POLITICO NIGHTLY: The democracy crisis Biden didn’t address

 

BY RENUKA RAYASAM With help from Nick Taylor-Vaisey President Joe Biden speaks to a crowd at the Atlanta University Center Consortium. | Megan Varner/Getty Images STOPPING THE NEXT INSURRECTION — President Joe Biden abandoned his inclinations toward bipartisanship today, blasting Republicans in an Atlanta speech for a raft of new GOP led state voting laws. For the first time, he backed the idea of allowing voting rights legislation to pass with a simple Senate majority rather than a filibuster-proof 60 bipartisan votes. “This is the moment to defend our democracy,” Biden said today. Yet even some liberal-leaning election law experts say Biden’s focus on voting rights obscures a larger threat to U.S. election integrity in the 2022 midterms and the 2024 presidential contest: The idea that a future election loser could subvert the country’s electoral machinery to take power — in other words, the next insurrection might be successful. “It’s the primary thing,” Richard Pildes, an election law expert at New York University, told Nightly. Pildes and Ned Foley, an election law expert at Ohio State University, joined two conservative scholars in an op-ed to argue for the urgency of reforming the Electoral Count Act, a 150-year-old law that contains the rules for how Congress certifies a presidential election. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has expressed interest in reforming the law. Biden didn’t mention the Electoral Count Act in his speech today. Biden picked the wrong moment to discard bipartisanship, Foley told Nightly today. “It was essential, in my judgment, to make common cause with every possible Republican,” Foley said. In his view, the country’s democracy is in crisis, one that requires Democrats to reach out to Republicans willing to buck former President Donald Trump — not give them a reason to unite against Democrats. Voting rights, at the moment, has become shorthand for a vast array of issues that have to do with voting and elections — everything from how congressional and statehouse districts get drawn to how elections are carried out to who is eligible to vote. Those issues are important, Foley said — he called Georgia’s new limits on political organizations giving people waiting in a poll line food and water “ugly and obnoxious” — but he sees them as less dire than the threat that Trump or a future presidential loser could successfully overturn the will of the voters. Foley and Pildes propose to revise the Electoral Count Act to bar Congress from invalidating a state’s electoral votes, unless a legislature sends competing slates of electors — which hasn’t happened since 1876. “As long as the state itself has settled on who won that state through policies established in advance of the election, Congress has no role other than to accept those as being the state’s electoral vote,” they wrote in the Washington Post with Michael W. McConnell and Bradley Smith. Biden and the Democrats are instead pushing forward with two highly partisan bills that may not have even simple majorities to pass. And that don’t address the law that the Capitol rioters hoped to exploit to keep Trump in office. It’s a strategy that could backfire, Foley said, if it further drags election law into partisan, winner-take-all territory. Democrats are crying foul on state Republican election measures. In his speech today, Biden compared some of these laws to the kind of state control imposed by totalitarian regimes. And the feeling that the game is rigged is shared by the GOP: The vast majority of Republicans already believe Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election. Democrats don’t need to choose between their voting bills and Electoral Count Act reform, Pildes said, but he worries about this pervasive distrust in elections from every side right now. “That is a dangerous situation for any democracy,” Pildes said. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at rrayasam@politico.com, or on Twitter at @RenuRayasam.   BECOME A GLOBAL INSIDER: The world is more connected than ever. It has never been more essential to identify, unpack and analyze important news, trends and decisions shaping our future — and we’ve got you covered! Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, Global Insider author Ryan Heath navigates the global news maze and connects you to power players and events changing our world. Don’t miss out on this influential global community. Subscribe now.     WHAT'D I MISS? — Biden health team weighs new mask distribution plan: Biden administration health officials are weighing whether to offer high quality masks, which could include KN95 or N95s, to all Americans , as the Omicron variant fuels a record surge of Covid-19, three people with knowledge of the deliberations told POLITICO. The internal discussions come amid growing calls for the government to make the more protective masks more easily accessible, and as evidence mounts that the cloth masks many have relied on throughout the pandemic are less effective at protecting against the Omicron variant. — Powell’s warning to Congress: Inflation a ‘severe threat’ to jobs: Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell had a stark warning today for U.S. senators who will decide whether he gets a second term: Surging prices pose a threat to the job market. He vowed to get them under control. That stance could put him at odds with some Democratic lawmakers, who have pressed the Fed to continue its two-year effort to boost the economy until the benefits of the recovery can be felt by most workers. — FAA briefly halted West Coast flights amid North Korean missile scare: A North Korean missile launch prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to ground flights for a short time at some West Coast airports Monday out of an abundance of caution. The temporary “ground stop” — an order, most often used during bad weather, that curtails landings at certain airports — prompted a brief mystery about what the threat was that shuttered landings for at least some airports on the West Coast. — Senators grill feds over Jan. 6 riot probe: Democratic senators grilled top Justice Department and FBI officials today for declining, so far, to declare Jan. 6 rioters’ crimes as “domestic terrorism” as judges sentence those involved for their crimes. The questions came during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the Justice Department’s response to the storming of the Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021. Democrats challenged prosecutors for not seeking the lengthier, terrorism-related sentences related to the insurrection, while Republicans often steered the discussion away from the Jan. 6 attack altogether. — Florida might ban abortions after 15 weeks: State lawmakers in Florida are planning to pass legislation this year that would drastically limit how and when people can access abortions, a move sure to inflame growing tensions nationally over conservative efforts to overturn Roe v. Wade . Republicans who control the Florida Legislature have spent months crafting the proposal after Texas lawmakers in May banned all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy and opened up abortion providers to lawsuits from private individuals. They settled on a less extreme but still restrictive measure that will anger Democrats and abortion rights advocates across the country: a ban on abortion after 15 weeks except if two doctors agree a fetus is suffering from a fatal abnormality. There are no exceptions for rape or incest. Existing Florida law restricts abortions after 24 weeks.   