https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/week-transcript-31-21-sen-bernie-sanders-gov/story?id=75594037

Incoming Senate Budget Committee Chair Bernie Sanders has been leading that charge and joins us now.

Good morning. Senator.

The Democrats seem prepared to pass Biden’s COVID relief package with or without Republican support, which has been shrinking in recent days. Did — did the president overestimate the appetite for bipartisanship?

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT): Look, Martha, we all want bipartisanship. And I think you’re going to see more of it as we move down the pipe. You’re going to see bipartisanship on infrastructure. There are a lot of Republicans who are outraged by the high cost of prescription drugs in this country. We pay ten times more than other countries do for certain drugs. We are going to look forward to working with Republicans.

But right now this country faces an unprecedented set of crisis. We have families who are watching this program right now who cannot feed their kids. We have millions of people who face eviction. We are in the midst of the worst pandemic in 100 years. We have got to act, and we have got to act now.

RADDATZ: And you —

SANDERS: And we just don’t have — I’m sorry.

RADDATZ: Senator, you — you — you’ve said you can’t reach out to Republicans indefinitely and Democrats should use the majority, but this morning we’re hearing 10 GOP senators have a new plan. So is it a mistake for Democrats to consider abandoning bipartisanship negotiations so soon?

SANDERS: Martha, the issue is not, you know, bipartisanship or not. The issue is, are we going to address the incredible set of crises and the pain and the anxiety which is in this country.

You know what, I don’t care what anybody says, we have got to deal with this pandemic, we have got to make sure that we are producing the vaccines that we need and get those vaccines into the arms of the people. We cannot have children in America going hungry, people being evicted, schools not open. We need to open our schools in a safe way. That’s what we have to do.

So the question is not bipartisanship, the question is addressing the unprecedented crisis that we face right now. If Republicans want to work with us, they have better ideas on how to address those crises, that’s great. But to be honest with you, I have not yet heard that.

RADDATZ: Does your party have the votes to pass the relief package through the reconciliation process if you decide to go that route?

SANDERS: Yes, I believe that we do because it’s hard for me to imagine any Democrat, no matter what state he or she may come from, who doesn’t understand the need to go forward right now in an aggressive way to protect the working families of this country.

Look, all of us will have differences of opinion. This is a $1.9 trillion bill. I have differences and concerns about this bill. But at the end of the day, we’re going to support the President of the United States, and we’re going to come forward, and we’re going to do what the America people overwhelmingly want us to do. The polling is overwhelming. Republicans, Democrats, independents. They know this (INAUDIBLE).

RADDATZ: Senator — Senator, you — you say you’re confident about the Democrats, but I saw Joe Manchin from West Virginia this weekend, and he has made remarks after watching Kamala Harris being interviewed about this relief package, saying, no one called me about that. We’re going to try to find a bipartisan pathway forward. I think we need to do that. We need to work together. That’s not a way of working together.

Are you still confident?

SANDERS: Yes, I am absolutely confident. And I’ll tell you also why, Joe Manchin is a chairman, I’m a chairman, Democrats have majority because of the fact that we won two seats with great candidates in Georgia. And, obviously, those candidates won the support of the people of Georgia but that campaign, in many ways, was a national campaign.

And what those candidates said is, yes, we are going to provide checks of $2,000/$1,400 (ph) on top of the $600. Yes, we’re going to extend unemployment benefits. Yes, we are going to address the needs of working families. The entire Democratic Party came together behind the candidates of Georgia. We made promises to the American people. And if politics means anything, if you’re going to have any degree of creditability, you don’t want your campaign on a series of issues and then after the election when you get power say, oh well, you know what, changing our mind. That’s not the way it works.

We make —

RADDATZ: Senator —

SANDERS: — promises to the American people, we’re going to keep those promises.

RADDATZ: And Senator, speaking of Georgia, I want to talk about Marjorie Taylor Greene. We’ve been talking about her this morning.

Do you believe she’s fit to hold office? And should she be on the Education Committee?

SANDERS: Look, I think the idea that you’re talking about members of the U.S. House of Representatives are talking about violence, that is — it is almost beyond comprehension. I think this is something the Republican Party has got to deal with.

Look, the Republic — I’m not going to give the Republicans advice. They don’t want my advice. But ultimately they will continue being a conservative party that believes in democracy or an authoritarian party based on big lies, conspiracy theories, and, in fact, a movement toward violence. And I hope the Republicans make the right decision and come down on the side of democracy.

RADDATZ: And Senator, we only have about 15 seconds left, but there was a big story this week about the Robinhood app and GameStop. Some of your colleagues were very critical of Robinhood’s decision to block its users from purchasing more GameStop stock on Thursday.

What do you say to them? What do you think needs to happen? Quickly, if you can, sir.

