“Old battles have become new again”: Bloody Sunday brings current battlegrounds into focus
Alabama Democrat Terri Sewell shares what the day means to her almost 60 years later. Plus, the week ahead in government plus details on the just-released full-year funding bill.
👋🏾 Hi, hey, hello! Welcome back to Once Upon a Hill. I’m Michael Jones. Thanks for spending part of your evening with me.
It’s Sunday, March 3. State of the Union week is upon us. President Joe Biden will give the high-stakes speech in the House chamber on Thursday evening. I’ll have a preview in a column ahead of the event and be at the Capitol, covering it live. Stay tuned.
Vice President Kamala Harris this afternoon called for an immediate six-week ceasefire in Gaza to reverse what she described as a humanitarian catastrophe during a speech on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, to mark the 59th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. Keep reading for coverage of the current-day significance of the anniversary from the perspective of Alabama’s sole congressional Democrat and details of the US operation to airdrop aid into Gaza that started this weekend.
Here’s what else is happening on Capitol Hill, at the White House and beyond this week:
Tuesday:
The House is back after a session that lasted less than two days last week. The Rules Committee will meet to consider two bills: One would require the Securities and Exchange Commission to deregulate investment markets for companies, brokers and advisors. The other would require the Homeland Security Department to detain undocumented immigrants charged in the US with theft, burglary, larceny or a shoplifting offense in honor of Laken Riley, an Augusta University nursing student whose body was found in a wooded area near the University of Georgia late last month. The man charged with the crime is a Venezuelan immigrant who was previously charged in connection with a shoplifting case in Georgia.
Across the Capitol, the Senate also returns Tuesday to advance the nomination of Ronald Keohane to be an Assistant Defense Secretary. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) also scheduled procedural votes on two additional nominees this week.
President Biden will return from Camp David, where he spent the weekend preparing for his SOTU speech.
Wednesday:
The House and Senate are in.
The House Judiciary Crime and Federal Government subcommittee will hold a hearing on child sex abuse material identification.
The Financial Services Committee will hold a hearing on the Federal Reserve’s semi-annual monetary policy report with testimony from Fed Chair Jerome Powell.
The House Oversight Committee will hold a hearing on the Biden administration’s role in pandemic response and preparedness.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will hold a hearing on global food insecurity on Wednesday.
Vice President Kamala Harris will travel to Madison, Wis., to uplift the administration’s work to expand registered apprenticeship programs in her role as chair of the White House Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment. It will be the vice president’s second trip to the state this year and the sixth since she was sworn into office. Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su will join her.
Thursday:
The House and Senate are in.
The House Education and Workforce Higher Education subpanel will hold a hearing on DEI on college campuses.
The House and Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committees will hold a joint hearing on American veterans with disabilities and the House federal government weaponization committee will hold a hearing as well.
Friday:
The first six funding bills are due to avoid a partial government shutdown. (More on this below.)
President Biden and First Lady Dr. Jill Biden will travel to Philadelphia for a campaign event before traveling to Wilmington, Delaware for the night.
Saturday:
The president and first lady will travel to Atlanta for a campaign event before returning to Wilmington, where they will remain until Sunday.
Editor’s note: This post is a response to recent feedback from subscribers who tell me they’d like a primer for what to pay attention to at the start of each week. If it’s something you find useful, I’ll continue sending future Sundays.
Thank you for being you,
Michael
Bloody Sunday anniversary
It’s been three years since the late Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) passed away. 56 years prior, he suffered a skull fracture among the hundreds of peaceful protesters marching on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma before they were attacked by state and local law enforcement officers with billy clubs and tear gas while in pursuit of civil rights.
For Terri Sewell, the lone Democrat in Alabama’s congressional delegation and a child of Selma who grew up a stone’s throw away from the bridge, she never imagined her cause would be Lewis’s.
“Old battles have become new again, not just for reproductive rights and reproductive freedoms, but for voting rights,” she told me this past week. “John was bludgeoned on a bridge for the right of all of us to vote and we have seen Republicans roll back that, [the] Republican-led Supreme Court with the Shelby decision and it’s simply unacceptable.”
Sewell also viewed the anniversary as an opportunity to highlight the stakes of the election this November for young voters and voters of color.
“I think that there’s one thread that I worry about is voter apathy,” she said. “And I’m going to use this opportunity this weekend to talk about the difference that we can make when we vote.”
The weekend also serves as a call to action for fellow Democrats.
“I really will take this opportunity to not only share with my colleagues the great history that lives and breathes in my district, but also to challenge them to go back and rededicate ourselves to the struggle for which John Lewis and so many others known and unknown fought for,” Sewell said.
During Harris’s remarks, she paid homage to those active in the civil rights movement and who crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge and highlighted how their efforts led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 six months after Bloody Sunday. As President Biden has done on the campaign trail, Harris drew parallels between those who worked to stifle the civil rights movement and the modern-day attacks on reproductive freedom and fertility treatments, the right to vote, LGBTQ+ rights and gun violence prevention efforts.
Following her remarks, the vice president joined a group of about 100 marchers, which included prominent civil rights leaders, local residents and dignitaries, and Biden administration officials who gathered at the foot of Edmund Pettus Bridge, arms linked.
During the march, the group did a call and response: “What does democracy look like? This is what democracy looks like!”
Harris attended the commemoration of Bloody Sunday in 2018, 2020 and 2022, and virtually in 2021.
