Live updates Democrats, White House regroup on expanding voting access after GOP blocks bill

Senate Republicans banded together Tuesday to block a sweeping Democratic bill that would revamp the architecture of American democracy, dealing a grave blow to efforts to federally override dozens of GOP-passed state voting laws.

The test vote, which would have cleared the way to start debate on voting legislation, failed 50-50 on straight party lines — 10 votes short of the supermajority needed to advance legislation in the Senate.

It came after Democrat after Democrat delivered warnings about the dire state of U.S. democracy, blaming President Donald Trump for undermining its foundations by challenging the 2020 election results, which in turn prompted his supporters in numerous state legislatures to pass new laws rolling back ballot access.

Biden met with FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell, homeland security adviser and deputy national security adviser Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall and other officials Tuesday to discuss disaster preparedness.

“We’re going to bring every resource to bear. … I insist on being ready for whatever comes our way,” the president said at the start of the White House meeting.

He said he will host a meeting next week with Western governors as they deal with excessive heat, drought and wildfires.

Biden spoke of the extreme weather as climate change results in more intense storms and other events. This past weekend, a tornado caused extensive damage in the western suburbs of Chicago, while Tropical Storm Claudette was blamed for more than a dozen deaths in Alabama.

“The last few days, we’ve seen droughts and wildfire in the West. We’ve seen tornadoes in Illinois, flooding in the South and Mid-Atlantic. Extreme weather doesn’t confine itself, as you all know, to state lines,” Biden said. “These crises require proactive federal response. It’s not just the states.”

Biden credited Criswell for helping to vaccinate Americans, and “now we have to respond to brutal storms, and more severe storms and fires, and they extend into longer seasons every year.”

The president also praised the work of firefighters — and expressed disbelief at their pay.

“There’s an old expression: God made man. Then he made a few firefighters. They have a higher incidence of severe injuries than police officers do. They are incredibly, incredibly brave at what they do. … And I just realized — I didn’t realize this, I admit — that federal firefighters get paid $13 an hour. That’s going to end in my administration,” he said. “That’s a ridiculously low salary to pay federal firefighters.”

Salaries for federal firefighters cover a wide range, with a nationwide average of about $34 an hour.

Biden’s choice to be the federal government’s chief personnel officer secured Senate confirmation by a single vote Tuesday after Republicans tried to sink her nomination for her past embrace of the theory of systemic racism known as “critical race theory.”

After the evenly divided chamber tied along party lines, Vice President Harris cast the decisive vote to confirm Kiran Ahuja, the first of Biden’s nominees for whom she had to break an impasse. The relatively obscure Office of Personnel Management, which Ahuja will now lead, is likely to remain at the center of a political war over Biden’s whole-of-government approach to promoting racial equity.

Candidates for such low-profile posts normally receive quick confirmation votes, but Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) objected to an up-or-down vote this past spring, forcing Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) to go through procedural hurdles.

Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Tuesday that Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) will vote to advance an expansive voting rights bill, ensuring all Democrats are united.

However, they face Republican opposition and lack the votes to break the 60-vote filibuster threshold later Tuesday.

“Sen. Manchin and I have come to an agreement … we worked it out,” Schumer told reporters.

Separately, Manchin issued a statement, saying he would vote yes, “to ensure every eligible voter is able to cast their ballot and participate in our great democracy.”

Manchin has offered a compromise to the sweeping bill that passed the House. His legislation would make voter registration automatic, set Election Day as a holiday, require at least 15 days of early voting for federal elections, prohibit partisan gerrymandering and require voter IDs with several ways to prove an individual’s identity.

But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) made clear earlier Tuesday that he has no interest in debating either the sweeping bill or Manchin’s alternative.

“This is not a federal issue. It should be left to the states,” McConnell told reporters.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki pushed back at the suggestion that Biden hasn’t fought hard enough for voting rights and said that even if the vote to move forward with debate on the issue fails in the Senate as anticipated, the president will keep fighting.

Psaki said the president and vice president would work with voting advocacy groups in red and blue states to expand voting access while continuing to fight in Washington for federal legislation.

