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The latest Democratic battle to expand Medicare access is under way.

A group of more than 150 House Democrats from the progressive and centrist wings of the party are launching a campaign to include an expansion of Medicare in President Joe Biden's infrastructure plan, The New York Times reported.

They sent a letter on Thursday to Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris arguing to widen the federal health program so it includes a broader range of Americans, along with growing the range of benefits provided so it includes dental, vision, and hearing aids.

"Medicare expansion means more coverage for more people and by finally allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices, it's at a lower cost for taxpayers," Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus Pramila Jayapal, a leader of the effort, said in a Friday tweet. "Let's get this done."

The plan would cut the eligibility age from 65 to 60, adding roughly 23 million Americans into the government health insurance program. The group projects it would amount to $200 billion over a decade. They say the price tag would be offset with another proposal: empowering Medicare to negotiate the cost of prescription drugs, which Democrats have failed to achieve in the past.

The effort is certain to trigger Republican opposition and potentially reopen a fierce debate among Democrats on healthcare. The last Democratic presidential primary was largely defined by policy brawls over Medicare for All and whether Americans should be able to keep their private coverage in a reform effort.

Expanding Medicare access is popular with voters, however, particularly reducing prescription drug costs. Up to now, however, Biden and Democrats have directed their efforts at expanding the insurance subsidies available under the Affordable Care Act.

Widening Medicare coverage could run into roadblocks in the Senate from centrist Democrats. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia has stated his opposition, complicating the path ahead for other Democrats supportive of the measure. "No, I'm not for it, period," he told The Washington Post last month. It's unclear why Manchin opposes it, although he told The Hill in 2019 the government "can't even pay for Medicare for some."

Biden continues negotiating with Republicans on an infrastructure plan, and the talks are set to stretch into at least early June. The White House did not include a Medicare expansion or a blueprint to cut the price of prescription drugs in its economic plans, though it called on Congress to approve the measures in its budget without laying out specific policies.

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Democrats want to allow 60-year-olds into Medicare as part of Biden's infrastructure package - Business Insider

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Karla Perez and Esperanza Gonzalez warm up by a barbecue grill during the power outage caused by the winter storm on Feb. 16 in Houston.

Texas Democrats are demanding an investigation into the death toll of the catastrophic February storm and power outages after a BuzzFeed News analysis found that hundreds more people likely died from the freezing temperatures than the state has acknowledged.

An official investigation into the true death toll of the power grid collapse is our best shot at guaranteeing accountability for those in power who allowed this to happen, former member of Congress and 2020 presidential candidate Beto ORourke told BuzzFeed News in an email.

The loss of life that is depicted in this story is heartbreaking and the fact that the death toll numbers have been miscalculated is absolutely unacceptable, said Rep. Marc Veasey, a member of the Houses Energy and Commerce Committee, by email. We cant let this stand. We need answers and accountability.

The states official tally of deaths from the storm currently stands at 151. But BuzzFeed News ran an excess deaths analysis of how many more people died during and right after the storm than would have been expected, given long-term demographic and seasonal trends. Our best estimate is that around 700 people were killed in the week of the storm and the worst power outages.

The staggering toll exposes the magnitude of the states failure in preventing the power grids collapse, despite being warned of its vulnerabilities, and adds new pressure to hold local leaders accountable. Moreover, an undercounted death toll creates economic problems for the families of victims. Without an official acknowledgment that their loved ones died due to the storm, relatives were unable to claim federal assistance for funeral costs.

In the wake of this reporting, Texas Republicans have remained silent. Not one contacted for this story responded by deadline. That included Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, who drew fierce backlash for flying to Cancn while many of his constituents shivered in dark homes without running water.

Sen. Ted Cruz checks in for a flight at Cancn International Airport as Texas endured a fatal winter storm on Feb. 18, 2021.

No Texas Republicans who serve on the Houses climate, energy, infrastructure, and science and technology committees responded to requests for comment. Neither did the Texas Republican Party, nor Republican leaders of the states legislature.

