Eager to nudge President Biden’s domestic wish list through the Senate? Not enough Democrats.
Fortify marriage and contraception rights in statute to checkmate a conservative Supreme Court? The House began taking action on Tuesday, but the 50-50 Senate is a question mark.
Executive action? In courts, opponents challenge federal authority and the president’s pen.
“Democrats start with the question of, ‘Are we allowed to do this or not?’ And I think Democratic voters will forgive you if you try, and later on it turns out a court strikes it down,” former Republican-turned-Democratic-adviser Kurt Bardella told The Washington Post. “What they won’t forgive is if you keep asking them to keep you in power, but you don’t do anything with it, or at least try to do something with it.”
On the theory that reacting to perceived setbacks is a form of offense, the House on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved legislation that would protect same-sex and interracial marriages amid concerns that the Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe could jeopardize other constitutional precedents. The vote was 267-157, and 47 Republicans crossed the aisle to join every Democrat (The Hill and The Associated Press). Among GOP members who voted yes: Liz Cheney (Wyo.) Tom Emmer (Minn.), Burgess Owens (Utah), Scott Perry (Pa.), Elise Stefanik (N.Y.), Ann Wagner (Mo.) and Michael Waltz (Fla.).
The Hill: Analysis of the 47 House Republicans who supported Tuesday’s marriage equality protection measure.
It was a direct response to a separate opinion written by Justice Clarence Thomas last month that advocated rescinding high court decisions that prohibit states from banning gay marriage and contraception rights.
It is unclear whether the House-passed measure will come to a vote in the Senate,
where at least 10 Republicans would need to join every Democrat to overcome a filibuster. The bill calls for the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act, which former President Clinton signed into law in 1996. Still on the books, it recognizes marriage as “only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife.” The law defines a spouse as “a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife.”
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said Monday that the chamber should vote on enshrining those two rights (NBC News). On Tuesday, he said marriage protections and access to contraception were Democratic priorities, but “we have more priorities than we have time” (The Wall Street Journal).
Meanwhile, the White House wants to salvage what it can of Biden’s reform agenda after Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said he wants to wait before considering climate and tax provisions. The president, short on votes and time, has urged House and Senate allies to try to pass remaining pieces to send to his desk before the fall (The Hill).
Biden will be in Massachusetts today to talk about climate change at the site of a former coal-fired power plant that shuttered in 2017 but has since been reborn as an offshore wind power facility. He will not declare a national climate emergency during his trip, as had been urged by climate activists and Democrats, but the idea remains under consideration, according to the White House (The Hill and The Associated Press).
Amid Democrats’ frustrations and recriminations about major policy promises that some now declare “dead,” Biden’s Senate allies are reluctant to say that the president or Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) bungled the overall legislative strategy, reports The Hill’s Alexander Bolton. The public second-guessing may grow louder this summer.