STEP INSIDE THE WEST WING: What's really happening in West Wing offices? Find out who's up, who's down, and who really has the president’s ear in our West Wing Playbook newsletter, the insider's guide to the Biden White House and Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details that you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today.     THE GLOBAL FIGHT Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau receives his Covid-19 vaccine booster shot at a pharmacy in Ottawa. | Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press via AP CANADIAN INITIATIVE, LESS WORTHWHILE THAN PROJECTED — Ottawa Playbook author Nick Taylor-Vaisey writes: Canada has talked a big game on helping to vaccinate the world against Covid. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced C$440 million in Sept. 2020 for the global COVAX facility — half of which would pay for doses headed to low- and middle-income countries. The rest of that money would secure up to 15 million doses for Canadian arms. That promised investment eventually grew to C$545 million. Ottawa pledged millions in surplus doses to other countries that desperately needed them. International Development Minister Harjit Sajjan’s orders are to donate 200 million doses by the end of 2022. But the talk has not been matched with action. The latest figures reveal a relative pittance in donations. As of Dec. 21, Canada had sent fewer than 12 million COVAX-funded shots to 17 countries, and shipped more than 750,000 surplus AstraZeneca doses to six others. Rwanda received the most recent shipment: 477,680 doses of Moderna on Dec. 21. As Omicron’s rapid spread has forced Canadian provinces to quickly ramp up booster shot campaigns, one sentence from Trudeau’s 2020 announcement stands out: “Protecting Canadians from Covid-19 is priority number one, and the first foundation of the Government of Canada’s plan for a stronger and more resilient Canada.” Every government’s most important job is protecting its people. But Canada’s federal procurement department has secured six vaccines for every Canadian, the most in the world per capita. Canada’s vaccination rates are among the highest in the world. As Omicron silently infects thousands of people a day, the nation appears as hungry for boosters as it was for first and second shots. On Dec. 1, only 3.4 percent of the population had received a third shot. Monday’s total was 26.6 percent. Everybody knows that vaccination rates in most of the developing world badly lag Canada’s numbers. Trudeau knows vaccine nationalism will prolong the global crisis. “We cannot beat this virus in Canada unless we end it everywhere,” he said back in September 2020. Ottawa, however, is loath to risk damaging fragile relationships with vaccine manufacturers by waiving the patent on Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine using a rarely employed federal measure. And Trudeau also knows how politics work back home. Canadians fancy themselves a generous society when a crisis strikes somewhere far away. But they want their boosters, and they want them now. The political price of giving short shrift to the rest of the world pales in comparison to the upheaval caused by a cupboard left bare at home. AROUND THE WORLD WHO PUMPS ENDEMIC BRAKES — The World Health Organization told governments today it was too early to predict that the Covid-19 pandemic will burn itself out, as it warned that more than half of people in Europe would catch the disease over the next two months, Sarah-Taïssir Bencharif writes. With the highly contagious Omicron strain unleashing “a new west-to-east tidal wave sweeping across the region,” hospitalizations can be expected to rise, WHO Europe chief Hans Kluge told a press conference. “It is challenging health systems and service delivery in many countries where Omicron has spread at speed, and threatens to overwhelm in many more,” said Kluge. The intervention by the global health body came after Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez signaled a policy shift away from counting cases and quarantining, toward a risk-based approach typical of managing outbreaks of diseases like influenza that seeks to protect the most vulnerable. NIGHTLY NUMBER About 17 hours The amount of time between Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot announcing she and the Chicago Teachers Union ended a tense standoff over the safety of children and staff returning to school amid the Omicron surge, and Lightfoot announcing she had tested positive for Covid-19. PARTING WORDS Sen. Roger Marshall presents a display of the yearly pay received by Anthony Fauci at a Senate HELP hearing on Capitol Hill. | Greg Nash-Pool/Getty Images ‘WHAT A MORON’ — Anthony Fauci called Sen. Roger Marshall a “moron” at the end of a contentious question-and-answer exchange focused on whether the financial disclosure information of the White House’s top public medical adviser is available to the public. Marshall (R-Kan.) began his interrogation into Fauci’s finances by noting the doctor’s salary, $434,000, and the multibillion-dollar budget for federal research grants that he oversees as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “As the highest-paid employee in the entire federal government, would you be willing to submit to Congress and the public a financial disclosure that includes your past and current investments?” Marshall asked. “After all, your colleague [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle] Walensky and every member of Congress submits a financial disclosure that includes their investments.” Fauci countered Marshall’s claim, stating that his investments and financial information were already “public knowledge,” and had been for more than 30 years. “All you have to do is ask for it,” Fauci said. “You’re so misinformed, it’s extraordinary.”   Follow us on Twitter Chris Suellentrop @suellentrop Tyler Weyant @tweyant Renuka Rayasam @renurayasam Myah Ward @myahward   FOLLOW US

