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Democrats See Tax ‘Framework’ to Pay for Huge $3.5 Trillion Package

The White House and congressional Democrats have agreed to a framework of options to pay for their huge emerging social and environment bill, top Democrats said Thursday. Now they face the daunting task of narrowing the menu to tax possibilities they can pass to fund President Joe Biden’s $3.5 trillion plan. 

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California announced the progress as Biden administration officials and Democratic congressional leaders negotiated behind the scenes. The package aims to rewrite tax and spending priorities to expand programs for Americans of all ages while upping efforts to tackle income inequality and fight climate change. 

Staring down a self-imposed Monday deadline, lawmakers said they would work nonstop to find agreement on specifics. Democrats’ views on those vary widely, though they largely agree with Biden’s idea of raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy to fund the package.

“We certainly think it’s progress,” Biden press secretary Jen Pskai said at the White House. 

Biden has been encouraging the negotiations, inviting more than 20 of his party’s moderate and progressive lawmakers to the White House for lengthy meetings this week. He’s working to close the deal with Congress on his “Build Back Better” agenda at a time when his presidential campaign promises are running into the difficulty of actually governing.

But the party has been divided over many of the details. 

Moderate Democrats, most prominently Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, are demanding that the massive dollar total be reduced. The revenue options to pay for it — that mostly means taxes — being considered can be dialed up or down, the leaders say. The ultimate price tag may certainly slip from the much-publicized $3.5 trillion. 

Republicans are solidly opposed to the package, calling it a “reckless tax and spending spree.” So Democrats will have to push it through Congress on their own, which is only possible if they limit their defections to a slim few in the House and none in the Senate.

“We’re proceeding,” Pelosi said. “We intend to stay the course and pass the bill as soon as possible.” 

The congressional leaders huddled early Thursday with the chairs of the tax writing committees to agree to the framework, pulling from work already being done on those panels. They are intent on sticking to Biden’s pledge not to raise taxes on people making less than $400,000 a year. 

Representative Richard Neal, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, has already drafted his version, which would raise about $2.3 trillion by increasing corporate tax rates to 26.5% for businesses earning more than $5 million a year and increasing the top individual tax from 37% to 39.6% for those earning more than $400,000, or $450,000 for married households. 

The House panel’s bill also includes a 3% surtax on the adjusted incomes of very wealthy people making more than $5 million a year. 

The Senate Finance Committee under Senator Ron Wyden has not yet passed its bill, but it has been eyeing proposals that further target the superrich, including efforts to curtail practices used to avoid paying taxes. 

“I’m not going to get into any specific stuff today, but I’ve made it very clear as chairman of the Finance Committee a billionaire’s tax will be on the menu,” Wyden said.

Those tax goals align with the Biden administration, which is marshaling arguments that the increases are fundamentally about fairness at a time of gaping income inequality. 

According to a new analysis released Thursday by the White House, the wealthiest 400 families worth more than a billion dollars paid an average tax rate of just 8.2% between 2010 and 2018. Treasury Department tables show that is lower than the average tax rate of families with an income of roughly $142,000.

The analysis suggests two clear reasons why billionaires pay a lower rate than the upper middle class: They derive income from stocks, dividends and other assets that are taxed at lower rates, and they can permanently avoid paying tax on certain investment gains that by law are excluded from taxable income.

Without divulging a framework, Wyden indicated he is in agreement with the House’s plans for certain retirement savings accounts used by the wealthy to shield liabilities. 

Targeting “Mega IRAs,” Democrats hope to correct what they see as a flaw in the retirement savings system enabling billionaires to amass millions in independent retirement accounts without ever paying taxes. Under some proposals, individuals earning beyond $400,000 would be barred from contributing to their IRAs once their account balances top $10 million. 

The Biden administration has also shown interest in one climate change tax, a so-called pollution importer fee, which would essentially impose a tariff on goods coming from countries without certain emissions controls. The tax is seen as a way to pressure China.

Gaining less traction seems to be a carbon tax that could fall on households and stray from Biden’s pledge not to tax those earning less than $400,000. 

Another big unknown: whether Democrats can coalesce around a plan to rein in prescription drug costs, which could save the government hundreds of billions that could be used for Biden’s goals 

Thursday’s sudden announcement of framework options caught key lawmakers off guard, including Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent and the chairman of the Budget Committee, and others playing leading roles in assembling one of the biggest bills Congress has ever attempted.

Schumer later acknowledged of the emerging framework, “It’s hardly conclusory, but it was a good step of progress.” 

Yet the framework could help the congressional leaders show momentum as they head toward crucial deadlines and start to address concerns raised by Manchin and other moderates who want a more clear-cut view of what taxes are being considered before they move forward, aides said. 

On Monday, the House plans to begin considering a separate $1 trillion package of road and other infrastructure projects as a first test of Biden’s agenda. That public works bill has already passed the Senate, and Pelosi has agreed to schedule it for a House vote to assuage party moderates who badly want that legislation passed but are leery of supporting the larger $3.5 trillion measure. 

But progressives are threatening to defeat the public works bill as inadequate unless it is partnered with the broader package. To make sure both bills can pass, Democratic leaders are trying to reach agreement on the bigger bill.

Meanwhile, the House and Senate remain at a standstill over a separate package to keep the government funded past the Sept. 30 fiscal year-end and to suspend the federal debt limit to avert a shutdown and a devastating U.S. default on payments. Senate Republicans are refusing to back that House-passed bill, despite the risk of triggering a fiscal crisis. 
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Bipartisan Police Reform Talks Collapse in US Senate

Bipartisan talks in the U.S. Senate to reform policing that began after a spate of police killings of unarmed Black citizens in 2020 have collapsed, dealing at least a temporary setback to President Joe Biden’s vow to address police brutality.

The negotiations started nine months ago following the high-profile police killings of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky, and the deaths of other Blacks that drew less attention.  

Floyd was pinned under a white police officer’s knee for more than nine minutes in an incident captured on cellphone video by a bystander. His death in police custody   inspired global protests of institutional racism and police practices, particularly in the United States, where Blacks are disproportionately the victims of deadly encounters with police. The officer, Derek Chauvin, was convicted on murder and manslaughter charges.

Blacks in the U.S. were more than two-and-one-half times more likely to have been killed by police than whites during a five-year period ending in May 2020, according to a Yale University study.

Democratic Senator Cory Booker announced the collapse of the talks on Wednesday, citing a failure to garner Republican support for Democratic proposals to make officers personally responsible for abusive conduct, to raise professional standards and to gather national data on police agencies’ use of force.

“It was clear that we were not making the progress that we needed to make,” Booker said.

In a statement, Republican Senator Tim Scott said he was “deeply disappointed” that Democrats left agreements on the negotiating table banning chokeholds, limiting the transfer of military equipment to police agencies and increasing mental health resources.

“Crime will continue to increase while safety decreases, and more officers are going to walk away from the force because my negotiating partners walked away from the table,” Scott said in a statement. Both senators are African American.

Declaring Floyd’s murder “a stain on the soul of America,” Biden said in a statement that Republicans were to blame for the failed talks.

“Regrettably, Senate Republicans rejected enacting modest reforms, which even the previous president had supported, while refusing to take action on key issues that many in law enforcement were willing to address,” Biden said in a reference to his immediate predecessor, former President Donald Trump.

Biden also said he would continue to pursue police reform through Congress and through “potential further executive actions.” Biden noted his administration had previously announced new policies on chokeholds, no-knock warrants and police body cameras.

Earlier this year, Biden called on lawmakers to reach a bipartisan agreement by May 25, the anniversary of Floyd’s death. But Biden’s appeal and lobbying trips to Washington by victims’ families failed to provide enough momentum among lawmakers, leaving attorneys Ben Crump and Antonio Romanucci, who have represented victims’ families, feeling “extreme disappointment.”

“We cannot let this be a tragic, lost opportunity to regain trust between citizens and police,” the attorneys said.  

Crump and Romanucci said the Senate should vote anyway on the Democrats’ policing bill. They said Republicans would likely defeat the bill, but that would allow voters to “see who is looking out for their communities’ best interests.”

Some information in this report was provided by The Associated Press and Reuters.
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Disagreement Over Debts, Spending Plunge Washington Into Crisis Mode 

The Biden administration and congressional Democrats are facing what may be the most politically fraught moment since they took unified control of Washington in January.

Lawmakers are battling to avoid a potential government shutdown and a default on the national debt at the same time that Democratic infighting is endangering two pieces of legislation meant to further the party’s key priorities.

The stakes, for both the U.S. economy and President Joe Biden’s domestic agenda, could scarcely be higher.

A combination of a few missteps or delays in passing a budget resolution and raising the amount of money that the Treasury Department is allowed to borrow could have catastrophic economic impacts on the United States and the world economy. An estimate by Moody’s Analytics found that the worst-case scenario, in which the U.S. defaults on its debts, could result in a loss of 6 million jobs and destruction of as much as $15 trillion in household wealth.

If House Democrats are unable to muster the votes to pass a $1.5 trillion infrastructure bill that has been approved by the Senate and a $3.5 trillion bill that would lock in spending on social services, climate change mitigation and other party priorities, they will face voters in 2022 with little to show for two years of Democratic control of Washington.

