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Any legislation that Democrats hope to pass and put on President Joe Bidens desk needs Sen. Joe Manchins (D-W.Va.) support first. The chances for his vote seem to be slipping away for the For the People Act, a sweeping election reform package.

But the legislations supporters, particularly progressives in Manchins home state of West Virginia, arent giving up.

Despite large coalitions of national groups organizing the grassroots campaign to pass the bill, the campaign to win Manchins support has largely been a local affair. A coalition of West Virginia groups is working to educate West Virginians and Manchins office about the bill and why he should support it.

So far, its been for naught. He is the only member of the Senate Democratic caucus not to co-sponsor the bill and told ABC News on Wednesday that its because it does not have bipartisan support.

Its not for lack of effort from local groups. The push to woo Manchin began the night before Democrats officially won their Senate majority. Ryan Frankenberry, state director for the progressive West Virginia Working Families Party, fired off a letter to Manchins office on Jan. 5 as the returns for Georgias two special elections started to come in. He wrote that he was hopeful about the nights elections and that he looked forward to working with Manchins office when Democrats held the Senate majority.

[We] recognized before Georgia flipped that there was a possibility for this scenario, Frankenberry said. Weve been planning on it.

The plan is to pressure Manchin with niceness.

I would use the phrase encouraging rather than pressuring, said Sam Hickman, executive director of the West Virginia chapter of the National Association of Social Workers.

The groups running this encouragement campaign hope to remind Manchin about his past support for similar policies when he served in the West Virginia state government that are now a part of the For the People Act.

For example, as West Virginias secretary of state, he oversaw the implementation of the Help America Vote Act, a national law mandating new election standards for every state just as the For the People Act does. When he was governor, he backed a law introducing a public election financing program for judicial elections. The For the People Act includes a voluntary public financing program for congressional elections.

He knows the positive impact that these types of reforms can have, said Julie Archer, coordinator for West Virginia Citizens for Clean Elections. Were encouraged, and we just want to encourage him to do the right thing.

To convince Manchin to support the For the People Act, the local coalition has held rallies and phone banks to talk to West Virginians, plus district office visits and constituent meetings with Manchins office. The West Virginia Working Families Party also went on the air with a radio ad on Wednesday calling on both Manchin and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) to support the For the People Act.

The ad connects West Virginias founding in opposition to Southern slavers to a need for pro-democracy legislation today in response to the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Today democracy and freedom are at risk, the ad says. And the truth is, they are as precious now as when West Virginia was founded. Thats why were calling on Senator Capito and Senator Manchin to support the For the People Act.

Voting rights advocates can also point to polling by two nonpartisan pro-For the People Act groups, Represent.Us and Un-PAC,showing broad support in West Virginia for the bill.

The groups also note the recent success they had in the spring state legislative session in killing a bill that would have reduced voter access by eliminating the two most popular early voting days in the state and making it easier for county clerks to purge voters from the rolls.

We saw that as a major victory, Frankenberry said. They were hearing a lot of pressure.

With the state legislative session over for now, the West Virginia activist groups hope to focus all of their efforts on pushing Manchin to support the For the People Act. But now the question is whether its too late.

Manchin has repeatedly said the legislation must have bipartisan support to win his vote, even though he previously issued a statement declaring his support for many elements of the bill. But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) says that 100% of his focus is on stopping this new administration, including all legislation it supports.

The bill faced universal opposition from Republicans at a mark-up in the Senate Rules and Administration Committee on Tuesday where the vote deadlocked 9-9. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) can still discharge the bill to the Senate floor, where it is expected to face a Republican filibuster.

Bill Clark via Getty ImagesSen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) is the lone member of the Senate Democratic caucus not to co-sponsor the For the People Act.

Schumer has promised that everything is on the table to pass the bill, including changing the Senates filibuster rules, but Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) are vocally opposed to doing that. Manchin has, however, made statements in favor of a so-called talking filibuster as an expansion of the filibuster. But it is not clear what this means.

Its a positive that Sen. Manchin has talked about expanding the filibuster to include a talking filibuster, Frankenberry said. And we recognize when he says he wants to involve Republican voices. We hear what hes saying, but we think there will come a time where its very clear that their obstruction is the first and foremost thing they care about, and these bills are too important for the people of West Virginia.

