Aug. 18, 2021, 6:57 a.m. ET

Daily Political Briefing

Senators rush to pass infrastructure bill as new analysis shows it would add $256 billion to deficit over the next decade.

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Congressional staff members carry binders containing details of an infrastructure agreement reached by bipartisan negotiators last week on Capitol Hill in Washington.Credit...T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York Times

Republicans and Democrats rushed on Thursday to line up a Senate vote to pass the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill, working to clear away the final obstacles despite a finding by Congress’s official scorekeeper that the bill would add more than $250 billion to the federal deficit over the next decade.

The flurry of activity came after three days of plodding work on the package, which would devote $550 billion in new money to rebuilding roads, bridges and rail systems and funding new climate resiliency and broadband access initiatives.

It followed an estimate from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office on the cost of the legislation, which was one of the last major hurdles to passing it. The C.B.O. calculated that nearly half of the new spending — $256 billion — would be financed by adding to the nation’s debt between 2021 to 2031, contradicting the claims of Republican and Democratic proponents that the measure would fully pay for itself.

Fiscal watchdogs have warned that lawmakers have used budgetary gimmicks to obscure the true cost.

Still, with their August vacations looming, senators appeared ready to move forward with the bill, a key component of President Biden’s agenda.

In a statement defending the legislation they helped craft, Senators Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, and Kyrsten Sinema, Democrat of Arizona, insisted that there were actually $519 billion in offsets.

“The American people strongly support this bipartisan legislation and we look forward to working with our colleagues on both sides of the aisle and President Biden to get it passed through Congress and signed into law,” the two senators said.

A new analysis released by the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Wharton Budget Model on Thursday estimated that the legislation would authorize $548 billion in new infrastructure investments. Changes to the tax code would finance $132 billion of that, the analysis said, but the remaining $351 billion would be deficit spending. The legislation would have no significant impact on economic growth through 2050, the analysis concluded, rejecting assertions by the Republicans and Democrats who wrote it that growth resulting from their plan would generate $56 billion in savings.

In its report on Thursday, the C.B.O. said that it did not estimate how any macroeconomic effects of the legislation would influence the federal budget.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has also taken issue with the lawmakers’ accounting. For instance, senators estimated $200 billion in savings from unused funds from earlier pandemic relief packages. But the committee said that those savings had already occurred, so they should not count as an offset for the cost of the infrastructure bill, which it estimated would have a net cost of about $350 billion.

Marc Goldwein, the senior policy director at the committee, said that the C.B.O.’s deficit projections were not capturing the additional spending that Congress would be authorizing in the bill and that the “offsets” did not appear to raise as much revenue as lawmakers anticipated. He estimated that, if enacted, it could actually add more than $400 billion to the national debt.

“It’s a bit worse than I thought,” Mr. Goldwein said.

Republicans have expressed growing concern about the cost of the Biden administration’s economic agenda, arguing that the flood of new spending would cause inflation and inflict grave economic damage. They have also declared that they will not support raising the statutory debt limit, which the Treasury Department says technically expired at the beginning of this month.

“This is absolutely unacceptable, especially at a time when Montana families are already dealing with soaring inflation and skyrocketing prices on everything from gas to groceries,” said Senator Steve Daines, Republican of Montana, who confirmed he would not support the bill shortly after the budget office released its analysis.

Senator Rick Scott, Republican of Florida and the chairman of his party’s Senate campaign arm, declared in a similar statement that “I fully support spending on infrastructure,” but “we cannot afford this reckless spending.”

The C.B.O. said on Thursday, in a report unrelated to the infrastructure legislation, that it projected the federal budget deficit would hit $3 trillion this year and average $1.2 trillion per year through 2031.

Schumer is said to tell senators to expect votes on voting rights legislation within days.

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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) wears a protective mask while arriving to the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Thursday.Credit...Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times

Senate Democrats will make another, likely futile, attempt to take up voting rights legislation in the coming days before the chamber leaves Washington for a summer recess, a sign that party leaders remain determined to try to break a logjam on the issue as Republican-led states lock in new ballot restrictions.

Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, has privately told senators to expect additional votes on the matter on the Senate’s way out of town, according to Democrats familiar with the private discussions, who described them on the condition of anonymity. The development is welcome news for voting rights activists, who have been worried that Democrats’ monthslong push to enact a massive bipartisan infrastructure bill would eclipse voting rights and sap any appetite for an aggressive bid to try to steamroll Republicans and act on it unilaterally.

