Biden Cuts Off Stalled Infrastructure Talks With Leading Republicans

Biden pulls the plug on infrastructure talks with Capito, shifting focus to centrist senators for a bipartisan deal.

Image
A bipartisan group of senators meet in a Capitol office Tuesday evening to discuss a new infrastructure package.Credit...Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times

President Biden on Tuesday ended a weekslong effort to reach a deal with Senate Republicans on an expansive infrastructure plan, cutting off negotiations that had failed to persuade them to embrace his bid to pour $1 trillion into the nation’s aging public works system and safety-net programs.

It was a major setback to Mr. Biden’s effort to attract Republican support for his top domestic priority, which had always faced long odds over the size, scope and financing of the package. Most Republicans have made it clear they are willing to spend only a fraction of what Democrats want on a much narrower initiative, and balked at any tax increases to pay for it.

In a final telephone call on Tuesday with Senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, the leading Republican negotiator, after days of back-and-forth discussions, Mr. Biden made clear that the divide was too large to bridge.

The breakdown did not close off the possibility of a bipartisan compromise entirely, and the White House signaled that the president would continue seeking one. He shifted his focus to a bipartisan group of centrist senators who have been working separately on an alternative, calling three of them personally to cheer on their efforts and encourage them to work with top White House officials to hammer out a deal.

Ms. Capito said it had been Mr. Biden who had been unwilling to compromise.

“While I appreciate President Biden’s willingness to devote so much time and effort to these negotiations, he ultimately chose not to accept the very robust and targeted infrastructure package, and instead, end our discussions,” Ms. Capito said in a statement.

While administration officials went to great lengths to emphasize Mr. Biden’s respect for Ms. Capito as a negotiator and her efforts to reach a compromise, it was clear he had already moved on, placing his hopes for a deal on the bipartisan Senate group. He spoke on Tuesday with Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, and Senators Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, both Democrats.

“Any infrastructure package should and must be bipartisan,” Mr. Cassidy said on Twitter, adding that he had raised “flood resiliency and energy provisions” with Mr. Biden during their conversation.

Mr. Cassidy and the other members of the bipartisan group were to huddle Tuesday evening on Capitol Hill to discuss their ideas for an infrastructure plan.

“I don’t know that it’s something we’ve signed off on, but we do have a tentative figure at this point,” said Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah. He would not disclose that figure, but said he had spoken to administration officials about it.

Democrats could also move infrastructure legislation on their own through the fast-track budget process known as reconciliation, which would allow them to avoid a filibuster, though that would require all 50 Democrats in the Senate and near unanimity among House Democrats.

“We all know as a caucus we will not be able to do all the things that the country needs in a totally bipartisan — a bipartisan way,” said Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader.

A landmark industrial policy bill aimed at countering China easily clears the Senate in a bipartisan vote.

Video
bars
0:00/1:20
-0:00

transcript

Senate Passes Bipartisan Technology Bill to Compete With China

The Senate on Tuesday voted 68-32 to approve legislation that would spend a quarter-trillion dollars over the next five years on scientific research and development aimed at boosting the United States’ ability to compete with Chinese technology.

“We rely on foreign nations to supply supply critical technologies that we invented like semiconductors. That sunny American optimism has flickered as well. The world is more competitive now than at any time since the end of the Second World War. If we do nothing our days as the dominant superpower may be ending.” “Passing this bill, now called the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, is the moment when the Senate lays the foundation for another century of American leadership.” “I believe that this legislation will enable the United States to out-innovate, outproduce and outcompete the world in the industries of the future. And I believe that the strongly bipartisan work on this bill has revealed that in this chamber, we all believe that another American century lies on the horizon. I urge my colleagues to vote yes.” “On this vote, the yeas are 68, the nays are 32. The 60-vote threshold having been achieved, the bill is passed.”

Video player loading
The Senate on Tuesday voted 68-32 to approve legislation that would spend a quarter-trillion dollars over the next five years on scientific research and development aimed at boosting the United States’ ability to compete with Chinese technology.CreditCredit...Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times

The Senate overwhelmingly passed legislation on Tuesday that would pour nearly a quarter-trillion dollars over the next five years into scientific research and development to bolster competitiveness against China.

