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We have looked at and talked to a bunch of progressive partners around the country West Virginia did West Virginia Cant Wait, said Brown, referencing the 2020 grassroots movement to bring a pro-labor electoral infrastructure to Charleston. The co-op model is, we think, kind of a breakthrough in progressive political organizing because the candidates pay dues and that means that the co-op can provide direct services to them, everything A to Z: campaign manager, recruitment, candidate training, writing campaign plans. So its really like running a statewide, coordinated campaign for 50 candidates.

The Sunrise Movement, the youth-led climate organization, has already endorsed the slate and is out with an ad promoting the bloc of candidates.

After Gov.Gina Raimondo, a Wall Street-friendly venture capitalist, resigned to become President Joe Bidens commerce secretary in March,Lt. Gov Dan McKee, a moderate Democrat, was sworn in as governor.McKee and a handful of other Democrats are also vying for governor in 2022.

Brown challenged Raimondo in 2018but did so without a statewide network, losing in the primary 57-34 percent, or roughly 28,000 votes.

But this time, Brown has a stronger progressive network to tap. The Rhode Island Political Cooperative won 10 of its 24 races in the 2020 election cycle: two for city council, five for state Senate, and three in the House.

Those victories shook up the state legislature. The General Assembly, which had balked at a minimum wage increase for years, quickly passed a bill lifting the minimum to $15 an hour, while making additional nods in a progressive direction.

But for the insurgents, it quickly became clear that a more wholesale sweep was needed. Mendes, who had knocked off the finance chair, said that she was taken aback at the apathy and callousness on display from her Democratic colleagues. As a state Senator, I witnessed really up close and personal the apathy and negligence of our government and just how they just refuse to work on behalf of the people even in the moments of our greatest need, she said. It was one thing to intellectually understand the corruption of the state government, but it was another thing altogether to see it up close.

It was difficult, Mendes said, to deal with the ache of being in that space and realizing how much they didnt care. Mendes, a single mom and a nurse, said that the gap between her everyday life at home and her life in the statehouse was monumental. To live in a community where theres a sense of urgency that there are deep needs around us, and that we need to address them, and then go into a chamber where people are interested in going to fundraisers, and getting a headline, and getting in front of a camera its actually surreal, she said.

We just cant wait for corrupt politicians to start caring, Mendes said.

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Rhode Island Progressives Are Coming for Political Establishment - The Intercept

With Daniel Lippman

INFRASTRUCTURE COALITION FLIES IN AHEAD OF EXPECTED HOUSE VOTE: A coalition of business groups led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is amping up its pressure on House lawmakers to pass the bipartisan infrastructure package next week as political dynamics surrounding the measure have kept its prospects for passage murky. The groups, part of the Coalition for Bipartisan Infrastructure, launched a national day of action today, which includes a letter to House members, meetings on the Hill and a grassroots and social media push urging members to support the bill if, as Democratic leaders pledged this morning, it comes up for a vote next Monday.

A spokesperson for the Chamber said that the business lobby is doubling down on its outreach to Republicans in the House, a push that comes as a bloc of liberal Democrats threatens to torpedo the bill if its not tied to passage of a partisan $3.5 trillion social spending and climate package. Though 19 Republicans in the Senate voted for the bipartisan legislation, POLITICOs Olivia Beavers reported this morning that House leadership only has fewer than a dozen Republican votes not enough to overcome progressives opposition. The Chamber is lobbying House Republicans, highlighting the historic levels of funding that will be provided as well as the local projects that will be completed if the bill passes.

Another member of the infrastructure coalition, the Association of Equipment Manufacturers, has been blanketing the Hill today as part of a sprint to Mondays deadline, focusing its lobbying efforts at this point on House Republicans almost exclusively. Out of meetings with around 60 congressional offices today and tomorrow, the vast majority have been with Republicans as the trade association urges them to not throw the baby out with the bath water, the groups top lobbyist, Kip Eideberg, told PI. After their meetings, Eideberg said AEM feels confident that anywhere from 10 to 15 Republicans will vote for the package while trusting in [Speaker Nancy Pelosi] when she tells us that she will have enough Democrats to pass the bill.

AEM is pairing its D.C. advocacy with a grassroots pushback in members districts, looking to get Republicans out to equipment manufacturing facilities while providing air cover to yes votes and nudging other lawmakers who are leaning in that direction. It's an all-out effort on House Republicans, Eideberg said.

