filibuster

primary 1/22 on BBB and voting rights

neg 9 22 dark$

see minority rule

note manchinema corp dems

shackelford says got machinima

---

LEVER mp BK SHOCK AND AWE

BRIAN MCCABE B43 JUD NOMS, GANG 14 AGREED T END FILIBUSTER, ADS

---

===

AN THOM 3 3 25

This is the same on-the-take Senator Joe Manchin who refused to break a filibuster and thus blocked legislation that would have reversed Citizens United and established an absolute right to vote in America.

---

an 9 24

McConnell warns GOP 'it’s over' for Republicans if Harris wins and kills Senate filibuster

an pro p 924

ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, privately heaped praise on a major religious-rights group for fighting efforts to reform the nation’s highest court — efforts sparked, in large part, by her husband’s ethical lapses.

Thomas expressed her appreciation in an email sent to Kelly Shackelford, an influential litigator whose clients have won cases at the Supreme Court. Shackelford runs the First Liberty Institute, a $25 million-a-year organization that describes itself as “the largest legal organization in the nation dedicated exclusively to defending religious liberty for all Americans.”

Shackelford read Thomas’ email aloud on a July 31 private call with his group’s top donors.

[JUDGE SHOPPING?] NOPE SCOTUS

Thomas wrote that First Liberty’s opposition to court-reform proposals gave a boost to certain judges. According to Shackelford, Thomas wrote in all caps: “YOU GUYS HAVE FILLED THE SAILS OF MANY JUDGES. CAN I JUST TELL YOU, THANK YOU SO, SO, SO MUCH.”

Shackelford said he saw Thomas’ support as evidence that judges, who “can’t go out into the political sphere and fight,” were thankful for First Liberty’s work to block Supreme Court reform. “It’s neat that, you know, those of you on the call are a part of protecting the future of our court, and they really appreciate it,” he said.

On the same call, Shackelford attacked Justice Elena Kagan as “treasonous” and “disloyal” after she endorsed an enforcement mechanism for the court’s newly adopted ethics code in a recent public appearance. He said that such an ethics code would “destroy the independence of the judiciary.” (This past weekend, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said she too was open to an enforceable ethics code for the Supreme Court.)

After the call, First Liberty sent a recording of the 45-minute conversation to some of its supporters. ProPublica and Documented obtained that recording.

Ginni Thomas did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

First Liberty Institute did not directly respond to ProPublica and Documented’s questions about the recording. Hiram Sasser, executive general counsel at First Liberty Institute, said in a statement: “First Liberty is extremely alarmed at the Leftist attacks on our democracy and judicial independence and is fighting to bring attention to this dangerous threat. It’s shameful that the political Left seems perfectly fine destroying democracy to achieve the court decisions they favor instead of working through democratic and constitutional means.”

The July 31 call led by Shackelford came shortly after President Joe Biden had announced support for a slate of far-reaching Supreme Court changes. Biden endorsed term limits for justices, a constitutional amendment reversing the court’s recent presidential immunity decision and a binding ethics code for the court’s nine members. Kagan’s comments came before Biden’s. She did not mention any of the structural proposals Biden endorsed.

On the donor call, Shackelford voiced strong opposition to various court reform proposals, including the ones floated by Biden, as well as expanding the size of the court. All of these proposals, Shackelford said, were part of “a dangerous attempt to really destroy the court, the Supreme Court.” This effort was led by “people in the progressive, extreme left” who were “upset by just a few cases,” he said.

This is not the first time that a spouse of a Supreme Court justice injected themselves into controversial political matters. Ginni Thomas sent dozens of messages after the 2020 election that echoed then-President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud. In messages to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, Thomas said “Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History” and urged Trump to not concede the election. In emails to Arizona and Wisconsin lawmakers, she pleaded with them to fight back against supposed fraud and send a “clean slate of Electors.” She later wrote, “The nation’s eyes are on you now. … Please consider what will happen to the nation we all love if you do not stand up and lead.” (Thomas said in 2022 she regretted sending the inflammatory messages to Meadows.)

Martha-Ann Alito, the wife of Justice Samuel Alito, faced scrutiny for flying an upside-down American flag at the family’s Virginia home — a symbol used by the Stop the Steal movement that claimed the 2020 election had been stolen from Trump. The flag flew outside the Alito home as the Supreme Court was deciding whether to hear a case related to the 2020 election. (Samuel Alito told The New York Times he had no role in flying the flag. He said his wife did it in response to “a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs.”)

The push to change how the court functions grew after a series of ProPublica stories showed that wealthy Republican donors have showered Thomas and Alito with free gifts and travel that they failed to disclose. Following ProPublica’s reporting, Thomas amended past disclosure reports, and the Supreme Court adopted the ethics code, its first ever.

Thomas and Alito have said they weren’t required to disclose free flights or hospitality from friends.

First Liberty has been at the forefront of a decades-long and successful effort to expand the First Amendment rights of religious groups, even as those interests can collide with other constitutional principles like maintaining the separation of church and state or providing equal protection for protected classes.