Republicans and Democrats — overcoming their traditional partisan differences over economic policy — banded together to endorse what would be the most significant government intervention in industrial policy in decades. It includes federal investments in a slew of emerging technologies as well as the semiconductor industry.

The 68-32 vote reflected the sense of urgency about the need to counter Beijing and other authoritarian governments that have poured substantial resources into bolstering their industrial and technological strength.

The bill is likely to face stiffer headwinds in the House, where top lawmakers have expressed skepticism about its focus on bolstering emerging technologies.

That debate played out in the Senate, which ultimately watered down the original concept of the legislation. Still, the Senate’s lopsided margin of support for the more than 2,400-page bill highlights a series of political shifts. Jolted to action by the coronavirus pandemic, which prompted shortages of crucial goods that highlighted the country’s dependence on its biggest geopolitical adversary, policymakers in Washington have moved to try to increase domestic production capacity. Passage of the legislation came hours after the Biden administration announced new steps to strengthen U.S. supply chains.

“Whoever harnesses the technologies like A.I. and quantum computing and innovations yet unseen will shape the world in their image,” said Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic majority leader and a longtime China hawk who helped spearhead the bill. “Do we want that image to be a democratic image? Or do we want it to be an authoritarian image like President Xi would like to impose on the world? Either we can concede the mantle of global leadership to our adversaries or we can pave the way for another generation of American leadership.”

The legislation, the core of which was a collaboration between Mr. Schumer and Senator Todd Young, Republican of Indiana, would prop up semiconductor makers by providing an emergency injection of funding for a $52 billion subsidy program with few restrictions, sending a lifeline to the industry during a global chip shortage that shut auto plants and rippled through the global supply chain.

It would sink hundreds of billions more into scientific research and development pipelines in the United States, creating grants and fostering agreements between private companies and research universities across the country to encourage breakthroughs in new technology.

“When future generations of Americans cast their gaze toward new frontiers, will they see a red flag planted on those new frontiers that is not our own?” Mr. Young said during a speech on the Senate floor. “Today, we answer unequivocally, ‘No.’ Today we declare our intention to win this century, and those that follow it as well.”

While the centerpiece of the legislation is focused on bolstering research and development in emerging technologies, it also includes a major trade measure that would allow the temporary suspension of tariffs on specific U.S. imports and would call on the Biden administration to impose sanctions on those responsible for forced labor practices and human rights abuses in and around China’s Xinjiang region.

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

Kamala Harris concludes meeting with Mexico’s president, capping her high-stakes trip to the region.

Video
bars
0:00/0:56
-0:00

transcript

Harris Meets With Mexico’s President

Vice President Kamala Harris met with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico on Tuesday to discuss migration, human trafficking and economic cooperation.

Reporter: “Will you increase your assistance in immigration enforcement?” Translator: “We will be speaking to the vice president, and we are very pleased to have her here.” Translator: “And we will touch on that subject.” Translator: “But always addressing the fundamental root causes.”

Video player loading
Vice President Kamala Harris met with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico on Tuesday to discuss migration, human trafficking and economic cooperation.CreditCredit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times

MEXICO CITY — Vice President Kamala Harris met with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on Tuesday, capping her first foreign trip with a discussion on economic cooperation, as well as joint efforts to combat human trafficking and manage migration to their shared border.

Mr. López Obrador “and I spent a significant amount of time together one on one,” and had “very directed candid conversations as well as a very productive bilateral meeting,” Ms. Harris said afterward, noting that they discussed the pandemic, vaccines, migration and border security.

According to a statement from Symone Sanders, a top adviser and spokeswoman for Ms. Harris, the Biden administration would issue loans for affordable housing, efforts to grow cacao and coffee and infrastructure project development.

The U.S. will also invest $130 million over three years to support labor protections for Mexican workers and will also provide forensic training to Mexican officials seeking to find tens of thousands of missing people.

“The two leaders also agreed to increase cooperation to further secure our borders and ensure orderly immigration,” Ms. Sanders said.

Ms. Harris and Mr. López Obrador signed an agreement in Mexico’s national palace reiterating their governments’ commitment to deter migration north by addressing its root causes: poverty, persecution and corruption in Central America.

