The Senate’s Dangerous Inability to Protect Democracy - The struggles of Angus King reflect the rise of Trumpism over centrism. - link
Wall Street’s Pandemic Bonanza - Most Americans have missed out on the asset-price boom created by the policy response to the pandemic. Not so the big banks. - link
Del Rio and the Call for Migrant Justice - No law requires that people fleeing political violence and natural disaster should be met by the militarized cordon sanitaire in South Texas. - link
Mapping Climate Grief, One Pixel at a Time - Norco, an indie adventure game about an oil town menaced by global warming, is a striking contribution to American landscape art. - link
Making Love in the Land of Oil Rigs - In Tabitha Lasley’s memoir, a study of the insular world of offshore oil rigs becomes an exhibit of the power dynamics between the men who work on them and the women they love on land. - link
From Vox
Biden’s immigration policies have left Haitians stranded in Mexico -
Haitian migrants seeking asylum queue to register with the National Commission for Refugees in Tijuana, Mexico, in October 2021. | Guillermo Arias/AFP via Getty Images
Record numbers of Haitians are seeking asylum in Mexico because they have no other option.
Thousands of Haitians are indefinitely trapped in Mexico. They face pervasive racism, and many are unable to work, have no access to medical care, and are targets for criminals. Most have arrived in the last year, hoping that the Biden presidency would open up an opportunity for them to finally seek protection in the US.
Those hopes were in vain. Now, Mexico is seeing a sharp uptick in Haitian asylum applicants — a surge it is unequipped to manage — all because the United States has offloaded its immigration responsibilities onto its neighbor.
The Biden administration continues to enforce pandemic-related border restrictions that have kept out the vast majority of asylum seekers, including Haitians; it’s deported nearly 14,000 Haitians since September 2021 despite their country’s political and economic crises. As a result, many Haitians face a difficult choice: Try to cross the US border and risk getting deported to Haiti if caught, or attempt to make a life for themselves in Mexico, at least temporarily.
“Mexico is increasingly going to have to look like at least a long-term stopover point, if not a forever place, because the last thing people want to do is to head back to Haiti after they’ve been on the move for so long,” said Caitlyn Yates, a consultant for the Migration Policy Institute and PhD student studying Haitian migration at the University of British Columbia.
Many of the Haitians currently stuck in Mexico resided in Chile and Brazil for years in the aftermath of a devastating 2010 earthquake, but weredriven out by a pandemic-related economic downturn in the region. And in 2021, these Haitians and their Chilean-born children accounted for a record of nearly 59,000, or about 45 percent, of the more than 131,00 asylum applications Mexico received. That represents a tenfold increase in the number of applications from Haitians over the previous year. By comparison, Honduras and El Salvador, two major migrant-sending countries, accounted for about 36,000 and 6,000 applications in 2021, respectively.
The migrant surge could burden a government that was already struggling to process Haitians’ immigration applications and offer them the kind of humanitarian support they need. For example, due to a 2019 deal in which the Mexican government agreed to beef up immigration enforcement on its southern border in order to avert US tariffs threatened by former President Donald Trump, there’s a community of about 3,000 Haitians stuck in Tapachula, a city along Mexico’s border with Guatemala. Haitians apprehended by Mexican immigration authorities have been forced to stay in the city unless they have some kind of legal immigration status, such as asylum, that would allow them to move freely through the country.
Marco Ugarte/AP
Haitians, many who have been waiting up to a year in Mexico for asylum requests to be processed, wait in line outside a store in Tapachula, Mexico, to receive remittances sent from family members abroad in September 2021.
Other Haitians have been living in Tijuana, just across the border from San Diego, since as early as 2016. In the time since then, many have put down roots, less by choice than by necessity: As of October 2021, there were some 4,000 Haitians living in Tijuana, more than half of whom had secured formal employment in local factories or the service sector.
For Haitians and Black migrants overall, assimilating in Mexico isn’t an easy prospect, however. Getting legal status is a long and arduous process. They may not speak fluent Spanish, though many of them have previously lived in Latin America for years. For those without work authorization, finding employment is a challenge. And they face persistent racism and discrimination.