In the last several years, First Liberty has notched big victories. In June 2022, the Supreme Court’s six conservatives ruled in favor of several Maine families represented by First Liberty and the Institute for Justice, a libertarian-leaning legal advocacy group, when it struck down the state’s ban on using public funding to pay for religious schooling.

Days later, the six conservatives ruled again in favor of a First Liberty plaintiff — in this case, a former football coach at a Washington state public high school who had been fired for praying on the field after games. The conservative majority said the coach had been wrongly removed from his job, a decision hailed by religious groups and criticized by some experts who said it would now be more difficult for public schools to keep education separate from religion.

First Liberty has also represented a bakery in Oregon whose owners refused to make a cake for a same-sex wedding, citing their religious beliefs; religious groups that opposed the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate; and nearly three dozen Navy SEALs and military members who refused to be vaccinated for the virus on the basis of their faith. In all the cases, First Liberty’s plaintiffs won partial or full victories in lower courts or at the Supreme Court.

Shackelford, who is First Liberty’s president and CEO, has led the group for nearly three decades. His influence extends into the broader conservative movement. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a former First Liberty attorney, once called Shackelford a mentor. Shackelford has served as vice president of the Council for National Policy, an umbrella group that brings together conservative leaders and deep-pocketed donors.

He also works closely with Ziklag, the secretive network of ultrawealthy conservative Christians that aims to “take dominion” over every major sphere of influence in American culture. According to internal Ziklag newsletters obtained by ProPublica and Documented, Shackelford has participated in Supreme Court prep sessions and appeared on strategy conference calls organized by the group.

On the July 31 donor call, Shackelford kept the focus squarely on the mounting calls to reform the Supreme Court. In addition to Biden’s proposals, several groups, including prominent liberal legal outfits, have proposed other changes including term limits and stronger ethics guidelines. And earlier in July, the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law said it had received a $30 million gift from the private-equity investor Jim Kohlberg to create a new project that will “seek reform of the Supreme Court.”

Shackelford described all of this — Kagan’s speech, Biden’s announcement, the $30 million donation — as if it was a coordinated effort. “They’re doing everything in their power,” he told the donors. “They’re hitting from every direction.” The “extreme left,” he explained, was “upset by just a few cases, but that’s all they need to say, ‘We’re ready to totally’ — they would call ‘reform’ or ‘restructure’ the court — but almost everything they propose would actually destroy the court.”

He aimed his fiercest criticism on the donor call at Kagan. “That is incredible, somewhat treasonous, what Kagan did,” Shackelford said. “The chief justice rules the court. They’re trying to keep the other branches’ hands off of them. And then you’ve got Kagan from the inside really being somewhat disloyal and somewhat treasonous in what she’s doing.”

Shackelford accused ProPublica of being part of a campaign to “delegitimize or get rid of the court.” He said that the ethics lapses unearthed by ProPublica’s reporting were “false” and “baseless,” even though they helped spark the creation of a new ethics code and led to Thomas filing new financial disclosure forms, in effect admitting that he had failed to disclose certain gifts.

ProPublica stands behind all of the stories in its “Friends of the Court” series. Donors do not have access to stories ahead of their publication, and they have no say over coverage decisions.

Turning to what his donors could do to help, Shackelford said that prayer was at the top of the list. “This is a spiritual battle,” he said. “Because the evil that will occur if we lose the rule of law is beyond, I think, what any of us can even think through.”

But First Liberty needed more than prayer — it also needed money. “We need resources to be able to do a bunch of the things that will make a difference between now and the next six months. And that turned out to be key last time,” he said, referring to a similar instance in 2021 and 2022.

Near the start of the Biden presidency, he said, First Liberty raised $3 million to run a campaign that sought to block efforts to add more justices to the high court and to reform or eliminate the filibuster in the U.S. Senate. Getting rid of the filibuster then would’ve removed the 60-vote procedural hurdle that currently exists for most types of legislation.

According to Shackelford, First Liberty conducted polling, ran advertisements, worked with social media influencers and urged Congress to oppose these changes. In particular, Shackelford said, his group focused its activities on convincing Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to oppose filibuster reform.

In the end, both senators did just that. “We stopped this from happening,” Shackelford said. (Spokespeople for Manchin and Sinema did not respond to requests for comment.)

But now, he went on, First Liberty needed more money if it wanted to mount a similar campaign to stop Supreme Court reform. He mentioned the Brennan Center’s recent $30 million gift and then asked, “Where’s our, you know, $10 million guy or gal?”

And to anyone who wondered about the odds that Supreme Court reform would actually happen, Shackelford responded: “I don't know. I mean, 25%? 30%? Whatever it is, it’s amazing how big that is when you consider that our country will be over and the rule of law will be over.”

