Texas Republicans propose a new congressional map that aims to protect the party’s incumbents. – The New York Times
Daily Political Briefing
Sept. 27, 2021, 11:21 p.m. ET
Sept. 27, 2021, 11:21 p.m. ET
Republicans in the Texas Legislature proposed a new congressional map on Monday that would preserve the party’s advantage in the state’s delegation to Washington amid booming population growth spurred by communities of color.
The new map was designed with an eye toward incumbency and protecting Republicans’ current edge; the party now holds 23 of the state’s 36 congressional seats. Rather than trying to make significant gains, the party appears to be bolstering incumbents who have faced increasingly tough contests against an ascendant Democratic Party in Texas.
Indeed, in the proposed map, there is only one congressional district in the state where the margin of the 2020 presidential election would have been less than five percentage points, an indication that the vast majority of the state’s 38 districts will not be particularly competitive.
Texas was the only state in the country to be awarded two new congressional districts during this year’s reapportionment, which is taking place after the 2020 census. The state’s Hispanic population grew by two million people over the past 10 years, and is now just 0.4 percentage points behind that of the Anglo population.
But the map proposed by the Republican-controlled State Senate redistricting committee, led by State Senator Joan Huffman, would decrease the number of predominantly Hispanic districts in the state from eight to seven, and would increase the number of majority-white districts from 22 to 23.
Though the map proposed on Monday was just a first draft and could undergo some changes, civil rights groups expressed alarm at the lack of new districts with a majority of voters of color.
“With Latinos accounting for nearly half of the total growth of the Texas population in the last decade, we would expect legally compliant redistricting maps to protect existing Latino-majority districts and potentially to expand the number of such districts,” said Thomas Saenz, the president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.
Texas has a long history of running afoul of the redistricting parameters set by the Voting Rights Act, having faced a legal challenge to every map it has put forward since the law was passed in 1965. But in 2013, the Supreme Court gutted a key provision of the act that forced some states to obtain approval from the Justice Department before making changes to voting laws or to congressional districts.
This year is the first time that Texas legislators have been free to redraw the state’s congressional map without following that requirement.
Across the country, each party is poised to press its advantage to create as many favorable congressional and state legislative seats as possible in states where its lawmakers control how maps are drawn.
On Friday, the National Redistricting Action Fund, a Democratic organization run by former Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., sued Ohio over Republican-drawn state legislative maps that it argued had violated a 2015 state constitutional amendment.
In Nebraska this month, Democrats protested a proposed map from Republicans that split Douglas County, which includes Omaha, the state’s largest city, into two congressional districts. The Democrats eventually forced a compromise that maintained a district in which President Biden won a majority of votes. On Friday, Nebraska legislators agreed to pass a congressional map that preserves Douglas County as a single district.
Fast-growing Oregon is one of the few states where Democrats have the potential to press a redistricting advantage. The state is adding a sixth congressional district to its delegation, which now has four Democrats and one Republican. But the new map, set to pass on Monday, will most likely create a Democratic district, adding to Democrats’ advantage in the state.
Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, said in an interview on CBS’s “60 Minutes” on Sunday night that she was “wrong” to oppose same-sex marriage, reversing a longstanding position.
“I was wrong,” Ms. Cheney said. “I was wrong.”
Ms. Cheney famously came out against same-sex marriage in a television interview in 2013, while running for Senate in Wyoming, saying she believed “in the traditional definition of marriage.” Mary Cheney, her sister who is gay and married with children, wrote online at the time that Liz was “on the wrong side of history.”
The issue sparked a public rift inside the close-knit and high-profile political family. Dick Cheney, the former vice president and Ms. Cheney’s father, became an unlikely advocate for gay rights when he stated in 2004 that he supported Mary, and that “freedom means freedom for everyone.”
On Sunday night, Liz Cheney said her father had been right the whole time. “I love my sister very much,” she said. “I love her family very much and I was wrong. It’s a very personal issue, very personal for my family. I believe my dad was right and my sister and I have had that conversation.”
