Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) told Axios he’s earnestly engaged in talks with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) over a climate, energy and deficit reduction package, reviving hopes for action this year.
Manchin called those preliminary talks “respectful” and “encouraging, to a certain extent.”
But he added: “There could be nothing. There could be truly nothing. That’s all I can tell you.”
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) “has been using taxpayer dollars to cover the cost of flights between a Florida family vacation home and Washington, D.C., including nine such trips last year, federal records show,” the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports.
He responded on Twitter: “This isn’t journalism, it’s advocacy. It is a fully coordinated attack by the Dem Party and their allies in the media.”
“After the deadliest school shooting in a decade, a small group of Republican and Democratic senators have begun an urgent and uphill effort to strike a compromise on new gun laws, voicing hope that a wave of collective outrage at the slaughter of 19 children and two teachers could finally conquer a decade of congressional paralysis,” the New York Times reports.
“Members of the bipartisan group emerged from a private meeting on Thursday determined to work quickly to try to reach a deal on modest steps to limit access to guns.”
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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) told CNN he “met earlier in the day with Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and encouraged the senior Republican senator to begin discussions with Democrats, including Sens. Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), to see if they can find a middle ground on legislation to respond to the tragic Texas elementary school shooting.”
“Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are facing enormous pressure to take action in the wake of the horrific shooting, but members on both sides acknowledge the uphill battle to find common ground given the highly polarized political climate around gun legislation and widespread GOP opposition to stricter gun control.”
“It is significant, though, that McConnell has decided to weigh in and is giving a greenlight to a bipartisan effort on a potential legislative response to the shooting.”
“Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) told colleagues Thursday morning that they should be prepared to vote on gun-control legislation when they return to Washington next month after the Memorial Day recess, promising a showdown with Republicans after mass shootings in Buffalo and Texas left 31 people dead,” The Hill reports.
“Schumer said he’s not scheduling a vote this week on two House-passed bills to expand background checks because he wants to give Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and other colleagues more time to negotiate a deal with Republicans on background check or red-flag legislation.”
“The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday advanced the nomination of Judge Michelle Childs for a post on the nation’s second-highest court on a 17-5 bipartisan vote,” Politico reports.
Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) delivered a forceful speech after Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) blocked unanimous consent to confirm a new undersecretary for health of the Department of Veterans Affairs, Politico reports.
Said Tester: “I hope, Madam Chair, that the senator of Florida doesn’t walk in to Memorial Day services and talk about what a great friend he is of our veterans. Cause he is not.”
He added: “This is obstruction at the worst, because this obstruction stops our veterans from getting the healthcare that they need. You want to talk about why the American people think the United States Senate is dysfunctional? The senator from Florida could look in the mirror.”
“On Thursday, Senate Republicans are set to block legislation intended to combat domestic terrorism. And they’re all over the place on whether homegrown extremism even needs more federal attention,” Politico reports.
The two Arizona senators had very different responses on doing something legislatively after the Texas school massacre:
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), when asked about reforming the filibuster: “You know, I don’t think that D.C. solutions are realistic here.”
Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ): “It’s fucking nuts to do nothing about this.”
Ron Brownstein: “That’s because gun control is one of many issues in which majority opinion in the nation runs into the brick wall of a Senate rule—the filibuster—that provides a veto over national policy to a minority of the states, most of them small, largely rural, preponderantly white, and dominated by Republicans…”
“The practical implications of these imbalances were dramatized by the last full-scale Senate debate over gun control. After the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut, the Senate in 2013 voted on a measure backed by President Barack Obama to impose background checks on all gun sales.”
“Again assigning half of each state’s population to each of its senators, the 54 senators who supported the bill (plus then–Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who opposed it only for procedural reasons) represented 194 million Americans. The remaining senators who opposed the bill represented 118 million people. But because of the Senate’s filibuster rule, which requires the backing of 60 senators to move legislation to a vote, the 118 million prevailed.”
Within hours of the school shooting in Uvalde, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer “moved to clear the way to force votes in coming days on legislation that would strengthen background checks for gun purchasers, pushing to revive measures with broad appeal that Republicans have blocked in the past,” the New York Times reports.
“The pair of bills would expand criminal background checks to would-be gun buyers on the internet and at gun shows and lengthen the waiting period for gun buyers flagged by the instant background check system to allow more time for the F.B.I. to investigate.”
“The measures, passed by the House in 2019 and again last year, have languished in the Senate amid Republican opposition. Even as they publicly mourned the massacre that killed 19 children and two adults on Tuesday, Republican senators gave little indication that their positions had changed.”
“Senate Democrats say a major floor debate on gun control is inevitable after a mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, left at least 19 children and two adults dead, only 10 days after another massacre killed 10 people at a supermarket in Buffalo,” The Hill reports.
“The second high-profile killing spree in the span of just more than a week means that Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) will be under heavy pressure to bring a gun-control measure to the floor before the July 4 recess, risking a partisan brawl that could be tough on vulnerable Democrats up for re-election in swing states this fall.”
“Just to be clear, fuck you Ted Cruz. You fucking baby killer.”
— Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), on Twitter, after Cruz offered prayers for the families of the children killed at a Texas school.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) slammed his colleagues for doing “nothing” to address gun violence, hours after a gunman shot and killed at least 18 kids and one teacher at a Texas elementary school, Axios reports.
Said Murphy: “Why do you spend all this time running for the United States Senate … if your answer is as the slaughter increases, as our kids run for their lives — we do nothing?”
He added: “Why are you here, if not to solve a problem as existential as this? This isn’t inevitable. These kids weren’t unlucky. This only happens in this country, nowhere else. Nowhere else do little kids go to school thinking they might be shot that day.”
“Democrats are set to blow through the soft Memorial Day deadline for reaching a deal with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) on a slimmed-down budget reconciliation bill to raise taxes, fight climate change and lower the cost of prescription drugs,” The Hill reports.
“Senate Democratic sources say there’s no chance of getting a deal this week but they argue that doesn’t necessarily mean the negotiations over a long-awaited budget reconciliation package are doomed.”
Former Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) slammed Democrats on his podcast for failing to pass the Build Back Better Act.
Said Franken: “My feeling is that this wasn’t about Build Back Better is just the worst name for a bill ever. It was that we didn’t put what was in this bill before the people. And all they kept hearing was from the press. It was at 3 trillion is at 1.5 trillion? It was inside baseball. It was, it was a horse race.”
He added: “The fail here was that we, the American people never knew what was in the bill. And this is why I argued for putting these, these bills on the floor individually.”
Roughly one third of the U.S. Senate has reported testing positive for Covid-19 at some point, with Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) testing positive twice, Bloomberg reports.
“The parents of Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti have enlisted the help of prominent lobbyists to aid their son’s beleaguered nomination to serve as U.S. ambassador to India,” Politico reports.
“The registration is the latest sign that Garcetti’s allies are turning over every possible stone to get his nomination across the finish line.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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