Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of February 1

Senate Passes Budget Resolution; Vice President Harris Breaks Tie

The House must now pass the same version of the budget measure before lawmakers can begin writing the final relief package. That vote may come later Friday.

Holy shit, in legislative terms this is like operating at FTL speeds. The new Congress taking actual steps within it's first few weeks to address the problems that have been literally killing people for almost a year. And all it took was getting the cheeto out and telling the Republicans to STFU and go sit in the corner.

I'm not bitter though

Manchin will support Democrats' reconciliation bill, allowing COVID relief to move forward without GOP

This is huge. Just about everything except $15 minimum wage* can be passed through reconciliation, so most of the 1.9 trillion will go through.

* I mean in a somewhat weird way, because the Senate is the most sovereign body over its own affairs. So technically it's up to the Parliamentarian to decide what's budgetary and what's not, but of course a majority can simply fire the Parliamentarian, but then again they could also just remove the fillibuster with a simple majority anyway

This is something that everyone who voted in Georgia and across the country accomplished. Votes matter!

Pete Buttigieg has been confirmed as secretary of transportation, making him both the youngest person to head that department as well as the first ever openly gay Cabinet member.

Liz Cheney survives. I do not expect many to celebrate the continued political career of the Cheney dynasty heiress, but if that vote had passed - that the GOP House voted out one of their most respected (in the GOP establishment that is) members because she voted for impeachment - it would mean that GOP has truly become nothing but the party of Trump and Qanon.

Kenosha County DA seeks arrest of Kyle Rittenhouse, higher bond

Prosecutors asked a judge Wednesday, Feb. 3 for a new arrest warrant for Kyle Rittenhouse -- the Illinois teen charged with shooting three people, killing two of them, during an anti-police protest in Wisconsin after he apparently violated his bond conditions.

The Kenosha County District Attorney's Office said it doesn't know where Rittenhouse is -- and that's a bond violation. The 18-year-old's legal team filed a response, saying he and his family are at a "Safe House" due to threats.

Rittenhouse posted $2 million bond in November, listing his address as his family home in Antioch, Illinois. When detectives went to that address on Feb. 2, court documents show, it was found he has not lived there for months.

The prosecutors' motion asks the court to increase Rittenhouse's bond by $200,000. Rittenhouse's legal team argues the move was all about safety and asked the district attorney to keep the "Safe House" address private. The court filing includes an email from Binger, responding in part: "Unless you can provide me with a specific, tangible and imminent threat (or threats) that would justify secrecy in this case, I am not willing to agree to redact your client's address from the public record.

Also related news from a few weeks ago:
Kyle Rittenhouse prohibited from association with supremacists under modified bail conditions

Prosecutors had requested the modifications after Rittenhouse was seen drinking at a bar in the southeastern Wisconsin city of Mount Pleasant, about 25 miles south of Milwaukee, this month. The legal drinking age is 21, but in Wisconsin, Rittenhouse could legally drink alcohol because he was with his mother.

According to WMTV, prosecutors wrote in their request that Rittenhouse also posed for a photo outside Pudgy's Pub with two men as they made the “OK” sign with their hands, a symbol used by white supremacists. Prosecutors also alleged five men at the tavern serenaded Rittenhouse with a song that has become the anthem of the Proud Boys, a neo-fascist group.

And while not US news, some recent related news from Canada:
Canada labels the Proud Boys, neo-Nazi groups as terrorists

Public Safety Minister Bill Blair announced today that the federal government will designate 13 groups as terrorist entities, adding some white nationalist and neo-Nazi groups to a list already populated with militant Islamist organizations.

The federal government will now classify the Proud Boys (a neo-fascist organization with chapters in Canada and the U.S.), the Atomwaffen Division, AWD (a group that calls for acts of violence against racial, religious and ethnic groups), and the Base (another neo-Nazi organization that advocates for violence to incite a race war), as terrorist entities under the Criminal Code.