But the party’s endgame remains far from clear. Republicans have blocked Democrats’ marquee voting rights legislation once with a filibuster, and have the votes to do so again. As such, Democrats’ only conceivable path forward would require changing the Senate’s filibuster rule. Doing so would require the support of all of their members, including some swing-vote Democrats, like Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who are adamantly opposed.

Democrats are up against an increasingly daunting deadline to act. Lawyers have warned party leaders that any election changes would likely have to take effect in the next month to impact the 2022 balloting. If not, Democrats will be competing in several swing states based on Republican-written rules that they fear will make it harder to turn out voters of color, a key constituency.

“There is a deep sense of urgency among many of us in the caucus,” said Senator Raphael Warnock, Democrat of Georgia. “We are witnessing an unabashed assault on voting rights — not just suppression, but an effort to overthrow the results at the local level. And it would be irresponsible for us not to do everything we can to address that.”

The Washington Post earlier reported on Mr. Schumer’s private comments on the matter.

Mr. Warnock, who is running for election next fall, is preparing to compete in a state where Republicans moved decisively this spring to make mail-in voting more difficult, constrain early voting and shift power over elections toward the G.O.P.-led legislature. In an interview, Mr. Warnock said he was all for passing an infrastructure bill, but called it a “mistake” to do so without addressing “the infrastructure of our democracy.”

He and other progressives still hope that they can prevail on moderate holdouts like Mr. Manchin to alter the Senate rules. And they view additional votes on the Senate floor as a key to making their case that Republicans are not willing to find common ground.

As of Thursday, senior Democrats were still trying to hash out what exactly they would vote on in the coming days. Mr. Schumer met on Wednesday with a group of senators working on a scaled-back version of the For the People Act, the sprawling elections overhaul bill that Senate Republicans blocked in June. They believed they could reach agreement among themselves within days.

Party leaders expect their new bill will win support from all 50 Democrats and independents in the Senate, in part by lopping off ethics provisions included in the original bill, scaling back its mandates for automatic voter registration, excising a public campaign financing system for senators and backing off an attempt to change the composition of the Federal Election Commission in favor of other changes.

Democrats are still assembling a second voting rights bill, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which could come up for a vote both in the House and the Senate in the fall. It would restore key enforcement powers under the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that were struck down by the Supreme Court in 2013.

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In a key moment for the 2022 midterms, census redistricting data will arrive next week.

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Colorado is set to gain an eighth House seat based on the 2020 census numbers.Credit...David Zalubowski/Associated Press

After a lengthy delay, the Census Bureau will release the data used to redraw congressional and state legislative boundaries on Thursday, the agency said in a statement, setting up what is certain to be a highly contentious nationwide fight over redistricting before the midterm elections next year.

The census data had been delayed largely because of difficulties in collecting and processing the enormous amount of information amid the coronavirus pandemic, but also because of efforts by President Donald J. Trump to meddle with the census by adjusting its timing.

The pandemic and Mr. Trump’s actions — he also sought to add a citizenship question — have left some people questioning the count’s accuracy. The debate over the citizenship question, in particular, has raised worries about possible suppression of the participation of Latino communities.

The delay forced many states to delay their redistricting plans, which will most likely lead to a compressed, scrambled process with elevated stakes. There is growing belief in Washington that the balance of power in the House of Representatives after the 2022 midterm elections will depend largely on the results of the redistricting process.

Multiple battleground states, including Florida, Texas and North Carolina, are set to gain at least one new congressional seat, as are Colorado, Montana and Oregon. Seven states will lose a seat: New York, California, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Illinois.

Potential House and Senate candidates have also been forced to keep their political ambitions frozen in amber as they wait to see whether redistricting will affect their ability to hold on to a current seat, open up an opportunity to run for a newly drawn seat, or otherwise change their calculus for seeking a particular office.

A rocky road awaits the bipartisan infrastructure bill in the House.

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Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, speaks with reporters on Monday during an amendment vote for the infrastructure bill.Credit...Sarahbeth Maney/The New York Times

As senators grind through votes this week on a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill, discontent is building among progressive Democrats, signaling a potentially bitter intraparty fight to come in the House.

