Author: PolitCens

A group of Republican U.S. senators is due to speak to reporters Wednesday in Washington about U.S. concerns of a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

The group includes Republicans from the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees. 

Three of those members — Senators Kevin Cramer, Roger Wicker and Rob Portman — were part of a bipartisan congressional delegation that met with Ukrainian officials this week to reinforce U.S. support for Ukraine and its defensive needs. 

Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal, who was also on the trip, told reporters Monday after the lawmakers met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that the United States was ready to both impose economic sanctions on Russia and to provide additional arms to Ukraine. 

Senate Democrats and Republicans have each introduced legislation to carry out such support for Ukraine. 

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters. 
…

An effort to bar members of Congress from buying and selling stock in public companies is gaining momentum in Washington after a series of revelations that dozens of lawmakers violated financial disclosure requirements, often in ways that suggested they were profiting from advance knowledge of issues related to the coronavirus pandemic.

Last week, Georgia Senator John Ossoff and Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, both Democrats, introduced the Ban Congressional Stock Trading Act, a proposal that would require members of Congress and their immediate families to place any stock they own into a blind trust, making it impossible for them to trade on knowledge gained through their work on Capitol Hill. 

The Senate proposal largely mirrors a House bill that has been working its way through the legislative process for a year. Sponsored by Virginia Democrat Abigail Spanberger and Texas Republican Chip Roy — two members who agree on little else in politics — it is called the Transparent Representation Upholding Service and Trust (TRUST) in Congress Act. 

Both Democrats and Republicans appear to agree on the need for reform. In addition to the bipartisan team of Spanberger and Roy in the House, conservative Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri has introduced legislation similar in intent to the Ossoff-Kelly bill. 

Questionable trades 

Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, news reports have surfaced about members of Congress buying or selling shares of public companies before information, of which they had advance knowledge, was released to the public. 

One of the most striking examples is that of Senator Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican, who served as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee in early 2020, just as the seriousness of the pandemic was becoming clear. Burr, who had access to sensitive intelligence briefings, sold stocks worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in mid-February 2020, before the seriousness of the pandemic was widely understood in the United States. 

Burr has claimed that he was acting on publicly available information, but his trades remain under investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which seeks to root out manipulation of financial markets. He stepped down as Intelligence Committee chairman in May 2020. 

Burr was far from the only lawmaker whose trades attracted attention in the early days of the pandemic. A number of senators from both parties, including California Democrat Dianne Feinstein and Oklahoma Republican James Inhofe, also were criticized for stock sales as the coronavirus was first taking hold in the United States, although the Justice Department closed brief investigations into both cases and chose to take no legal action. 

Such sales by lawmakers were well timed. From mid-February through mid-March of 2020, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, a key indicator of U.S. market performance, plummeted by roughly one-third. Millions of Americans’ net worth eroded severely, although the stock market has since recovered, and the Dow currently sits well above its pre-pandemic high. 

Failure to disclose 

Dozens of other lawmakers came under scrutiny early this year after a report by the publication Insider revealed that in 2021, 54 members of the House and Senate had failed to live up to reporting requirements set out in the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act, which became law in 2012 after a similar series of revelations about members of Congress trading on privileged information. 

The Insider account found that members of both parties had violated the law, some to a greater degree than others, by failing to report stock transactions or by reporting them far later than they were supposed to. 

In a statement this week, Spanberger said that she had been moved to act, in part, because Americans seemed to treat the news that members of Congress might be enriching themselves by trading on nonpublic information with resignation rather than outrage. 

“In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw the public react to accusations of insider trading by lawmakers — not with shock, but with a shrug,” Spanberger said. “The perception of insider trading itself, let alone the practice of it, by members of Congress is damaging to our democracy.”

Appearance of impropriety 

Good governance organizations argue that even the appearance of impropriety in lawmakers’ personal investments is corrosive to the already low level of trust that many Americans say they have in Congress.

“Most members of Congress go into government service for the right reasons and don’t look to line their pockets,” said Donald Sherman, vice president and chief legal counsel for Citizens For Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Current practices on Capitol Hill, however, raise obvious concerns, he told VOA. “It is totally reasonable for any constituent to question whether their member is making choices based on their stock portfolio as opposed to their constituents’ interests when they see that members of the Energy and Commerce Committee, for example, are invested in energy companies. You don’t have to be a cynic to raise questions about that.” 

Pandemic clarified differences 

Some groups calling for reform argue that the universal impact of the pandemic may have helped underscore the impropriety of members of Congress trading on insider knowledge for everyday Americans who might not normally pay much attention to such things.

“The pandemic has clarified the way that this problem can really manifest itself in an especially glaring and corrupt-looking kind of way,” said Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, government affairs manager for the Project on Government Oversight.

“This is a huge event that is causing pain and disruption in everyone’s lives,” he told VOA. “And it looked like there were some members of Congress who had advance knowledge of how bad it was going to be, and tried to use that knowledge to make sure that they didn’t feel as much pain as the rest of us.” 

Progress unclear 

Whether the bills before Congress will become law is far from clear at this point. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, appeared to be dismissive of the effort in remarks last month. She said that rules were already in place to restrict conflicts of interest among lawmakers, and that she believes lawmakers ought to be allowed to “participate” in the United States’ free-market economy. 

Last week, a spokesperson for Pelosi told The Washington Post that the speaker had requested that the Committee on House Administration, which oversees House members’ compliance with the stock trading rules, consider whether stricter enforcement and higher penalties are needed. 

Also last week, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, said that if Republicans take over the House following the 2022 elections, he will consider banning members from owning stocks. As minority leader, McCarthy is seen as the most likely person to become House Speaker in the event of a Republican takeover. 
…

The House committee investigating the Capitol insurrection issued subpoenas Tuesday to Rudy Giuliani and other members of Donald Trump’s post-election legal team who filed multiple lawsuits claiming election fraud that were roundly rejected by the courts but gave rise to the lie that Trump did not really lose the 2020 presidential contest. 

The committee is continuing to widen its scope into Trump’s orbit, this time demanding information and testimony from Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, Sidney Powell and Boris Epshteyn. All four publicly defended the president and his baseless voter fraud claims in the months after the election.  

“The four individuals we’ve subpoenaed today advanced unsupported theories about election fraud, pushed efforts to overturn the election results, or were in direct contact with the former President about attempts to stop the counting of electoral votes,” Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, Democratic chairman of the panel, said in a statement.  

