Republicans on Tuesday blocked the most ambitious voting rights legislation to come before Congress in a generation, dealing a blow to Democrats’ attempts to counter a wave of state-level ballot restrictions and supercharging a campaign to end the legislative filibuster.
President Biden and Democratic leaders said the defeat was only the beginning of their drive to steer federal voting rights legislation into law, and vowed to redouble their efforts in the weeks ahead.
“In the fight for voting rights, this vote was the starting gun, not the finish line,” said Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader.
But the Republican blockade in the Senate left Democrats without a clear path forward, and without a means to beat back the restrictive voting laws racing through Republican-led states. For now, it will largely be left to the Justice Department to decide whether to challenge any of the state laws in court — a time-consuming process with limited chances of success — and to a coalition of outside groups to help voters navigate the shifting rules.
Democrats’ best remaining hope to enact legal changes rests on a long-shot bid to eliminate the legislative filibuster, which Republicans used on Tuesday to block the measure, called the For the People Act. Seething progressive activists pointed to the Republicans’ refusal to even allow debate on the issue as a glaring example of why Democrats in the Senate must move to eliminate the rule and bypass the G.O.P. on a range of liberal priorities while they still control Congress and the presidency.
They argued that with former President Donald J. Trump continuing to press the false claim that the election was stolen from him — a narrative that many Republicans have perpetuated as they have pushed for new voting restrictions — Democrats in Congress could not afford to allow the voting bill to languish.
Liberal activists promised a well-funded summertime blitz, replete with home-state rallies and million-dollar ad campaigns, to try to ramp up pressure on a handful of Senate Democrats opposed to changing the rules. Mounting frustration with Republicans could accelerate a growing rift between liberals and more moderate lawmakers over whether to try to pass a bipartisan infrastructure and jobs package or move unilaterally on a far more ambitious plan.
But key Democratic moderates who have defended the filibuster rule — led by Senators Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona — appeared unmoved and said their leaders should try to find narrower bipartisan compromises, including on voting and infrastructure bills.
The Democrats’ voting rights bill would usher in the largest federally mandated expansion of voting rights since the 1960s, ban partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts, force super PACs to disclose their big donors and create a new public campaign financing system.
Republicans never really considered the legislation, or a narrower alternative proposed in recent days by Mr. Manchin. They mounted an aggressive campaign in congressional committees, on television and finally on the Senate floor to portray the bill as a self-serving attempt to federalize elections to benefit Democrats.
“These same rotten proposals have sometimes been called a massive overhaul for a broken democracy, sometimes just a modest package of tweaks for a democracy that’s working perfectly and sometimes a response to state actions, which this bill actually predates by many years,” said Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader. “But whatever label Democrats slap on the bill, the substance remains the same.”
For many Democrats and voting rights groups, the failure to advance the party’s major elections bill on Tuesday felt like the arrival of the inevitable, the final thud of a tree crashing in the woods after wavering for months. And everyone heard it.
Unable to halt the relentless push by Republican state legislatures to pass a host of voting restrictions, many Democrats had rested their hopes on a long-shot bid to enact a federal voting law that would undo much of the G.O.P. legislation and expand access to voting for millions around the country.
But on Tuesday, as it became increasingly clear that passing federal voting legislation would be a steep challenge, Democrats, civil rights groups and voting rights organizations reaffirmed their resolve to fight in Congress for voting protections.
“The pathway is Congress must do their job,” said Derrick Johnson, the president of the N.A.A.C.P. “When the Voting Rights Act was adopted in 1965, people thought it was a long shot. It’s our jobs as civil rights organizations to make possible what other people think is impossible. We continue to push forward.”
Though the bill, known as the For the People Act, struggled to garner universal support among Democratic senators, it had been perhaps the ultimate overarching objective for Democrats who have been beaten badly in state legislatures for much of the past two decades, allowing Republicans to draw gerrymandered state legislative districts to hold onto power and move nearly unimpeded in their recent quest to pass new voting laws.