Liberals who bristled at seeing their top priorities jettisoned as President Biden and other Democrats sought an elusive deal with Republicans have warned that they may seek to change the bill substantially. At minimum, House Democrats have made clear that they do not intend to take up the bill until Congress approves a second package to provide trillions of dollars for health care, education, child care and climate change programs, something not expected until the fall.

The result is that, even as senators navigate their compromise toward a final vote that could come within days — pausing every few hours to congratulate themselves for finding bipartisan consensus in a time of deep division — the legislation still faces a rocky path beyond the Senate. Democrats’ House majority is slim enough that even a few defections could sink legislation, and progressives have been open about their reluctance to support the infrastructure bill without a guarantee that the larger package, expected to cost about $3.5 trillion, will pass.

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President Biden sets a goal of 50 percent electric vehicle sales by 2030.

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Electric vehicles at a charging station in Lakewood, Colo.Credit...David Zalubowski/Associated Press

The White House said on Thursday that it was aiming for half of all new vehicles sold by 2030 to be electric powered, portraying the shift to battery power as essential to keep pace with China and to fight climate change.

President Biden announced the target on Thursday as part of a plan that will also include construction of a nationwide network of charging stations, financial incentives for consumers to buy electric cars, and financial aid for carmakers and suppliers to retool factories for electric vehicles.

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Biden Wants 50% of New Cars to Be Electric by 2030

President Biden, surrounded by labor and business leaders from the American auto industry, signed an executive order on Thursday setting a national goal to have half of all new vehicles sold by 2030 be electric.

Labor and industry, state and local leaders are all working together to write the next chapter of the American story. As I’ve said before, we’re in competition with China and many other nations for the 21st century. To win, we’re going to have to make sure the future will be made in America. They’re a vision of the future that is now beginning to happen, the future of the automobile industry that is electric — battery, electric plug-in, hybrid electric, fuel cell electric. It’s electric and there’s no turning back. The question is whether we’ll lead or fall behind in the race for the future. Today, I’m announcing steps we’re taking to set a new pace for electric vehicles — first, I’m following through on the campaign commitment to reverse the previous administration’s short-sighted rollback of vehicle emissions and efficiency standards. And I’m doing so and with the support of the industry, the automobile industry. Today, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation are unveiling proposals to do just that. These agencies are beginning to work on the next round of standards for a broad class of vehicles, for cars, SUVs, pickup trucks, medium and heavy-duty vehicles. This is an executive order strengthening America’s leadership in clean cars and trucks. And again, let me start off by thanking the C.E.O.s as well as the U.A.W. You all, all you — is the reason why it’s happening. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right.

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President Biden, surrounded by labor and business leaders from the American auto industry, signed an executive order on Thursday setting a national goal to have half of all new vehicles sold by 2030 be electric.CreditCredit...Tom Brenner for The New York Times

“Folks, the rest of the world is moving ahead. We’ve just got to step up,” Mr. Biden said on Thursday.

The president is also seeking to tighten fuel economy standards that were rolled back by former President Donald J. Trump.

Electric vehicles account for a much higher share of auto sales in Europe and China because of incentives for consumers and government regulation. In June, less than 4 percent of the new cars sold in the United States were pure electric vehicles or plug-in hybrids, according to Argonne National Laboratory.

“Despite pioneering the technology, the U.S. is behind in the race to manufacture these vehicles and the batteries that go in them,” the White House said in a statement. “Today, the U.S. market share of electric vehicle sales is only one-third that of the Chinese electric vehicle market.”

The Biden administration’s target is generally in line with what the major American carmakers have set for themselves. Virtually all major U.S. automakers as well as numerous foreign automakers endorsed the plan, though they described the target as 40 percent to 50 percent electric vehicles and said it would be possible only with enough charging stations for millions of cars.

“We look forward to working with the Biden administration, Congress and state and local governments to enact policies that will enable these ambitious objectives,” Ford Motor, General Motors and Stellantis, which owns Jeep and Chrysler, said in a joint statement.

The United Automobile Workers union expressed support for the plan, as did BMW, Honda, Volkswagen and Volvo.

A Russian-aligned disinformation campaign pretends that U.S. Covid vaccinations will be forced.