Likely outcomes unclear

For sure, there are few experts in Washington who expect the battle over the budget and debt limit to actually end in a government default. Lawmakers have gone down this path many times, and have always pulled back at the last minute.

On the spending bills so important to the Biden administration, expectations are not so clear. Wednesday afternoon, Biden brought Democratic lawmakers to the White House to try to hammer out an agreement.

“This is where the rubber meets the road — when it comes to how he can get them together,” said Dan Mahaffee, senior vice president and director of policy at the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress. “Can he be the same dealmaker that united progressives and centrists throughout the [presidential] campaign? He has to do that same thing now in the White House.”

Budget problems

The most immediate problem facing lawmakers is that the federal government will lose the authority to spend money on many of its key functions unless a new budget resolution is passed before a September 30 deadline.

The federal government has shut down before, but never in the midst of a pandemic, and it is unclear just how damaging a significant halt in federal operations would be to the country’s public health response to the coronavirus.

Democrats in the House of Representatives on Tuesday night passed a “continuing resolution” that would allow the government to continue operating until December, giving lawmakers time to pass separate budget bills for different parts of the government.

However, Republicans in the Senate are expected to block that bill by denying Democrats the 60 votes they will need to end debate. The reason is that Democrats have attached it to legislative language that would waive enforcement of the debt ceiling until December 2022.

Debt ceiling

Senate Republicans, led by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, have said that they will not supply any votes to raise the debt ceiling — even votes to cut off debate so that Democrats can pass the bill on their own.

McConnell has publicly said that the debt limit must be raised and that the government must not be allowed to default. However, he is demanding that the Democrats take full responsibility for making that happen — historically a politically onerous task — by using a budget reconciliation bill, which is immune to the filibuster’s 60-vote threshold.

Democrats are refusing to use budget reconciliation for the debt limit because they believe Republicans should share responsibility for raising the debt limit, which will help pay for measures adopted and signed when Republicans had united control of Washington just a few years ago.

Battle lines firm

On Wednesday, six former Treasury secretaries wrote a letter to congressional leaders warning them that legislative brinkmanship might push the country into default, even accidentally, with dire consequences.

“Even a short-lived default could threaten economic growth,” they wrote. “It creates the risk of roiling markets, and of sapping economic confidence, and it would prevent Americans from receiving vital services. It would be very damaging to undermine trust in the full faith and credit of the United States, and this damage would be hard to repair.”

On Tuesday night, McConnell said he had introduced a continuing resolution of his own that would fund the government through December, but that “removes the debt limit language [which waives enforcement until December 2022] that Democrats have known since July will not receive bipartisan support from Senate Republicans.”

On Wednesday morning, however, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said it would be the House bill, not McConnell’s, that he brings to a vote in the Senate.

“That’s the bill that will be on the floor,” he said. “Those who will vote yes will vote to avoid default, to avoid a government shutdown. Those who vote no will be saying, ‘We’re OK with default and we’re OK with the government shutdown.’ To say, ‘Do it another way,’ that doesn’t cut it. This is what’s on the floor.”

Democratic squabbling

At the same time that lawmakers are trying to navigate around a government shutdown and potential default, Democratic leaders are working to avoid a derailment of the Biden administration’s domestic policy agenda.

Early in his term, Biden had insisted that Democrats in Congress find a way to compromise with Republicans on an infrastructure bill. As a result, the Senate passed a bipartisan $1.5 trillion bill funding infrastructure basics like roads, highways and bridges. That allowed Biden to claim that he had kept his campaign promise to work across the aisle.

However, the Senate bill left out an enormous number of provisions that Democrats wanted and on which Biden had campaigned, including increased social spending, funding to fight climate change and more.

As a result, progressive members of the House of Representatives announced that they would not support the $1.5 trillion Senate bill until the House and Senate both passed a separate $3.5 trillion package that contained all of the Democrats’ other priorities — something they expected to accomplish by using a budget reconciliation bill to bypass the filibuster.

Centrist Dems revolt

In both the Senate and the House, more centrist members objected to both the progressives’ tactics and their demands. House centrists demanded and received assurances from Democratic leaders that the $1.5 trillion bill would get a vote no later than September 27.

Months ago, it seemed at least possible that the larger $3.5 trillion bill could be passed by that date. However, in the Senate, Democratic lawmakers Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona said that they would not support the larger bill, blocking progress.

Now, without the $3.5 trillion bill in hand, Democratic progressives are threatening to withhold support for the $1.5 trillion bill, raising the possibility that the Biden administration could be left with neither.

Losing bills ‘deadly for Biden’

Some experts are still expecting that the Democrats will find some sort of agreement, if only because the alternative is so bad.

“My assumption all along has been that Democrats know losing these bills is deadly for Biden, and for them,” said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.

“My sense of it is that in the end, reluctantly, they’ll find something to agree on, because the alternative is so disagreeable,” he said. “The compromise may not be tasty, but the alternative is poisonous.”
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Lawmakers Urge Justice Department to Act Against Rising Hate Crimes in US

Two members of the U.S. Congress instrumental in the passage of anti-hate crime legislation this year are pressing the Department of Justice to step up enforcement of the measure, warning that reinstatement of pandemic-related restrictions is likely to provoke more attacks — particularly on Asian Americans. 

The new law seeks to accelerate the Justice Department’s reviews of alleged hate crimes reported to federal authorities. 

“As the pandemic wears on and COVID-19 variants cause states, localities, or private entities to reinstate restrictions or public safety mandates, frustration with the virus will undoubtedly resurface,” Sen. Mazie Hirono, a Democrat of Hawaii, and Representative Grace Meng, a New York Democrat, wrote Monday in a letter directed to Attorney General Merrick Garland. 

“We fear the impact this could have on perpetuating hate-based violence against people,” they added. “Full implementation of the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act will help stem the tide against further violence.” 

Advocates for the Asian American and Pacific Islander community blame rhetoric from political leaders, especially former president Donald Trump, who relentlessly blamed the coronavirus pandemic on China, for driving up anti-Asian bias during the pandemic. 

Hate crimes rose sharply in 2020 

The letter comes not long after a report that hate crimes in the United States spiked sharply in the first year of the coronavirus pandemic, rising by about 14% to 8,305, the highest level since 2001 and the third-highest since the Justice Department began tracking bias crimes. 

The rise was driven by sharp increases in bias crimes against Asian and Black individuals and was far higher than the Federal Bureau of Investigation originally reported when it released 2020 crime statistics late last month showing only a 6% increase. 

The discrepancy in the numbers, reported by the Washington Post, was blamed on a technical problem that incorrectly under-reported data from the state of Ohio.

Anti-Black bias most prevalent 

Black people are far and away the most common victims of bias crimes in the United States. Including the updated information from Ohio, there were nearly 2,900 recorded incidents of bias crimes against Blacks in 2020. That’s an increase of more than 45% from the previous year. Hate crimes resulting from anti-Black bias accounted for about 35% of all hate crimes in the U.S. in 2020. 

Asians in the U.S. experienced the highest percentage increase in hate crimes last year. Between 2019 and 2020, the number of crimes rooted in anti-Asian bias jumped by 70%. The roughly 274 anti-Asian crimes reported in 2020 reflected about 4% of the country’s total. 

Hate crimes targeting White people make up the second largest total category measured by the FBI, at about 10% of the total. Crimes against Jewish people made up about 9%.

Reporting system deeply flawed 

It is important to recognize that there are significant flaws in the reporting system that combine to significantly understate the extent of the problem.

In addition to the fact that many bias attacks are never reported to law enforcement in the first place, nearly one in five of the 18,623 law enforcement agencies in the country do not report hate crime statistics to the FBI. 

Further, there is a strong likelihood that even many of those that do report statistics to the FBI are undercounting the real prevalence of bias crimes. In any given three-month period, a large majority of law enforcement agencies that do participate in tracking hate crimes report that there were none in their jurisdiction during that time period. In 2020, 64 jurisdictions with populations of more than 100,000 people reported not a single hate crime.

“The fact that so many law enforcement agencies did not participate is inexcusable, and the fact that 64 jurisdictions with populations over 100,000 affirmatively reported zero hate crimes is simply not credible,” Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan A. Greenblatt said in a statement when the FBI data was released. 

“Data drives policy and without having a complete picture of the problem, we cannot even begin to resolve the issues driving this surge in hate and violence,” Greenblatt added. 

COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act 

The law that Hirono and Meng helped pass, the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act, is meant, in part, to remedy the poor reporting of hate crimes in the U.S. The bill directs the Department of Justice to issue guidance to law enforcement agencies around the country on how to establish effective hate-crime reporting regimes. 

It also tells the FBI to recommend that local agencies keep track of bias “incidents,” such as racially motivated verbal abuse, that do not rise to the level of a crime.

“While these actions are unlikely to rise to the level of a hate crime, the impetus for these actions are the same—fear and xenophobia. In order to meaningfully address the root causes of this bias and hostility, we need a clear and full picture of the scope of the problem. Data on hate crimes alone is insufficient,” Hirono and Meng wrote. 
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House OKs Debt and Funding Plan, Inviting Clash With Republicans

The U.S. House voted Tuesday night to fund the government into early December, suspend the federal debt limit, and provide disaster and refugee aid, setting up a high-stakes showdown with Republicans who oppose the package despite the prospects of a looming fiscal crisis.