The meeting concludes a high-stakes visit for Ms. Harris to Mexico and Guatemala, where she was on Monday. She has been tapped by President Biden to be the administration’s emissary for one of its more complex and politically volatile issues: improving conditions in Central America and deterring migration to the U.S.-Mexico border.

For weeks, Ms. Harris has faced criticism from Republicans for not visiting the United States’ southwest border, where an increasing number of lone migrant children and teenagers are arriving, and she has also tried to manage the expectations of Democrats for Mr. Biden to fulfill his campaign promise of taking a compassionate approach to asylum-seekers at the border.

The trip has shown that her approach in the short-term prioritizes a moderate approach to migration and projecting a perception that the border is under control, even if it means turning away the very asylum-seekers she has said the United States is committed to helping in the long term.

On Monday, Ms. Harris sparked criticism from immigration advocates and Democrats when she delivered a blunt message to potential migrants.

“I want to be clear to folks in this region who are thinking about making that dangerous trek to the United States-Mexico border: Do not come. Do not come,” Ms. Harris said in Guatemala City, standing feet away from the Guatemalan president, Alejandro Giammattei.

“This is disappointing to see,” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, said on Twitter. “First, seeking asylum at any US border is a 100% legal method of arrival.”

The Biden administration has continued to embrace an emergency rule put in place under the presidency of Donald J. Trump after the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. The rule empowered border agents to rapidly turn away migrants without providing them a chance to apply for asylum, justifying the expulsions as necessary to stop the virus from spreading.

Under U.S. immigration law, migrants are entitled to ask for protection once they step on American soil. The continued use of the rule, known as Title 42, has prompted criticism from immigration lawyers, former officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the administration’s own medical consultants.

Biden’s first two judicial nominees are confirmed with modest Republican support.

Image
The Senate voted 66-33 to confirm Julien Neals as a U.S. district court judge on Tuesday. Credit...Pool photo by Kevin Lamarque

The Senate confirmed President Biden’s first two judicial nominees on Tuesday with modest Republican support, the start of what Democrats intend to be a sprint to fill scores of federal vacancies and rebalance the ideological makeup of the courts after the Trump era.

In a lopsided 66-to-33 vote, the chamber approved Julien Xavier Neals to serve as a district court judge in New Jersey, where a spate of vacancies have contributed to a significant backlog of cases.

A few hours later, Democrats mustered even more Republican support, voting 72 to 28 to confirm Regina M. Rodriguez as the first Asian American judge to serve on the Federal District Court bench in Colorado.

Image
Regina M. Rodriguez, nominated to be a U.S. District Judge for Colorado, was confirmed by the Senate on Tuesday.Credit...Pool photo by Tom Williams

“This is the first, certainly not the last — not even close,” Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, boasted between the votes. “We’re going to be able to restore a lot of balance to the courts because there are a lot of vacancies we are going to fill.”

Democrats plan to move as soon as this week to confirm Mr. Biden’s first appeals court pick, Ketanji Brown Jackson, to serve on the powerful D.C. Circuit. They have roughly a dozen other nominees winding their way through the approval process, and more than 100 seats on the federal bench are expected to become vacant in the coming months.

But they are starting from a deep hole. When they controlled the Senate under the presidency of Donald J. Trump, Republicans, led by Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, used their majority to confirm more than 220 federal judges over four years, including more than 50 to influential appeals court posts and three to the Supreme Court.

The Biden White House moved swiftly to begin naming nominees for many of the most important posts this spring, far earlier than the historic norm, and Mr. Biden’s liberal allies on Capitol Hill have made the approval of those nominees a top priority.

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

New York passes a first-of-its-kind bill intended to allow civil lawsuits against gun makers and dealers.

Image
A Ruger pistol at a “buyback” event held by the New York Police Department and the office of the state attorney general in Brooklyn last month.Credit...Ed Jones/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

ALBANY, N.Y. — New York State lawmakers passed legislation on Tuesday intended to allow civil lawsuits to be brought against firearm manufacturers and dealers, an attempt to circumvent the broad immunity gun companies currently enjoy under federal law.

The bill, passed by the Democratic-controlled State Legislature, is the first of its kind in the nation to specifically classify the illegal or improper marketing or sale of guns as a nuisance — a technical classification that state lawmakers say would open the gun industry to civil liability suits in New York.