The committee said it is seeking records and deposition testimony from Giuliani, the 76-year-old former New York City mayor once celebrated for his leadership after 9/11, in connection to his promotion of election fraud claims on behalf of Trump. The panel is also seeking information about Giuliani’s reported efforts to persuade state legislators to take steps to overturn the election results. 

A lawyer for Giuliani did not immediately return a phone message seeking comment. 

Giuliani took on a leading role in disputing the election results on Trump’s behalf after the 2020 presidential election, even visiting states like Michigan and Pennsylvania, where he claimed ballots “looked suspicious” and Biden’s electoral win was a fraud.  

To this day, not a single court has found merit in the core legal claims made by Trump, Giuliani and the other three subpoenaed Tuesday.  

The nine-member panel is also demanding information from Trump legal adviser Ellis, who the lawmakers say reportedly prepared and circulated two memos that analyzed the constitutional authority for then-Vice President Mike Pence to reject or delay counting the electoral votes from states that had submitted alternate slates of electors.  

Besides Giuliani, Sidney Powell was the most public face of Trump’s attempts to contest the election, routinely making appearances on behalf of the president.  

In numerous interviews and appearances post-election, Powell continued to make misleading statements about the voting process, unfurled unsupported and complex conspiracy theories involving communist regimes and vowed to “blow up” Georgia with a “biblical” court filing. 

Ellis and Powell appeared with Giuliani at press conferences, pushing false claims of election fraud. Powell was eventually removed from the team after she said in an interview she was going to release “the kraken” of lawsuits that would prove the election had been stolen. 

Powell did not immediately return an email seeking comment. 

The last person subpoenaed Tuesday by the committee is Boris Epshteyn, a former Trump campaign strategic adviser, who reportedly attended meetings at the Willard Hotel in the days leading up to the insurrection. The committee said Epshteyn had a call with Trump on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, to discuss options to delay the certification of election results in the event of Pence’s unwillingness to deny or delay the process. 
…

Voting legislation that Democrats and civil rights leaders say is vital for protecting democracy appeared headed for defeat as the Senate opened debate Tuesday, a devastating setback enabled by President Joe Biden’s own party as two holdout senators refuse to support rule changes to overcome a Republican filibuster. 

The Democratic senators, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, faced strong criticism from Black leaders and civil rights organizations for failing to take on what critics call the ” Jim Crow filibuster.”

The debate carries echoes of an earlier era when the Senate filibuster was deployed in lengthy speeches by opponents of civil rights legislation. It comes as Democrats and other voting advocates nationwide warn that Republican-led states are passing laws making it more difficult for Black Americans and others to vote by consolidating polling locations, requiring certain types of identification and ordering other changes. 

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer acknowledged the current bill’s likely defeat this week. But he said the fight is not over as he heeds advocates’ call to force all senators to go on record with their positions. 

“The eyes of the nation will be watching what happens this week,” Schumer said as he opened the session Tuesday.

This is the fifth time the Senate will try to pass voting legislation this Congress. 

The Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act combines earlier bills into one package that would make Election Day a national holiday, ensure access to early voting and mail-in ballots — which have become especially popular during the COVID-19 pandemic — and enable the Justice Department to intervene in states with a history of voter interference, among other changes. 

Both Manchin and Sinema say they support the package, which has passed the House, but they are unwilling to change the Senate rules to muscle it through that chamber over Republican objections. With a 50-50 split, Democrats have a narrow Senate majority — Vice President Kamala Harris can break a tie — but they lack the 60 votes needed to overcome the GOP filibuster. 

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who led his party in doing away with the filibuster’s 60-vote threshold for Supreme Court nominees during Donald Trump’s presidency, warned off changing the rules again. He said Tuesday it would “break the Senate.” 

Democratic senators countered in speeches from the Senate floor that with Republicans objecting to the voting legislation, they have no choice. 

Just as Manchin and Sinema blocked Biden’s broad “Build Back Better” domestic spending package, the two senators are now dashing hopes for the second major part of Biden’s presidential agenda. They are infuriating many of their colleagues and faced a barrage of criticism during Martin Luther King Jr. Day events. 

Martin Luther King III, the son of the late civil rights leader, compared Sinema and Manchin to the white moderates his father wrote about during the civil rights battles of the 1950s and 1960s — who declared support for the goals of Black voting rights but not the direct actions or demonstrations that ultimately led to passage of landmark legislation. 

“History will not remember them kindly,” the younger King said, referring to Sinema and Manchin by name. 

Once reluctant himself to change Senate rules, Biden used the King holiday to press senators to do just that. But the push from the White House, including Biden’s blistering speech last week in Atlanta comparing opponents to segregationists, is seen as too late, coming as the president ends his first year in office with his popularity sagging.

“The president’s view is that the American people deserve to see where their leaders stand on protecting their fundamental rights,” said White House press secretary Jen Psaki. 

The Senate launched what could become a days-long debate, but the outcome is expected to be no different from past failed votes on the legislation. Biden has been unable to persuade Sinema and Manchin to join other Democrats to change the rules to lower the 60-vote threshold. In fact, Sinema upstaged the president last week, reiterating her opposition to the rules changes just before Biden arrived on Capitol Hill to court senators’ votes. 

Senators have been working nonstop for weeks on rule changes that could win support from Sinema and Manchin. The two, both moderates, have expressed openness to discussing the ideas but have not given their backing. 

Both Manchin and Sinema have argued that preserving the filibuster rules, requiring the 60-vote majority to pass most legislation, is important for fostering bipartisanship. They also warn of what would happen if Republicans win back majority control, as is distinctly possible this election year. 

McConnell has argued the legislation is a federal overreach into state-run elections, and he harshly criticized Biden’s speech last week as “unpresidential.” 

NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson wrote in an open letter to the Senate, “We cannot think of a time more defining to the American story than the chapter you are presently writing.” 

“What country will your children and grandchildren be left with, given the relentless assaults on American freedom and democracy?” 

Leading sports figures from Manchin’s home state of West Virginia also have weighed in. In a letter last week, University of Alabama football coach Nick Saban, NBA Hall of Famer Jerry West and others urged him to support the legislation. 

Manchin spokeswoman Sam Runyon said in a statement late Monday that the senator believes the right to vote “must be protected by law. He continues to work on legislation to protect this right.” 

Sinema’s office did not respond to a request for comment. 

Before Republicans lowered the vote threshold for Trump’s Supreme Court nominees, Democrats had similarly dropped it to a simple majority for confirmation of administrative positions and lower court nominees. 

The voting bill was the Democrats’ top priority this Congress, and the House swiftly approved H.R. 1, only to see it languish in the Senate. 