The Democratic-led House passed the measure by a vote of 220-211, strictly along party lines. The bill now goes to the Senate, where it is likely to falter because of overwhelming GOP opposition.

The federal government faces a shutdown if funding stops on Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year, midnight next Thursday. Additionally, at some point in October the U.S. risks defaulting on its accumulated debt load if its borrowing limits are not waived or adjusted. 

“Our country will suffer greatly if we do not act now to stave off this unnecessary and preventable crisis,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said shortly before the vote.

The package approved Tuesday would provide stopgap money to keep the government funded to Dec. 3 and extend borrowing authority through the end of 2022. It includes $28.6 billion in disaster relief for the aftermath of Hurricane Ida and other extreme weather events, and $6.3 billion to support Afghanistan evacuees in the fallout from the end of the 20-year war.

While suspending the debt ceiling allows the government to meet financial obligations already incurred, Republicans argued it would also facilitate a spending binge in the months ahead.

“I will not support signing a blank check as this majority is advancing the most reckless expansion of government in generations,” said Representative Dan Meuser, a Republican.

Backed by the White House, Democratic congressional leaders pushed ahead at a time of great uncertainty in Congress. Democrats are also trying to gather support for President Joe Biden’s broad “build back better” agenda, which would have a price tag of up to $3.5 trillion over 10 years.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said he was not about to help pay off past debts when Biden was about to pile on more. He said since Democrats control the White House and Congress, it’s their problem to find the votes.

“The debt ceiling will be raised as it always should be, but it will be raised by the Democrats,” McConnell said.

In the 50-50 Senate, Democrats will be hard-pressed to find 10 Republicans to reach the 60-vote threshold needed to overcome a filibuster.

“This is playing with fire,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said.

The Treasury Department has been using “extraordinary measures” to fund the government since the last debt limit suspension expired July 31, and projects that at some point next month will run out cash reserves. Then, it will have to rely on incoming receipts to pay its obligations, now at $28.4 trillion.

That could force the Treasury to delay or miss payments, a devastating situation.

Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, warned if lawmakers allow a federal debt default “this economic scenario is cataclysmic.” 

In a report being circulated by Democrats, Zandi warned that a potential downturn from government funding cutbacks would cost 6 million jobs and stock market losses would wipe out $15 trillion of household wealth. 

Once a routine matter, raising the debt ceiling has become a political weapon of choice for Republicans in Washington ever since the 2011 arrival of tea party lawmakers who refused to allow the increase. At the time, they argued against more spending and the standoff triggered a fiscal crisis.

Echoing that strategy, McConnell is refusing to provide Republican votes, even though he also relied on Democratic votes help raise the debt ceiling when his party had the majority. He explained his current thinking to senators during a private lunch Tuesday.

Still, some Republican senators might have a tough time voting no.

Republican John Kennedy of Louisiana, whose state was battered by the hurricane and who is up for election next year, said he will likely vote for the increase. “My people desperately need the help,” he said. 

White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that “in our view, this should not be a controversial vote.” Psaki said Congress has raised the debt ceiling numerous times on a bipartisan basis, including three times under President Donald Trump.

Representative Rosa DeLauro, the Democratic chairwoman of the House Appropriations Committee, was forced to introduce another version of the bill Tuesday after some within the Democratic caucus objected to the inclusion of $1 billion for Israel’s Iron Dome defense system, which uses missiles to intercept short-range rockets fired into the country.

The Israel defense issue splits Democrats, but DeLauro assured colleagues that money for the weapons system would be included in the annual defense spending bill for the next fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. Hoyer went a step further and said he would bring a bill to the floor this week to replenish the Iron Dome system.

Republicans were highly critical of the change and vowed to stand as allies with Israel. 

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Democrats were negotiating among themselves over Biden’s big “build back better” package as the price tag likely slips to win over skeptical centrist lawmakers who view it as too much. 

Publicly, the White House has remained confident the legislation will pass soon, despite sharp differences among progressives and moderates in the party over the eventual size of the package and a companion $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill.

There has been a flurry of outreach from the White House to Democrats on Capitol Hill, and Biden himself was given a call sheet of lawmakers to cajole, even though his week was dominated by foreign policy, including his speech to the United Nations General Assembly. 

The president has been talking to a wide number of lawmakers beyond his recent meetings with Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, two key centrist votes, according to a White House official familiar with the calls and granted anonymity to discuss them.

Biden’s big initiative touches almost all aspects of Americans’ lives. It would impose tax hikes on corporations and wealthy Americans earning beyond $400,000 a year and plow that money back into federal programs for young and old. It would increase and expand government health, education and family support programs for households, children and seniors, and boost environmental infrastructure programs to fight climate change.

With Republicans opposed to Biden’s vision, Democrats have no votes to spare in the Senate, and just a few votes’ margin in the House.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has promised a Sept. 27 vote on a companion bill, a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill of public works projects that enjoys widespread support from both parties in the Senate, though House Republicans mostly oppose it.

Even though that bipartisan bill should be an easy legislative lift, it too faces a political obstacle course. Dozens of lawmakers in the Congressional Progressive Caucus are expected to vote against it if it comes ahead of the broader Biden package. And centrists won’t vote for the broader package unless they are assured the bipartisan bill will also be included.
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Senate Parliamentarian Deals Blow to Dems’ Immigration Push

Democrats can’t use their $3.5 trillion package bolstering social and climate programs to give millions of immigrants a chance to become citizens, the Senate’s parliamentarian said late Sunday, a crushing blow to what was the party’s clearest pathway in years to attaining that long-sought goal. 

The decision by Elizabeth MacDonough, the Senate’s nonpartisan interpreter of its rules, is a setback for President Joe Biden, congressional Democrats and their allies in the pro-immigration and progressive communities. It badly damages Democrats’ hopes of enacting — over Republican opposition — changes letting several categories of immigrants gain permanent residence and possibly citizenship.  

MacDonough’s decision was described by a person informed about the ruling who would describe it only on condition of anonymity. 

The parliamentarian decided that the immigration language could not be included in an immense bill that’s been shielded from GOP filibusters. Left vulnerable to filibusters, which require 60 Senate votes to defuse, the immigration provisions have virtually no chance in the 50-50 Senate. 

MacDonough rejected Democratic language that would have opened a doorway to citizenship for young immigrants brought illegally to the country as children, often called “Dreamers”; immigrants with Temporary Protected Status who’ve fled countries stricken by natural disasters or extreme violence; essential workers; and farm workers. 

Estimates vary because many people can be in more than one category, but the liberal Center for American Progress has estimated that 6 million people could be helped by the Democratic effort. Biden had proposed a broader drive that would have affected 11 million immigrants. 

Democrats and their pro-immigration allies have said they will offer alternative approaches to MacDonough that would open a doorway to permanent status to at least some immigrants.  

The overall legislation would boost spending for social safety net, environment and other programs and largely finance the initiatives with tax increases on the rich and corporations. Moderate Democrats want to water down some of the provisions, including shrinking its price tag, but progressives oppose trimming it. 

Party leaders are still working on finding a compromise on the sweeping legislation that would satisfy virtually every Democrat in Congress. They can’t lose any Democratic votes in the 50-50 Senate and can lose no more than three in the House. 

Under the special process Democrats are using to shield the overall bill from a filibuster, language in such legislation is considered “extraneous” and is supposed to be removed if its budget impact is “merely incidental” to the provision’s overall policies.  

MacDonough said the budget impact of Democrats’ immigration proposal was outweighed by the policy impact it would have. Democrats have said that according to an unreleased estimate by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the immigration provisions would have increased federal deficits by more than $130 billion over the coming decade, largely because of federal benefits the immigrants would qualify for.  

Democrats and a handful of GOP allies have made halting progress during the past two decades toward legislation that would help millions of immigrants gain permanent legal status in the U.S. Ultimately, they’ve been thwarted each time by broad Republican opposition. 

The House has approved separate bills this year achieving much of that, but the measures have gone nowhere in the Senate because of Republican filibusters. Bipartisan talks have yielded no middle ground. 
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US Debt Limit Struggle Raises Specter of Catastrophic Default

Unless Congress votes to increase the amount of money the U.S. Treasury is allowed to borrow above its current debt of $28.5 trillion, the United States will default on its financial obligations sometime in the next several weeks, experts warn.

Few experts consider that likely to happen, but if it did, it could trigger an economic catastrophe with effects far beyond America’s shores.

In a letter to members of Congress last week, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned of the damage that would result if the U.S. is unable, even for a short time, to pay its bills.

“A delay that calls into question the federal government’s ability to meet all its obligations would likely cause irreparable damage to the U.S. economy and global financial markets,” wrote Yellen, the former chair of the Federal Reserve Board. “At a time when American families, communities, and businesses are still suffering from the effects of the ongoing global pandemic, it would be particularly irresponsible to put the full faith and credit of the United States at risk.”

With that crisis looming, Democrats and Republicans in Washington are battling over who should take responsibility for the politically unpopular task of raising the cap on borrowing, commonly known as the debt limit. Republicans, led by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, have vowed that not a single one of them will vote to raise the limit.