Some voting rights groups expressed frustration with initial Democratic efforts, arguing that even though the issue was nominally the party’s top legislative goal — as evidenced by its H.R. 1 and S. 1 marking in Congress — it has not been treated with the requisite urgency. Yet they also hoped that the failed vote on Tuesday would vividly demonstrate the gravity of the situation.
“I have yet to see Democrats act like this is the No. 1 priority on their agenda, and I suspect that we will start to see that after today,” said Nsé Ufot, the chief executive of the New Georgia Project Action Fund, a voting rights group. “Today is the starter pistol. Today marks the beginning of the escalation.”
The blockade of the Democratic legislation in Congress came on the same day that Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas called a special session of the state’s Legislature to begin July 8, as Republicans there resumed their attempt to pass an expansive bill of voting restrictions.
News Analysis
The Democrats’ expansive voting rights and ethics bill did not start as a battle for the future of democracy, as they frame it, or as the partisan power grab that Republicans call it. The initial driver was the ethical norm-breaking of President Donald J. Trump and his White House.
When House Democrats sat down to write the bill in 2019, passage was the farthest thing from their minds. Democrats running for the House in Republican-leaning districts had campaigned on a poll-tested message of ending corruption in Mr. Trump’s Washington, rooting out money from politics, and ending partisan gerrymandering.
Their newly elected speaker, Nancy Pelosi, wanted to enshrine those campaign pledges as the first bill of the new Democratic House, House Resolution 1 — a transformative measure, but with Republicans controlling the Senate and Mr. Trump in office, one that had no chance of becoming law.
By this year, circumstances had changed dramatically — after the effort by Mr. Trump and his supporters to overturn the results of the 2020 election and amid a rush by Republicans to enact a wave of state-level legislation impeding ballot access — but the bill had not.
What started out as a largely political document suddenly was portrayed by Democrats as an imperative to preserve voting rights and a crucial test of democracy itself. And although Republicans in Congress made it clear they would oppose any bid to expand ballot access, Democratic leaders vowed to use their narrow majorities in the House and the Senate to try to push it through.
The failure of that strategy became clear on Tuesday. With Republicans making good on their promise to block it, a first procedural vote in the Senate left the legislation far short of the 60 votes it needed to advance, dooming the bill and leaving Democrats with an issue to campaign on — but not the big legislative victory progressives had sought.
The blockade will preserve the status quo post-Trump, freezing action indefinitely in Washington as Republicans at the state level proceed, largely unencumbered, with new laws curtailing early and mail-in voting, while installing partisans to oversee and certify the next election.
Four Saudis who participated in the 2018 killing of the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi received paramilitary training in the United States the previous year under a contract approved by the State Department, according to documents and people familiar with the arrangement.
The instruction occurred as the secret unit responsible for Mr. Khashoggi’s killing was beginning an extensive campaign of kidnapping, detention and torture of Saudi citizens ordered by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, to crush dissent inside the kingdom.
The training was provided by the Arkansas-based security company Tier 1 Group, which is owned by the private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management. The company says the training — including “safe marksmanship” and “countering an attack” — was defensive in nature and devised to better protect Saudi leaders. One person familiar with the training said it also included work in surveillance and close-quarters battle.
There is no evidence that the American officials who approved the training or Tier 1 Group executives knew that the Saudis were involved in the crackdown inside Saudi Arabia. But the fact that the government approved high-level military training for operatives who went on to carry out the grisly killing of a journalist shows how intensely intertwined the United States has become with an autocratic nation even as its agents carried out horrific human rights abuses.
The State Department initially granted a license for the paramilitary training of the Saudi Royal Guard to Tier 1 Group starting in 2014, during the Obama administration. The training continued during at least the first year of former President Donald J. Trump’s term.
A State Department spokesman declined to confirm whether it awarded licenses to Tier 1 Group for the Saudi training.