She added, “This is an issue that we have to recognize as human beings that we need to work against discrimination of all kinds in our country, in our state.” And she reiterated her father’s famous line: “Freedom means freedom for everyone.”
Ms. Cheney’s reversal on the issue may be more indicative of the country’s evolution on same-sex marriage than any political transformation of her own. Support for same-sex marriage has reached a record high of 70 percent, according to a Gallup poll conducted last June. Among Republicans, support for same-sex marriage was at 55 percent.
Ms. Cheney, who voted to impeach President Donald J. Trump and who was ousted by Republicans in May from her leadership post, has become an unlikely figure of the “resistance.” She has not ruled out a long-shot primary bid against Mr. Trump in 2024 if he decides to run again.
As vice chairwoman of the select committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, one of only two Republicans on the panel, she has continued to be a vocal critic of Mr. Trump’s lies about the 2020 election.
But in her “60 Minutes” interview, she made it clear that support for same-sex marriage was not part of a larger softening of her conservative stances on many issues.
She reaffirmed that she was anti-abortion and supported gun rights. She insisted waterboarding was “not torture.” She said she did not regret voting to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and she proudly stated that she voted for Mr. Trump’s agenda more than 90 percent of the time.
Gay rights advocates said they viewed Ms. Cheney’s reversal as something more personal than political, noting that her original stance was more surprising than the reversal. “I think it is hard to hold hate against your own sister,” Christine Quinn, the former speaker of the New York City Council, who is gay, said of Ms. Cheney’s reversal. “We have always said that knowing someone personally who is L.G.B.T.+ is the key to changing people’s minds and identifying new allies.”
Ms. Quinn added: “We all learned this year that time together is not a given.”
WASHINGTON — Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, the inscrutable Democrat who may hold the key to passing her party’s ambitious social policy and climate bill, is scheduled to have a fund-raiser on Tuesday afternoon with five business lobbying groups, many of which fiercely oppose the bill.
Under Ms. Sinema’s political logo, the influential National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors and the grocers’ PAC, along with lobbyists for roofers and electrical contractors and a small business group called the S-Corp political action committee, have invited association members to an undisclosed location on Tuesday afternoon for 45 minutes to write checks for between $1,000 and $5,800, payable to Sinema for Arizona.
Full vaccinations for the coronavirus will be required, according to the invitation.
The planned event comes during a make-or-break week for President Biden’s agenda, when House Democrats are trying to pass a trillion-dollar infrastructure bill that Ms. Sinema helped negotiate, and trying to nail down the details of a social policy and climate bill that could spend as much as $3.5 trillion over the next decade.
Ms. Sinema has said she cannot support a bill that large, and has privately told Senate Democratic colleagues that she is averse to the corporate and individual tax rate increases that both the House and Senate tax-writing committees had planned to use to help pay for the measure.
In both positions, she is likely to find a receptive audience at the fund-raiser. The S-Corp PAC, for instance, has told its members the rate increases in the package that passed the House Ways and Means Committee “would kneecap private companies” like theirs that pay taxes through the individual tax system, not the corporate tax system.
Eric Hoplin, the chief executive of the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors, which buy products from manufacturers at wholesale rates and distribute them to retailers, said in a statement earlier this month, “Passing the largest tax increase in U.S. history on the backs of America’s job creators as they recover from a global pandemic is the last thing Washington should be doing.”
In a lengthy message to members this month, Robert Yeakel, the director of government relations at the National Grocers Association, went over a “laundry list of tax hikes that Democrats are contemplating.”
“Even if a handful of moderates balk at many of these hikes (Senators Sinema and Manchin have already publicly opposed the $3.5 number), grocers and other industries are still going to see a jump in their tax bill,” he wrote, referring also to Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia.
In a Senate that is equally divided between Republicans and members who caucus with the Democrats, a single vote can decide the fate of legislation, and Ms. Sinema has not been shy about using that power. Exactly what she will and will not accept in the final bill is not yet clear, but colleagues say she is going through its contents methodically.
