Category Archives: Democrat

Like every Nevadan, I grew up in awe of the American experiment. As children, we looked up to the flag and were proud of what it symbolized and what it stood forfreedom, opportunity and promise.Back then, we knew both partiesdespite their political differencesshared the same values.

Like so many other Nevadans, I registered with the Democratic Party because Democrats seemed to be the party of the working class. As a dishwasher who joined the Culinary Union, thats what wasand still isimportant to me.

But like President Ronald Reagan and President Donald Trump, Ive seen firsthand how the Democrat Party has changedradically, and not for the better.Theyve embraced a socialist, extremist agenda that is not the party of JFK, or of my parents.Their ideas hurt working-class families, restrict freedom and extinguish opportunity for millions of Americansparticularly working-class minorities who deserve the chance to give their families a better life.

NIKKI HALEY: BIDEN'S BORDER CRISIS HERE ARE LESSONS HE CAN LEARN FROM TRUMP'S IMMIGRATION EXAMPLE

As the Democratic mayor of North Las Vegas, I have the great privilege of leading our city, both in times of prosperity and through incredibly trying times, much like weve seen this past year. We Nevadans, and we Americans, are resilient. We live in the greatest country in the world, made possible thanks to the values we hold dear. Today, these values are under attack.

Here in Nevada, weve seen the full takeover of the Democratic Party by admitted socialists.Their goal is clearending the America we know and love, and replacing it with a culture of socialist conformity that erases freedom, opportunity and liberty from the American canvas.

I will not let the America I love be hijacked by an extremist left-wing mob that blacklists, bans, shouts down and cancels anyone who disagrees with them.

That is why I am switching to register as a member of the Republican Party.Though Ive been a registered Democrat on paper, I made the switch in my heart a long time ago, because on some things, theres simply no compromise.

Thats why I voted for President Trump twice. Thats why I had an A-plus rating from the NRA and their endorsement in my time in the state Senate. I refused to compromise my pro-life, pro-Second amendment values.

There used to be a place in the Democratic Party for conservative voices like mine.Today, thats no longer the case.

There used to be a place in the Democratic Party for conservative voices like mine.Today, thats no longer the case.Their party demands a senseless devotion to cancel culture, socialism and anti-American values I simply do not share.

Im not the only former Democrat who feels abandoned by the modern Democrat Party.I know there are countless others who want to make the switch, because it means the difference between hope and despair for their children and grandchildren. And I want them to join me in making that switch.

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The Republican Party that has emerged from President Trumps leadership is a working-class party of opportunity, freedom and hope.I dont just want that for my familyI want that for every Nevadan and American.

The Great Seal of America says:"Out of many, one."Our national motto is:"In God we trust."Its time to bring people together to get things done. Its time to stop shouting and start solving problems. Its time to defend the America we love so our sons and daughters can share in the blessings weve enjoyed.

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Nevada Mayor John Lee: Why I'm leaving the Democratic Party - Fox News

Democrats are pushing a sweeping voting bill that would make many changes to rules regarding voting and campaign finance. The bill is facing a tough battle in the evenly divided Senate in coming weeks, after the House version of the bill passed 220-210 with no Republican support.

Proponents say the bill is necessary to protect access to the polls, especially for minority voters. They also argue that it is crucial now because many GOP-controlled state legislatures are considering their own laws to tighten voting rules, saying they would improve election security. (You can see a guide to Georgias new rules here.) Republicans argue that the bill amounts to a partisan, federal takeover of elections that would make voting less secure.

Here is a look at what is in the roughly 800-page bill, known as the For the People Act.

Big chunks of the For the People Act lay out rules regarding voting. Bill authors say new national minimum standards are needed to ensure access to the polls, while Republicans argue that states should retain flexibility on how they run elections and that the proposal would represent a federal takeover of voting rules.

States currently have wide latitude on questions such as early voting and vote-by-mail options. Some federal restrictions on changes to election practices in Southern states, which had been a core provision of the Voting Rights Act, were nullified by the Supreme Court in 2013.

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Whats in the Democrats Voting-Rights Bill - The Wall Street Journal

That will make many lawmakers eyes glaze over.

Most members of Congress dont understand the first thing about the international corporate tax system and wont have the bandwidth to figure it out which should make Democrats proposals easier to approve.

A lot of members dont understand it and will not be interested in learning about it theyll just defer to people in the caucus they view as experts, predicts Rohit Kumar, a former top aide to Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell now at the consulting firm PwC.

The complexity of the proposals, and lawmakers unfamiliarity with the international tax system, also presents a challenge to opponents of the plans, including lobbyists seeking to kill or blunt the provisions.

Lawmakers have long complained about their rivals voting for bills they have not read or dont understand. But that will perhaps never be truer with Democrats international tax changes.

The section of the code dealing with companies operating in multiple countries is notoriously baroque among tax professionals. Corporations often have ornate structures, with subsidiaries across the globe, and it can be difficult determining where they made their money, how much they owe in taxes and which government they should be paying.

This stuff is enough to make your head explode, even if youre a tax lawyer, said one tax lobbyist, speaking on condition of anonymity. It is ungodly complicated.

President Joe Biden has proposed a host of changes to the international tax system. On Monday, a trio of senators, including Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), offered their own international proposal that builds and expands on the administrations plans. Senate Budget Committee Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has put out yet another package of possible changes.

