Post Politics Now Lame-duck Congress returning to Washington with full agenda waiting

The Senate on Monday evening voted to advance a bill that would codify marriage equality.

Lawmakers voted 61-35 to limit debate on the Senate’s edits to a House version of the measure known as the Respect for Marriage Act which would, among other things, enshrine same-sex marriage and interracial marriage into law and would overturn the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines, under federal law, that marriage exists only between a man and a woman.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was among the Republicans who voted no on this procedural vote.

With less than two weeks until a railroad strike deadline, President Biden called on Congress on Monday to impose a deal negotiated with help from his administration earlier this year to avert a shutdown of the country’s freight railroads, Lauren Kaori Gurley, Tyler Pager and Tony Romm report.

“I am calling on Congress to pass legislation immediately to adopt the Tentative Agreement between railroad workers and operators — without any modifications or delay — to avert a potentially crippling national rail shutdown,” Biden said in his statement on Monday evening.

The Supreme Court is reopening its doors to the public, beginning Thursday.

The imposing marble building has been closed since March 2020 because of pandemic precautions, and the justices themselves stayed away at various times. They have held oral arguments via teleconference, and last term met in the courtroom with only credentialed reporters, clerks, family members and a few guests looking on.

Beginning with the new term in October, oral arguments were again opened to those who waited in line for a seat — but not to those who simply wanted to tour the building.

The Supreme Court’s legal counsel on Monday defended Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. in a letter to Congress, rebutting an allegation that the justice or his wife gave advance notice to conservative donors about the outcome of a pending case or violated ethics standards.

In response to questions from lawmakers, the lawyer for the high court reiterated Alito’s denial of the allegation from a former antiabortion activist about the 2014 case involving contraceptives and religious rights. The allegation from the Rev. Rob Schenk, a former evangelical minister, is “uncorroborated” and “there is nothing to suggest that Justice Alito’s actions violated ethics standards,” legal counsel Ethan V. Torrey wrote to the chairmen of the House and Senate judiciary committees.

Former vice president Mike Pence told NewsNation that Donald Trump was “wrong” to meet with antisemite Nick Fuentes at his Mar-a-Lago estate.

In a clip from an interview that is scheduled to air at 7 p.m. Eastern, Pence said the former president was “wrong to give a white nationalist, an antisemite and a Holocaust denier a seat at the table.”

“I think he should apologize for it,” Pence said.

Still, Pence said he doesn’t believe that Trump espouses Fuentes’s beliefs.

“That being said,” Pence added, “I don’t believe Donald Trump is an antisemite. I don’t believe he’s a racist or a bigot. I would not have been his vice president if he was.”

Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, said former president Donald Trump’s meeting with white nationalist Nick Fuentes was a “bad idea on every level.”

Whoever is advising the former president and suggested he have dinner with Fuentes should be fired, Thune added.

Thune joined a small but growing number of Republicans — including two other GOP senators, Susan Collins (Maine) and Bill Cassidy (La.) — who have condemned Trump for meeting with Fuentes and the rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida. Many more Senate Republicans, however, have refrained from openly condemning the president.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Monday criticized former president Donald Trump for dining last week with Nick Fuentes and Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, a duo who have promoted antisemitism and hateful rhetoric. She also appeared to criticize Republicans, many of whom have declined to comment on Trump’s meeting.

“There is just no place for these types of vile forces in our society,” Jean-Pierre told reporters at the White House. The two men dined with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago private club in Florida last week.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) added his voice Monday to the late lobbying over the 2024 early presidential nominating calendar, with a written promise to change state law to move the state’s primary earlier if given the Democratic Party’s blessing.

Minnesota Democrats are competing with Michigan Democrats to be the Midwestern replacement to Iowa in the 2024 presidential nominating process. Democrats in both states won control of the House, Senate and governors’ mansions this month, allowing them to change the primary dates over the objections of Republicans.