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The move was reminiscent of 2003 when outnumbered Democrats twice broke quorum to stop Republican efforts to redraw voting maps. House Democrats first left the state en masse for Ardmore, Okla., only to return several days later.

But as the night wore on in the House, the GOP's chances wobbled. About two hours before the midnight deadline, Democrats began filing out of the chamber in greater and greater numbers, denying Republicans the quorum necessary to hold a final vote.

The Texas Senate had approved the measure in a vote before sunrise, after Republicans used a bare-knuckle procedural move to suspend the rules and take up the measure in the middle of the night during the Memorial Day holiday weekend.

Ultimately, neither effort worked as the Democrats eventually returned to the Capitol and Republicans passed the bill.

Under revisions during closed-door negotiations, Republicans added language that could make it easier for a judge to overturn an election and pushed back the start of Sunday voting, when many Black churchgoers head to the polls.

Texas is the last big battleground in the GOP's nationwide efforts to tighten voting laws, driven by former President Donald Trump's false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Georgia and Florida have also passed new voting restrictions, and President Biden on Saturday unfavorably compared Texas' bill to election changes in those states as "an assault on democracy."

The vote in the Texas Senate came just a short time after a final version of the bill had been made public Saturday.

For Carter, it's about more than just social justice movements. He believes his city's leadership, especially the executive office, should reflect the population.

For Carter and other activists-turned-political candidates, making the decision to run felt like an actionable step after a year of such frustration and anger.

Tate took on criminal justice reform years before protests for Floyd took over streets across the country.

He created a name for himself while leading marches and protests following the deaths of Floyd and Breonna Taylor, a Black woman shot and killed by police in Louisville, Kentucky.

LaTonya Tate is not new to the fight to make the justice system more just. As a Black woman in the South and part of a family with a history of activism, it has been ever-present. And as a retired parole officer, she knows a good deal about the justice system and its failures.

She believes she can lead desperately needed and uncomfortable conversations if she is elected to the city council in Birmingham, Alabama.

Ossé is running for a seat on the city council representing his district in Brooklyn, New York. If elected, he would become one of the youngest, and one of the first self-described queer city council members in New York City.

Tate is advocating for community policing. She believes in reallocating funds from police to invest in the community with mental health training, health care, education, youth programs and social services.

Francois Alexandre believes that a community policing role is crucial for accountability. It's what he'd like to change when it comes to law enforcement in his district in Miami if he wins a seat on the Miami City Commission.

Charlotte, North Carolina City Council member Braxton Winston knows the path these activists are taking well. He was the subject of an iconic photo depicting the tension between police and protesters after an officer shot and killed Keith Scott, a Black Charlotte resident in 2016.

Winston's gained victories to defund chemical agents for crowd control, which he says led to a broader conversation about the overall role of government in ensuring public safety. He says he has learned that support and political will are essential and in ways he is not set up to succeed.

The Black Voters Matter organization, which aims to increase power in the black community through voter outreach and advocacy, says efforts are underway to engage black voters and to build voting power.

In June, the organization plans to launch a bus campaign to engage Black voters while commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Freedom Rides movement, bus tours taken by civil rights activists in the '60s to fight segregation in the South.

Carter hopes this can be a moment where the country looks deep into its soul and reckons with its past.

three factors conspired against us

First, it took U.S. authorities too long to grasp the full threat.

Second was the CDC’s failure to develop an effective testing kit in a timely manner, “perhaps the lowest point in the history of a very proud institution,

third was the transformation of masks from a public health measure to a cultural and political war, one the president of the United States eagerly waged.

Often, administration officials knew what needed to be done, but it still rarely happened. “Everyone on the task force understood the magnitude of the crisis; they were diligent, meeting every weekday, with conference calls on weekends,” Wright recalls. “The real problem was that the administration was simply not executing the tasks that needed to be done to limit the pandemic.”

When top officials engaged, they often did so unofficially. Wright details how Deborah Birx, who served as the White House’s coronavirus task force coordinator, took an extended road trip with epidemiologist Irum Zaidi — “racking up 25,000 miles as they crossed the country eight times, visiting forty-three states” — to meet with politicians, health officials and hospital executives. “She was the only federal official doing so,” Wright points out.

The lack of a comprehensive national plan, he concludes, led one pandemic to become multiple pandemics in this country, lived differently by race, age and geography. (“One has to wonder,” he posits, “how the nation might have responded had the victims been younger, whiter, richer.”)

he points to major challenges ahead, no matter how this began. If the virus evolved in nature, we should “expect recurrences” because of all the new ways humans are interacting with animal life; if it came from a lab, “then it is a reminder that science is engaged in experiments that invite catastrophe with the smallest slip,” he writes. “In either case, Covid-19 is a harbinger.”

