| Welcome to The Daily 202 newsletter! Tell your friends to sign up here. On this day 77 years ago, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, popularly known as the "G.I. Bill of Rights." Democratic hopes Congress can thwart Republican efforts to restrict voting face at best an uncertain future, with a test vote today virtually sure to end in defeat — courtesy of math, GOP cohesion and centrist affection for the filibuster. Under pressure to get more personally involved to resist Republican efforts to end electoral practices blamed for President Donald Trump's defeat, President Biden promised on June 1 to "fight like heck" to defend the "sacred right" of voting. Ten days later, his Justice Department laid out a series of steps it would or could take as part of what my colleagues Amy Gardner and Sean Sullivan called "one of the most sweeping commitments to voting rights in recent U.S. history." On Tuesday, the White House seemed to recalibrate expectations in an attempt to seize symbolic victory from the jaws of parliamentary defeat, pinning its hopes on fractious Democrats sticking together. "What we're measuring, I think, is: Is the Democratic Party united? We weren't, as of a couple of weeks ago. That's a step forward," said White House press secretary Jen Psaki, who also suggested Biden's team, at least at the moment, had no Plan B. "Where do we go from there?" Psaki continued. "That is a conversation we're going to have to have with leaders in Congress, with Democrats, with a range of members who also want to see advances on voting rights."  Residents vote during the New York City mayoral primary election at the Brooklyn Museum polling station on Tuesday. (Angela Weiss/AFP/Getty Images) | For weeks and even months, progressive anger has been growing at the perceived gap between the stakes of the battle over how America conducts elections and the resources the Biden administration has devoted to the fight. | From an Indivisible activist: |  | | | If Republicans successfully block the legislation, it'll be the second time in weeks the GOP has thwarted a Democratic priority the president's supporters describe as essential to the Republic's survival — the first being the creation of a special commission to investigate the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot by Trump supporters. My colleague Aaron Blake set the table for today's actions: "It still isn't clear exactly what will happen with Sen. Joe Manchin III's middle-ground proposal on voting rights. Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) is planning to bring up the For the People Act, which Manchin (D-W.Va.) opposes in its current form, for a vote Tuesday, while saying he will continue working with Manchin. But that's just about getting to all 50 Democratic votes; getting to the necessary 60 still looks prohibitive, based on early GOP reviews of even Manchin's friendlier proposal." It's not even clear Manchin will vote to advance the For The People Act, Politico's Burgess Everett reported yesterday, in which case the White House may need a Plan C. The West Virginia senator's power in 2021 Washington stems in part from his refusal to support calls to change the filibuster, which currently requires 60 votes to advance legislation, giving Republicans a veto in a Senate split 50-50. Manchin has run out of different ways to tell reporters he won't change his mind, even as he has resisted fierce and increasing pressure from Democratic activists to do so and said he'd rather see big-ticket items pass with GOP support. On Tuesday night, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) penned her own paean to keeping the filibuster, saying it prevents Senate majority from passing legislation a future majority might easily reverse. "The filibuster compels moderation and helps protect the country from wild swings between opposing policy poles," she wrote. Whether resistance to changing the filibuster might erode after today, Psaki said: "If the vote is unsuccessful … we suspect it will prompt a new conversation about the path forward and we'll see how that goes." Republicans, meanwhile, have been taking something of a victory lap on Manchin's embrace of voter ID provisions in his compromise bill — and Democrats coming out, if not totally in favor, then at least not in opposition. "I don't know anybody who believes that people shouldn't have to prove that they are who they say they are," said Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D-Ga.). "But what has happened over the years is people have played with common sense identification and put into place restrictive measures intended not to preserve the integrity of the outcome, but to select certain voters. That's what I oppose." A new Monmouth University poll out yesterday found 80 percent of Americans — including 62 percent of Democrats — generally support requiring voters to show a photo ID in order to vote, while just 18 percent oppose it. Democratic opposition to voter ID requirements tends to center on three arguments, first and foremost that in-person voter fraud is vanishingly rare in American elections, so it's a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. A second objection relates to the disparities in which Americans have a government-issued photo ID. The Brennan Center, for instance, reported that 25 percent of Black voting-age Americans don't have one, compared to just 8 percent of White voting-age Americans. A third objection alleges states arbitrarily determine which IDs are valid, in