The approach, if successful, could prompt other states to follow suit as many cities grapple with rising gun violence. Indeed, Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey has already indicated he supports a similar proposal.

The move comes a few months after President Biden reiterated his support of repealing a 2005 federal statute that gave gun manufacturers far-reaching immunity from being sued by victims of gun violence and their relatives.

The 2005 law, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, protects gun producers and firearm dealers from being held liable when crimes are carried out with their products. The federal statute, however, did not shield manufacturers in some cases, such as when they break state laws in their sales and marketing practices — an exception that the New York bill seeks to exploit.

Supporters of the bill framed the legislation as a way to hold manufacturers accountable for the smuggling of illegal weapons into New York, which already has some of the strictest gun control laws in the country.

Between 2010 and 2015, 86 percent of handguns recovered from crimes in New York were originally purchased out of state, most from neighboring states with weak gun laws along Interstate 95, or the so-called Iron Pipeline, according to the state attorney general.

“This bill stands for a pretty simple proposition,” said State Senator Zellnor Myrie, a Democrat from Brooklyn who introduced the legislation. “If you are a member of the gun industry and you are conducting business in a reckless or unsafe way, that has consequences for the kids in Brownsville, in Crown Heights, in Rochester.”

The legislation was forcefully opposed by the gun industry, as well as Republican lawmakers, who said it would not solve the root cause of gun violence.

Republicans filibustered a pay equity bill introduced to fail.

Image
Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader, with other Republican senators at the Capitol on Tuesday.Credit...Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times

Senate Republicans on Tuesday blocked debate on a bill to combat pay discrimination against women and L.G.B.T.Q. workers, the first in a series of votes set up by Democratic leaders this month to highlight the power of the filibuster to stop even the consideration of legislation.

The Paycheck Fairness Act, which failed, 49 to 50, was never going to get the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster and bring it to the Senate floor under existing rules. The bill, which passed the House in April, has been on the Democratic wish list since 1997.

Republicans have long said it was an unnecessary measure that would primarily benefit trial lawyers, while Democrats point to pervasive disparities in pay between women and men that other laws have not remedied.

But the bill’s fast-track introduction by Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, had a broader purpose: to build support for changing Senate rules to modify or end the legislative filibuster.

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

Fallout from a Dec. 21 breach of Oregon’s Capitol: G.O.P. lawmakers call for a colleague’s resignation.

Image
Protesters smashing the door to the Oregon State Capitol on Dec. 21.Credit...Mathieu Lewis-Rolland/Reuters

A little more than two weeks before a mob of supporters of Donald J. Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol, falsely claiming that he had won the election, a strikingly similar event unfolded at the Oregon State Capitol.

On Dec. 21, a crowd breached the exterior doors and battled law enforcement officers. The agitators, waving Trump flags and clad in body armor, wielded pepper spray and smashed windows. “Arrest Kate Brown!” the crowd chanted, referring to the state’s Democratic governor.

Republicans in Congress have resisted a full, formal investigation into the much larger attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, but in Oregon, lawmakers facing new evidence about the Dec. 21 siege are taking a different approach. On Monday, the state’s House Republican caucus signed a letter encouraging the resignation of a colleague, Representative Mike Nearman, who in a newly discovered video reported by Oregon Public Broadcasting appeared to be coaching protesters on how they might gain access to the building.

That video added to the concerns raised by security footage made public days after the Salem attack, which showed Mr. Nearman opening a door at the State Capitol in a way that allowed protesters inside as he left the building.

The House Republican leader, Christine Drazan, said on Tuesday that she believed there was enough support in her caucus to expel Mr. Nearman from the Legislature if he did not resign. State legislators have never before expelled one of their own.

“I would hope that Representative Nearman would make the decision to not be the first,” Ms. Drazan said in an interview.

After the first video emerged, Mr. Nearman said he did not condone violence but also said he believed that legislative proceedings should be open to the public.

Mr. Nearman did not respond to messages seeking comment about the video that surfaced last week, which shows him coyly giving out his cellphone number and suggesting that anyone who might need to enter the Capitol building could text the number if they needed a way inside.

But in an interview with the conservative radio host Lars Larson, Mr. Nearman said he had been “clowning around” in the video and “setting up” for what he had assumed would be a peaceful protest. He said he had been speaking in the video to a group that was not known to be violent.