Democrats could end up raising more money from those international provisions than they do from their much better-known plan to hike the corporate tax rate, especially if Congress balks at Biden's proposal to lift that rate to 28 percent from 21 percent. If lawmakers do increase the corporate rate, many expect them to settle for something in the mid-twenties which could force Democrats to lean even more into dunning businesses overseas operations to make their budget numbers work.

Many of their proposals revolve around strengthening a special tax known as GILTI Republicans created in 2017 as a way of targeting so-called intangible income, which is money companies earn from things like patents and royalties and other types of intellectual property.

Democrats also want to revamp or throw out an export incentive known as foreign-derived intangible income or FDII, sometimes called Fiddy.

And Democrats are proposing to rewrite or kill another special tax called BEAT, which was designed to go after companies that reduce their tax bills by booking lots of deductions in the U.S. while declaring they made most of their profits in foreign affiliates that are beyond the jurisdiction of the IRS. The BEAT, or base erosion and anti-abuse tax, hasnt worked out like lawmakers intended, raising a fraction of the revenue policymakers had anticipated.

On Wednesday, the administration proposed replacing it with a new tax it dubbed SHIELD that Treasury officials said would do a better job of combating offshore tax avoidance.

The proposals will require a big education campaign on Capitol Hill just to get across the basic concepts, and lawmakers in both parties have begun preparing for debate over the provisions. Every vote will potentially matter because of Democrats tiny majorities in the House and Senate.

Democrats acknowledge the complexity of their proposals but say they are trying to give colleagues enough time to get up to speed on the issues.

It is really Byzantine and you have to reconcile this section and that section and thats why were starting early and were starting with some pretty straightforward concepts, said Wyden.

Their easier-to-digest message on the proposals boils down to one word: outsourcing.

Pointing to the fact that companies can pay lower tax rates on their overseas profits than their domestic earnings the GILTI tax rate is half the 21 percent regular corporate rate Democrats argue the provisions push companies to move their operations and jobs overseas.

Republicans in Congress gave corporations essentially a 50-percent-off coupon on their taxes if they move production overseas, said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), another tax writer.

Experts call that an oversimplification, and the evidence of companies going overseas because of the provisions, which were part of the GOP's 2017 tax overhaul, is thin. Investment and jobs in the U.S. actually increased in 2018, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation.

Some say its pointless to try to lobby lawmakers on the specifics of the proposals because theyre too complicated. Better to focus on bottom-line issues like the burden it would place on employers. Republican lawmakers, for instance, are warning the provisions will encourage companies to move their headquarters abroad in order to escape the IRS, and lead to more foreign takeovers of American companies.

It will not be productive to go up there and talk about the technicalities of this stuff that would be a complete waste of time, the lobbyist said. They will have no idea what youre talking about.

At the same time, the complexities will give a very small group of lawmakers, staffers, Treasury aides and lobbyists schooled in the international tax system outsized influence in the debate over Democrats plans.

There will also probably be some lawmakers unfamiliar with the issues who will take some convincing, said Kumar in which case, the density of the proposals could prove a headache for Democrats trying to steer the proposals though the House and Senate.

There are always some members who are risk adverse and are going to be worried about voting for something thats so tremendously complicated, he said. For those members, the easiest thing to do is to vote no.

And in this environment, a no vote is potentially fatal" to the Democrats' plan.

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Confusion may be Democrats friend in drive to raise corporate taxes - POLITICO

Its sure to be an interesting election year, given a split among Hamden Democrats that, according to politicos, partially mirrors the national divide between the moderate and progressive wings of the party and also stems from local issues and rivalries.

Most recently, the tensions became apparent in the Democratic Town Committees process to field candidates seeking the partys endorsement to run for mayor. Incumbent Mayor Curt Balzano Leng, a Democrat who has held the post since 2015, is not participating, nor has he indicated whether he will seek reelection or the endorsement.

The DTC asked interested persons to fill out a questionnaire and indicate whether they supported the committees platform, ratified in January.

At times openly critical of the administration, the platform itself has been a point of tension with the mayor, who called it misleading and disputed its portrayal of how Hamden operates.

Some traced the beginnings of these tensions back to 2016, when both the primary contest between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton and the election of Donald Trump brought out a more progressive wing of the Democratic Party and spurred some newcomers to become involved in politics, said Scott McLean, a professor of political science at Quinnipiac University.

In the years that followed, some up-and-comers like council members Brad Macdowall and Lauren Garrett (raised) questions to the more established, you know, members of the town committee, McLean continued.

And in 2018, membership of the DTC itself began to change, according to Chairman Sean Grace.

The following year, Garrett announced her run for mayor, and while the endorsement went to Leng, she still managed to earn 27 of the DTCs 61 votes. In the subsequent primary, Leng easily defeated her, however.

Half a year later, an election to decide who got a seat on the DTC which has 63 members, 7 per council district, according to Grace turned out differently.

Often, DTC membership is decided via a caucus, but challengers who do not win at the caucus can petition and trigger an election. In 2020, that happened in seven of Hamdens nine Legislative Council districts, with candidates running as part of a slate.

Leng himself ran for a District 6 seat and lost, as did most contenders on slates he openly supported on social media, according to election results posted on the state website.

The New Haven Independent, which reported on the DTC primary, called the winners of the 2020 election the self-proclaimed progressive wing.

