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When Sen. Joe ManchinJoe ManchinGreen groups shift energy to reconciliation package Ocasio-Cortez says Sinema wrong with defense of filibuster Photos of the Week: Infrastructure, Britney Spears and Sen. Tillis's dog MORE (D-W.Va.) came out in favor of a procedural debate over voting rights legislation on Tuesday, he offered a symbolic showing of Democratic Party cohesion.

But before GOP senators blockedthe billlater in theevening, progressives had already started grumbling about the White House, demonstrating that public and private resentment toward President BidenJoe BidenTrump calls Barr 'a disappointment in every sense of the word' Last foreign scientist to work at Wuhan lab: 'What people are saying is just not how it is' Toyota defends donations to lawmakers who objected to certifying election MORE had been mounting all day.

Were past the point where weve lost faith that hes going to do it on his own, said Cliff Albright, co-founder of the Black Voters Matter Fund, about Bidens approach to the Capitol Hill fight over the For the People Act.

Albright took Biden to task early into his term when he urged the newly elected president to prioritize election reforms ahead of other policy issues. Hes since been campaigning around the country with a cohort of organizers to emphasize the gravity of the situation on the ground.

Activists like Albright were perplexed after watching Biden give wide-ranging speeches on other areas of his agenda and embark on a national infrastructure tour. He wondered why infrastructure in particular took precedence over loudly defending a basic democratic concept.

Wheres your voting rights tour? Albright said, offering frustration ahead of the Senate vote. People have already started to call this out. Thats just going to escalate.

Progressives have been generally more critical of aspects of the Biden administration than their moderate counterparts. That occasional opposition came into full view on Tuesday when one freshman congressman openly called for more engagement and robust leadership from the White House.

The president needs to lead out front and be very vocal on this issue, Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) said during an interview withCNN.

The remarks from Bowman, a Black, first-term member who is part of the "squad" of young progressive Democrats, were among the strongest expressed by a group of progressive lawmakers now targeting Biden in addition to Manchin, fellow moderate Sen. Kyrsten SinemaKyrsten SinemaGreen groups shift energy to reconciliation package Ocasio-Cortez says Sinema wrong with defense of filibuster Headaches mount for Biden in spending fight MORE (D-Ariz.) and the vast majority of the GOP.

Our democracy is in crisis and we need @POTUS to act like it, Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.) wrote on Twitter, repeating his earlier criticism about the presidents purported lack of focus.

One leading liberalorganization took the position that Biden has effectively been dodging the issue on the public stage and condemned the presidents limited speaking schedule.

What youve seen from those of us advocating for democracy is a hope that the president would come out swinging, said Ezra Levin, co-founder of Indivisible, which has been targeting Biden with a sharp focus this week.

Early into his administration, there was a belief among many progressives that after Biden plowed through the American Rescue Plan without Republican support, he might replicate that tactic with voting rights. That would happen only if he could convince Manchin and Sinema to join the rest of the Senate Democratic caucus and end or reform the filibuster.

Historically, Levin pointed out, past presidents on both sides of the aisle have managed to check off some of their key legislative priorities. So far, Biden is a notable exception on this issue, he said.

Trump got his tax cuts. Obama got his stimulus. George W. Bush got his tax cut. Clinton got his paid Family and Medical Leave Act, Levin said. Up until this point, aside from a statement here and there, aside from a line in a speech ... the president has been pretty absent in the democracy fight.

The White House rebuked the notion that they have not pursued the topic forcefully.

Those words are a fight against the wrong opponent, White House press secretary Jen PsakiJen PsakiBiden gambles on bipartisanship Lawmakers, advocates demand details on Afghan evacuation plan Overnight Finance: Republicans warn Biden over infrastructure deal | White House pushes back on criticism | Biden phones Sinema |Consumer spending flat in May, personal incomes drop MORE said when questioned during an afternoon briefing about Bowmans critique. Like other Democrats willing to give the president grace,she sought to redirect the attention to the opposing party.

Psaki elaborated by reiterating the presidents passionate championing of voting protections during his career in politics. Hes absolutely revolted by the wave of anti-voter laws based on the same repeatedly disproven lies that led to an assault on our nations capital, she said.

Minutes before the Senate convened to vote, the official White House Twitter account sent out a tweet providing a brief update about the status of Bidens work with Senate Majority Leader CharlesSchumer (D-N.Y.).

Today, @SenSchumer and I held our latest strategy call on getting the For the People Act to my desk,the tweet read. Democrats are united and committed to passing this landmark legislation to protect voting rights, ensure the integrity of our elections, and repair and strengthen our democracy.