Both trade groups joined more than 100 trade associations, business groups and unions on a letter to all House members today urging yes votes on the bipartisan bill. The letter touts the broad benefits of the bipartisan bill in each state as identified by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, in addition to good-paying jobs through project construction in the short term and improved safety and mobility for people and goods for decades to come across the country. The letter was signed by other groups, including the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, the American Farm Bureau Federation, the American Trucking Associations, the AFL-CIO, the National Association of Manufacturers, the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors and the National Stone, Sand and Gravel Association.

Good afternoon and welcome to PI. Got some juicy K Street or reconciliation gossip? Lets hear it: [emailprotected]. And be sure to follow me on Twitter: @caitlinoprysko.

SLACK YOU LATER: Slack, the ubiquitous business messaging platform from Salesforce Inc., is debuting a new tool for business leaders to coordinate policy letters and outreach to Congress, the White House and other local or global policymakers, Salesforces head of global sustainability, Patrick Flynn, told POLITICO Long Games Lorraine Woellert. Were going to bring our voice together and communicate to Congress or the president or the G-20 that climate matters to us, Flynn told her. The current process involves a flurry of emails and back-channel communications, and the new feature brings those talks to a single place. Its a massive streamlining of that effort.

ANNALS OF CAMPAIGN FINANCE: A political strategist who was pardoned by the former president after being convicted in a 2012 campaign finance scheme is facing new charges related to an alleged 2016 plot to illegally funnel donations made by a Russian national to support then-candidate Donald Trumps White House bid, The Washington Posts Felicia Somnez and Isaac Stanley-Becker report.

Jesse Benton, 43, who was previously a top aide to former congressman Ron Paul (R-Tex.) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and later ran the pro-Trump Great America super PAC, was charged this month, according to a federal indictment in Washington unsealed Monday. Also charged is Roy Douglas Doug Wead, 75, a conservative author and former special assistant to President George H.W. Bush.

Prosecutors allege that Benton and Wead made a so-called straw-man donation, illegally soliciting a contribution from a Russian national months before the 2016 election that they then funneled into a joint fundraising committee. The pair then filed false FEC reports to conceal the true source of the funding, prosecutors say. Federal disclosures from that period make clear the donation went to support Trumps election, though the recipient is not named in the indictment. Authorities allege Benton arranged for the Russian national to attend a fundraiser and get a photograph with the candidate, in exchange for a political contribution.

Benton and Wead concealed the scheme from the candidate, federal regulators, and the public, according to the indictment. The court filing does not name Trump, but details in the indictment match a $25,000 donation that Benton made in the fall of 2016 to a committee that jointly raised money for the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee, campaign finance records show.

CASSIDY ADDS LONGTIME APPROPS HAND: Sarah Young has left the House Appropriations Committee, where she was the top staffer on the Military Construction-VA Subcommittee, after more than two decades to join Cassidy & Associates as a senior vice president. Young is the latest Hill aide to end up at Cassidy in recent months Samantha Swing, a former aide to Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) and a Harry Reid alum, joined Cassidy last month as a vice president. Earlier this year, Andrew Forbes rejoined the firm after serving as legislative director for the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), while Will Fadely joined as a vice president from The Wilderness Society.

HEARING AID MANUFACTURER LAUNCHES PUSH TO SHAPE ACCESSIBILITY RULES IN WASHINGTON: Starkey Hearing Technologies has launched a new initiative looking to shape the conversation around various legislative and regulatory pushes in D.C. aimed at making hearing aids more accessible. The new initiative, dubbed Listen Carefully, will seek to make health care professionals' voices more prominent as Democrats in Congress weigh expanding Medicare benefits to include hearing.

The companys push also looks to counter misinformation surrounding an executive order from President Joe Biden this year targeting the lack of over-the-counter hearing aids, as the industry awaits regulations from FDA that were due last year. As the push ramps up, lobbying disclosures show Starkey brought on a new outside lobbying firm at the beginning of August, retaining Robert White Associates in addition to its existing bench of lobbyists at Forbes-Tate and The Petrizzo Group.

As the largest American-owned hearing aid manufacturer, Starkey has a responsibility to share accurate information with lawmakers about hearing healthcare, to help guide informed legislative policies, Starkey President and CEO Brandon Sawalich said in a statement. Together, we will be a voice for the millions of Americans who suffer from hearing loss and are looking to officials in Washington to get OTC hearing aid regulation and Medicare expansion right.