Its a division that finds parallels in the Clinton/Sanders split, or the contest between representatives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Squad versus the moderate wing of the national Democratic Party.

McLean said he sees the split as partly coming down to progressives and liberals, and I think thats the story of the Democratic Party from the national to the state to the local level.

Does the progressive takeover of the DTC mean the farther-left side of the party has won out in Hamden? Not necessarily.

Michael McGarry, a DTC member and president of the Legislative Council, is a self-described progressive. He said he believes the DTC skews a little left of where the Hamden Democratic Party is and a little more left of where Hamden is in general.

James Pascarella, who previously served as Legislative Council president and as acting mayor in 2015, is a DTC member who questioned some of the decisions the committee has made.

Running on a Leng-supported slate, he managed to eke out a win in the 2020 primary, even as the remaining members of his slate lost.

I think it was just a matter of turnout, he said. A lot of people didnt pay attention. Its not really an election of the government of the town. The town committee primary, in my opinion, was not a rejection of the mayor, nor a rejection of the rest of us.

On the other hand, Grace, the DTC chairman, said the 2020 wins were hard fought.

Despite being vastly outspent, a strong reform focused message carried the day across Hamden and in some districts by a two to one margin, he wrote in an email to the Register.

Many say the split cannot be defined only in terms of progressive versus moderate.

According to Grace, the divide developed from a gradual process of self-education. As Democrats like Macdowall and Garrett closely examined Hamdens budget, he said, many concluded that the current administration was partly to blame for fiscal problems.

They also demanded more transparency and accountability, Grace said.

Abdul Osmanu, who serves as the DTCs recording secretary but is not a member, said the change in the DTC was about going up against the old guard and being unabashedly truthful.

While mayoral hopefuls have expressed support for initiatives such as making all town records easily accessible online, Leng challenged the idea that the administration has not been transparent, saying audits, annual budgets and expense and revenue reports are available online.

Some of the sticking points for those critical of how the town is run financially include a contention that past budgets have been dishonest, incorporating unrealistic line items, and criticism of fiscal practices such as capital sweeps.

Leng, on the other hand, has said the town has made real financial progress, is turning a corner and is slated to have the healthiest fund balance in years.

The DTC (tends) to be more extreme and constantly negative on financial matters and more, when a consistent and moderate approach is more effective and less harmful to peoples wallets, he said when asked for insights into the differences in the party. This reeks of politics and is reminiscent of Washington where people cant work to compromise and get things done that are meaningful in peoples lives.

He also accused the committee of being far less supportive of police, saying he was supportive of both police and police reform.

Mayor Leng acknowledges that he supports police reform just as all of us should, Grace said in a written statement responding to Lengs comments. A key component in advocating for police accountability and reform is acknowledging that our current practices fall short of what our community needs. The goals established in the DTC platform are based on scientific based research and can be found in President Obamas Task Force on 21st Century Policing.

Regarding the financial issues, Grace indicated there was grounds to worry.

Our most recent audit, which revealed a fund balance deficit in the millions, confirmed that there is reason to be concerned, he said.

McGarry, the council president, said he often feels caught between Hamdens Democrat factions.

Personally, I am extraordinarily progressive, but I also take very seriously the fact that I represent everybody in Hamden, that includes Republicans, that includes the unaffiliated, and so I listen to everyone, he said. Building consensus is difficult, and it takes a lot of time.

As for the DTC itself, McGarry questioned whether it had come to be about acting against a particular person the mayor. He further contended it should be wider in scope, with room for more voices.

Instead of fighting each other, lets get to work, he said. That would be my mantra.

Grace said every Democrat in town was invited to participate in drafting a platform.

The scope of the issues addressed in our platform is about as wide and inclusive as can be, he said.

Of the divisions among Hamden Democrats, McLean, the Quinnipiac professor, warned against (getting) the idea that this is all about ideology.

Its about their personalities, too, and its about who they are and the ambitions that they have, he said. Theyre competing.

Thats certainly the case for this year, which already has multiple contenders.

Macdowall, Garrett and Peter Cyr all have announced they are seeking the partys endorsement, which will be decided at the DTC convention this summer. Meanwhile, if Leng does not get the endorsement, he still could petition to be on the ballot, either in a Democratic primary or as a third-party candidate in the general election.

Pascarella, the former council president and current DTC member, said the election will mark a referendum as to whether the majority of Hamden Democrats support the new DTC.

Itll be very interesting this September, he said.

meghan.friedmann@hearstmediact.com

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What's behind the split in Hamden's Democratic Party? - CT Insider

The Virginia State Capitol in Richmond, Va. (Bob Brown / Richmond Times-Dispatch via AP, Pool)

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The Democratic Partys post-Trump revival began in Virginia in 2017. Thats when a state, local and national backlash against the racist demagogue helped the party win the top three racesgovernor, lieutenant governor, and attorney generaland 15 House of Delegate seats, missing taking the majority by a tie in one district, which got settled by selecting the name of the winner, a Republican, from a ceramic bowl. Democrats then took the majority of Virginias House of Representatives delegation in 2018, and won control of the state General Assembly, both the House of Delegates and the state Senate, in 2019.

But to paraphrase the old rap song: more incumbents, more problems. Now some Virginia Democrats are in a circular firing squad, with progressive party insurgents blasting the establishment. Last week the state Board of Elections, chaired by a Democrat, disqualified three House of Delegates candidates who were challenging Democratic incumbents, for various problems with filing campaign paperwork. All three happen to be Black. The state NAACP quickly spoke out against the appearance of disparate treatment of candidates of colorwho sought to challenge incumbent legislators.

