Wisconsin woman attacked, robbed in another anti-Asian hate crime.

Sanders Not Comfortable with Twitter Ban of Trump

en. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) told New York Times that he doesn’t feel “particularly comfortable” with Twitter permanently banning former President Trump from the platform.

Sanders said Trump “is a racist, a sexist, a homophobe, a xenophobe, a pathological liar, an authoritarian, somebody who doesn’t believe in the rule of law.”

But he added” “if you’re asking me, do I feel particularly comfortable that the president, the then-president of the United States, could not express his views on Twitter? I don’t feel comfortable about it.”




https://politicalwire.com/2021/03/23/sanders-not-comfortable-with-twitter-banning-trump/

Tweet of the Day

Biden Team Scraps Trump-Era Opinion That Gave Away Tribal Lands

The Biden administration scrapped a controversial Trump-era legal opinion on Monday that sought to give North Dakota control over a portion of the Missouri River on Native American land.

The withdrawal comes one week after Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna tribe of New Mexico, was confirmed as the first Native American Cabinet secretary in U.S. history. Haaland and President Joe Biden have vowed to uphold tribal sovereignty and reverse the Trump administration’s attacks on Indigenous cultural sites.

In May 2020, Daniel Jorjani, then the top lawyer at the Department of the Interior and a former longtime adviser to the fossil fuel moguls Charles and David Koch, issued a memo concluding that the state of North Dakota owns mineral rights beneath the portion of the Missouri River that flows through the Fort Berthold Reservation.

That opinion replaced one from 2017 in which Hilary Tompkins, the interior solicitor under President Barack Obama, determined that the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation, also known as the Three Affiliated Tribes, had rightful ownership.




https://www.huffpost.com/entry/missouri-river-biden-administration-ownership-fort-berthold_n_6058cb80c5b6f12839d65306

Obamacare Draws 200,000 New Enrollments as Deep-Red States Eye Medicaid Expansion

Eleven years after President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act, the reach of the law is growing, with hundreds of thousands flocking to its marketplace and even deeply conservative states considering its Medicaid expansion.

More than 200,000 Americans signed up for health insurance under the law during the first two weeks of an open enrollment period created by President Biden — a sign that those who lost insurance during the pandemic remain in desperate need of coverage, according to federal officials and health policy experts.

And a provision in the president’s $1.9 trillion stimulus law to make Medicaid expansion more fiscally appealing has convinced deep-red Alabama and Wyoming to consider expanding the program to residents whose incomes are too high to qualify now but too low to afford private health plans.

Tuesday is the 11th anniversary of the health law’s signing, and the Biden White House is going to mark the occasion in a big way. The president will travel to Ohio as part of his “Help Is Here” tour to talk up the stimulus bill, which also expanded subsidies to make insurance affordable for middle-class people. And his newly installed health secretary, Xavier Becerra, will travel to Carson City, Nev.




https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/03/22/us/biden-news-today?type=styln-live-updates&label=washington%20updates&index=1&action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage#eleven-years-after-its-signing-the-affordable-care-act-is-drawing-hundreds-of-thousands-of-enrollments

Democrats Press for D.C. Statehood as Part of Voting Rights Agenda

WASHINGTON — House Democrats put new weight on Monday behind their push to grant statehood to Washington, D.C., convening a key House panel to make the case in the latest sign that the long-suffering movement has shifted from the political fringe to the center of the party’s voting rights agenda.

At a hearing before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, local officials argued that the deadly Capitol riot — during which the mayor was powerless to quickly call in the National Guard, as a governor would have been able to do — provided new evidence that the District of Columbia and its more than 700,000 taxpaying residents needed federal representation.

The panel was considering a bill that the House passed last summer to establish for the first time a 51st state — called Washington, Douglass Commonwealth, in honor of Frederick Douglass — with two senators and a voting representative in the House. The legislation would leave the National Mall, the White House, Capitol Hill and some other federal properties under congressional jurisdiction.

“Congress can no longer allow D.C. residents to be sidelined in the democratic process, watching as Congress votes on matters that affect the nation with no say of their own, or watching as Congress votes to overturn the laws of the duly elected D.C. Council with no say of their own,” said Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia’s lone nonvoting delegate. “Full democracy requires much more.”




https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/22/us/politics/democrats-dc-statehood.html

Holy shit! Joe Biden's swinging for the fences.

“President Biden’s economic advisers are preparing to recommend spending as much as $3 trillion on a sweeping set of efforts aimed at boosting the economy, reducing carbon emissions and narrowing economic inequality, beginning with a giant infrastructure plan that may be financed in part through tax increases on corporations and the rich,” the New York Times reports.

“After months of internal debate, Mr. Biden’s advisers are expected to present a proposal to the president this week that recommends carving his economic agenda into separate legislative pieces, rather than trying to push a mammoth package through Congress.”

“The total new spending in the plans would likely be $3 trillion.”




https://politicalwire.com/2021/03/22/biden-team-preparing-up-to-3-trillion-package/

NY-23: Reed Won't Run for Re-Election in 2022

“Rep. Tom Reed (R-NY) said in a statement Sunday night he would not run for re-election or for governor in 2022, following allegations last week of inappropriate sexual conduct,” the Wall Street Journal reports.




https://politicalwire.com/2021/03/21/reed-wont-run-for-re-election-in-2022/

Rodney Crowell - Till I Gain Control Again

DNC reports best-ever February fundraising for a non-presidential year

The Democratic National Committee said it raised the most money it ever has in February in a non-presidential election year, $8.5 million, according to a DNC spokesperson.

February's haul was also the second highest the DNC has ever seen, period, according to the spokesperson. Combined with January's numbers, the DNC has raised the most it ever has in January and February at $18.4 million, according to the spokesperson.

The numbers, obtained by POLITICO ahead of the monthly filing deadline Saturday evening, come on the heels of the Jan. 5 Georgia runoff Senate elections, which Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock swept. They also come under the stewardship of new DNC chair Jaime Harrison.

Harrison was the best-funded Senate candidate ever when he squared off against Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) this November, raising $131 million but losing by 10 points. Some within the party had questioned whether Harrison’s success in fundraising against Graham would be able to carry over to the DNC.




https://www.politico.com/news/2021/03/20/dnc-fundraising-non-presidential-year-477329