| | |  | BY ELANA SCHOR | With help from Renuka Rayasam COUNTING TO 60 — Senate Democrats have held their paper-thin majority for just two months, and already they’re inundated with pressure from the left to snuff out the legislative filibuster. It’s understandable why liberals would dream of a move to pure majority rule in the chamber, as Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s House keeps sending over progressive bills that sit idle for a lack of 60 Senate votes. It’s also clear that the Democrats are a long way from killing the filibuster as we know it, and not just because of the reluctance of Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.). In the last week, two Democratic senators — California’s Dianne Feinstein and New Mexico’s Martin Heinrich — called for limits on the Senate minority’s ability to block passage of most legislation that can’t get to 60 votes. Both spoke favorably of the “talking filibuster,” as has President Joe Biden. Merely requiring an objecting senator or senators from the minority to hold the floor while talking at length, Jimmy Stewart-style, isn’t the real question. What matters is the number of votes that would be required to break a talking filibuster: 60, the threshold the Senate has operated under since 1975, or a simple majority of 51? When Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) proposed in 2011 to require talking filibusters with “only a majority of senators” needed to end them, his plan won 49 votes, including those of 25 Democratic senators who are still in office. That sounds promising for filibuster haters, right? One half of the 50-member Democratic caucus, including Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, already on the record in favor of reform! The reality is more complicated. Four Democrats who voted for Merkley’s plan in 2011 recently told POLITICO they’re not convinced it’s time to ditch the 60-vote threshold. And there are likely more wobbly Democrats who are keeping their qualms to themselves. The math is simple: Unless Democrats can count to 50 (members of their caucus) supporting 50 (votes to end a filibuster, whether or not constant talking is required), the supermajority requirement to pass most bills isn’t going anywhere. Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) is on to something when he says that filibuster critics need to show its defenders “how the rules can be used and abused before we go any further.” Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his members have yet to formally filibuster a single bill. After any official obstruction begins, we might see more of a Democratic groundswell for change. For now, despite all the political noise surrounding the issue, the whip count for making any dent in the legislative filibuster looks far behind where it needs to be. Besides Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), the Democrats openly doubtful about ditching 60 include Sens. Jon Tester of Montana and Angus King of Maine, an independent who caucuses with the majority. That means the White House may be spending its spring indulging Biden’s penchant for outreach to GOP senators, in the hope of getting to 60 votes for something. Biden advisers are probably going to start their courtship on immigration and infrastructure with the 10 Republican members of the Senate’s bipartisan “Group of 20,” which held its latest meeting last week. Six of that group’s 10 Democrats are either defenders of the 60-vote threshold or skeptical about redefining filibusters as breakable with a simple majority vote. Any of them are hypothetically persuadable, though — which may explain why Durbin, the reform-minded whip, is a G20 member. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news and tips at eschor@politico.com and rrayasam@politico.com, or on Twitter at @eschor and @renurayasam.
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| | SUBSCRIBE TO "THE RECAST" TO JOIN AN IMPORTANT CONVERSATION : Power dynamics are shifting in Washington and across the country, and more people are demanding a seat at the table, insisting that all politics is personal and not all policy is equitable. "The Recast" is a new twice-weekly newsletter that breaks down how race and identity are recasting politics, policy, and power in America. Get fresh insights, scoops, and dispatches on this crucial intersection from across the country, and hear from new voices that challenge business as usual. Don't miss out on this new newsletter, SUBSCRIBE NOW . Thank you to our sponsor, Intel. | | | | | | | ‘NO FORMAL ROLE’ — Less than a week after her husband was sworn into office, first lady Jill Biden told a group of young Latinos during a virtual chat that her new chief of staff “will be working” on an effort to reunify migrant children separated from their families. The remark was followed by a series of headlines proclaiming that Biden herself would monitor or lead a task force to help the families separated under President Donald Trump. Some articles even said Biden would reunite the children. None of that has happened. First lady Jill Biden actually has “no formal role” in the effort, according to her office. Among lawyers and advocates helping the families, her lack of involvement reinforces a broader concern about the slow pace of reunification efforts under Biden, Anita Kumar and Eugene Daniels write. The administration has yet to locate additional parents or announce a specific plan to unite families, as staffers instead struggle to address another problem: a surge of unaccompanied children at the border. In recent administrations, first ladies have taken on largely unobjectionable social causes like healthy eating, military families and online bullying (although each of those cases had their critics.) The exception to the rule was Hillary Clinton, who dove head first into trying — unsuccessfully — to overhaul health care for her husband. That ended in disaster and served as a cautionary tale for every first lady since. And yet advocates had been hoping that Jill Biden would wade into one of the most politically fraught issues her husband faced: immigration. And they hoped she would use her outsized platform to ensure the administration makes the issue more of a priority.
