Political Jason

House progressives forced Democratic leaders to boost paid leave for railroad workers before agreeing to avert a potentially disastrous strike. They may end up with little more than a symbolic win. The compromise arranged between Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s leadership team and an emboldened left hinged on a seemingly elegant solution to avoid a rail strike: House members voted on both the base labor agreement and a separate bill adding seven days of paid sick leave to it. When the two-part…

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A House-passed bill to head off a nationwide freight rail strike faces an uncertain future in the Senate — just days before the threatened work stoppage is likely to begin affecting the economy. The bill, which still needs a vote in the Senate, would impose a labor contract opposed by tens of thousands of unionized workers. It is meant to prevent a freight shutdown that the railroads say would cost the U.S. an estimated $2 billion per day, but the…

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The strategy behind Hakeem Jeffries’ yearslong ascent to House Democratic leader, as his top allies see it, focused on making the outcome feel inevitable. And in the end, it did. The New York Democrat culminated a remarkably frictionless climb of the party ladder on Wednesday, securing every vote and avoiding a single challenger. He became the highest-ranking Black congressional leader in U.S. history just 12 days after formally declaring his run. “He makes it look easy, what is difficult. That’s…

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Thom Tillis has helped ink plenty of bipartisan deals over the past two years. His advocacy for protecting same-sex marriage rights still surprised some of his fellow senators. “When people first saw me get involved, they were scratching their heads,” the North Carolina Republican said in an interview just before the marriage bill passed the Senate on Tuesday. The second-term Tillis saw the opportunity to put his own mark on an issue central to LGBTQ rights just a few weeks…

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Several Democrats privately described it as a longshot challenge, given Clyburn’s many allies. Powered by WPeMatico