Schumer also used strong language to condemn the party-wide blockade from Republican senators, positioning them with former President TrumpDonald TrumpTrump calls Barr 'a disappointment in every sense of the word' Last foreign scientist to work at Wuhan lab: 'What people are saying is just not how it is' NY prosecutors give Trump Org lawyers Monday deadline: report MOREs debunked theory of widespread election fraud.

Once again, Senate Republicans have signed their names in the ledger of history alongside Donald Trump, the big lie, and voter suppression, to their enduring disgrace, he said.

The majority leader and aligned Democrats cautioned thatmore time is needed beforedeclaring reform efforts doomed.

President Biden has been very outspoken about sounding the alarm about the threats to democracy that we face and the need for legislative fixes, said Norm Eisen, a former high-ranking Obama administration official and co-founder of States United Democracy Center.

While I understand and applaud the sense of urgency that my fellow activists are bringing to that, everyone needs to bear in mind that this is a long process.

Brett Samuels and Alex Gangitano contributed to this report.

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White House draws ire of progressives amid voting rights defeat | TheHill - The Hill

President BidenJoe BidenTrump calls Barr 'a disappointment in every sense of the word' Last foreign scientist to work at Wuhan lab: 'What people are saying is just not how it is' Toyota defends donations to lawmakers who objected to certifying election MORE is scheduled to deliver a speech today outlining his administrations anti-crime strategy. As we enter the summer months, during which violent crime traditionally surges, it already has been soaring in cities across the country. While Democrats would like to blame COVID-19 for that, the surge started before the pandemic hit, and it was turbo-charged by the rioting and defund the police campaigns that followed George Floyds death at the hands of Minneapolis police 13 months ago.

A preponderance of crime victimizes urban communities, particularly Black communities. The reason is something you will never hear from President Biden. Violent crime, especially gang crime, tends to be local, and it is simply a fact that young African American males engage in such crimes at higher rates than other demographic groups.

You can never understand a phenomenon, much less devise a strategy to address it effectively, absent a willingness to understand it. Biden and todays Democrats, led by hardline progressives who call the tune in the major cities riven by lawlessness, do not want to grapple with the harsh realities of crime. Their objective, instead, is to weave a political narrative that shifts responsibility for crime, from cultural dysfunction that is exacerbated by progressive policies to cultural dysfunction that is said to trace to Americas systematic racism.

The narrative is patently foolish. But it thrives in a fortress of political correctness. The in terrorem effects of cancel culture warn that speaking frankly about crime will get one ostracized as a racist. This, notwithstanding that the failure to speak and think honestly about crime harms Black communities more than any others.

The progressive narrative about crime holds that America is an inherently and, it seems, indelibly racist society, in which police are the armed front lines preserving the white power structure. They must be defunded if not to the point of being zeroed out, then at least to the point of being defanged, with swaths of their budgets transferred to social services. Only then can the power structure be dismantled, replaced by a more just system (i.e., a government of progressives, by progressives, and for everyone whether they want it or not).

Progressives would have you believe that the large number of young Black men who are arrested, prosecuted and imprisoned a number that is disproportionately high compared to the less than 6 percent of total U.S. population this demographic represents is a function of inherent racial bias, which supposedly plagues the criminal justice system.

It is an absurd story, but one that makes it convenient to overlook the true reason for this state of affairs: the disproportionately high incidence of offense behavior.

Cities where violent crime is spiking, such as New York, Chicago, Minneapolis, St. Louis and San Francisco, are run by progressives. The judicial system, which processes criminal cases, is run by elite lawyers members of the profession which, with the possible exception of university academics and administrators, is the most unabashedly progressive in the nation. The notion that they would abide racism let alone systemic racism in systems over which they exercise suffocating control is laughable.

Moreover, police in the United States are today more representative of the racial and ethnic make-ups of the communities they protect and serve than at any time in U.S. history.

Take Atlanta, for example. The citys population is about 51 percent African American; its police department is about 58 percent African American. It boasts a Black police chief, a Black assistant chief, and Black commanders of the critical airport and special operations divisions. Yet, a few months back, when a Black man named Rayshard Brooks first assaulted police who were lawfully arresting him, then was shot to death during a chase in which he shot at one of the cops with a stun-gun he had taken from them, the left wailed: another Black man killed by the police, as if that were all you needed to know.

Here is the most significant reason why you know the systemic racism narrative on crime is nonsense: The principal source of our knowledge about who commits crime is not police observations; it is victim reports. Progressives, with their preternatural interest in the welfare of criminals (because the system is supposedly the problem) have precious little to say about those on whom the criminals prey. But the victims overwhelmingly inhabit poor urban communities where crime gang crime, in particular is rampant. We know that young Black males are violating the laws at disproportionately high rates because Black neighborhoods are ravaged by crime at disproportionately high rates.