The three challengersRichmond City Council member Dr. Michael Jones, Arlington legislative aide and activist Matt Rogers, and Dumfries Town Council member Cydny Neville, from Prince William Countycome from different corners of the Commonwealth and different backgrounds. Their paperwork problems are different, tooand tedious, as such problems always are. But the state board has routinely granted candidates extensions to solve such problemsat least eight got them in 2020, including GOP congressional candidates Delegate Nick Freitas (who lost) and Bob Good (who won). State law provides for a 10-day grace period at the boards discretion.

While exercising that discretion last year, chair Bob Brink called disqualifying candidates over paperwork errors a draconian move. Doing that would run counter to my personal belief that, as much as possible, we ought to permit access to the ballot and let the voters decide, Brink told The Roanoke Times. The board is between a rock and the hard place. We dont want to be in the position of picking and choosing winners and losers. Thats the voters job. To be fair, Brink also complained that by granting the extensions the board was giving a pass to the scofflaws at the expense of the candidates who followed the rules.Related Article

But this year, the first time in ages that state Democrats are defending majorities in the General Assembly, the board suddenly made candidates paperwork troubles a capital offense, with no grace period to fix them. Im not gonna lie, Jones told me; if flawed paperwork normally doomed candidates, hed go back to his life as a Richmond pastor and City Council member and take the L. But granting extensions was their practice. They change the rules in the middle of a pandemic? The NAACP has asked the board to proceed with extensions in the same manner it has consistently done in the past, but theres no evidence the decision will be reconsidered.

With five years on the City Council and 20 as a Richmond pastor, Jones perhaps posed the greatest political threat, challenging longtime incumbent Delegate Betsy Carr, who is white. Jones compares Virginia Democratic Party politics to the bloody HBO series Game of Thrones, and jokes hed be cast as Slayer of Monuments for his work getting Confederate statues removed in Richmond and around the state. He has also been a strong voice for criminal justice and police reform.

Two hours north of Richmond, in heavily Democratic Arlington, if my dog got the Democratic nomination, he would win, says Matt Rogers. Former chief of staff to moderate state Senator David Marsden, Rogers is well to the left of his old boss, as well as the incumbent he seeks to replace, Delegate Patrick Hope. Over the last few cycles, hes worked alongside 90for90.org, the group committed to recruiting Democrats in every Virginia legislative district (which is less popular with the Democratic establishment than you might expect).Current Issue

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Rogers backs Medicare for All and cannabis legalization, and hes long opposed the death penalty (Governor Ralph Northam recently signed legislation abolishing it). He knew he was facing headwinds in his districtMarsden made clear he would back Hope, a centrist allybut says his team has already knocked 90 percent of the doors of Democratic voters in his district. The state boards decision not to give the three Black challengers time to address paperwork complaints routinely granted to others utterly threw him. The fix was in, he says, with some bitterness. One painful irony: Two years ago, the board granted his intended opponent, incumbent Hope, a grace period to fix his own filing problems.

How does the state board explain its decision this year? Brink, himself a former Virginia delegate, sent a letter in January to the states Republican and Democratic party leaders saying that there would be no assurance of deadline extensions in 2021, and urged the parties to make sure candidates filed proper papers. In his two years as chair, we were getting repeated requests for extensions, and we felt it put us in a very unfair position, Brink told me. Jones and Rogers say they never heard about problems from party higher-ups (Neville did not respond for this piece). But some candidates did hear from the party, Im told, and were able to take that into account when preparing their paperwork. While Brink shared his letter with the House caucuses for both parties, the caucuses by definition only work with their membersand that means incumbents.

Rogers says the job of informing candidates should never have been offloaded to party leaders, anyway, since they generally work to protect incumbents. How can partisan actors be neutral arbiters here? he asks.

Not many Virginia activists, apart from the NAACP, have spoken out about the disqualifications. One exception is Valerie Slater, executive director of Richmonds RISE for Youth, who called it strange indeed that the candidates have been given the chance to cure such problems in past years. I would like to see fairness for all candidates, she told me. Virginians deserve the right to decide what candidates to support. That opportunity should not be subverted by the Board of Elections.

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That points to what has long been a tension in Virginia Democratic politics and beyond. When I was first writing about the crop of first-time candidates, most of them women, running for the House of Delegates in 2017, I heard fierce complaints that challengers werent getting the help from party leaders they had expected. But party caucuses and other establishment groups tend to be incumbent-protection organizations, focused on shoring up Democrats who were already in the House and Senate and paying less attention to challengers, especially those perceived unlikely to win. What happened in Virginia in 2017 was that progressive outside groupsso-called pop-up organizations from all over the country, fired up by Donald Trumps electionthrew money and volunteers at the candidates whose success was less assured. In the end, 11 of the 15 Democrats who flipped GOP seats were women.

But those women werent challenging Democratic incumbentsmany were sacrificial candidates running to try to plant a blue flag in a red district where no Democrat had run for eons; others were in districts where Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump, where they had a better shot (and where the party ultimately racked up most of its 2017 wins). Now that the party has control of both the Senate and the House of Delegates, protecting incumbents is an even higher priority for the House Democratic Caucus. Helping primary challengers qualify for the ballot isnt part of the job description.

