Anne: So I don't know if you follow what's going on in the US. There's a law, that probably won’t get passed in the Senate but just got passed in the house, that basically says that if someone like you, graduates from high school, or is on the way to graduating from high school and hasn't gotten in trouble, you can get a conditional residence—Mike: Right.Anne: And get a social security card for ten years. Ten years conditional residence. And then if you get employed in three years during that time you can get permanent legal access.Mike: Oh, okay. So that was the Trump administration when they came to an agreement, right?Anne: No, they haven't reached an agreement, but it's this new dream. If you had known that all you had to do was keep going to school and you could get a social security card and you could have a path to citizenship, would that have made a difference, do you think?Mike: Yes. I feel like yes, if I would have known earlier. But at the same time, once you start living in Arizona, or anywhere in the US, you kind of start thinking like you're from there. I was telling the nice lady from earlier, Anita, that once you get used to it, once you think that you're from there—that was my mistake, because I started not caring—you just start doing stuff that if you don't have papers you should know you're not supposed to do. I got kind of carried away and was trying to get the whole world. Because I didn't have my papers, I was trying to go after everybody. I'm like, "Okay. So if I can't work, cool, I'll just do my own thing, or I'll just do this, do that."Mike: I feel like if I was a little more informed, it would have gone a different way, or a little more help, programs or anything. I feel like I could have still had a fighting chance.Anne: Yeah. I mean the hope is that there will be policy that will give hope to people like you that as soon as you finish going to school, you can then get a social security card, you can get a job, you can make a life for yourself, but currently—

West Virginia’s non-Hispanic white population is 92 percent, much higher than the nation overall (60 percent). I’m not suggesting that Manchin doesn’t care about Black voting rights, but he doesn’t have a huge Black constituency pressing him on this issue, as only 4 percent of West Virginians are Black (compared with 13 percent in the nation overall). 

For example, the United Nations Gender Inequality Index combines several measures related to women’s progress toward equality. One of the measures used in the GII is “representation of women in parliament”. Two countries in the world have laws mandating gender representation in their parliaments: China and Pakistan. As a result these two countries perform far better in the index than countries that are similar in all other ways. Is this fair? It doesn’t really matter, because it is confusing to anyone who doesn’t know about this factor. The GII and similar indices should always be used with careful analysis to ensure their underlying variables don’t swing the index in unexpected ways.

On the Motion to Proceed (Motion to Proceed to S. Con. Res. 5 )

The 2001 example is the most recent time that the Senate has had this type of split: It’s only happened two other times in history, in 1881 and 1954.

In 2013, a Democratic Senate majority effectively ended the filibuster for district and circuit court nominations as well as executive branch nominations, and then in 2017, a GOP-controlled Senate ended the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations.

With a Senate majority, Biden can basically choose whomever he wants for both Cabinet and sub-Cabinet roles in federal agencies, as those choices are not subject to the filibuster.