Police do not encounter Black offenders because, acting on inherent biases, they target Black men as crime suspects. They encounter the offenders because police are dispatched in heaviest concentrations to the communities in which victims report crimes. There is nothing racist about that. If we had physicians departments, like we have police departments, we would not deploy doctors in healthy communities; wed send them where the highest concentration of sick people was, and we would not presume racism on their part based on who their patients were.

Joe Biden used to know this. As Judiciary Committee chairman in 1994, he steered through the Senate the Clinton crime bill that ratcheted up penalties for crack-trafficking. The legislation had significant support in the Congressional Black Caucus, precisely because members were hearing from constituents who were besieged by violent gang crime, which always goes hand-in-hand with the storage and distribution of drugs and money.

When enforced, the new laws resulted in high rates of prosecution and incarceration of Black defendants. That was not because of inherent racism; it was because of offense behavior the epidemic of which was why the laws were enacted in the first place. The incarceration terms were more severe because the punishments prescribed for crack trafficking in legislation principally drafted by a Democratic-controlled Congress and a Democratic administration were significantly higher than for powder cocaine.

It is fair to argue that this disparity (which has since been reduced) was too extreme. That, however, had nothing to do with the politicized fable that crack was the Black drug while powder cocaine was recreation for rich whites. Crack was punished more harshly because of its association with high rates of addiction and violent crime. The laws more routine application to Blacks was because of offense behavior, not to some sinister plan or to the unthinking wages of a racist system.

Enactment of the 1994 law was one of several factors that led to a generational plummeting of crime rates a historic achievement that progressives have made it their mission to undo. Thus did Biden, in his 2020 presidential campaign, distance himself from the 1994 legislation which, in his characteristically shameless self-promotion, he used to gloat about as the Biden Crime Bill. Meantime, in cities across America, the approach now taken by progressive prosecutors is to decline to enforce special sentencing enhancements for gang crime, on the rationale that they are all together now! systematically racist.

To call offense behavior an afterthought would be an overstatement. Were not supposed to think about it at all.

Though its effects are more damaging, crime is like any other problem: It cant be effectively managed, much less solved, until we are ready to see it for what it is. Crime is not a racialized morality play. It is real life, with real victims.

As a senator, Biden once understood that. A generation ago, it was mainstream Democratic thinking, and Biden always has been a mainstream Democratic weathervane. But those Democrats are gone now. There is a new, far-left mainstream, and President Biden is its tribune. So, as someone likes to say, heres the deal: Its going to be a long, hot summer.

Former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow atNational Review Institute, a contributing editor at National Review, and a Fox News contributor. His latest book is Ball of Collusion. Follow him on Twitter@AndrewCMcCarthy.

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Worried about rising violent crime? You can thank today's progressives | TheHill - The Hill

Just before the pandemic, I moved to the part of Brooklyn where Carroll Gardens meets Gowanus. Although Smith Street closer to Atlantic Avenue is a restaurant haven, near where I live the street is dead, housing big empty lots. Past those lies the Gowanus Canal. Unlike the canals of Venice or Amsterdam, the Gowanus is mostly a hostile environment, with little building frontage, several bridges that bikers and pedestrians must share with large trucks, walled-off lots with heavy machinery, and a big Whole Foods parking lot.

An ongoing rezoning promises to create a better neighborhood around the canal, providing housing, much of it affordable, to thousands of new neighbors. Ground-level retail, new streets some of them pedestrian only, new parks and plazas, and direct access to the canal will make it walkable and enjoyable. The neighborhoods proximity to several subway stops (Carroll Street, Smith-Ninth, Fourth-Ninth) and bus routes would make it a true transit-oriented community.

With climate change breathing down our necks and housing prices soaring, wrapping up the rezoning quickly and getting to building should be a priority. But many of my neighbors disagree and the oppositions true concerns are not entirely clear.

The strong, increasingly organized, opposition to the Gowanus rezoning, Voice of Gowanus, has thrown everything at the wall to see what sticks. According to its literature, the sewage system will collapse; the transit lines are already at capacity; jobs will be lost; luxury housing will displace residents in a distressed, low-income neighborhood; the community engagement happened over Zoom and therefore was unlawful.

Most of this isnt true and, quite frankly, those probably are not the real reasons why people are putting so much time and effort into opposing the rezoning.