He is concerned about the rise of autocrats around the world but pays special attention to China these days.

“He’s deadly earnest on becoming the most significant, consequential nation in the world,” Biden said of Chinese President Xi Jinping during his address to Congress on Wednesday, departing from his prepared remarks. “He and others – autocrats – think that democracy can’t compete in the 21st century with autocracies.”

A senior White House official, who requested anonymity to speak more candidly, said Biden’s perspective on the rise of autocracies and the threat to democracy was “magnified by seeing some of those same characteristics reflected in the American president (Trump) and the American government for the last four years.”

“Things are changing so rapidly in the world in science and technology and a whole range of other issues that – the question is: In a democracy that’s such a genius as ours, can you get the consensus in the timeframe that can compete with autocracy?” Biden told TV anchors on Wednesday ahead of his congressional address. “Xi does not believe we can. That’s what he’s betting on.” It’s one of the reasons why aides say Biden prioritized passing the safety net expansion included in the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan and tackling a sweeping infrastructure bill, rather than thornier progressive policies like immigration reform and gun control. And in turn, Biden has used this clarion call as a central part of his pitch for the sweeping set of government investments and programs topping his agenda, namely his $4 trillion, two-pronged package that contains proposed investments in infrastructure, manufacturing, education and child care.

“A big part of it is looking out at Xi Jinping’s China, Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the pitch that they are making more overtly now than ever before … that the autocratic model, the non-democratic model is a better model for actually solving problems,” Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan told CNN. “And Joe Biden in his bones believes they are wrong.”

Sitting in the Oval Office in early February, surrounded by his foreign policy team, Biden was mulling what kind of message he wanted to deliver at his first Group of 7 summit, when he craned his neck and pointed up at the hulking portrait of President Franklin D. Roosevelt adorning the wall behind him.

Just as Roosevelt led the US through a pivotal decade in which democracy was threatened, Biden told his aides he believed the US was at a similar inflection point. With autocracies like China on the rise, the US – and by extension his presidency – would be judged, at least in part, on the ability to answer a fundamental question: Can the US demonstrate that democracy works?

On the domestic front, Biden’s views on that inflection point also informed decisions as he and his team of senior advisers began crafting his legislative priorities early in his presidency.

Still, even with language aimed at appealing to Republicans who have harped on the threat that China represents, Biden does not appear any closer to getting the 10 Republicans he would need to pass the infrastructure package he proposed without using the partisan budget reconciliation proces

For now, Biden’s main argument is his $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill and his handling of the pandemic, marked by a steady increase in vaccines and a return to a science-based approach. Officials said they hope those demonstrations of competence will reflect well on the US’s image abroad.

“The power of America’s example is a power to influence the choices of other countries, whether they’re going to be transparent, respect human rights and deliver good governance to their citizens or go the route of a China or Russia. That comes down in part to America showing the world that its model can effectively deliver for its citizens,” Sullivan said. “He believes a world in which there are more like-minded capable democracies is a world that is more hospitable to American interests and values.”

The measure also limits who can hand out any item, including food or water or election-related material, to voters waiting in line. Items can't be given to voters within 150 feet of a ballot box. Only volunteers or staff working with the election supervisor can "provide nonpartisan assistance" to voters within that area.

The bill would also require voters to request mail-in ballots regularly and place restrictions on third-party voter registration groups.

Florida's voting bill is part of a nationwide effort to alter how states conduct elections and to restrict expanded voter access. A controversial law approved in March in Georgia was slammed by voting rights activists and Democrats as voter suppression.

Major businesses with ties to Texas and Georgia criticized attempts to curb voter access.

That means passing big, bold legislation. And the institution Schumer leads — the Senate — is the primary obstacle to that happening.

How do you win over Trump voters? What kinds of economic policies can help deliver Democrats victory in 2022? How should the party approach topics like race and gender? How will he pass bills, like the For The People Act, that can’t go through budget reconciliation? And, of course, what do you do about the filibuster?

Video and images of the protests saw some demonstrators clashing with police, breaking windows and starting fires. In response, police fired tear gas and made 34 arrests.

A French pensioner who only gave her name as Patricia to AFP spoke about the protests, saying, "There are so many motivations for a revolt that are building up — the management of COVID, the so-called reforms that are going to take away people's ability to live, job-seekers who are going to lose their benefits."