John LaBombard, a spokesman for Ms. Sinema, would not comment on the fund-raiser but said the senator “voted yes in August on the budget resolution” that paved the way for a social policy and climate bill that cannot be filibustered by Republicans. He added that she was “working directly, in good faith, on the legislation with her colleagues and the administration.”
Jim Dudlicek, the communications director for the grocers association, said the organization would have no comment on the fund-raiser.
Senate Republicans on Monday blocked a spending bill needed to avert a government shutdown this week and a federal debt default next month, moving the nation closer to the brink of fiscal crisis as they refused to allow Democrats to lift the limit on federal borrowing.
With a Thursday deadline looming to fund the government — and the country moving closer to a catastrophic debt-limit breach without action by Congress — the stalemate in the Senate reflected a bid by Republicans to undercut President Biden and top Democrats at a critical moment, as they labor to keep the government running and enact an ambitious domestic agenda.
Republicans who had voted to raise the debt cap by trillions when their party controlled Washington argued on Monday that Democrats must shoulder the entire political burden for doing so now, given that they control the White House and both houses of Congress. Their position was calculated to portray Democrats as ineffectual and overreaching at a time when they are already toiling to iron out deep party divisions over a $3.5 trillion social safety net and climate change bill, and to pave the way to clear a bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure measure whose fate is linked to it.
The package that was blocked on Monday, which also included emergency aid to support the resettlement of Afghan refugees and disaster recovery, would keep all government agencies funded through Dec. 3 and increase the debt ceiling through the end of 2022. But after the bill cleared the House a week earlier with just Democratic votes, it fell far short of the 60 votes needed to move forward in the Senate on Monday.
The vote was 48 to 50 to advance the measure.
The resulting cloud of fiscal uncertainty marked yet another challenge for Mr. Biden and Democratic leaders who are facing a daunting set of tasks as they press to keep the government funded, scrounge together the votes for the infrastructure bill — also slated for a vote on Thursday — and resolve their disputes over the broader budget plan. They must also hatch a new plan for raising the statutory limit on federal borrowing, which officials have said is on track to be reached as early as mid- to late October.
“It may not be by the end of the week — I hope it’s by the end of the week,” Mr. Biden said on Monday at the White House, hedging the chances of accomplishing all of the imperatives Congress now faces. Ticking off the four pieces of legislation, he added, “we do that, the country’s going to be in great shape.”
Without any one of them, Mr. Biden’s agenda and his party’s fortunes would be in peril, a prospect that Republicans appeared to relish.
Despite both parties willingly racking up trillions of dollars in debt in recent years, Senate Republicans presented their refusal to vote for the debt cap increase on Monday as deserved comeuppance for Democrats who are pushing past G.O.P. opposition to muscle their multitrillion-dollar domestic spending and tax increase plan through Congress.
“We will not provide Republican votes for raising the debt limit,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, repeating a warning he has issued for months. He added, “bipartisanship is not a light switch — a light switch that Democrats get to flip on when they need to borrow money and switch off when they want to spend money.”
An earlier version of this article misstated when government funding is set to lapse. It is Sept. 30, not Sept. 31.
For nearly two decades, lawmakers in Washington have waged an escalating display of brinkmanship over the federal government’s ability to borrow money to pay its bills. They have forced administrations of both parties to take evasive actions, pushing the nation dangerously close to economic calamity. But they have never actually tipped the United States into default.
The dance is repeating this fall, but this time the dynamics are different — and the threat of default is greater than ever.
Republicans in Congress have refused to help raise the nation’s debt limit, even though the need to borrow stems from the bipartisan practice of running large budget deficits. Republicans agree the U.S. must pay its bills, but on Monday they are expected to block a measure in the Senate that would enable the government to do so. Democrats, insistent that Republicans help pay for past decisions to boost spending and cut taxes, have so far refused to use a special process to raise the limit on their own.
