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U.S. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy attends a meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden (R) and other leaders of Congress at the White House on November 29, 2022 in Washington, DC to review legislative priorities through the end of 2022 discuss.

Kevin Dietsch | Getty Images

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden hosted a rare meeting of the four leaders of the House and Senate at the White House on Tuesday, where Republicans and Democrats agreed to pass legislation to avert a nationwide railroad workers’ strike before the U.S. economy its effects could begin to be felt as early as this weekend.

Meeting with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, DN.Y., Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, both out California, was a last-minute addition to Biden’s public schedule. It was also the first time the group known as “The Big Four” had met with Biden since Republicans narrowly gained control of the House of Representatives earlier this month and Democrats clung to the Senate despite strong political headwinds.

Tuesday’s meeting was neither partisan nor contentious, although attendees said the power dynamics in Washington are set to change.

“It was a very positive meeting and it was open,” Pelosi told reporters at the Capitol after the meeting. “But from a time point of view, we have to avoid the strike at the moment.”

McConnell struck a similar tone: “We had a really good meeting and laid out the challenges that we all face together here.”

A rail strike could officially start on December 9 if no agreement is reached between unions and rail companies. But the effects of that were felt before that. Rail freight companies are obliged to give customers a week’s notice of a possible strike to give them time to make contingency plans.

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Congress can step in and use its powers under the Constitution’s Commerce Clause to pass legislation to end a strike or lockout and set the terms of agreements between unions and carriers. In that case, Congress appears poised to pass a tentative collective bargaining agreement, which was endorsed by some – but not all – of the sector’s major unions in September.

Pelosi said she plans to bring a bill to the floor of the house on Wednesday morning.

“It’s not all I’d like to see. I think we should have paid for sick leave,” she said.

“And I don’t like taking action against unions’ ability to strike. But as we weigh stocks, we need to avoid a strike,” Pelosi added.

Both Pelosi and McCarthy said Tuesday they believed the railroad strike law had the votes it took to get through the house.

But in the Senate, where it takes only one dissenting senator to stop a bill, emergency strike legislation could face new hurdles down the road.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., has previously announced that he will oppose the bill.

“Just because Congress has the authority to enforce a cumbersome solution doesn’t mean we should,” Rubio said in a statement Tuesday.

An unlikely ally for Rubio on the other side of the political spectrum could be Senator Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent who criticized the deal when it was first reached in September. On Tuesday, he declined to say whether he would support the bill.

“Workers across the country who work for the railroads, people who work dangerous jobs in inclement weather, don’t have paid sick leave. This is outrageous,” Sanders told reporters at the Capitol on Tuesday.

“I think it’s up to Congress to do everything in its power to protect these workers and make sure the railroad treats them with the respect and dignity they deserve,” he added.

Either Rubio or Sanders or any other senator could decide to mount a filibuster of the bill and potentially hold it up for days under Senate rules.

McConnell declined to speculate Tuesday about how many Republicans would support the bill.

“You have to ask our members,” he told reporters. “I think some tend to vote against and others argue that the economic price of doing so is too high.”

The House of Representatives is expected to pass a version of the bill Wednesday morning. After that, it becomes more difficult to predict the timeline given the flexibility afforded to senators under the chamber’s debate and filibuster rules.

Rachel Maddow explained why Trump elevates Nazis by having dinner with them isn’t politics as usual.

Video:

Rachel #Maddow “These guys, neo-Nazi agitators, who literally get a big hug, a private audience with what’s probably the next Republican Party presidential nominee… that’s great for the Nazis, isn’t it? “pic.twitter.com/9Y09iQmUkN

— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) November 29, 2022

Maddo says:

And I feel like ever since that came to light over the bank holiday weekend, the main thing in political circles has been about whether or not this is bad for Trump, whether or not this will reflect badly on him as the leader of the Republican party, whether or not him that something could hurt, whether that could be a mistake or whether it’s slipping off him too.

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Okay, so the reason groups like People For The American Way monitor guys like this and track what they say and do isn’t just because a guy like that might someday have a random effect on a real politician who’s with them interacts.

No, the reason it’s worth keeping an eye on Holocaust-denying racist agitators who advocate race war and – I’m not kidding – the burning of women alive in America, the reason you – the reason you Monitoring guys like that isn’t just because of that
Their potential future impact on other people in power lies in their power and the harm they intend to cause.

And those guys, neo-Nazi agitators, who literally get a big hug, a private audience with what’s likely to be the next Republican Party presidential nominee, sure, that’s reflective of that political candidate and his party, but more importantly, it’s great for the Nazis, right ? It’s an overkill for their perceived legitimacy, their reach, their ability to get their message out to the people, to operate, to recruit, and to do what they want to do, which in this guy’s case is the United States of America in Whites transformed – only, no Jew allows a fascist homeland under a dictator that he would like Donald Trump to be. It’s hard to have normal, everyday, normal politics alongside this kind of politics, but this is where we are and the violent far right will benefit greatly from this moment.

Maddow was right. This situation is not politics as usual. Donald Trump Uplifts Nazis And Tells People Nick Fuentes Really Gets Him Trump’s desires and impulses have never been in doubt, and he wants to destroy democracy in order to seize and keep power.

When the media treats Trump’s dining with Nazis as just another Trump quirk and debates whether or not it’s a bad thing for the former president to hang out with NAZIS, they’re normalizing extremism and injecting it into mainstream society.

Donald Trump is a national security threat, and treating him as something lesser only helps America’s far-right.

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House press pool and congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a bachelor’s degree in political science. His thesis focused on public policy with a specialization in social reform movements.

Awards and professional memberships

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and the American Political Science Association

dr Anthony Fauci, Senior White House Medical Advisor, speaks during a COVID-19 briefing at the White House November 22, 2022 in Washington, DC.

Win Mcnamee | Getty Images

The nation’s leading infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci said the US is “certainly” still in the middle of a Covid-19 pandemic and he was “very concerned” by the divisive state of American politics.

“As a public health official, I don’t want to see anyone suffer and die from Covid,” he told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday. “I don’t care if you’re a far-right Republican or a far-left Democrat, everyone deserves the reassurance of good public health and that doesn’t happen.”

Fauci said between 300 and 400 people are still dying from Covid every day and uptake of the latest vaccine booster is less than 15%.

“I think the idea of ​​forgetting it, that’s over — it’s not,” he said.

The 81-year-old became a household name during the Covid-19 pandemic and battled misinformation – sometimes from the highest levels of government. He challenged former President Donald Trump on everything from hydroxychloroquine use to mask mandates, and his unwavering commitment to science made him a quasi-celebrity.

White House Covid-19 Response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha said Sunday he knew it had been a long two years for Americans but that getting vaccinated ahead of the holiday season was still “incredibly important”.

“We understand that people want to move on,” Jha told ABC News on This Week. “The good news is that if they keep their immunity up to date they can keep going.”

Fauci announced plans in August to step down from his duties as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and as advisory White House medical adviser by the end of the year. He gave his expected final Covid briefing on Tuesday, encouraging people to get vaccinated.

“I hope to be remembered for what I tried to do, just to bring science, medicine and public health principles into very serious crises that we’ve had,” Fauci said Sunday. “As I said before, I gave everything to do that.”

Fauci has advised seven US Presidents starting with Ronald Reagan on the HIV/AIDS epidemic, West Nile virus, the 2001 anthrax attacks, pandemic flu, various avian flu threats, Ebola, Zika and most recently Covid and monkey pox.