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What happened to Otto Warmbier in North Korea? | DW Documentary

 

US student Otto Warmbier was sentenced to 15 years in a North Korean labor camp in 2016. Warmbier was released the following year, but he died of brain damage shortly after his return to the United States. Was he really the victim of torture? Otto Warmbier was sentenced to 15 years hard labor in 2016 after being convicted of attempting to steal a propaganda poster during a trip to Pyongyang. Just over a year on he was dead, having been sent home to the US in a vegetative state. US President Donald Trump tweeted that he had been "tortured beyond belief " in North Korea. The US president blamed both the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and the Obama administration for Warmbier’s death - and Trump appeared before the media with the student’s parents. This was at the peak of the North Korean missile crisis. Later, as relations between Trump and Kim Jong Un became warmer, the US president changed his tune. In 2019 Trump said that he believed that Kim did not know what happened to the US student much to the consternation of Warmbier’s parents. What really happened to Otto Warmbier in North Korea? Veteran foreign correspondent Klaus Scherer sets out to try to find out. In the documentary, Scherer interviews a number of people with knowledge of the case who have been largely unheard up to now. He shows that a US court investigating a liability case against North Korea brought by Warmbier’s parents also ignored important witnesses, who continue to cast doubt on the torture allegations. These include the coroner in Cincinnati who examined Warmbier’s body. She believes that the account given by North Korean doctors is credible. They claim that Warmbier had inadvertently been given too high a dose of sedatives by prison staff. This, the medics say was the cause of his state of unresponsive wakefulness. Could Trump’s initial torture charges simply have been motivated by political opportunism?

Jim Jordan backpedals on Jan. 6 Trump calls

 

Today’s Action: Mask up and get vaccinated!

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EU set to recommend reinstating restrictions on US travelers

Today's Top Stories:

Rep. Jim Jordan suddenly remembers at least one other call with Trump on Jan. 6
The House Select Committee revealed just days ago that it would seek phone records and other communications as part of its probe. Interesting timing, Jim!

Take Action: Demand Rep. Jim Jordan resign after witnesses say he covered up serial sexual abuse on Ohio St. campus.

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VIDEO OF THE DAY: Ron DeSantis gets dismantled on national TV
Florida leads the nation in COVID hospitalizations, but that isn't stopping the Republican governor from politicizing the crisis and selling obnoxious anti-science merchandise to stuff his campaign coffers.

