse than expected (The Los Angeles Times) 
• EPA announces flights to look for methane in Permian Basin (The Associated Press) 
• Atlantic hurricane season will remain above-normal, NOAA says in updated predictions (CNN) 
• Jury tells judge it’s deadlocked in marathon Flint water crisis civil trial (MLive) 
• Source of River Thames dries out ‘for first time’ during drought (The Guardian)

ICYMI

• Judge rejects federal plans for fossil fuel mining in Powder River Basin 
• Coral cover on parts of Great Barrier Reef highest in decades 

That’s it for today, thanks for reading. Check out The Hill’s Energy & Environment page for the latest news and coverage. We’ll see you tomorrow.  

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Cheney: DOJ would be 'hard-pressed not to prosecute' Trump amid 'mounting evidence'

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) dismissed concerns Thursday that prosecuting former President Trump would martyrize him among his followers. She said there are democratic risks if evidence against Trump is ignored. 

“The question for us is, are we a nation of laws? Are we a country where no one is above the law? And what do the facts and the evidence show?” Cheney told CNN’s Kasie Hunt in an interview aired Thursday.

Cheney is one of two Republicans on the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the Capitol, and among many panel members who have urged the Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate Trump for his actions leading up to Jan. 6 and his alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. 

“I’ve been very clear, I think he’s guilty of the most serious dereliction of duty of any president in our nation’s history,” the Wyoming congresswoman said Thursday.

Amid mounting evidence against the former president, the DOJ would be hard-pressed not to prosecute, Cheney added. 

“How do we then call ourselves a nation of laws? I think that’s a very serious, serious balancing.”

The DOJ’s criminal probe in to the circumstances surrounding Jan. 6 has reportedly begun to hone in on the former president, sparking questions about potential criminal prosecution.

Last week, Cheney retweeted an article suggesting the case for prosecuting Trump was strengthening. She’s long argued that the former president is a threat to democracy and to the Republican party.

Cheney is up for reelection in this year’s midterms and is staring down her state’s GOP primary in August. Mid-July polling showed the congresswoman falling behind her Trump-backed challenger.

She’s pitched her primary as a split between her party and Trump extremism. 

“We have to choose because Republicans cannot both be loyal to Donald Trump and loyal to the Constitution,” she said in June.

The Jan. 6 committee is expected to return for more hearings in the fall, after Wyoming’s GOP primary.

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Bipartisan group of senators introduce bill to expand Border Patrol, increase pay

A bipartisan group of four senators introduced a bill on Thursday that would create a 2,500-agent Border Patrol reserve force and increase agents’ pay by 14 percent.

The bill, which was introduced by Sens. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), James Lankford (R-Okla.), Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), would also standardize professional development and training requirements for all Border Patrol agents.

“Every time I’ve visited with Border Patrol, they have made it clear that they need increased funding to recruit and retain agents,” Portman said in a statement. “At a time when our southern border crisis is heading towards a catastrophe, we must provide Border Patrol with the tools and resources they need to do their jobs.”

The senators said in a press release the reserve force would increase the total number of Border Patrol agents to 20,500.

The bipartisan group also touted the proposed 14-percent pay raise as a way for Border Patrol salaries to be more competitive with other federal law enforcement agencies. Border Patrol agents’ salaries are based on factors like locality and amount of overtime, but agents on average are compensated between $70,234 and $111,407, depending on their grade level, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

The agency has reported more than 200,000 monthly encounters at the border with migrants in several months so far this year, surpassing levels reached in past years.

Republicans have laid into Biden over the situation at the border amid the uptick in encounters.

“Biden continues to encourage illegal border crossers to enter the U.S., and our Border Patrol stand between U.S. citizens and people from 150 countries coming into our nation, potentially connected to the Mexican cartels or terrorist organizations worldwide,” Lankford said in a statement.

The bill was also endorsed by the president of the National Border Patrol Council, a labor union that represents Border Patrol agents.

The proposal additionally is sponsored by two border-state Democrats, including Kelly, who faces a tough reelection battle in November.

“Our bipartisan bill will give the hardworking men and women of the Border Patrol the support, resources and pay raises they deserve,” he said. “We’ll keep working with Republicans and Democrats to ensure that our law enforcement has the tools needed to recruit and retain agents so we can ensure a secure, fair and orderly process at the border.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Partisan meddling in primaries makes everything in Washington worse

Last Tuesday’s election revealed the extent to which both of our political parties have yielded to the unethical practice of helping more extreme elements of the other party win primary campaigns. Both Democrats and Republicans have become increasingly willing to boost the prospects of more extreme, less collaborative, more antagonistic candidates for Congress because they believe doing so will help them elect their own party’s candidates. But not only does this practice risk sending extremists to Washington—it undermines public faith in our system of government and makes the prospect for substantive bipartisanship much more difficult for those who remain in office. For the sake of our democracy, it must end.

Both parties have engaged in this sort of duplicity before, putting party before country, before honesty, and before public trust. In 2016, for example, Republican nominee Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters backed Green Party candidates in a ruse to siphon off votes from Hillary Clinton in key states, including Pennsylvania. This year, Democratic campaign groups are embracing this similar deceit as standard practice, boosting extremists who deny that Joe Biden is America’s legitimately elected president even after courts throughout the country, with judges with a wide variety of political and ideological histories have ruled that Biden is our president.