Before the call ended, Shackelford wanted his “very top supporters” to know that they had the support in this fight from key figures in high places. He said that a First Liberty staffer based in Washington, D.C., had recently been in a meeting with Ginni Thomas. Afterward, Thomas sent the email that praised First Liberty for joining the fight against Supreme Court reform.

“‘Great to meet through the meetings today,’” Thomas wrote, according to Shackelford, who read the email aloud to the donors. “‘I cannot adequately express enough appreciation for you guys pulling into reacting to the Biden effort on the Supreme Court,” she said, adding, “Many were so depressed at the lack of response by R’s and conservatives” to recent court-reform proposals. The rest of Thomas’ email, Shackelford said, was the all-caps gratitude.

Do you have any information about the Supreme Court and efforts to block court reform that we should know? Andy Kroll can be reached by email at andy.kroll@propublica.org and by Signal or WhatsApp at 202-215-6203.

---

'I don’t care': Kyrsten Sinema plans to cash in on Senate infamy if she loses reelection in 2024 - Alternet.org

Senator Kyrsten Sinema (I-Arizona), who has been a thorn in the side of both President Biden and the Senate Democratic Caucus, is already eyeing a potentially lucrative private sector career if her bid to stay in the US Senate is unsuccessful.

In Atlantic staff writer's new biography of outgoing Senator Mitt Romney (R-Utah), Sinema — an independent who caucuses with Democrats (she left the Democratic Party in 2022) — apparently confided to the 2012 Republican presidential nominee that she's apathetic about staying in Washington for another six-year term. Arizona's senior US senator added that she feels she unilaterally "saved" the upper chamber of Congress by bucking' Democrats' efforts to eliminate the filibuster.

"I don’t care. I can go on any board I want to. I can be a college president. I can do anything,” she told Romney. “I saved the Senate filibuster by myself. I saved the Senate by myself. That’s good enough for me."

As the New Republic noted, the filibuster isn't actually a tradition in the Senate, nor is it even mentioned in the US Constitution. Former President Barack Obama once called it a "Jim Crow relic." Sinema's colleague, Senator Angus King (I-Maine), has called for it to be reformed by requiring those who use it to actually hold the Senate floor in what's known as a "talking filibuster."

"[I]nstead of having to have 60 votes to pass something, you'd have to have 41 votes to stop it. That way, the minority would at least have to show up," Sen. King said of the filibuster in 2021, when it was used to stop voting rights legislation. "So we've got to do something about this, at least when it comes to something as crucial as democracy itself, as voting rights."

The New Republic's Jason Linkins wrote last weekend that Sinema's obstinance in getting rid of the filibuster has led to Democrats being unable to pass significant legislative reforms — not only in the arena of voting rights, but in an assortment of other social programs included in President Biden's Build Back Better Act that Sens. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) and Sinema ultimately watered down and killed. Sinema was also a key opposition vote in Democrats' unsuccessful attempt to keep the expanded child tax credit.

"Her steadfast opposition to taxing corporations and the wealthy cut off the one funding mechanism that Manchin was willing to countenance to keep it running," Linkins wrote.

Sinema is currently running as an independent in the 2024 US Senate race against both presumptive Republican nominee Kari Lake and presumptive Democratic nominee Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Arizona). An early October poll showed Lake in front, with 37% of respondents saying they would vote for her next November. Gallego was second, with 33%, while Sinema came in third with just 19% support.

---

https://www.alternet.org/manchin-sinema-2659280053/

sinema and Manchin literally 'high-fived' at Davos to show their support for keeping the Senate filibuster

Alex Henderson

Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have earned a reputation for being the two Democratic U.S. senators — or in Sinema’s case, a formerly Democratic U.S. senator — who are the mos...

judd Davos 1 23

...tuesday's WEF program included a panel with Senators Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) and Joe Manchin (D-WV). The pair shared an on-stage high-five in celebration of the filibuster, which has been used to block increases in the minimum wage, protections for voting rights, and efforts to maintain access to reproductive health care. ...

HR 1 for the ppl act stalled

an comm dr

Proponents of democracy responded with disgust Thursday after Senate Republicans filibustered the popular DISCLOSE Act, which seeks to expose the super-wealthy donors who are spending unlimited amounts of undisclosed money to ensure that the U.S. government advances their interests at the expense of the vast majority.

As Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), author of the defeated legislation, said in a Wednesday floor speech, the bill's goal is to prevent corporations and billionaires from using dark money loopholes to "spew bile and slime" into the nation's political system.

After all 49 of his GOP colleagues in attendance voted to prevent debate on the legislation endorsed by President Joe Biden, Whitehouse released a statement slamming right-wing lawmakers for fighting to preserve "dark money's poisonous influence over American democracy."

"Today, Senate Republicans stood in lockstep with their megadonors and secretive special interests to protect the most corrupting force in American politics—dark money," said Whitehouse, a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. "The American people are fed up with dark money influence campaigns that rig their government against them and stymie their priorities."

Whitehouse was far from alone in condemning the GOP.