some cases allowing handgun licenses but disallowing student IDs from state universities, or out-of-state drivers' licenses, which students often have. It's not clear how much of an impact voter ID statutes have. A February 2019 study of elections from 2008 to 2018 by the National Bureau of Economic Research found (with caveats) "no negative effect on registration or turnout, overall or for any group defined by race, gender, age, or party affiliation." Between that assessment and the absence of meaningful in-person voter fraud, the authors wrote, "our findings suggest that efforts to improve elections may be better directed at other reforms." | | | Quote of the day "We can't wait until the next election, because if we have the same kinds of shenanigans that brought about Jan. 6, if we have that for a couple more election cycles, we're going to have real problems in terms of our democracy long-term," former president Barack Obama said on the voting rights bill. | | | What's happening now Democrats in New York will pick a nominee today to succeed Mayor Bill de Blasio. "'New city, new vision, new mind-set,' Brooklyn borough president Eric Adams told voters at a Sunday rally in Inwood, a largely Dominican neighborhood in Manhattan," Jada Yuan and David Weigel report. "Adams, a 60-year-old retired police captain and former state legislator, has become the dominant figure in a race where sexual misconduct allegations, a campaign staff revolt and even a debate question about real estate prices knocked other candidates off course. In public polls, he has charged ahead of 2020 presidential candidate Andrew Yang, 46... "Tuesday will be the city's first test of ranked-choice voting, which allows voters to list up to five candidates in order of preference. No winner will be declared until those preferences are added up and lower-finishing candidates are nixed in a series of tallies until one candidate cracks 50 percent. That will slow down the count, and the city's Board of Elections is also expecting thousands or tens of thousands of absentee ballots to arrive and be counted after Tuesday, which will delay a final result. No Democrat is expected to win an outright majority Tuesday — but since New York City is majority Democrat, the eventual primary winner is likely to become mayor in November." To start your day with a full political briefing, sign up for our Power Up newsletter. | | | Lunchtime reads from The Post - "Retail workers are quitting at record rates for higher-paying work,'" by Abha Bhattarai: "Americans are ditching their jobs by the millions, and retail is leading the way with the largest increase in resignations of any sector. Some 649,000 retail workers put in their notice in April, the industry's largest one-month exodus since the Labor Department began tracking such data more than 20 years ago. Some are finding less stressful positions at insurance agencies, marijuana dispensaries, banks and local governments, where their customer service skills are rewarded with higher wages and better benefits. Others are going back to school to learn new trades, or waiting until they are able to secure reliable child care."
- "Before Carl Nassib, Michael Sam was the NFL's first openly gay draft pick. He never played a regular season game," by Katie Shepherd: "Sam ultimately retired from the sport in 2015, citing the toll on his mental health in the year after he came out. On Tuesday, Sam thanked Nassib for joining the ranks of LGBTQ football players, paying special tribute to the donation Nassib made to the Trevor Project, a nonprofit focused on suicide prevention. ... Though many professional athletes around the world, including several retired NFL players, had come out by 2014, no one who was still playing football had dared to make that move before Sam."
- "An American lawyer tried to break up a scuffle in Hong Kong. Now, he's in jail," by Shibani Mahtani: "Samuel Bickett, an American corporate lawyer in Hong Kong, was on his way to dinner in late 2019 when he saw a man hitting a teenager with a baton and stopped to intervene. The assailant turned out to be an off-duty policeman, and Bickett was arrested and charged with assaulting an officer and common assault. On Tuesday, Bickett, 37, was convicted and denied bail ahead of sentencing next month. The outcome added to fears among legal observers and Western officials that Hong Kong's courts are increasingly compromised as China exerts tighter control of the city's institutions."
| | | … and beyond - "A record buyout is just the start as wealthy flee U.S. tax hike," by Bloomberg Wealth's Melissa Karsh, Michelle F Davis and Devon Pendleton: "For 110 years, four generations of Mills family members earned their money by expanding their great-grandfather's Chicago apron business into a medical supplier that ranked among the nation's largest private companies. But soon after Democrats turned their attention toward raising taxes for the wealthy this year, the family signed a deal to cash out billions. It was no coincidence, according to people close to the more-than $30 billion transaction. ... The threat of subjecting billions in proceeds to additional capital gains taxes motivated the clan to get it done before the end of 2021, when higher rates could take effect, the people said. Such maneuvers are suddenly in the works throughout the opaque world of private U.S. corporations, as founders and their offspring discreetly consult tax experts and bankers with a pointed question: How much might they save by selling quickly?"