Senate Democrats late last week reintroduced the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would restore and strengthen parts of the Voting Rights Act, including Section 5, which required certain jurisdictions to receive federal approval before enacting certain changes to their voting laws. The House passed the bill in 2021, but the Senate failed twice to defeat a filibuster. A vote to exempt the legislation from the Senate filibuster rules also failed.
The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a full committee hearing next Tuesday on the ongoing need for the John Lewis Act amidst continued voter suppression efforts in Republican-led states.
Sen. Laphonza Butler (D-Calif.), who chairs the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, held a hearing on Friday in Montgomery, Ala., to examine modern-day voting discrimination.
“59 years after Bloody Sunday, Black Americans are once again on the frontlines of the battle for voting rights,” she said. “We cannot let our children inherit an America less free than the one we were born into.”
War in Gaza
Before beginning her Bloody Sunday remarks, Harris spent about six minutes addressing the situation in Gaza.
She said that the “threat that Hamas poses to the people of Israel must be eliminated,” but “given the scale of suffering in Gaza, there must be an immediate ceasefire.”
While the comments are a notable change in the administration’s rhetoric, its Israel policy remains status quo. It’s unclear if the force Harris delivered the message with and the historic setting will earn the White House any goodwill from the online moral left who have become single-issue voters over the war in Gaza.
Harris also said Israel must do more to increase the flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza.
“No excuses,” she said.
The remarks come a day after the Biden administration completed its first humanitarian assistance airdrop into Gaza.
Three cargo airplanes dropped 38,000 ready-to-eat meals into the region between 3-5 p.m. local time. Each plane carried 22 total bundles of meals. No water was included in the airdrops.
A senior administration official said the locations were chosen as areas where people could best access the meals while also conceding some of the meals could fall into the hands of Hamas terrorists.
The official added that the US monitored the location and saw civilians approaching the aid to distribute amongst themselves.
“The fact that today’s aircraft was successful is an important test case to show that we can do this again in the coming days and weeks successfully,” the official said. “Our colleagues at [the Defense Department] are planning additional drops, but nothing further to share there in terms of timing.”
The US is also exploring distributing aid by sea, in addition to the airdrops and truck convoys.
Behind the scenes, the White House has been hard at work to facilitate a six-week ceasefire that would lead to the release of the remaining hostages held captive by Hamas. President Biden previously expressed optimism a deal would be in place by the Muslim holiday Ramadan, but a senior administration official exercised more caution.
“The deal is basically there,” the official told reporters Saturday morning. “But I don’t want to create expectations one way or the other than to just say we’re doing everything we possibly can.” The official added that the current deal under negotiation is more complicated than the first, which was a five-day ceasefire that was extended day by day.
The US asked the Israeli government to investigate, a request it says the Israelis are taking seriously to avoid tragedies like this from happening again.
White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby suggested that was enough to earn Israel the trust to investigate itself.
“There have been examples in the past where they have investigated incidents and have been very honest and upfront about mistakes they’ve made from the [Israeli Defense Force] level in the past—and not distant past either,” he said on Friday. “So let’s see what they come up with. Let’s see what they’ve learned.”
Government shutdown countdown
House and Senate leaders released the text of the first six funding bills for the 2024 fiscal year late this afternoon.
Here’s the 1,050-page “minibus” bill if you’re hankering for some evening reading.
Congress must pass the bills by midnight on Saturday to avoid a partial government shutdown. House leadership is expected to put the minibus on the floor under suspension of the rules, which will require a two-thirds majority vote but bypass the Rules Committee, where it could stall due to conservative opposition. (I wrote more about why Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has had to rely on the suspension calendar to pass major legislation in last Thursday’s issue.) Once it clears the House, the Senate will vote on it.
The package includes provisions for several federal agencies, including the Agriculture, Commerce, Justice, Interior, Veterans’ Affairs and Transportation Departments. The bill also funds the FDA and energy, water, science and housing programs. The legislation is in line with President Biden's budget agreement with then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy last summer and a deal between Leader Schumer and Speaker Johnson in January that reaffirmed the Biden-McCarthy deal.
Specifically, the bill includes more than $7 billion for women, infants and children’s program—better known as WIC—an increase of more than $1 billion from the previous fiscal year. This is a major victory for congressional Democrats who faced fierce resistance from Republicans to fund the program fully.
Democrats also blocked a Republican-led pilot program that would have restricted SNAP purchases. And they secured money to hire additional air traffic controllers and increase pay for firefighters plus rental assistance amid an affordable housing crisis.
The biggest feather in the Republican’s policy cap is a provision that blocks the VA from flagging a veteran to a national gun registry without permission from a judge.
The GOP also blocked oil sales to China from the US’s emergency stockpile and Justice Department investigations into parents who speak out against diversity, equity and inclusion at school board meetings. Republicans secured cuts to the FBI, Environmental Protection Agency and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Congressional appropriators had time to hammer out the bills following a deal last Wednesday between top leaders to extend current funding levels to next week for the first package of bills and two weeks after that for the second batch. The House and Senate would pass the short-term extension the next day and President Biden would sign it into law the day after. It was the fourth short-term extension he signed since the end of the last fiscal year.
The bill text for the second set of bills is expected in the coming days. It will cover the Defense, Homeland Security, State and Health and Human Services Departments plus Financial Services, the legislative branch and more. Leaders expect to pass the bills by the March 22 deadline.
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