3 Stories You Should Read 5/28/2019: Climate Policy, Missouri, Mueller
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In the category of: Compromise??
Budget reconciliation is not ideal, but it could work.
Even Democrats’ most optimistic 2020 projections have them winning 51 seats in the Senate, maybe 52. That means they would need eight or nine sympathetic Republican votes to get anything past a filibuster. They are … not going to get those votes. For anything.
So Democrats are not going to pass anything unless they kill the filibuster, right?
That is certainly what many people think. It’s the reason several presidential candidates, among them Elizabeth Warren, Jay Inslee, and Pete Buttigieg, have advocated for scrapping the filibuster. (Other Democrats, like Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, have proposed changing the rule to restore the “talking filibuster,” which would force objecting senators to actually stay on the floor, talking, as long as they wanted to delay a bill.)
But there is another possibility, one less often touted in public by Democrats but frequently discussed behind closed doors: budget reconciliation.
In the category of: And it continues to spread…
Missouri Set To Become First State Since Roe v. Wade With No Abortion Clinic
As states sign strict anti-abortion measures into law, women in more and more states could lose access.
Missouri’s last remaining abortion clinic is set to close in just 72 hours, just days after the governor signed a strict anti-abortion measure into law.
Planned Parenthood said Missouri’s health department is refusing to renew the St. Louis clinic’s license to operate in the state, which would force it to close at the end of the week.
If it shuts down, Missouri would be the first state without a functioning abortion clinic since the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, according to the group. It is one of six states with just one remaining clinic.
“This is not a drill. This is not a warning. This is a real public health crisis,” Leana Wen, Planned Parenthood president and CEO, said in a statement to HuffPost. “This week, Missouri would be the first state in the country to go dark ― without a health center that provides safe, legal abortion care. More than a million women of reproductive age in Missouri will no longer have access to a health center in the state they live in that provides abortion care.”
In the category of: When the f*ck is it going to finally be Mueller-time
Robert Mueller’s silence has become a problem
Turns out, Robert Mueller is camera-shy.
Since being named special counsel in the Russia investigation two years ago, Mueller has out-Garboed Garbo in his ability to maintain a public silence. Mostly, this has been a good thing — it is easier to take a prosecutor seriously when he or she avoids grandstanding on cable news and instead sticks to the work of taking down the bad guys. Mueller’s ability to keep his lips zipped was especially striking in contrast with President Trump, whose constant commentary on the investigation sometimes provided his critics with fresh ammunition.
Now, however, Mueller’s reticence is becoming a problem. He has been summoned to discuss his report before the House Judiciary Committee — but he wants to do it, more or less, behind closed doors, away from the television cameras that would broadcast his comments to the world.
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