Democrats Reach Drug Price Deal; Biden Upbeat on Manchin

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Democrats reached agreement Tuesday on a plan to lower prescription drug costs for most older people, capping out-of-pocket Medicare costs at $2,000 and reducing the price of insulin, salvaging a campaign promise as part of President Joe Biden’s $1.75 trillion domestic policy proposal.  Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced the deal, which is one of the few remaining provisions that needed to be resolved in Biden’s big package as the party moves closer to wrapping up negotiations. Schumer acknowledged it’s not as sweeping as Democrats had hoped for, but a compromise struck with one key holdout Democrat, Sen. Kyrsten Sinemamore

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Elections Across US Showcase Security Steps, New Voting Laws

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Elections taking place across the U.S. on Tuesday will be the first to test new voting restrictions in some Republican-controlled states and give elections officials a chance to counter a year’s worth of misinformation about voting security. Officials said demonstrating secure, consistent and fair practices could help reassure those who still have doubts about last year’s presidential election as they begin preparations for next year’s midterms. “It is a great dress rehearsal for 2022,” said Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon. Much of the attention will be on Virginia and New Jersey, where voters are casting ballots for governor andmore

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Two US States Hold Elections for Governor

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Voters are casting ballots Tuesday for governor in the U.S. states of Virginia and New Jersey, two closely watched races ahead of next year’s midterm congressional elections.  In Virginia, Democrat Terry McAuliffe, who served as the state’s governor from 2014 to 2018, is facing Republican Glenn Youngkin, a political newcomer.  Both candidates held final campaign events Monday in the northern Virginia suburbs outside Washington. Youngkin told his supporters “the future of this country is going to be decided,” in Tuesday’s vote, while McAuliffe said “the stakes are huge.”  McAuliffe has seen his lead in opinion polls slide in recent months, just as approval ratings formore

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Manchin Wavers on Biden’s Plan, Democrats Vow to Push Ahead

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Senator Joe Manchin wavered Monday on his support for President Joe Biden’s sweeping $1.75 trillion domestic policy proposal, saying instead it’s “time to vote” on a slimmer $1 trillion infrastructure package that has stalled amid talks.  The West Virginia Democrat’s announcement comes as Democrats want a signal from Manchin that he will support Biden’s big package. He’s one of two key holdout senators whose votes are needed to secure the deal and push it toward passage. Instead, Manchin rebuffed progressive Democrats, urging them to quit holding “hostage” the smaller public works bill as negotiations continue on the broader package. “Enoughmore

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Nebraska School District Hires Students as Interpreters

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 Facing staff shortages, public schools in Nebraska’s largest city have turned to bilingual high school students to interpret when families talk with teachers during report card conferences. The Omaha school district has some full-time bilingual liaisons, but students and their families speak more than 100 different languages, and more than 18,000 students have received services for limited English speakers at some time while in the district.  Lisa Utterback, the district’s chief student and community services officer, told the Omaha World-Herald that the district has about 20 students contracted as interpreters. The students are paid $18 an hour to help withmore

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Texans Unsure of New Abortion Law as Supreme Court Prepares to Hear Arguments

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A Texas abortion law that was signed in May by Governor Greg Abbott is considered the most restrictive abortion legislation in the country. After the Supreme Court voted 5-4 in September to at least temporarily uphold the law, the court once again will hear arguments regarding the case on Monday. Texans across the state, meanwhile, are vigorously debating the new law themselves. “It obviously violates Roe v. Wade,” said Rose MacKenzie, a San Antonio resident and musician in the U.S. Air Force Band. “It’s restrictive to women who need care when we should actually have control over our body, well-being,more

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Climate Activists Praise Biden’s Bid for $555 Billion in Green Investment

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U.S. President Joe Biden will arrive at COP 26, the United Nations Climate Change Conference being held in Glasgow next week, with the promise, if not the guarantee, that the United States is about to commit to the largest single investment in combating climate change in history. The White House and Democratic leaders in Congress on Thursday announced a scaled-back version of the president’s Build Back Better climate and social spending package. While less ambitious than earlier versions, the package contains $555 billion in spending directed at reducing the country’s greenhouse gas emissions to between 50% and 52% of 2005more