In Berlin, at least 5,000 people protested against social inequality. Demonstrators clashed with police and some people threw fireworks, bottles and rocks, Reuters reported.

According to Reuters witnesses, demonstrators and union leaders were pushed to the ground and detained by police, some of whom were in plainclothes.

Democrats say they are not yet ready to move ahead with any attempt to overhaul the filibuster rules and they also lack votes in their own party to do so at the moment.

n his comments, Mr. McConnell threatened that Republicans would turn the rules against Democrats and try to make it virtually impossible to do anything in the Senate if they proceeded with the change. He referred to the fact that the chamber operates under arcane rules often bypassed through what is known as a unanimous consent agreement where no senator objects. If Democrats plunged ahead to gut the filibuster, he warned, Republicans would deny consent even on the most mundane of matters, effectively bogging down the Senate.

The moves are designed to alleviate some of the pressure the White House now faces over a situation that even allies say is becoming a crisis. It is, to a degree, a familiar place for a president to be. Biden’s predecessors had to address surges in migration at the Mexican border, too.

“The headwinds now making it more difficult are coming from both directions,” said a former Biden adviser. “It is among the hardest challenges for the federal government because the law is insufficient, the resources are insufficient, the politics are terrible on both sides usually because of misinformation.”

And they’ve signaled plans to use the issue to try to retake Congress in 2022. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy will travel to the border next week with a dozen Republican members.

“The situation is becoming untenable every day that passes without a coherent plan to address this crisis,” House Oversight Committee Republicans wrote in a letter to DHS.

“Republicans are eager to use it to not do something,” the former adviser said.

After he was sworn into office, he pleaded with immigrants to not come to the U.S. because the programs needed to handle the influx were not ready yet. Still, they’re coming.

He moved in a much more humane direction in the campaign,” Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) said. “I thought he was trying to thread the needle well. But I think even if he had said nothing you were going to get an … effect because he wasn’t Donald Trump.”

“It’s logistics and capacity,” said an immigrant advocate who speaks to the White House. “You can’t solve this in weeks. You need months. They just need time to figure out.”

But the Biden administration has decided to let children crossing the border into the country to stay for humanitarian reasons. Nearly 9,500 unaccompanied children were detained at the border in February, up from more than 5,800 the prior month, Troy Miller, the acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, announced this week. Detentions of the minors more than doubled in February compared to the same month last year.

The administration last week directed shelters to return to their pre-pandemic capacities.

Trump-allied officials used the opening of such shelters to accuse the Biden administration of both hypocrisy and naivete on immigration policy, much as they did in 2014 when Obama faced a surge in migrant children at the border as well. But, in a reflection of the tug and pull he now faces, immigration advocates are worried that the current plans don’t go far enough in protecting unaccompanied minors.

Yet in the United States, the government often funds research and development and then hands off the ownership of vaccines and medicines to companies that can charge whatever price they think the market will bear. Drug companies often demand a premium price to compensate for early risk that was actually borne by taxpayers.

In the coming weeks Congress is expected to advance legislation that would allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices. President Biden has pledged his support. This year, we can achieve reforms that both advance innovation and ensure Americans can afford the medicines — and vaccines — we need.

Of course, it’s not yet certain that Senate Democrats will even unify in support of the bill. Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who votes against his party with some regularity, is the lone Democrat who didn’t sponsor it, and he has yet to signal unequivocal support. If he does get behind it, he would have to work to roll back the filibuster as well (something that he and at least one other Democratic senator, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, haven’t yet gotten behind) in order to make that support mean anything.

Bätzing's diocese also updated its Facebook profile photo to an image of Limburg Cathedral surrounded by a rainbow, a symbol of the LGBT community, and the phrase "#LoveIsNoSin."Bätzing is the head of the German Bishops' Conference, the Catholic church's ruling body in Germany.

"We are here to bless, no matter how and no matter whom," Lentz said in a statement. "We want to be an open church where everyone feels at home."Since Friday afternoon the community has flown a rainbow flag with a phrase from Genesis 12:2 that reads: "You shall be a blessing."

While Pope Francis has frequently been praised for his welcoming tone toward LGBTQ people both within and outside the church, he approved the March 15 statement."The blessing of homosexual unions cannot be considered licit," wrote the Vatican's top doctrinal office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Blessing same-sex unions, the Vatican says, would send a sign that the Catholic Church approves and encourages "a choice and a way of life that cannot be recognized as objectively ordered to the revealed plans of God."