The cartoon posted on the far-right discussion forum showed police officers wearing Biden-Harris campaign logos on bulletproof vests and battering down a door with a large syringe. A caption read in part, “In Biden’s America.”

The cartoon appears to be an example of the latest effort in Russian-aligned disinformation: a campaign that taps into skepticism and fears of coronavirus vaccination to not just undermine the effort to immunize people but also try to falsely link the Biden-Harris administration to the idea of forced inoculations. The image was one of several spotted by Graphika, a company tracking disinformation campaigns.

Both Russia and China have worked to promote their own vaccines through messaging that undermines American and European vaccination programs, according to the State Department’s Global Engagement Center. But Moscow has also spread conspiracy theories. Last year, the department began warning that Russia was using fringe websites to promote doubts around vaccinations.

The rise of the Delta variant of Covid-19 — and shifting scientific advice on how to defend against it — has created an atmosphere for misinformation to more easily spread, experts said.

“Disinformation thrives in an information vacuum,” said Lisa Kaplan, the chief executive of the Alethea Group, which helps corporations guard against misinformation. “That is when disinformation can really take hold. And knowing how the Russians typically play those situations, it wouldn’t surprise me they are trying to take advantage of it.”

The aim of various Russian groups continues to be to exacerbate tensions in Western societies, a key foreign policy goal of Moscow, according to American officials briefed on the disinformation efforts.

The campaign comes after President Biden warned President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia last month to rein in ransomware attacks emanating out of Russia and aimed at critical American infrastructure. Though the ransomware attacks are separate from the disinformation campaigns, the warning was the latest effort by United States officials to prod Russia to rein in destructive digital incursions.

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Biden signs a bill awarding the Congressional Gold Medal to officers who responded to the Capitol riot.

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President Biden spoke on Thursday with the children of William Evans, a Capitol Police officer who died after a car rammed into him outside the Capitol in April.Credit...Tom Brenner for The New York Times

President Biden on Thursday signed a bill awarding the Congressional Gold Medal, the body’s highest expression of national appreciation, to a group of law enforcement officers who responded to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

The president, who was joined by Vice President Kamala Harris, signed the legislation during a Rose Garden ceremony. The solemn speech that followed served as an emotional counterweight to a campaign by some Republicans to distort and deny what happened at the Capitol that day.

“My fellow Americans, the tragedy that day deserves the truth above all else,” Mr. Biden said. “We cannot allow history to be rewritten. We cannot allow the heroism of these officers to be forgotten. We have to understand what happened, the honest and unvarnished truth. We have to face it.”

The ceremony was attended by more than a dozen members of the Capitol Police and Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department. Among them were Officer Michael Fanone of the Metropolitan Police, who was seriously injured during the riot and who has publicly pleaded with Republican lawmakers to denounce the lies some members of their party have been telling about the deadly attack.

Congress passed the bill honoring the officers this week amid reports of the suicides of two officers who had been at the Capitol on the day of the riot, bringing to four the known number of officers who have killed themselves in its aftermath. Dozens of other officers are still recovering from the psychological and physical trauma they suffered at the hands of the mob. The families of several fallen officers were also invited to attend the ceremony on Thursday.

Last week, four police officers who defended the Capitol that day testified about their experiences in excruciating detail before a special committee investigating the riot, describing the brutal violence, racism and hostility they experienced as a throng of angry rioters, acting in the name of President Donald J. Trump, beat, crushed and shocked them.

Around 140 police officers were injured during the attack, and 15 were hospitalized. Officer Brian D. Sicknick of the Capitol Police died of a stroke after clashing with the mob.

The Senate voted in February to award a Congressional Gold Medal to Officer Eugene Goodman, who led rioters away from the Senate chamber and directed Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, away from the mob.

In June, the House expanded the measure to apply to all members of the Capitol Police and the Metropolitan Police Department who were involved in the Jan. 6 response. That legislation passed overwhelmingly, though 21 far-right Republicans voted against it.

Under the new legislation, four Congressional Gold Medals will be issued to honor the officers: one each to be displayed at the headquarters of the Capitol Police and the Metropolitan Police Department, one at the Smithsonian and one at the Capitol. A plaque at the Capitol will list all the law enforcement agencies that helped protect the building.

On Thursday, Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader, praised the officers for defending the Capitol.