And Gov. Greg Abbott who on the eve of the storm assured Texans that the state would not lose power was also silent when asked if he would call for an investigation into the death toll. Previously, a spokesperson only told BuzzFeed News that he was working collaboratively with the House and Senate to find meaningful and lasting solutions to ensure these tragic events are never repeated.

The February blackouts, which impacted more than 4 million Texans, should not have surprised any official. A 2011 winter storm similarly triggered widespread blackouts and revealed the power grids vulnerability to cold temperatures. But a decade later, when forecasts warned of freezing weather on an unprecedented scale, power providers were still not required to protect their equipment.

Now state lawmakers are debating a proposal that would finally require power plants and some natural gas providers, which power much of the states electricity, to weatherize their equipment to the cold or face some fines. And with the legislative session ending on May 31, they are quickly running out of time.

Im honestly not sure if the bill passes, state Rep. Jon Rosenthal, a Democrat, told BuzzFeed News. But he hopes the discussions about the disasters true death toll add pressure to get the bill over the finish line. I would hope that it provides more drive to really take substantive measures to fix our electrical grid.

And state Sen. Sarah Eckhardt, a Democrat, told BuzzFeed News in an email, "we will be reconvening again in the fall for redistricting and should use that opportunity to address the risks that continue to threaten our grid and the lives of our people."

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in September 2020

The Texas Department of State Health Services, which is responsible for the states official count, said it is still working on the tally. But it has no current plans to use statistical methods similar to the BuzzFeed News analysis to investigate the full toll from the storm and power outages, which would include medically vulnerable people whose deaths have been attributed to their underlying conditions.

As is noted on our website, the investigations into deaths related to the February winter storm is ongoing, spokesperson Lara Anton told BuzzFeed News by email. We expect the count to change as more information is reviewed. Our count includes deaths that can be verified as disaster-related rather than estimates of excess deaths from a statistical analysis.

Meanwhile, Democrats in Texas are not only calling for an investigation into the storms death count but are also blaming the catastrophe on Republicans who control the states government.

Texas Democrats will continue to push for real answers on the true scope of this disaster, and will hold Abbott and Texas Republicans accountable for their damaging and deadly failures in leadership, Clare Donohue-Meyer, a spokesperson for the Texas Democratic Party, told BuzzFeed News in an email.

Not only did Republican leadership fail to address the grids vulnerabilities while they still had a chance, said ORourke, but they also refused to adopt any sort of significant disaster response following the blackouts, leaving thousands of Texans without the vital services and medical care they needed to survive in the days and weeks after the storm hit.

Governor Abbott failed Texans miserably, said Julin Castro, the former US secretary of housing and urban development. He failed to prepare and respond to the winter power crisis that left hundreds more dead than his administration has told us. Republicans in the pocket of lobbyists left our state vulnerable to disaster and are now covering up the extent of their failures. Texans deserve an independent investigation to hold public and private sector leaders accountable and ensure this failure never happens again.

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Beto O'Rourke And Texas Democrats Are Demanding An Investigation Into The True Death Count Of The Winter Storm - BuzzFeed News

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Roughly three months ago, Evanna Hu realized something had to change. For months, she and other Asian Americans working in the national security field had heard a startling number of anecdotes about a climate of fear and hostility toward people of Asian heritage. Approval for security clearances were taking a lot longer for some government employees and contractors. At the State Department, more Asian American diplomats are facing restrictions on where they can serve and what positions they can holda process that has grown so dispiriting that one employee told CNN, It helps immensely to change ones last name.

For Hu, the chief executive of an artificial intelligence company that does business with the Defense Department, she began noticing microaggressions and not-so-micro aggressions in her interactions with government officials. There was always this initial skepticism of my citizenship and my loyalty, she recalled. I finally got really fed up with it. Sheturned to several peers and wrote an open letter. Signed by more than 220 people in her field, the letter condemned the xenophobia that is spreading as U.S. policy concentrates on great power competition and warned that it has exacerbated suspicions, microaggressions, discrimination, and blatant accusations of disloyalty simply because of the way we look.