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11 States Sue US Government Over Vaccine Mandate for Federal Contractors

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Eleven U.S. states with Republican governors sued the Biden administration on Friday, seeking to block a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for federal contractors and arguing it is unconstitutional and violates federal procurement law. Saying they were necessary to fight COVID-19, President Joe Biden issued on September 9 a pair of executive orders requiring that all executive branch federal employees and federal contractors be vaccinated. A joint lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri by 10 states: Arkansas, Alaska, Missouri, Iowa, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming. Texas filed a separatemore

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Biden Says Pope Supports His Holy Communion Rights

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U.S. President Joe Biden met with Pope Francis at the Vatican on Friday, ahead of his meeting with G-20 leaders. Biden said the pope supported his receiving Holy Communion, while some U.S. bishops want to deny him the sacrament over his stance on abortion. With Anita Powell contributing, White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara has this report from Rome. …

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White House Renews Bid to End ‘Remain in Mexico’ Policy

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The Biden administration launched a second bid Friday to end a Trump-era policy to make asylum-seekers wait in Mexico for hearings in U.S. immigration courts, while also reaffirming a commitment to reinstate it under court order.  Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the “Remain in Mexico” policy likely contributed to a drop in illegal border crossings in 2019 but with “substantial and unjustifiable human costs” to asylum-seekers who were exposed to violence while waiting in Mexico.  The announcement came more than two months after a federal judge ordered that the policy be reinstated “in good faith,” while leaving an openingmore

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Republican Lawmaker Who Voted to Impeach Trump Will Not Seek Re-Election

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U.S. Representative Adam Kinzinger, one of the few Republican lawmakers who voted to impeach then-President Donald Trump, said Friday he would not seek re-election in 2022. The Illinois congressman, who also bucked party leadership by joining a House of Representatives panel investigating the January 6 U.S. Capitol riot lamented national divisions in announcing his exit. “I cannot focus on both a re-election to Congress and a broader fight nationwide,” Kinzinger said in a video posted on Twitter. Kinzinger was the latest Republican lawmaker to decide not to seek re-election after 10 House Republicans joined Democrats in voting to impeach themore

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Biden Cuts Social Safety Net Plan in Half

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U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday unveiled a $1.75 trillion spending plan he said would provide the “most transformative” aid to American families in decades and at the same time set the United States on a path toward sharply cutting its greenhouse gas pollution.    Biden laid out the plan – half the amount he had proposed weeks ago – in an early morning meeting with Democratic lawmakers in Congress. He later planned an address from the White House on the proposals ahead of a trip to Europe for meetings in Rome on the global economy and in Glasgow, Scotlandmore

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US Senate Considers ‘Wealth Tax’ to Fund Biden’s Spending Proposals

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As Democrats in Congress fight among themselves over how much of U.S. President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better social and environmental spending package to enact, disagreements over other proposals to raise tax revenue have party members proposing a novel and highly controversial “wealth tax.”  Put forward by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, the tax would force about 700 of the country’s wealthiest people to pay taxes on unrealized gains on their assets. For example, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos would be required to pay taxes on the increase in value of the shares he holds in hismore

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US Arresting Far Fewer Undocumented Immigrants Under Biden

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Reports of dramatically reduced immigration enforcement inside the United States have prompted cheers from rights advocates and derision from critics of the Biden administration who are already incensed over record migration to the U.S.-Mexico border. The Washington Post reported Tuesday that arrests of undocumented immigrants inside the United States dropped significantly in fiscal 2021, which ended September 30. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) data showed the total of 72,000 arrests to be the lowest number in more than a decade, according to the news outlet, and about “half the annual totals recorded” during the Trump administration. By comparison, ICE’s Enforcementmore

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Zoom Gets More Popular Despite Worries About Links to China

