Good morning. It's Monday and your Capitol View is here.
In Washington, Dems are pushing for a new pandemic relief package as Republicans and the White House want to go cheap. The AP reports : "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday assailed Republican 'disarray' over a new pandemic relief package as the White House suggested a narrower effort might be necessary, at least for now. The California Democrat panned the Trump administration's desire to trim an expiring temporary federal unemployment benefit from $600 weekly to about 70 percent of pre-pandemic wages. 'The reason we had $600 was its simplicity,' she said from the Capitol. The administration's chief negotiators — White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin — spent a few hours at the Capitol later Sunday to put what Meadows described as 'final touches' on a $1 trillion relief bill Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is expected to bring forward Monday afternoon. ... Both Mnuchin and Meadows said earlier Sunday that narrower legislation might need to be passed first to ensure that enhanced unemployment benefits don’t run out for millions of Americans. They cited unemployment benefits, money to help schools reopen, tax credits to keep people from losing their jobs, and lawsuit protections for schools and businesses as priorities."
Federal agents spurred violence across the nation again over the weekend. Via the AP : "Protests took a violent turn in several U.S. cities over the weekend, with demonstrators squaring off against federal agents outside a courthouse in Portland, Oregon, forcing police in Seattle to retreat into a station house and setting fire to vehicles in California and Virginia. A protest against police violence in Austin, Texas, turned deadly when, according to a witness, the driver of a car that drove through a crowd of marchers opened fire on an armed demonstrator who approached the vehicle. And someone was shot and wounded in Aurora, Colorado, after a car drove through a protest there, authorities said."
Gov. Tim Walz's plan for schools is coming this week. The DFL governor has suggested in recent days that there won’t be a uniform order that will determine whether school buildings reopen. On KFGO radio Friday, Walz reinforced that local decisions are important and it'll be up to school leaders to implement safety guidelines. "It won't necessarily look the same everywhere,” he said earlier this week, “but the outcomes need to be the same — kids and staff safe in that learning environment.”
A surprise VP pick for Joe Biden? Politico reports that Karen Bass, a California congresswoman and "the anti-Kamala Harris," is in the final stages of vetting.