Right now, it appears that Manchin doesnt intend to support a pathway for the For the People Act to pass. Local groups still hope that their efforts to show support from West Virginians will bring a change of heart.

The position that he is in is not lost on us, Hickman said. Hes got bargaining power like nobodys business. We hope he uses that bargaining power to line up with average people.

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How West Virginia Progressives Are Pushing Joe Manchin On Voting Reform - HuffPost

I spent Monday between rage and a sense of loss. I watched the Israeli government and security forces make one decision after another to escalate an already bloody situation. My familys WhatsApp text thread pinged again and again:

They are talking about red alert alarms and sirens at nine.

Im just worried about the girls, I dont want them to have a scary memory of waking up in the middle of the night.

Where do you go if there is an alarm?

My family in Tel Aviv was preparing for the possibility of Hamas firing rockets on the city, part of the latest escalation in the decades-long conflict.

READ MORE: The Latest: Gaza deaths rise in Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Hamas and other groups firing rockets into Israel from Gaza was the culmination of a weekend in which Israeli security forces brutalized Palestinian protesters and worshipers, including in the al-Aqsa Mosque, one of the most sacred mosques in Islam.

On Monday, before a single rocket was fired and my family started texting, I talked to Jawad Salah, a Palestinian lawyer born and raised in Beirut who now lives in the Philadelphia area, to hear his perspective watching from afar. He predicted that if a group like Hamas became involved, English-language media would start and end the story there, a pattern that hes seen repeatedly, that overlooks the abuse of the Palestinian people.

There is a singular focus on the last Palestinian response but never what led to it, Salah told me. He said that firing rockets is deplorable but always has a context.

I remember red alert sirens warning of incoming rockets well and how much they scared me. Growing up during the Second Intifada in Tel Aviv, suicide bombings were common but sirens were not. That changed in 2012, when Hamas fired a rocket from Gaza to Tel Aviv for the first time. I was working as a medic at a basketball arena. Everyone froze in panic. Then a blast. Iron Dome, Israels American-bought anti-rocket defense system, intercepted the rocket. Rocket attacks became a bit more common during escalations, but hits on Tel Aviv remained extremely rare.

The struggle in Sheikh Jarrah is one that everyone, especially liberals and progressives, should pay attention to and stand in solidarity with.

Still, I am so sad for the fear that my nieces and nephews are enduring as the fighting continues.

But people in Tel Aviv prepping for a red alert siren is not where the story of this week starts or ends. This story starts in Sheikh Jarrah, an East Jerusalem neighborhood nearly 6,000 miles away from Philadelphia that many Americans probably never heard of, or at least hadnt until recent news.

Despite the distance, the struggle in Sheikh Jarrah is one that everyone, especially liberals and progressives, should pay attention to and stand in solidarity with.

The short version of whats going on in Sheikh Jarrah is that right-wing Jewish activists, in their continuing effort to control the occupied territory of East Jerusalem, have been invoking a law that allows Jews to reclaim homes that they lost in the 1948 war if they have old land deeds. The law doesnt offer Palestinian residents of similar right to claim homes currently inhabited by Jews from which they might have fled from during the same war.

In early May, Palestinian residents in Sheikh Jarrah began to protest the so-called evictions. Israeli security forces responded brutally from violent arrests to the use of tear gas and rubber bullets. The violence escalated over the weekend, and extended into the complex of the al-Aqsa Mosque, where thousands of Palestinians visited for Ramadan prayer.

On Monday, tensions boiled over and Hamas fired rockets from Gaza toward Jerusalem and the south of Israel. The Israel Defense Force responded with an aerial bombardment of Gaza. The violence only escalated in the following days: Warplanes leveled residential buildings in Gaza, killing at least 49 people including 14 children, and showers of rockets from Gaza to Israel killed at least six, including one child.

Thats when my familys group text started to go nuts. My mind began connecting the dots between the struggle of Sheikh Jarrah and the struggle for justice that has been playing out in America and Philadelphia over the last year.

The murder of George Floyd, hundreds of miles away from Philadelphia and thousands of miles away from Israel, started a global movement.