“This administration insists on responsible use of U.S. origin defense equipment and training by our allies and partners, and considers appropriate responses if violations occur,” said the spokesman, Ned Price. “Saudi Arabia faces significant threats to its territory, and we are committed to working together to help Riyadh strengthen its defenses.”
As the last remaining American troops prepare to depart from Afghanistan and Congress debates removing presidential war-making powers for the first time in a generation, there is a growing understanding that the veterans of America’s longest wars have a far greater risk of suicide and other mental health concerns than those who came before.
A new report from the Costs of War Project at Brown University found an estimated 30,177 active duty military personnel and veterans who have served since the Sept 11, 2001, terrorist attacks have died by suicide, compared with the 7,057 killed in military operations during the two-decade global war on terror. Among those who died by suicide, not all served in combat roles, suggesting that the problems that led to their suicides went beyond many of the often-cited causes, such as the high number of traumatic brain injuries and other severe combat-related wounds.
The study pointed to service members’ exposure to mental, moral, and sexual traumas; the influence of the military’s hegemonic masculine culture; access to guns; and the difficulty of reintegrating into civilian life. The study also questioned “the impact of the military’s reliance on guiding principles which overburden individual service members with moral responsibility or blameworthiness” for actions or consequences over which they may have little control.
The overall suicide rate for veterans is 1.5 times as much as the rate for civilians. Among post-Sept. 11 veterans between 18-years-old and 35-years-old, the rate is 2.5 times that of all civilians, the report found, and double that of civilians the same age.
A great deal of money and legislation has been focused on fighting veteran suicide, yet the numbers have moved very little. The total number of veteran suicides increased by 36 from 2017 to 2018, the latest data available from the Department of Veterans Affairs, even as the veteran population fell by 1.5 percent.
Lawmakers hope new programs passed in the last year that focus on veterans from the post-Sept. 11 period and those in rural areas will have more profound effects. Veterans who die by suicide often do not seek V. A. services, so other means of reaching them may be more successful.
While most American veterans did not serve in the post-Sept. 11 wars, suicide rates for those who did rose from an average of 32.3 per 100,000 between 2005 and 2017 to 45.9 per 100,000 in 2018, the report found, drawing a firm line between service in those wars and special risk.
Thomas H. Suitt III, the author of the report, said it was important to focus on that set of suicides, rather than the broader cases in the military.
“For active service members, the rates look similar to those of the civilian population,” he said in an email. “Indeed, the Department of Defense has a quick line they use that points that out, as though it is comforting. However, historically, rates among active component service members were lower than the general population and usually decreased in wartime.”
Attorney General Merrick B. Garland backed away on Tuesday from doing a broad review of Justice Department politicization during the Trump administration, noting that the department’s independent inspector general was already investigating related issues, including aggressive leak hunts and attempts to overturn the election.
Democrats and some former Justice Department employees have pressed Mr. Garland to uncover any efforts by former President Donald J. Trump to wield the power of federal law enforcement to advance his personal agenda. Their calls for a full investigation grew louder after recent revelations that Mr. Trump pushed department officials to help him undo his election loss and that prosecutors took aggressive steps to root out leakers.
Answering questions from reporters at the Justice Department on Tuesday, Mr. Garland said that reviewing the previous administration’s actions was “a complicated question.” He noted that managers typically sought to understand what previous leaders had done, but said he would stop short of a comprehensive review in part to keep career employees from concluding that their work would be judged through changing political views.
“I don’t want the department’s career people to think that a new group comes in and immediately applies a political lens,” Mr. Garland said.
He also invoked the investigations by the Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael E. Horowitz, noting that they spoke to the question of whether Mr. Trump had improperly used the department’s powers to investigate and prosecute.
“It’s his job to look at these things,” Mr. Garland said of Mr. Horowitz. “He’s very good at this — let us know when there are problems and what changes should be made, if they should be. I don’t want to prejudge anything. It’s just not fair to the current employees.”
Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent in charge of the powerful Senate Budget Committee, signaled on Tuesday an openness to adjusting the cap on how much taxpayers can deduct in state and local taxes as he seeks to secure the support of nearly every Democrat in Congress for a multitrillion-dollar economic package.
Some congressional Democrats have warned that they may not support any changes to the tax code that do not also address that provision, put in place during the Trump administration, because of the impact on their constituents.
A draft budget document circulated by staff members on Capitol Hill and obtained by The New York Times included money to address the cap, which primarily increases the tax bills of higher-income residents of high-tax states like New York and California. The funding was not included in Mr. Biden’s original proposals and could amount to a partial repeal of the cap for some taxpayers.
“I have a problem with extremely wealthy people being able to get the complete deduction,” Mr. Sanders said in an interview, though he did not comment on specific details. “I think that’s an issue we’ll have to work on.”
Democrats have begun to move forward to pass some, if not all, of Mr. Biden’s economic agenda through the fast-track budget reconciliation process in order to bypass a Republican filibuster in the Senate. But the openness from Mr. Sanders underscored the breadth of compromises that rank-and-file lawmakers may have to accept to secure the necessary support of all 50 senators who caucus with Democrats and nearly every House Democrat.
Mr. Sanders, who has pushed for as much as $6 trillion in spending should bipartisan negotiations on a narrower infrastructure package collapse, said he had asked Democrats on his committee to outline their priorities as he moves to build consensus around an outline.
“OK, look, what do you think? What kind of numbers you’re comfortable with? And where would you like to cut back?” Mr. Sanders said as he described his approach. “We haven’t heard a lot about the cutting back.”
But he acknowledged the challenge in such maneuvers even as he pushes for various liberal priorities, including expanding Medicare benefits and eligibility and more spending. “We’re going to have to make sure that we end up with numbers that 50 members can agree on,” he said.
Mr. Sanders said he had not yet received a commitment from every senator for a $6 trillion package, even as he warned that a bipartisan infrastructure agreement would clear the Senate only with the promise that every Democrat would also support a reconciliation package.
“We’re going to have to work hard, and, you know, make some trade-offs, and so forth and so on,” he said. “I am more than willing to speak to every member and hear what they have to say.”
Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, were expected to meet with White House officials Tuesday evening to discuss both bipartisan talks and the reconciliation process.
Among those expected to attend the meeting, according to an official familiar with the plans, were Brian Deese, the director of the National Economic Council; Steve Ricchetti, a top adviser to Mr. Biden; Louisa Terrell, the director of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs; Shalanda Young, the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget; and Susan Rice, the White House domestic policy adviser.
The meeting comes after a series of lengthy huddles on Tuesday between a bipartisan group of centrist senators and White House officials. Those talks, spearheaded by Senators Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, and Kyrsten Sinema, Democrat of Arizona, are expected to continue Wednesday.
Vice President Kamala Harris cast the tiebreaking vote to confirm President Biden’s nominee to run the Office of Personnel Management, Kiran Ahuja, overcoming Republican objections to her nomination that centered on her views on racial justice.
Ms. Ahuja’s confirmation follows a tumultuous period at the federal human resources agency. O.P.M. had five different directors, three of them acting, while President Donald J. Trump was in office, with one of the confirmed directors quitting under pressure from the White House and the other fired by the president.
“Kiran Ahuja is a qualified, experienced and dedicated public servant who we are looking forward to leading the Office of Personnel Management in its work protecting the safety of the work force, empowering federal employees, and building a federal work force that looks like America,” said Chris Meager, a White House spokesman.
The unified Republican objections centered on Ms. Ahuja’s remarks last year, when she ran a Seattle-based philanthropic organization, following the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.
“You can’t be a true ally to Black communities until you take it upon yourself to understand our racialized history in its most intimate and heinous forms,” she wrote last June. “And learn, as I did, that all forms of discrimination flow from the subjugation of Black and Indigenous people.”
Before the vote, Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, sought to tie Ms. Ahuja to critical race theory — a framework used to look at how racism is woven into seemingly neutral laws and institutions — which Republicans have used as an organizing tool to energize conservative voters during the Biden presidency.