“This fight is not over, no matter the outcome today, it’s going to continue,” she said.

She rejected criticism from Democratic Rep. Jamaal Bowman (N.Y.), who said the president needed to be more vocal and out front on the issue.

“I would suggest that — those words are a fight against the wrong opponent,” she said. “The president is passionate about this issue. He has been passionate through the course of his time in public office.”

“He will be standing with advocates in this fight for the foreseeable future,” she added.

Moments after the news briefing ended, Biden tweeted about the voting rights bill:

“We can’t sit idly by while democracy is in peril — here, in America. We need to protect the sacred right to vote and ensure “We the People” choose our leaders, the very foundation on which our democracy rests. We urgently need the For The People Act. Send it to my desk.”

Harris broke the tie Tuesday on the Senate vote to advance the nomination of Kiran Ahuja, Biden’s choice to lead the Office of Personnel Management. Her confirmation was held up by Republican senators over her past emphasis on the concept of systemic racism known as “critical race theory” and her support for abortion rights.

With the vote tied at 50-50, Harris returned to the Senate chamber and, as president of the Senate, cast the deciding vote. A final vote to confirm Ahuja is expected Tuesday afternoon.

GOP senators, led by Sen. Josh Hawley (Mo.), had objected to a quick confirmation for Ahuja.

“These associations merit real scrutiny, especially in light of Ms. Ahuja’s nomination to a role that would allow her to reinstate race-based training sessions throughout the entire federal government,” Hawley spokeswoman Kelli Ford told The Washington Post last month.

The senators zeroed in on Ahuja’s role at the nonprofit Philanthropy Northwest and, more specifically, a blog post by her that included a link to an article that said Donald Trump’s election was an example of white supremacy. The author of that article also spoke about racial equity at a Philanthropy Northwest event.

The GOP senators also said they were concerned about Ahuja’s support for abortion rights and whether she would adhere to the Hyde Amendment, the law that forbids any federal money to be used to fund abortions.

The United States will miss President Biden’s original goal of getting coronavirus shots to at least 70 percent of adults by July 4, a White House official confirmed Tuesday to The Washington Post, speaking on the condition of anonymity to preview planned remarks.

The White House will instead announce a new goal: ensuring that 70 percent of Americans age 27 and up receive at least one shot through the July 4 holiday weekend, the official said. Seventy percent of Americans age 30 and up have already received at least one shot, the official said.

The White House’s planned announcement Tuesday is a formal acknowledgment of what had become clear in recent weeks: The United States had fallen behind Biden’s goal as vaccinations slowed, particularly in the South and Midwest. Health officials have struggled to persuade younger Americans to get vaccinated despite lotteries, gifts and other promotions. NBC News first reported the White House’s planned announcement.

Reps. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) and Fred Upton (R-Mich.) are circulating a proposal to fulfill President Biden’s dream of creating a federal research agency dedicated to finding a cure for cancer and other deadly diseases.

Since he was vice president, Biden has called on the federal government to use its tremendous resources to help end cancer, which causes more than 600,000 Americans deaths a year and killed Biden’s oldest son, Beau, who died of an aggressive brain cancer in 2015.

The bill would authorize the $6.5 billion the White House requested in its fiscal 2022 budget to create an Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, or ARPA-H, modeled after the military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA.

“The federal government has amazing resources at its disposal,” DeGette and Upton said in a joint statement, “and now is the time to put the full weight of those resources to use to cure some of the world’s most devastating diseases, such as cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s and more. Developing and delivering new lifesaving cures is a mission that must unite all of us.”

They point to DARPA’s success in funding the development of the mRNA vaccine for covid-19 and suggest that the new entity could seek to use that technology to help prevent cancer.

The lawmakers said they have been working with the White House on the proposal for several months.

“The Bidens know, firsthand, the pain and heartache that comes from losing a loved one to an illness, such as cancer. Like us, they’re determined to find new cures and treatments for these difficult diseases and we couldn’t be more excited to be working with them to make this dream come true.”