“I’m willing to have some consequences for what I did, or whatever, but this is super extreme,” Mr. Nearman said.

Stacey Abrams and her group will try to rally young voters of color behind the For the People Act.

Image
Stacey Abrams and the voting organization she leads, Fair Fight Action, are using a vast texting campaign, virtual events and a paid media campaign to rally support for an expansive federal elections bill.Credit...Diwang Valdez for The New York Times

Stacey Abrams, the former Georgia Democratic candidate for governor, and the voting organization she leads are beginning a monthlong advocacy campaign to rally young voters of color to support the For the People Act, an expansive federal elections bill.

The effort, called Hot Call Summer, will be anchored in a texting campaign, in which the group aims to reach at least 10 million voters in battleground states that have either passed new laws with restrictions on voting or are advancing such bills. Ms. Abrams’s group, Fair Fight Action, will also host virtual events and fund a paid media campaign to support the push.

“With voting rights under attack in 48 out of 50 state legislatures across the country, the moment has never been more urgent, and it will take all of us to ensure that Congress passes the voting rights protections our country and democracy desperately need,” Ms. Abrams said in an email to supporters that was obtained earlier by CBS News. She called on supporters in every state to “make sure that EVERY U.S. Senator is hearing from their constituents about the urgent need” to pass the legislation.

The campaign kicks off just days after Senator Joe Manchin III, a moderate Democratic senator from West Virginia, announced that he would not support the federal voting legislation, making passage extremely unlikely in the evenly divided Senate.

Republican-led states across the country are continuing to introduce and pass laws that would erect new barriers to voting. Republicans in Texas have vowed to pass a voting bill in a special session this summer, and voting bills are progressing through the Republican-controlled legislatures in New Hampshire and Michigan.

Ms. Abrams has made voting rights one of her central platforms. In Georgia in 2018, she came within 55,000 votes of being elected the first Black governor in the United States, and within 18,000 votes of forcing a runoff with her Republican rival, Brian Kemp, in an election that drew almost four million ballots. When she ceded to Mr. Kemp, she maintained her allegations that he had used his position as Georgia’s secretary of state to engage in voter suppression.

Ms. Abrams is seen as a likely Democratic candidate for governor in Georgia in 2022. She is scheduled to participate in three virtual town hall events, including one with Katie Hobbs, the Arizona secretary of state and candidate for governor, and Jason Frierson, the Nevada Assembly speaker. Both are Democrats.

The Fair Fight campaign joins other national and state organizational efforts in trying to combat the new voting laws being passed by Republican-controlled legislatures. In Texas, the state Democratic Party announced a program aiming to use at least $13 million to register at least one million new voters.

And later this month, a coalition of voting rights groups organized by Black Voters Matter will embark on a bus stop tour from New Orleans to Washington, D.C., whose name harks back to its inspiration, the integrated bus trips of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s: the “Freedom Ride for Voting Rights.”

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

White House officials unveil measures to address threats to the country’s supply chains.

Video
bars
0:00/1:08
-0:00

transcript

White House Announces New Supply-Chain Task Force

The White House on Tuesday unveiled measures aimed at addressing threats to critical supply chains and reducing reliance on foreign countries for goods.

Our approach to supply-chain resilience needs to look forward to emerging threats, from cyber- security to climate issues, and so we are future-proofing and building back better. Second, it’s clear from these reports that we need to take action. And today we made a series of announcements to that effect, including on pharmaceuticals. The Department of Health and Human Services is going to be using its Defense Production Act authority and funding appropriated under the president’s American recovery plan to invest $60 million in advanced pharmaceutical manufacturing technologies and R. & D. We need to be nimble and be able to address emerging supply-chain issues at the same time as we’re continuing this work on these longer supply-chain resiliency strategies. And that is why today we are launching a new supply-chain disruptions task force to tackle near-term bottlenecks in the semiconductor, home building and construction, transportation, and agriculture and food industries. This task force is going to be led by three cabinet secretaries, Secretaries Buttigieg, Raimando and Vilsack, and will bring in all of government approach to addressing the near-term supply-demand mismatches we are seeing in these sectors as the economy reignites.

