Live updates Federal employees to get Friday off as Biden signs legislation making Juneteenth a national holiday
After a week in Europe, capped by a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Biden is returning to a raft of domestic challenges, including ongoing negotiations over an infrastructure package, one of his leading priorities.
Here’s what to know:
Analysis: Biden is ‘not confident’ he can change Putin. That’s good.
Biden declared Wednesday he was “not confident” of changing Putin’s ways and acknowledged that his cautious remarks about pulling U.S.-Russia relations up from their lowest point in years amounted to putting on “an optimistic front.”
“This is not about trust. This is about self-interest and verification of self-interest,” he told reporters.
Biden’s skeptical remarks, made in a solo news conference after their first summit and later on the tarmac near Air Force One, broke with decades of presidents predicting they would charm, cajole or cow their counterparts in Moscow.
House votes to repeal 2002 authorization for military force with strong bipartisan support, White House endorsement
The House voted Thursday to repeal a 19-year-old military authorization that Congress passed to give legal backing to the Iraq War with the support of Democrats, Republicans and the White House — an unprecedented coalition to end post-9/11 authorities to engage in hostilities that critics argue are outdated.
The 268-to-161 vote reflects growing bipartisan support for the repeal effort and tees up the legislation for the Senate, where Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) this week declared his support for the measure and his intention to bring it to the floor for a vote sometime this year.
“Today’s historic vote is a turning point,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Gregory W. Meeks (D-N.Y.) said on the floor just before the vote. “I look forward to Congress no longer taking a back seat on some of the most consequential decisions our nation can make.”
Pelosi said she 'will never forget’ how hard the GOP worked to dismantle ACA
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) celebrated Thursday the Supreme Court ruling to preserve the Affordable Care Act as an affirmation of Democrats’ efforts to keep insurance for those with preexisting conditions, and a rejection of GOP efforts to kill the legislation.
“Thanks to the tireless advocacy of Americans across the country and Democrats in Congress, the Affordable Care Act endures as a pillar of American health and economic security alongside Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security,” she said in a statement.
Republican lawmakers and conservative media outlets have criticized the health-care legislation since its inception. President Donald Trump vowed to abolish the law, but despite dozens of attempts, congressional Republicans were never able to repeal or replace it.
Pelosi said liberals will never forget how hard their conservative opponents worked to dismantle one of the hallmark pieces of legislation from Barack Obama’s presidency.
“On Day One of our House Majority, Democrats acted decisively to throw the full legal weight of the House of Representatives into the fight against this GOP lawsuit,” she said. “We will never forget how Republican leaders embraced this monstrous suit to rip away millions of Americans’ health care in the middle of a deadly pandemic.”
Schumer similarly noted that since the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010, Democrats “have had to fight tooth and nail to preserve the law from partisan Republican attacks.”
Through countless legislative and judicial challenges, Schumer said, the health-care law prevailed.
“And now, we’re going to try to make it bigger and better — establish, once and for all, affordable health care as a basic right of every American citizen,” Schumer said. “What a day.”
Government says Friday will be a holiday for federal employees after Biden signs the Juneteenth Act
The government said that Friday will be a holiday for federal employees following Biden’s expected signing Thursday of legislation making Juneteenth a federal holiday.
In a tweet, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management said that because June 19 falls on a Saturday this year, the holiday would be observed by most federal employees Friday.
Biden plans to sign the bill Thursday afternoon. Juneteenth marks the end of slavery in Texas.
The legislation was approved Wednesday by the House on a 415-to-14 vote, just a day after the bill establishing the holiday moved suddenly and unanimously through the Senate.
Supreme Court unanimously rules for Catholic group in Philadelphia foster-care dispute
The Supreme Court said Thursday that Philadelphia was wrong to end a contract to provide foster care services to a religious organization that refuses to work with same-sex couples.