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Get your copy of "Obie is Man Enough," by Schuyler Bailar — the first transgender NCAA athlete and renowned inclusion advocate
OD Action Pick: "A heartfelt coming-of-age tale about a young trans athlete; ­readers will be rooting for ­every one of Obie’s wins, in and out of the pool." –School Library Journal

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Ida makes catastrophic landfall, knocks out power for all of New Orleans
The National Hurricane Center warned of a dangerous storm surges and flash floods around southeastern Louisiana and southern Mississippi after Ida made landfall as one of the strongest storms in US history.

Take Action: Tell Congress to strengthen and expand Social Security!

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Notorious North Korea nuclear reactor reportedly back up and running
Oh, good.

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Lake Tahoe threatened by massive wild fire, thousands more ordered to flee
All residents on the California side of the Lake Tahoe Basin were warned to evacuate the region, after fire officials had stressed for days that protecting the area was their top firefighting priority.

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White House calls for state, local eviction moratoriums after Supreme Court ruling
The White House called for "urgent help" from governors and mayors to help struggling renters, encouraging officials to issue their own state and local eviction moratoriums after the high court's six conservative justices blocked the president's targeted federal freeze.

Take Action: Add your name to call for Congress to make the Child Tax Credit permanent!

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Republicans pull shameless stunt over vaccines
No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen: Unbelievable

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3rd conservative radio host who condemned vaccines dies of COVID
Marc Bernier, a mainstay on talk radio in Daytona, is the third right wing radio personality to die from coronavirus who vehemently rejected vaccines.

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Rand Paul claims scientists won't study horse deworming drug ivermectin's use as a potential COVID cure because of their "hatred for Trump"
Sure, Rand, whatever you say.

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US killed suspected suicide bombers plotting another attack on the Kabul airport
There are reports that the drone strike also resulted in the deaths of Afghan civilians, including children.

Take Action: Call on the US to immediately bring in more Afghan refugees!

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Fauci backs vaccine mandate for school children: "A good idea"
The nation's top infectious disease expert recognized the idea would be met with lots of resistance but he said that the government has long mandated vaccines for children to attend school.

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Seriously?

British troops save rescue dogs, cats as 1000s of Afghans left behind

Belief in immortality is reason Mississippi isn't afraid of COVID, gov says

Fox News weather reporter blown away during Ida coverage

Yes. Seriously.

Kid Rock cancels shows as band contracts COVID at Sturgis rally

Florida ICU doc breaks down during interview about COVID patients

Professor resigns mid-lecture after student refuses mask protocol

Drought is complicating California's plans for a carbon-free future

Hope...

GoodGoodGood: Faith communities mobilizing to get people vaccinated

Google Science Fair-winning teen fights microplastic pollution with magnetic liquids

US special forces vets secretly rescue hundreds of Afghan allies

Mom fights off mountain lion, saves 5-year-old son

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Today’s Action: Mask up and get vaccinated!

As the Delta variant surges throughout the country, we desperately need a new way to message masking up and getting vaccinated. We are far, far away from the necessary numbers to reach herd immunity and protect our most vulnerable. As our ICUs fill up — overwhelmingly with unvaccinated Americans — children who cannot get vaccinated are increasingly among the gravely ill.

We have an obligation to take all necessary precautions to slow the spread of this pandemic. And let’s be honest, it’s not that hard. 

Get the free shot and put a piece of cloth over your face. You know, so you don’t accidentally kill your neighbor.

Follow the updated CDC guidelines and mask up indoors, even if you’re vaccinated. While you’re on the website, check out their recommended conversation points for talking to a loved one about getting vaccinated! 

There is still so much misinformation about masks and the vaccines. While you might already be vaccinated and following updated CDC guidelines, the likelihood of you being just a few degrees of separation from someone who isn’t is high. If every reader sets an example by wearing their mask, or asking unvaccinated loved ones to talk to their primary care doctor about vaccination, the chance of flattening the curve would increase exponentially.

Another COVID wave is scary, and we need all hands on deck to fight it and protect our neighbors. You can absolutely make a difference by following the science and opening constructive dialogue.

Take a few moments to review and share the updated CDC guidelines to mask up indoors, even if you’re vaccinated. Then, check out the CDC’s suggested talking points to help drive up vaccination rates!

PS — Please don't forget to sign the petition demanding Trump testify for January 6th committee, and be sure to follow OD Action on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.