Video player loading
The White House on Tuesday unveiled measures aimed at addressing threats to critical supply chains and reducing reliance on foreign countries for goods.CreditCredit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

The Biden administration on Tuesday announced several actions aimed at addressing supply chain disruptions caused by the pandemic and reducing reliance on foreign countries for crucial goods by increasing domestic production capacity.

Strengthening supply chains — the interconnected global manufacturing and transportation systems needed to distribute essential goods — was a growing concern even before the spread of the coronavirus, as policymakers grappled with interruptions caused by economic crises, natural disasters and malevolent international actors.

But the pandemic bared major flaws, leading to shortages and price increases that cascaded from factories to ports to retail stores to consumers, and President Biden identified the issue as a major focus shortly after taking office.

On Tuesday, White House officials announced the creation of an effort to “tackle near-term bottlenecks” in construction, transportation, semiconductor production and agriculture.

“At this time last year we had bare grocery shelves,” Sameera Fazili, a National Economic Council official who is working on the plan, said at the White House. “We have people finally able to be out there moving again, visiting families this summer, and going out to eat.”

Ms. Fazili said that cabinet departments had embarked on a governmentwide effort “to really diagnose the problems, understand what’s going on out there in these markets, and see what actions can be taken to close those vulnerabilities.”

As part of the initiative, the Department of Agriculture has allocated more than $4 billion to bolster “a resilient food supply chain” that would prevent or lessen shortages, she added.

The initiative was bundled with the creation of “trade strike force” targeting China and other countries to push back “on unfair foreign competition, unfair foreign subsidies and other trade practices that have adversely impacted U.S. manufacturing.”

In February, Mr. Biden signed an executive order that required a review of critical supply chains in product areas where the United States relies on imports: semiconductors, high-capacity batteries, pharmaceuticals and their active ingredients, and critical minerals and strategic materials, like rare earths.

“This is about making sure the United States can meet every challenge we face in the new era,” Mr. Biden said in February, when he signed the order.

The Department of Health and Human Services, for instance, will use $60 million from the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill to develop technologies to increase domestic production of active ingredients in key pharmaceuticals. The Interior Department will work to identify sites where critical minerals could be produced in the United States. And several agencies will work on creating supply chains for new technologies that will reduce reliance on imports of key materials.

The first congressional report on the Capitol riot examines the security failures on Jan. 6.

Image
A new report by two Senate committees concluded that a dysfunctional police force at the Capitol lacked the capacity to respond effectively during the Jan. 6 riot.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times

Top federal intelligence agencies failed to adequately warn law enforcement officials before the Jan. 6 riot that pro-Trump extremists were threatening violence, including plans to “storm the Capitol,” infiltrate its tunnel system and “bring guns,” according to a new report by two Senate committees that outlines large-scale failures that contributed to the deadly assault.

An F.B.I. memo on Jan. 5 warning of people traveling to Washington for “war” at the Capitol never made its way to top law enforcement officials. The Capitol Police failed to widely circulate information its own intelligence unit had collected as early as mid-December about the threat of violence on Jan. 6, including a report that said right-wing extremist groups and supporters of President Donald J. Trump had been posting online and in far-right chat groups about gathering at the Capitol, armed with weapons, to pressure lawmakers to overturn his election loss.

“If they don’t show up, we enter the Capitol as the Third Continental Congress and certify the Trump Electors,” one post said.

“Bring guns. It’s now or never,” said another.

The first congressional report on the Capitol riot is the most comprehensive and detailed account to date of the dozens of intelligence failures, miscommunications and security lapses that led to what the bipartisan team of senators that assembled it concluded was an “unprecedented attack” on American democracy and the most significant assault on the Capitol in more than 200 years.

“The failure to adequately assess the threat of violence on that day contributed significantly to the breach of the Capitol,” said Senator Gary Peters, Democrat of Michigan and the chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. “The attack was quite frankly planned in plain sight.”

The 127-page joint report, a product of more than three months of hearings and interviews and reviews of thousands of pages of documents, presents a damning portrait of the preparations and response at multiple levels. Law enforcement officials did not take seriously threats of violence, it found, and a dysfunctional police force at the Capitol lacked the capacity to respond effectively when those threats materialized.