REGULATORS MOVE TO CRACK DOWN ON STABLECOINS: The Treasury Department is moving to rein in a new class of cryptocurrencies whose popularity as a payment method is skyrocketing, POLITICOs Victoria Guida reports, citing a need to head off potential risks to consumers and to the financial system. So-called stablecoins payment tokens that differ from other cryptocurrencies because their value is often pegged to the U.S. dollar are drawing scrutiny because they have already been used in trillions of dollars worth of lightning-fast transactions and could transform the way Americans pay for things. Treasury and other regulators want to ensure that theyre reliable, even during financial panics.

The new attention is setting up a clash between the emerging crypto industry and financial regulators and is also feeding tension between the upstarts and more traditional firms like banks, which dominate the payments industry. Yet its also a sign that, even as assets like Bitcoin grab headlines as speculative investments, virtual currencies are steadily becoming more enmeshed in the U.S. financial system. There are some benefits to consumers that are worth exploring; namely, facilitation of faster payments, FDIC Chair Jelena McWilliams said in an interview. But there are also risks if stablecoins are adopted more broadly.

A message from HCA Healthcare:

HCA Healthcare has treated more COVID-19 inpatients than any other health system in the U.S. By analyzing our vast repository of COVID-19 data, we have a unique ability to leverage and share learnings to improve patient outcomes and public knowledge. The insights gained from our research and collaborations with the CDC and NIH will greatly accelerate the discovery of new approaches to care. See how we show up for our patients, communities and each other.

Michele Connell has been appointed global managing partner at Squire Patton Boggs. Shell succeed Fred Nance, who will launch a newly created DEI office within the firm. Connell was previously managing partner of Squires Cleveland office and strategic adviser to its corporate clients.

Sarah Meek joined BlueCross BlueShield as its director of government affairs, where she will be responsible for developing CareFirsts advocacy strategy. Meek previously worked for Lutheran Services in America Disability Network and the Alliance for Retired Americans.

Progressive data firm TargetSmart added Jamaa Bickley-King, a veteran of New Virginia Majority and Change the Game, as chief solutions officer. Chris Brill will rejoin the firm as director of strategic consulting after advising progressive outside groups in 2020.

Anand Gopal is joining Energy Innovation as executive director of strategy and policy. He was previously an environment program officer at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

Reana Kovalcik is joining the Organic Trade Association in October as director of public affairs. Kovalcik previously served as the associate director for communications and development at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition and most recently as communications adviser on climate for American Forests.

Former Rep. Allyson Schwartz (D-Pa.) is joining FTI Consulting as a senior adviser in the strategic communications practice. She most recently was president and CEO of the Better Medicare Alliance.

Bonnie Glick is joining the Center for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue as its inaugural director. She previously was deputy administrator and COO at USAID.

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535 Group, LLC: Reston Strategy Group, LLC On Behalf Of Hawkeye 360Becker & Poliakoff, P.A.: National Association Of Waterfront EmployersBecker & Poliakoff, P.A.: Ups (United Parcel Service)Bpce Sa: Bpce SaCivitas Public Affairs Group, LLC: New Venture FundEagle6 Consulting: Consensys Software Inc.Hogan Lovells US LLP: Corporation Services CompanyJ M Burkman & Associates: Green Mountain Flower CompanyJ.P. Deese & Associates, LLC: Defi Angels LLCMaynard, Cooper & Gale, P.C.: Mobile Airport AuthorityState Federal Strategies: Saybrook ManagementState Federal Strategies: Strata Clean EnergySteven Holtzman: Branch MetricsThunderbird Strategic LLC: Tusk StrategiesTwinlogic Strategies, LLP: Science Applications International CorporationVnf Solutions, LLC: Drax Group

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A message from HCA Healthcare:

HCA Healthcare has treated more suspected and positive COVID-19 inpatients than any other health system in the nation. We are taking the learnings and insights we have gathered from these encounters and sharing them with prominent research institutions to accelerate the discovery of new approaches to care, improve patient outcomes and, ultimately, save lives.

Our innovative partnerships with governments, technology companies and other health systems allow us to pool resources, expertise and capabilities to improve the national COVID-19 response. By collaborating with the CDC, government agencies and other healthcare organizations, HCA Healthcare is supporting hospitals and caregivers around the world not just our own in the fight against COVID-19.

Through patient-centered care, collaboration, research and innovation, we are showing up for our patients, our communities and each other. Learn more about HCA Healthcares COVID-19 response.

