| | |  | BY ELANA SCHOR | Presented by |  |
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| With help from Peter S. Canellos and Tyler Weyant FORGET 2009 — It’s become fashionable in politics to compare 2021 to 2009, another year when an incoming Democratic president faced serious economic and public health challenges and struggled with how long to let bipartisan talks play out on his top domestic priority. But the more relevant year when it comes to President Joe Biden’s agenda is actually 2013. Let’s journey back in time to then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s 2013 decision to squash the filibuster for all executive-branch nominees except the Supreme Court. That monumental step set the stage for Mitch McConnell, Reid’s GOP successor as Senate leader, to end filibusters of Supreme Court nominees in 2017. Now progressives are pressuring current Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to deliver the final blow to the Senate’s 60-vote threshold by eliminating it for legislation. But Reid made his move against the filibuster in the chill of November — and only after laying months upon months of groundwork. On July 16, 2013, dozens of senators in both parties spoke at a “highly unusual” confab “in the ornate old Senate chamber — where deals like the Missouri Compromise were struck nearly two centuries ago,” per our story in the POLITICO archives. Even then, Reid waited four more months to act. The three judicial nominees whose confirmations the GOP blocked, in what proved the last straw before Reid went nuclear, weren’t even tapped until the first week of June 2013.
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Then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid waits for the Senate subway after a vote in December 2013 on Capitol Hill. | Getty Images | Aspiring Senate prognosticators can take a few lessons from 2013: on timing, on stakes and on behavior. First, if Schumer wants to follow Reid down the road to a rules change while commanding a majority five votes smaller than the Nevadan he once called a “foxhole buddy,” he’s going to have to wait longer to get enough buy-in. Reid acted about halfway through a 2013-2014 Congress that ended up seeing what was, at the time, the highest number of votes on cloture (a.k.a. filibuster cutoff) in the maneuver’s history: 218, surpassed only by the 298 such votes in the 2019-2020 session. The current Congress, by contrast, has seen only 43 cloture votes. When it came to stakes, Reid also worked hard to build a case before putting his cuffs on the filibuster. He could point to multiple nominations that would have sailed through if not for GOP blockades. Schumer’s Democrats, on the other hand, have yet to win over their own colleague Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) for their big-ticket elections measure, much less the Republicans. This year’s Democratic caucus has similar problems maintaining unity on other liberal legislation, from policing to labor organizing. Which leaves the most important lesson that this year’s filibuster reformers can take from 2013 as they push Biden to take risks: Behavior matters when it comes to cajoling 50 Democratic caucus members to ditch a century-old tradition. Before Reid did his thing, which was also made possible by a strong 2012 campaign after which Democrats picked up two Senate seats, then-President Barack Obama used his bully pulpit to excoriate Republicans for throttling his priorities. Lately, though, you’ve heard Biden speak more sharply toward Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) than he does toward GOP senators. And while White House allies have talked about their interest in learning lessons from Biden’s time in the Obama administration by not letting talks with the GOP drag on for too long, the president doesn’t seem eager to let go of bipartisan infrastructure talks just yet. Until we see a White House acting like it’s prepared to take drastic steps to curb the filibuster, Schumer has no room to act like a majority leader ready to go that far. So until you see both Biden and Schumer acting a lot more like Obama and Reid did in 2013, on messaging as well as execution of raw political power, the legislative filibuster will remain alive and well – with more fans than just Manchin and Sinema, though they’re the only two Senate Democrats willing to say so out loud. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas for us at eschor@politico.com, or on Twitter at @eschor.
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A message from AARP: Congress: It’s time to let Medicare negotiate for lower drug prices. The President, Congress, and the American people agree: we need to lower prescription drug prices. Americans can’t afford to pay the highest prices in the world for their prescription drugs. Giving Medicare the power to negotiate will save hundreds of billions of dollars and reduce prescription drug costs for all Americans. aarp.org/FairRxPrices | | | | | — White House: ‘No substitute for face-to-face’ Putin summit despite doubts: The White House today defended Biden’s upcoming summit with President Vladimir Putin of Russia — arguing it was important for the two leaders to meet face to face despite an apparent lack of deliverable policy objectives, broad doubts about Moscow’s trustworthiness and concerns from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. — U.S. seizes most of Colonial Pipeline’s $4.4M ransom payment: Federal investigators were able to recover more than half of the $4.4 million ransom payment that Colonial Pipeline made to the hackers who froze its computers and forced the shutdown of its massive fuel distribution system, the Biden administration announced today. By tracing the payment across the cryptocurrency ecosystem, the government was able to locate and seize $2.27 million from a virtual currency account used by the hackers. — No. 2 Capitol Police official resigns: Chad Thomas, the No. 2 Capitol Police official overseeing most of its uniformed officers, resigned from his position today as the department attempts to chart a path forward after the Jan. 6 insurrection, according to congressional and Capitol Police sources. His departure comes as watchdogs urge the department to shift its posture from that of a police force to more of an intelligence-gathering and protective agency for members of Congress and as rank-and-file officers express frustration with current leadership. — 3 justices suggest male-only draft is unconstitutional: Three members of the Supreme Court indicated today that the law requiring only men to register for the draft may be unconstitutional and outdated, but the high court balked at formally addressing the issue — for now. The court denied review to a case brought by the National Coalition for Men, challenging the registration requirement reintroduced in 1980 by former President Jimmy Carter. — Poll: 51 percent of Americans support Trump’s 2-year Facebook ban: While the majority of Americans have heard about former President Donald Trump’s Facebook suspension, just over half support the platform’s two-year ban, according to a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll released today. 71 percent of voters have heard “a lot” or “some” about Trump’s suspension from the social media platform, while 51 percent of Americans strongly or somewhat support Facebook’s move.