 
…

U.S. President Joe Biden began his term under the long shadow of the January 6 Capitol riot, a grinding pandemic and an increasingly divided America.

As he now rounds the one-year mark, he faces many of those same challenges – all as he tries to push through a sweeping and expensive legislative agenda.

The difficulty of governing through the triple threat of a seemingly never-ending pandemic, increasing consumer prices and political polarization from Congress to city halls across America is neatly reflected in Biden’s approval ratings, which hover around 45%. Since he took office on January 20, his approval ratings have weakened, with 50% of Americans now disapproving of his performance, according to the most recent Ipsos poll.

That, said White House press secretary Jen Psaki, comes with the territory.

“You have every challenge at your feet — laid at your feet, whether it’s global or domestically,” she said this month, as Biden’s proposed voting rights legislation stalled in Congress.

“And we could certainly propose legislation to see if people support bunny rabbits and ice cream, but that wouldn’t be very rewarding to the American people. So, the president’s view is we’re going to keep pushing for hard things, and we’re going to keep pushing the boulders up the hill to get it done,” she said.

It’s the economy – and the pandemic

There are two main drivers of this discontent, said Mallory Newall, vice president of public polling at Ipsos: the economy and the pandemic.

Biden campaigned on a platform of addressing the pandemic and healing the wounded economy. As inflation recently hit a 39-year high, the economy has taken the lead, Newall said.

“The economy – and certainly inflation as part of that, has started to surge as a main issue,” she said. ”We see that in our Ipsos core political data. We see that as the top issue for the American public right now. And the president’s approval rating on the economy is underwater, meaning more disapprove of the job he’s doing than approve.”

And then there’s the pandemic, which has long overstayed its welcome with humanity.

“The longer the pandemic goes on, the more uncertainty and the more frustration the American public has in general, but they are starting to look at the top,” she said. “Especially considering that President Biden campaigned so strongly on COVID-19 and tackling the coronavirus once he was in office.”

Amid those challenges, Biden has tried – so far, without success – to leverage his party’s slim Congressional majority to back trillions of dollars’ worth of legislation that he says is necessary for the U.S. to keep pace with the rest of the world. That includes a stalled spending plan worth about $2 billion that aims to address everything from child and elder care to environmental justice, affordable housing and paid family leave.

Do this, not that

Biden’s critics say he should focus more on healing the ailing economy.

“The Biden administration is acting as though it can ignore fundamental economic problems forever,” Andrew Puzder, a visiting fellow in business and economic freedom at the conservative Heritage Foundation, wrote on the organization’s website. “News flash — it can’t. The longer we wait to seriously address inflation, labor shortages, and supply chain problems, the worse the threat of an inevitable and deep recession becomes.” 

Critics also dislike Biden’s handling of the pandemic, with conservative columnist Jarrett Stepman describing Biden’s vaccination mandates as “draconian COVID-19 policies of increasingly dubious effectiveness,” on the website the Daily Signal.

Think of the puppies

Kevin Kosar, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said the White House’s own messaging is also to blame. He noted that the Biden administration has missed opportunities to tout successful legislation, such as a new bill – passed within five months, with little fanfare – that gives wounded veterans access to emotional support puppies.

“A lot of the conversation coming out of the White House and done in coordination with Democratic leadership in both chambers has been focused on the things that they haven’t been able to get done,” Kosar said.

“And a lot of it has been kind of a circular firing squad, where they’re pointing at, you know, their own senators, and complaining that these people will not get on board, and why are they holding things up? And then trashing Republicans in the process. And for the most part, Americans don’t well respond to that. They don’t like hearing toxic partisan talking points, or like hearing excuses,” he said.

New year reset?

As Biden begins his second year in office, and the pandemic begins its third year, “the mood in the country is tough,” Newall said.

“There’s this collective pause, and with that pause, comes frustration. And with it comes questions and uncertainty. And particularly when this was the number one issue that the president campaigned on, you know, for him to be losing ground on COVID, it doesn’t necessarily bode well for other issues either, because the collective mood is one of questioning and frustration,” she said.

She added: “And I think that does spill over into issues related to the economy, getting back to work, curbing inflation, dealing with other domestic policies. As we enter this collective pause, that’s going to spill over and have a ripple effect.”

Both Biden’s critics and supporters have suggested a reset, but Psaki said the White House is committed to its current path.

“We are still continuing to work with members to determine the path forward on Build Back Better; that we have the vast majority of Democrats in the Senate supporting voting rights,” she said. “That’s a path forward for us. And our effort is to do hard things, try hard things, and keep at it.” 

Patsy Widakuswara contributed to this report.
…

Former U.S. President Donald Trump recently addressed 15,000 ardent supporters in Arizona, making his first major public appearance since the one-year anniversary of the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol that sought to keep him in office despite having lost the 2020 presidential election. 

In 93 minutes of remarks late Saturday, Trump repeated the false claim that the election had been stolen from him and predicted a Republican victory in the 2024 presidential contest, hinting at what political observers already assume: that he is planning a bid to return to the White House. 

Trump is expected to hold more rallies in the months leading up to midterm elections in November that will determine control of Congress for the final two years of President Joe Biden’s term in office. In state after state, Trump aims to boost the fortunes of Republicans seeking office who are loyal to him and repeat his claims. 

Voters are taking notice. 

“He’s going to remain a factor in American politics for the next several presidential terms,” Robert Ellis, a New Orleans-based lawyer who voted for Trump in the 2016 and 2020 elections, told VOA. “And he should remain a factor. He got results while president, and the more we see Biden’s failures, the more we see Donald Trump was correct.” 

By contrast, many moderate Republicans and independent voters – who are often pivotal in close elections – aren’t sure the former president’s continued politicking is good for the country or the Republican Party. 

Chelsea Jaramillo, an entrepreneur in Denver, is one such independent voter. 

“Honestly, I believe his presence hurts the Republican party,” she said. “Even many Republicans seem tired of his bull—- all the hate and blame that don’t benefit anyone but him.” 

Trump’s supporters 

In his remarks Saturday, the former president attacked his Democratic successor’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, the U.S. economy and international affairs. He also took gleeful aim at the handful of Republican lawmakers who voted with Democrats to impeach him after the Capitol riot and have either announced they will not seek reelection or face a bumpy road to remain in office. 

“They’re falling fast and furious. The ones that voted to impeach, we’re getting rid of them fast,” Trump said.

Robert Collins, professor of Urban Studies and Public Policy at Dillard University in New Orleans, said there wasn’t much in the speech he found surprising. 

