WTF Just Happened Today

Friday, May 28, 2021

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1/ Senate Republicans blocked the creation of an independent, bipartisan commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, using their filibuster power in the Senate for the first time during Biden’s presidency. The vote was 54 in favor, 35 against, and 11 senators not voting — short of the 60 needed to proceed. Six Republicans voted in favor of proceeding with the legislation. Prior to the vote, McConnell reportedly asked his Republican Senate colleagues to filibuster the bill as “a personal favor” to him, dismissing the proposed commission – modeled after the 9/11 Commission – as a “purely political exercise.” Sen. Joe Manchin said there were “an awful lot of other Republicans that would have supported” the commission “if it hadn’t been for [McConnell’s] intervention,” guessing that “13 or 14” GOP senators might have voted for the bill. Manchin, however, reaffirmed that he would not reconsider his opposition to getting rid of the filibuster. Sen. Lisa Murkowski also took aim at McConnell over his opposition to the commission, saying: “To be making a decision for the short-term political gain at the expense of understanding and acknowledging what was in front of us on Jan. 6, I think we need to look at that critically. Is that really what this is about, one election cycle after another?” (New York Times / Washington Post / NPR / Politico / NBC News / Bloomberg / Axios / Wall Street Journal / CNBC)

2/ Senate Republicans delayed passage of a $195 billion bipartisan bill aimed at countering China’s global economic and political influence. A small group of conservative senators complained they didn’t have time to review the more than 2,400 pages of the American Innovation and Competition Act. The vote was postponed until June 8, when senators return from a weeklong Memorial Day recess. (New York Times / Associated Press / CBS News)

3/ The Biden administration defended a Trump-era oil and gas project in Alaska. The administration declined to explain how its position on the multibillion-dollar plan from ConocoPhillips to drill in part of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska aligns with Biden’s pledge to cut U.S. emissions in half by 2030, replace fossil fuels ...

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