President Joe Biden did allow more than 100,000 Haitians already living in the US before July 29, 2021, to apply for Temporary Protected Status, which allows them to live and work in the US on a temporary basis. But he has largely pursued a strategy of deterrence and exclusion with respect to Haitian migrants outside US borders, despite the fact that their country is still reeling from President Jovenel Moïse’s assassination and the one-two punch of a 7.2-magnitude earthquake and a tropical storm last summer.
Biden promised to institute a more humane immigration policy than his predecessor, but instead he has clung to pandemic-related border restrictions, known as the Title 42 policy, implemented by the Trump administration last year. Since March 2020, that policy has been used to rapidly expel more than a million migrants, including Haitians, without hearings before an immigration judge.
Christian Torres/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
A Haitian family crosses the Rio Bravo river illegally to surrender to American authorities at the border of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, and El Paso, Texas, on December 23, 2021.
Along the border, Biden has restarted Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, under which tens of thousands of migrants were forced to wait in Mexico for their court hearings in the US. Though Haitians have not yet been sent back to Mexico under the new iteration of the program, there is no longer an exclusion for non-Spanish speakers, meaning that they could be subject to the “Remain in Mexico” policy in the future.
The Biden administration briefly paused deportation flights to Haiti in 2021 due to escalating political violence, but has resumed them despite the fact that the situation on the ground hasn’t improved. In just the last month, it chartered 51 deportation flights carrying more than 5,000 passengers.
And it has sought to discourage Haitians from trying to reach the US by boat. Officials have made clear that those who try will be intercepted by the US Coast Guard and will not be permitted to enter the US. Instead, they will either be repatriated back to Haiti or, if they can demonstrate the need for humanitarian protection, resettled in another country.
All of these choices have not just limited the movement of Haitians from Haiti, but restricted avenues by which Haitians trapped in Mexico can legally enter the US.
The US could have made other choices that would have eased the burden on Mexico. For example, the Biden administration could have expanded TPS for Haitians or allowed them to enter the US temporarily on what’s called “parole,” a kind of temporary protection from deportation. It could have ended its deportation flights to Haiti and its restrictive border policies, or at least created broader exemptions to them. Instead, it has dumped its responsibilities to Haitians onto Mexico, which is ill-equipped to give them the kind of support they need.
Mexico isn’t meeting Haitians’ humanitarian needs
Before 2019, Haiti migrants apprehended by Mexican immigration authorities were permitted a brief period to leave the country on their own accord, giving them the freedom to travel north to the US border. But things have changed drastically since Mexico ramped up immigration enforcement on its southern border, and that’s causing problems for Haitians stranded in the country.
<cite>Damian Sanchez/AFP via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Migrants clash with Mexico National Guard
members in Tapachula, Mexico, as they walk in a caravan toward Mexico City to request asylum and refugee status in October 2021.
Some 3,000 migrants stuck in Tapachula have been living at a campsite in Tapachula’s Olympic Stadium. They have no access to clean water, food, health care, and other basic services, and share only a few portable toilets. And they have reported being mistreated, arrested in violent and arbitrary manners, and robbed of their money and their phones by Mexican authorities.
Many of them have applied for asylum but are living in uncertainty over their cases due to lengthy backlogs at COMAR, the Mexican refugee agency. Though Mexican law requires that their applications be processed in 90 business days or fewer, COMAR has seen record numbers of applications over the last year.
Mexican Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard has promised to reduce wait times by streamlining the bureaucracy around the asylum process, but has acknowledged that the government simply doesn’t have the staffing and resources to meet the explosion in need. Haitians, for instance, have reported a shortage of Creole translators to conduct asylum interviews.
Mexico takes a broader view of who qualifies for asylum than the US, but COMAR hasn’t taken into account the kind of generalized violence that currently exists in Haiti when issuing decisions in Haitians’ cases. That has meant that less than a quarter of Haitian applicants were ultimately granted asylum in 2021. And without legal status, Haitians say that they have been barred from accessing basic services and employment.
“During the time we have been here, we have suffered from constant acts of discrimination, xenophobia and racism at the hands of Mexican authorities,” the Association of Haitian Refugees in Tapachula wrote in Spanish in a December letter to Mexican immigration officials. “Frequently, our children are not allowed to attend school, we do not have access to hospitals, we cannot work due to lack of legal documents.”