- "American basketball pro spent eight months in secretive China detention," by the Wall Street Journal's James T. Areddy: "When Chinese police detained American professional basketball player Jeff Harper in Shenzhen last year, they didn't formally arrest him, he says, but instead kept him locked in a room with a rancid mattress and a plastic chair for eight months. That form of Chinese detention, called 'residential surveillance in a designated location,' is used by authorities to hold a suspect for interrogation in a secret location before any arrest or charge. Human-rights groups describe it as a frightening situation that sometimes features violence and leaves the subject cut off from lawyers and family. Mr. Harper says he wasn't physically abused but was tormented by the uncertainty around what authorities planned for him."
| | | The Biden agenda The Biden administration endorsed legislation that would end the disparity in sentences between crack and powder cocaine offenses. - Biden himself helped create these disparities decades ago, and the endorsement highlights how his attitudes on drug laws have shifted over his long tenure in elected office, Sean Sullivan and Seung Min Kim report.
- "At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Regina LaBelle, the acting director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, expressed the administration's support for the Eliminating a Quantifiably Unjust Application of the Law Act, or Equal Act."
- "The current disparity is not based on evidence, yet has caused significant harm for decades, particularly to individuals, families and communities of color," LaBelle testified "The continuation of this sentencing disparity is a significant injustice in our legal system, and it is past time for it to end."
The Senate will vote today on Biden's nominee to lead the Office of Personnel Management after senators blocked her over her views on critical race theory and abortion rights. - "The senators, led by Sen. Josh Hawley (Mo.), objected to a quick confirmation of [Kiran] Ahuja, so the Senate will hold a floor debate ahead of a final vote," Colby Itkowitz reports. "The senators, led by Sen. Josh Hawley (Mo.), objected to a quick confirmation of Ahuja, so the Senate will hold a floor debate ahead of a final vote."
| | | Trump, post-presidency Trump's former bodyguard is now under scrutiny in the New York probe into the former president. - "New York prosecutors are investigating whether a top Trump Organization executive, Matthew Calamari, received tax-free fringe benefits, as part of their probe into whether former Trump's company and its employees illegally avoided paying taxes on such perks, according to people familiar with the matter. Prosecutors' interest in Mr. Calamari, once Mr. Trump's bodyguard, indicates that their probe into the Trump Organization's alleged practice of providing some employees with cars and apartments extends beyond Allen Weisselberg, the company's chief financial officer, and his family," the WSJ's Rebecca Ballhaus and Corinne Ramey report. "Receiving benefits — such as free apartments, subsidized rent or car leases — from an employer, and not paying taxes on such benefits, can be a crime, although experts said prosecutors rarely bring cases on such perks alone."
- "Prosecutors in recent weeks advised Mr. Calamari and his son, Matthew Calamari Jr., that they should hire their own lawyer, people familiar with the matter said. The elder Mr. Calamari, who works as the Trump Organization's chief operating officer, and his son, the company's corporate director of security, had previously been represented by a lawyer who was also representing other Trump Organization employees."
- Prosecutors could decide whether to seek an indictment against Weisselberg as soon as next month, CNN reports.
The winner of today's Manhattan District Attorney primary will take over the Trump investigation. - "The outgoing district attorney, Cyrus Vance Jr., is likely to decide whether to charge a case against the former President, the Trump Organization or company executives by the end of his term in December," CNN's Erica Orden reports. "If that happens, the next district attorney — most likely the winner of Tuesday's primary, given the overwhelmingly Democratic makeup of Manhattan — will oversee the prosecution. With eight contenders, the Democratic primary race for district attorney is a crowded one, and unlike the New York City mayoral primary, it doesn't have ranked-choice voting."
- "Alvin Bragg, widely seen as a leading contender in the race, has boasted of having sued the Trump administration more than 100 times while he was in the state attorney general's office, where he was chief deputy. He has also noted that he led the team that sued the Donald J. Trump Foundation, which resulted in Trump personally paying $2 million to an array of charities."
Trump's company sued New York to regain control of its Bronx golf course. - "De Blasio (D) terminated Trump's contract to run the Ferry Point golf course in January, citing Trump's role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The city said that Trump had tarnished his brand name such that he could never operate a 'first class, tournament quality course' as the city wanted, according to court papers," David Fahrenthold and Shayna Jacobs report. "In the lawsuit, Trump said the course had done nothing to break its contract with the city. Instead, he said, de Blasio disliked Trump because of his politics and used the Capitol insurrection 'as a pretext' to carry out a political vendetta."