For their part, Democrats say that much of the spending the increased debt would finance is the result of policies passed by a Republican-led Congress and signed by a Republican president, Donald Trump. Therefore, they argue, the GOP should participate in raising the limit.

‘America must never default’

The strange thing about the current debate is that there is absolutely no disagreement between the parties about what should happen. In an interview with the Louisville Courier-Journal in his home state of Kentucky last week, McConnell was explicit, saying that “America must never default” and “the debt ceiling needs to be raised.”

However, McConnell said, Republicans will not provide any votes to make that happen. What he is demanding the Democrats do is raise the debt limit unilaterally, using a process called “budget reconciliation,” which would make it impossible for Senate Republicans to block a vote on the measure.

McConnell’s stance has angered Democrats, who point out that enforcement of the debt ceiling was suspended three times during the four years of the Trump presidency, each time with Democratic support for allowing the debt to rise.

Possible House vote next week 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, has ruled out the possibility of including a debt ceiling increase in a reconciliation package, creating what appears to be an impasse on Capitol Hill.

On Friday, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat, said the House would vote on a measure to raise the debt ceiling next week. House Democrats could opt to tie the debt limit measure to a must-pass spending bill that would avert a government shutdown when the fiscal year ends on September 30, upping the significance of Republican opposition.

If the House bill passes, it would move to the 50-50 Senate, where Democrats have a bare majority because Vice President Kamala Harris can cast a tiebreaking vote. Such a measure, however, would be susceptible to a Republican filibuster if GOP lawmakers choose to block it.

‘Who blinks first?’ 

Many in Washington believe the debt ceiling will be raised before the U.S. defaults, but they aren’t sure of the mechanism. Yet lawmakers have come dangerously close to defaulting in the past. In 2011, when House Republicans battled with Democratic President Barack Obama over the federal debt, the bond rating firm Standard & Poor’s issued the first-ever downgrade of U.S. sovereign debt, sparking a major stock market sell-off.

“We know what’s going to happen, but we don’t know how it’s going to happen,” said Marc Goldwein, senior vice president and senior policy director for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a government spending watchdog. “At the end of the day, one way or another, politicians will raise or suspend the debt limit. The United States cannot and will not default on its obligations. And so somebody is going to budge. But the question is, who blinks first?”

There are multiple ways this could play out, said Richard Kogan, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

“Congress could enact a debt limit increase or a new suspension, and the amount of that increase or the duration of the suspension could be debatable,” he said. “Congress could choose to add other conditions, but doing so has not been the standard in recent years, for good reason. And it is possible that for political reasons Republicans in Congress will allow this to be done, but only with Democratic votes.”

New borrowing necessary

Until August 2, the country had been operating under the latest of a series of suspensions of the debt ceiling that allowed the Treasury to issue new debt without restrictions. When the suspension was lifted, the government’s debt stood at an estimated $28.5 trillion.

That represented an increase of about $6.5 trillion since 2019, the last time the limit was suspended, and about $8.6 trillion since a suspension that took effect in the first months of the Trump administration.

Most of the increase in federal debt since 2017 happened under the Trump administration, but a significant part of it, mainly in pandemic relief legislation, was signed into law by President Joe Biden.

Since August, the Treasury Department has engaged in a series of “extraordinary measures” to avoid defaulting on obligations without additional borrowing. However, Treasury officials have said those measures will become unsustainable sometime next month.

Pressure campaign 

The Biden administration has been trying to increase the political pressure on McConnell and congressional Republicans to force them to participate in a debt limit increase.

On Wednesday, Yellen spoke with McConnell on the phone. The White House said the purpose of the call was to “convey what the enormous dangers of default would be.” But a spokesperson for McConnell made it clear that the conversation had not moved the Republican.

“The leader repeated to Secretary Yellen what he has said publicly since July,” the spokesperson said. “They will have to raise the debt ceiling on their own, and they have the tools to do it.”

On Friday, The Associated Press reported that the administration had been reaching out to state and local government leaders to warn them about interruptions in federal funding that could result if the limit wasn’t raised.

Debt limit history 

The debt limit was not designed to be used as a political cudgel. Its origins go back to World War I, when Congress pre-authorized a certain level of debt so the Treasury would not have to seek congressional authorization every time it needed to issue new bonds.

Since 1917, when it was created, the debt limit has been raised many times. According to the Treasury Department, since 1960, Congress has acted to “raise, temporarily extend, or revise the definition of the debt limit” 78 times.

It is only in recent decades, as federal borrowing has accelerated, that raising the debt limit has become a political weapon.

 
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Pelosi, in London, Cautions Britain on Ending Ireland Peace Agreement

U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi cautioned Britain on Friday that nullifying the Northern Ireland peace agreement — known as the Good Friday accords — would likely undermine negotiations for a post-Brexit bilateral trade agreement with the United States.  

Pelosi, who was in London, told Chatham House she was not making a threat, but a prediction.

“If there is destruction of the Good Friday accords, they [are] very unlikely to have a UK-U.S. bilateral. We have to have a path that includes it,” Pelosi told the London-based think-tank.

Signed in 1998 by the Irish and British governments, the Good Friday peace accords helped end 30 years of sectarian violence. Part of that agreement allowed for a “soft border” between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, allowing for goods and services to pass easily between the two countries.

When Britain left the European Union earlier this year, the sides agreed to keep an open land border between the North and Ireland, which remains an EU member. That, however, required customs checks to be introduced on goods moving between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K.  

Facing internal opposition to those checks, Britain wants to renegotiate the agreement but the EU has so far refused.

The United States, which played a key role in securing the landmark 1998 accord, has cautioned Britain against doing anything to undermine the peace settlement.

Pelosi added that nobody was “declaring one thing or another,” and the government in Ireland has expressed a desire to work out the differences. But she said any significant changes to the accords would make a bilateral trade agreement with Britain “problematic.”

Pelosi was also asked about U.S. politics and the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump.

The House speaker said the insurrection, which she said was “incited” by Trump, was rooted in “some kind of white supremacy, antisemitism, Islamophobia.” She alluded to FBI statements that identify domestic extremists as the most urgent terror threat on U.S. soil.

Pelosi also urged members of the U.S. Republican party to “take back your party.”

“The Republican party, the Grand Old Party, has made tremendous contributions to our country,” Pelosi said, telling party leaders, “Don’t let your party be hijacked by a cult.”

Some information in this report was provided by the Associated Press and Reuters news organizations.
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Biden Slams Opponents of Vaccine Mandate

A growing number of Republicans, including state governors, have vowed to mount legal challenges against President Joe Biden’s sweeping measures to compel workers and federal employees to get vaccinated against COVID-19. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara has the story.
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Republican Who Voted to Impeach Trump Exits 2022 Race

Congressman Anthony Gonzalez, one of 10 US House Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump in January, said Thursday he would not seek reelection, citing the “toxic” atmosphere in a party that remains enthralled by the former president.

The two-term back-bencher from Ohio stressed that family considerations played a substantial role in his decision, but he acknowledged the difficult political scenario, one in which he would have had to face a Trump-endorsed primary challenger next year.

“While my desire to build a fuller family life is at the heart of my decision, it is also true that the current state of our politics, especially many of the toxic dynamics inside our own party, is a significant factor in my decision,” he said in a statement.

Gonzalez was more blunt in an interview in Thursday’s New York Times, assailing Trump as “a cancer for the country” for inspiring his supporters to launch the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot.

“I don’t believe he can ever be president again,” he told the daily.

Gonzalez, a 36-year-old conservative, is the first among the House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump to retire rather than endure what is undoubtedly a brutal season of primaries ahead.

Trump, who remains hugely influential in the party, has made clear he will work tirelessly to help defeat those Republicans who sought to oust him.

They include Liz Cheney, who lost her House Republican leadership position when she refused to tone down her criticism of the former president.

Trump has already announced his support for a former Trump aide, Max Miller, running for Gonzalez’s seat.

Several House Democrats tweeted out their appreciation of Gonzalez after his announcement.

He and the other Republicans who voted to impeach Trump “are paying a price for doing the right thing,” congressman Brendan Boyle said. “But they will be vindicated by history.” 
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Lawyer Charged in Probe of Trump-Russia Investigation 

The prosecutor tasked with examining the U.S. government’s investigation into Russian election interference charged a prominent cybersecurity lawyer on Thursday with making a false statement to the FBI. 

The case against the attorney, Michael Sussmann, is just the second prosecution brought by special counsel John Durham in 2½ years of work. Yet neither case brought by Durham undoes the core finding of an earlier investigation by Robert Mueller that Russia had interfered in sweeping fashion on behalf of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and that the Trump campaign welcomed that aid.

It lays bare the wide-ranging and evolving nature of Durham’s investigation. In addition to having scrutinized the activities of FBI and CIA officials during the early days of the Russia probe, it has also looked at the behavior of private individuals like Sussman who provided the U.S. government with information as it scrambled to determine whether Trump associates were coordinating with Russia to tip the election’s outcome. 

Suspect worked with Clinton campaign

The indictment accuses Sussmann of hiding that he was working with Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign during a September 2016 conversation he had with the FBI’s general counsel, when he relayed concerns from cybersecurity researchers about potentially suspicious contacts between Russia-based Alfa Bank and a Trump organization server. The FBI looked into the matter but found no connections. 