Observers inside and outside Washington are worried neither side will budge in time, roiling financial markets and capsizing the economy’s nascent recovery from the pandemic downturn.
If the limit is not raised or suspended, officials at the Treasury Department warn, the government will soon exhaust its ability to borrow money, forcing officials to choose between missing payments on military salaries, Social Security benefits and the interest it owes to investors who have financed America’s spending spree.
Yet Republicans have threatened to filibuster any attempt by Senate Democrats to pass a simple bill to increase borrowing. Party leaders like Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky want to force Democrats to raise the limit on their own, through a fast-track congressional process that bypasses a Republican filibuster.
“If they want to tax, borrow, and spend historic sums of money without our input,” Mr. McConnell said on the Senate floor this week, “they will have to raise the debt limit without our help.”
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Biden Gets Pfizer-BioNTech Booster Vaccine On Camera
President Biden received his third dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine, days after federal regulators approved Pfizer boosters for Americans 65 years and older, as well as those with medical conditions and jobs placing them at higher risk.
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“You’re eligible for a booster if it’s been six months since your second Pfizer shot, and if you fall into one of these categories: people over 65, which is hard to acknowledge, adults — I’m only joking folks — adults with certain underlying health conditions like diabetes and obesity, and those who are at increased risk of Covid-19 because of where you work or where you live, like health care workers, teachers, first responders, grocery store clerks. Now I know it doesn’t look like it, but I am over 65. I wish — way over — and that’s why I’m getting my booster shot today. Boosters are important, but the most important thing we need to do is get more people vaccinated. The vast majority of Americans are doing the right thing. Over 77 percent of adults have gotten at least one shot. About 23 percent haven’t gotten any shots. And that distinct minority is causing an awful lot of us, an awful lot of damage for the rest of the country. This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated. That’s why I’m moving forward with vaccination requirements wherever I can.” Reporter: “Is the first lady getting hers as well today, Mr. President?” “She’s going to get one, I think she’s teaching, but she’s going to get one, yes.” Reporter: “Mr. President, what do you say to world health leaders like the World Health Organization who’s saying wealthy nations should help more countries without vaccinations to get vaccinated before they give out boosters here in America?” “We are helping, we’re doing more than every other nation in the world combined. We’re going to have well over a billion, 100 million shots, and we’re going to continue going. We’re going to do our part. We’ve also given a great deal of funding to Covax, which is a vehicle that does this. So we have plenty, plenty of opportunity to make sure we get everyone in the world to play our part, the largest part in the world of getting everyone vaccinated.”
President Biden may have gotten ahead of the government’s scientists in announcing prematurely that virtually all Americans would begin getting coronavirus booster shots this fall, but he made a show of getting his own. The president spoke briefly before he received a Pfizer-BioNTech booster on Monday afternoon.
“Let me be clear,” Mr. Biden said before he got the shot. “Boosters are important. But the most important thing we need to do is get more people vaccinated. The vast majority of Americans are doing the right thing.”
His third shot came only days after federal regulators moved to allow millions of Americans to get Pfizer booster shots if individuals received a second dose of that vaccine at least six months ago and met new eligibility rules. Frontline workers, older people and younger adults with medical conditions or jobs that place them at higher risk got the green light following weeks of intense debate within regulatory agencies that left much of the American public confused about the specifics of the booster plan.
Mr. Biden, eligible for a booster at age 78, has been vaccinated in public before when he got his first Pfizer dose last December, a contrast to his predecessor, Donald J. Trump, who received an early vaccine at the White House but did not talk about it at the time. But Mr. Biden has pursued the opposite strategy.
The White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Monday that Mr. Biden had gotten his booster on camera “to make clear it’s safe, it’s effective, it’s something you should do if you’re in one of these categories.”
Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, announced on the Senate floor that he had also received a booster shot — “an easy decision,” he added, particularly as a survivor of polio.
On Monday, Mr. Biden added to the air of nonchalance around the booster by answering reporters’ questions — about critiques of vaccine policy, infrastructure negotiations and other topics — while getting injected.