This is a dynamic that plays out elsewhere. As weve seen in Congress, where progressive women of color like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, and Cori Bush won seats in liberal districts by primarying more centrist Democratic incumbents, for women and people of color to make gains, their best shot will tend to be in liberal districts. They can either wait for an open seat or primary an incumbent. As in Virginia, party leaders dont tend to like that approach, with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee prohibiting its candidates from hiring consultants or vendors who work with challengers in the last cycle. (The rule was changed in March.)

How democratic are we really if were just about protecting Democratic incumbents? Jones asks. Younger, progressive candidates of color, he notes, are not typically invited to the smoke-filled, whiskey-filled rooms where historically a lot of these decisions got made. Liberal Arlington, Rogers notes, hasnt sent a Black to the General Assembly since Reconstruction. The three have the option of challenging the boards move in court, but theyll have to do it fast, as officials say they will move quickly to print absentee ballots for the June 8 primaries.

Andrew Whitely, executive director of the Virginia Democratic Party, recognizes that the disqualified challengers feel slighted, given the ease with which filing extensions were granted in prior years, and the confusion over who should have let them know they had paperwork problems. We have to make sure we dont have a replication of this again, Whitely said.

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Are Virginia Democrats Running Progressive Challengers Out of the 2021 Primary? - The Nation

BlackRock will conduct a racial equity audit. The money-management giant agreed to examine how its policies and practices contribute to racial injustices, Bloomberg reports. Other Wall Street firms, including Bank of America, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase, have asked shareholders to reject investor proposals for similar audits.

Topps, known for its trading cards and Bazooka gum, is going public by merging with a SPAC in a deal that values the company at $1.3 billion. The transaction includes an investment of $250 million led by the SPAC sponsor Mudrick Capital, along with investors including GAMCO and Wells Capital. Michael Eisner, the former Disney C.E.O. who is Toppss chairman, will roll his entire stake into the new company, and stay on.

Everybody has a story about Topps, Mr. Eisner said. Thats what initially attracted him to the trading card company, which he acquired in 2007 via his investment firm, Tornante, and Madison Dearborn for $385 million. Buying Topps was a bet on a brand that elicits an emotional connection as strong as Disney, the company Mr. Eisner ran for 21 years. (And he knows the value of sports: At Disney, he helped acquire ESPN via ABC.)

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Topps has focused on a shift to digital, launching online apps for users to trade collectibles and play games. It also created Topps Now, which makes of-the-moment cards to capture a defining play or a pop culture meme. (It sold nearly 100,000 cards featuring Bernie Sanders at the presidential inauguration in his mittens.) And, yes, it has gotten into blockchain, too, via the craze for nonfungible tokens, or NFTs.

The pandemic has increased interest in memorabilia, with a Mickey Mantle card recently selling for $5.2 million. Topps probably made something like a nickel on it, 70 years ago, said Jason Mudrick, the founder of Mudrick Capital. NFT mania will allow Topps to take advantage of the secondhand market by linking collectibles to digital tokens. The executives involved in the merger stressed that an NFT boost was not part of their projections, nor a driver of the deal. Topps is focused on digital investments and growth beyond sports, like its partnerships with Marvel and Star Wars. The company generated record sales of $567 million in 2020, a 23 percent jump over the previous year.

Michael Brandstaedter, the C.E.O. of Topps, said he expected baseball memorabilia to continue to be lifted by trends like players coming up from the minor leagues more quickly even after the pandemic bump fades.

Can it keep up the momentum? Among the industries attracting SPAC investors, Mr. Mudrick said that collectibles both digital and physical were the surest bet. Our core business is value investing, he said, and we just couldnt wrap our heads around electric vehicles, drones and the other sectors that are hot for SPACs.

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Democrats and Business Are Increasingly Allies - The New York Times

In 2019, when more than two dozen Democrats were vying for the partys presidential nomination, they all seemed to agree on one thing: They opposed former President Donald Trumps draconian immigration policies. Beyond that, though, it got messy. One camp of more progressive Democrats, helmed by former San Antonio mayor and housing secretary Julin Castro, advocated for repealing a law that makes unauthorized border crossings a crime. Other candidates expressed unease with the idea, raising concerns about what that would mean for human traffickers or drug smugglers crossing the border.

But the fact that Democratic presidential candidates were discussing decriminalizing border crossings still represented a significant break. Over the years, Democrats have moved to the left on immigration, and Democratic voters now hold more progressive views on immigration than both their Republican equivalents and one-time Democratic Party leaders like former President Barack Obama. But as the 2019 presidential primary debate shows, theres still a lot of debate in the party on just how far left to go. Democratic strategists and immigration experts Ive talked to say its hard to understand why immigration remains such an issue for Democrats without first factoring in how the partys relationship to immigration has changed and what that has meant for competing factions within the party. Understanding these trends also helps explain why Democrats dont really campaign on immigration, and why this makes President Bidens decision about how to address the current increase of apprehensions at the U.S.-Mexico border an even more complicated situation for a party that doesnt want to risk its congressional majority next year.