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Business groups zero in on House Republicans to save BIF as progressives waver - Politico

Five progressive organizations on Tuesday urged top congressional Democrats to exclude a carbon tax from the sweeping budget reconciliation package they aim to pass this week following reports that the policy is under consideration in the U.S. Senate.

"Carbon taxes... do not reduce emissions, they put a squeeze on working families, and they are embraced by polluters."Mitch Jones, Food & Water Watch

Given the Senate's current makeup and Democrats' refusal to abolish the filibuster, passing the Build Back Better package is considered essential to delivering on President Joe Biden's climate pledges. Backed by the latest science, progressives have repeatedly advocated against including "false solutions" that impede a just transition away from fossil fuels and exacerbate the climate emergency.

Climate Justice Alliance, Food & Water Watch, Indigenous Environmental Network, Our Revolution, and Progressive Democrats of America made their case for leaving a carbon tax out of the package in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), House Ways and Means Committee Chair Richard Neal (D-Mass.), Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).

While applauding Democratic leaders' efforts to generate the money necessary to combat the climate emergency, the groups warn of the expected harms of such a policy and argue that repealing fossil fuel subsidies "would provide a simpler and more robust revenue stream."

The letter came amid uncertainty over the fate of both the Build Back Better package and a bipartisan infrastructure bill, and just days after Wyden confirmed to The New York Times that in the face of opposition to the party's tax plan from Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), Schumer instructed him to craft legislation that would put a price on carbon emissions but also align with Biden's vow not to raise taxes on households making below $400,000.

As Wyden noted to the Times, a carbon tax remains a heavy push politically even if it comes with a dividend that would return a portion of the money to consumers. Of course, the more money returned to consumers in the form of rebates, the less revenue there is to spend on other programsthe point of instituting a carbon tax.

The potential impact that such a policy could have on families with lower incomes is among the concerns detailed in the groups' letter:

The Build Back Better Act is touted as the best shot to address the climate crisis, but it is also an opportunity to address the injustice and harms that fossil fuels bring to Black, Indigenous nations, and environmental justice communities. Including a carbon tax as a pay-for in this spending plan will further our dependency on fossil fuels and undermine efforts to eliminate and reduce pollution in vulnerable communities. Furthermore, this regressive tax will also undermine a key promise of President Biden to not raise taxes on people making under $400,000 per year, an increase that will be felt hardest among low- and moderate-income households who are least equipped to make investments necessary to avoid carbon emissions and these new taxes.

The organizations explain that fossil fuel interests support carbon taxes because they not only sustain but create more dependence on the industry by making social programslike those proposed in the Democrats' packagereliant on revenue from polluters.

"This perverse relationship," the letter warns, "will cause us to choose between the health of vulnerable communities and our climate or funding government programs, a dichotomy we should avoid at all costs."

"The inclusion of a carbon tax," the letter continues, "would create an inequitable, discriminatory, ineffective, and ultimately regressive proposal that gives a green light for the biggest climate scofflaws to pay to pollute and maintain a harmful status quo."

Food & Water Watch policy director Mitch Jones echoed the letter's warnings and demands in a statement Tuesday.

"Carbon taxes have fallen out of serious climate discussions for good reasons: They do not reduce emissions, they put a squeeze on working families, and they are embraced by polluters as a ploy to look concerned about climate while continuing business as usual," he said.

"If lawmakers are really concerned about holding the costs of this spending bill," Jones added, "they should get rid of the billions of dollars we waste every year on subsidies to polluters."

Read the original post:
Progressive Groups Warn Congress Against Including Carbon Tax in Reconciliation Package - Common Dreams

The Biden administration is in mortal peril. Hemmed in by circumstances, the Democrats bet nearly their entire domestic agenda on the passage of two gigantic bills, the trillion-dollar infrastructure package and the $3.5 trillion reconciliation package.

Both are now in serious trouble because Democratic moderates and progressives arent close to agreeing on what should be in the bills, how much they should cost or even when they should be voted on. If these bills crumble, the Democrats will fail as a governing majority, and it will be far more likely that Donald Trump will win the presidency in 2024.

We dont want that, so the question is, how can moderate and progressive Democrats create a package they both can live with? The best way to do that is to build on each sides best insights.

The best progressive insight is that we need a really big package right now.