World Health Organization officials have called for a global moratorium on booster shot programs until the end of the year, describing them as an unequal and ineffective use of the limited pool of available vaccines. Asked about the criticism, Mr. Biden reiterated that the United States had provided more vaccine doses to the global effort than all other countries combined, and would continue to do more.
Mr. Biden said that about 23 percent of adult Americans had not received a single dose of the vaccine, and they were causing “an awful lot of damage for the rest of the country.”
Asked what vaccination percentage would get things back to normal, Mr. Biden said he was not a scientist, but that so many people “can’t go unvaccinated and us not continue to have a problem.”
Mr. Biden said that he was moving forward with vaccination requirements where he could impose them, and that he planned to travel to Chicago on Wednesday to talk about individual businesses implementing their own vaccination mandates.
A Reuters/Ipsos national survey conducted Aug. 27-30 found that 76 percent of Americans who have received at least one shot of a vaccine want a booster. Only 6 percent do not, the poll found.
Mr. Biden asked on Friday for people who were not yet eligible to be patient. He said that his administration was “looking to the time when we’re going to be able to expand the booster shots, basically across the board,” and that boosters for the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines were likely in the offing.
“So I would just say, it’d be better to wait your turn in line, wait your turn to get there,” Mr. Biden said.
Zachary Montague and Emily Cochrane contributed reporting.
Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will appear on Tuesday in what could be the most significant televised congressional hearing involving senior military leaders since Gen. David H. Petraeus was grilled by lawmakers on the fiasco that was the war in Iraq in 2007.
Halfway through his four-year term as the nation’s top military officer, General Milley, along with Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III, is certain to face sharp questions about Afghanistan, including their advice to President Biden not to withdraw all U.S. troops from the country.
General Milley has also spoken about his efforts during the last tumultuous months of the Trump administration to protect the military and American democratic institutions from a president who was searching for avenues to remain in power. Those moves, as described in one book, culminated with General Milley twice calling to reassure his Chinese counterpart and extracting promises from the military chain of command not to launch a nuclear weapon on Mr. Trump’s orders without first alerting him.
In so doing, General Milley has prompted demands from some Republicans to resign and rekindled discussions about the ways that former President Donald J. Trump put the military where the country’s founding fathers said it was not supposed to be: at the center of politics.
In normal times, the tumultuous Afghanistan withdrawal punctuated by a tragic errant drone strike would be enough, by themselves, to dominate any congressional hearing with senior Pentagon leaders. But the recent revelations that General Milley may have inserted himself into the chain of command to check Mr. Trump’s capability to launch a nuclear strike raise questions about the limitations of a doctrine traditionally viewed as sacred: civilian control of the military.
Both Democrats and Republicans are expected to demand answers, and a pithy quote in response could land the general in hot water — with Congress or the White House.
“This is a crucial time for Milley,” said Jeffrey J. Schloesser, a retired two-star Army general who as commander of U.S. forces in eastern Afghanistan from 2008 to 2009 was General Milley’s boss.
A cluster of satellites operated by an American company called HawkEye 360 looked down on the Middle East early this year and discovered radar and radio waves associated with a Chinese-based fishing fleet off the coast of Oman.
When the company matched the data up with information from NASA satellites that track light sources on the Earth’s surface, it discovered the vessels were using powerful lights — a telltale sign of squid hunting — as they surreptitiously sailed into Oman’s fishing waters with their tracking transponders turned off.
The surveillance was something of a technological test — in this case the company did not notify either Oman or China. But the work, company officials said, demonstrated the kinds of intelligence that can been gleaned from their satellites, which have also detected military activity on the border between China and India, tracked poachers in Africa for wildlife groups and followed the satellite phones used by smugglers working refugee routes.
With Congress pushing the Biden administration to make more use of commercial satellites, intelligence officials are starting to award new contracts to show they can augment the capabilities of highly classified spy satellites with the increasingly sophisticated services available from the private sector.