All nine justices agreed with the outcome, but Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for a majority of six in saying Philadelphia violated the Constitution’s guarantee of free exercise of religion in ending a contract with Catholic Social Services to screen potential foster care parents.
“CSS seeks only an accommodation that will allow it to continue serving the children of Philadelphia in a manner consistent with its religious beliefs; it does not seek to impose those beliefs on anyone else,” Roberts wrote. “The refusal of Philadelphia to contract with CSS for the provision of foster care services unless it agrees to certify same-sex couples as foster parents cannot survive strict scrutiny, and violates the First Amendment.”
Pelosi says passage of Juneteenth Act an important step forward in fight to end racism
Democrats gathered Thursday to celebrate the passage of the Juneteenth Act, a bill to make the day marking the end of slavery in Texas, a federal holiday.
Support for a new federal holiday — the first since Congress established Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 1983 — was bipartisan, which is rare in the current political climate on issues related to race such as voting rights and reparations.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) officially enrolled the bill that Biden will sign into law Thursday afternoon and acknowledged that many Americans have been involved in moving those discussions into action for more than a century.
“Over the past 156 years, Juneteenth has evolved as a day not only of celebration but of reflection, reminding us of the history much stained by brutality and injustice,” she said. “We all remain committed to the fight to end racism and advance justice which continues with renewed urgency.”
Black Americans continue to press lawmakers and the White House to implement policies that can repair the harm caused by the enslavement of Black people. Pelosi said the passage of the Act is movement in that direction.
“This step is important obviously to the Congressional Black Caucus, but this is an important step for America as we insure that one of the most momentous events in our history finally takes its official place of honor in our nation,” she said.
Affordable Care Act survives third Supreme Court challenge, as case from Trump administration and GOP-led states is rejected
The Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed the latest challenge to the Affordable Care Act, saying Republican-led states do not have the legal standing to try to upend the law.
Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote the court’s 7-to-2 decision preserving the law that provides millions of Americans with health coverage.
Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M Gorsuch dissented.
The decision meant the attempt to derail President Barack Obama’s landmark domestic achievement met the fate of past legal challenges, in 2012 and 2015.
Analysis: GOP divisions threaten the bipartisan efforts to pass antitrust legislation
House lawmakers touted their antitrust package targeting the tech industry as a bipartisan achievement at a Wednesday news conference on Capitol Hill.
But divisions within the Republican Party could present a major hurdle to actually passing it.
Rep. Jim Jordan (Ohio), the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, criticized the news conference, where Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) appeared alongside Rep. David N. Cicilline (D-R.I.) and other lawmakers from both parties to tout the legislation.
Stacey Abrams says she supports voting compromises floated by Sen. Manchin
Prominent voting rights activist Stacey Abrams said Thursday that she could “absolutely” support compromises floated by Sen. Joe Manchin III (W.Va.), the lone Senate Democrat who is not sponsoring a sweeping elections bill in the chamber.
A three-page memo circulated by Manchin’s office this week indicates the centrist’s willingness to support key provisions of the For the People Act, the marquee Democratic bill that the House passed in March — including provisions mandating at least two weeks of early voting and measures meant to eliminate partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts. But Manchin’s memo also sketches out several provisions that have historically been opposed by most Democrats, including backing an ID requirement for voters.
During an appearance on CNN, Abrams was asked if she could support such a compromise.
“Absolutely,” she responded. “This is a first and important step to preserving our democracy.”
Abrams said it is a common misperception, fueled by Republicans, that Democrats outright oppose voter ID. Rather, she said, she and others object to restrictive provisions that are “designed to keep people out of the process.”
“No one has ever objected to having to prove who you are to vote,” she said. “What [Manchin] is proposing makes sense.”
Though Abrams, a former gubernatorial candidate in Georgia, has no formal say in the Senate process, her support of Manchin’s proposals could help sway liberal Democrats, whose overarching aim is to counter a bevy of Republican-passed laws that have rolled back ballot access in numerous states.