The same themes that provoked those reckonings exist in the struggle of Sheikh Jarrah: police crackdown, response to protest with force, racially motivated residential displacement, and the larger question of what is citizenship and who are the government and police meant to serve.

But while many progressives are on the front lines of change in the United States, most, particularly white ones, remained silent as Palestinians were attacked. As of Monday morning, not a single representative of the Philadelphia area in Congress condemned Israels actions in Sheikh Jarrah. After Hamas fired rockets, some issued statements condemning the response and ignoring its source.

Reem Kassis, the award-winning author of the recently published cookbook The Arabesque Table and probably Philadelphias highest-profile Palestinian, followed the unfolding events in Jerusalem from Philadelphia, like me. I just feel utter helplessness and a sense of despair because this is not the first time Ive seen this, she told me Monday.

Kassis grew up in Jerusalem and remembers residents being displaced then, as they are now. I remember, as a kid, driving through these neighborhoods [of East Jerusalem], I remember driving past a house once and there was an old lady sitting on a plastic chair. My mothers friend asked her, Why are you sitting here? And she said, They took my house but I dont want to leave. I was a kid at the time, so I didnt think much of it, but I look at it now and I think it is just so hugely unfair, its inhumane, and the world is silent.

The silence on Palestinians by American liberals and progressives is so pervasive that there is a term for it: progressive except Palestine.

In his recently published book Except for Palestine, Temple University professor and activist Marc Lamont Hill and his coauthor, Mitchell Plitnick, write: The American political left has normalized a world in which it is acceptable, through words and policies, to embrace the ethical and political contradiction of being progressive except Palestine.

Hill told me that there are two reasons that led him, a Black educator from North Philadelphia, to advocate for Palestinians. Its not just the right thing to do, although it is, its also that I dont think that any of us can get fully free if other people arent free not as a lefty clich but as an actual analysis of how our politics work together.

Every year, Israel receives more than $3 billion in military aid from the United States money that Hill says could fund infrastructure in Black communities or education instead.

READ MORE: From Tel Aviv, Marc Lamont Hills Palestine comments dont sound so wrong to me | Opinion

But perhaps that most proximate reason for progressives to end their Palestinian exception is that Palestine is not just a land across the ocean it is also the home of our neighbors here in Philadelphia. Any erasure of Palestine, and the pain of Palestinians, is an erasure of people in our community.

I was 17 when I left Jerusalem. Im going to be 34 this year. I still refer to Jerusalem as home, Kassis says. I love Philadelphia. I just, as a Palestinian living in America, I dont feel totally at home. I think in part it is that I feel that there is no understanding of the Palestinian case of our struggle and very few willing to stand up for us.

My family eventually had to run to shelter and I took some solace in the protection of Iron Dome. My Palestinian neighbors likely had a much different experience. The families of Salah, Kassis, and all Palestinians deserve the same recognition that my family gets: that they deserve to be free and safe unconditionally. And that is worth standing up for from Philadelphia to Tel Aviv to Sheikh Jarrah.

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As my family shelters in Tel Aviv, Im unsettled that progressive Americans arent speaking up for Palestinian - The Philadelphia Inquirer

Last week, the United Nations warned of all-out war as the conflict between Israel and Palestine intensified. Its all playing out in real time, as videos and photos shared across social media are bring people all over the world into the conflict.

Here in Massachusetts, local politicians are weighing in, including Sen. Ed Markey, who is facing backlash from young campaign volunteers and donors from his 2020 campaign who criticized his use of the all sides message. To discuss what it all means, The Scrum podcast co-hosts Peter Kadzis, GBH news politics editor, and Adam Reilly, GBH news politics reporter, joined Joe Mathieu today on Morning Edition.

The thing most Americans don't realize is the roots of this are in a local political dispute, Kadzis said about the conflict, explaining that in April, the Palestinian Authority had postponed parliamentary elections. This whole dispute, which we are hearing is about land grabs, has its roots in the dispute between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. And Hamas has raised the stakes by its rocket attacks on Israel.

In a series of tweets, Markey said that all sides must protect innocent civilians and that Israel has the right to defend itself from indiscriminate rocket attacks and no one should fear being forcefully evicted from their homes. Reilly said that, at the root of Markeys backlash, is the critique of framing the issue as two sides with equal power.