SANDERS: Well, in one sentence, I have long believed that the business model of Wall Street is flawed. I think we have to take a very hard look at the kind of illegal activities and outrageous behavior on the part of the hedge funds and other Wall Street players.

RADDATZ: OK. Thanks very much. Very succinct and appreciate it.

https://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/video/senator-bernie-sanders-75595942

💗🔥👊 pic.twitter.com/iRAmAVPTTu

— Brown Eyed Susan (@smc429) January 29, 2021

Thank you so much for all the ❤️ you show Levi. I can scarcely believe that under a year ago he was beaten, starved, + chained outdoors 365.

Now, he’s been voted PA’s Official Dog with fans all over.

If you’re able, please consider opening your home + ❤️ up..

— John Fetterman (@JohnFetterman) January 31, 2021

Levi looks like our Billy

Robert Reich

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/31/republicans-biden-covid-trump-congress

If there were ever a time for bold government, it is now. Covid, joblessness, poverty, raging inequality and our last chance to preserve the planet are together creating an existential inflection point.

Trump may be out of office, but Republicans are still angry and ready to do his bidding.

Fortunately for America and the world, Donald Trump is gone, and Joe Biden has big plans for helping Americans survive Covid and then restructuring the economy, rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure and creating millions of green jobs.

But Republicans in Congress don’t want to go along. Why not?

Mitch McConnell and others say America can’t afford it. “We just passed a program with over $900bn in it,” groused Senator Mitt Romney, the most liberal of the bunch.

Rubbish. We can’t afford not to. Fighting Covid will require far more money. People are hurting.

Besides, with the economy in the doldrums it’s no time to worry about the national debt. The best way to reduce the debt as a share of the economy is to get the economy growing again.

Bill McKibben is impressed by the initial actions of the Biden Administration

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-biden-administrations-landmark-day-in-the-fight-for-the-climate

January 27th was the most remarkable day in the history of America’s official response to the climate crisis, at least since that June afternoon in 1988, when nasa’s James Hansen told a congressional committee that the planet had begun to heat. On Wednesday, in the course of a few hours, the Biden Administration took a series of coördinated actions that, considered together, may well mark the official beginning of the end of the fossil-fuel era.

The Biden Administration temporarily paused the new leasing of federal lands and waters for fossil-fuel production, while speeding up the process of permitting renewables. The President pledged that the federal government would start buying electric cars in volume. His order sets up or strengthens offices in the Justice Department, the Energy Department, and the Environmental Protection Agency to focus on what he called “environmental justice.” He announced that climate change would become a national-security priority for the Pentagon. And all of this came after his earlier pledges to rejoin the Paris climate accord and to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline. There’s a shock-and-awe feel to the barrage of actions, and that is the point: taken together, they send a decisive signal about the end of one epoch and the beginning of another. And that signal, most of all, is aimed at investors: fossil fuel, Biden is making clear, is not a safe bet, or even a good bet, for making real money. Coal, oil, and gas are the past, not the future. They’re the present, too, of course—but you don’t make big-money bets on the present.

We may not get to that future fast enough to stave off truly disastrous global warming—the natural world made some announcements of its own this week, including the news that the melt from glaciers and ice sheets is in line with the worst-case scenarios that scientists have produced—and we won’t get to that safer future easily. The fossil-fuel industry is already hitting back hard against the Biden announcements, using the only argument it has left: jobs. But the Administration’s team was prepared for the onslaught—Biden styled his announcements as a job-creation scheme, predicting, for instance, that electric cars would create a million new jobs for autoworkers. And his aides made clear that they understood the need to cushion the blow in areas where oil, gas, and coal jobs are disappearing. “We’re going to make sure that nobody is left behind,” the domestic climate czar Gina McCarthy told reporters. “We need to put people to work in their own communities. That’s where their home is. That’s where the vision is. So we are creatively looking at those opportunities for investment, so that we can get people understanding that we are not trying to take away jobs.”

The difference between these actions and the responses of previous Administrations is that Biden isn’t hedging his bets. Probably the day’s most important development was the least remarked upon. The White House made clear that America would stop letting public funds from agencies such as the Export-Import Bank flow to fossil fuels, and that it would use its leverage at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to support the goals of the Paris accord. And then, crucially, John Kerry, who is coördinating the Administration’s global climate policy, made clear in a speech to virtual Davos that this dictum applied to natural gas. “The problem with gas is, if we build out a huge infrastructure for gas now to continue to use it as the bridge fuel—when we haven’t really exhausted the other possibilities—we’re going to be stuck with stranded assets in ten, twenty, thirty years,” he said. “Gas is primarily methane, and we have a huge methane problem, folks.”

This statement is enormously important, because gas has always been the Democratic Party’s climate vice.