Guillermo Arias/AFP via Getty Images
Haitian migrants queue to register with the National Commission for Refugees (COMAR) in Tijuana, Mexico, in October 2021.
It’s a similar story in Tijuana. To the extent that there is a support structure for migrants in the city, it has been severely strained amid the implementation of US policies designed to keep them on the Mexican side of the border. That has left Haitians and other Black migrants particularly vulnerable.
A December report by Refugees International that surveyed Haitian migrants in Tijuana found that they were targets for criminals, and had a hard time accessing basic services and finding stable work due to racism and a lack of legal status. Though some have been in Tijuana for so long that they have married Mexicans and now have residency, others came to Tijuana on temporary transit visas that have now expired, or were given humanitarian visas while awaiting decisions on their asylum cases that they can’t renew.
According to the report, Haitians said that they did not go out at night for fear of attack or theft. A total of 15 Haitian people have been killed in Tijuana since 2016.
Without work authorization, Haitians relegated to the informal labor market saw many job opportunities dry up and experienced exploitation during the pandemic. They have reportedly suffered abuse from landlords, with one migrant recounting how she and her husband were evicted after she asked for proof of the water bill. Without stable employment, the vast majority of those surveyed were worried about making rent. And Refugees International found they were half as likely to be treated for illness as compared to Central American migrants, possibly due to language barriers.
These reports show the Mexican government has proven incapable of catering to the humanitarian needs of Haitian migrants. The US does have the resources necessary to do so, as shown by Biden’s TPS extensions. Rather than utilize those resources, the US has managed to evade any responsibility for Haitians trapped in Mexico.
The world has moved on from Colleyville. American Jews can’t. -
A rally against anti-Semitism in Manhattan in January 2020. | Erik McGregor/LightRocket/Getty Images
The siege on the Beth Israel synagogue reflects a scary new normal.
When an armed man stormed a Texas synagogue on Saturday, taking a rabbi and three worshippers hostage, it seemed fairly obvious that the victims’ identity had something to do with the attack. But in a press conference after all four hostages escaped Beth Israel synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, FBI special agent Matthew DeSarno seemed to deny that, telling reporters the attack’s motive was “not specifically related to the Jewish community.”
DeSarno was attempting to communicate that the hostage taker’s core demand — the release of imprisoned jihadist Aafia Siddiqui — wasn’t about Jews. But interviews with the hostagesthemselves revealed a clear connection: Their captor believed that a Jewish conspiracy ruled America and that, if he took Jews hostage, he could compel the US to release Siddiqui.
“He terrorized us because he believed these anti-Semitic tropes that the Jews control everything, and if I go to the Jews, they can pull the strings,” hostage Jeffrey Cohen told CNN. “He even said at one point that ‘I’m coming to you because I know President Biden will do things for the Jews.’”
Perhaps DeSarno wasn’t aware of this when he made his comments, which the FBI has since walked back. But major media outlets ran with his line, blaring headlines that downplayed the anti-Semitism at the core of the attack. It was as though the attacker had chosen Beth Israel at random, rather than targeted a Jewish community near where Siddiqui was imprisoned.
The coverage only underscored a creeping sentiment that spread among us last weekend. Many Jews, myself included, already felt like few were paying attention to the crisis in Colleyville as it unfolded over the weekend; that we Jews were rocked by a collective trauma while most Americans watched the NFL playoffs.
This is not a new feeling.
In the past several years, American Jews have been subject to a wave of violence nearly unprecedented in post-Holocaust America. If these anti-Semitic incidents garner significant mainstream attention — a big if — attention to them seems to fade rapidly, erased by a fast-moving news cycle. The root causes of rising anti-Semitism are often ignored, especially when politically inconvenient to one side or the other.
There are always exceptions: In the wake of the Colleyville attack, for example, many Muslims have been particularly vocal allies. But for the most part, the world has moved on. American Jews, on the other hand, cannot — for good reason.
The troubling rise in anti-Semitism
Let’s recount what the past few years have been like for American Jews.