| | MISSISSIPPI’S DOUBLE DOSE OF VAX HESITANCY — Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves lifted the state’s mask mandate and Covid restrictions earlier this month. Even so, when Nightly’s Renuka Raysam traveled to the state capital, Jackson, for a story last week, most of the people she saw — in the airport, in restaurants, in her hotel, at a water distribution site — were all wearing masks. That is, almost everywhere. The one exception was in the governor’s mansion, where Renu went Friday to meet with Reeves, a Republican, in the Gold Parlor. Neither Reeves nor his staffers had face coverings. Reeves is looking forward to Jackson’s music venues being full again once the pandemic ends, he said, recalling a time he saw Prince play twice in one night: at an official concert and then after the show. Last week, Mississippi became the second state , after Alaska, to open up vaccinations to all residents 16 or older. Arizona followed suit today. Mississippi’s vaccine rollout has been sluggish. Just 21.9 percent of the state’s population has gotten a dose, compared to 24.5 percent nationally. Black residents have accounted for 28 percent of doses handed out, even though they account for nearly 38 percent of the state’s population. Reeves and I talked about what’s next for the state’s vaccination efforts. This conversation has been edited.
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Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves | Rory Doyle for POLITICO Magazine | Why open up shots to everyone right now? If you look at our Jan. 1 numbers compared to other states, I was very disappointed with where we were. We were depending solely on our hospitals to distribute the vaccine. And suffice it to say our hospitals weren’t doing a very good job at that time. That’s when I made the decision to set up approximately 20 mass vaccination sites. What we started seeing a week ago, 10 days ago, is that while most of the appointments continue to get taken up very quickly, we did have appointments, particularly in the more rural areas of our state. That’s when we made the decision to expand from those over 65 to those over 50. Perhaps we’ve even moved to the point where, at least amongst those in our state above the age of 50, supply had exceeded demand, because two-thirds of all Mississippians in that category had already been inoculated. The reality is, we didn’t spend much time in Mississippi arguing over who was worthy of a vaccine and who wasn’t. We decided early on that we were going to make it available to as many people as possible as quickly as possible. What are you doing to speed up the pace of vaccinations? When you look at the two groups nationally that have the highest levels of vaccine hesitancy, African Americans are one and rural, white Trump voters are two. We’ve got a whole bunch of both of those. So no question, we’ve got work to do in encouraging and working to get more of our fellow Mississippians to be willing to take the vaccine. We’re seeing in polling that it’s getting better. We didn’t want to spend too much time encouraging individuals to get the vaccine while the supply was so limited, relative to demand. But now we’re getting to the point where it is time, because over the next month or so, we may find ourselves in a position where supply actually exceeds demand. We are doing proactive messaging. Our health department is spending a lot of time working in African American communities, getting local pastors and local leaders to take the vaccine, to do social media campaigns and otherwise. Actually 38 percent of our shots last week went into African American arms. Have you gotten your shot? I’ve got not one but two. My state health officer came to me in January and said, “It is time for you to send the message to everyone in Mississippi that it is okay to get the vaccine.” I got it in this room. I did it on Facebook Live and sent the message to all of my fellow Mississippians and particularly my conservative friends throughout the state that the vaccine is our new way to combat the virus.
| | — U.S., allies announce sanctions on China over Uyghur genocide: The United States and its allies in Canada, Britain and the European Union announced sanctions on several Chinese officials alleged to have links to what U.S. officials say is a genocidal campaign against Uyghur Muslims . The international, coordinated sanctions, first reported by POLITICO, drew condemnation and some immediate retaliatory sanctions from Beijing. — Former Newsom chief of staff to join San Francisco firm, ending Biden job speculation: Ann O’Leary, a former top Hillary Clinton aide and most recently chief of staff to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, said she will become a partner in a San Francisco law firm, ending speculation that she might be nominated as director of the Office of Management and Budget. — Study shows AstraZeneca vaccine is safe and effective: A late-stage clinical trial of the Oxford/AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine found the shot was effective in preventing Covid-19 — and reported no evidence of the thrombosis-related events that have concerned EU countries, AstraZeneca announced today. — Trump looks to take down Raffensperger in Georgia: Trump endorsed Rep. Jody Hice in a campaign to unseat Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in next year’s Republican primary, saying that “unlike” the incumbent, “Jody leads out front with integrity.” — Biden taps Khan for FTC: The president picked prominent tech industry critic Lina Khan to join the Federal Trade Commission, in a major win for progressive Democrats who say the agency has not aggressively regulated major Silicon Valley platforms on antitrust and privacy issues.
| | Nightly asks you: Have you gotten vaccinated? Or are you struggling to sign up on your state’s website? Are you still ineligible? Tell us your vaccine story on our form , and we’ll include select responses in Friday’s edition.
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| | | ALASKAN MEETING OF THE WEEK — U.S. and Chinese officials met in Alaska for their first in-person talks under the Biden administration last week and things got pretty testy. POLITICO Europe’s China correspondent Stuart Lau talks on the latest POLITICO Dispatch about a meeting he says “was as frosty as the weather suggests.”
| | | | LESSONS OF 2020 — Today, more than 80 million Americans have been vaccinated. There is a promise of return to life as we remember it, but there are still a lot of questions about what the next few months, and even years, will look like. Video journalist Krystal Campos explores the key lessons we’ve learned about Covid-19 since it began to spread in the United States.
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