Sussmann is a former federal prosecutor who specializes in cybersecurity.

Sussmann’s lawyers, Sean Berkowitz and Michael Bosworth, said their client is a highly respected national security lawyer who had previously worked in the Justice Department under both Republican and Democratic administrations. They said they were confident he would prevail at trial and “vindicate his good name.” 

“Mr. Sussmann has committed no crime,” they said in a statement. “Any prosecution here would be baseless, unprecedented, and an unwarranted deviation from the apolitical and principled way in which the Department of Justice is supposed to do its work.” 

The Alfa Bank matter was not a pivotal element of the Russia probe and was not even mentioned in Mueller’s 448-page report in 2019. Still, the indictment may give fodder to Russia investigation critics who regard it as politically tainted and engineered by Democrats. 

Sussmann’s former firm, Perkins Coie, has deep Democratic connections. A then-partner at the firm, Marc Elias, brokered a deal with the Fusion GPS research firm to study Trump’s business ties to Russia. That work, by former British spy Christopher Steele, produced a dossier of research that helped form the basis of flawed surveillance applications targeting a former Trump campaign official, Carter Page. 

Firm accepts resignation

A spokesman for Perkins Coie said Sussmann, “who has been on leave from the firm, offered his resignation from the firm in order to focus on his legal defense, and the firm accepted it.” 

The Durham investigation has already spanned months longer than the earlier special counsel probe into Russian election interference conducted by Mueller, the former FBI director, and his team. The investigation was slowed by the coronavirus pandemic and experienced leadership tumult following the abrupt departure last fall of a top deputy on Durham’s team. 

Though Trump had eagerly anticipated Durham’s findings in hopes that they’d be a boon to his reelection campaign, any political impact the conclusion may have once had has been dimmed by the fact that Trump is no longer in office. 

The Durham appointment by then-Attorney General William Barr in 2019 was designed to examine potential errors or misconduct in the U.S. government’s investigation into whether Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign was conspiring with Russia to sway the outcome of the election. 

A two-year investigation by Mueller established that the Trump campaign was eager to receive and benefit from Kremlin aid and documented multiple interactions between Russians and Trump associates. Investigators said they did not find enough evidence to charge any campaign official with having conspired with Russia, though a half-dozen Trump aides were charged with various offenses, including false statements. 

Until now, Durham had brought only one criminal case — a false statement charge against an FBI lawyer who altered an email related to the surveillance of Page to obscure the nature of Page’s preexisting relationship with the CIA. That lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to probation. 
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California Governor Newsom Beats Back Recall Challenge

California voters have rejected a move to unseat their governor in a recall election, a rarely used provision of direct democracy in some 20 U.S. states.As the ballot count continued Wednesday, nearly two-thirds of voters had rejected the recall effort, and Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, turned back 46 challengers in an election where former President Donald Trump was an unseen player.Democrats urged a “No” vote on the recall, but Newsom said Tuesday night at a victory celebration that the result was an affirmation of his and his party’s values.“We said yes to science. We said yes to vaccines. We said yes to ending this pandemic,” he said.Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 8 MB480p | 11 MB540p | 15 MB720p | 30 MB1080p | 60 MBOriginal | 343 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioNewsom’s leading challenger, conservative radio host Larry Elder, a Republican, said COVID-19 precautions such as masks and vaccines should be voluntary and not mandated by politicians. That view disturbed voter Alice Frankston.“COVID is quite real, and we’re not done with it yet, and we need to keep with the fight,” she told VOA after voting “No” on the recall.As early voting was under way Monday, President Joe Biden campaigned in California against the recall and Elder.“He’s the clone of Donald Trump,” Biden said of Elder at a Newsom rally in Long Beach. “Can you imagine him being the governor of this state?” The partisan crowd yelled, “No.”Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said that for Democrats, dislike of Trump became a powerful motivator in voting down the recall.’Still toxic’“I think what the California result proves is that Donald Trump is still toxic to Democrats, and using Trump as a campaign issue will produce lots of Democratic votes,” he said.But Democrats were worried, as Republicans rallied around Elder over dozens of rival candidates, said analyst Shannon Bow O’Brien.“They brought big-named national Democrats out to rally the troops. I think that betrayed that they considered this a serious threat,” said O’Brien, an associate professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin.In addition to showcasing Biden, Democrats aired anti-recall ads from leading party figures, including U.S. Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.Some ongoing issues hurt Newsom, including California’s high crime rate and rising homelessness, prompting voters like Roger Neal to support the recall.“I’ve been living in Southern California for 40 years … and I just think that we need new leadership,” he said.Newsom, a former mayor of San Francisco and a former lieutenant governor, will face voters again next year in a regular election for a second four-year term. Elder, as he conceded defeat Tuesday, told supporters and reporters that the fight was not over.“We recognize that we lost the battle, but we are certainly going to win the war,” he said.It will be an uphill fight. Nearly half of California voters are registered as Democrats, while fewer than one-quarter are registered as Republicans.And California’s Republican Party is moving away from moderate voters, said Sabato.“What we’re seeing here is a party that has moved to Trump and to the right so far that they can’t win statewide elections in California,” he said.Khrystyna Shevchenko of VOA’s Ukrainian Service contributed to this report.
 
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California Governor Beats Back Recall Challenge

California voters have rejected a move to unseat their governor in a recall election, a rarely used provision of direct democracy in some 20 U.S. states. Mike O’Sullivan reports that Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, faced down 46 challengers in an election where Donald Trump became an unseen player. Camera: Roy Kim  
 
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2 Women of Color to Face Off in Boston Mayoral Race

A preliminary runoff election in the northeastern U.S. city of Boston has narrowed the field of mayoral candidates to two women of color, ensuring the city’s next elected mayor will be someone other than a white man for the first time in about 200 years. Two city councilors, Michelle Wu, who is of Taiwanese descent, and Annissa Essaibi George, a self-described Arab Polish American, won Tuesday’s runoff, defeating three other candidates that included acting Mayor Kim Janey. Wu and Essaibi George will face off in November.  Janey was the first woman and Black city resident to hold the position of acting mayor. She was appointed after Mayor Marty Walsh’s U.S. Senate confirmation as labor secretary in March. All five runoff candidates are people of color, an indication of the rapidly changing demographics in the city, where the latest U.S. census figures show that Boston residents who identify as white make up only 44.6% of the population. The figures also show that 19.1% of the city’s residents are Black, 18.7% are Latino and 11.2% are of Asian descent. Whichever woman wins the November election will govern a city with a history of racial strife. Violence erupted in the mid-1970s, when the city sought to racially integrate its public schools to comply with federal law. At that time, mobs of white adults and teens threw rocks at buses transporting Black students to all-white schools in South Boston.  Simmering racial tensions in Boston escalated again in the late 1980s, when Charles Stuart, a white man, falsely accused a Black man of killing his wife. Some information in this report was provided by The Associated Press and Reuters. 
 
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US Justice Department Files Emergency Motion Against Texas Restrictive Abortion Law

The U.S. Justice Department has filed an emergency motion with a federal judge asking him to block the southwestern state of Texas from enforcing a new law that bans nearly all abortions in the state.   In a 45-page motion filed late Tuesday with a federal district court, the Justice Department argued that the new law, commonly known as Senate Bill 8, was drafted “to prevent women from exercising their constitutional rights” to obtain an abortion.  The emergency motion is the second legal action the Biden administration has taken against Texas over the new law, after filing a lawsuit last week citing the same legal grounds.   The new law, which took effect on September 1, outlaws abortions after the sixth week of pregnancy — which opponents say is well before most women are even aware they are pregnant — with no exceptions for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest.    Texas is among a dozen mostly Republican-led states that have enacted so-called “heartbeat” abortion bans, which prohibits the procedure once a “fetal heartbeat” is detected, often at six weeks, and sometimes before a woman realizes she is pregnant. Courts in the past have blocked such bans, ruling they did not conform to the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision giving women in the U.S. the constitutional right to an abortion without excessive government interference.      The Texas anti-abortion law is also unusual in that it gives private citizens the power to enforce it by allowing them to sue abortion providers and anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion after six weeks. Those winning such lawsuits would be entitled to at least $10,000.    The Justice Department called this provision “an unprecedented scheme that seeks to deny women and providers the ability to challenge S.B. 8 in federal court.” The U.S. Supreme Court declined to block Texas from implementing the new anti-abortion law in a 5-to-4 decision earlier this month that enraged supporters of Roe v. Wade, including President Joe Biden, who warned that  “complete strangers will now be empowered to inject themselves in the most private and personal health decisions faced by women.”   Some information for this report came from the Associated Press and Reuters.  
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California Voters Reject Attempt to Remove Gov Newsom in Recall Election