Across the United States, anti-Asian hate crimes have skyrocketed in recent months. The Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino found that while hate crimes as a whole largely declined in the largest US cities, anti-Asian hate crimes rose by nearly 150 percent in 2020. Researchers and Asian American community leaders believe the Trump administrations fixation on China as the source of the coronavirusoften with disparaging phrases like China virus or kung flucontributed to an environment in which Asian Americans are more at risk.Trumps use of the term China virus was deadly for the Asian American community because it really did racialize the virus, says San Francisco State University professor Russell Jeung, who co-founded the group Stop AAPI Hate last year. Chinese people were stigmatized.

When discussing China as a rival superpower vying for sway in foreign relations, Republicans were quick to use near-apocalyptic language to characterize the threat. In December, then-Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe wrote that China poses the greatest threat to America today, and the greatest threat to democracy and freedom world-wide since World War II. In March,Rep. Rob Wittman (R-VA), a member of the House committee that approves the Pentagons annual policy priorities, said Chinas goal is nothing less than the complete destruction of the United States.

While Democrats have largely avoided the racistcaricatures that Trump would employ, the emphasis on China as a top threat and rival hasnt changed that much under Joe Biden.The president has made competition with China a key priority for the US military and described the US conflict with China as a great inflection point in history that determines who will win the 21st century. Hes even kept some of Trumps more hawkish policies, including a wave of tariffs affecting Chinese goods, in place for now.

Chinas repressive turn under leader Xi Jinping poses innumerable challenges for the region and for Chinese people themselves, who find their freedoms restricted and their cultural diversity extinguished. In the United States, China poses a much different, multilayered problem. Watch a congressional oversight hearing on nearly any topicfrom espionage to climate change or tradeand China almost always comes up.

This laser-like focus on China comes with its own risks, community leaders and Asian American scholars say. As China becomes a universal bogeyman for US politicians, Chinese Americans can become targets of racism in the same way Muslim Americans were during the War on Terror. How Democrats learn to talk about Chinain all its manifold complexitymay not just be key to the next decade of national security strategy. It will also go a long way toward avoiding the mistakes of the last two decades and show how serious Joe Biden is at confronting anti-Asian violence.

After the murder of eight people in Georgia two months ago, Biden went to Atlanta and said our silence is complicity. To Jessica Lee, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a think tank that advocates military restraint, Bidens remarks missed the mark in an important way. Lee, who has written frequently about the connection between national security policy and anti-Asian violence, wrote that Bidens White House failed to acknowledge that Washingtons over-the-top language about China is fueling an atmosphere of fear and anxiety, which boomerangs in the form of violence against Asian Americans.

If there was any doubt that American foreign policy is domestic policy, she added, these shootings should quell them.

Anti-Asian hate is far from a recent phenomenon in US history. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was one of the first pieces of legislation to explicitly limit immigration and remains to this day the only federal immigration restriction to single out just one specific country or ethnic group.

In 1913, California barred Asian immigrants from owning land, becoming the first of more than a dozen states to impose similar legislation. Japanese Americans, many of whom would be moved to internment camps following Japans attack on Pearl Harbor, were increasingly targeted as well. Later laws that privileged the admittance of Northern Europeans at the expense of Asians and Mexicans solidified the nativist notion of the United States as a white country. President Woodrow Wilson, asked by a supporter in California for his view on Chinese exclusion, responded,We cannot make a homogenous population out of people who do not blend with the Caucasian race.

China and the United Statesallies in World War IIfound themselves on opposite sides of the Korean War and relations between the two countries were not normalized until Richard Nixon visited the country in 1972. China eventually became a global player and successive US presidents bet on its economic opening sparking a kind of social and cultural liberalization. But that bet proved wrong. The Chinese Communist Party has only become more entrenched in its rule as Chinas economy has grown at a faster rate than any other modern country.