Same-sex unions are the latest issue on which the German Catholic church has clashed with the Vatican in recent years.In 2019, it revealed plans for a two-year process of reckoning and reform, to rebuild public trust in the wake of a shocking report into child sexual abuse in the church.

What we’ve learned over the past 7 or 8 years, however, is that we’re mainly looking at accounting tricks rather than real capital flight to avoid taxes

Another way to make the point is to note that most — most! — overseas profits reported by U.S. corporations are in tiny tax havens that can’t realistically be major profit centers. Here’s a chart from the Biden administration’s fact sheet on its tax plan:

So one way to think about the failure of the Trump tax cut is that it didn’t reverse capital flight because the capital flight never happened in the first place. In effect, the U.S. government gave up hundreds of billions of dollars to fix a nonexistent problem.

Now the Biden administration wants to go after the real problem, which was always tax avoidance, not loss of jobs to foreigners. Will they manage to pass the necessary legislation? We’ll just have to wait and see.

Along with the court order, the attorney general is asking for policy reforms, as well as a monitor to be installed to oversee the NYPD's tactics and handling of future protests.

The NYPD has been sharply criticized over a number of its officers' actions in the past year. Last May, police SUVs were shown in a video of a protest in Brooklyn, surging into a crowd that had surrounded them. In another incident, an officer drew his gun and pointed it at a crowd of people.

The NYPD did not immediately respond to a request for comment. After the lawsuit was filed, the Police Benevolent Association of the City of New York issued a statement blaming the city's leadership for the problems at the protests.

The police actions broke state and federal law, James says. The lawsuit alleges that New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio, NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea and NYPD Chief of Department Terence Monahan "failed to prevent and address the pattern or practice of excessive force and false arrests by officers against peaceful protesters in violation of the First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution"

James announced the lawsuit against the NYPD Thursday morning, in a virtual news conference that began shortly before New York Gov.

Last June, the NYPD suspended at least two officers for their behavior during protests, including an officer who was captured on video pushing a woman to the ground in Brooklyn. Another officer was punished for "pulling down an individual's face mask in Brooklyn and spraying pepper spray at him,

Human Rights Watch, an independent watchdog group, issued a report last year on the police misconduct in Brooklyn which said that clearly identified medics and legal observers were among those zip-tied and beaten by police, in a response to the protest which was "intentional, planned, and unjustified."

The lawsuit says the police department sent thousands of poorly trained officers to cope with large-scale protests, resulting in mass arrests and attempts to suppress demonstrations. It also says the NYPD made a practice out of "kettling" – corralling people by using physical force and obstructions – to arrest protesters rather than allow crowds to disperse.

A Minnesota judge ruled this week that Derek Chauvin, the former police officer who kept his knee on Floyd's neck for several minutes, will stand trial alone when proceedings begin in March. Chauvin is charged with second-degree murder and manslaughter. Readability mode is unavailable for this webpage. Please visit cache page or original page Top - A + ==== Serif ====PT SerifMerriweatherMartelNoto SerifSlabo 27pxAndadaLoraRoboto Slab== Sans Serif ==Source Sans ProOpen SansLato

But the most important, most dangerous part of all this was Trump’s successful attempt to convince millions of his supporters that he’d won and was being cheated out of his win—and the fact that many leaders of the Republican Party, at all levels, went along. That claim is somewhat akin to a charge of child abuse—the very accusation is also a demand for immediate action to stop it. The mob that gathered last Wednesday took that accusation seriously, and acted to “stop the steal.”

There is a great desire to blame Trump—who is certainly very much to blame—and move on, without recognizing and responding to the dire reality: that much of the GOP enlisted in his attempt to steal an election.

The legislators were there to count the votes certified by the states—after months of review by election officials, and after endless court challenges were rebuffed—and, instead, they voted to throw them out. They did this after months of lying to the public, saying that the election had been stolen. They crossed every line a democracy should hold dear. To my knowledge, not one of them has yet apologized or recanted for their participation in what even some Republican senators are openly calling the “big lie.”

Some, like Senator Ted Cruz, have tried to cover up their attempt to overturn the election by saying that their constituents (and indeed tens of millions of Americans) believe that the election was stolen, and that they were merely honoring their beliefs. However, it was they, along with the president, who convinced those millions of people that the election was stolen in the first place, and that Joe Biden was not the legitimate president-elect

Some legislators have since tried to argue that they didn’t mean to “overturn” the election, that their action was more akin to a protest vote. This cannot be taken seriously. That’s like pulling a gun on somebody, walking away with their wallet, and then claiming that you never intended to shoot them if they hadn’t turned over their wallet.