Joe Manchin, a leading moderate, argues that the $3.5 trillion package is too big. The economy is already growing. Inflation is already rising. The national debt is already gigantic. We dont need another flood of deficit-bulging spending. We should pause to think this through.

The American people largely agree with Manchin. A No Labels poll revealed that 64 percent of Americans living in suburbs support a strategic pause while only 36 percent oppose one (in urban areas, 53 percent support large-scale welfare spending now while 47 percent support a pause).

But Manchin and those people supporting his position are missing the big picture. Were a nation in decline. Were in decline because we have become a wildly unequal, class-rived society in which tens of millions of people feel alienated, disillusioned, distrustful and left out.

The progressives have a strategy to reverse American decline: Redistribute money to people without a college degree. Make health care more affordable so people have a stable foundation upon which to build their lives. Offer child tax credits so parents have more options. Expand free public education by four years so the coming generations are better equipped.

Thats a plausible strategy and the time to enact it is now. There are rare critical junctures in history. Covid has exposed the tears in the American social fabric and made Americans more enthusiastic about government spending. If we can add, say, $4 trillion to the roughly $5.3 trillion in Covid-relief spending that already passed, well at least have made a giant effort to heal the ruptures bedeviling American society.

The key moderate insight is that were America, not Europe. We are mostly an immigrant-fueled, frontier nation. We place a lot of value on individual striving, hard work and mobility. We are hostile to centralized power. These values have made America more unequal and crueler than Europe but also much richer, more innovative and more productive.

The moderates are right to point out that a newly expanded welfare state should flow along the grain of American values and not against it.

We should not be doling out huge benefits to people without asking anything from them in return, like work and education requirements. A recent YouGov/American Compass poll found that only 28 percent of voters said they supported a permanent child tax credit that went to people regardless of whether they work. The history of welfare reform over the past few decades shows that there are better outcomes for kids when governments help parents join the labor force.

We should not be centralizing power in Washington, pouring more money into federal programs that badly need reform or rigging personal choices to fit the preferences of the professional class. There is a lot of evidence to suggest that high-quality pre-K education for kids 3 to 5 years old can produce long-term gains. But Head Start has been ailing for decades and needs to be transformed, not reinforced. Even we champions of early childhood education have to admit that theres some evidence that when done badly, it can have negative or no effects. Government should give parents more resources to make decisions based on whats best for their own children.

We should not be under the illusion that were going to create a European-style welfare state on this side of the Atlantic. The Danes were apparently happy to devote 46 percent of their G.D.P. to taxes in 2019, to contribute to their welfare provisions. In America the 50-year average federal tax revenue-to-G.D.P. ratio was 17 percent, and as James Pethokoukis points out in his column in The Week, even if the Democratic bills passed, it would go up to only 19 percent in the coming decade. Americans prefer to control their own resources, and so were never going to have the kind of cradle-to-grave system Europeans are content with.

The upshot is that we need a big jolt to heal the nation, but every plank should be about building a society in which if you work hard you will get ahead. We should ditch provisions like Medicare expansion and double down on pre-K, community colleges, infrastructure, green energy jobs and the child tax credit.

The theme should not be cradle-to-grave security. It should be giving people an open field and fair chance to be better capitalists, pioneers of their own destinies. America will reverse decline with a measure that is progressive in its scope and moderate in its values.

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Opinion | What Democrats Need to Do Now - The New York Times

WASHINGTON President Bidens passionate language on reducing gun violence, safeguarding access to abortion and protecting voting rights has lifted the hopes of progressives who were once wary of electing a traditionalist who champions compromise.

But now, as they look past the final push on a $3.5 trillion spending bill the White House has made its policy priority, they are growing more concerned that Mr. Bidens actions will not be as bold as his tone at least when it comes to some of their key issues.

The spending plan that Democrats are trying to get through Congress would be transformative, affecting almost every American at every stage of life, from free universal prekindergarten to coverage of elder care. It includes money to address not only social programs and the expansion of the social safety net, but also funds to address climate change.

But in order to take up some of the other issues Mr. Biden has framed as threats to the foundations of American democracy, he will have to confront arcane rules that guide the institution of the Senate that he reveres and that so far he has made clear he does not want to pressure senators to change.

Privately, White House officials have been trying to assure activists that they plan to turn their attention in earnest to voting rights after their push on infrastructure is through at the end of the month. But that has done little to ease anxiety.

Im guardedly concerned, said the Rev. Al Sharpton, who said he was nervous that Mr. Biden would not follow up his lofty statements and speeches with action. Theres a difference between passion and marriage.