The climate fight is far from over—battles with the fossil-fuel industry will continue for the foreseeable future, and the outcome will determine the pace of the transition toward clean energy. (Keep an eye on the fate of the Dakota Access Pipeline and the Line 3 tar-sands pipeline in Minnesota—the new Administration’s climate logic should mean their cancellation, but it would be a heavy political lift.) But this week’s actions mark an unmistakable turning point. The climate movement has, finally, shifted the zeitgeist far enough for an Administration to act decisively, and Joe Biden has risen to the moment.

Jeet Heer

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/biden-executive-order-times/

The New York Times finds this “blistering pace” much too fast. In an editorial, the newspaper enjoined, “Ease Up on the Executive Action, Joe.” According to the Times, executive orders are a blunt and limited instrument, lacking the force and greater permanency of congressionally passed laws. After all, it would just take another Republican president to put back in place Trump measures Biden had overturned.

The Times editorial board even has the gall to use the Dreamers, undocumented immigrants brought to America as children, as a weapon in its polemical onslaught against executive orders. The newspaper frets about Dreamers’ living in “a nightmarish limbo” due to the whiplash of changing executive orders from Obama to Trump to Biden. But this creates an equivalence between those trying to protect the Dreamers and those trying to deport them. In truth, the “nightmare limbo” was created by two forces: Republicans in Congress, unwilling to enact immigration reforms, and Trump, trying to leverage the Dreamers in order to coerce funding for his border wall. Leaving out this fact serves as an apologia for the GOP.

This editorial is a prime example of the Times’ vulnerability to myopic Mugwumpism, a tendency to focus on small-bore political process while ignoring the actual power dynamics that drive politics. The Mugwumps—late-19th century reformers—fixated on civil service reform as a panacea for all that ailed America, ignoring battles over Reconstruction and the civil rights of formerly enslaved people.

In a like manner, a persnickety focus on the limits of executive orders makes sense only if one ignores the much larger battles around American democracy. Earlier this month, Donald Trump egged on a mob to attack Congress in order to thwart the process of even installing Biden as president. Trump and many other Republican elected officials did everything in their power to cast doubt on the legitimacy of Biden’s win. To this day, some, like South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, refuse to admit that Biden won a free and fair election.

In the context of having his legitimacy called into question, it is crucial for Biden to assert his authority as quickly as possible so that the nation can see he is in fact the president. Biden took a number of decisive early moves to make visible his executive authority, notably firing the National Labor Relations Board’s general counsel, Peter Robb, a Trump-era holdover who refused a request to resign. Undoing some of Trump’s worst executive orders was also a way for Biden to make clear that he is president.

The one part of the Times editorial that has value is the argument that Biden should in the future work with Congress. But executive orders and congressional action are not mutually exclusive. Congress works slowly and will take time not just passing laws but also reasserting the oversight role that Trump thwarted. There’s nothing incompatible about an early push on executive orders to clean up Trump’s mess and fostering a healthier relationship with Congress.

But working with Congress doesn’t necessarily mean the bipartisan outreach that the Times recommends. Biden and congressional Democrats show every sign of pushing ahead with an ambitious stimulus agenda, even if it means stepping on the toes of Republicans. As Politico reports, “Democrats are vowing to move forward on a new stimulus package as soon as next week, with or without Republicans. Though Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi have not officially said they plan to pursue a party-line approach through budget reconciliation, many Democrats now believe that’s the only way forward.”

Reconciliation won’t give the Democrats everything they want. Any efforts at legislating outside the budget will require either overturning the filibuster or getting the support of 10 or more Senate Republicans. Both paths are uncertain and perhaps foredoomed.

Still, the early turn to reconciliation shows that congressional Democrats aren’t being sidelined. They are ready to work with Biden. On some significant issues, like the second impeachment of Donald Trump, congressional Democrats have forged a path independent of the president.

Biden’s executive orders aren’t a threat to democracy. Rather, they spring from an energized Democratic Party that is helping to revitalize American democracy and make it functional again.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/pelosi-ptsd-capitol-riots/2021/01/30/c728b47e-6274-11eb-9061-07abcc1f9229_story.html

In addition to leading the impeachment of a former president and the inauguration of a new one, Pelosi (D-Calif.) has also played a unique role these past few weeks: emotional shepherd to a flock of traumatized lawmakers, staff and police still reeling from the aftermath of rioters storming the Capitol in a bid to overturn the 2020 election.

Some of her staff members locked themselves in a windowless conference room, blocking the door with office furniture and hiding under a table for 2½ hours as rioters tried to break down the door.

Lawmakers inside the House chamber donned gas masks and crawled across the floor, then ran to secure locations under the armed protection of U.S. Capitol Police.