Today, its easy to lump the Democrats into two camps: moderate and progressive. But it wasnt always so straightforward. Back in the 1980s and 90s, when the number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. began to tick up, there were two main schools of thought in the Democratic Party regarding immigration: A civil rights wing aimed at advancing equal opportunity in housing, education and voting rights and, as such, was pro-immigration, and a dueling labor wing that was wary or even hostile toward immigrants whom they worried would replace union workers or undermine working conditions.

But immigration wasnt the polarizing issue it is today, so it wasnt a big talking point among Democrats. (The partys 1984 platform didnt even include a section on immigration.) Republicans, however, were talking about immigration more and started to push for stricter immigration measures, including building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. This, coupled with an effort to crack down on crime, created a dynamic where the GOP was perceived as the party that was tough on crime, while Democrats were depicted as soft on crime.

That changed for Democrats, though, with the election of President Bill Clinton, who ran on a pro-law enforcement platform and criticized his opponent, George H.W. Bush, for cutting local law enforcement aid during his tenure. (Clinton doubled down on this approach, later running on a reelection platform that said, We cannot tolerate illegal immigration and we must stop it.) And it was under Clinton that the law that in essence created the immigration enforcement system as we know it today was passed. The 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act authorized greater resources for border enforcement, added penalties for undocumented immigrants who committed a crime in the U.S., and placed the onus on asylum seekers to provide the documentation needed to support their applications.

In many ways, Democrats decision to get tough on immigration was part of a larger effort to push tougher law enforcement policies. In this same period, Clinton also signed into law the 1996 welfare reform act, which he said would end welfare as we know it and made assistance far more temporary and dependent on employment. There was also the now-infamous 1994 crime bill, which accelerated mass incarceration in the U.S.

Cristobal Ramn, an independent immigration policy consultant, told me that Democrats have gradually moved on from these positions, but stressed how interconnected the laws from then were. The dominant political view, Ramn told me was, that deterrence was the only way to stop violations of the law, including the nations immigration laws. But these laws have left Democrats with an uncomfortable legacy, as they disproportionately affected and criminalized people of color.

In the early 2000s, though, a few things shifted in the Democratic Party. For starters, the share of the partys voters expressing concern about immigrants and refugees entering the U.S. dipped after the number of migrants entering the U.S. declined substantially. Plus, tough on crime policies were expensive and their impact was minimal.

As time went on, the older divides in the party fell away. While there were still some concerns among Democrats about the impact of immigration on the American worker, the pro-union wing of the party became more pro-immigrant after mounting pressure from other unions, in particular service-worker unions, many of whose members are Hispanic. The AFL-CIO also reversed its anti-immigrant positions, calling in 2000 for undocumented immigrants to be granted citizenship. Another major development during the latter part of this decade was an omnibus immigration reform bill Republicans pushed through Congress in 2006, which didnt become law, but would have emphasized border security and raised penalties for illegal immigration.

This is also when Republican and Democratic voters began to dramatically split on immigration, according to polling from the Pew Research Center. In the mid-2000s, the two parties were pretty close in their views. When asked in 2003 if immigrants make the country stronger, 47 percent of Democrats and people who lean Democratic and 46 percent of Republicans and people who lean Republicans agreed. Now, though, nearly 90 percent of Democrats feel that way compared to just 40 percent of Republicans.

But despite this seismic move to the left on immigration, there are still important divisions within the Democratic Party, many of which have roots in the partys past. The two major camps we see elected officials fall into today are the establishment, pro-immigrant wing, which tends to include moderate Democrats, including those who hail from purple districts and/or live along the U.S.-Mexico border and the progressive wing, which includes members who generally see the Democratic Party as too centrist and too cautious.

There is one thing both wings seem to be united on, though: advancing the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which lets undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children apply for renewable work permits and avoid deportation. Theres been some movement on this program as of late: All House Democrats plus nine Republicans voted in favor of the Dream and Promise Act, which would provide a path to citizenship for DACA recipients. (Its less clear how the bill will fare in the Senate.)

But thats about all the two wings have in common. The establishment, pro-immigrant wing of the party tends to approach immigration from a more economic-based lens, according to Veronica Vargas Stidvent, executive director of the University of Texas at Austins Center for Women in Law and former assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Labor. This wing is more likely to be more concerned about the impact of immigrants on the American worker and support limited deportation for certain immigrants (like those in the U.S. without documentation who have committed a crime).

Many elected officials who fall into this group are making tough political calculations. For some (think members like Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California liberal who has been pro-immigration crackdowns), the fact that they fall in this wing of the party is more a reflection of their moderate politics. But for other members hailing from districts that arent as Democratic, and from states where migrant influxes are more pronounced and Latino voters have shown some signs of moving toward the GOP the fact they fall in this wing is more a reflection of their political reality.

Those who live closest to the U.S.-Mexico border most directly experience the disruptions of unauthorized immigration. As a result, the politics around immigration are complicated. Many Texas Latinos, for example, embrace enforcement-minded views on immigration, even if they also empathize with the migrants. Democrats in this camp are unlikely to support broad overhauls of the immigration system for fear of being alienated from their constituencies. Going too far on immigration reform can also mean theyre depicted as supporting open borders, a phrase that has become a right-wing talking point.

Members of the progressive wing, meanwhile, do want a more humanitarian-based immigration system focused less on border enforcement. Many want to abolish or dramatically restructure U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement a rallying cry that became popular among some Democrats amid some of Trumps most stringent immigration policies and they want the federal government to stop deporting immigrants. They also want to broaden immigrants access to social safety net programs.