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| ‘DO NOT COME’ — Vice President Kamala Harris today sought to deter migrants from trying to cross into the U.S., issuing a warning during a bilateral meeting with President Alejandro Giammattei in Guatemala. “Do not come. Do not come,” Harris said during her first major address abroad, which she delivered in English. “The United States will continue to enforce our laws and secure our border.” The vice president’s message was in line with what other officials throughout the Biden administration have tried to convey for months in the face of an influx of people trying to enter the country along the southern border. The issue has largely persisted, however, and the situation has been one of Republicans’ go-to criticisms of Biden during his first five months in office. It’s also one of several thorny political problems Harris has been tasked with as she seeks to carve out an influential role for herself within the White House. “There are legal methods by which migration can and should occur,” Harris said in Guatemala City. “And I believe if you come to our border, you will be turned back. So let’s discourage our friends, our neighbors, our family members from embarking on what is otherwise an extremely dangerous journey.”
| | AT LEAST TRAE YOUNG CAN’T MESS THIS UP — Eight candidates. A handful of scandals. And a new, complicated way of tallying votes. In the latest POLITICO Dispatch, New York reporter Erin Durkin breaks down everything you need to know about the messy, confusing race to become mayor of America’s biggest city.
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| | | | | IN THE ROUGH — Nightly’s Tyler Weyant emails: On May 26, as a part of Ohio’s first-in-the-nation vaccine lottery, Abbey Bugenske from Silverton won $1 million. On June 5, just an hour-plus drive away in Muirfield Village, Ohio, a positive Covid case likely cost golfer Jon Rahm $1,674,000. The scene played out live on national television Saturday afternoon. Rahm was informed by medical personnel when he finished his third round that he had tested positive and would have to withdraw from the Memorial Tournament he was leading by six strokes. A PGA Tour release after the withdrawal indicated Rahm was informed on May 31 he was in close contact with someone who was Covid positive, and was tested daily after deciding he would play in the tournament. Andy Levinson, the PGA Tour’s senior vice president of tournament administration, told reporters the tour is slightly above 50 percent vaccinated, and has had only four positive tests, including Rahm’s, since the PGA Tour returned in June of last year. Levinson would not confirm Rahm’s vaccination status, but the safety standards for the tour indicate that vaccinated players are no longer subject to weekly testing. We’ve seen other public incidents in sports as fans return to fields and arenas, including the New York Yankees outbreak in May. The questions this event yields are numerous: What was the risk to other golfers and fans? Is there any way Rahm could have finished the tournament, while masking and distancing? Should Rahm have been pulled off the golf course earlier? Regardless, athletes should take one big lesson from this weekend: Getting vaccinated seems to be a bit cheaper than the alternative.
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| | | JUSTICE FOR JOHN MARSHALL HARLAN — Managing editor for enterprise Peter S. Canellos emails Nightly: Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan, who served from 1877 to 1911, was known as the Great Dissenter for his scorching rebuttals of court decisions that took away the rights of African Americans and prevented the government from addressing issues of economic inequality. In almost all of his major dissents, he was vindicated by history. He was a hero to generations of progressives, from Frederick Douglass to William Jennings Bryan to Thurgood Marshall. Today, he is also viewed as a hero by Mitch McConnell, Neil Gorsuch, John Roberts and many other leading conservatives. Liberals see him as a justice with an innate sense of how Supreme Court decisions could hurt average people; he often warned of human suffering that would result from callous rulings. Today’s conservatives see him as a principled adherent to the original intent and plain meaning of the Constitution. “Justice Harlan got the original meaning of the Equal Protection Clause right the first time, and the Court recognized that belatedly,” Gorsuch said at his 2017 confirmation hearing. “It is one of the great stains on the Supreme Court’s history that it took it so long to get to that decision.”
| Could today’s often polarized justices and their followers find common ground in their appreciation for Harlan? The mutual attraction to a man who stood alone against the most powerful forces of his time on economic protections as well as racial equality speaks well for the future of the court. But why isn’t more known about Harlan? And what gave him the strength and conviction to stake out such lonely stances, only to be vindicated in time? Those are some of the themes of my book, “The Great Dissenter: The Story of John Marshall Harlan, America’s Judicial Hero,” coming out Tuesday from Simon & Schuster. Harlan’s confidence came from many sources — from a strong Presbyterian religious faith to having witnessed the devastation of a Civil War brought on, he came to believe, by the country’s refusal to enforce equality under the law. He also had direct contact with African Americans — especially the civil rights leader Robert Harlan , who grew up in slavery and was rumored to be his half-brother. Today’s justices can be forgiven for lacking that kind of real-world credential. Still, Harlan’s message to them would be to look beyond the confines of their conference room — a room that now happens to be adorned with a portrait of the elderly Harlan, furrowed of brow and gazing toward the future.
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A message from AARP: Congress: Act now to lower prescription drug prices. Every year, Medicare spends more than $129 billion on prescription drugs. Yet, it's prohibited by law from using its buying power to negotiate with drug companies for lower prices. This must change. Americans are sick and tired of paying three times what people in other countries pay for the same medicine, forcing many to choose between buying the prescription drugs they need and paying for food and rent. aarp.org/FairRxPrices | | | Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here. | |
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