“It was a lot of the same stuff from him,” he said. “But where it got interesting to me, is you could hear the crowd get excited when they perceived Trump was talking about running for president again in 2024.” 

A recent Marquette Law School Poll found that 60% of Republican voters believe he should run for president again in 2024.

“That’s more than enough voters to win the Republican nomination,” Collins said, “so it’s a real possibility should he decide to run.” 

Brandon Legnion, a New Orleans-based nurse, is open to the idea. His priorities, he said, include the issue of abortion and how America handles the pandemic. 

 “I don’t believe vaccines and masking are ‘anti-freedom’ like a lot of other conservatives seem to believe,” he told VOA, “but I do think Republican voters are more likely to listen to Trump instead of Biden when it comes to unifying around fighting COVID-19. I’d probably vote for him if he ran in 2024.” 

Turning the page 

While the large majority of Republican voters say they would vote for Donald Trump if he secured the party’s presidential nomination, some say they hope a different candidate emerges to lead the party. 

“Trump’s independent, patriotic attitude, and his work on border control, jobs and our economy, have all earned him a leading voice in our party,” said Republican voter Jerry Bell of Indiana, “but I do feel there should be a new presidential torchbearer in 2024. New blood to repatriate our conservative vision of governance so we can ‘Make America Great!’” 

A University of Massachusetts at Amherst poll conducted December 14-20 showed that 71% of Republicans falsely believe Joe Biden’s election was illegitimate – a contention Trump’s critics often refer to as “The Big Lie.” 

Trump addressed the label head-on in Arizona on Saturday, opening the rally by declaring, “The Big Lie is a lot of bull—-,” to wild applause from raucous crowd.

Legnion sees the focus on the past as counterproductive. 

“It’s time to move on,” he said. “To continue to beat past elections to death is not at all unifying for America.” 

Helping or hurting? 

Whether the former president and his obsession with the 2020 election helps the Republican Party in the midterms and in the next presidential election is a matter of ongoing debate among experts, politicians and voters. 

“The sitting president’s political party almost always loses the House of Representatives in the midterm elections during their first term,” explained Robert Collins of Dillard University. “So regardless of Trump’s involvement, you can pretty much bet everything you’ve got that that will happen this year.” 

The Senate is less of a certainty, he said.

“While every seat in the House is up for election every two years, only one third of the Senate is,” Collins said. “And among those, probably only five to eight of those seats will be competitive elections. Trump’s impact is more likely to be felt there.” 

The prevailing thought among experts such as Collins is that while Trump can generate excitement and voter turnout for Republican candidates who are loyal to him, some of those candidates – including several he lauded at the rally in Arizona – could struggle to win in swing states and districts with a more moderate electorate. 

“I’m not opposed to Donald Trump supporting midterm candidates,” said Ronald Robichaux of Tampa, Florida, who said he voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020, “but I am fearful he’ll bring up voting irregularities that have thus far been unfounded and that that might turn some voters off. He can’t seem to bury the hatchet.” 

Collins suggested less bombast from Trump would be helpful for his political fortunes and those of Republicans more broadly. 

“People seem to forget that when Trump’s involved, elections tend to be an up or down vote on Trump,” he explained. “If I was working on his campaign, I’d spend time trying to rehabilitate his image and reign him in. But based on Saturday’s speech, that doesn’t seem to be their strategy,” he said. 

Collins added, “So if you’re a candidate running for office in the midterms, all that can be done now is decide if you want to keep your distance from Trump, or if you want to embrace him.”
…

Descendants of slain U.S. civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. and their supporters marched on Washington Monday to urge Senate Democrats to overcome Republican opposition and obstruction within their own ranks to push through a national overhaul of voting rights.

They rallied on the national holiday honoring King on the 93rd anniversary of his birth. The march occurred just days after two centrist Senate Democrats, Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, said they would oppose attempts to change legislative rules in the politically divided 100-member chamber to allow Democrats to set uniform national election rules over the objections of all 50 Republican senators.  

King’s son, Martin Luther King, III, his wife Arndrea Waters King, and their teenage daughter, Yolanda Renee King, joined several hundred activists as they walked in chilly weather across the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge, symbolizing recent congressional support for a $1.2 trillion infrastructure measure.

“You were successful with infrastructure, which was a great thing,” King told the crowd. “But we need you to use that same energy to ensure that all Americans have the unencumbered right to vote.”

Watch related video by Laurel Bowman:

U.S. President Joe Biden said in a video address that Americans must commit to the unfinished work of Martin Luther King, Jr., delivering jobs, justice and protecting “the sacred right to vote, a right from which all other rights flow.”

“It’s time for every elected official in America to make it clear where they stand,” Biden said. “It’s time for every American to stand up. Speak out, be heard. Where do you stand?”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is calling for a vote as early as Tuesday on the legislation that would expand access to mail-in voting and early voting before the official election days in early November, strengthen federal oversight of elections in states with a history of racial discrimination and tighten campaign finance rules.

Democratic supporters say the legislation is needed to counter new restrictions on voting passed in 19 Republican-led states that some critics say would make it harder for minority and low-income voters to cast ballots. Republicans say the legislation is a partisan power grab by Democrats and would be a federal takeover of elections that the 50 states have typically managed with state-by-state rules.

But the legislation is almost certainly to be killed unless Sinema and Manchin suddenly reverse their opposition to ending use of the Senate filibuster rule that allows opponents of contentious legislation, either Republicans or Democrats, to demand that a 60-vote supermajority be amassed for passage.   

Marches supporting voting rights and other civil rights measures were planned in several U.S. cities on the King holiday.
…

As the U.S. approaches the federal holiday honoring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., modern-day civil rights advocates are facing the reality that despite years of increasing public focus on racial injustice, they appear likely to fall short of their goal of improving minorities’ access to the vote.

Last week King’s family requested that celebrations of civil rights leader’s legacy be suspended this year, unless Congress passes legislation to expand voting rights in America.

Democrats have championed legislation that would give Washington a stronger say in how federal elections are administered in each of the 50 U.S. states. While the federal government does not control state-level elections, new federal requirements could affect them, because they are often conducted in tandem. Among other provisions, the two Democratic-sponsored bills, the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, aim to undo laws passed by Republican-led states that limit methods and opportunities to cast ballots.

Democrats and many civil rights activists say the state laws will disadvantage minority voters, and they accuse Republicans of thinly veiled voter suppression. Republicans reject the charge, insisting their goal is to protect the integrity of elections and prevent voter fraud.