Democrats remain at odds over how best to move forward. Bidens approach has so far been to roll back what Trump did, but he is ultimately going to have to pick a side within his party or work toward some sort of compromise. That wont be easy, though, especially when it comes to handling the current issue at the border. For starters, hed likely need Republican support to get anything immigration-related passed (budget reconciliation might not be an option, given parliamentarian rules, unless immigration measures are tacked onto another bill) and the GOP doesnt look likely to cooperate with Democrats.

Plus, whatever action Biden does take risks angering one of the aforementioned wings of his party. If he moves too far left, he risks losing moderate voters, but at the same time, if he doesnt move left enough, he risks breaking his promise of a fair and humane immigration overhaul.

Immigration also presents a broader electoral challenge for Biden. While he gets high marks on his overall job as president, handling of the economy and COVID-19 pandemic, according to a mid-March CBS/YouGov poll, only 52 percent of U.S. adults approve of the way he is handling immigration, among the lowest of the issues YouGov polled.

Anytime you have competing factions, it can do one of two things: push people to the middle to find compromise or result in a stalemate, Stidvent said. And ultimately, as Stidvent cautioned, a Democratic Party that is divided on how best to handle immigration doesnt help either party. That said, it wouldnt be completely surprising if some of the more moderate Democrats did propose some type of compromise with Republicans. (House Democrats passed two bills earlier this year that would offer legal protections for millions of undocumented immigrants, including DACA recipients, and Senate Democrats, hamstrung by the filibuster, might have to find middle ground on Republicans demands for more border enforcement if they want their bills to get to Bidens desk.) But with the current makeup of Congress and the drastically opposing views on immigration reform both within and between the parties, any type of comprehensive immigration reform will be tricky.

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How Democrats Became Stuck On Immigration - FiveThirtyEight

Photographer: Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg

Photographer: Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg

A New York Democrat said he wont back any tax increases that President Joe Biden proposes to pay for infrastructure legislation unless there is also a repeal of the $10,000 cap on state and local tax deductions.

No SALT, no deal, Representative Tom Suozzi said in a statement Monday. I am not going to support any change in the tax code unless there is a restoration of the SALT deduction.

Repealing the $10,000 cap on SALT write-offs, is a top priority for several members of Congress representing high-tax states including New York, New Jersey and California, who say that their voters have been hurt by the limits on the tax break.

Removing the cap, which would cost the federal government tax revenue, could become a key area of contention as Democrats seek to raise levies on corporations and the wealthy to pay for a bevy of infrastructure, health care and social programs. Republicans are set to oppose any tax hikes, and Democrats have only narrow control in both the House and Senate, so any dissent in their ranks could imperil legislation.

In addition to costing $88.7 billion a year -- revenue that some Democrats would like to direct elsewhere -- doing away with the SALT cap is a politically difficult issue for some members of Congress, because more than half the benefits flow to households earning more than $1 million a year, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.

Read More: Yellen Pledges to Work With Congress on Ways to Ease SALT Cap

However, the issue has support from key members of Congress and the Biden administration. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, also supports the effort. He sponsors the Senate companion to Suozzis legislation to repeal the cap. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen also told a congressional panel earlier this month that the SALT deduction limit causes disparate treatment among taxpayers and said she would work with lawmakers to resolve the issue.

The $10,000 limit on SALT deductions was instituted in President Donald Trumps 2017 tax overhaul and Democrats have repeatedly tried to repeal the change, but were blocked in a Republican-controlled Senate. Democrats are now considering the infrastructure legislation that Biden is set to unveil later this week as a possible vehicle to which the SALT provision could be attached.

Before it's here, it's on the Bloomberg Terminal.

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Democrat Says He Will Oppose Any Biden Tax Plan Without SALT Fix - Bloomberg

In early March, House Democrats passed H.R.1, an enormous anti-corruption and voting rights reform bill also known as the For the People Act. H.R.1 also includes a major overhaul of campaign finance and redistricting laws. The bill will next face a vote in the Senate, where it has a tough road ahead despite the Democrats majority in that chamber.

H.R.1 and its Senate counterpart S.1 are, as the numbers suggest, Democrats first priority in Congress. This is the second time in two years that Democrats have introduced this sweeping democracy-reform bill it first passed the House in March 2019 but faced defeat in the Senate.

At nearly 800 pages, H.R.1 covers a lot of ground. Some key points, though, are instituting nonpartisan redistricting commissions to end partisan gerrymandering, creating a national system for automatic voter registration and adding transparency requirements for political advertising.

There is a stark partisan divide on the bill that would overhaul the U.S. voting system as we know it. Congressional Democrats, along with President Joe Biden, say the country needs federal intervention to stop Republicans from reinstating racist Jim Crow-style rules that make it more difficult for minorities to vote. Republicans, on the other hand, view H.R.1 as a power grab that would remove protections on the right to vote and take away states authority to maintain their own voting systems.

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With no support from Republicans, the bill has no chance of attracting the 60 votes in the Senate it would need to overcome a filibuster. That has led some Democrats including Minnesota Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith to advocate for abolishing the filibuster in order to pass the bill.

Republicans are not as gung-ho on the topic of filibuster reform: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said the result would be a scorched earth Senate, insinuating that by killing the filibuster, Democrats would release furies they can barely imagine.

The massive bill can generally be split into three categories: election integrity, expanding voting access and voting rights, and campaign finance reform.

