The Capitol Police's acting chief expresses remorse for the Capitol riot, but Senate Republicans aren't eager to relitigate Trump's role in it. It's Wednesday, and this is your politics tip sheet. |
- Only five Republicans joined Democrats yesterday in voting to hear former President Donald Trump's impeachment trial — enough to allow the trial to proceed but far fewer than the Democrats would eventually need to join them in convicting him.
- The 55-to-45 vote reflected many Republicans' desire to avoid confronting Trump's role in inciting the Capitol riot. Even Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, voted with most members of his party to uphold a challenge set up by Senator Rand Paul, who argued that it was unconstitutional to hold an impeachment trial for a former president (contrary to the opinions of many legal scholars, and the Senate's own history).
- "I think it's pretty obvious from the vote today that it is extraordinarily unlikely that the president will be convicted," said Senator Susan Collins, one of the five Republicans who voted to proceed to trial. "Just do the math."
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- The acting chief of the Capitol Police apologized yesterday for the agency's enormous security failures on Jan. 6, acknowledging in a closed-door briefing with the House Appropriations Committee that the department had known there was a "strong potential for violence" but failed to take adequate steps to prevent it, and calling the Capitol riot a "terrorist attack."
- In remarkable testimony that was obtained by The Times, Yogananda Pittman, the acting chief of police, confirmed that the Capitol Police Board had declined a request for National Guard troops made two days before the riot.
- As the outburst unfolded, the board, an obscure panel with three voting members, waited an hour before finally agreeing to the Capitol Police's plea for troops, Pittman said.
- Researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have pushed to return children to in-person learning as soon as possible, writing in a journal article published yesterday that the "preponderance of available evidence" indicated that in-person instruction could be carried out safely as long as mask-wearing and social distancing were maintained to prevent the coronavirus from spreading.
- But for that to work, local officials may have to impose limits on other public gatherings — at restaurants, bars or poorly ventilated gyms — to keep infection rates low, the researchers wrote.
- Widespread vaccinations probably remain a few months away. President Biden said yesterday that his administration was closing in on a deal with Moderna and Pfizer for 200 million additional doses of their vaccines, which would become available by summer's end. Because of limited manufacturing capacity, the deal isn't likely to speed up distribution before the spring.
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- Biden also announced a series of executive actions aimed at tackling racial inequity. "The simple truth is, our soul will be troubled as long as systemic racism is allowed to persist," he said yesterday. "It's corrosive, it's destructive and it's costly."
- The actions directed the Department of Housing and Urban Development to take steps to address racially discriminatory federal housing policies, and ordered the Justice Department to eliminate its use of private prisons (other departments weren't affected). Those actions and others announced yesterday were received by racial justice advocates as symbolically meaningful but ultimately small measures.
- In the courts, the Biden administration suffered its first significant setback when a federal judge in Texas temporarily blocked a key element of Biden's executive order placing a 100-day pause on deportations.
- The district court judge, a Trump appointee, approved a two-week nationwide restraining order, sought by Texas' attorney general, that would prevent the halt to deportations.
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 | | Doug Mills/The New York Times |
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Biden delivered remarks on the pandemic yesterday in front of a painting of Abraham Lincoln. |
How will the filibuster drama play out? |
The big question hanging over Washington right now is whether Senate Democrats will allow the filibuster to stand, or abolish the maneuver and allow themselves to pass bills with a 51-vote majority. The answer will determine the way government functions in the coming two years. |
Just days into the Democrats' new Senate majority, there has already been big news on this front. I connected with Carl Hulse, our chief Washington correspondent, to get caught up. |
Mitch McConnell spent much of the past week pushing Democrats to commit to leaving the filibuster alone: For a while, he went so far as to stop the Senate from beginning the basic business of assigning committees and moving legislation. But on Monday he gave up. Would you say this is another example of McConnell's willingness to use a level of obstructionism that would have been considered extreme in another era? |
I do believe Democrats were caught off guard by McConnell's willingness to make a fight over the filibuster essentially the first order of business. They were celebrating their election wins and return to power, and wham, their nemesis was standing in their way again. It was classic McConnell, using a moment of maximum leverage to try to extract something from Democrats. |
But Chuck Schumer, the new majority leader, knew he could not cave to McConnell at the start. Once McConnell saw that Democrats were not going to budge, he began looking for a way out and seized on promises by two Democratic senators, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, to not support any effort to get rid of the filibuster. They had been saying it for months, but it provided an exit and an end to the impasse for the Republicans. |
Definitely a defeat for McConnell. Ending the filibuster remains a possible weapon for the Democrats. |
How are Democrats responding? Is there a degree to which McConnell's decision could backfire, by making even moderate Democrats worried that he will grind things to a halt if they keep the filibuster in place? |
Democrats are definitely happy they can move on. Many have been waiting for years to chair committees, so this is a very big deal for them. |
But this fight is far from over. Democratic strategists think McConnell overreached and just put more focus on the filibuster and the likelihood that Republicans will try to block many of the new administration's initiatives. Progressive groups that want to get rid of the filibuster so Democrats can do things like expand the Supreme Court and make the District of Columbia a state say they are going to keep up their drive. |
The Democratic votes are not there at the moment to overturn the filibuster. But a concerted campaign by Republicans to block big Biden moves on the pandemic, immigration and climate change could change some minds. This will probably take months, if not longer, to play out. |
In the view of the officials you're talking to, from a policy standpoint, how much rests on whether Democrats ultimately do decide to jettison the filibuster, allowing them to pass bills with a simple 51-vote majority? |
Remains to be seen. I think there is still hope among some Democrats and more centrist Republicans that they can come together, get the Senate back on track and produce some legislation without dumping the filibuster. That is certainly the hope of Biden, who has staked his presidency on his ability to get the Senate to do what he wants. |
And there is a very convoluted Senate budget process called reconciliation that allows some legislation to advance without being subject to a filibuster. But there is only so much you can do that way. It feels to me like push is going to come to shove at some point and there will be a showdown over the filibuster if Democrats are completely stymied. |
If the filibuster is so crippling, how do we explain the two Democratic senators — Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema — who have said they won't do away with it? |
Even though it has often been used to block progressive legislation like civil rights bills, there is an aura around the filibuster that holds it as the key to forcing bipartisan compromise. Manchin and Sinema definitely think that way. They are also more moderate Democrats who don't want the progressive side of the party fully empowered, able to push through an agenda that might not be well received in a state like West Virginia. |
Other Democrats worry — with good reason — that if Democrats ditch the filibuster, conservative Republicans would get a free hand when they next control Congress and the White House. |
But Democrats are not going to sit idly by for four years while Senate Republicans hold up both them and Biden. If it reached that point, the Democratic holdouts would come under tremendous pressure to join with their colleagues. Minds have been changed in the past. |
What Fauci had to say about the Trump administration |
Dr. Anthony Fauci opened up to our reporter Donald McNeil Jr. about his experience of dealing with the pandemic under the Trump administration. He described receiving a powder-filled letter and being called "the skunk at the picnic." Listen to their exclusive interview on "The Daily." |
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