“I’m concerned that as the federal government’s H.R. director, Ms. Ahuja could use her platform to promote radical ideologies that seek to divide rather than unite the American people,” Mr. Hawley said. “She could bring critical race theory back into federal government training.”
Much to the consternation of some conservatives, Mr. Biden on Inauguration Day rescinded a Trump-era executive order that forbade some workplace diversity and training programs for federal employees and contractors.
Ms. Ahuja, an Indian-born immigrant who was raised in Savannah, Ga., worked in the Department of Justice and as the executive director of President Barack Obama’s Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. With her confirmation, Ms. Ahuja returns to the personnel agency where she served as chief of staff during the final two years of Mr. Obama’s administration.
Jerome H. Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, said on Tuesday that the central bank was focused on returning the economy to full strength, and he emphasized that the Fed would be more ambitious and expansive in its understanding of what that meant.
Speaking before House lawmakers on Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Powell emphasized that the Fed was looking at maximum employment as a “broad and inclusive goal” — a standard it set out when it revamped its policy framework last year. That, he said, means the Fed will look at employment outcomes for different gender and ethnic groups.
“There’s a growing realization, really across the political spectrum, that we need to achieve more inclusive prosperity,” Mr. Powell said in response to a question, citing lagging economic mobility in the United States. “These things hold us back as an economy and as a country.”
The Fed cannot solve issues of economic inequality itself, he said. Congress would need to play a role in establishing “a much broader set of policies.”
But Mr. Powell’s explanation of full employment came as many lawmakers wanted to talk about the second of the central bank’s two goals: stable inflation. The Fed chair was quizzed repeatedly about the recent pickup in price gains, with Republicans warning that the trend could become dangerously entrenched — even quoting statistics about recent jumps in bacon and used-car prices — as Democrats warned that the central bank should not be quick to react to the price pressures.
“There’s sort of a perfect storm of very strong demand and weak supply due to the reopening of the economy,” Mr. Powell said, adding that much or all of the recent overshoot in inflation came from short-term bottlenecks. “They don’t speak to a broadly tight economy.”
Mr. Powell added that price jumps have been bigger than expected and that the Fed was monitoring them closely, but he said they were still expected to wane over time. He also acknowledged that economic data was uncertain now, given quirks in supply and demand as businesses reopen.
“We have to be very humble about our ability to really try to draw a signal out of it,” Mr. Powell said.
He said he had “a level of confidence” that strong price gains would be temporary but was not certain when bottlenecks would clear up. Nevertheless, the goods and services categories where costs are picking up quickly, like restaurants and travel, are clearly tied to the pandemic.
“It should not leave much of a mark on the ongoing inflation process,” he said.
The White House on Tuesday publicly acknowledged that President Biden does not expect to meet his goal of having 70 percent of adults at least partially vaccinated by July 4 and will reach that milestone only for those aged 27 and older.
It would be the first time that Mr. Biden has failed to meet a vaccination goal he has set. If the rate of adult vaccinations continues on the current seven-day average, the country will come in just shy of Mr. Biden’s target, with about 67 percent of adults partly vaccinated by July 4, according to a New York Times analysis.
White House officials have argued that falling short by a few percentage points is not significant, given all the progress the nation has made against Covid-19. “We have built an unparalleled, first-of-its-kind, nationwide vaccination program,” Jeffrey D. Zients, the White House pandemic response coordinator, said at a news briefing. “This is a remarkable achievement.”
New reported doses administered by day
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention | Note: Line shows a seven-day average. Data not updated on some weekends and holidays. Includes the Johnson & Johnson vaccine as of March 5.
In announcing the goal on May 4, Mr. Biden made a personal plea to the unvaccinated, saying getting a shot was a “life and death” choice. According to the latest figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 150 million Americans have been fully vaccinated and 177 million have received at least one dose.