Since then, the speaker’s office has served a leading role in providing the congressional community access to post-traumatic counseling.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/30/politics/butch-bowers-deborah-barbier-trump-impeachment-team/index.html

Former President Donald Trump’s five impeachment defense attorneys have left a little more than a week before his trial is set to begin, according to people familiar with the case, amid a disagreement over his legal strategy.

It was a dramatic development in the second impeachment trial for Trump, who has struggled to find lawyers willing to take his case. And now, with legal briefs due next week and a trial set to begin only days later, Trump is clinging to his election fraud charade and suddenly finds himself without legal representation.

A person familiar with the departures told CNN that Trump wanted the attorneys to argue there was mass election fraud and that the election was stolen from him rather than focus on the legality of convicting a president after he’s left office. Trump was not receptive to the discussions about how they should proceed in that regard.

https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2021-01-29/as-coronavirus-variants-threaten-immunity-the-race-to-vaccinate-shows-pitfalls

New data showing that two COVID-19 vaccines are far less effective in South Africa than in other places they were tested have heightened fears that the coronavirus is quickly finding ways to elude the world’s most powerful tools to contain it.

The U.S. company Novavax reported this week that although its vaccine was nearly 90% effective in clinical trials conducted in Britain, the figure fell to 49% in South Africa — and that nearly all the infections the company analyzed in South Africa involved the B.1.351 variant that emerged there late last year and has spread to the United States and at least 30 other countries.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/31/us/democrats-agenda-coronavirus-economy.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage

Democrats are haunted by legislative memories of 2009 as they fashion their response to the multiple crises of 2021.

Their strategy for addressing the coronavirus pandemic and its accompanying economic havoc is being shaped by what they see as their own miscalculations 12 years ago when Barack Obama became president, they controlled both houses of Congress and they tackled both an economic rescue package and a sweeping health care overhaul.

In retrospect, in the quest to win Republican backing for both, Democrats say, they settled for too small an economic stimulus and extended talks on the health care measure for too long. Those experiences explain why the White House and top Democrats are determined to move quickly this time on a plan for pandemic aid, and why they are reluctant to pare back their nearly $2 trillion stimulus package or make significant changes that would dilute it with no certainty of bringing Republicans on board.

“The dangers of undershooting our response are far greater than overshooting,” said Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the new majority leader. “We should have learned the lesson of 2008 and 2009, when Congress was too timid and constrained in its response to the financial crisis.”

That view was driving the party’s tepid response on Sunday to a new offer from 10 Senate Republicans who asked for a meeting with President Biden to lay out a substantially smaller compromise package that they said could pass quickly with bipartisan support. In a letter, the 10 senators — notably enough to defeat a filibuster — said their priorities aligned with Mr. Biden’s on crucial areas such as vaccine distribution.

But members of the group made clear in interviews on Sunday that their plan amounted to a fraction of Mr. Biden’s proposal: $600 billion. Democrats said they would review it, but would insist on a comprehensive legislative response.

Some Democrats still hold out hope of reaching bipartisan agreement on at least some elements of the administration’s coronavirus response and say the party must make a legitimate attempt at coming together with Republicans.

“We ought to try to do what we can do in a bipartisan way,” Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, a leading Democrat in the bipartisan talks, told reporters. He said it would then be appropriate for Mr. Schumer to use “other means to move things along” if progress could not be made.

Most Democrats do not appear to be in a mood to wait long. The lessons of 2009 are telling them that it is preferable to be accused of failing to be bipartisan than to be accused of failing to do all they could have to confront a national crisis.

From PB’s neck of the woods

https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2021/01/timber-unity-capitol-riot/

In March, my colleague Ali Breland and I wrote about a pro-logging, anti-climate group called Timber Unity that helped to scuttle Oregon legislation for cap-and-trade in 2019 and 2020. To the average Oregon voter, Timber Unity appeared to be an organic backlash fueled by frustrated rural voters in a state dominated by Democrats. The group’s rallies, which drew hundreds and sometimes thousands of truckers and loggers to the capitol, made it appear that it had broad support among Republican voters.

But actually, Timber Unity was founded and bankrolled by the logging industry—specifically Andrew Miller, CEO of a timber company called Stimson Lumber. At Timber Unity’s urging, in June 2019, Republican legislators staged a walkout that denied the government its two-thirds quorum to function, thus stalling climate legislation indefinitely. Timber Unity’s hijinks in the state legislature were coming to a head just as COVID-19 became a national emergency, depriving the state of a normal working legislative session at the start of the crisis.

Timber Unity has been praised by state and national Republicans, and includes at least one former Oregon GOP lawmaker among its leaders. But as we reported in March, there is a troubling strain of extremism among some members of the group, and leaders have done little to denounce it.