The Senate is now voting on the nomination of Marcia Fudge to lead the department of housing and urban development.

The Democratic congresswoman, who has been championed by progressives, is expected to be confirmed.

Democrat Stacey Plaskett denounced her Republican colleague, Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin, after the congressman baselessly claimed the Black Lives Matter movement opposes “old fashioned” families.

Arguing against the coronavirus relief bill, Grothman said that the legislation would result in a tax penalty for married couples.

“I bring it up because I know the strength that Black Lives Matter had in this last election. I know it’s a group that doesn’t like the old fashioned family,” Grothman said. “I’m disturbed that we have another program here where we’re increasing the marriage penalty.”

Plaskett, a delegate who represents the US Virgin Islands and previously served as an impeachment manager, then spoke on behalf of Democrats, and she asked Grothman to remain in the chamber as she delivered her remarks.

Plaskett said she had intended to speak in support of the relief package, but she refused to let Grothman’s words stand.

“How dare you? How dare you say that Black Lives Matter, Black people do not understand old fashioned families?” Plaskett said. “We have been able to keep our families alive for over 400 years.”

She went on to say, “That is outrageous. That should be stricken down.”

After Plaskett concluded, her Democratic colleagues applauded her.

Lauren Boebert, a Republican congresswoman who has previously voiced support for the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory QAnon, denounced the coronavirus relief bill in a floor speech.

The Colorado lawmaker dismissed the $1.9 trillion relief package as a “trashy spending spree” that would do nothing to help Americans who have “suffered the most from this China virus”.

Experts have said the elevation of phrases like “China virus,” which Donald Trump has also used to blame Beijing for the coronavirus pandemic, has contributed to the recent rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans.

Speaking on the House floor, minority leader Kevin McCarthy condemned the coronavirus relief bill as the latest sign that socialism has overtaken the Democratic party.

“I’ve watched socialism grow in this country; I’ve watched it grow in this body. I see it within your own party,” McCarthy told Democrats.

House budget committee chairman John Yarmuth dismissed the Republican leader’s comments as a shallow attempt to sow doubt about a broadly popular bill.

“If Democrats had a potluck picnic, the Republicans would call it socialism,” Yarmuth said.

Jay Ashcroft, the Missouri secretary of state, has said he does not plan to run for the US Senate next year.

“After intense, prayerful consideration we have decided to remain devoted to the work Missouri voters have entrusted to me as secretary of state,” Ashcroft, a Republican, said in a statement.

The news comes two days after Republican Senator Roy Blunt announced that he would not run for reelection next year.

Blunt narrowly won his 2016 reelection race, but Republicans are largely expected to maintain control of the Senate seat, given that Donald Trump won the state by 15 points in November.

Over in the Senate, minority leader Mitch McConnell has announced that he will oppose Joe Biden’s nominations of Deb Haaland and Michael Regan.

Haaland has been nominated to lead the interior department, and Regan has been selected to serve as the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

“I’ll be voting for American families and against both of their nominations,” McConnell said.

McConnell has supported most of Biden’s cabinet nominees so far, with the exception of Alejandro Mayorkas, who was ultimately confirmed to lead the department of homeland security.

Haaland and Regan are also still expected to be confirmed, despite McConnell’s opposition. If confirmed, Haaland will be the first Native American to serve as a cabinet secretary, and Regan will be the first African-American man to lead the EPA.

As the House debates the coronavirus relief bill, another analysis has been released showing the legislation would substantially lower US poverty, particularly among Americans of color.

According to the Urban Institute, the relief package will reduce projected US poverty for 2021 by more than one-third.

Here’s an excerpt from the abstract of the think tank’s analysis:

In an earlier analysis, we projected that without this legislation, the 2021 annual poverty rate would be 13.7 percent. We project that key elements of the American Rescue Plan would reduce that annual poverty rate to 8.7 percent. The policies would reduce poverty by more than half for children and for people in households experiencing job loss. Poverty would fall about 42 percent for Black, non-Hispanic people, 39 percent for Hispanic people, and 34 percent for white, non-Hispanic people, reducing the disparities in poverty rates for Black, non-Hispanic people and Hispanic people relative to white, non-Hispanic people.

Marjorie Taylor Greene’s motion to adjourn the House has failed, after 40 Republicans joined Democrats to defeat the extremist congresswoman’s proposal.

The House has now started its two hours of debate on the coronavirus relief bill, and the chamber will then move on to a final vote on the legislation.

A CNN reporter asked House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office about Marjorie Taylor Greene’s repeated attempts to adjourn the House to delay votes on Democratic bills.

A spokesperson for Pelosi told CNN, “That’s a question for the Minority Leader who has lost control.”

Pelosi has repeatedly clashed with House minority leader Kevin McCarthy in recent weeks. Last month, the speaker sharply criticized the Republican leader’s failure to remove Greene from her committee assignments over her extremist views.

McCarthy’s refusal to do so forced Democrats to hold a full-chamber vote to remove Greene from her committees.

At the time, Pelosi mocked McCarthy as a member of the “Q” party, meaning QAnon, the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that Greene has previously voiced support for.

Marjorie Taylor Greene has sent a menacing tweet urging Republicans to support her motion to adjourn the House.