The government considers these three groups, along with another new addition, the Russian Imperial Movement (a Russian paramilitary group with ties to neo-Nazi groups worldwide), as "ideologically motivated violent extremists."

Mitt Romney has a plan to give parents up to $15,000 a year, albeit without raising taxes on the rich and at the cost of other programs

A mildly biased, but definitely elaborate article on Romney's plan to fix child poverty.

Romney’s plan would replace the child tax credit, currently worth up to $2,000 per child and restricted to parents with substantial income (it doesn’t fully kick in until you reach an income of over $11,000), with a flat monthly allowance paid out to all parents:

Parents of kids ages 0 to 5 would get $350 per month, or $4,200 a year
Parents of kids ages 6 to 17 would get $250 per month, or $3,000 a year

Parents with multiple kids could get a maximum of $1,250 per month or $15,000 a year; that translates to five kids between the ages of 6 and 17. Very large families would be somewhat penalized, but many families with three or four kids will get the full benefit.

If you’re a liberal reading this and wondering if there’s a catch, there is — but it’s not necessarily a huge one. Romney doesn’t want his plan to add to the deficit, and he wants to simplify the set of child-related benefits the government currently offers. So his plan would pay for the child allowance by eliminating a number of other programs, including some that mostly benefit the poor (more on those below).

The upside of Romney’s plan being fully paid for, however, is that it would allow Congress to make the measure permanent under budget reconciliation rules, whereas the Biden proposal that relies on deficit funding is a temporary one-year measure.

Romney’s proposal would eliminate:

Head-of-household filing status, which gives income tax breaks to some single parents and caregivers)

The child and dependent care tax credit, which offers tax breaks for parents paying for child care services so they can work

The temporary assistance for needy families (TANF) welfare program, which replaced traditional “cash welfare” after the 1996 welfare reforms and is run as a state block grant

The state and local tax deduction (SALT) in the income tax, which critics decry as regressive but also provides a subsidy for blue states with high income and property taxes

Interesting proposal from him. I think it underscores how societies must have welfare to function without ignoring destitution or oppressing it out of view. This also the second time Romney has been the right-winger who actually proposed some pretty good policy.

Newsmax bailing on pillow guy ranting about Dominion machines

Presumably they just don't want to get sued but wow that is a fun interview to watch.

John Matze, CEO of Parler, has been fired. It's interesting that he claims now to be in favor of deplatforming the extremists he spent the last year or more defending. You can forgive me if I don't trust what he says. But the fact that he's saying it publicly could be good for getting other sites to moderate their behavior and users.

Joe manchin is by no means the most dangerous senator to progressive reform

A mildly interesting article on what senators could pose the biggest threat to Joe Biden's agenda and leftists in general.

There is now a new most powerful person in the United States: Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia. With the Senate evenly split, Manchin, a Democrat representing a state in which nearly 70 percent of the votes cast in both the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections went to Donald Trump, has the power to break a tied vote on almost any legislative business requiring a simple majority to pass. He can even decide which bills get to be passed with a simple majority.

For some liberals, this is a disheartening prospect. Manchin voted “with Trump” more than any other Senate Democrat, opting to confirm two of the former president’s three Supreme Court nominees and even flirting with endorsing Trump’s reelection campaign. [...]

Joe Manchin is, considering his circumstances, by no means the worst Democratic senator. He is quietly a semi-reliable partisan who opposed the GOP’s tax bill and the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. And while he later suggested to the press that he would consider endorsing Trump, Manchin did vote to oust him in his first impeachment.

This is just about how you would expect a good Democrat from West Virginia to act in our stupid and unrepresentative electoral system.

The last time Democrats controlled the House, Senate, and White House, the key vote in the Senate was not a vulnerable senator from a state that overwhelmingly supported the previous Republican president; it was Joe Lieberman, from Connecticut. [...]

The reason Lieberman could get away with this kind of behavior was because he was from a safe seat. (For more typical Democrats, that is. He himself was not very popular in Connecticut by the time he retired.)