Voters in the western U.S. state of California have rejected an effort to remove Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom from office.   Nearly 70% of voters overwhelmingly voted “no” in ending Newsom’s tenure early, with just more than 30% voting “yes,” according to figures released shortly after polls closed in the large state late Tuesday night.   The Associated Press, CNN and NBC News are all projecting the recall effort has failed. Speaking to reporters early Wednesday morning as the results showed him prevailing, Newsom said he was humbled and grateful to the millions and millions of Californians that exercised their fundamental right to vote.” WATCH: California election Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 4 MB480p | 6 MB540p | 8 MB720p | 15 MB1080p | 32 MBOriginal | 96 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioThe recall was launched by Republicans angered over Newsom’s strict COVID-19 rules throughout the pandemic, including school closures and restrictions on small businesses such as bars and restaurants.  Organizers secured enough signatures of registered voters to force the recall on the ballot. Voter opinion surveys in the days leading up to Tuesday’s vote showed Larry Elder, a staunch conservative radio talk show host, was the leading candidate among more than 40 would-be successors to serve out the remainder of Newsom’s term in office, which ends next year. Newsom equated the recall effort, and especially Elder’s presence on the ballot, to former President Donald Trump, a deeply unpopular figure among Democrats.  “We defeated Donald Trump, we didn’t defeat Trumpism. Trumpism is still alive, all across this country,” the governor said.   “I want to focus on what we said ‘yes’ to as a state: We said yes to science, we said yes to vaccines, we said yes to ending this pandemic,” he said earlier in his remarks.   Newsom is a prominent figure among national Democrats, having previously served as mayor of the city of San Francisco and California lieutenant governor before he was elected governor in 2018.  He enlisted the help of several Democratic luminaries in his effort to fight off the recall, including President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, a fellow Californian, and former President Barack Obama.   A potential defeat in a state dominated by Democrats could signal major problems for Biden and congressional Democrats heading into next year’s midterm legislative elections. He is the second California governor to face a recall vote. The first one in 2003 removed Democrat Gray Davis and installed popular Hollywood actor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Some information in this report came from Reuters and the Associated Press.  
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Biden Pushes $3.5 Trillion Climate Change Solution 

U.S. President Joe Biden says extreme weather caused by climate change is putting America in a “code red” situation. He’s pushing two massive bills in Congress, totaling in the trillions of dollars, to reverse the damage. From Washington, VOA White House correspondent Anita Powell looks at what’s at stake.  Produced by: Jesusemen Oni 
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Biden Pitches Spending Plan as Key to Fight Climate Change

President Joe Biden tried to advance his domestic spending plans in Colorado on Tuesday by warning about the dangers of climate change while highlighting how his clean-energy proposals would also create well-paying jobs.The trip to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s Flatirons Campus outside Denver capped the president’s two-day swing to the West, and it offered Biden the chance to continue linking the need to pass his spending package to the urgent threat posed by climate change.”Here’s the good news: Something that is caused by humans can be solved by humans,” Biden said. He deemed the need for a clean-energy future an “economic imperative and a national security imperative” and said that there was no time to waste as the impact of climate change seems to grow more severe by the year.Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 9 MB480p | 14 MB540p | 18 MB720p | 35 MB1080p | 69 MBOriginal | 222 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioBiden said that extreme weather events will cost more than $100 billion in damages this year, and he underscored his goal to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 while using solely carbon pollution-free power by 2035.”We can do that. We can do all of this in a way that creates good jobs, lowers costs to consumers and businesses, and makes us global leaders,” the president said.Biden spoke about “more jobs for the economy” on an earlier tour as he checked out a giant windmill blade on the ground outside the lab and got a demonstration of wind turbine technology.And, keenly aware of the delicate work under way back in Washington to craft details of his infrastructure-plus spending package, he gestured at Democratic legislators along for the tour and said, “They’re the ones getting it all through Congress.”‘A crisis with … opportunity’Biden had spent Monday in Boise, Idaho, and Sacramento, California, receiving briefings on the devastating wildfire season and viewing the damage by the Caldor Fire to communities around Lake Tahoe.”We can’t ignore the reality that these wildfires are being supercharged by climate change,” Biden said, noting that catastrophic weather doesn’t strike based on partisan ideology. “It isn’t about red or blue states. It’s about fires. Just fires.”Throughout his trip, Biden held out the wildfires across the region as an argument for his $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill and additional $3.5 trillion package of spending. The president said every dollar spent on “resilience” would save $6 in future costs. And he made the case that the rebuilding must go beyond simply restoring damaged systems and instead ensure communities can withstand such crises.”In the end, it’s not about red states or blue states. A drought or a fire doesn’t see a property line,” Biden said. “It doesn’t care, give a damn for what party you belong to. … Yes, we face a crisis, but we face a crisis with unprecedented opportunity.”The climate provisions in Biden’s plans include tax incentives for clean energy and electric vehicles, investments to transition the economy away from fossil fuels and toward renewable sources such as wind and solar power, and creation of a civilian climate corps.Biden has set a goal of eliminating pollution from fossil fuel in the power sector by 2035 and from the U.S. economy overall by 2050.’We have to think big’The president’s two-day Western swing comes at a critical juncture for a central plank of his legislative agenda. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are working to assemble details of the infrastructure-plus plan — and how to pay for it, a concern not just for Republicans.With unified Republican opposition in Congress, Biden needs to overcome the skepticism of two key centrist Democrats in the closely divided Senate. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona have expressed concerns about the size of the $3.5 trillion spending package.In California, Biden appeared to respond to those concerned about the plan’s size, saying the cost “may be” as much as $3.5 trillion and would be spread out over 10 years, a period during which the economy is expected to grow. He also insisted that when it comes to addressing climate change, “we have to think big.””Thinking small is a prescription for disaster,” he said.The 100-member Senate is evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. Given solid GOP opposition, Biden’s plan cannot pass the Senate without Manchin’s or Sinema’s support. The legislative push comes at a crucial time for Biden, who had seen his poll numbers tumble after the United States’ tumultuous exit from Afghanistan and a rise in COVID-19 cases due to the highly contagious delta variant. 
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California Voters to Decide Fate of Governor Gavin Newsom in Recall Election

Voters in the western U.S. state of California are heading to the polls Tuesday to decide whether to remove Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom in a recall election.
 
Newsom was joined by U.S. President Joe Biden late Monday in a final campaign rally in the southern city of Long Beach to urge Democrats to turn out in the polls and reject the recall.    
 
“The eyes of the nation are on California,” President Biden told the crowd, “because the decision you’re going to make isn’t just going to have a huge impact on California, it’s going to reverberate around the nation, and quite frankly, not a joke, around the world.”
 
The recall was launched by Republicans angered over Newsom’s strict COVID-19 rules throughout the pandemic, including school closures and restrictions on small businesses such as bars and restaurants.  Organizers secured enough signatures of registered voters to force the recall on the ballot.President Joe Biden acknowledges the crowd as he arrives at a rally to support California Gov. Gavin Newsom ahead of the California gubernatorial recall election, Sept. 13, 2021, in Long Beach, California.Californians are being asked to vote either yes or no to remove Newsom from office.  If enough voters select “yes,” a candidate who receives a simple majority of the vote will replace Newsom.  Voter opinion surveys show Larry Elder, a staunch conservative radio talk show host, is the leading candidate among more than 40 would-be successors to serve out the remainder of Newsom’s term in office, which ends next year.
 
Newsom is a prominent figure among national Democrats, having previously served as mayor of the city of San Francisco and California lieutenant governor before he was elected governor in 2018.  His defeat in a state dominated by Democrats could signal major problems for Biden and congressional Democrats heading into next year’s midterm legislative elections. But recent surveys show Newsom with a solid lead in the campaign.
 
He is the second California governor to face a recall vote. The first one in 2003 removed Democrat Gray Davis and installed popular Hollywood actor Arnold Schwarzenegger.  
Democrats are running. YouTube creator Kevin Paffrath is the most well-known of nine Democrats on the ballot.
 
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Biden Comes to California to Help Newsom Fight off Recall

