The battle over whether to keep a minimum wage hike in President Biden’s COVID-19 relief package is heating up, with key players on both sides of the issue digging in for the fight.
The debate is threatening to create deep divisions among Democrats as they move forward with an economic rescue package without GOP support.
Outside groups are also exerting pressure on progressive and moderate Democrats to boost the rate from $7.25, where it’s stood since 2009, to $15 an hour.
An apparent bipartisan majority of the House Homeland Security Committee on Thursday endorsed the idea of new laws to address domestic terrorism in the wake of last month’s riot at the U.S. Capitol, as experts warned such internal threats would plague the country for decades to come.
Elizabeth Neumann, a former assistant secretary of homeland security for counterterrorism during the Trump administration, warned lawmakers that there is a “high likelihood” that another domestic terrorist attack would occur in the coming months and that the problem would persist “for the next 10 to 20 years.”
Jonathan Greenblatt, head of the Anti-Defamation League, told lawmakers that Jan. 6 had been a “watershed moment for the white supremacist movement,” and that its adherents viewed the Capitol breach as a “victory.” Continue reading.
The House managers walked quietly through Statuary Hall to present the single article of impeachment against former president Donald Trump to the Senate. Americans have now become deeply familiar with this civics lesson, one that features members of the House striding slowly through the hall as though they are part of a funeral procession. What once seemed so rare and arcane has now become a sad hum in the background — the contrails of an administration that the country may take a generation to shake.
The former president was impeached for a second time in the House of Representatives, most recently for “engaging in high Crimes and Misdemeanors by inciting violence against the Government of the United States.” In other words, he egged on the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol early this month. And so on Monday evening, with the Capitol blessedly quiet and calm, one could hear the footfalls of the legislators on the stone floor as they walked two by two, solemnly focused on their task. A few camera shutters clicked, but mostly there was an eerie silence in a space that has been the location of so much tumult, so many emotions in such a short span of time.
The impeachment managers moved though a room filled with the ghosts of our distant past and the fresh memories of our troubled present. Continue reading.
Lawmakers are taking matters into their own hands to prevent white supremacists and other extremists from joining and remaining in the military.
Following the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol — and the subsequent revelation that nearly 1 in 5 people charged in connection with the riot have some form of military background — Congress plans to insert language into this year’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to address extremism at the Pentagon and other federal agencies.
“The attack on our Capitol was an insurrection fueled in large part by groups that espouse the same extreme white supremacists’ views groups that actively recruit veterans and from the ranks of our military,” Rep. Anthony Brown (D-Md.) said in a statement to The Hill. Continue reading.
From the Ku Klux Klan’s campaign of terror against African Americans following the Civil War to the anti-government bombing in Oklahoma City, terrorism and political violence have been a part of American history for generations. Since 2001, America has focused intently on countering a different form of terrorism—specifically, a form of terrorism practiced most prominently by al-Qaida and later the Islamic State (IS) group. After the September 11 attacks, there was a consensus that this form of terrorism presented the clearest threat to the U.S. homeland—and the U.S. government was willing to take unprecedented measures to counter the threat. Some actions, such as the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL, were proportionate and successful; others deeply undermined U.S. values while increasing anti-American sentiment.1 The country continues to live with these shameful legacies such as the ongoing operation of the Guantanamo Bay prison.
Today, however, America faces a different threat environment. The increasingly polarized state of American politics, combined with the proliferation of social media networks, has allowed previously isolated hate groups to connect and coordinate. As a result, a new consensus is growing among counterterrorism watchers that the most significant terrorist threat to the United States is now the threat from violent white supremacists. Most recently, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) found that white supremacist violence is the most lethal overall threat facing the United States.2 Early this past summer, a report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) corroborated these findings:
… far-right terrorism has significantly outpaced terrorism from other types of perpetrators, including from far-left networks and individuals inspired by the Islamic State and al-Qaeda. Right-wing attacks and plots account for the majority of all terrorist incidents in the United States since 1994, and the total number of right-wing attacks and plots has grown significantly during the past six years. Right-wing extremists perpetrated two thirds of the attacks and plots in the United States in 2019 and over 90 percent between January 1 and May 8, 2020.3
After last week’s insurrection at the Capitol, metal detectors were installed at certain entrances to the building, including to the House chamber. Pretty much immediately, Republican members of Congress pitched a fit about it. Now, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says lawmakers will be fined $5,000 if they try to skip past the new security measures.
Anyone who has visited Capitol Hill knows that, for members of the public, it was already full of metal detectors. Members of Congress, however, were often able to bypass security so long as they showed their lawmaker pins. But the Capitol insurrection has changed all that. On Jan. 12, memos regarding the new security measures were sent to all members of Congress by newly appointed acting Sergeant-at-Arms Timothy Blodgett, who assumed the position after Michael Stenger resigned.
“To ensure compliance with Capitol Police Board regulations concerning firearms and incendiary devices, as well as to provide a safe and secure environment in which to conduct legislative business, effective immediately, all persons, including members, are required [to] undergo security screening when entering the House chamber,” Blodgett wrote in his memo, according to The Hill. Continue reading.
Vice President Pence declared Democrat Joe Biden the winner of the presidential election at the end of a violent and deadly day at the Capitol. Pence also announced that Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) had won the vice presidency, after the Senate and House rejected Trump loyalists’ challenges to Biden’s win in Pennsylvania and Congress finally counted the electoral votes.
Shortly thereafter, President Trump — who had defiantly told supporters at a rally that he would “never concede” — said in a statement that “there will be an orderly transition on January 20th.” Continue reading.
Congress has agreed to shield patients from many big, unexpected medical bills — a practice that consumers and politicians have bemoaned for years but that eluded a federal solution until now.
A ban on what is known as surprise billing is woven into a pandemic relief package, which lawmakers approved late Monday. The ban is based mainly, but not entirely, on a bipartisan accord this month among three House committees and one in the Senate that had each tried to outlaw the practice before.
The issue involves often-large bills that patients are sent for care they did not realize was outside their insurer’s network. Such bills have become increasingly common even when patients use an in-network hospital. At times, emergency room visits can lead to bills for treatment by a physician who has not agreed to participate in the network. And when care is planned in advance, such as for surgeries, patients do not always know that some medical specialists, such as anesthesiologists, can be outside a network. Continue reading.
WASHINGTON — Congress is set to pass a massive bipartisan emergency relief bill that’s intended to aid Americans affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Summaries from House Democratic appropriators say it includes:
Direct payments
—$166 billion in another round of economic impact payments that will go directly to Americans.
—$600 stimulus checks for individuals that begin phasing out at an income of $75,000 and $1,200 for married couples phasing out at an income of $150,000, as well as $600 for each child dependent. Continue reading.
Democrats are arguing that more coronavirus relief legislation will need to be enacted early in the incoming Biden administration, even as they tout the $900 billion package that lawmakers unveiled on Monday.
Democrats are highlighting provisions in the agreement that they fought for, including extended unemployment benefits, a second round of direct payments and rental assistance. But they wanted the package to be bigger and say the relief in the $900 billion measure is insufficient.
“I would hope that as we see the need for what we have done in this nearly $900 billion legislation that we’ll vote on today, that everyone understands it’s a first step,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said on the House floor Monday. Continue reading.