"Once again, Senate Republicans sided with special interests and dark money—and against honest and transparent political debate,"Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) tweeted. "Instead of voting for the DISCLOSE Act and cracking down on the dark money in our democracy, Republicans blocked it. Shameful."

Michael Sozan, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, said in a statement that "at a time when the guardrails of our democracy are undergoing a severe stress test, it's lamentable that the Senate minority continues to give corporations, wealthy special interests, and foreign entities the ability to secretly spend vast amounts of money to influence election outcomes."

Trevor Potter, president of Campaign Legal Center, added that the failure "to advance, or even allow debate on, the Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light On Spending in Elections (DISCLOSE) Act... disappoints those of us who have been fighting against the influence of secret spending."

"More importantly," he continued, "it deprives voters of important information about who is attempting to influence their vote and allows corruption to prevail by permitting special interests to continue anonymously rigging the system in their favor."

"It is past time for Congress to enact legislation that bolsters transparency requirements and fulfills voters' right to know who is spending on election influence—a right that has repeatedly been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, even as the court has struck down other campaign finance and election-related laws," said Potter.

The ability of the nation's wealthiest individuals to translate their disproportionate economic power into political clout has increased exponentially since the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision eliminated effective limits on campaign contributions.

As Whitehouse's office noted, "Dark money in particular has skyrocketed despite the Supreme Court, by an 8 to 1 margin inCitizens United,upholding disclosure requirements as a means for citizens and shareholders to hold elected officials and corporate spenders accountable."

According to the Rhode Island Democrat, "Dark money political spending went from under $5 million in 2006 to more than $1 billion in 2020. Billionaire political spending increased by a factor of 70, from $17 million for the 2008 election to $1.2 billion for 2020."

Among other things, the DISCLOSE Act would require "organizations spending money in elections—including super PACs and 501(c)(4) dark money groups—to promptly disclose donors who have given $10,000 or more during an election cycle," his office explained. "In addition to election disclosure requirements, the bill requires groups that spend money on ads supporting or opposingjudicial nominees to disclose their donors."

[twt kickass]

"The DISCLOSE Act would shine a light on special interest spending to neutralize its toxic effect, giving Americans' voices a chance to be heard," said Whitehouse. "Republicans heeded the wishes of dark money donors today, but the fight to pass this bill isn't over."

Given the GOP's unified opposition to the legislation, passing it requires that Senate Democrats abolish the upper chamber's 60-vote filibuster rule—a move corporate Democrats like Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona have refused to support.

"Holding a vote on the DISCLOSE Act without pushing to end the filibuster highlights the fundamental flaw with Democrats in Washington: Their rhetoric and warnings about dark money have always been spot-on, but they have failed to take the actions necessary to actually stop the flow of secret cash distorting and corrupting American politics," The Lever reported earlier this week. "Meanwhile, the party has become increasingly reliant on these same dark pools of cash to help elect more Democratic lawmakers."

an comm dr 9 22

Whitehouse was far from alone in condemning the GOP.

[twt kickass]

this means filibuster became a bigger problem?!

https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/supreme-court-2657745095/

Environmentalists and climate change activists were dealt a severe blow on June 30, when the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its 6-3 decision in West Virginia v. EPA and greatly limited the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate power plan emissions. The decision came during a summer in which extreme weather events, which environmentalists are attributing to climate change, have been especially plentiful — from heatwaves, droughts and wildfires in both the United States and Europe to record flooding in Sydney, Australia (although June-August is winter in Australia because it’s in the world’s southern hemisphere).

London had a record high of 104F/40.3C, and St. Louis, on July 25-26, suffered more than 9 inches of rain — events that, according to climate change activists, serve as painful reminders of how bad a decision the High Court made in West Virginia v. EPA.

But according to Georgetown University law professor Lisa Heinzerling, handcuffing the EPA is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the damage the Court’s West Virginia v. EPAdamage will cause. Heinzerling, in an article published by The Atlantic on July 26, warns that the Court’s GOP-appointed supermajority has made regulation in general "much harder" for government agencies.

“Like many governmental agencies, the Environmental Protection Agency has an elaborate process for developing important rules,” Heinzerling explains. “As I saw during the Obama Administration, when I headed the EPA office that oversees this process, getting a major rule over the finish line can take years. Almost every step of the way offers obstacles to addressing any serious environmental problem. This work just got much harder, if not altogether impossible.” [OIRA/OMB? DQA, SECRET SCI BS]

The Georgetown law professor continues, “In West Virginia v. EPA, the Supreme Court held that Congress may not authorize an administrative agency like the EPA to address an issue of great economic and political significance — in the Court’s parlance, a ‘major question’ — unless Congress speaks extremely precisely in doing so. Broad statutory language, written with the aim of empowering an agency to take on new problems in new ways, will no longer suffice.”

Heinzerling emphasizes that although the Court’s West Virginia v. EPA decision “has the immediate effect of limiting the EPA’s power and flexibility in regulating fossil-fuel-fired power plants under the Clean Air Act,” it “extends beyond that.”