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Very few companies can boast of having their name also used as a verb. Zoom is one of them. The popularity of the videoconferencing platform continues to grow around the world despite continued questions about whether Chinese authorities are monitoring the calls. Since Zoom became a household word last year during the pandemic, internet users including companies and government agencies have asked whether the app’s data centers and staff in China are passing call logs to Chinese authorities. “Some of the more informed know about that, but the vast majority, they don’t know about that, or even if they do,more

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Students in US State Sue for Right to Civics Education

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Students in Rhode Island are asking a federal appeals court to affirm that all public school students have a constitutional right to a civics education, saying that they aren’t taught how to meaningfully participate in a democratic and civil society and that the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol was a symptom of such ignorance.  Students nationwide need to know how to participate in the political process, effectively exercise their constitutional rights and learn skills like media literacy to distinguish accurate from false information, their lawyers argue. The plaintiffs have asked the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Boston,more

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Biden, Congressional Democrats Continue Tough Negotiations Over Massive Social Safety Net Bill

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Democrats in the U.S. Congress continued to be mired in negotiations on President Joe Biden’s major social safety net and climate control spending plan, particularly which  programs to keep and which ones to remove as well as the means to pay for them. The president held talks at the White House Tuesday night with Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, two moderate lawmakers in Biden’s own Democratic party who have staunchly opposed much of his original $3.5 trillion Build Back Better plan that would provide the biggest expansion of government benefits to American families inmore

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Senate Confirms Cindy McCain, Jeff Flake to Ambassador Posts

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The Senate confirmed two prominent anti-Trump Republicans to serve in the Biden administration on Tuesday with former Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona approved to serve as the ambassador to Turkey, and Cindy McCain, the wife of the late Senator John McCain, approved to serve as the ambassador to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture.  The Senate also voted to confirm former Democratic Senator Tom Udall of New Mexico to serve as ambassador to New Zealand, and Victoria Reggie Kennedy of Massachusetts, the widow of former Senator Ted Kennedy, to serve as ambassador to Austria.  The nominations were approvedmore

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Treasury Department Names First Counselor for Racial Equity

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The Treasury Department has hired a former JPMorgan Chase executive to head a new government program aimed at combating racial inequality issues in banking and other financial-services industries. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Monday that Janis Bowdler will be the department’s first counselor for racial equity, part of a multipronged strategy by the Biden administration to deal with systemic racism found in many parts of the economy. Banking and finance have long had issues with racial inequity, from the lack of representation of Blacks and other minorities at the highest levels of companies to ongoing issues of getting equal accessmore

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Biden: ‘Very Optimistic’ on Approval for Social Safety Net Spending Plan

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U.S. President Joe Biden said Monday he is “very optimistic” on completing a deal this week on his pared-down social safety net spending plan, an assessment echoed by one of the centrist Democratic lawmakers who has been holding back on his support.  Biden told reporters in Delaware that his Sunday meeting with West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, who has sought sharp cuts in Biden’s original $3.5 trillion package, “went well.”  They discussed final details in the package that could be trimmed to about half that amount, with Manchin insisting on a $1.5 trillion figure.  “A few more things to workmore

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Biden Trying to Finalize Social Safety Net Spending Plan

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U.S. President Joe Biden is meeting Sunday with two key senators at his home in Delaware to try to complete details of a pared-down social safety net and climate control spending plan set for introduction in Congress as soon as Monday.  Biden is hosting Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, along with Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, one of two pivotal lawmakers who has called for sharp cutbacks in the president’s original $3.5 trillion plan proposing the biggest expansion of government benefits to American families in five decades.  With the 100-member Senate equally split between Republicans and Democrats, the policymore

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‘Strategic Ambiguity’ on Taiwan Apparent as White House Walks Back Biden Comments 

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White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Friday appeared to walk back President Joe Biden’s statement on Thursday that the United States was committed to defending Taiwan should it come under Chinese attack. “The president was not announcing any change in our policy, nor has he made a decision to change our policy,” Psaki said during a White House news briefing. “Our defense relationship with Taiwan is guided by the Taiwan Relations Act.” The 1979 Taiwan Relations Act states that the U.S. will provide arms for Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense capability. It does not say the U.S. wouldmore

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