Stalled in the U.S. Senate for months, hopes for passing the Freedom to Vote Act appeared to be extinguished last week. Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema and West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, both Democrats, said that even though they support reforming election laws, they will not vote to change Senate rules in order to pass those reforms with Democrat-only backing.

A change in Senate rules would be necessary because no Republicans support the voting law bill. Under the chamber’s rules, Republicans can block most legislation even if a Democratic majority supports it.

On Friday, during a livestreamed interview with The Washington Post, Martin Luther King III bitterly criticized Sinema’s and Manchin’s position.

“History is not going to be judging … them in the way that perhaps they would want to be remembered. History is looking [them] dead in the face to say, ‘When it was time to make sure the democracy was preserved, what did you do?’” he said.

How did we get here?

Voting rights did not return to the top of the Democratic priority list overnight. The journey of civil rights issues to the forefront of public discourse in the U.S. has been years in the making.

The rise of the Black Lives Matter movement after multiple highly publicized police killings of unarmed Black men between 2014 and 2019 galvanized many Americans behind the idea that the U.S. still had a long way to go to reach racial equality.

At the same time, the release of The New York Times’ 1619 Project, an effort to retell the history of the U.S. with more of a focus on the role of slavery, highlighted centuries-old racial inequalities in the U.S. So did a movement to tear down many monuments to the Confederacy, which fought to preserve slavery during the U.S. Civil War of 1861-65.

Pushback, sometimes violent

The increasing focus on racial justice in the U.S. has not come without a virulent reaction. White supremacist groups have become more active and vocal across the country. In 2017, a group of white supremacists marched through Charlottesville, Virginia. During related protests, one white supremacist activist drove a car into a group of counter-protesters, killing a young woman.

It was also difficult for many to disentangle the presidency of Donald Trump from the battle over racial inequality. Trump came to political power by pushing the falsehood that President Barack Obama, the first Black president, was not an American by birth, and that his presidency was therefore illegitimate. (By law, the president must be a natural-born U.S. citizen.)

Watch related video by Laurel Bowman:

Trump also called for the violent suppression of the Black Lives Matter movement, at one point sending in federal agents to break up a peaceful but boisterous protest near the White House. He also reportedly demeaned African and Black-led countries, asserting that the U.S. should not accept immigrants from them.

At the same time, a movement arose on the political right to restrict the teaching of racially sensitive topics in public schools. The themes protesters object to were short-handed as “critical race theory,” even though that subject is a relatively obscure area of legal scholarship that is never taught in elementary or high schools.

2020 election

The focus on voting rights has always been a major element of the Civil Rights movement in the United States, but it became especially acute in 2021, after minority voters played a major role in electing Joe Biden as president in the 2020 election and helped give Democrats control of the House and Senate.

Across the country, minority voters turned out in record numbers. This was especially true in states like Georgia, a Republican stronghold, where a campaign to register new minority voters and get them to the polls resulted in the state voting for a Democrat for president for the first time since 1992, and sent two Democrats to the Senate for the first time in a generation, giving the party control of that chamber.

After the election, the defeated President Trump insisted the election had been “rigged,” a falsehood that he has continued to repeat, and which many of his supporters, including many state legislators, have echoed.

In the months that followed, many Republican-controlled states passed restrictive new voting legislation that will make it more difficult for minority groups, including the non-English speakers and individuals with disabilities, to vote in future elections than it was in 2020, when measures to ease voting during the coronavirus pandemic helped drive record turnout.

In some cases, states did more than roll back pandemic-related voting accommodations. Some created new provisions allowing state legislatures to intervene in the certification of vote counts, established new rules allowing poll watchers to challenge individual voters, and put volunteer poll workers in danger of criminal prosecution for providing what, in years past, would have been routine voter assistance.

A common reaction

According to Carol Anderson, a historian and professor of African American Studies at Emory University, there is a long history in the United States of laws being changed after Black Americans exercise their freedom in a way that challenges power structures.

“What is happening is what always happens in America,” Anderson, the author of the New York Times bestselling White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide, told VOA. “When we look at the 2020 election, where you had black folk coming out and voting, willing to stand in line for 11 hours to vote to fight for this democracy, the result of that was that Trump got removed from the White House and the Senate flipped. The response to that was a white rage policy of a series of voter suppression laws, and a series of laws that were about how to handle certification of elections.”

Not so, according to Republicans, who say they are fighting against federal overreach and accuse Democrats of attempting to tip the electoral scales in their favor.

“This effort by liberal Democrats to take power away from states to run elections is not about enfranchising voters – it’s about shifting power to the advantage of the liberal Democratic agenda,” Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina recently tweeted.

Amid the acrimony and on the eve of what seems sure to be a more somber Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday, Anderson said she is sure the fight for voting rights — and civil rights more broadly — will continue.

“We have an incredibly engaged civil society that is fighting for this democracy,” she said. “We have folks who are litigating against these voter suppression laws. We have folks who are registering folks to vote jumping through all of the hurdles. We have folks who are providing citizenship training school. … It is that civil society that has been just absolutely instrumental in fighting for American democracy.” 
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Ohio’s Republican-drawn congressional map was rejected by the state’s high court Friday, giving hope to national Democrats who had argued it unfairly delivered several potentially competitive seats in this year’s critical midterm elections to Republicans. 

In the 4-3 decision, the Ohio Supreme Court returned the map to the Ohio General Assembly, where Republicans hold supermajorities in both chambers, and then to the powerful Ohio Redistricting Commission. The two bodies have a combined 60 days to draw new lines that comply with a 2018 constitutional amendment against gerrymandering. 

The commission was in the process of reconstituting so it can redraw GOP-drawn legislative maps that the court also rejected this week as gerrymandered. That decision gave the panel 10 days to comply. 

With February 2 and March 4 looming as the filing dates for legislative and congressional candidates, respectively, the decisions have raised questions of whether the state’s May 3 primary may have to be extended. 

Ohio Republican Party Chair Bob Paduchik called the situation a mess, criticizing the Ohio Supreme Court for giving the commission less than two weeks to come up with new legislative maps. 

“That’s a lot to dump on a commission with a very short period of time,” he said during a forum at the City Club of Cleveland on Friday. “It’s hard to say what’s going to happen.” 

Opinions

Justices chastised Republicans in both decisions for flouting the voters’ wishes and the Constitution and directed them to move with haste. 

Writing for the majority, Justice Michael Donnelly wrote, “(T)he evidence in these cases makes clear beyond all doubt that the General Assembly did not heed the clarion call sent by Ohio voters to stop political gerrymandering.” 