Young adults aged 18 to 26 have so far proven particularly hard to persuade. Younger Americans are less likely to be vaccinated than their elders, and factors like income and education may affect vaccine hesitancy, according to two new studies by the C.D.C.
Mr. Zients and Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, both stressed that the administration’s efforts would continue long after that benchmark is reached.
But health experts warn that the falloff in the vaccination rate could mean renewed coronavirus outbreaks this winter when cold weather drives people indoors, with high daily death rates in areas where comparatively few people have protected themselves with shots.
In recent weeks, new cases, hospitalizations and deaths related to the virus have declined sharply nationwide. As of Monday, the seven-day average of new virus cases across the United States was 11,243 cases a day, a nearly 30 percent decrease over the last two weeks, according to a Times database.
Lazaro Gamio contributed reporting.
A Senate committee on Tuesday discussed legislation that would establish Washington, D.C., as the nation’s 51st state, after the House passed the measure along party lines earlier this year.
The legislation would create a state called Washington, Douglass Commonwealth — in honor of Frederick Douglass, the Black emancipation and civil rights leader — represented by a single voting representative in the House and two senators for its more than 700,000 residents, many of whom are people of color. Some government property — including the National Mall, the White House and Capitol Hill — would be left under federal control.
While the measure is unlikely to clear the 60-vote filibuster threshold given widespread Republican opposition and skepticism among some moderate Democrats, Senator Tom Carper, Democrat of Delaware, pushed for the Homeland Security Committee to hold the hearing, just the second on the topic in the chamber’s history. He oversaw the first such hearing in 2014, when he served as chairman of the committee.
“Our nation’s capital is home to more than just monuments and museums; it is home to American families who go to work, start businesses, pay their taxes and contribute to America’s economic prowess,” Mr. Carper said as the hearing began. “As every Congress passes, we are failing these fellow Americans and coming well short of our founders’ rallying cry of ‘no taxation without representation.’”
Momentum for statehood has intensified since that inaugural Senate hearing, as advocates and allies of the movement have argued that making the nation’s capital a state would end the disenfranchisement of district residents. The pandemic underscored the disparate treatment of the district, which received less federal emergency relief through the expansive coronavirus aid bill than expected because it is not a state.
President Biden has also said he supports statehood for the district.
Mayor Muriel E. Bowser, Eleanor Holmes Norton, the district’s lone nonvoting representative in the House, and Senator Joe Lieberman, an independent who pushed for the legislation during his time in the Senate, appeared before the committee to speak on the issue.
One Democrat on the committee, Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, has not yet said whether she supports the legislation, although 45 of the senators who caucus with Democrats have signed on. Republicans have argued that the bill is unconstitutional, an argument that the White House has privately sought to counter with suggested changes.
Priorities USA, one of the biggest Democratic super PACs, announced on Tuesday that it will pump $20 million into voting rights initiatives ahead of the 2022 election cycle, aiming to combat Republican-led election laws with digital ads and organizing as well as in the courts.
The digital effort will include a series of extensive voter information campaigns, going beyond a more traditional approach that would consist solely of persuasion ads. The group’s overall goal is to help people navigate a new balloting landscape created by the many new restrictions passed by Republicans in at least 16 states. The campaigns will also provide voting tools like text message reminders to register to vote or request an absentee ballot.
“The purpose of this program is to really center the voters who we know are particularly targeted by the Republicans’ suppression efforts,” said Danielle Butterfield, the executive director of Priorities USA. “Those are voters of color, Black and Latino voters specifically, and we plan to center them both in our creative and our targeting to make sure that they are aware of how empowering voting is.”
The other significant investment will be on the legal front, where the group has served as one of the leading litigators in voting lawsuits across the country. Priorities USA joined lawsuits in 10 states during the 2020 election and its aftermath, squaring off against legal attempts by Donald J. Trump’s campaign to overturn the election results and pushing back on new voting laws. Though Priorities has not sued any state this year in response to new voting restrictions, group officials said that more legal efforts would be coming soon.
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