Recent hostility toward Chinese Americans corresponds with a rise in the perception of China as a predominant threat to US national security. In 2001, only 14 percent of Americans believed China was the greatest enemy of the United States, according to a Gallup poll. Two decades later, 45 percent of Americans listed China. The prominence of China as a national security talking point has kept Democratic lawmakers and foreign policy activists alert to the potential for the conversation to veer in a racist direction. When this rhetoric gets out of hand and there is intense xenophobia, then there is a blowback on Asian Americans, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), himself a Taiwanese immigrant, said at an Asia Society event in April.

The challenge is to separate the actions of Xi Jinpings government, which include the killing and imprisonment of Uyghur Muslims and the eradication of democratic norms in Hong Kong, from the identity of Chinese and Asian Americans. In recent weeks, progressive foreign policy advocacy groups have become especially vocal about establishing this distinction. The relationship between the United States and China is poised to be one of the most pivotal foreign policy issues of the coming decades, begins a memo sent out by one group, Win Without War, earlier this month. Unfortunately, much of the current discourse on the issueon both sides of the aisleis steeped in a dangerous, antagonistic mindset that risks igniting a catastrophic new Cold War. The memo goes on to emphasize the importance of cooperation with China on global issues like climate change and nuclear proliferation and rejects the notion that a threat from China can besolved through further military buildup or economicantagonism.

Lee, the senior research at the Quincy Institute, is one of many progressives and scholars in the antiwar community working to draw attention to examples of overheated rhetoric, especially from Democrats. Last spring, activists flagged a Biden campaign ad that criticized Trumps sluggish response to the coronavirus pandemic. Trump rolled over for the Chinese, the ads narrator says at one point.

Asian American activists were not pleased, asPoliticoreported at the time. Wow @JoeBiden. Already trying to out-Trump Trump, Cecillia Wang, a deputy legal director at the national ACLU tweeted. This kind of fearmongering is causing violent attacks on Asian Americans. When Bidenreleased a follow-up ad weeks later, the tone softened considerably. There was no mention of the Chinese or of Trumps travel ban, which the first ad had maligned as not exactly airtight.

Since taking office, Biden has kept the national security focus on China as congressional Democrats work to pass a bipartisan package of bills aimed at preserving the US supply chaingiven Chinas control of exports crucial to the production of electronics and certain medicinesand countering Chinese influence domestically. This latter bill, known as the Strategic Competition Act, spawned a series of condemnatory articles from Quincy scholars, who said it would effectively constitute a declaration of cold war on China by the U.S. Congress. The legislation, pushed by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), treats Chinese influence as a global terror and includes a $300 million fund to counter the malign influence of the Chinese Communist Party globally.

Even Bidens defense budget uses China as an implicit argument for more funding. When his administration announced its request for $715 billion in defense spending in Aprila rejection of progressive demands to cut the budget from last yeara White House statement said the budget considers the need to counter the threat from China as the Pentagons top challenge.

For Democrats, the relentless focus on competing with China on trade and manufacturing not only creates some common ground with Republicans, but also could interest workers eager for an aggressive attempt to keep jobs in the United States. It also invites other problemswhich progressives are quick to point out. Erica Fein, senior Washington director at Win Without War, says its a big problem that Democrats believe they can score cheap political points by being hawkish towards China.

Not only does it lead to more xenophobia and racism at home, it could even lead to an actual war, she adds. This is one of the biggest challenges for the progressive movement, and its going to take a major shift in priorities to get us where we need to be.

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With Anti-Asian Attacks on the Rise, Democrats Need to Figure Out How to Talk About China Mother Jones - Mother Jones

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In the final 14 hours before the final midnight deadline for advancing Senate bills in the Texas House, Democrats pulled out all the stops Tuesday to keep the body from considering GOP-backed legislation they opposed, spelling death for some of the Senate's priority bills.

The House had on its calendar several of the Senates priorities, including a bill banning social media companies from blocking users because of their viewpoint or their location within Texas, another that would ban local governments from using public funds to pay for lobbyists, and another that would force transgender student athletes to play on sports teams based on their sex assigned at birth instead of their gender identity.