“On Jan. 6, Congress got a firsthand reminder of a reality that many American citizens face every day,” Mr. McConnell said in a statement. “That the brave men and women of law enforcement really are a thin blue line standing between peace and chaos.”

The Rose Garden event gave Mr. Biden a fresh opportunity to stand as a defender of law enforcement, even as his White House continues to face pressure from some progressive Democrats who support defunding police departments that employ racist tactics.

On Thursday, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, was asked about Mr. Biden’s support of law enforcement and comments made by Representative Cori Bush, Democrat of Missouri, who said she needed private security after receiving death threats in response to her support for defunding police departments.

“There may be some in the Democratic Party, including Congresswoman Bush, who disagree with him; that’s OK,” Ms. Psaki told reporters. “It does not appear to be becoming a Democratic message, even though there might be a desire for that on the other side.”

For his part, the president made clear in his remarks on Thursday how he felt about the officers being honored and what they experienced on Jan. 6.

“It breaks my heart,” Mr. Biden said. “It breaks the heart of the nation to remember that you were assaulted by thousands of violent insurrectionists at the Capitol of the United States of America.”

After the president finished speaking, he stepped out from behind the lectern and began shaking hands. As he was busy greeting family members, several officers in uniform, including Officer Fanone, embraced and wiped their eyes. A military band played “Amazing Grace.”

Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas calls a new legislative special session, putting pressure on Democrats.

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Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas speaking at a news conference in Austin in early June. On Thursday, the day before the current special session of the Texas Legislature was to expire, Mr. Abbott called for another special session that is set to begin on Saturday.Credit...Eric Gay/Associated Press

Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas on Thursday called a new special session of the Texas Legislature that is set to begin on Saturday, a swift move that puts pressure on Democratic lawmakers who left the state for Washington last month to block the passage of a major Republican bill overhauling Texas elections.

The current special session is set to expire on Friday, but Mr. Abbott issued his call a day early. With the Democrats’ absence from the state House of Representatives denying the chamber a quorum, the Legislature has been unable to pass any new laws. Mr. Abbott has vowed to call as many special sessions as required to pass the elections bill and other conservative priorities.

“The Texas Legislature achieved a great deal during the 87th Legislative Session, and they have a responsibility to finish the work that was started,” Mr. Abbott said in a statement.

Asked about the special session, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said:

“Our fundamental view is that if you are pushing for legislation that makes it harder and not easier to vote, that makes it less accessible, that limits the ability of people to get to the polls, to take time off to do that, then our question is, what are you afraid of here? Are you afraid of more people getting out to vote?”

When asked if President Biden thought the Texas Democrats should stay in the state rather than leave when the new special session got underway, she said that the president would be supportive of them staying to vote.

“Certainly, the president believes that, one, they’ve been outspoken advocates and champions of voting rights,” she said, adding that if the legislative calendar “required them to be there, we would support that.”

The agenda for the latest special session remains largely the same; in addition to a new voting bill, Mr. Abbott is calling on the Legislature to pass laws that would restrict the rights of transgender student athletes, limit the ways that students are taught about racism, add additional border security, further limit access to abortion and crack down on perceived censorship of conservatives by social media companies, among other proposals.

The governor did add multiple new priorities to his list of 17 agenda items — including one that said “legislation relating to legislative quorum requirements,” though it was unclear what that might mean.

The new special session presents a new fork in the road for the Texas Democrats who have been staying in Washington for the past 24 days, trying to pressure President Biden and leading Democrats in Congress to push for federal legislation to protect voting rights. In recent days, with the end of the first special session approaching, the Democrats have weighed whether to return home or remain in the nation’s capital.

They currently have an event scheduled for Friday outside the Senate chamber on Capitol Hill to “address their victory in killing the Texas Republicans’ anti-voter measures back home.”

Katie Rogers contributed reporting.

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Biden defers deportations of Hong Kong residents in the U.S.

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A protest in Hong Kong in May in support of 47 pro-democracy activists who were charged under China’s national security law. The high threshold for bail means that most are likely to spend months if not years in jail before they go to trial.Credit...Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times

President Biden on Thursday granted special protections to Hong Kong residents in the United States, offering them a temporary deferral from deportation in response to an escalating crackdown by Chinese officials on democratic institutions and political dissent in Hong Kong.