Reilly said the criticism echoes back to Markeys re-election campaign in 2020, in which he tapped into energized young people who rallied around him as a progressive leader. Reilly pointed to the popular Green New Dealmaker ad in which Markey invoked John F. Kennedys call to invite younger people into the political process.

The theme of that ad was: There is a movement, led by young people, sweeping the country. Ed Markey is a representative of that movement, Reilly said. And those young people have a right to demand change from the political establishment that represents them that was an argument that worked for Markey in the primary. Now, the people who are criticizing him are basically saying, 'Hey, you made us this promise. We want you to lead in a way that you told us you were going to.'"

WATCH: Adam Reilly on Senator Markey's young supporters

Kadzis said that Markey is taking cues from the White House with his cautiousness. What Markey is doing is following the White House lead. President Biden is treading very carefully, said Kadzis, who also said the debate is an indication of the growing power of progressives in the political landscape locally.

Its also a reminder to all of us who follow politics that there is a huge swath of the Massachusetts Democratic Party that is very that that is decidedly to the left, much more so than the rest of the nation, Kadzis said.

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By Weighing In On Middle East Conflict, Markey Faces Backlash From Young Progressive Supporters - wgbh.org

President Bidens Republican critics charge that he has foisted a bait and switch on voters that he campaigned as a moderate but veered abruptly to the left after he arrived at the White House.

The bait was he was going to govern as bipartisan, but the switch is hes governed as a socialist, House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield complained last month.

He talks like a moderate but is governing to satisfy the far left, Senate Republican chief Mitch McConnell of Kentucky chimed in.

Theyre right on one count: Biden is pushing an ambitious progressive program while making it sound, well, moderate.

But their charge of false advertising is bogus. Biden never concealed his big-government goals; they were all in plain sight in his platform.

Its still on the campaign website for anyone who wants to check. Candidate Biden called for more than $4 trillion in new federal spending, beginning with an immediate stimulus to help the economy recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. It included massive proposals to combat climate change, rebuild infrastructure, reduce poverty, subsidize child care and provide universal pre-K education.

Sound familiar? All those planks resurfaced in Bidens proposals this year: his $1.9-trillion COVID-19 relief bill, his $2-trillion-plus jobs plan and his $1.8-trillion family-policy plan.

To be fair, McCarthy and McConnell may have been too busy to read up on their opponents long and detailed program. Their party saved time by not having a platform at all.

But surely they noticed when former President Obama released a video last year praising Biden for the most progressive platform of any major party nominee in history. Or when Biden, in his last big campaign speech, compared his program to Franklin D. Roosevelts New Deal and prom-ised a pandemic plan, a healthcare plan, a climate plan and an economic plan to give working people a fair shot again.

None of this should have come as a surprise, Greg Schultz, Bidens campaign manager during last years primary season, told me. My only surprise is that people werent listening.

McCarthy and McConnell werent the only ones who underestimated Bidens commitments. Plenty of progressives didnt quite believe it, either.

After all, during the primaries Biden had presented himself as a moderate, pragmatic alternative to Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Bidens Democratic rivals chastised him for centrist positions he took decades ago: his 1970s opposition to mandatory busing to desegregate schools, his 1994 vote for then-President Clintons punitive crime bill. Those ancient controversies made him sound like an out-of-touch relic.

But they were forgetting one of Bidens most striking features: his adaptability. He is as critics used to say about FDR something of a political chameleon.

Over 51 years in politics, Biden has always positioned himself at his partys center which has required a steady evolution toward the left.

The Biden of 2008 who ran as Obamas running mate was more progressive than the Biden of 1994 who voted for Clintons crime bill. The Biden of 2012 who declared himself a fan of same-sex marriage was more progressive than the Biden of 2008.

When he pondered entering the 2016 presidential race, he intended to run to Hillary Clintons left and Bernie Sanders right a classic Biden gambit to seek his partys center point.

Biden for President was going to go big, Biden wrote of the plans for that never-launched campaign in his 2017 memoir. A $15 minimum wage. Free tuition at our public colleges and universities. Real job training. On-site affordable child care. Equal pay for women. Strengthening the Affordable Care Act. A job creation program built on investing in and modernizing our roads and bridges. We needed what I called an American Renewal Project.