As is often the case with development in Gowanus and elsewhere different folks dislike it for different reasons: Some may feel that too much affordable housing will bring low-income people to the community, lowering homeowners property values (there are offensive whispers that crime will spike as a result). Others may worry that new luxury housing might make amenities and surrounding housing too costly, causing displacement. Others fear that development might simply change the status quo which can seem scary.

One argument, however, tends to reflect genuine fears and recurs during every rezoning: New development will mean less parking. Many New Yorkers especially those in a higher income bracket own cars and are accustomed to parking them on the street for free. Many view free on-street car storage as an inalienable right, so every new neighbor means potentially one less opportunity to park for free.

This is the so-called tragedy of the commons: Everyone wants access to the curb. Each new car means more competition for finite curb space. As is typical of this economics phenomenon, people act selfishly when they think their access is threatened.

Even if parking loss is not the oppositions main concern, it certainly serves them well to stoke these parking fears in order to gain support. I recently tweeted a photo of a hyperbolic flyer being handed out by Voice of Gowanus, warning neighbors that if they support the rezoning, they will permanently lose free car storage.

If you dont pay attention to the rezoning and whats going on in the neighborhood, it sounds scary! It can be hard to think about the overall benefits of the rezoning on the housing supply, climate change, and neighborhood liveliness when faced with a threat to the way you have chosen to live your life. Privilege is very hard to give up. Very few people do it willingly.

In fact, the rezoning does come with some new if minimal off-street parking for the new residents because of minimum-parking requirements in the citys zoning code. These requirements exist precisely because communities worry about losing their on-street parking. Yet new off-street parking lots make it easier for people to own cars and drive, triggering more traffic congestion. Minneapolis, Buffalo, and San Francisco, among others,recently successfully dropped such requirements.

A recent article in The Atlantic described how developers pass the cost of minimum-parking requirements onto tenants. Parking may or may not be the true reason that Voice of Gowanus is trying to stop the rezoning. If, as the group says on its website, it is concerned that the majority of the apartments will be super expensive, well, members should be agitating for less off-street parking, and accept a slightly longer search for on-street parking.

The NIMBYism manifested by Voice of Gowanus, and which is seen in basically all rezonings, is contradictory and baffling especially when it comes from self-identified progressives. The District 39 City Council candidates mostly opposed the rezoning, and the more progressive they are, the more opposed. Yet, they missed some fundamental points. Citywide, high housing prices stem from lack of supply. Raise the supply to meet demand across the city, and housing price hikes will slow and eventually stop. Upzoning neighborhoods is an important start.

Meanwhile, progressive housing advocates often support upzoning in wealthy neighborhoods in order to provide low- and middle-income housing that will enable more people from a mix of incomes to live there even if prices rise locally in the short term. The Gowanus Rezoning does precisely that. More city housing also tends to lessen demand for suburban housing which is important when it comes to climate change.

If progressives truly cared about our dual emergencies of climate change and skyrocketing housing prices, they would usher through as many rezonings as possible in as short a time as possible not sue to stop them all.

It is even more baffling when you realize that the opposition is made up of urbanites. What is living in a city if not being close to many people? The plans and renderings Ive seen so far seem like an urbanists dream.

If the opposition took a second, it might actually find that they enjoy the vision of a rezoned Gowanus. Rather than fight to keep our walled-off fields filled with tumbleweeds and toxins, we should all be fighting to make the city realize the urban dreamscapes it is presenting. We should be fighting for less off-street parking to make the housing more affordable, more frequent transit, and many other asks of the Gowanus Neighborhood Coalition for Justice, a racially and economically diverse group seeking to influence local planning, so long as the costs dont break the budget. Maybe try to get a new bike/ped-only bridge thrown in the mix. We should be looking for common cause to make this the best project it can be.

Then we should move on to the next rezoning.

Annie Weinstock (@Annie_Weinstock) is the director of programs of People Oriented Cities and, with Walter Hook, helms itsReorientations blog.

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OPINION: Progressives Should Support the Gowanus Rezoning Streetsblog New York City - Streetsblog New York

Earlier this month comedian Bill Maher delivered a biting commentary on self-styled progressives, mocking the recurrent theme on the far left that things have never been worse. On privileged university campuses, Maher noted, progressive students cant see that (their) dorm in 2021 is better than the South before the Civil War. Among progressive elites, woe unto the brave soul who points out that there are progressive talking points that simply do not withstand serious scrutiny. In such quarters, Maher says, what you say doesnt have to make sense, or jibe with the facts, or ever be challenged.