In a memo announcing the decision, Mr. Biden said there were “compelling foreign policy reasons” for the order, which would give any resident of Hong Kong targeted for deportation an 18-month reprieve to live temporarily in the United States.

“Over the last year, the P.R.C. has continued its assault on Hong Kong’s autonomy, undermining its remaining democratic processes and institutions, imposing limits on academic freedom, and cracking down on freedom of the press,” Mr. Biden said in the memo, noting that at least 10,000 people, including pro-democracy officials and activists, had been arrested in connection with anti-government protests that began in 2019.

Mr. Biden added that “offering safe haven for Hong Kong residents who have been deprived of their guaranteed freedoms in Hong Kong furthers United States interests in the region.”

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said in a statement that “Hong Kong’s promise of democracy has dimmed,” and that the United States would offer safe haven to residents who feared returning to the city.

The order is the latest move by the Biden administration seeking to respond to the crackdown on dissent in Hong Kong. The United States sanctioned Chinese officials last month for their role in undermining Hong Kong’s democratic freedoms. Sanctions imposed by the Trump administration had barred other officials involved in the crackdown from traveling to the United States and frozen their assets in the country.

In a statement on Friday, the Hong Kong branch of China’s foreign ministry said the offer of “so-called safe havens” made clear the United States’ “sinister intention of playing the Hong Kong card to contain China’s development.”

“This is not at all standing with Hong Kong people,” the statement said. “This is standing with a small group of anti-China Hong Kong rioters.”

Beijing imposed a sweeping new security law in June 2020 granting broad powers to suppress dissent in the city, laying out new offenses such as “separatism” and “collusion with foreign forces” that carry penalties of up to life in prison. It also demanded oversight of schools and news media.

Since that law took effect, Beijing has unleashed a stampede of actions to bring Hong Kong into political lock step with the mainland: arresting activists, seizing assets, firing government workers, detaining newspaper editors and rewriting school curriculums.

The high threshold for bail means that most of those who have been charged under the security law are likely to spend months if not years in jail before they go to trial.

Life in the city has been drastically altered. Residents swarm police hotlines to inform on their neighbors and colleagues. Police officers goose-step in formation in the streets. And civil servants have been ordered to sign pledges of fealty to the government.

A bipartisan group of former health officials urge more safety rules in the private sector.

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Tyson Foods workers got coronavirus vaccines from health officials at the company’s Wilkesboro, N.C., facility in February.Credit...Melissa Melvin/FRE, via Associated Press

A bipartisan group of officials from the past five presidential administrations, as well as public health experts, are pressing private sector leaders to adopt a new set of recommendations to maximize coronavirus vaccination among their employees.

“You have a key role to play in our national quest to keep Americans safe, while respecting individual liberties,” an open letter from the group says, asking businesses to institute new workplace rules that would complement actions by federal and local governments to increase vaccinations against the surging Delta variant. Fully vaccinated people are protected against the worst outcomes of Covid-19, including those caused by the Delta variant.

The letter recommends that private companies, which employ 124 million Americans, require staff members to get vaccinated. Last year, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said employers could require immunization, though companies that do could still face lawsuits.

But it also recommends steps for companies to take if they choose not to require vaccination for their workforces.

Those include an “infection screening protocol,” which would require twice-a-week screenings through rapid tests. Anyone with proof of vaccination would be allowed to bypass that routine testing. The letter also recommends that companies provide incentives for employees to get vaccinated, including cash payments and paid leave.

“We recognize that any protocols create some amount of burden and cost for businesses and your employees,” the letter says. “Still, these will be relatively modest compared to the significant cost of ongoing disruption and uncertainty in business productivity and in people’s lives.”

The private sector initiative comes a week after President Biden sought to revive the country’s stalled vaccination push with a new set of requirements for federal workers and a plea to local governments to offer cash incentives.

Some of the nation's largest employers, like Disney and Tyson Foods, have mandated vaccines for their workers, while others like Google and Microsoft are requiring proof of vaccination to return to the office.

The letter is signed by Jerome Adams, the surgeon general under President Donald J. Trump; Richard Carmona, the surgeon general under President George W. Bush; Kathleen Sebelius, the health secretary in the Obama administration; Andy Slavitt, who served as a senior adviser to the Covid response coordinator in the Biden administration; and Rosalynn Carter, the former first lady, among others.