Republicans control all branches of Texas government, and Democrats have been trying to fight back these bills since the beginning of the legislative session in January. The midnight deadline to pass the bills was the minority partys last hope. And though they ended the night with hoarse voices, House Democrats landed a rare victory this session, killing all three of those bills. They ceded one other Senate priority bill, which aims to limit the terms of employment that local governments can require companies offer workers, after successfully attaching some amendments.

The failure of several of the Senate's priorities is likely to continue the rift between the two chambers, which differ on their legislative priorities. Last week, the House took a break from lawmaking for a few days ahead of key legislative deadlines, imperiling Senate priorities, because the Senate was not moving House priority bills on criminal justice and health care.

The House started Tuesday at 10 a.m. with 129 bills on its agenda, setting up a marathon of debating, voting and political maneuvering. Members spent the first half of the day giving final approval to bills the House had initially passed Monday, a usually procedural move that went beyond banking hours Tuesday as Democrats barraged their fellow lawmakers with questions, compliments and tactical procedures to slow down the chambers progress.

The tactics in the House caught the attention of lawmakers in the Senate, whose bills floundered with each passing minute the House Democrats delayed because legislation must get approval in both chambers before becoming law. With plenty of House bills locked up in the upper chamber, the senators also began slowing their progress and ribbing state representatives who visited them during a lunch break.

Senators began making dog puns as Sen. Jos Menndez, D-San Antonio, laid out a House bill that dealt with where pet store owners in large counties get their dogs and cats from, in an effort that targeted puppy mills.

We dont want it to be a dog-eat-dog world, said Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston.

Menndez called to Rep. Jared Patterson, R-Frisco, the bills author who walked into the chamber, to show him that the Senate was passing House bills.

Itd be nice if we could get some good Senate bills passed as well, Menndez said.

Back in the House, groups of Democratic and Republican lawmakers huddled in different parts of the chamber, planning their strategies for the rest of the day: Democrats to stop bills they opposed, and Republicans to get as many of the bills that theyd worked on over the top.

Outside the chamber, opponents of the bill to restrict the participation of transgender student athletes in school sports held banners that read, Stop SB 29, and chanted, Protect trans kids!

Around 6 p.m. the House began taking up legislation that had been postponed by lawmakers on Tuesday in efforts to make last-minute tweaks or work out deals to ease the passage of those bills through the chamber.

But the tweaking was not done, as lawmakers continued to postpone bills. The bills banning social media content moderation because of viewpoint and the use of local government funds to pay for lobbyists were among those delayed. The social media bill had the backing of Gov. Greg Abbott, who traveled to Tyler to promote it with its author, Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, in March.

Further down the list and therefore in more peril were the measure related to transgender student athletes, which Abbott had also indicated support for, and a bill that would require people seeking an abortion in Texas to consult a state contractor about support services and other available resources before the procedure could be performed. None of those bills ended up receiving a vote.

Near 7 p.m., the House took up Senate Bill 14, a measure banning cities and counties from requiring companies to offer workers benefits or other terms of employment beyond what is already required by state and federal law.

The bill is a revival of a similar measure that died in the 2019 legislative session after some cities implemented paid sick leave requirements for businesses within their boundaries. Supporters said the Senate version would prevent regulatory confusion in a way that helps businesses with locations in multiple Texas cities regain their footing as the economy tries to recover from the pandemics devastating financial effects. But opponents said the Senate version reduces workers access to paid sick leave after theyve been navigating the pandemic for more than a year.

The bill does not apply to municipalities employees or conditions of government contracts. It targets attempts by several Texas cities to mandate benefits for employees. In the past three years, Austin, Dallas and San Antonio passed paid sick leave ordinances, but court rulings have kept them from being enforced.

Democrats, who largely oppose the bill, were attempting to tack on amendments to soften its effect on the large counties where their party holds control of local governments. With each amendment, more time passed and the deadline inched closer.