In August 2017, the torch-carrying marchers at Charlottesville chanted, “Jews will not replace us,” as they rallied to protect Confederate iconography. Armed individuals dressed in fatigues menaced a local synagogue — also named Beth Israel — while neo-Nazis yelled, “Sieg heil!” as they passed by.
In October 2018, we saw the deadliest mass killing of Jews in American history: the assault on the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, which claimed 11 Jewish lives. The far-right shooter believed that Jews were responsible for mass nonwhite immigration and wanted to kill as many as he could find in retaliation.
In April 2019, another far-right shooter preoccupied by fears of a Jewish-perpetrated “white genocide” attacked the Chabad synagogue in Poway, California, killing one and injuring three.
In December 2019, New York and New Jersey — the epicenter of American Jewry — were swept by a wave of anti-Semitic violence.
In May 2021, the conflict between Israel and Hamas led to yet another spike in anti-Semitic violence, including high-profile attacks perpetrated by individuals who blamed American Jews for Israel’s actions. In Los Angeles, for example, a group of men drove to a heavily Jewish neighborhood and assaulted diners at a sushi restaurant. The attackers were waving Palestinian flags and chanting, “Free Palestine!”
This sort of violence is certainly not the norm. In absolute terms, most American Jews are still quite unlikely to be targeted by anti-Semitic attacks. But both quantitative and anecdotal data suggest that there has been asustained rise in anti-Semitic activity.
The following chart shows data on anti-Semitic incidents of all kinds, ranging from murders to harassment, from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a Jewish anti-hate watchdog. The ADL data, while not perfect, is one of the better sources of information on the topic — and it shows a spike in the past several years.
<img alt=" " src="https://cdn.vox-
cdn.com/thumbor/tA59AiliZagg9d4QaaSvbePPWqM=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox- cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23179071/Screen_Shot_2022_01_19_at_10.19.30_AM.png" /> Anti-Defamation League
The explanation among scholars and experts for this rise tends to focus on Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy and the concomitant rise of the alt-right.
In this telling, Trump’s ascendance shifted the Overton window for the far right, leading to a rise in anti-Semitic harassment and violence. (Trump himself repeatedly made anti-Semitic comments despite having Jewish family.) Recent academic research finds that, in the United States, anti-Semitic beliefs are more prevalent on the right.
The attacks in Pittsburgh and Poway suggest this diagnosis is in large part correct. But the past few years of anti-Semitic violence demonstrate clearly that it’s not the full story.
The Colleyville siege seems to have been perpetrated by a British Islamist. The 2021 attacks seem to have emerged out of anti-Israel sentiment, a cause more associated with the left. The 2019 violence in New York and New Jersey doesn’t really connect to politics as we typically understand it, emerging in part out of a radical subsection of the already-small Black Hebrew Israelite group and local tensions between Black and Jewish residents in Brooklyn.
What this illustrates, more than anything else, is the protean and primordial nature of anti-Semitism — a prejudice and belief structure so baked into Western society that it has a remarkable capacity to infuse newer ideas and reassert itself in different forms.
Today, we are seeing the rise not of one form of anti-Semitism but of multiple anti-Semitisms — each popular with different segments of the population for different reasons, but also capable of reinforcing each other by normalizing anti-Semitic expression.
There is no mistaking the consequences for Jews.
In a 2021 survey from the American Jewish Committee, a leading Jewish communal group,24 percent of American Jews reported that an institution they were affiliated with had been targeted by anti-Semitism in the past five years. Ninety percent said anti-Semitism was a problem in America today, and 82 percent agreed that anti-Semitism had increased in the past five years.
Synagogues have had to increase security spending, straining often tight budgets that could be spent on programming for their congregants. Measures include hiring more armed guards to patrol services, setting up security camera systems, and providing active shooter training for rabbis and Hebrew school teachers.
Some of this is familiar; there have been armed guards at my synagogue as long as I can remember. But much of the urgency is new. For a community that has long seen America as our haven, a place different in kind from the Europe so many Jews were driven out of, it’s a profoundly unsettling feeling.
The twisting of Jewish suffering
Dara Horn, a novelist and scholar of Yiddish literature, spent 20 years avoiding the topic of anti-Semitism. She wanted to write about Jewish life rather than Jewish death.