The new private sector push is being driven by the Covid Collaborative, a bipartisan group of political and scientific leaders working on vaccine education, which has worked closely with the White House on the issue of vaccine hesitancy. John Bridgeland, a co-founder of the Covid Collaborative, said the plan was to get 1,000 businesses or more to act.

Companies like Accenture, Baptist Health, Kaiser Permanente, Tyson Foods, Live Nation and the Ad Council have signed on to support what the group is calling #CovidSafeZones, with more big employers expected to join in the coming days.

“We recognize there is momentum for collective action, so no business feels disadvantaged and the impact of these steps is maximized,” the letter says. “We believe if you take visible action, many more will follow.”

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Spending in the infrastructure bill makes clear that both parties now see climate change as a crisis.

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Rescue workers and civilians waited for emergency crews in the Houston neighborhood of Meyerland after Hurricane Harvey made landfall in August 2017.Credit...Alyssa Schukar for The New York Times

The bipartisan infrastructure deal struck this week provides new money for climate resilience unmatched in United States history: Tens of billions of dollars to protect against floods, reduce damage from wildfires, develop new sources of drinking water in areas plagued by drought, and even relocate entire communities away from vulnerable places.

But the bill is remarkable for another reason. For the first time, both parties have acknowledged — by their actions, if not their words — that the United States is unprepared for the worsening effects of climate change and requires an enormous and urgent infusion of money and effort to get ready.

No amount of money appears to be too much, and bipartisan consensus is easy to find.

However, agreement between Republicans and Democrats to reduce the emissions that are causing the planet to warm is more elusive, as Republicans are largely resistant to limiting the use of fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal.

As a result, Democrats in Congress and the Biden administration are aiming to fold more aggressive climate action into a separate budget bill, which Democrats hope to pass even without Republican votes.

The infrastructure bill, which could pass the Senate in the coming days, still faces uncertainty in the House, where progressives oppose provisions to fund natural gas and nuclear plants, among other things. But money to protect communities from sea level rise and extreme weather has few opponents.

“The climate crisis impacts both red states and blue states alike,” Senator Tom Carper, Democrat of Delaware and chairman of the environment and public works committee, said in a statement. Many of his Republican colleagues, he added, “have seen firsthand how calamitous the consequences can be if we fail to invest in resilience.”

In a new ad, a Democratic group pointedly pushes Biden on voting rights and the filibuster.

A major Democratic nonprofit group is taking aim at President Biden in a new television ad, urging the president to take a more aggressive and concrete stand on overhauling the filibuster to pass federal voting legislation.

The ad, aired by a group called End Citizens United and Let America Vote Action Fund, is the first to publicly call out the president by name on the issue and is yet another sign of growing tension between the White House and left-leaning voting rights groups over the federal response to a wave of new laws governing elections from states with Republican-controlled legislatures this year.

The ad, which will begin airing on Friday, is centered on comments by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. made at a 1963 news conference. In those remarks, the civil rights leader denounced the filibuster, a procedural tool that requires a supermajority of 60 votes to bring bills to a final vote. Its use has often stymied major legislation.

In the ad, as the screen flickers between long voting lines in the 1960s and more recent elections, King says: ”Senators who will use the filibuster to keep the majority of people from even voting — and certainly they would not want the majority of people to vote because they know they do not represent the majority of the American people.”

The group said it would spend $1.1 million on the ad, which will air on broadcast and cable television in Washington, D.C.; Michigan; Pennsylvania; and Wisconsin, including during Olympics broadcasts.

“This moment calls for presidential leadership, and we’re asking President Biden to fight like heck and use every tool available to him, including using his relationships in the Senate, to call for a reform to the filibuster to protect this sacred right,” said Tiffany Muller, the president of End Citizens United and Let America Vote Action Fund.

The president has called on Congress to pass a federal voting rights law, including in an impassioned speech last month in Philadelphia in which he called restrictive voting laws in states like Georgia, Florida and Iowa “the most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War.”

But he has stopped short of publicly calling for a change to the filibuster, which would almost certainly be necessary to pass any kind of voting legislation in the Senate, where both parties hold 50 seats and Vice President Kamala Harris can break ties.

The ad closes with a clear directive: “President Biden, please, tell the Senate: Reform the filibuster. Everything is at stake.”

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