That’s what was so troubling about this week’s primaries. In western Michigan, most notably, Democrats worked successfully to oust moderate Republican Rep. Peter Meijer, a young conservative who bravely supported former President Trump’s impeachment. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee backed his Trump-supporting opponent who says the 2020 election was stolen. During the Maryland Republican gubernatorial primary, the Democratic Governors Association came to the aid of a Trump-backed primary candidate running against the candidate favored by one of the most bipartisan Republicans in our country, my No Labels co-chair Gov. Larry Hogan.

These cynical schemes are profoundly dishonest, and they undercut the trust voters must have in the integrity of elections in our democracy. For an American political party to support a candidate in the other party who they think is weaker, even though they disagree with him or her on policy, is the kind of behavior we have come to expect from Russian cyberattackers—not from Democrats or Republicans.

The other downside to this partisan chicanery is that it erodes what is left of the incentives for bipartisanship in Washington by destroying trust. Most of the American people are desperate for the two parties to work together to solve problems. Democrats regularly express incredulity when Republicans won’t work with them on what appear like commonsense solutions to big problems, and vice versa. But these sorts of backhanded tactics create profound disincentives for those considering bipartisan collaboration because they warn that the very people reaching plaintively across the aisle will subsequently bludgeon the hand that meets it, potentially ending their partner’s career.

Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton who, like Meijer, is a combat veteran, and who joined Meijer on a controversial visit to Afghanistan last year, recently summarized the current crisis with jarring clarity: “I think Peter is exactly the kind of Republican we want to have around, but at the end of the day we have to win the majority, and that is the bigger concern.”

Meijer’s defeat will now spur others to reconsider whether to work across the aisle. You can imagine the circumstances. Support our climate change bill and we will use that support to end your political career. Join us in trying to pare back government spending and we will use those efforts to thwart your reelection. Entreaties to bipartisanship will be seen as little more than bait-and-switch. At a time when there is such a deep desire to see the parties work collaboratively, this pattern of deceit will make real bipartisanship that much more elusive.

For years, those of us who believe that the best answers to big challenges emerge when the two parties work together have rued the incentives that prize political tribalism — the endless quest for campaign contributions, the bottomless desire for partisan media attention, and the divisive influence of the political parties. But this is a new level of perniciousness and immorality.

If the parties make a standard practice of trying to make the other more extreme, America’s governing institutions will have a hard time rebounding. We can, and should, have spirited elections, but campaigns should be about ideas. If the penalty that legislators face for working in good faith across the aisle is to be undermined by those seeking their cooperation, our country will suffer greatly. Democrats and Republicans should call out this practice for what it is — politics at its worst. And they should stop it.

Joe Lieberman represented Connecticut in the U.S. Senate, 1989-2013, and is founding Co-Chair of No Labels.

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Senate votes in favor of axing Biden environmental review rule, but push faces uphill battle

The Senate on Thursday voted in favor of reversing a Biden administration rule that sought to strengthen environmental reviews in a Republican-led push. 

The legislation passed 50-47, with Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) joining Republicans in voting for it. 

Most Republican priorities are not brought to the Senate floor, as Democrats hold the majority. In fact, most partisan legislation is prevented by the filibuster, which blocks most measures that cannot get 60 votes. 

However, Thursday’s vote used a special process called the Congressional Review Act (CRA), which is specifically used to undo regulations put forward by the federal government. 

The CRA operates under different rules than a typical vote. A petition signed by just 30 senators can discharge a CRA resolution for Senate consideration. CRA resolutions are also not subject to a filibuster. 

Yet, the resolution still faces an uphill battle, both in the House and at the White House. CRA resolutions also require the president’s signature, and President Biden is unlikely to sign a resolution undoing the actions of his own administration.

Often these resolutions are used to undo midnight regulations from prior administrations. Democrats used such measures in 2021 to undo three Trump-era rules. 

Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska.) introduced the resolution in mid-July with the co-sponsorship of every Senate Republican. The Alaska senator explicitly framed the resolution as an effort to put Senate Democrats on record.

“There won’t be any hiding from this vote. It will be very interesting to see who my Democratic colleagues stand with. I know who I stand for: the men and women who build our country,” he said in a statement last month.

The resolution comes as Manchin separately pushes for permitting reform changes that advocates fear could weaken the environmental review process in favor of speeding up infrastructure projects. 

Manchin made a deal with Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) to pass such measures in exchange for his support on a major climate and tax bill. 

The resolution targets regulations passed by the Biden administration on the implementation of a law called the National Environmental Policy Act that governs environmental reviews. 

The Biden changes in question restored some of the environmental protections that were eliminated during the Trump administration. This includes explicit requirements to consider a project’s indirect actions on a community and how a source of pollution may combine with other nearby sources to impact a community overall.

Despite the revolution’s slim chances of becoming law, environmental advocates were quick to condemn it. 

“Today is a sad day for environmental justice communities and public voice,” Oxfam America Senior Climate Policy Advisor Russell Armstrong said in a statement. “Senator Manchin and his Republican allies prevailed in championing the proposal to use the broad sweeping powers of the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to undermine federal agencies’ duties to review projects. This may have cumulative and devastating impacts for our climate.”

Source: TEST FEED1