A federal judge tossed most claims against Trump, Bill Barr and other officials in the clearing of Lafayette Square. - "A U.S. judge on Monday dismissed most claims filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of D.C., Black Lives Matter and others in lawsuits that accused the Trump administration of authorizing an unprovoked attack on demonstrators in Lafayette Square last year," Spencer Hsu reports. "The plaintiffs asserted the government used unnecessary force to enable a photo op of Trump holding a Bible outside of the historical St. John's Church. But U.S. District Judge Dabney L. Friedrich of Washington called allegations that federal officials conspired to make way for the photo too speculative."
| | | The pandemic The United States has fully inoculated 150 million people against the coronavirus, the White House said. - This is a major milestone even as experts warn that highly contagious new variants mean the vaccination rate needs to continue rising, Katerina Ang, Miriam Berger and Derek Hawkins report.
- "Roughly 46 percent of U.S. residents have completed their vaccination schedule, a significant improvement but nowhere near the threshold necessary to snuff out the virus in the country."
- "Health experts have said the delta variant of the coronavirus, first detected in India, could become dominant in the United States over summer, adding urgency to their pleas for more people to get their shots."
The Wuhan lab's classified work complicates the search for the pandemic's origins. - "A review of the lab's public records and internal guidelines reveals the existence of unspecified classified projects and discussion of the lab's responsibilities under China's state secrets law. Some records mention protocols for disclosing information to foreigners and the sealing of some research reports for up to two decades," Eva Dou reports.
- "The secrecy may help to explain why efforts to confirm or disprove the lab-leak theory of the pandemic's origins have made little progress. President Biden has ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to 'redouble their efforts' to determine the source of the virus — exactly the sort of operation the Wuhan lab prepared for more than a decade ago with the setting up of systems to handle confidential information."
Nursing home deaths increased 32 percent in 2020 amid the pandemic. - "Deaths among Medicare patients in nursing homes soared by 32% last year, with two devastating spikes eight months apart, a government watchdog reported Tuesday in the most comprehensive look yet at the ravages of COVID-19 among its most vulnerable victim," the AP's Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar reports. "The report from the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services found that about 4 in 10 Medicare recipients in nursing homes had or likely had COVID-19 in 2020, and that deaths overall jumped by 169,291 from the previous year, before the coronavirus appeared."
Coronavirus cases surged in Cornwall, England, after the G-7 summit. - "Downing Street says the Group of Seven summit held in the British town earlier this month is not to blame," Berger reports. "The seven-day case rate in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly has soared from 4.9 per 100,000 people in early June to 130.6 per 100,000 people on June 16."
- "We are confident that there were no cases of transmission to the local residents," a spokesperson for Prime Minister Boris Johnson told the Guardian. "All attendees were tested, everyone involved in the G-7 work were also tested during their work on the summit."
| | | Hot on the left Trump wanted his Justice Department to stop "Saturday Night Live" from teasing him. "In March 2019, the then-president of the United States had just watched an episode of the long-running, liberal-leaning NBC sketch comedy series (it wasn't even a new episode, it was a rerun), and grew immediately incensed that the show was gently mocking him," the Daily Beast's Asawin Suebsaeng and Adam Rawnsley report. "Trump went farther than simply tweeting his displeasure with the late-night comedians and SNL writers' room. ... According to two people familiar with the matter, Trump had asked advisers and lawyers in early 2019 about what the Federal Communications Commission, the courts systems, and — most confusingly to some Trump lieutenants — the Department of Justice could do to probe or mitigate SNL, Jimmy Kimmel, and other late-night comedy mischief-makers." | | | Hot on the right Diplomat and former U.S. ambassador Eric Edelman told the Bulwark's Charlie Sykes that the ongoing chaos among GOP leaders could be caused by "contact lunacy." When talking about figures like Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Tex.), who used to be a White House physician and who recently has been pushing the false narrative that Biden suffers from mental impairment, Edelman said "this is just another example of someone who's been affected by close contact to Donald Trump and has walked away a complete lunatic as a result of it." "Contact lunacy for me has been the explanation all along for this effect that Trump seems to have on people," Edelman said. | | | Ranked-choice voting, visualized For the first time, New York City is using ranked-choice voting to select a mayor, trading its old runoff system for one in which voters will rank as many as five candidates. In a traditional voting system, voters select just one candidate. With ranked-choice voting, they rank candidates in order of preference. This voting simulation shows how ranked-choice voting works and why its supporters say it better represents the will of the people: | | | Today in Washington Biden will meet with FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell and Homeland Security adviser and Deputy National Security adviser Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall at 1:45 p.m. | | | In closing | A hat-tip to our colleagues at the New York Times, who ran what could likely be one of this year's most memorable headlines: |  | | | | And Seth Meyers said former vice president Mike Pence should reconsider his allegiances after he was heckled during a conservative conference last week:  | | | | | | |
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