A mugging is a mugging, and a mass of legislators claiming that the election was stolen and rejecting the results is an attempt to overturn the election. When the president himself refuses to concede, voting against the recognition of electoral votes cannot simply be a protest, and we don’t have to accept such absurdity at face value.

Already, there are signs that many in the GOP intend to respond to their loss in the Senate by doubling down on disenfranchising voters in the name of fighting the “election fraud” they falsely convinced millions is widespread

Today, by contrast, many GOP legislators have claimed for months that the election was fraudulent or stolen, and have explicitly and repeatedly called on their supporters to stop this fraud. The president not only refused to concede before they took their vote, but even as the storming of the Capitol was still under way, he once again claimed that he had won in a landslide.

A great misunderstanding about democracy is that it can be stolen or damaged only if formal rules are suspended or ignored. In fact, many authoritarian regimes are sticklers about formal rules, even as they undermine their meaning

We’ve already witnessed the hollowing out of some of the core tenets of liberal democracy—equal representation of voters, unimpeded access to the ballot—in many aspects of our electoral system. Republicans have pursued a project of minority rule for decades, exploiting structural features of American politics and opportunistically shaping rules in their own favor.

The Senate is structurally dominated by a minority—less than 20 percent of the population elects a majority of its members. Through gerrymandering and the uneven distribution of the population, the GOP does about 6 percent better in the median House district than it does in the national popular vote.

Some Republicans have raised the fact that the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, referred to Trump’s presidency as “illegitimate.” That may well be, but that happened long after the election was over and the transition was complete. She called Trump to concede less than 12 hours after the polls closed, and the Obama administration immediately started the transition process. There was no formal challenge that required suspending the session to debate whether to accept the actual results.

The Republicans who backed Trump’s effort to overturn the election may have known that it didn’t have a high chance of success, but that doesn’t change the nature of the attempt, especially given their lack of remorse or apology. Unless they are convinced that it was a mistake—unless they pay such a high political price for it that neither they nor anyone else thinks of trying again—they are likely to seize the next available opportunity to do the same. If a future election comes down to one state instead of three, if a future presidential candidate uses lawsuits and coercion more competently, or if a few election officials succumb to threats more easily, they’ll be in the game.

A line must be drawn. The increasing entrenchment of minority rule and democratic backsliding in almost every level of government was terrible enough, but now we’ve even moved past that.

Democrats will soon control the House, the Senate, and the presidency, making it possible for them to undertake crucial reforms on voting rights and electoral integrity. Perhaps some Republicans will decide to join them; if there ever were a time for putting country over party, this is surely it.

The President later released a stronger video denouncing the incident, but sources told CNN that Trump later appeared to regret making the video.

Although Trump has enjoyed widespread support from police unions in the run up to the 2020 election, even law enforcement organizations that endorsed him for reelection -- such as the powerful Fraternal Order of Police -- were appalled at the Trump-fueled January 6 attack on the Capitol.

In a strongly worded statement imploring the President to speak out against the Capitol violence, the group said, "the images coming in from the United State Capitol Building today are heartbreaking to every American. We call on President Trump to forcefully urge these demonstrators to stop their unlawful activity, to stand down, and to disperse."

While addressing a group of police officers early in his presidency, Trump encouraged those in attendance to be "rough" with suspects.

"When you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon. You see them thrown in rough," Trump said, adding, "Please don't be too nice."

The Gainesville, Florida, police department said Trump had "no business endorsing or condoning cops being rough with arrestees and suggesting that we should slam their heads onto the car while putting them in." The department added that Trump's remarks "set modern policing back and erased a lot of the strides we have made to build trust in our community."

Trump's caustic comments about the investigators working to uncover Russian influence stood at odds with his attempted "pro-law enforcement" image, as did comments made by the President's attorney, Rudy Giuliani, when he compared career FBI agents to murderous Nazis.

With less than a week remaining as president, Trump's ceaseless false claims of mass voter fraud continue to threaten and make life more difficult for law enforcement in America.

As the nation prepares to inaugurate Joe Biden as the 46th President of the United States, federal law enforcement agencies have transformed the nation's capital into a veritable fortress -- fearful that pro-Trump supporters could stage an attack along the lines of the Trump-inspired violent insurgence at the US Capitol on January 6.