Senate Archives - Newshacker

Justice Stephen Breyer is Retiring. A Confirmation Battle Looms

Longtime Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, 83, the most senior member of the court’s three-justice liberal wing, is set to announce his retirement Thursday. The decision to retire comes just ten months away from the midterm elections, where the Democrats are widely expected to lose control of Congress.

How Might the 2022 Midterms Play Out?

The 2022 midterms are just under 10 months away. As they get closer, we are starting to get a better picture of how these elections might play out, especially as congressional redistricting is starting to be finalized by most states. We are starting to see clues of how some of the most consequential elections of this midterm election cycle might play out for both the Democrats and the Republicans.

Schumer Sets Up Vote For Senate Rule Change To Pass Voting Rights Legislation

On Monday morning, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., announced in a letter to colleagues that the Senate will vote on changing the rules to pass voting rights legislation if Republicans block a vote to open debate by Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Jan. 17. The threat to nuke the filibuster comes at the beginning of a critical midterm election year for the Democratic Party, where control of both houses of Congress is at stake.

Senate Passes Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill and Preps For Partisan Bill

The Senate has finally passed the bipartisan infrastructure bill negotiated months ago and was at once on the brink of failure on Tuesday. The package includes $1.2 trillion of new spending on physical infrastructure, $550 billion of which is new spending. In a related move, Senate Democrats on early Wednesday morning passed a budget resolution allowing them to proceed on a $3.5 trillion partisan economic, infrastructure, and investment package.

The Most Competitive Races of the 2022 Senate Elections

Though they are still more than a year away, the 2022 Senate elections are already shaping up to be one of the most competitive cycles, with many states expected to be battlegrounds. The result of the 2022 Senate elections will be a key indicator of the popularity of the Biden administration and will determine the balance of power between the parties in Washington.

Senate Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill In Peril

It has been a long time since President Joe Biden first announced an infrastructure and jobs bill and over a month since a group of senators agreed on a bipartisan infrastructure package totaling $1.2 trillion, with $600 billion in new spending. Anything this large on a bipartisan scale is clearly fragile, and with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer trying to force a procedural vote on the bill on Wednesday, many Republican senators, including some of those who helped negotiate the bill, are having second thoughts.

Decoding the Moves of Sen. Joe Manchin

Sen. Joe Manchin, a moderate Democrat from the very Republican state of West Virginia, may seem to be one of the last, if only, conservative-esque, centrist Democrats left in Congress. He seems to oppose many Democratic priorities, such as on abortion, increasing the minimum wage, and gun control, and always tries to act in a bipartisan way. Lately, he voiced his opposition to passing the For the People Act, a large, sweeping Democrat-backed voting rights reformed package also known as H.R. 1 or S. 1. However, despite this, he isn’t nearly as conservative or as Republican-friendly as he may first seem.

Senate GOP Blocks Jan. 6 Commission

Despite compromises by the Democratic Party, Senate Republicans have blocked an effort lead by the Democrats to establish a bipartisan commission investigating the riots and insurrection at the Capitol Building on Jan. 6. With a bipartisan commission now officially off the books, the only other solution left for the Democrats may be to establish a congressional select committee into investigating the attack, which is sure to be more partisan.

Why Missouri Could See a Competitive Senate Race in 2022

Missouri, once a major political bellwether, has slowly drifted into being solid for the Republicans. Therefore, it may come as a surprise to many that Missouri had a Democratic senator as recently as 2018, and the 2016 U.S. Senate election here was very competitive as well. Though the 2022 Missouri U.S. Senate election is expected to be safe for the Republicans, there is one scenario in which this race could become competitive.

An Early Look Into the 2022 Senate Elections

After talking about why increasing political polarization and hyperpartisanship are horrible for the Senate, today, we are going to discuss the 2022 Senate elections as a whole. The 2022 midterms will be the first major federal elections to be held in President Joe Biden’s first term, and we could see a Republican sweep if Biden is disapproved of in a year and a half’s time, or we could see Democrats maintain control if Biden and his party remain popular.

Partisanship is Destroying How the Senate Functions

The Senate is the most important legislative body in the United States. It is the upper chamber of Congress, and is also the body that confirms all of a president’s nominees. By design, the Senate was meant to exist to give smaller states equal representation in Congress and encourage bipartisanship, but America’s increasing partisanship is slowly eating away at the principles of how the Senate once worked.