“The GOP has messaged against this ridiculous bill,” the extremist congresswoman said of the relief package . “We should do everything to stop it. Pay attention if Rs vote to adjourn. Or with the Dems.”

When Greene introduced a motion to adjourn last week, 18 House Republicans joined Democrats in voting to keep the chamber in session.

That number may increase this rime, given that a number of Republicans have told reporters they are growing tired of Greene’s delay tactics.

Marjorie Taylor Greene has repeatedly introduced motions to adjourn the House in recent weeks, in order to delay votes on Democrats’ bills.

The motion forces members to return to the floor for an extra vote in order to keep the House in session.

And it appears that even Republicans are not thrilled with the extremist congresswoman’s delay tactics. When Greene introduced a motion to adjourn last week, 18 House Republicans joined their Democratic colleagues to keep the chamber in session.

This time around, even more of Greene’s Republican colleagues may vote against the motion.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Republican congressman who was removed from her committee assignments over her extremist views, has now introduced a motion to adjourn the House.

The motion will force House members to return to the floor to take an extra vote in order to keep the chamber in session.

Democrats will be able to defeat the motion, but Greene will successfully delay the timing of the final vote on the coronavirus relief bill for about an hour.

The House will likely not pass the relief bill until 1 pm ET or later at this point.

This is Joan Greve in Washington, taking over for Martin Belam.

The House is now in session, and the chamber will soon take its final vote on the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill.

The Democratic-controlled House is expected to pass the bill, but the vote will likely fall along party lines, as it did in the Senate on Saturday.

Once the House passes the bill, it will go to Joe Biden for his signature, and the president has said he intends to sign the legislation as soon as it reaches his desk.

If the House passes the bill as expected, it will mark Biden’s first major legislative victory as president.

The relief package will send $1,400 checks to most Americans, and it will authorize federal unemployment benefits through the beginning of September.

The blog will have more details on the vote coming up, so stay tuned.

A quick snap here from Reuters, that a White House official has told them that the US plans to double its order of the single-shot Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine.

President Joe Biden will make the announcement at a meeting with the chief executives of Johnson & Johnson and Merck later in the day.

Merck has agreed to partner with Johnson & Johnson to produce its vaccine. Johnson & Johnson’s manufacturing has been slower than expected, and the company was not expected to be able to deliver any doses of its vaccine this week. It is expected to resume shipments later in March.

Joe Biden’s press team have been very vocal on social media already this morning about what they regard as good news from a CNN poll out today about public attitudes to the coronavirus relief package.

In particular, they’ve been keen to emphasise the extent to which Republican supporters appear to be backing many of the measures, even if not a single Republican in the House or Senate could bring themselves to vote for the bill. Jennifer Agiesta, CNN’s Polling Director, writes:

61% support the $1.9 trillion economic relief bill proposed by Biden, and several key provisions of the bill are even more popular. 85% say they support policies in the bill that would provide larger tax credits for families and make them easier for low-income households to claim, including majorities across party lines (95% of Democrats and 73% of Republicans support it).

Around three-quarters favor provisions to provide funding to facilitate a return to the classroom for K-12 students (77%), and sending stimulus checks worth up to $1,400 per person to most families and individuals (76%). Both of those policies also have majority support across party lines (55% of Republicans support each, among Democrats, support tops 90% for each one).

A smaller majority, 59%, say they back providing $350 billion in aid to state and local governments. That policy sparks the sharpest partisan divide among the four tested, with 88% of Democrats in favor vs. just 28% of Republicans.

One measure not in the bill – raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 per hour to $15 per hour – also has majority support. Overall, 55% favor such an increase in the minimum wage, including 85% of Democrats, 52% of independents and 20% of Republicans.

Sam Levin in Los Angeles reports for us today on California’s new DA, George Gascón:

George Gascón, a former LA police official and district attorney in San Francisco, won his race last November after the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor brought mainstream attention to systemic problems in law enforcement.

Gascón gained traction as he explicitly spoke about the harms of California’s racist prison system. “We’ve created this machine of mass incarceration for the last 40 years, that we have normalized what is really abnormal anywhere else in the world,” Gascón recently told the Guardian. “What I’m doing is radical for the US … but sending people to prison for 60 years, 100 years, 150 years, or to death row, or prosecuting a 15-year-old as an adult – these are all concepts that in most of the rest of the world would be inconceivable.”

The stakes are enormous. Gascón’s success or failure could determine whether young people in LA are sentenced to life behind bars, whether elderly people get a chance to come home after decades in prison, and whether the DA’s office pursues criminal cases against police for misconduct and unjust killings.

And what happens in LA could affect the future of mass incarceration and reform policies across the US. The LA district attorney’s office is the largest in the country, with jurisdiction over a county larger than most US states, and Gascón’s term has become a crucial test for a growing movement of progressive prosecutors.

“The norm is changing, and the police can’t accept that,” said Helen Jones, an organizer with the group Dignity and Power whose 22 year-old son died in LA sheriff’s custody in 2009. “They don’t want to have to worry about being held accountable, that one of them might go to jail for murdering somebody’s child. They know that change is coming. So they fight back.”

Read more of Sam Levin’s report here: Can LA’s top prosecutor transform the criminal justice system?

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March 10, 2021