But the past few years changed things. In 2021, Horn published a book titled People Love Dead Jews, an examination of the role that Jewish suffering plays in the public imagination. Her analysis is not flattering.
“People tell stories about dead Jews so they can feel better about themselves,” Horn tells me. “Those stories often require the erasure of actual Jews, because actual Jews would ruin the story.”
One of the more provocative examples she mentioned is the oft-repeated poem, attributed to German pastor Martin Niemöller, citing attacks on Jews as one of several canaries in the coal mine for political catastrophe. You’ve probably heard this version of it, or at least seen it on a Facebook post:
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me
In theory, the message is one of solidarity: What happens to Jews should be of concern to all of us. But Horn argues that there’s a worrying implication to this message, one that instrumentalizes Jews rather than centering us.
“What you’re basically saying is that we should all care when Jews are murdered and attacked because it might be an ominous sign that ‘real people’ might be attacked later,” Horn tells me. “I get that that’s not what it’s trying to say, but it plays into this idea that Jews are just this symbol that you can use for whatever purpose you need.”
In American political discourse, anti- Semitism often gets treated in exactly the way Horn fears: as a tool to be wielded, rather than a problem for living, breathing Jewish people.
Among conservatives, support for Israel becomes equated with support for Jews — to the point where actual anti-Semitism emanating from pro-Israel politicians, from Donald Trump to Marjorie Taylor Greene, is treated as unimportant or excusable. The Jewish experience becomes flattened into a narrative of “Judeo-Christian” culture under shared threat from Islamist terrorism, eliding the ways in which America’s mostly liberal Jewish population feels threatened by the influence of political Christianity on the right.
Menahem Kehana/AFP/Getty Images
Then-President Trump with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in May 2017.
Colleyville is already being deployed in this fashion. In a public letter, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) turned an attack on Jews into an attack on admitting Afghan refugees.
“I write with alarm over reports that the Islamic terrorist who took hostages at a Jewish synagogue in Texas this past weekend was granted a travel visa,” Hawley claims. “This failure comes in the wake of the Biden Administration’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan and failure to vet the tens of thousands who were evacuated to our country.”
There are also problems like this on the left, albeit less common among mainstream political figures.
Incidents of anti-Semitic violence are mourned and then swiftly deployed in partisan politics, turned into a brief against MAGA America, rather than serving as an opportunity to confront the way many progressives fail to take anti-Semitism seriously as a form of structural oppression. Similarly, Jewish concerns about anti-Israel rhetoric crossing the line into anti-Semitism are ignored or even dismissed as smear jobs. I have had brutal, sometimes even angry conversations with progressive friends and acquaintances on this very topic.
The throughline here is that Jews don’t own their stories; that anti-Semitism means what others want it to mean. And that’s when people pay attention to anti-Semitism at all, which they often do not — except for the few days after incidents like Colleyville.
A common refrain from Jews I know during and after the Colleyville standoff was a sense of total alienation, that they were glued to their phones and TVs while most others had no idea that American Jews were in crisis. It wasn’t that we had been made into object lessons for others, at least not yet; it was that our suffering was barely worth noticing.
What American Jews need from mainstream American society right now is to be listened to, for our fears about rising anti-Semitism to be heard and, once heard, taken seriously on their own terms.
This does not require the false assumption of a monolithic Jewish community, where all of us agree on how to tackle anti-Semitism. What it does require is a mental reorientation among America’s non-Jews: a willingness to reckon with the fact that anti-Semitism remains a meaningful force in American society, one that requires a response both unfamiliar and politically uncomfortable.
The Senate filibuster vote dooms much of Democrats’ agenda -
Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) catch an elevator to go to the Senate Chamber to vote on September 30, 2021, in Washington, DC. | Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images
A failed vote on filibuster reform guarantees little progress on voting rights — and many other policies.
The Senate on Wednesday voted 48-52 against changing the chamber’s filibuster rules, dooming much of Democrats’ agenda for the near term.
Democrats were ultimately split on the rules vote, with two opposing the change, and 48 in favor of it. Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) were the only Democrats who voted against the rules change, which would have made an exception to the 60-vote threshold many bills need to advance. No Republicans voted to support the reform.