President Joe Biden is providing last-minute help Monday to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is only the fourth governor in U.S. history and the second in California to face a recall election. The only other time a recall election for a California governor was held, in 2003, voters removed Democratic Gov. Gray Davis and replaced him with Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger. Voting ends Tuesday in the race that could oust Newsom, a first-term Democrat, and it’s being watched ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, when control of Congress and more than half of governorships are in play. “We can show the rest of the nation that we won’t let Republicans drag our state backwards,” Newsom tweeted. “Make sure your voice is heard. VOTE NO.” Amateur Republican political organizers upset with Newsom’s approach to crime, homelessness and immigration launched the recall drive in early 2020, but the coronavirus pandemic got it to the ballot. Newsom was the first governor in the country to issue a statewide stay-at-home order that shuttered many businesses for months and kept kids out of classrooms.  “There’s no front that I can think of where this man has done a good job — not on schools, not on homelessness, not in the way he shut down this state,” Larry Elder, a conservative talk radio host and Republican front-runner in polls, said Monday at a campaign stop.  Elder planned events across Southern California, concluding with an election eve rally in Orange County that would occur as Newsom campaigns with Biden just to the north in Long Beach.  Tuesday is the last day to vote. Nearly 8 million Californians already have cast mail-in ballots. Republicans tend to be more skeptical of mail voting, particularly as former President Donald Trump has suggested it leads to fraud, so recall organizers are hoping Newsom’s critics show up in huge numbers for in-person Election Day voting. Voters are being asked two questions: Should Newsom be recalled, yes or no, and who should replace him? The results of the second question only matter if a majority wants to remove Newsom. Recent polls from the Public Policy Institute of California and others showed Newsom defeating the recall. Lead recall organizer Orrin Heatlie said the fact that Newsom is bringing in Biden to campaign with him shows Democrats are concerned. He says neither Biden nor Trump should be weighing in on the contest because it’s about California issues.  “This is a matter between the people of California and their governor and really has nothing to do with the federal government; and the president, with all due respect, should mind his own business,” Heatlie said. Meanwhile, he said Trump’s statement Monday calling the election rigged was “more damaging than the actual fraud itself.” “When people aren’t confident, if they don’t have faith that their vote is going to count, then they’re not going to waste their time to cast their ballot,” Heatlie said.  There has been no confirmed evidence of widespread fraud.  Biden toured wildfire damage in Northern California before heading south to rally with Newsom. His appearance underscores the importance of Democrats holding the governorship in the nation’s most populous state and chief laboratory for progressive policies.  Vice President Kamala Harris, a California native, campaigned with Newsom last week and former President Barack Obama recorded a television ad urging no on the recall.  “Gavin Newsom can bring in all the Washington folks that he wants, but this election is a referendum on the governor’s failures,” said former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, another Republican candidate to replace Newsom. Businessman John Cox, a Republican who lost badly to Newsom in 2018, campaigned outside the French Laundry, the upscale Napa Valley restaurant where Newsom was caught attending a birthday party last fall in violation of his administration’s coronavirus rules.  State Assemblyman Kevin Kiley planned campaign stops in Southern California. No prominent elected Democrats are running. YouTube creator Kevin Paffrath is the most well-known of nine Democrats on the ballot. 
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Out West, Biden Points to Wildfires to Push for $3.5 Trillion Rebuild

President Joe Biden on Monday used his first Western swing since taking office to hold out the wildfires burning across the region as an argument for his $3.5 trillion rebuilding plans, calling year-round fires and other extreme weather a climate change reality the nation can no longer ignore. “Even some of my less believing friends are all of a sudden having an altar call,” Biden said of those who have sought to minimize the risks posed by climate change. “They’re seeing the Lord.”  With stops in Idaho and California, Biden sought to boost support for his big rebuilding plans, saying every dollar spent on “resilience” would save $6 in future costs. And he said the rebuilding must go beyond simply restoring damaged systems and instead ensure communities can withstand catastrophic weather, which doesn’t strike based on partisan ideology. “It’s not a Democrat thing. It’s not a Republican thing. It’s a weather thing,” he said in Boise, Idaho. “It’s a reality. It’s serious and we can do this.” The president’s two-day Western swing comes at a critical juncture for a central plank of his legislative agenda. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are working to assemble details of the infrastructure-plus plan — and to figure out how to pay for it, a concern not just for Republicans. A key Democratic senator said Sunday that he will not vote for a package so large. In California, Biden took an aerial tour of damage from the Caldor Fire after getting a briefing from officials at the state emergency services office. Governor Gavin Newsom, who faces a recall vote Tuesday, joined Biden for the briefing. As he amplified Biden’s message, Newsom said the emergency center had become his office because fire season has “just kept going.” “This has been a hard year and a half,” Newsom said. President Joe Biden speaks during a meeting as he tours the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, Sept. 13, 2021.During an earlier briefing in Boise at the National Interagency Fire Center, which coordinates the government’s wildfire response, Biden noted that wildfires start earlier every year and that this year, they have scorched 5.4 million acres. “That’s larger than the entire state of New Jersey,” Biden said. “The reality is we have a global warming problem, a serious global warming problem, and it’s consequential, and what’s going to happen is, things are not going to go back,” he said.  Biden, who visits Denver on Tuesday before returning to Washington, aimed to link the increasing frequency of wildfires, drought, floods and other extreme weather events to what he and scientists say is a need to invest billions in combating climate change, along with vastly expanding the nation’s social safety net. The president argued for spending now to make the future effects of climate change less costly, as he did during recent stops in Louisiana, New York and New Jersey — all states that suffered millions of dollars in flood and other damage and scores of deaths after Hurricane Ida.  Biden also praised firefighters for the life-threatening risks they take and discussed the administration’s recent use of a wartime law to boost supplies of fire hoses from the U.S. Forest Service’s primary supplier, an Oklahoma City nonprofit called NewView Oklahoma.  In deep-red Idaho, several opposing groups leveraged Biden’s visit as a way to show resistance to his administration. GOP gubernatorial candidates, an anti-vaccine organization and a far-right group were among those urging people to turn out against the president. More than 1,000 protesters did so, gathering in Boise before Biden arrived, to express displeasure with his coronavirus plan, the election and other issues. Chris Burns, a 62-year-old from Boise, said, “I’m against everything Biden is for.” Burns was especially displeased with a sweeping new vaccine mandate for 100 million people that Biden announced last week. “He’s acting like a dictator,” Burns said. The White House is trying to turn the corner after a difficult month dominated by a chaotic and violent U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the surging delta COVID-19 variant that has upended what the president had hoped would mark a summer in which the nation was finally freed from the coronavirus. Biden, while acknowledging that his polling numbers had dipped in recent weeks, argued his agenda is “overwhelmingly popular” with the public. He said he expects his Republican opponents to attack him instead of debating him on the merits of his spending plan. Besides the Republican opposition in Congress, Biden needs to overcome the skepticism of two key centrist Democrats in the closely divided Senate. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona have expressed concerns about the size of the $3.5 trillion spending package. Manchin said Sunday, “I cannot support $3.5 trillion,” citing in particular his opposition to a proposed increase in the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28% and vast new social spending envisioned by the president. Manchin also complained about a process he said felt rushed.  The 100-member Senate is evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. Given solid GOP opposition, Biden’s plan would fail to clear the Senate without Manchin and Sinema’s support. The climate provisions in Biden’s plans include tax incentives for clean energy and electric vehicles, investments to transition the economy away from fossil fuels and toward renewable sources such as wind and solar power, and creation of a civilian climate corps. The Biden administration in June laid out a strategy to deal with the growing wildfire threat, which included hiring more federal firefighters and implementing new technologies to detect and address fires quickly. Last month, the president approved a disaster declaration for California, providing federal aid for the counties affected by the Dixie and River fires. He issued another disaster declaration for the state just before Monday’s visit aimed at areas affected by the Caldor Fire. 
 
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In Historic First, Woman of Color Expected to Be Next Mayor of Boston

The four front-runners in the race for mayor of Boston are all women of color, a remarkable turn of events for a city that has only elected white men to that office since its inception in 1822. On Tuesday, voters will choose the top two candidates from a field of eight, but polling indicates that only four candidates stand a chance at advancing — each of whom is a woman of color. The two winners will face off in the official mayoral election on November 2. Leading the field with 31% of the vote, FILE – Boston mayoral candidate Michelle Wu waves while walking in the Roxbury Unity Parade, in Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood, July 18, 2021.Janey took office in March when former mayor Martin Walsh left to become U.S. secretary of labor. Janey and Campbell are both Black women. George is the daughter of a Tunisian-Arab father and a Polish mother, and identifies as a woman of color. There are four other candidates on the ballot, only three of whom remain active, but none was polling above 3% last week. History will be made “History will not be made on November 2, the day of the final election,” said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center. “History will technically be made next Tuesday, because both candidates will be persons of color.” While in some ways remarkable, the candidates vying for mayor are actually a reflection of a city that has undergone significant change in its racial makeup over the past decades. Long a majority-white city, Boston is now a majority-minority city, with Black and Hispanic residents representing 19% of the population and Asians representing 11%. While still the largest single group, Whites now represent only 45% of the city’s residents. A signal of coming political change arrived in 2018 when Ayanna Pressley, a Black woman and a member of the City Council, unseated 10-term Congressman Mike Capuano as representative of Massachusetts’ Seventh Congressional District. Troubled racial history Boston, the 24th-largest city in the U.S., has a complex and sometimes troubled racial history. In the years prior to the Civil War, the city was a hotbed of the Abolitionist movement, which demanded an end to slavery. And during the war, the famed all-Black 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment was raised there. But the city hasn’t always lived up to its history. In the 1970s and 1980s, efforts to integrate schools that were sharply divided by race were met with violent protests from White Bostonians who objected to having Black children bused into their neighborhoods for school. FILE – Boston’s acting Mayor Kim Janey speaks during a news conference at City Hall in Boston, Aug. 12, 2021.One of the candidates, Acting Mayor Janey, experienced those riots as a child. At an event last week, she recalled being bused through rock-throwing mobs as a child. She said her presence as acting mayor and as a mayoral candidate are both “a testament to how far this city has come.” Candidates’ biographies Janey, who became acting mayor when Walsh joined the Biden administration, has already made history in that role as the first woman and first person of color to run City Hall. A native of Boston, she raised her daughter as a single mother in high school, and ultimately worked her way through Smith College.  Wu is a graduate of Harvard and Harvard Law School. She has served on the City Council since 2013 when, at age 28, she became the first Asian American elected to that body. The child of Taiwanese immigrants, Wu speaks fluent Mandarin and Spanish. FILE – Boston mayoral candidate Annissa Essaibi George greets people before the start of the Roxbury Unity Parade, in Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood, July 18, 2021.George is a native Bostonian who attended Boston University and earned a master’s degree in Education from the University of Massachusetts Boston. A high school teacher since 2001, George was elected to the City Council in 2015. FILE – Boston mayoral candidate Andrea Campbell greets people before the start of the Roxbury Unity Parade, in Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood, July 18, 2021.Campbell, also a Boston native, has served on the City Council since 2015 and became the first Black woman to serve as Council president, a position she held for two years beginning in January 2018. She worked for a time as deputy legal counsel to Deval Patrick, the first Black person to serve as governor of Massachusetts. Slow to elect women The election of Pressley, and now the expected election of a woman of color as mayor, mark significant strides for a city that has not welcomed women to seats of power, said Erin O’Brien, an associate professor of Political Science and the University of Massachusetts Boston. “Boston has been very slow to elect candidates of color, and women,” she said. “And even today, we’re barely middle of the pack when it comes to electing women, amongst the 50 states. So you’ve got a very liberal state, but you don’t have a state where the elected leaders are as diverse as the populace.” One thing that won’t be unique about the outcome of the election on Tuesday is the political party of the victor. All four of the leading candidates are members of the Democratic Party. Boston has not elected a Republican mayor since 1925. Whoever prevails on Tuesday, said Suffolk’s Paleologos, the result “is going to rewrite history, and in terms of the election, in November, of a person of color, that’s a big story.” 
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Man with Weapons Arrested Near US Capitol 