A little after 9 p.m., a procedural concern was raised about the bill that could have spelled doom for it. After more than two hours, the chamber postponed the debate on it until 10 p.m.

By then, time was running out. Before the bill could be revisited, House lawmakers made surprise moves to postpone debate on the bill restricting transgender student athletes in school sports until 11:30 p.m., leaving it with only 30 minutes to pass before the midnight deadline.

When the House picked up SB 14 again, lawmakers added an amendment by Rep. Rhetta Bowers, D-Garland, that exempted local nondiscrimination ordinances that banned discrimination on the basis of hair texture. Bowers had previously filed the Texas CROWN Act, to prevent race-based hair discrimination that often affects Black Americans in school and in the workplace.

The House then gave the bill its initial approval.

By 11 p.m., the bill that would restrict how governmental entities use public money on outside lobbyists had been killed because the bill's author could not find agreement on it with other lawmakers. The bills dealing with social media companies and transgender student athletes never returned for a hearing.

As the clock ticked towards midnight, the House gallery began to fill with onlookers, including supporters of transgender children who had been advocating against SB 29 all session.

Democratic lawmakers spent the last 15 minutes ostensibly trying to tack on an amendment to a bill about prevailing wage rates, but really just coordinating with one another to run out the clock.

As the clock struck midnight, Democratic lawmakers stood at the front of the chamber waving transgender pride flags and celebrating with onlookers in the gallery.

House Speaker Dade Phelan announced that his desk was clear and the chamber recessed until 9 a.m. Wednesday, when it will take up its final calendar of Senate bills that are largely local or uncontested.

Megan Munce contributed reporting.

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Multiple Senate GOP priorities fail in Texas House after last-ditch effort by Democrats to run out the clock - The Texas Tribune

Recruiters looking to fill positions at OHare International Airport meet with candidates during a job fair at the airport on May 19, 2021 in Chicago, Illinois.

Scott Olson | Getty Images

More than two dozen groups representing U.S. businesses and employers unveiled a new coalition Tuesday to fight against virtually every Democratic plan to raise taxes on self-described "job creators."

The coalition of 28 industry groups, which have locked arms under the name "America's Job Creators for a Strong Recovery," argues that hiking taxes on corporations and other businesses will hamper the U.S. economy in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

The alliance emerges in direct opposition to the Biden administration, which is pushing Congress to pass trillions of dollars in spending on infrastructure and a slew of other projects that will be paid for in large part by raising rates on corporations and the richest Americans.

Organizers told CNBC the coalition has already started to research its counter-messaging efforts nationally. But it has an especially keen eye on Arizona, a competitive purple state with two moderate Democratic senators, Mark Kelly and Kyrsten Sinema, organizers said.

The coalition aims to turn the narrative away from a debate about taxing the rich and the biggest corporations to pay for roads and bridges. The organizers themselves acknowledge that that rhetorical battleground leans strongly in Democrats' favor in public opinion polls.

But the organizers say President Joe Biden's so-far popular infrastructure plan loses support when the focus shifts toward the high level of public spending it will demand, and the taxes on so-called job creators it proposes.

"The record tax hikes that Democrats are seeking to ram through could not come at a worse time for America's job creators who are just beginning to recover from a crippling pandemic," said Eric Hoplin, president and CEO of the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors, which is leading the new coalition.

"Employers support a smart infrastructure to ensure America's 21st century competitiveness, but it shouldn't be used as a Trojan horse to enact record high taxes on America's individually and family-owned businesses," Hoplin said.

"The pandemic has taxed individually and family owned businesses enough taxing them again while they are still struggling to recover just goes too far," said Chris Smith, executive director of another group called the Main Street Employers Coalition.

"These tax hikes would put the path of the recovery at such risk, so we need to make sure the voice of Main Street is heard loud and clear with the people and places that matter most," Smith said.

The coalition is not yet sharing its fundraising goals but it plans to target numerous key states led by moderate Democratic lawmakers, organizers said.

These are the founding members of the coalition:

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Business groups form coalition to oppose every tax hike proposal by Democrats - CNBC