Had it passed, the rules change would have enabled lawmakers to bring back a talking filibuster specifically for a voting rights bill that includes the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. This reform would have required senators to hold the floor and make speeches in order to maintain their opposition to the bill.It also would have allowed senators to pass the voting rights bill with a simple majority once debate on the measure had ended. For other legislation, filibuster rules would have stayed as is.
Because of Manchin and Sinema’s longstanding opposition to filibuster reforms, the outcome of the vote wasn’t surprising. It did reveal, however, just how much support filibuster reform has within the Democratic caucus, and highlighted a stark shift in the party’s position on the issue. As the vote indicated, opposition to filibuster reform is now limited to Manchin and Sinema, two of its most vocal critics.
Moderates like Sens. Tim Kaine (D-VA), Angus King (I-ME), and Maggie Hassan (D-NH), meanwhile, were among those who voted in favor of reform, a clear sign that rules changes are no longer something that only more progressive Democrats advocate for. With President Joe Biden giving a major speech in favor of changing the rule last week, and now this vote, it’s apparent that support for filibuster reform has increasingly become a mainstream Democratic position.
The rules change needed the support of all 50 Democrats to be successful, and would have had a major impact on Democrats’ ability to pass legislation. Since the vote on the rules change failed, voting rights bills as well as many other Democratic priorities like gun control and protections for workers’ rights to organize, have no chance of passing anytime soon, since they won’t be able to overcome Republican opposition.
Moving forward, many of Democrats’ bills are simply stuck. That makes Wednesday’s vote a huge missed opportunity for Democrats, who remain significantly limited in the policies they can advance ahead of this year’s midterms, when they could lose congressional control.
Voting rights — and many other bills — are at an impasse
Because the filibuster is still intact, a lot of Democratic bills have no path forward.
In the past year, Senate Republicans have already blocked voting rights bills four times, and none have signed onto the Freedom to Vote Act, a narrower piece of legislation crafted by Sen. Manchin (D-WV) in hopes of introducing legislation that would appeal to Republicans. Since Democrats have a tenuous 50-person majority, they need 10 Republicans to join them in order to overcome any filibuster. That support, however, has not materialized.
“Democrats have tried for months — months — to convince our Republican colleagues to join us on a bipartisan basis to begin a debate on these bills, to no avail,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer previously said.
It was their repeated failure to pass voting rights legislation that led Democrats to seriously consider altering the filibuster. And that failure is set to have staggering consequences, as 19 states have approved laws that restrict voting access and undercut the authority of regional election administrators. Democrats’ bills directly sought to counter many of these state laws by establishing a federal standard for voting access and stronger protections for election officials.
As Vox’s Fabiola Cineas has reported, the legislation wasn’t perfect. The bills fell short of confronting and addressing the issue of election subversion, or potential attempts by partisan legislatures and officials to overturn state election results, something former President Donald Trump had called for them to consider when he lost in 2020.
Still, the bills would have been an important check on states’ renewed attempts to limit access to the ballot, policies that disproportionately affect communities of color. If passed, they would have established 15 days of early voting, expanded access to vote by mail, provided election officials legal recourse to challenge potential removals, and prohibited partisan gerrymandering.
“It’s, in many ways, tailored to combat the worst types of voter suppression that we’ve seen,” says Daniel Weiner, co-director of the Elections and Government Program at the Brennan Center for Justice.
By voting to keep the filibuster as is, moderate Democrats have guaranteed that much of the party’s agenda will be stymied for now. Already, Republicans have blocked multiple bills including legislation to establish a committee to investigate the January 6 insurrection and a measure aimed at guaranteeing equal pay in the workplace.
Other bills, like a deal on police reform, have collapsed because they haven’t been able to garner sufficient Republican support. Policies intended to establish universal background checks for gun purchases, to protect workers’ right to organize, and to shield LGBTQ people from discrimination, have all languished, too.
That means Democrats will need to significantly scale back their ambitions if they want to pass anything at all. They’ll also need to focus on policies Republicans actually want to see enacted, measures that are set to be much narrower than what Democrats have proposed. Certain GOP members have signaled that there are, perhaps, bills it would be willing to work with Democrats on, including a version of a child allowance, and recently, a much more limited election reform bill.
