1. President Joe Biden used executive power to deal with gun violence.
This may sound like a good thing. The president has done something because there is not much Congress can do.
The executive actions – which Biden repeatedly claimed to do nothing about the Second Amendment right to bear arms – included attempts to limit weapons known as “ghost weapons” that can be built using parts and instructions purchased online. .
The moves are limited in scope and are not covered by steps Biden has sworn to pressurize Congress. Still, last month they fulfilled their pledge to take “ common sense ” steps of their own, and one move – heavier regulatory armrests used to make firing a pistol more accurate – relates directly to the March shooting in Boulder, Colorado. , where such a device was used.
But the bigger problem is that Biden’s action is a symptom of Washington’s greater paralysis. It’s not that there isn’t a majority in the House or Senate to pass legislation backed by members of both parties. The problem is that under current Senate rules, majority support is meaningless, as the minority party – currently Republicans – can push for a super-majority of 60 votes to approve anything at all.
2. Democratic Senator Joe Manchin said he would never support the ending of the filibuster.
This could be the death knell for Biden’s infrastructure plan, along with any hopes for action against immigration or climate crisis.
What it means is that Democrats can’t get the 50 votes they need to pass the changing senate rules so that a bare majority can pass laws – so the need to achieve a super majority remains, at least until the end of the year. next elections.
Republicans are united behind the filibuster, and several Democrats, particularly Manchin – a centrist from increasingly reddish West Virginia – are nervous about the shake-up.
That may be true, but it is equally clear that as long as there is a filibuster to exploit, legislators will use it to get in the way of gun laws, climate laws, voting rights laws, and immigration laws.
Manchin calls for cooperation between Republicans and Democrats, ignoring recent evidence that they are being rewarded for fighting and failing to find common ground.
What proves Manchin wrong is that in the time since the Democrats and Republicans ended the filibuster for federal, judicial, and Supreme Court nominations, the world has not ended and Presidents have gotten most, but not all, of the nominees. they have wished for. The filibuster is not a law, it is a custom handed down from a time before senators were selected by voters.
3. Kentucky has passed a bill on voting rights
The third and perhaps most important thing that has happened in recent days is that Kentucky – not a blue state, but a state with a Democratic governor and a republican legislature – pushed through voting reforms.
This in itself is not dysfunctional. But the fact that it’s a surprise only further underscores how polarized and paralyzed the rest of American politics is right now. The reality of a Democratic governor working with Republicans to expand voting rights is the larger trend of GOP-controlled swing states, making it harder for people to vote.
Kentucky opening access to the ballot doesn’t put it on par with other states. In Georgia, where Republicans have moved to restrict access, it is still arguably easier to vote than in Kentucky, where the new law gives access to just three days early voting.
It may also underline the need for more national standards. It’s easier to vote in some places than others, meaning different Americans have different access to the polls.
Still, the idea that something twofold is happening in Washington right now seems so fantastic, in part because tiny minorities in the Senate have the power to block any legislation they want.
Stop calling them “vaccine passports”
I wrote here about the political controversy around verifying a vaccine in exchange for access to something – airplanes and cruise ships, or concerts, say.
There was quite a bit of reader commentary on that edition. Mark Hall, a senior fellow at Brookings, concluded with his research that while the idea of ”vaccine passports” is divisive, it is not divisive in the normal partisan way.
The government can play a role here, they argued, by establishing a system to document vaccine verification without requiring a vaccine itself.
“While the government is not at the helm, it will need to help guide it. Private actors need standards and boundaries, including clear guidelines banning the use of vaccine certification that involves unlawful discrimination,” they write.
‘Passport’ can be a divisive term. There was a similar spirit in conservative pollster Frank Luntz, who, along with Brian Castrucci on CNBC, claimed that the passport problem is one of messaging. Call it vaccine verification, they argued.
“The concept of a vaccine passport pushes almost every partisan political button for Republicans who already don’t trust their political leaders and who fear the government is going too far.”
After leading a focus group, they argued, “If you want everyone to be vaccinated and life back to normal, it starts with using the correct language. A” verification “of the vaccine is preferable to a passport. by any population subgroup – all of them. “
“While I recognize that most journalists use the term ‘vaccination passport’ in a general sense – as a kind of shorthand – it is actually imprecise, inflammatory and disrupts critically important public debate. It plays into the hands of extremists – on both ends. of the political spectrum – who use the term deliberately to reinforce the claim that any type of digital health card system would, by definition, be an affront to civil liberties and / or health equality, ”he said.
CORRECTION: In an earlier version of this story, Stanford researcher David Studdert was misidentified.