Mahers point was illustrated by the most recent deluge of thousands of Hamas rockets fired from Gaza at Israeli civilian centers. As always, Hamas attacks on Israel produce the confident if bizarre progressive orthodoxy that rocket attacks blanketing Israeli communities are somewhere between no big deal and perfectly fine, whereas Israels efforts to protect its civilians by stopping them constitute war crimes.

With the 2022 midterm elections already in view, some Democrats willing to risk eternal damnation as Not Sufficiently Progressive worry that slavishly following the Partys left may result in losing control of Congress in 2022 and the White House in 2024. It isnt hard to see why. Republicans have the wind at their back, with historical precedent strongly suggesting that they will pick up seats in both houses of Congress. They need only a small handful of pick-ups in the House of Representatives to seize control there, and a net gain of only a single seat to regain control of the Senate. As for 2024, the bravado about Bidens 7.1 million popular vote margin obscures this reality: had only 6,000 Biden voters in Arizona, 6,000 in Georgia and 11,000 in Wisconsin voted instead for Donald Trump, he would be five months into his second term.

A recent analysis of the 2020 election by three Democratic groups contained some serious warnings for Democrats. One was that the Republican line that Democrats were socialists and favored eliminating law enforcement may drive Rachel Maddow-watchers berserk, but they resonated, including among core Democratic constituencies. Republican attempts to brand Democrats as radicals worked, the authors concluded. The data firm Catalist calculated that Bidens percentage share of Latino voters decreased by 8% relative to Hillary Clintons 2016 share, his share of Black voters fell 3% and his share of Asian American Pacific Islander voters slipped 1%. In many key Congressional districts, Democratic candidates trailed Biden. Some districts where law and order or socialism was a drumbeat also a saw a higher share of Latino/AAPI/Black supporters who supported the GOP, the Democratic groups report found.

These warnings may be dismissed by some Democrats who delude themselves that Cambridge, Mass., is representative of the country, and that the nation is just waiting to embrace the Democratic Socialists of America.

To be sure, the Republican Party is a hot mess, dominated by insurrectionists, charlatans and phonies. A new Economist/YouGov poll published on the very day President Biden was meeting with Russias Poisoner-in-Chief reported that the Russian president is more popular among Republicans than the American president. Thirty percent of Republicans believe that it is likely that Trump will be reinstated as president within six months, and 70% of them believe the whacked-out hogwash that Trump won the 2020 election. Simply put, the GOP is barking mad, and the left believes that that ought to be enough to keep control of Congress and the presidency.

It wont be. Over-the-top rhetoric and the disconnected, even haughty assumptions by progressive Democrats that Americans believe what they believe run the risk of leaving them, and Democrats generally, sorely disappointed two Novembers from now.

Jeff Robbins is a Boston lawyer and former U.S. delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Commission.

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Robbins: Progressives bet the farm that America sees things their way - Boston Herald

NEW YORK CITY A new wave of progressives seem to be on the verge of taking charge in the city.

Although results are just preliminary, especially considering ranked choice voting in the case of municipal elections, their elections could represent change coming to New York City.

We put out a vision for Manhattan of marrying safety and fairness based on my lived experience of confronting public safety challenges and police accountability challenges, and my work experience of doing both, said Alvin Bragg; hes poised for become the next Manhattan District Attorney.

PIX11 caught up with Bragg in Harlem, where he was born and raised and has been stopped and frisked at gunpoint by police.

He has deep reservations of about Eric Adams pledge to increase the careful use of stop, question and frisk to combat the recent surge in gun violence should he become mayor.

I hope we can have a dialogue on that, Bragg said. Its not just my lived experience, but when I was at the Attorney Generals office and leadership, we studied this issue. We looked at four years of data that showed only 0.1% of stops resulted in a conviction for a gun offense.

Other progressives who are leading in their races take things a step further.

Current City Councilman Antonio Reynoso, ahead currently in the race for Brooklyn Borough President, said previous NYPD reform efforts nibble around the edges.

The messaging Im pushing as some thing people might consider radical, Reynoso said. But I think its only a matter of time before communities that have been underrepresented and marginalized, realize the way of dealing with these issues and the ill of society, is by dealing with the root cause, which is poverty.

Some of that language is echoed by Councilman Brad Lander, who often campaigned with Reynoso, and may be poised to become the next comptroller.

Lander so far is outperforming the leading progressive in the race for Mayor Maya Wiley.

What we wanted to show is that on the other side of this pandemic we can build a more just and equal city and honor those essential workers we clapped for with better pay and protections, Lander said. Lets make sure federal rescue funds get to all neighborhoods to protect tenants and small businesses and expand childcare.

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Meet a new wave of progressive leaders in NYC - WPIX 11 New York