U.S. Capitol Police said they arrested a California man early Monday near the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington and that multiple knives, a bayonet and a machete were in his truck. Officers on patrol said that around midnight Sunday they noticed the truck, with a swastika and other white supremacist symbols painted on it. Instead of a license plate, police said the truck had a picture of an American flag. It is illegal to carry a bayonet and machete in Washington. The arrested man, Donald Craighead, 44, of Oceanside, California, said he was “on patrol,” police said. Craighead was charged with possession of prohibited weapons. Police said they are continuing to investigate the suspect. Security alerts remain high near the U.S. Capitol, not far from the Democratic party headquarters, in the aftermath of the storming of the Capitol building January 6 by hundreds of supporters of former President Donald Trump. The incident happened as lawmakers were certifying that he had lost his re-election bid last November to Democrat Joe Biden, who took over as president January 20. Those supporting the more than 600 rioters arrested eight months ago are planning a rally, “Justice for J6,” in Washington this Saturday. About 50 people have pleaded guilty to an array of charges, while the rest of the cases are pending, with some suspects remaining jailed, awaiting trials.   
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Analysis: Is Biden Summoning ‘Strategic Patience’ With North Korea?

As the stalemate between the United States and North Korea persists, some experts are wondering whether the Biden administration is returning to the Obama-era policy of strategic patience.Ken Gause, director of the Adversary Analytics Program at CNA, thinks the U.S. could “by default” end up in strategic patience, which he described as a “kind of status quo and which is the comfort zone for the United States.”Strategic patience refers to the Obama administration’s lack of action after a deal to freeze and disable the Yongbyon reactor collapsed in 2012.Gause added, “After that fell through, they really didn’t try to go back to the negotiating table. … The Biden administration is made up of a lot of people that served in those administrations, and probably, their latitude for trying new things with North Korea is probably somewhat limited.”Others argue that Biden’s North Korea policy differs from Obama’s, citing the administration’s willingness to engage North Korea.”The Biden administration, in contrast to the Obama administration, [has] expressed public concern about North Korea’s nuclear development and recognized that it cannot be kicked down the road too far,” said Scott Snyder, director of the program on U.S.-Korea policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price on Thursday reiterated that the U.S. is ready for dialogue with North Korea.”When it comes to the United States, our goal continues to be the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” Price said. “We are prepared to engage in diplomacy toward that objective.”Price continued: “We have made clear to them that Paramilitary forces parade to mark the 73rd founding anniversary of the republic at Kim Il Sung square in Pyongyang in this undated image supplied by North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency.”The Biden administration faces adverse circumstances around its efforts to engage with North Korea — in the form of North Korea’s domestic economic stress, the pandemic and North Korea’s internal political rectification campaign,” Snyder said.North Korea faces a slew of issues, including “North Korea leader Kim Jong Un attends a paramilitary parade held to mark the 73rd founding anniversary of the republic at Kim Il Sung square in Pyongyang in this undated image supplied by North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency, Sept. 9, 2021.Anthony Ruggiero, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said the U.S. should not lift sanctions before North Korea makes a move toward denuclearization.”Since 1994, the Kim family has convinced American presidents to provide significant sanctions relief and other benefits for the promise of North Korea’s denuclearization,” Ruggiero said. “And each time, the Kim family has failed to deliver.”Ruggiero continued: “Biden should change his approach and increase the pressure on North Korea by implementing existing sanctions.”Some analysts warned that North Korea could return to brinkmanship to put pressure on the Biden administration.David Maxwell, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said North Korea’s demand for sanctions relief will continue in a form of “blackmail diplomacy, which is really about using threats, increased tensions, in provocations.”Repetition of past provocations such as border clashes, Yeonpyeong Island attacks, and missile and rocket tests could occur, according to Maxwell.  
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Newsom, GOP Rivals Seek Votes in Recall’s Final Weekend

Democratic allies of California Governor Gavin Newsom continued to express confidence Saturday in his chances of beating back a recall but warned his supporters to keep urging people to vote as they seek a decisive win, while Republicans said the contest is far from settled.  “We don’t need to just win by a little, we need to win by a lot. We need to send a message: Hands off our democracy, hands off our California,” said April Verrett, president of the SEIU Local 2015, as she rallied union members who have been among Newsom’s biggest supporters.  Newsom joined the Oakland rally as his Republican rivals made their cases up and down the state and both major parties sent volunteers out to knock on doors and urge their supporters to vote. The race concludes Tuesday, and more than a third of voters have mailed in their ballots or voted early in person. Former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, one of the GOP candidates, voted Saturday morning in his home city. Poll shows Newsom with edgeA recent poll from the Public Policy Institute of California shows Newsom likely to survive, and Democrats are making a stronger showing in early voting. But the GOP is expecting a larger turnout on Election Day, given many Republicans are skeptical of voting by mail. “Anyone who is counting the recall out at this point is not really in touch with what’s actually going on with this movement,” said Republican Assemblyman Kevin Kiley, who is running to unseat Newsom and is favored by some of the recall’s original supporters. The ballot includes two questions: Should Newsom be recalled from office and, if so, who should replace him? If a majority of voters want him gone, he’d be replaced by whoever gets the most votes among the 46 candidates on the replacement ballot.  Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 8 MB480p | 12 MB540p | 17 MB720p | 42 MB1080p | 74 MBOriginal | 184 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioMore than 7.7 million people have voted, according to ballot tracking data compiled by Political Data Inc., a data firm that works with Democrats.  Newsom called the numbers encouraging and attributed it to more Democrats becoming aware of the recall as it winds to a close. Still, he said he’s taking nothing for granted. He’ll spend the next few days campaigning in Southern California, and on Monday he’ll be joined by Democratic President Joe Biden.  He stuck to his closing message that the race could have profound consequences beyond California, calling it a contest of “outsize consequences.” He and other Democrats have likened it to former President Donald Trump’s refusal to accept the results of the 2020 presidential election and have charged Republicans with pursuing a recall because they can’t win a normal election. Californians haven’t elected a Republican statewide since 2006.  “The recall is about catching you while you’re sleeping,” he said. “This recall is about getting us in an off year, in an off month, while no one else is paying attention.” The recall made the ballot through a process that’s been in the California Constitution for more than a century. Originally the recall was likely to be held in October or November, but Democrats in the state Legislature sped up the process to allow for an earlier election.  GOP objectionsRepublicans angry with Newsom’s policies on immigration, crime and a host of other issues sparked the recall drive, but it took off during the coronavirus pandemic. Organizers got more than 1.7 million signatures to place it on the ballot. That’s less than a tenth of registered voters.  “Gavin Newsom has failed Californians. From surging crime to a broken unemployment department and raging wildfires, our state deserves better than this governor’s serial incompetence,” California Republican Party Chairwoman Jessica Millan Patterson said in a statement. She was out Saturday knocking on doors in Los Angeles County. Meanwhile, the union leaders who rallied alongside Newsom pointed to his pandemic policies as lifesaving measures for home health care and other essential workers. They also applauded him for increasing providers’ pay, which was cut under former Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the winner of the 2003 recall.  The Service Employees International Union has donated more than $2.5 million to Newsom’s campaign, and unions collectively are his biggest financial backers. Beyond campaigning, several candidates marked the 20th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks. Larry Elder, who is considered the Republican front-runner, attended 9/11 commemorations and a lunch with homeless and disabled veterans, and John Cox and Kiley also attended anniversary events. Before his campaign stop, Newsom visited the Wall of Heroes memorial at the California National Guard’s headquarters. 
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California Governor Hopes to Beat Back Recall Effort 

California voters will decide on Tuesday (Sept. 14) whether to remove Governor Gavin Newsom in a recall election. Mike O’Sullivan reports that both Democrats and Republicans are aggressively mobilizing voters either for or against the Democratic governor.Camera:  Genia Dulot, Elizabeth Lee for homeless video 
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