Power Up: The center of Washington’s drama has officially transferred to Congress

Congress, however, is filling in the prime-time TV void – and lawmakers are painting a clear picture of the chaos that can come with such a slim majority in both chambers. And the last few days have illustrated the challenge facing Republicans who want to build a “very big tent” that can house all factions of its party in the post-President Trump era. 

Finishing this morning at 5:30 a.m.: As Democrats paved the way for party-line passage of Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan using special budget rules that allow a simple majority vote, Republicans promised to deliver political pain by forcing them to take tough votes on amendments in the freewheeling amendment process. And sure enough, there were 900 proposed amendments and 41 votes — just shy of the record of 44 in 2008 — in a “vote-a-rama” that lasted 15 hours.  

“Republicans were using the opportunity to force Democrats to vote on politically tricky issues … Even if adopted, the amendments would not have the force of law — but they could show up in future political ads,” our colleagues Erica Werner and Jeff Stein report. 

• For example: “Democrats blocked an amendment by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) aimed at opposing packing the Supreme Court … An amendment by Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.) aimed at ensuring state and local jurisdictions cooperate with federal law enforcement authorities also failed on party lines.” 
• “Sen. Todd C. Young (R-Ind.) offered an amendment he said was aimed at ensuring that undocumented immigrants do not receive stimulus checks. It passed 58 to 42, with eight Democrats voting in favor.”

Signs of movement: This morning, Biden and Vice President Harris will meet with House Democratic leaders and the chairs of House committees working on the relief package. With Senate passage of the budget resolution this morning, “the House, which approved its own budget bill on Wednesday, must then act on the Senate’s version, which it is expected to do within a day.” 

• “With the budget resolution complete, Congress can turn in earnest to writing Biden’s expansive pandemic relief proposal into law — and push it through the Senate without Republican votes if necessary under the special rules unlocked by the budget legislation. That process will take weeks.”
• ?: “Signs of disunity were already emerging among Democrats. Members of the moderate-leaning Blue Dog Coalition caucus in the House released a letter Thursday to Congressional Democratic leaders calling on them to move a stand-alone bill funding vaccine production and distribution before turning to the broader relief package. Biden has rejected the notion of breaking apart his relief package.”

Democrats — joined by 11 Republicans — voted 230 to 199 last night to strip the lawmaker who has espoused extremist beliefs of her assignments after House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), with an eye on 2022, declined to do so himself. The flap shows how party leaders are still wary of completely alienating former president Trump, his chosen candidates, and his most ardent supporters — even though they lost the White House, House and Senate under his term. 

More Republicans voted in defense of Greene than they did for keeping establishment Republican Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) in her leadership post the previous evening after backlash from the Trump wing for her vote to impeach him last month. 

• “Greene had renounced some of her most egregious remarks on the House floor a few hours earlier, in a 10-minute speech that was more explanation than apology — one that doubled down on her attacks against the media and her political enemies while omitting some of her most recent behavior,” Mike DeBonis writes.
• “These were words of the past, and these things do not represent me, they do not represent my district, and they do not represent my values,” Greene said. “ … I also want to tell you, 9/11 absolutely happened.”

McCarthy’s “insistence on allowing every Republican a place under the GOP’s big tent … has magnified the Democratic argument that his party is accommodating extremist elements, some in his party fear,” our colleagues Michael Scherer and Josh Dawsey report. 

• Democratic ad-makers are going to be busy after that vote: Already, “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has taken to identifying home state compatriot McCarthy as ‘Q-CA,’ and the Democratic campaign arm has begun funding misleading campaign spots tying Republican members to the conspiracy theorists and extremists.”
• Quotable: “If any candidates for the House or Senate are explaining Jewish space lasers next fall, we have no hope for recapturing either majority,” one prominent Republican campaign strategist told our colleagues.
• But: “Greene said on Twitter late Wednesday that she had raised more than $330,000 from 13,000 small donors in 48 hours,” per Mike. 

The vote made for some striking visuals from the House floor: “Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) hoisted a sign showing a Facebook post her campaign made in September — one showing Greene posing with a military-style rifle juxtaposed with photos of three liberal Democratic congresswomen and the caption ‘The Squad’s Worst Nightmare’ — and walked it over to the Republican side of the chamber,” per Mike. “When you take this vote, imagine your faces on this poster,” Hoyer said. “Imagine it’s a Democrat with an AR-15. Imagine what your response would be.” 

 The former president rejected a request by House Democrats to testify about his role in the Jan. 6 siege on the U.S. Capitol. “The President will not testify in an unconstitutional proceeding,” Trump spokesman Jason Miller said in a statement.

• “House leaders have been calling for testimony from a range of eyewitnesses to the insurrection, including police officers who were injured as they fended off rioters while lawmakers barricaded themselves in various rooms inside the Capitol complex,” our colleagues Amy Gardner, Karoun Demirjian, Tom Hamburger, and Josh Dawsey report.
• “Their goal: to force Republicans to remember the terror and violence of that day before they vote to acquit, as a majority of them have indicated they will do. The attack left four rioters and one Capitol Police officer dead; two other officers subsequently took their own lives.”
• However, it’s still unclear whether Senate leaders will ultimately allow for witnesses: “Although the idea of live witness testimony was initially discussed enthusiastically by House managers, that focus has dissipated somewhat as the partisan divide in the Senate has become clear and many senators made the case for a shorter trial, according to people familiar with the discussions,” per Amy, Karoun, Tom and Josh.
• There may be video footage, though: “There is a vast amount of self-incriminating video capturing Trump’s comments and the insurrectionists’ reactions,” Norm Eisen, who served as a counsel to the House impeachment managers during Trump’s first impeachment told our colleagues. “Everyone can and will see for themselves what happened.”