Democrats will need to narrow their legislative ambitions
In recent weeks, some Republicans have said they’d be open to considering changes to the Electoral Count Act, which lays out Congress’s role in certifying presidential elections. These changes could clarify that the vice president isn’t able to overturn presidential election results, an act that Trump called on then-Vice President Mike Pence to consider.
Republican leaders, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. John Thune (R-SD), have said they’re open to considering this legislation, an indication that it could garner the GOP votes needed to pass.
But this legislation would do nothing to counter states’ attempts at voter suppression or partisan election administration, and has widely been derided as a distraction by some Democrats who saw renewed Republican support for it as a way to keep moderates from changing the rules.
“I support reforming the Electoral Count Act. That said, reforming the Electoral Count Act will do virtually nothing to address the sweeping voter suppression and election subversion efforts taking place in Georgia, and in states and localities nationwide,” said Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) in a floor speech.
This is not to say that changes to the Electoral Count Act aren’t worth considering, though it does highlight how limited Democrats are when it comes to policies they want to pursue on elections, or any other issue.
Because they need 10 Republicans on board, they’ll need to water down whatever it is they’re interested in, in order to secure adequate GOP support. In some instances, it may be that even a watered-down version of a bill isn’t palatable to enough Republicans, as was the case with Manchin’s voting rights bill.
Whatever policies materialize will probably be much narrower than Democrats had hoped for — they don’t really address the party’s goals on issues like voting rights. That’s the reality the party faces after its filibuster vote, one that severely reduces the policy impact it could otherwise have.
From The Hindu: Sports
Andy Murray out in 2nd round at Australian Open - Loses to 120th ranked Taro Daniel
Shoaib Akhtar can still bowl quick: Misbah-ul-Haq - Asia Lions skipper excited to see so many legends in the tournament
Dhawan rues middle-order collapse after loss to South Africa - According to the south-paw, he was “happy” that he did well in the game.
U-19 WC | COVID-hit India stroll into QFs after beating Ireland; Australia win too - Record four-time champions and title contenders India stormed into the Super League quarterfinals of the U-19 World Cup after thrashing minnows Irela
Third seed Muguruza knocked out by ‘super focused’ Cornet - “I felt like you always have to play a super good match to beat Garbine as she’s such a fighter”
From The Hindu: National News
Lorry rams into Periyar statue in Villupuram, damages it - Police said the incident was an accident; DMK cadre picketed the police station demanding action; the lorry driver has been arrested
5G rollout: Boeing clears Air India’s U.S. flights - Flights were cancelled due to concerns over 5G rollout in the U.S.
Kamal Haasan releases second list of candidates for urban civic polls - It includes candidates for Madurai, Chennai, Avadi, Bodi
Explained | Significance of Telangana’s tribal fair Sammakka-Sarakka jatara - Event symbolises traditions and heritage of Koya tribal people
Three cops suspended in Gujarat after video of their ‘musical journey’ goes viral - The video showed four constables swaying to music and also singing while riding in a car
From BBC: Europe
Former Pope Benedict failed to act over abuse, new report finds - Benedict XVI is incriminated in a report into the Church’s handling of child sex abuse in Munich.
Ukraine tension: Biden says he thinks Putin will ‘move in’ - The US president warns the Russian leader against invading, but hints at splits among Western allies.
International Red Cross hack exposes half a million vulnerable people - A cyber-attack on the humanitarian organisation exposes the details of half a million vulnerable people
Jozef Puska, 31, charged with murder of Ashling Murphy - A man appears at a special court in the Republic of Ireland charged with the murder of Ashling Murphy.
Hana Horka: Czech singer dies after catching Covid intentionally - Hana Horka’s son tells the BBC his mother was unvaccinated but wanted to acquire immunity.
From Ars Technica
Red Cross implores hackers not to leak data for 515k “highly vulnerable people” - Hack on Red Cross storage contractor follows a separate hacking incident last year. - link
The real-life gentleman pirate behind HBO Max’s new series Our Flag Means Death - “It’s swashbuckling! Let’s have fun with it!” - link
Google brings Android games to Windows in limited (very limited) beta - Only users in Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong have access to a beta signup. - link
Google to free G Suite users: Pay up or lose your account - Have a free G Suite account from 2006-2012? You have until May to fork over cash. - link
If you like the data on your WD My Cloud OS 3 device, patch it now - The disk maker updates the OS to incorporate patches available for 4 months. - link
From Jokes Subreddit
Ole and Sven are elderly friends who die in a snowmobiling accident, drunker than skunks And go to Hell. -
The Devil observes that they are really enjoying themselves.