Mr. Sharpton said he wanted the White House to pressure senators to support a carve-out in the filibuster to allow voting rights legislation to pass with a simple majority.

They have not said theyre going to do that, Mr. Sharpton said.

Marc H. Morial, the president and chief executive of the National Urban League, said that in private meetings, he had pressed the president and his senior aides to work to pass voting rights by any means necessary. If you cant find 10 Republican votes, then the filibuster must go, it must be carved out, it must be reformed, he said. Its not more important than protecting American democracy.

The response from the president and his top aides, according to Mr. Morial, has been muted.

You dont get much of a response, he said. I think theres a reluctance to telegraph future moves.

Mr. Biden has used soaring language to match the bases passion on certain issues.

Every life that is taken by a bullet pierces the soul of our nation, the president said in May after a mass shooting in San Jose, Calif. He also referred to gun violence in America as an epidemic that required urgent action.

This month, after the Supreme Court declined to block a Texas law prohibiting most abortions, Mr. Biden called the decision an unprecedented assault on a womans constitutional rights.

And in a summer speech on voting rights, he framed the movement to suppress and subvert the right to vote as an assault on democracy, an assault on liberty, an assault on who we are who we are as Americans and said it was threatening the very foundation of our country.

But the question remains: What comes next?

Mr. Biden is approaching a crossroads moment for his domestic agenda, where he has already had to trim back his policy goals on the minimum wage, electoral safeguards and criminal justice reform in the face of resistance from Republicans as well as members of his own party.

This month, the president admitted a stunning defeat for his gun-control agenda when he had to pull his pick to run the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives after he could not muster enough support for the nomination in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, has said that growing frustration among gun safety advocates should be vented at the members of the House and Senate who voted against the measures the president supports, and wed certainly support their advocacy in that regard.

That is not a satisfying answer to many activists.

We will have had two years with Democrats in full control, and if they end up breaking their promises on every one of those issues from guns to voting rights to abortion rights that seems inconceivable and should be inconceivable, said Eli Zupnick, a spokesman for Fix Our Senate, a coalition of more than 80 organizations working to eliminate the filibuster. But thats what theyre on track to do unless they finally address the filibuster standing in the way.

Stephen Spaulding, a senior counsel at Common Cause, said that engaged Democratic voters were attuned to the filibuster, the Senates signature procedural weapon that requires a 60-vote supermajority to advance most bills.

They will have serious questions if its not reformed and there is no action to protect voting rights or reproductive rights, both of which are under attack in states across the country, he said. They will ask the question: Why did you care more about a Senate rule than these priorities?

Even a pared-down voting rights bill that Senate Democrats have united around is unlikely to gain traction with Republicans, who have argued the legislation is a threat to their party.

Mr. Biden has criticized the filibuster, saying at his first formal news conference as president that it was being abused in a gigantic way.

But since then, he has said he does not want to press for reforms because that fight would distract from his agenda. Wouldnt my friends on the other side love to have a debate about the filibuster instead of passing the Recovery Act? he said at a CNN town hall event in July. He also said he wanted to pass voting rights with bipartisan support, not by changing Senate rules.

I want to make sure we bring along not just all the Democrats, we bring along Republicans who I know know better, he said. What I dont want to do is get wrapped up right now in the argument whether or not this is all about the filibuster.

The conversation has become unavoidable, even as the White House has tried to avoid it. In a round table meeting that senior White House officials held this month with womens rights and reproductive health leaders, many participants raised the issue of the filibuster and asked whether Mr. Biden was going to be shifting his position, according to attendees. They received no response from the officials in attendance.

While many of them offered suggestions on how to fight the Texas abortion law, and encouraged legal action that the Justice Department took this month, all of them said that a legislative fix was ultimately necessary and that White House pressure would help.

Long term, we need legislative intervention just as its needed on voting rights, said Nancy Northup, the president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, who participated in the meeting. Its necessary to stop Texas from what its doing, but also long term to actually address this issue.

A White House spokesman, Chris Meagher, said that the president has made clear that voting rights, protecting a womans constitutional right to access safe and legal abortions as protected by Roe, and combating the scourge of gun violence are critical priorities for his administration. Mr. Meagher added, He will continue to engage with leadership on the Hill to prioritize legislation around these critical issues.

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Progressives Worry Their Priorities Will Be Left Behind, Despite Bidens Bold Words - The New York Times