Donnelly and the court’s other two Democrats were joined by Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, a moderate Republican set to depart the court because of age limits at the end of the year. 

The court’s three other Republicans — including Justice Pat DeWine, son of Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, a named plaintiff in the cases — dissented. 

They said it was unclear how it should be determined that a map “unduly favors” one party over another. 

“When the majority says that the plan unduly favors the Republican Party, what it means is that the plan unduly favors the Republican Party as compared to the results that would be obtained if we followed a system of proportional representation,” the dissent said. 

They explained that the U.S. has never adopted a system that requires congressional seats to be proportionally distributed to match the popular vote, nor does Ohio’s Constitution require it. 

In her separate opinion, O’Connor said voting-rights and Democratic groups that challenge the maps never argued strict proportionality was required. 

“The dissenting opinion’s dismissive characterization of all the metrics used by petitioners’ experts as simply being measures of ‘proportional representation’ is sleight of hand,” she wrote. “No magician’s trick can hide what the evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates: the map statistically presents such a partisan advantage that it unduly favors the Republican Party.” 

Lawsuits

Friday’s decision affects separate lawsuits brought by the National Democratic Redistricting Commission’s legal arm, as well as the Ohio offices of the League of Women Voters and the A. Philip Randolph Institute. The groups calculated that either 12 or 13 of the map’s 15 districts favor Republicans, despite the GOP garnering only about 54% of votes in statewide races over the past decade. 

Republicans had defended the map — which was pushed through the approval process in a flurry — as fair, constitutional and “highly competitive.” 

Voting rights advocates and Democrats praised the court’s ruling, their second victory this week. 

Ohio and other states were required to redraw their congressional maps to reflect results of the 2020 census, under which Ohio lost one of its current 16 districts because of lagging population. 

 
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The U.S. House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol subpoenaed Meta, Alphabet, Twitter and Reddit on Thursday, seeking information about how their social media platforms were used to help fuel misinformation in a failed bid to overturn the 2020 presidential election. 

“Two key questions for the Select Committee are how the spread of misinformation and violent extremism contributed to the violent attack on our democracy, and what steps – if any – social media companies took to prevent their platforms from being breeding grounds for radicalizing people to violence,” the House Select Committee’s chairman, Representative Bennie Thompson, said in a statement. 

“It’s disappointing that after months of engagement, we still do not have the documents and information necessary to answer those basic questions.” 

The subpoenas are the latest development in the panel’s investigation into the causes of the attack on the Capitol by then-President Donald Trump’s supporters, and the role played by Trump, who has pushed false claims that he lost a rigged election to Joe Biden. 

The committee has issued more than 50 subpoenas and heard from more than 300 witnesses. It is expected to release an interim report in the summer and a final report in the fall. 

Spokespeople for the four social media companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 

Social media platforms were widely blamed for amplifying calls to violence and spreading misinformation that contributed to the January 6 attempt to violently overturn the election results. 

Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai and former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey were grilled by lawmakers last March in a hearing on misinformation about the role of their companies in the Capitol riot. 

In a letter sent this week to Zuckerberg, Representative Thompson said that “despite repeated and specific requests for documents” related to Facebook’s practices on election misinformation and violent content, the committee had still not received these materials. Letters to the other three CEOs contained similar criticisms. 
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U.S. President Joe Biden and Democratic lawmakers are maneuvering this week to alter Senate rules to allow for debate on key voting rights legislation that has been blocked for months by Republicans. The showdown is the culmination of a fierce debate over the democratic process. VOA’s Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson has more.
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U.S. President Joe Biden was a longtime supporter of the Senate supermajority rule known as the filibuster, but with the chamber’s Republican minority blocking parts of his agenda, the former senator said this week he is open to altering the rule in order to try to enact voting rights legislation.

The 100-member Senate is currently divided evenly between members who caucus with Biden’s Democratic Party and members of the Republican Party.

Democrats can pass bills using the tiebreaker vote Vice President Kamala Harris can cast when necessary. But before a bill can be put to a simple majority vote, there must first be a move to end debate on the measure, which under Senate rules requires the support of 60 senators.

The procedural hurdle has its critics who argue it is anti-democratic and prevents the federal government from addressing problems facing the nation. But supporters say it forces the members of the Senate to find consensus on those matters and prevents the party in power from enacting sweeping changes.

Democratic Party leaders say they want to make voting rights legislation a category that needs only a simple majority support in order to move to a final vote and that they plan to pursue that change in the coming days.

Left uncertain is whether they have enough support among their caucus to achieve that goal. Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have expressed opposition, citing concerns that doing so would give Republicans an open path to do whatever they want should they reclaim a majority in the next round of elections in November.

Senator Mitch McConnell, the body’s top Republican, has also warned that if Democrats do away with the filibuster, his side would find other ways to slow action in the Senate.

Some information for this report came from Reuters. 
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The House panel investigating the U.S. Capitol insurrection requested an interview and records from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy on Wednesday, shifting their investigation to a top ally of former President Donald Trump in Congress. 

Representative Bennie Thompson, Democratic chairman of the panel, requested that McCarthy provide information to the nine-member panel regarding the violence that took place last January and his communications with former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in the days prior to the attack.

“We also must learn about how the President’s plans for January 6th came together, and all the other ways he attempted to alter the results of the election,” Thompson said in the letter. “For example, in advance of January 6th, you reportedly explained to Mark Meadows and the former President that objections to the certification of the electoral votes on January 6th ‘was doomed to fail.'” 

The request seeks information about McCarthy’s conversations with Trump “before, during and after” the riot, with lawmakers seeking a window into Trump’s state of mind from an ally who has acknowledged repeated interactions with the then-president.

The committee also wants to question McCarthy about communications with Trump and White House staff in the week after the violence, including a conversation with Trump that was reportedly heated. 

The committee acknowledged the sensitive and unusual nature of its request as it proposed a meeting with McCarthy on either February 3 or 4.

“The Select Committee has tremendous respect for the prerogatives of Congress and the privacy of its Members,” Thompson wrote. “At the same time, we have a solemn responsibility to investigate fully the facts and circumstances of these events. 

A request for comment from McCarthy’s office was not immediately returned.

McCarthy attracted the committee’s attention through his public characterizations after the riot of his private discussions with Trump. Thompson’s letter cites multiple statements and interviews in which McCarthy described his interactions with the president, including a CBS interview in which McCarthy said, “I was very clear with the president when I called him. This has to stop, and he has to go to the American public and tell them to stop this.” 