Jobless claims surge back above 400,000, snapping 6 weeks of declines
Americans filed 412,000 initial unemployment claims, the Labor Department reported Thursday, an unexpected increase after six weeks of declines.
The new numbers mark an increase of 37,000 from the 375,000 reported the week before, pushing the tally back above the 400,000 threshold amid labor shortages and a moderate slowdown in vaccination rates.
The job market still has a long way to go before reaching its pre-pandemic vitality, when weekly jobless claims stood at 256,000. The rise in jobless claims cuts against economic optimism elsewhere. In recent months, the widespread availability of coronavirus vaccines has enabled a near-full loosening of restrictions on commerce in some places.
California, which had some of the earliest and most strict shutdowns, has now lifted nearly all of its restrictions. New York did away with limits on social gatherings as well as certain cleaning requirements that had been imposed on businesses as the state’s vaccination rate reached 70 percent.
Mark Hamrick, a senior economist at Bankrate, said the numbers reflect new challenges for the economy, including labor market shortages and higher prices.
"What the claims information doesn’t tell us is how much faster the job market will heal or where so-called full employment will ultimately be,” Hamrick said in an email. “The easiest part of putting people back to work occurred from May through August of last year when more than a million jobs per month were added to payrolls.”
Analysis: Democrats devise a way to finally expand Medicaid in resistant states
Democrats, now in charge for the first time since Obamacare passed, have been mulling over how to get health insurance to about 4.3 million Americans stuck in the so-called “Medicaid coverage gap.”
Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Tex.) says he has a solution. On Thursday morning, he’ll introduce legislation, co-signed by more than 40 House Democrats, that would let cities and counties bypass the states still refusing to expand their Medicaid programs.
“We’ve got a new, homegrown solution to finally get Medicaid to millions of our most vulnerable citizens by empowering local governments to cover their residents and protect their health," Doggett said in a statement.
He was at the Capitol on Jan. 6. Now, feds say he used his nonprofit to advocate violence.
A few months before Alan Hostetter stood in triumph on the U.S. Capitol’s upper West Terrace, proclaiming the people had “taken back their house” as rioters stormed the building, the California native launched a nonprofit that promised to protect citizens’ rights, educate people on vaccines and call out media misinformation.
But in the months that followed, his nonprofit, the American Phoenix Project, instead organized rallies to support Donald Trump’s false claims of a stolen election and used it “as a platform to advocate violence against certain groups and individuals that supported the 2020 presidential election results,” federal prosecutors said in an indictment.
Fact Checker: Republican governors’ misleading spin on new voting restrictions
Courts across the country rejected President Donald Trump’s claims of massive election fraud in 2020, but his falsehoods have taken on a life of their own, as new voting restrictions pile up in Republican-controlled states.
At least 14 states have enacted laws this year that tighten the rules around casting ballots. Hundreds of bills pending in statehouses would institute new voting restrictions, as this Washington Post tracker shows, and many of the Republican lawmakers sponsoring those proposals are echoing Trump’s false claims that loose election laws allowed the 2020 White House race to be tainted by fraud.
Analysis: Trump’s DOJ emails show relentless pursuit to overturn 2020 election
As the Biden administration continues to forge ahead with infrastructure negotiations after a mainly successful overseas trip, the aftershock of the chaos wrought by the former president, seven months after his loss in the 2020 election, continues.
Conspiracy theorists, Donald Trump supporters and Republican lawmakers are still pushing for recounts in various states around the country; the Justice Department inspector general is now investigating the Trump Justice Department’s 2018 move to subpoena Apple and seek lawmakers’ data. And it is becoming increasingly clear just how far-reaching Trump’s push was to use federal law enforcement to support his unfounded claims of voter fraud and a stolen election.
President Joe Biden: What you need to know
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Biden’s strategy of pessimism ekes out progress with Putin
Biden, Putin aired differences at a high-stakes summit but agree on little
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The Biden Cabinet: Who has been selected
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