It's Monday, September 19, and Day 218 since Justice Antonin Scalia died and Mitch McConnell decided no nominee would get any Senate attention: No meetings, no hearings, no votes. It's also Day 187 since Merrick Garland was nominated by President Obama to fill that vacancy.
The Senate came back in this afternoon with hopes of having a temporary spending bill agreement. They don't.
Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Monday that negotiators haven't reach reached a deal on Zika money or the larger funding bill.
"We've made progress. I'm encouraged by the headway that we have made," he said. "[But] there is still work to be done."
Democrats have pledged to stop any CR that blocks Planned Parenthood clinics in Puerto Rico from accessing the Zika funds. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), whose state has been hard hit by the mosquito-spread disease, said late last week that he thought they were close to an agreement that would provide $1.1 billion to fight the virus.
They had intended a cloture vote sometime Monday on moving forward with that spending agreement. That may or may not happen.
They're supposed still negotiating a short-term spending bill, and who knows what's happening there. So let's spend our time appreciating Harry Reid, who doesn't give a shit for what Donald Trump might say about him.
Meanwhile, this is brewing in the background, ready to blow up in the lame duck session:
Senate Democrats are blasting their Republican colleagues for not only blocking the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, but also 53 other judges in the lower courts, calling their obstruction “unprecedented” and “irresponsible.”
“These are supposed to be nonpolitical positions,” Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), ranking member of the Senate Judiciary, said. “I’ve been here longer than anybody else, I’ve never seen anything so irresponsible.”
It's not just the Supreme Court, and all the other judges. It's funding to fight Zika. It's infrastructure spending. It's gun safety. It's every goddamned thing that the government needs to be effective. But the war on the judiciary is definitely the most radical, most extreme thing any modern majority party has done.
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