One of his Republican colleagues, Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler, has said McCarthy told her that Trump told him, “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.” 

The Republican leader is the third member of Congress the committee has reached out to for voluntary information. In the past few weeks, Republican Representatives Jim Jordan and Scott Perry were also contacted by the panel but have denied the requests to sit down with lawmakers or provide documents.

The panel, comprised of seven Democrats and two Republicans, has already interviewed more than 300 people and issued subpoenas to more than 40 as it seeks to create a comprehensive record of the January 6 attack and the events leading up to it.

The committee says the extraordinary trove of material it has collected — 35,000 pages of records so far, including texts, emails and phone records from people close to Trump — is fleshing out critical details of the worst attack on the Capitol in two centuries, which played out on live television.

Thompson told The Associated Press in an interview last month that about 90% of the witnesses subpoenaed by the committee have cooperated, despite the defiance of high-profile Trump allies like Meadows and Steve Bannon.

Lawmakers say they have been effective at gathering information from other sources in part because they share a unity of purpose rarely seen in a congressional investigation. 

 
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As of Wednesday, there were 300 days until the next federal election in the U.S., when voters will cast ballots for all 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and one-third of the members of the Senate, with enormous consequences for the second half of President Joe Biden’s four-year term in office. 

While it may seem to people outside Washington that it’s too soon to begin thinking about an election that far away, there is little question that key figures in Washington are already weighing their every move with an eye on how it might affect voters’ feelings in November. 

That applies particularly to Biden, who is struggling with an approval rating that has been hovering between 40% and 45% for several weeks as the coronavirus pandemic rages and inflation drives up the cost of living for everyday Americans at a pace not seen in nearly four decades.

Called a “midterm election” because it takes place at the midpoint of the president’s four-year term, the results are usually affected heavily by public perceptions of the president.

“There’s no reason to think that the midterm elections in November of this year will be anything other than what they usually are, and that is a referendum on the performance of the president and the president’s party,” William A. Galston, a senior fellow in the Brookings Institution’s Governance Studies program, told VOA.

Control of Congress at stake

Control of both the House and Senate is very much in play. Democrats have nominal control of both chambers but are severely constrained in enacting their proposals because of a 50-50 split in the Senate. Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris is able to cast tie-breaking votes, but the body’s filibuster rule allows Republicans to block most legislation from coming to a vote in the first place.

In the House, Democrats hold a slim 222-212 majority, with one seat vacant. Republicans are favored to win enough seats to take over the House in November.

In the Senate, the likely result is unclear. Of the 34 seats that are up for election this cycle, 20 are held by Republicans and 14 by Democrats. The overwhelming majority are considered “safe,” meaning that the incumbent is likely to be reelected. The six races generally considered competitive are split evenly, with three held by Republicans and three by Democrats.

As difficult as it presently is for Biden to force his agenda through Congress, the loss of control of either the House or the Senate to Republicans would all but guarantee a shutdown of his legislative agenda in the second half of his term.

Referendum on the president

Historically, midterm elections are tough on the party of the president. In all but three of the midterm elections since the 1861-65 Civil War, the party of the incumbent president has lost seats in the House.

“The best predictor of how a party is going to do is the incumbent president’s job approval rating,” Charlie Cook, the founder of the Cook Political Report, told VOA. “And the more under 50% it is, the tougher it is. So if you’ve got a president that’s at 42%, or 43%, as President Biden is, that’s not a good thing [for Democrats].”

“Sometimes you can oversimplify things in politics, but I think midterms benefit from oversimplification,” said Kyle Kondik, the managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics.

“Historically speaking, unless there’s some sort of big outside circumstance or extraordinary circumstance, you would not expect an unpopular president’s party to do well in a midterm,” Kondik told VOA. “And so I think what we could say from the vantage point of January is that Biden’s numbers need to get better or Democrats are in real danger of losing particularly the House and also the Senate.”

Controversy possible

Absent some grand unifying event that inspires Americans to cross political boundaries, the 2022 election will take place in an atmosphere of extreme partisan rancor. After the 2020 election, in which former President Donald Trump falsely claimed that the presidency had been stolen from him, many states passed controversial new election laws that could make contested outcomes more likely and more challenging to resolve.

“If there’s a close election in a major race — let’s say it’s a Senate race that could determine control of the Senate — will the losing side be willing to accept the legitimacy of the outcome or be convinced that the process was rigged in some way against it?” asked Rick Pildes, an election law expert and the Sudler Family Professor of Constitutional Law at the New York University School of Law. “We’re in a culture of tremendous distrust in advance [of the election] on both sides of the spectrum.”

Pildes pointed out that the situation is exacerbated by one aspect of the U.S. election system that is notably different from most other democracies.

“In the U.S., we do not have independent institutions to oversee and administer our elections, unlike in a lot of democracies,” he told VOA. “We have partisan elected officials … administering most of the election process and there is great concern now that the losers will convince themselves — in a close election, particularly if the other party’s elected figures are in control of the process — that something about the process was corrupt.”

If there is controversy, it will most likely be in a small handful of races, said Galston of the Brookings Institution.

“At this point, so many of the elections occur in jurisdictions that are dominated by one party or the other that we may not see that many close elections, either at the congressional district level or at the state level,” he said. “I don’t think it’s going to reach anything like the intensity that we saw after the presidential election of 2020.”

Abortion ruling as wild card

One event that could have a significant impact on the election is an anticipated ruling on a controversial state abortion law, expected from the Supreme Court in the early summer, according to Kondik of the University of Virginia. The ruling will decide if states are free to enact far more restrictive abortion laws than Supreme Court precedent has allowed.

“I think one big issue to watch is abortion — if, in fact, the Supreme Court allows states to heavily restrict abortion or restrict abortion more than they’re able to do now,” he said. “So, if you’re looking for an issue to come to the forefront in the 2022 election, that would be one to watch. Abortion is a very polarizing and important issue in American politics.”

With support for limiting or even abolishing abortion rights concentrated among Republicans, and most Democrats supporting expansive access to abortion services, a decisive ruling that moves the needle either way could galvanize voters, driving more voters from one or both parties to the polls in greater numbers.
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The White House COVID-19 response team on Wednesday reminded Americans of the continued need to slow the omicron variant’s spread despite its decreased severity and announced new efforts to help keep schools open.

As the omicron variant sweeps across the U.S., Dr. Rochelle Walensky emphasized that wearing masks, getting vaccinated and undergoing COVID-19 testing when necessary are the best strategies to help lower cases of the virus.