He says to them
‘Doesn’t the heat and smoke bother you?’
Ole replies, ‘Vell, ya know, ve’re from nordern Minnesooota, da land of snow an ice, an ve’re yust happy fer a chance ta varm up a little bit, ya know.’
The devil decides that these two aren’t miserable enough and turns up the heat even more.
When he returns to the room of the two from Minnesota, the devil finds them in light jackets and hats, grilling Walleye and drinking beer.
The devil is astonished and exclaims,
‘Everyone down here is in misery, and you two seem to be enjoying yourselves?’
Sven replies, ‘Vell, ya know, ve don’t git too much varm veather up dere at da Falls, so ve’ve yust got ta haff a fish fry vhen da veather’s dis nice.’
The devil is absolutely furious.
He can hardly see straight.
Finally he comes up with the answer.
The two guys love the heat because they have been cold all their lives.
The devil decides to turn all the heat off in Hell.
The next morning, the temperature is 60 below zero, icicles are hanging everywhere, and people are shivering so bad that they are unable to wail, moan or gnash their teeth.
The devil smiles and heads for the room with Ole and Sven.
He gets there and finds them back in their parkas, bomber hats, and mittens.
They are jumping up and down, cheering, yelling and screaming like madmen.
The devil is dumbfounded,
‘I don’t understand, when I turn up the heat you’re happy. Now its freezing cold and you’re still happy. What is wrong with you two?’
They both look at the devil in surprise and say,
‘Vell, don’t ya know, if hell iss froze over, dat must mean da Vikings von da Super Bowl.
A lady decided to give herself a big treat for her 70th birthday by staying overnight in a really nice luxurious hotel.. -
When she checked out the next morning, the desk clerk handed her a bill for $250.00. She demanded to know why the charge was so high “I agree it’s a nice hotel, but the rooms aren’t worth $250..00 for just an overnight stay - I didn’t even have breakfast!” The clerk told her that $250.00 is the ‘standard rate,’ and breakfast had been included had she wanted it.
She insisted on speaking to the Manager.
The Manager appeared and, forewarned by the desk clerk, announced: “This hotel has an Olympic-sized pool and a huge conference center which are available for use.” “But I didn’t use them.” ’’Well, they are here, and you could have."
He went on to explain that she could also have seen one of the in-hotel shows for which they were so famous. “We have the best entertainers from all over the world performing here.” “But I didn’t go to any of those shows..” She Pleaded.
“Well, we have them, and you could have.” was the reply.
No matter what amenity the Manager mentioned, she replied, “But I didn’t use it!” and the Manager countered with his standard response.
After several minutes discussion, and with the Manager still unmoved, she decided to pay, wrote a check and gave it to him.
The Manager was surprised when he looked at the check. “But Madam, this check is for only $50.00” “That’s correct” she replied “I charged you $200.00 for sleeping with me.”
“But I didn’t sleep with you madam!” said the manager
I saw a woman drop her purse in the high street this morning, so… -
I quickly followed her. As I was just about to tap her on the shoulder she started running for a bus. So I ran after her shouting, “You dropped your purse! You dropped your purse!” She didn’t hear me and proceeded to get onto the bus, so I got on the bus too. As I walked to the back of the bus I breathlessly said, “You dropped your purse on the floor outside McDonald’s.” “Thank you so much” she said, “Where is it?” I said, “I’ve just told you, on the floor outside McDonald’s.”
/cdn.vox-
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23179855/AP21321689424019.jpg)
Marco Ugarte/AP/cdn.vox-
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23179955/GettyImages_1237407450.jpg)
Christian Torres/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
/cdn.vox-
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23179917/GettyImages_1235733606.jpg)
Guillermo Arias/AFP via Getty Images
/cdn.vox-
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23179958/687158202.jpg)
Menahem Kehana/AFP/Getty Images