So far, 12 GOP senators have expressed an openness to convicting Trump — it would take 17 Republicans to join all 50 Senate Democrats to convict Trump:

ALLIES AND ADVERSARIES: “In his first foreign policy address since ascending to the nation’s highest office, Biden vowed to repair alliances through diplomacy and restore Washington’s leadership position on the global stage,” CNBC’s Amanda Macias reports. 

“Biden drew a bright line between himself and Trump during his first visit to the State Department as president, saying his administration was ‘rebuilding the muscle of democratic alliances that have atrophied over the past few years and neglect, and I would argue, abuse,’” our colleague Colby Itkowitz reports. 

• U.S. adversaries were also a key topic: Biden “noted that he’d told Russian President Vladimir Putin that he’d be much tougher on him than Trump was.”
• “I made it clear to President Putin in a manner very different from my predecessor that the days of the United States rolling over in the face of Russia’s aggressive actions, interfering with our elections, cyberattacks, poisoning its citizens are over,” Biden said. “We will not hesitate to raise the cost on Russia and defend our vital interests and our people.”
• Biden also announced he would raise the cap on refugee resettlements in the U.S. to 125,000, a year after Trump sliced it to just 15,000.
• Key quote: “America is back. Diplomacy is back.”

Biden also announced an end to U.S. support for offensive operations in Yemen: The Yemen announcement would end “remaining U.S. support that began under the Obama administration for a military effort led by Saudi Arabia against Iranian-linked Houthi rebels,” Anne Gearan, John Hudson and Missy Ryan report. “It was not clear how significant a change the announcement represents in U.S. support for the Saudi-led coalition, most of which has already been scaled back. In 2018, the Trump administration halted aerial refueling of Saudi jets conducting operations against the Houthis.” 

• “To end the six-year civil war in Yemen, [Biden appointed] a personal envoy to work on peace efforts,” the Wall Street Journal’s Warren P. Strobel reports.
• The move ends American support for a military campaign that has been blamed for the deaths of thousands of civilians. Biden says Yemen’s civil war created a “humanitarian and strategic catastrophe,” per Strobel.

BIDEN TALKS UNITY DURING PRAYER BREAKFAST: Biden “pushed faith as the prescription for the ‘dark, dark times’ he said the nation is suffering through amid an ongoing pandemic and the accompanying economic fallout,” Politico’s Anna Kambhampaty reports. 

• “Biden’s message — and the return of the event’s historically lofty tone — highlighted the president’s effort to restore Washington institutions to their traditional, pre-Trump form. For nearly seven decades, the breakfast had marked a respite from Washington’s partisan warfare, but after Trump’s barb-filled blast last year, some supporters of the event even suggested suspending it,” our colleague Annie Linskey reports.

• “For so many in our nation, this is a dark, dark time,” Biden told those watching the event. “So where do we turn? Faith.”

A ROLODEX OF JUDICIAL NOMINEES: “Biden’s top advisers have spent months building an extensive pipeline of judicial nominees to fill court vacancies throughout the country, attempting to swiftly remake portions of the judiciary and undo one of his predecessor’s most significant achievements,” our colleagues Ann E. Marimow and Matt Viser report. 

• “More than a third of judges nationwide serving on federal appeals courts one level below the Supreme Court are eligible to step back from active service. With Democrats narrowly controlling the Senate — and with the prospect that they could lose control during the 2022 midterms — Biden intends to move quickly to fill openings that arise on courts affecting significant policies, including environmental regulations, gun laws and immigration.”

Where will he find vacancies?

• Circuit Courts – The Biden administration has at least five vacancies to fill.
• The Supreme Court – “The administration could face the retirement of Justice Stephen G. Breyer, 82, a potential vacancy Biden has vowed to fill with a Black woman.”

PENTAGON TO ROOT OUT EXTREMISM WITHIN RANKS: “Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin convened the military chiefs and civilian secretaries of the armed forces on Wednesday to begin intensifying the Pentagon’s efforts to combat white supremacy and right-wing extremism in the ranks,” the New York Times’s Eric Schmitt reports.

• “In the days since a pro-Trump mob breached the Capitol on Jan. 6, senior leaders of the 2.1 million active-duty and reserve troops have been grappling with the reality that several current or former military personnel joined the rioters.”
• “Austin, the first Black secretary of defense, ordered each branch of the military to stand-down at some point over the next 60 days to discuss the threat posed by white supremacy and similar extremism,” NBC News reports.

VOTING COMPANY FILES BILLION-DOLLAR LAWSUIT AGAINST MEDIA GIANT FOR DEFAMATION: “Smartmatic, an election technology company, has followed through on a threat to sue the parent company of Fox News over comments made on the network suggesting that the company participated in fraudulent activities during the Nov. 3 presidential election,” our colleagues Jeremy Barr and Elahe Izadi report. 

• “One of the biggest challenges in the information age is disinformation. Fox is responsible for this disinformation campaign, which has damaged democracy worldwide and irreparably harmed Smartmatic and other stakeholders who contribute to modern elections,” Smartmatic Chief Executive Antonio Mugica said in a statement.

The lawsuit names Fox News and Fox Business Network hosts Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs and Jeanine Pirro, as well as Trump’s personal lawyers Sidney Powell and Rudolph W. Giuliani.

REALITY TV STAR DITCHES FILM AND TV UNION: “Former president Donald Trump has resigned from the Screen Actors Guild — American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) after its national leadership voted to consider expelling him over his role in inciting the January mob attack on the U.S. Capitol,” our colleague Sonia Rao reports.