McConnell Relents On Senate Power-Sharing Deal

The Washington Post reports:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Monday night signaled he would step back from an ultimatum over Senate rules that sparked a partisan showdown and threatened to obstruct President Biden’s early legislative agenda.

McConnell (R-Ky.) said in a statement that he was ready to move forward with a power-sharing accord with Democrats on how to operate the evenly divided Senate, defusing a potentially explosive clash over the minority’s rights to block partisan legislation.

The New York Times reports:

In his negotiations with Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the new majority leader, Mr. McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, had refused to agree to a plan for organizing the chamber without a pledge from Democrats to protect the filibuster, a condition that Mr. Schumer had rejected.

But late Monday, as the stalemate persisted, Mr. McConnell found a way out by pointing to statements by two centrist Democrats, Senators Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, that said they opposed getting rid of the procedural tool — a position they had held for months — as enough of a guarantee to move forward without a formal promise from Mr. Schumer.

Let’s see what that devil does in the days ahead before we celebrate anything.

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow says McConnell ‘caved’ on his filibuster demand during her Schumer interview https://t.co/LQLod0bjf7 via @Yahoo

— Don Winslow (@donwinslow) January 26, 2021