“Any agency that asserts authority over an issue of great economic and political significance could meet a hostile reception in the courts precisely because it has tried to do something big,” Heinzerling warns. “Many agencies will just avoid taking such actions in the first place, knowing the risk. The obvious result could be a federal government with little ability to tackle many of the biggest issues society faces…. The Court’s major-questions doctrine will make effective governance of this country even harder than it has long been.”

Heinzerling adds, “Somewhat ironically, the first victim is Congress itself. Congress has long addressed important problems by empowering agencies to regulate based on newly developed scientific and technical information. That is what Congress did in the Clean Air Act and in the public-health and workplace-safety statutes the Court narrowed in the COVID cases. All laws with a similar structure, passed in at least implicit reliance on a different interpretive framework from the one the Court has embraced, are now vulnerable to severe judicial cropping.So, while the Court is purporting to hand Congress the baton, in reality, it’s creating a major hurdle that will stand in the way of Congress’ work.”

she and manchin prefer dead kids to loss of filibuster

https://www.alternet.org/2022/05/kyrsten-sinema/

DC now demon term]

**U.S. Senator Kyrsten Sinema** (D-AZ), one of two major roadblocks to Democrats passing President Joe Biden’s top agenda items including gun control, just one day after an 18-year old gunman massacred 21 people in Texas including 19 elementary school children, offered to be open to discussion but made clear she does not believe in a federal solution to the gun violence that plagues America.

The United States is the only country in the world with a gun crisis of this magnitude. The :{leading cause of death for children and teens is now a gu:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}::{n:(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}:.

Republicans allowed the 1994 federal ban on semi-automatic weapons to expire in 2004. A 2019 study found “Mass-shooting fatalities were 70% less likely to occur during the federal ban period.”

Senator Sinema appeared to disagree with that study in remarks to reporters late Wednesday morning.

“I asked her if she was willing to set aside the filibuster,” Punchbowl News co-founder Jake Sherman reports. “She said she didn’t believe ‘that DC solutions are realistic here.'”

The federal assault weapons ban was a “DC solution.”

Sinema also told Sherman that “despite the fact that there is always heated rhetoric here in DC, I do think there’s an opportunity for us to actually have real conversations and try and do something. I think the conversation across America is very different than it is here.”

90 percent of Americans want Congress to pass a background check bill, which the House already has but Senate Republicans refuse to allow. Eliminating the 60-vote threshold in the filibuster might allow that legislation to pass, as it almost did under President Barack Obama, with 54 votes.

“People at home all across America are just, they’re scared,” Sinema added, suggesting that is no reason to make changes to the way the Senate works, or to pass gun control legislation. “They want us to do something.”

Sinema committed to no action other than “to start having conversations again with colleagues on both sides of the aisleto determine whether or not there’s something we can actually do to help increase safety and protect kids across the country.”

The House has already passed multiple bills the Senate could take up and pass — or at least get Senators on the record.

Sen. Sinema’s reluctance to do anything substantive stands in clear contrast to her Arizonan Democratic colleague in the House. **U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego**, long rumored to be a potential primary opponent when Sinema is up for re-election, on Tuesday night blasted Sinema and others, like “baby killer” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), standing in the way of gun control

placard say a maj never passed a bill (~ fillibuster?) vs 160x Rp amy Klobuchar

Manchin pushes a revisionist history in his fight to preserve the filibuster

Jon Skolnik Salon

January 21, 2022

On Wednesday, just months out from the midterm elections, Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., blocked their own party's effort to pass a sweeping voting rights overhaul by refusing to exempt...

https://www.alternet.org/2022/01/joe-manchin-filibuster/

placard say a maj never passed a bill (~ fillibuster?) vs 160x Rp amy Klobuchar

Manchin pushes a revisionist history in his fight to preserve the filibuster

Jon Skolnik Salon January 21, 2022

no lnx

Wednesday, just months out from the midterm elections, Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., blocked their own party's effort to pass a sweeping voting rights overhaul by refusing to exempt the measure from a Republican filibuster. The conservative Democratic explained his reasoning during a floor speech that day, addressing the upper chamber just as President Joe Biden prepared to address the nation ahead of his one-year anniversary in office. As Biden continued to push his stalled agenda, Manchin erected a big poster with one sentence to encapsulate his defense of the filibuster: "The United States Senate has NEVER been able to end debate with a SIMPLE MAJORITY."

Manchin's logic rests on the claim that no party has ever ended debate with a simple majority, largely because a filibuster requires 60 votes for a cloture (i.e., the official procedure used to end the filibuster). By creating a voting rights carveout in the filibuster that would allow Democrats to pass the bill with a simple majority, Democrats would be breaking legislative tradition, Manchin argues. His central assumption, however, is untrue.