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When it passed in the House, H.R.1 contained some provisions and legislation written by Minnesota representatives.

Rep. Dean Phillips authored five provisions in the package, including the Voter NOTICE Act, which fights disinformation, and the FIREWALL Act, which strengthens safeguards around online advertising.

REUTERS/Erin Scott

Rep. Ilhan Omar

Along with Virginias Sen. Mark Warner, Sen. Amy Klobuchar introduced the Honest Ads Act in response to Russian attempts to influence the 2016 presidential election. The act would improve disclosure requirements for online political advertisements and require digital platforms with at least 50 million monthly visitors to make public the communications between the platform and a person or group that spends over $500 on ads.

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Why Republicans say theyre against it

For Republicans, the Democratic bill represents a power grab that could centralize control of elections in all 50 states in Washington Democrats hands, according to Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

Other conservatives condemn the bill as a disastrous federal overreach, saying it will destroy the decentralized electoral system in favor of a nationalized standard approach to elections.

REUTERS/Leah Millis

Rep. Tom Emmer

At the state level, Republicans have passed legislation that restricts voter access. According to the Brennan Center, at least 33 states have already introduced or carried over 165 bills that re-tighten voting requirements. In Georgia, a state in the voting-rights spotlight after its amplified role in the 2020 Senate race, the Legislature recently passed the Election Integrity Act of 2021, which voting rights advocates have decried as a method of restricting voting access for minorities. Three voting rights groups have already signed a lawsuit challenging the new law.

Under current rules, the Senate needs 60 votes to end debate and pass legislation. This requires Democrats to have the support of at least 10 Republicans to advance bills in the current 50-50 Senate.

Thats because of the filibuster, made famous by movies like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. The filibuster used to necessitate that a senator speak on the chamber floor to block a bill for as long as they could keep standing and talking. But in the 1970s, the Senate changed its rules so that senators could trigger a filibuster simply by announcing they wanted to block a bill.

This rule change was meant to help the Senate run more efficiently, but as a result the filibuster became much easier to use and one of the largest obstacles to passing legislation

Some Democrats view abolishing the filibuster as the only way to pass the For the People Act in the closely divided Senate.

Minnesota Sens. Tina Smith and Amy Klobuchar have both expressed their support for abolishing the filibuster, with Smith calling the filibuster undemocratic. Klobuchar said the likely death of the For the People Act in the Senate flipped her from a long-standing maybe to a yes.

I would get rid of the filibuster. I have favored filibuster reform for a long time and now especially for this critical election bill, Klobuchar told Mother Jones. As the chair of the Senate Rules Committee which oversees federal elections, Klobuchar has a lot riding on the For the People Act.

REUTERS/Hannah McKay

Sen. Amy Klobuchar

Creating a new Senate precedent, known colloquially as the nuclear option and more formally as reform by ruling, can happen with only a simple majority of senators. In 2013, after Senate Republicans continually filibustered former President Obamas nominations, Senate Democrats changed the baseline for overruling a filibuster on presidential nominations (except Supreme Court nominations) from a three-fifths majority to a simple majority. Then in 2017, Senate Republicans used this approach to reduce the number of votes needed to end debate on Supreme Court nominations in an effort to end debate on the nomination of Neil Gorsuch.

Not all Democrats are on board with abolishing the filibuster. West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin favors a more bipartisan approach to passing legislation. He told POLITICO, I want to make it very clear to everybody: Theres no way that I would vote to prevent the minority from having input into the process in the Senate. That means protecting the filibuster. It must be a process to get to that 60-vote threshold. Democrats need all 50 of their Senators to be on board for filibuster reform, so if Manchin or anyone else decides against reform, thats it.

MinnPost file photo by Briana Bierschbach

Sen. Tina Smith

Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock (D) said on CNNs State of the Union on Sunday that the For the People Act was a moral imperative for Democrats.

I think that we have to pass voting rights no matter what, Warnock said when asked if he thought the filibuster had to be eliminated to get the bill passed. The filibuster at the end of the day is about minority rights in the Senate this is a defining moment in the American nation and I think all of us have a role to play.

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What's in Democrats' big election-reform bill and why they might be willing to get rid of the filibuster in order to pass it - MinnPost

In this installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, the crew discusses a package of changes to voting rules signed into law on Thursday by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, and compares them with other Republican proposals around the country that could make voting more difficult. The Georgia law contains a number of controversial provisions, including giving more authority over the state elections board to the state legislature (instead of the secretary of state) and banning volunteers from giving food or water to people waiting in line to vote.

The gang also looks at the challenges facing the Biden administration in dealing with the surge of migrants at the southern border and immigration reform more broadly. There does not appear to be a general consensus among Democrats about how to address immigration reform. And in the near term, the U.S. is seeing the largest increase in migrants at the southern border in 20 years, according to the secretary of Homeland Security.

You can listen to the episode by clicking the play button in the audio player above or bydownloading it in iTunes, theESPN Appor your favorite podcast platform. If you are new to podcasts,learn how to listen.

The FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast is recorded Mondays and Thursdays. Help new listeners discover the show byleaving us a rating and review on iTunes. Have a comment, question or suggestion for good polling vs. bad polling? Get in touch by email,on Twitteror in the comments.

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Politics Podcast: Democrats Are Struggling On Immigration Policy - FiveThirtyEight