“The failures are obvious,” said Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota and the chairwoman of the Rules and Administration Committee. “To me, it was all summed up by one of the officers who was heard on the radio that day asking a tragically simple question: ‘Does anybody have a plan?’ Sadly, no one did.”

There was much information the panel was unable to learn. The senators secured only limited cooperation from key agencies, including the F.B.I., the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department and the House sergeant-at-arms. Other agencies failed to meet deadlines to hand over documents.

The findings — and their limitations — are likely to fuel renewed calls for an independent commission like the one created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, populated by experts and armed with subpoena power to investigate what happened that day and why. Senate Republicans blocked the creation of such a body late last month, arguing in part that it would duplicate the work already underway by the Senate committees and prosecutors at the Justice Department.

Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, praised the committees’ work on Tuesday, but said he reserved the right to bring up the commission for another vote in the future.

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

Civil rights leaders press Manchin for a path forward on voting rights, but he remains unmoved on a broad bill.

Image
Derrick Johnson, the N.A.A.C.P.’s president and chief executive, in Detroit in 2019.Credit...Jeff Kowalsky/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Prominent civil rights leaders implored Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia on Tuesday to help find a path forward in Congress for legislation to protect voting rights, making a case to the measure’s most vocal Democratic opponent that enacting it was an existential imperative.

The virtual meeting between Mr. Manchin and the leaders of the N.A.A.C.P., the National Urban League and the National Action Network had been scheduled for weeks, and it yielded no breakthroughs. But it was particularly timely, coming two days after the West Virginian made his most unequivocal statement yet in opposition to the Democrats’ landmark elections bill, the For the People Act, and to gutting the legislative filibuster.

The statements appeared to close off the only viable pathway for broad legislation that would counter a wave of Republican state laws restricting access to the ballot.

Attendees said their goal had been to begin building a relationship with Mr. Manchin, a centrist from a deep red state, and appealing to him for action — not to stoke a confrontation. The conversation was scant on policy details, though Mr. Manchin told the leaders that he planned to continue a long-shot attempt to build Republican support for a narrower voting bill that would beef up the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

“At the N.A.A.C.P., we understand the sausage-making of public policy and because of that, we appreciate Senator Manchin and the pivotal role he plays,” said Derrick Johnson, the group’s president and chief executive. “So this was an opportunity to work toward a solution, not complain about a problem.”

But Mr. Johnson did suggest that Mr. Manchin’s stated position that he could not support “partisan” voting legislation — meaning any bill that lacked the support of at least some Republicans — was untenable. Others were blunter.

“Let me be clear here. We opened by asking him to reconsider his position,” said Marc H. Morial, president and chief executive of the National Urban League. “He did not say he is going to reconsider his position. But we’re not giving up.”

Speaking with reporters afterward, Mr. Manchin praised the civil rights leaders as “the most powerful, informative and respectful group I’ve spoken to in a long time.” He said he intended to talk with the group again, though the discussion had not prompted him to reconsider his views.

“I don’t think anybody changed positions on that; we’re just learning where everyone’s coming from,” Mr. Manchin said.

Mr. Manchin had previously said he was opposed to changing the filibuster rule, and did not support the For the People Act, also known as Senate Bill 1. But on Sunday, he made those hypothetical positions more concrete, in an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette Mail that stated plainly that he planned to would vote ‘no’ later this month when Democratic leaders hold a vote on Senate Bill 1. He also said he would never support changing the rules which require proponents of legislation to muster 60 votes to move past a filibuster, dashing the hopes of many of his colleagues that he could eventually be persuaded to do so.

Party leaders were unbowed on Tuesday. Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, said he would plow ahead with a vote on the bill later this month and was engaged in private talks with Mr. Manchin about changing the bill to win his vote to advance debate.

“Is it possible we might change a few things here and there? Mr. Schumer said. “We’re going to do it.”

The Rev. Al Sharpton, the president and founder of the National Action Network, said that he and other civil rights leaders could not get a clear answer from Mr. Manchin on substantive concerns he had with the voting measure, other than to say he wanted to find Republicans who would support such a bill.

“I think we made it clear that it was unlikely,” Rev. Sharpton said in an interview. “I’m a minister, but there’s a difference between faith and fantasy.”

The Senate approves a bill to compensate victims of mysterious health incidents.