The last three Supreme Court nominees – Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, and Neil Gorsuch – were all confirmed with a simple majority, noted political commentator Brian Tyler Cohen. In fact, Manchin himself was the 51st senator to back Kavanaugh, single-handedly ending debate on the scandal-plagued judge's confirmation.

And during Gorsuch's 2017 nomination, then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., lowered the cloture threshold for a Supreme Court nomination from 60 to 51 votes – or a simple majority.

Manchin's opposition to a filibuster carveout also flies in the face of his past comments around changing the Senate rules.

Back in 2011, when Manchin was just a freshman senator, Senate Democrats failed to circumvent a Republican filibuster of then-President Barack Obama's $447 billion jobs plan. At the time, Manchin expressed frustration over the GOP's maneuver, suggesting that a bipartisan compromise may have been reached if not for the filibuster.

"We have become paralyzed by the filibuster and an unwillingness to work together at all, just because it's an election cycle," Manchin told the Charleston Daily Mail. "We couldn't even get the horse in the start gate, let alone to run the race. That's the problem here. It's political and it's being played absolutely unmercifully at the highest level."

Later that year, Manchin issued a press release expressly calling the Senate to "fix the filibuster."

"If senators want to halt action on a bill, they must take to the floor and hold it through sustained debate; end filibusters on motions to proceed to debate," the Democrat said.

On Wednesday, emotions ran high amongst Democrats, who have endured months of slow-walking by both Manchin and Sinema on President Biden's Build Back Better Act, the president's signature $2.2 trillion social spending plan.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., was clear on this point, saying that "it's not just this [filibuster] vote" that's frustrating.

"These are people who I think have undermined the President of the United States," he told reporters after Wednesday's failed vote. "They have forced us to go through five months of discussions which have gotten absolutely nowhere."

Back in December, Manchin effectively ended negotiations with both Biden and Senate Democrats on Build Back Better, saying that he could not support the measure due to fears around inflation and the national debt.

10 21 big debate on getting rid of all or carveouts eg judges for voting

https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/sinema-mlms/

2x down on filibuster

silly filibuster args

https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/mitt-romney/

4theppl --> lewis --> joe's plan?

Manchin's big hopes for a bipartisan deal just went down in humiliating defeat

David Badash The New Civil Rights Movement

October 20, 2021

Minutes ago Senate Republicans filibustered critical voting rights legislation – actually, filibustered debate on voting rights legislation. They refused to even allow debate on protecting the most important, most critic....

https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/joe-manchin-2653507623/

mjr ppr edit

mcconn folds on filbuster w/o manchin and x

https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/senate-filibuster/

history

President Joe Biden has promised swift action on the pandemic, the economic crisis and more, but much of his agenda hinges on whether he can get enough support in the Senate, where an unprecedented number of bills in recent years has required a 60-vote supermajority in order to overcome filibusters. Many progressives and civil rights groups have urged Democratic leaders to kill the filibuster, warning that if they don't, Senate Republicans will obstruct Biden's plans just as they did with the Obama administration. Former Senate aide Adam Jentleson, author of the new book "Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy," says the filibuster has historically been used to stop racial progress and thwart majority opinion. "The framers … did not want the filibuster to exist," he says. "When they created the Senate, it was an institution that had no filibuster power. It was designed to be a majority-rule body."

Transcript

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! The Quarantine Report. I'm Amy Goodman.

Democratic lawmakers are moving ahead with plans to hold an impeachment trial of former President Trump for inciting the deadly January 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. House impeachment managers are walking the single article of impeachment to the Senate today. The Senate trial will begin the week of February 8th. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer spoke Friday.

MAJORITY LEADER CHUCK SCHUMER: Now, as I mentioned, the Senate will also conduct a second impeachment trial for Donald Trump. I've been speaking to the Republican leader about the timing and duration of the trial. But, make no mistake, a trial will be held in the United States Senate, and there will be a vote on whether to convict the president.

AMY GOODMAN: As senators prepare for the impeachment trial, lawmakers are also debating how to move forward on President Biden's proposed $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill. The Senate is split 50-50, but the Democrats control the Senate, with Vice President Kamala Harris serving as a tiebreaking vote.

Schumer and former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are locked in negotiations over how the Senate will be run over the next two years. McConnell is pushing to preserve the filibuster, which allows any senator to block a bill's passage unless it's supported by 60 senators. Critics say the filibuster is a relic of the Jim Crow era that preserves minority rule. A group of civil rights and social justice groups are pushing Democrats to eliminate the filibuster to limit McConnell's power and give Biden a chance to enact his agenda.

On Sunday, Senator Bernie Sanders, who's the incoming Senate Budget Committee chair, appeared on CNN and promoted using a process known as reconciliation to quickly pass part of Biden's COVID relief plan.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: What we cannot do is wait weeks and weeks and months and months to go forward. We have got to act now. That is what the American people want. Now, as you know, reconciliation, which is a Senate rule, was used by the Republicans, under Trump, to pass massive tax breaks for the rich and large corporations. It was used as an attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act. And what we are saying is, "You used it for that. That's fine. We're going to use reconciliation — that is, 50 votes in the Senate plus the vice president — to pass legislation desperately needed by working families in this country right now. You did it. We're going to do it. But we're going to do it to protect ordinary people, not just the rich and the powerful."

AMY GOODMAN: To talk more about the state of the Senate, we're joined by Adam Jentleson, the public affairs director at Democracy Forward, former deputy chief of staff to Democratic Senator Harry Reid of Nevada. Jentleson's new book is titled Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy.

So, let's start with what's happening in the Senate right now. You say it's the most unequal body in the U.S. federal government. Explain why, and how that impacts everything from reconciliation to the filibuster.

ADAM JENTLESON: That's right. And thanks for having me here. It's great to join you today.

So, you know, the Senate was created to provide a counterbalance to the House, which was supposed to be — the House was supposed to be sort of the direct body that represented the people. And the Senate was always designed to provide sort of an elite counterweight. And it was designed to be a little bit anti-democratic, in its inception.

You know, in the House, apportionment is determined by population, so every district is about the same size, and every state has about the same number of House members proportional to their population, so the bigger states have a lot more representatives. California has many more representatives in the House than, say, Wyoming, which has one representative.

In the Senate, every state gets equal representation. So, Wyoming has two senators, and California has two senators. California's population is about 39 million people. Wyoming's population is about 600,000 people. So, by that proportionate representation, it actually creates a disproportionate voting power. So, every citizen in Wyoming has many more times the voting power than a citizen in California.

This was something that the framers were aware of when they created it, but some of them decried it at the time and said this is a big problem. Madison, who's often cited as the chief framer and constructor of the Senate, actually strongly opposed this kind of equal representation. And when I say "equal," I mean the same number of senators; the way it plays out is actually, you know, dramatically unequal representation for the actual voters. Madison, at the time, said that it would be a great source of — he used the word — "injustice" to give states equal representation. At the time that he called this an injustice, the biggest state was Virginia, and it was about 10 times as big as the smallest state, Delaware. Madison was right that it creates an injustice, but that injustice is several orders of magnitude bigger now than at the time. You know, Virginia was 10 times the size of Delaware in 1789. Today,California is about 70 times the size of Wyoming.So, it is an unequal body. The way this —

AMY GOODMAN: Seventy times the size. And for people who listen to this globally, each of them, because they're each a state, have two senators, have equal representation in the Senate.

ADAM JENTLESON: That's right. And because a lot of — and, you know, the way this plays out is that what that translates to is not just disproportionate representation geographically, but disproportionate presentation in terms of racial, ethnic, minority voting power. California, obviously, is an incredibly diverse state. Wyoming is an incredibly monolithic state demographically. But Wyoming has equal voting power to California. And this continues throughout, if you go down the chamber, because the general pattern is that the more rural states, the lower-population states, tend to be overwhelmingly white. And so, what that translates to in our modern era is a dramatically disproportionate amount of voting power to white conservatives in America.

AMY GOODMAN: So, take this to the history of the filibuster. I want to play just a clip of President Obama speaking about the filibuster at the funeral of the late Georgia Congressmember John Lewis.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: And if all this takes eliminating the filibuster, another Jim Crow relic, in order to secure the God-given rights of every American, then that's what we should do.

AMY GOODMAN: "Another Jim Crow relic," says Obama. You take this back, Adam, to slavery.

ADAM JENTLESON: That's right. And Obama is 100% right. He's been consistent on the filibuster. He's always wanted to get rid of it. In his new memoir, he says he wishes he had started his first administration by rallying Democrats to get rid of it, so that he could have passed more and bigger things. But, yes, he's absolutely right about the history.

The history, you know, it's important to understand that the framers, for all their own racism and slaveholding status, even they did not want the filibuster to exist. When they created the Senate, it was an institution that had no filibuster power. It was designed to be a majority-rule body. It was designed to discourage obstruction. They were very clear about this; this wasn't just sort of a coincidence or sort of a gray area. The reason they were clear about it was that they created the Constitution in the shadows of the Articles of Confederation, and the widespread view at the time was that the reason the Articles of Confederation failed was that its Congress required a supermajority threshold to pass most major legislation. And so, the framers saw that that had been a disaster, and they created a Senate that was majority rule.

And they wrote very clearly in The Federalist Papers, in their own correspondence and other sources that they believed that a minority, a numerical minority, in the Senate should not be given the power to obstruct what the majority wanted to do. By all means, the Senate was supposed to be deliberative. It was supposed to be thoughtful. It was supposed to take things a little slower than the House. But there was a certain point at which debate was considered to have run its course. And at that point, a majority was allowed to end debate, bring the bill up for a vote and pass or fail it on a majority vote.