Walensky, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the omicron variant accounted for 98% of new COVID-19 cases in the U.S. Earlier this week, the U.S. set a record for the number of daily infections at nearly 1.5 million, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.

“All of us must do our part to protect our hospitals and our neighbors and reduce the further spread of this virus,” Walensky said.

The White House team also announced that the Biden administration would distribute 10 million tests to schools across the country each month to ensure they remain open, more than doubling the testing volume from last year.

Although the omicron variant is highly transmissible, it remains less severe than the delta variant, with a decreased risk of hospitalization and death.

Walensky, citing a recent study comparing the two variants, said omicron infections were associated with a 91% reduction in the risk of death and a 74% reduction in the risk of ICU admission.

She also said that infections with the variant had a 53% reduced risk of symptomatic hospitalization.

More hospitalizations

While the risk of hospitalization remains low, the “staggering rise in cases” has increased the country’s number of hospitalizations, according to Walensky.

Nonetheless, she said, patients infected with omicron are experiencing 71% shorter hospital stays than those infected with the delta variant.

On average, omicron patients are hospitalized for about 1.5 days and 90% are expected to be discharged in three days or less.

As the surge continues, Walensky reiterated that cases of the variant are expected to peak in the coming weeks. She also said deaths have increased, with more than 2,600 reported by John Hopkins on Wednesday.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious-disease expert, said the country would not be able to eliminate or eradicate COVID-19, but would “ultimately control it.” As the virus becomes endemic, it is likely that “virtually everybody is going to wind up getting exposed and likely get infected,” he said.

However, he added, this does not mean that vaccinations or preventative measures are ineffective or pointless. Fauci clarified that getting vaccinated and staying up to date with booster shots will prevent serious illness from the disease.

“If you’re vaccinated and if you’re boosted, the chances of your getting sick are very, very low,” Fauci said.

To help battle the current surge, the White House team stressed that mitigation efforts remain critical, including wearing a mask. While N95 masks have been shown to be the most effective in resisting airborne transmission of the virus, the CDC still recommends that, for the time being, people choose the mask that is right for them, and that wearing any well-fitting mask is better than no mask.

“We want to highlight that the best mask for you is the one that you can wear comfortably,” Walensky said.

Jeffrey D. Zients, the White House’s COVID-19 response coordinator, was asked about finding masks and said the administration is “strongly considering options to make more high-quality masks available to all Americans.”

As for schools, the team said that, along with increased testing, vaccination and other mitigation efforts are the keys to keeping students in the classroom.

Walensky stated that with pediatric vaccines now available, schools should be able to continue operating as planned. She also reminded reporters that 99% of schools remained open in the fall during a surge in the delta variant.

“One of the best things we can do is get our children and our teenagers vaccinated,” she said.
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Former Sen. Harry Reid will lie in state at the U.S. Capitol as colleagues and friends pay tribute to a hardscrabble Democrat who rose from poverty in a dusty Nevada mining town to the most powerful position in the U.S. Senate. 

Reid will be honored Wednesday in the Capitol Rotunda during a ceremony closed to the public under COVID-19 protocols. He died last month at 82 after a four-year battle with pancreatic cancer. 

The longest-serving Nevadan in Congress and the Senate majority leader alongside two presidents, Reid helmed the chamber during one of its more consequential legislative sessions — securing the economic recovery bill during the Great Recession and President Barack Obama’s landmark health care law.

President Joe Biden called Reid a “great American,” one who “looked at the challenges of the world and believed it was within our capacity to do good, to do right.” 

During a funeral service last weekend in Las Vegas, Biden, Obama and others recalled one of Reid’s best-known traits — abruptly hanging up on people, even presidents, rather than close with lengthy goodbyes. 

The few words Reid did say were often flinty and fiery, the senator unafraid to take on presidents (he called George W. Bush a “loser”), criticize the fossil fuel industry (“coal makes us sick”) or declare the war in Iraq “lost.” He titled his 2008 autobiography “The Good Fight.” 

Influential in retirement, Reid said Biden should give his new presidency just three weeks to try to work with Republicans. If not, Biden should force changes in the Senate’s filibuster rules to allow simple majority passage of elections and voting rights legislation and other priorities, Reid said. 

“The time’s going to come when he’s going to have to move in and get rid of the filibuster,” Reid told The Associated Press. 

Reid was born in the desolate mining town of Searchlight, Nevada, his father a hard-rock miner who later committed suicide, his mother doing laundry at home for bordellos. (He and other kids would swim in a brothel’s pool.) Searchlight was a place, he said, that “had seen its better days.” 

The town had no churches, his family no religion. But a picture of President Franklin D. Roosevelt hanging in the Reid home would influence his political career. 

Reid hitchhiked some 40 miles to attend high school and joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as he made his way through college and law school. An amateur boxer, he once leveled a punch at his future father-in-law after being denied a date with Landra Gould, who would become his wife. They were married for 62 years. 

First elected to the House in 1982 and reelected in 1984, Reid then served 30 years in the Senate, including a decade as the Senate Democratic leader. 

Along the way, Reid rewrote the map of Nevada by expanding public lands, halting the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste outside of Las Vegas; and securing national monument status around artist Michael Heizer’s “City” installation in the desert. He quietly ensured federal funding to research UFOs. 

A man of few words, Reid often wrote notes instead — to family, colleagues and a Nevada student advocate who had reached out on immigration law changes. He championed the Dream Act and Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals to protect young immigrants in the U.S. without legal status from deportation. 

As his power rose, Reid engineered a Democratic legacy for his state with Nevada’s early presidential caucus. He left behind a state party apparatus that was sometimes referred to as the “Reid Machine” for its enduring political power seeking to elect the next generation of Democratic leaders. 

After suffering an exercise accident at home, and with Democrats back in the Senate minority, Reid announced he would not seek reelection in 2016. 

In his farewell address to the Senate, he acknowledged he had done things that “probably a lot of people wouldn’t do.” But he passed on his advice to those wondering how he made it from Searchlight to Washington. 

“I didn’t make it because of my good looks. I didn’t make it because I am a genius. I made it because I worked hard,” Reid said. “Whatever you want to try to do, make sure you work as hard as you can to try to do what you want to do.”
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President Joe Biden is pushing legislation to prevent states from imposing laws that limit access to the vote, arguing that voting rights are a bedrock American value and need to be better protected. His Republican opponents want states to support more rigorous voter identification and ballot security measures to prevent voter fraud. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from the White House.

Produced: Bakhtiyar Zamanov 
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