Image
The United States Embassy in Havana. Staff at the embassy suffered  unexplained health incidents that many officials believe are attacks.Credit...Meridith Kohut for The New York Times

The Senate passed a bill Monday evening designed to provide financial support for government employees injured in a series of mysterious health incidents.

The bill, drafted by Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, would give the C.I.A. director and Secretary of State additional powers to provide assistance to government officials who have suffered brain injuries as a part of an unexplained series of health incidents that many officials believe are attacks.

The bill broadens the requirement to report incidents to Congress and also allows the officials to extend the benefits to people who have been injured in the United States. While the majority of the more than 130 cases being investigated by the government happened abroad, there are at least two in the United States that are being examined as possible examples of domestic incidents.

Senator Collins said that many of the victims had undergone brain imaging and had their damage verified. Initially, however, several victims of the incidents “were treated with great skepticism,” she said.

“They should be treated the same way we treat a soldier who has suffered a traumatic brain injury on the battlefield,” Ms. Collins said in a recent interview. “It is unacceptable and appalling that these individuals — in some cases — were denied medical care that they needed.”

Ms. Collins praised William J. Burns, the director of the C.I.A., for believing the victims and speeding up the process to get agency officers affected by a health incident into the military’s Walter Reed National Medical Facility.

But some victims continue to be frustrated with how the State Department has handled the incidents. A group of injured government employees have demanded more support and financial compensation for themselves and injured family members — something the Senate bill would give them. State Department officials have said they have made the health and safety of their diplomats and other workers the top priority.

While some former officials believe the attacks could go back several decades, the most recent series of incidents began in 2016, when diplomats and C.I.A. officers working in Havana reported feeling dizzy and nauseous. Many developed chronic headaches. For some the health effects have lasted years and could be permanent disabilities.

After the Havana incidents, Americans serving in China reported similar episodes. There have also been Pentagon and C.I.A. officers affected in a variety of places in Europe and Asia.

A National Academy of Sciences report concluded a microwave weapon was the most likely cause of the injuries, but the U.S. government has not yet made any final conclusions.

Some officials believe that Russia is responsible for at least some of the attacks, a charge the Russian government has dismissed.

The intelligence community has not concluded if all or some of the health incidents were the result of a deliberate attack and what country might be responsible. Ms. Collins said she has concluded that the incidents are deliberate attacks but that she does not know what country might be responsible.

The bill will now need to go to the House, for that chamber’s approval. The bill is expected to get a vote in the coming weeks, according to a congressional official.

While the House is often divided over intelligence issues, Representative Adam B. Schiff, the California Democrat who leads the House Intelligence Committee, and Representative Devin Nunes, the California Republican who is the ranking member, together introduced a bill similar to Ms. Collins’s in the House.

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

The Times asks a judge to unseal court filings from the government seeking reporters’ email data and a gag order.

Image
The New York Times building in Midtown Manhattan.Credit...Zack DeZon for The New York Times

The New York Times asked a court on Tuesday to unseal legal filings by the Justice Department that would reveal how prosecutors persuaded a court to cloak secrecy over an order to seize the email records of four New York Times reporters and then to prevent Times executives from speaking about the matter.

The filing came as Attorney General Merrick B. Garland scheduled a meeting on Monday with leaders of three news organizations — The Times, The Washington Post and CNN — to discuss concerns over prosecutors’ practices in leak investigations, according to two people familiar with the matter.

In recent weeks, the Biden Justice Department has disclosed Trump-era seizures of phone records for reporters at each of those organizations. After the first two disclosures, involving The Post and CNN, President Biden vowed not to let the Justice Department go after reporters’ sourcing information during his administration.

But last week, it came to light that the department had also secretly seized Times reporters’ phone records — and fought a separate, and ultimately unsuccessful, battle to obtain their email records from Google, which runs the Times’s email system. The Trump Justice Department obtained a court order to Google on Jan. 5. After Google resisted complying, the Justice Department under Mr. Biden kept the effort going until dropping it last Wednesday.

In an added twist, the government in March allowed a handful of Times lawyers and executives to know about the order and the legal fight over it. But it imposed a gag order that prevented them from disclosing it to the public or colleagues. Among others, Dean Baquet, the executive editor, was kept in the dark until a judge lifted the gag order on Friday.

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT