Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema Literally High-Fived Over Their Refusal to End the Filibuster

Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, both of whom have blocked crucial legislation, literally high-fived over their mutual belief in keeping the filibuster.

The two were speaking on a panel about U.S. foreign and domestic policy at the Davos World Economic Forum on Tuesday. Sinema argued that the current levels of partisanship in government are not “healthy for democracy,” and then Manchin asked if they still agreed on not getting rid of the filibuster.

“That’s correct,” Sinema said, and the pair high-fived.

The filibuster is a process used to block a bill’s passage in the Senate. Contrary to popular belief, the filibuster is not in the Constitution but is instead thought to have arisen from “tenuous precedents and informal practices,” according to the Center for American Progress. As of late, the filibuster has been used to essentially enforce minority rule. It takes 60 votes to end debate on a bill, so senators in the minority party can still block a bill’s passage through the filibuster. Since bills must pass the Senate before being signed into law, minority senators can force the majority party to agree to changes in the legislation before allowing a final vote.

Democrats have been trying for years to abolish or at least amend the filibuster, but there have been holdouts—notably Sinema and Manchin. The two senators have made names for themselves as perpetual thorns in Joe Biden’s side, blocking some of the president’s keystone legislation, such as the $2 trillion Build Back Better package aimed at tackling climate change and social welfare.

Manchin and Sinema have been accused of being more self-serving than public servants. West Virginia Senator Manchin voted against paid leave for rail union workers, backed fossil fuel initiatives such as the Mountain Valley natural gas pipeline, and fomented the ridiculous pro-gas stove frenzy.

Sinema, meanwhile, appears to have undergone an ideological 180 since coming to Capitol Hill, seemingly jettisoning the progressive beliefs she previously espoused. She went viral for voting with a flippant thumbs-down against increasing the minimum wage—despite previously being vocal in support of raising it. The Arizona Democratic Party censured her for opposing the removal of the filibuster and accused her of cozying up to wealthy donors instead of fighting for her own constituents.

She was already deeply unpopular across party lines in Arizona, and since switching from Democratic to independent in December, it has only gotten worse. A recent Morning Consult poll found that Sinema is one of the most unpopular senators in the entire country.

In this country, nobody wants to work (with George Santos). The New York representative had been hard-pressed to find a place to contribute his seasoned and experienced mind, but finally, it appears he’ll be finding a home on the Small Business Committee and the Science, Space, and Technology Committee—among the many areas of Santos’s expertise.

The news on Tuesday comes after uncertainty about whether Santos would have a spot on any committee at all. Last week, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said Santos would not receive a spot on any key committee. Santos had hoped to gain a spot on the House Foreign Affairs Committee or the House Financial Services Committee, amazing preferences given the international and financial investigations Santos currently faces.

According to CNN correspondent Manu Raju, several Republican chairs indicated their unwillingness to have Santos on their committees. But Republicans also feared that if they denied Santos committee spots, it would set a precedent for any other members who may face public scrutiny even while they have not been charged with a crime. As in, Republicans were putting more weight on the possibility of future members being as brazenly dishonest than they are on the importance of not rewarding that dishonesty with committee spots. The kind of calculus only to be found in a very reasonable political party.

Again, Santos is facing criminal investigation both in Brazil for fraud and in the United States on the federal and county level into his finances and background. Republicans’ purported fears already don’t apply to the case at hand.

Moreover, they have already set a precedent for not seating members they deem unfit onto committees. In 2019, the House Republican Steering Committee elected to keep Republican Steve King off committees after he had asked in an interview with The New York Times how terms like “white nationalist” and “white supremacist” became “offensive.” So seating Santos in order to avoid setting bad precedent for their party in fact overturns the previous precedent they had set.

But the crux of all this is that Republicans have a narrow majority. When they did not seat King on any committees, they were in a 30-some-seat minority, so the stakes of punishing someone were low. But now Republicans cannot afford to lose any more members. And any move they would have made to further delegitimize Santos risked him resigning or being forced out. So their calculus is perhaps less concerned with future precedent and more with not punishing members when the Republican Party needs every last one of them. Santos may not have gotten on the committee he wanted, but political realities at least gave him something.

Nearly two years ago, the House, including 11 Republicans, voted to strip Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee assignments just weeks into the Georgia freshman’s first term. The resolution followed Greene’s racist and antisemitic rhetoric; her parroting of conspiracy theories on the 2020 election, 9/11, and the 2018 Parkland shooting; and her repeated indications of support for fatal violence against Democrats.

Fast forward two years, Greene is now being elevated to the House Homeland Security Committee—despite having incited plenty of threats herself against the homeland.

Greene, a key provocateur of the rhetoric that led to the January 6 Capitol riot, had encouraged people in 2019 to “flood the Capitol” and resort to violence “if we have to.” Greene expressed support for executing Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton. After announcing her run for Congress, she posted an image on Facebook of herself holding a gun next to images of Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib. “We need strong conservative Christians to go on the offense against these socialists who want to rip our country apart,” she wrote in the caption.

Insofar as Greene displays any “concern” for protecting the homeland, it nearly always consists of racist fearmongering and lies. “They want to conquer America, and we’re not going to do it,” Greene previously said about Muslims. “We don’t need gun control! We need Muslim control!” a 2018 comment read on Facebook. Greene liked it.

In 2018, Greene wrote a theory that California’s deadly wildfires were a result of space lasers possibly controlled by the Rothschild investment bank. Greene also called George Soros—a businessman, philanthropist, and notable Democratic donor—a “Nazi” and “a piece of crap that turned in his own people over to the Nazis.” Soros is a Holocaust survivor.

The Homeland Security Committee has jurisdiction over the border. House Republicans have said they aim to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas as part of their perennial focus on the border. Greene is one of 32 Republican co-sponsors of recently introduced articles of impeachment against Mayorkas. (The last and only time a Cabinet secretary was impeached was in 1876, when Secretary of War William Belknap was impeached by the House and subsequently acquitted by the Senate.)

All that is to say, beyond conducting impeachment hearings and trafficking conspiracy, it does not seem likely Greene’s new assignment will lead her to pursue much constructive policy to keep people safe.

Members of the Taliban were able to temporarily subscribe to Twitter’s pay-for-verification feature, adding blue check marks to their accounts that appeared to confer a degree of legitimacy on the extremist regime.

At least two Taliban leaders and four prominent supporters were able to subscribe to Twitter Blue, the BBC reported Monday. They included Hedayatullah Hedayat, head of the Taliban’s department for “access to information”; Abdul Haq Hammad, head of the media watchdog at the Afghan Ministry of Information and Culture; and Muhammad Jalal, who praised Twitter owner Elon Musk for “making Twitter great again” after acquiring a blue check.

As of Tuesday, two of the officials mentioned in the BBC’s report had lost their blue checks. Neither Twitter nor Musk has publicly commented on why that happened.

“The main goal of the Taliban regime is to receive recognition,” Joseph Azam, board chair of the Afghan-American Foundation, told The New Republic. “For all of its current challenges, Twitter is considered to be a place where people are platformed. And so, for them to get verified would be a significant platforming of them and would give them some legitimacy that they haven’t been able to get through other more formal, historically relevant channels.”

“It puts them on par with other governments, in a way, which is what they want,” Azam said. “That matters. When you can’t get a seat at the U.N. … the next best thing are these informal channels.”

Musk unveiled plans for Twitter Blue shortly after his chaotic takeover of the platform in October, arguing it would help bring in revenue. Subscribers pay $8 a month for the blue verification check mark and, crucially, priority visibility on the platform. The subscription plan initially launched in November but was halted due to people verifying fake accounts to trick other users. Twitter Blue launched again in December, this time in earnest.

Experts have warned that Twitter Blue would increase the spread of misinformation. They have also said that Musk’s various plans, which included firing Twitter’s content moderators and rolling back disinformation policies, would allow hate speech and extremism to spread unfettered on the platform.

The Taliban receiving Twitter verification, even temporarily, is a chilling example of those warnings coming to bear. Twitter’s blue check mark, once highly coveted, still conveys a level of credibility and legitimacy to a bearer.

“Unfortunately, Elon Musk–controlled Twitter has allowed Taliban officials to commit their violence through online discourse as well, where they offer false narratives about the situation in Afghanistan,” said Halema Wali, co-director of Afghans for a Better Tomorrow.

Azam explained that verifying Taliban accounts portrays them as “the one true source of information on Afghanistan.”

“Once that credence takes hold, what it does for everybody else is it makes their realities less relevant. It makes it harder for people who don’t agree with them and who don’t have the platform, or reach, to be heard.”

As the Taliban continues to tighten its grip on Afghanistan, including in a huge crackdown on women’s right to education and work, any degree of credibility given to it only strengthens its position on the global stage. Twitter verification, even temporary, further isolates the people still in the country.

“Afghans have run out of allies. They’ve run out of avenues for redress, they’ve run out of platforms, they’ve run out of ways to be heard,” Azam stressed. “The private sector and nongovernment, it’s actually one of the most important remaining tools that 40 million people in Afghanistan have. The governments have turned their back on Afghans. So the responsibility that companies like Twitter have … is to try to offset that, or not make the same mistake. And I think that’s the part of this that’s really disappointing.”

This post has been updated.

Just weeks after a 6-year-old shot his teacher, a gun trade show in Las Vegas is hosting a manufacturer promoting its “JR-15,” a child-size AR-15 rifle.

The JR-15 was first launched last year by gun manufacturer WEE1 Tactical. The launch sparked outrage as the company promoted the J.V. death machine with cartoon skulls and crossbones stylized as boys and girls. The presumed boy skull had a blonde mohawk and green pacifier, while the girl skull sported blonde pigtails and pink bows and a pink pacifier. Both cartoons had one eye patched with a rifle sight.

The company’s website from last year claimed that the JR-15, while smaller, “operates just like Mom and Dad’s gun.” The site also boasted “SWAG for Adults and Young Shooters” that matched the cartoonized promotional materials. “The BRAND is meant to be EDGY,” the site read.

Now, as WEE1 Tactical heads to the SHOT Show in Las Vegas, where the deadliest mass shooting by an individual in U.S. history took place, it is preparing to re-promote the same gateway gun with a more muted tone. The company’s latest flyer skips the “edgy” branding to focus more on the product specifications of the JR-15. One page is dedicated toward explaining the company’s “tamper resistant safety” switch that “requires strength and dexterity to release.”

Instead of lauding the gun as “just like Mom and Dad’s gun,” the company focuses on the “American Family Values” to be had by buying its gun, which helps “introduce young enthusiasts to the shooting sports.”

“WEE1 Tactical has adopted this supposedly kinder, gentler marketing approach because it knows from experience that most Americans are shocked and disgusted by the idea of manufacturing semiautomatic assault rifles designed for grade schoolers,” said Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the Violence Policy Center.

AR-15s or similar rifles were the primary weapons used in some of the deadliest mass shootings in recent American history: the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, the 2017 Sutherland Springs church shooting, the 2018 Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, and the 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting.

Just among this handful of American shootings, three were at schools. Most might recoil at a gross push to get even more weapons into people’s hands, especially young people’s. (After all, there’s an estimated 120 guns for every 100 people in America.)

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, however, responded to the tragic Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde by suggesting they would have been safer with JR-15s.