Sound familiar?

By the time Biden ran in 2020, two things happened to push him even further.

One was the COVID-19 pandemic, which made it clear to both parties that big spending would be needed to rescue the economy. After Republican leaders, including then-President Trump, approved more than $3.8 trillion in COVID relief last year, GOP complaints about big-money requests from the new president sounded hollow.

The second was Democrats unexpected capture of 50 seats in the Senate, which meant the new president could pass much of his program without Republican votes. Yes, Biden had promised to seek bipartisan compromises but now he no longer had to worry about obstructionist Republicans whose only goal was to stop his program in its tracks.

And that not spurious charges of a bait and switch on policy is probably what makes Mitch McConnell so grouchy.

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Yes, Biden is governing as a progressive. Are you surprised? - Los Angeles Times

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When President Joe Biden told reporters last week that Israel, in the midst of a brutal conflict with Palestinians in Gaza, had a right to defend itself, the sharpest criticism came from members of his own party.

On Twitter, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Biden was reinforcing the false idea that Palestinians instigated this cycle of violence and taking the side of occupation.

Her remarks condemned the militant Palestinian group Hamas, but went further than Democratic leadership in blaming Israel for the regions vicious circle of violence. Like Biden, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Israel has the right to defend itself.

That common refrain, which privileges the Israeli governments image of the conflict as a nation-state defending itself from terrorism, has become a flashpoint in the ongoing debate over Bidens foreign policy and the views of Democrats writ large.

To antiwar progressiveswho have become more of a vocal force in Democratic debates about foreign policythe line is a rhetorical crutch that avoids centering the experience of Palestinians. No one is arguing that Israel, or any government, does not have the right to self-defense or to protect its people, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote in a New York Timesop-ed on Friday. So why are these words repeated year after year, war after war? And why is the question almost never asked: What are the rights of the Palestinian people?'

Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders represent a small but growing portion of the Democratic caucus that no longer considers reflexive support of Israelis right-wing government a necessary part of US foreign policy. In the Middle East, where we provide nearly $4 billion a year in aid to Israel, we can no longer be apologists for the right-wing Netanyahu government and its undemocratic and racist behavior, Sanders wrote.

More Democrats are getting comfortable making that case directly to the Biden administration. Earlier this week, 25 House Democrats, including Ocasio-Cortez, called on Secretary of State Antony Blinken to condemn Israels planned eviction of nearly 2,000 Palestinians from East Jerusalem. I dont think that Netanyahu or US politicians realize how acutely focused the world is on whats happening in Gaza right now, and how much damage is being done to Israels standing, former Obama national security official Tommy Vietor tweeted on Saturday, adding, the politics are moving beneath our feet.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is far from the firstor onlyissue that has progressives at odds with Bidens more traditional foreign policy. His promise to withdraw troops from Afghanistan by September and decision to stop some support for Saudi Arabias war in Yemen pleased progressives. But on other issues, Biden has been out of step with his partys left flank.

In February, human rights activists were outraged when the Biden administration approved a weapons sale to Egypt only days after President Abdel Fattah el-Sisis government arrested relatives of an Egyptian American activist, part of a systemic campaign of intimidation against critics of el-Sisis repressive regime. Two months later, the Biden administration announced plans for $715 billion in defense spending that snubbed progressive hopes for a slimmer Pentagon budget.

Even on Iran, a topic where Democrats had been nearly unanimous in opposition to Donald Trumps hawkish policy, Biden has angered progressives by proceeding slowly in negotiations with the country over a return to the 2015 nuclear deal, andby not offering upfront sanctions relief.

The backlash from progressives is only expected to continue as Congress readies a bipartisan China policy bill that antiwar groups have criticized as unnecessarily hawkish. The Biden administration has made no secret of its desire to pivot the US national security focus away from the Middle East and toward China, which Secretary of State Antony Blinken called the biggest geopolitical test for the United States.

These issues threaten to destroy the tentative consensus Biden has held together among Democrats since taking office, with his party clinging to narrow control of Congress. The violence in Gaza might be Bidens first major test of how Democrats can manage a divided caucusbut it certainly wont be the last.

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The Progressive Backlash to Biden's Foreign Policy Has Only Just Begun Mother Jones - Mother Jones