What happened was, over the course of several decades, after all the framers had passed away, other senators did use some obstructive tactics over the early decades, but it was very rare. John C. Calhoun came along, the "Great Nullifier," senator from South Carolina, sort of a grandfather of the Confederacy,and he innovated some of the tactics that became known as the modern filibuster. And he did it for the express purpose of increasing the power of the slaveholding class. What he saw at this time — this was around the 1830s and 1840s — was that slaveholders and slave states were becoming steadily outpowered in Congress. And so, he knew that if majority rule was allowed to continue, slavery was going to end. And they needed to — he felt a very compelling desire, from his perspective, to increase their power in the Senate.

And so, what he did was innovate what we would describe as the modern talking filibuster, the sort of Jimmy Stewart-style holding the floor, joining with allies, to delay a bill that he opposed, and, at the same time, doing it all in the service of this lofty principle of minority rights. And what he — the minority that he sought to protect was not a vulnerable population, by any means. It was the planter class, the slaveholders. And so, that was the origin of this essential principle of minority rights being tied to the filibuster. It was a desire to protect not a vulnerable minority, but the minority of the planter class against the march of progress, that Calhoun thought would progress under a majority-rule system.

AMY GOODMAN: So, take that to today and this battle over the filibuster in the Senate, the trajectory you see from slavery to Jim Crow to the new Biden administration and the Democratic majority, and what they're trying to do —

ADAM JENTLESON: Sure.

AMY GOODMAN: — whether we're talking about COVID relief or talking, for example, about impeachment.

ADAM JENTLESON: Sure. So, the key development in the history of the filibuster, from the time of Calhoun to now, is the transition from this talking filibuster, you know, the Jimmy Stewart-style holding the floor, into a supermajority threshold that can be applied to block any bill. And just to underscore, for the first 200 years of its existence or so, the Senate was majority rule. Even as the filibuster started to develop in Calhoun's time, all that senators could do was delay a bill. They had to talk on the floor, and eventually they had to give up. There was no ability to impose a supermajority threshold.

That didn't arise until after 1917, when the Senate put a rule on the books that, ironically, was designed to end filibusters. It implemented a supermajority threshold under the principle that after debate had gone for long enough, two-thirds of the body would be able to come together and say, "You know what? This is enough. Let's cut this off. Let's move to a final debate — a final vote on the bill."

It took a long time for this to happen, but Southern senators, in the Jim Crow era — and this gets back to what President Obama was talking about — started to reverse the purpose of that rule, and instead of using it to end debate, as it had been designed to do, started using it as a higher threshold for civil rights bills to have to clear. And it's important to underscore how transformative the power of racism was in this evolution. The only category —

AMY GOODMAN: And then, we just have a minute.

ADAM JENTLESON: Oh, OK.

AMY GOODMAN: We just have a minute, but I wanted to take this forward to what's happening now and play a clip of the incoming Senate Budget Committee chair, Bernie Sanders, speaking on CNN, defending his call for using reconciliation to pass the COVID relief bill, and then ask how that fits into this paradigm you're describing.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: And I criticized the Republicans, yeah, for using reconciliation to give tax breaks to billionaires, to create a situation where large, profitable corporations now pay zero in federal income taxes. Yes, I did criticize them for that. And if they want to criticize me for helping to feed children who are hungry, or senior citizens in this country who are isolated and alone and don't have enough food, they can criticize me. I think it's the appropriate step forward.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that is Bernie Sanders, yes, Senator Mittens, for those who have been following the, to say the least, viral meme of him wearing his Vermont mittens at the inauguration. But, Adam Jentleson, if you could end by talking about what this means for the COVID relief bill, who gets helped, and who doesn't?

ADAM JENTLESON: Sure. So, what Sanders has done is accurately identify a process called budget reconciliation, that is an end run around this supermajority threshold that I was describing. That threshold has gone, from the Jim Crow era, from being only applied to civil rights bills to today being applied to every bill. And this is the primary source of gridlock in the Senate.

As the budget chair, Sanders can use reconciliation to go around it. That can be used for the COVID relief bill. He's absolutely right about that. That may be where we go. It will enable us to pass COVID relief over the objections of Republicans and not have to clear a 60-vote threshold.

Long term, though, the filibuster will rear its head, because anything involving civil rights, democracy reforms or those types of reforms cannot go through reconciliation. Reconciliation is a restrictive process that has tight rules. They have to be budgetary items to conform with its rules. So, ultimately, we're going to have to face this question of the filibuster, if we want to do things like D.C. statehood, Puerto Rico statehood, any kind of civil rights expansions, automatic voter registration. All of that stuff can't go through reconciliation. If we don't reform the filibuster, it will die by the filibuster. So, that's where this issue will really come to a head for Democrats.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Adam Jentleson, I want to thank you for being with us, public affairs director for Democracy Forward, former deputy chief of staff to the Democratic majority leader, Senator Harry Reid. His new book, Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy.

Next up, as the number of U.S. COVID cases hits 25 million, we'll speak to the Reverend Barber about the challenges ahead. He gave the homily at the post-inaugural prayer breakfast. We'll talk about inequality. And what does unity really mean? Stay with us.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES