The Fern Hollow Bridge in Pittsburgh became a symbol of the country’s troubled infrastructure, collapsing into a ravine earlier this year, hours before President Biden visited the city.
At the time, Mr. Biden detoured to survey the scene, where vehicles were stranded on shards of roadway and several people were injured, and pledged that help was on the way. On Thursday, the Democratic president returned to the bridge in hopes of turning it into a symbol of success for his administration.
US President Joe Biden speaks about the rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure at the Fern Hallow Bridge in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on October 20, 2022. – The bridge carrying Forbes Avenue through Frick Park, collapsed early on January 28, 2022, hours before Biden was due for a Pittsburgh visit.
MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images
Mr. Biden has become a frequent visitor to Pennsylvania, leading up to the midterms less than three weeks away. John Fetterman, the Democrat running for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, was on hand for the president’s visit. Fetterman, known for his casual attire, wore a suit for the occasion.
President Joe Biden speaks with greeters, including US Democratic Senator from Pennsylvania Bob Casey (R), Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf (2nd R) and Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. and Democratic senatorial candidate John Fetterman (3rd R), upon arrival at Pittsburgh International Airport in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on October 20, 2022 .
MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images
A new span is being built, and the bridge could be finished by December.
“I’m coming back to walk over this sucker,” Mr. Biden said Thursday. “Although my staff said to me, ‘You realize how many times you’ve been to Pittsburgh?’ I said no. ‘Nineteen.’”
The White House is crediting the bipartisan infrastructure law championed by Mr. Biden for the accelerated timeline.
“It’s being done in record time. Normally, you’d be looking at two to five years to build a bridge like this,” Mr. Biden said, adding the cost is $25 million and “fully paid for” by the federal government.
The legislation is one of the president’s most notable successes from the first two years of his term, and he repeatedly emphasizes its impact while traveling the country to roadways, airplane terminals and seaports. Out of roughly $1 trillion in spending, about $40 billion is dedicated to bridges.
The Biden administration has sought to increase the , hosting a summit last week at the White House to help state and local government officials streamline their processes.
The push to speed up the permitting, design and construction process has come as high inflation has been pushing up costs and causing delays. The Commerce Department has an initiative to coordinate the installation of water pipes and broadband and power lines to avoid tearing up roads multiple times. And the Transportation Department launched an internal center to advise on best practices for construction.
Biden, before boarding his helicopter on the White House South Lawn, challenged a reporter who suggested that few Democratic candidates have done events with him ahead of the midterm elections.
“That’s not true,” Biden responded. “There have been 15. Count, kid, count.”
After the bridge, Mr. Biden plans to stop in Philadelphia for a fundraiser with Fetterman, trying to replenish coffers that have been drained in one of the year’s most expensive races.
Fetterman is competing with Dr. Mehmet Oz, a Republican, for an open seat being vacated by Sen. Pat Toomey, also a Republican. If Fetterman wins, Democrats will have a much better shot at maintaining control of the Senate.
Mr. Biden was born in Pennsylvania, and the state remains central to his political identity.
His trip on Thursday will be his 14th to the state since taking office. A 15th trip has already been scheduled for next week, when he’s expected to return to Philadelphia for another political event.
Asked during a stop at a Pittsburgh sandwich shop if Democrats will hold the Senate, the president responded, “I think so. It ain’t over until it’s over.”
Democratic Pennsylvania Senate candidate John Fetterman‘s campaign released an updated letter from his doctor on Wednesday, five months after he suffered a stroke only days before the state primary and as he faces ongoing questions about his health from Republican opponent Dr. Mehmet Oz.
The new letter is dated Oct. 15 one day after the campaign says Fetterman had a follow-up visit with his primary care physician. It states overall that the Senate candidate is recovering well from his stroke and his health continues to improve.
“He has no work restrictions and can work full duty in public office,” writes Dr. Clifford Chen of UPMC.
Since returning to the campaign trail this summer – Fetterman has been using a closed captioning device to read questions during interviews as he continues to struggle with auditory processing challenges during his recovery.
Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate John Fetterman holds a rally at Nether Providence Elementary School on October 15, 2022 in Wallingford, Pennsylvania. Election Day will be held nationwide on November 8, 2022.
Mark Makela / Getty Images
“He spoke intelligently without cognitive deficits,” his doctor wrote. “His speech was normal and he continues to exhibit symptoms of an auditory processing disorder which can come across as hearing difficulty. Occasional words he will “miss” which seems like he doesn’t hear the word but it is actually not processed properly. His hearing of sound such as music is not affected.”
The letter said that his communication has significantly improved compared to his first visit. The candidate has been attending speech therapy on a regular basis since the stroke. According to the letter, Fetterman’s physical exam was normal with blood pressure 116/82. He also had a regular heart rate and his lung exam was clear.
“The Lt. Governor takes appropriate medications to optimize his heart condition and prevent future strokes,” the letter states It also says he can walk four to five miles regularly without difficulty.
According to FEC filings, Chen has donated to Fetterman’s campaign in the past and the Democratic party.
Fetterman returned to campaigning in person in mid-August. Since then he has been holding rallies across the state. Most recently, he appeared Tuesday evening for a rally in Butler County, just outside Pittsburgh. Fetterman continues to address his stroke on the stump, crediting his wife Gisele for saving his life.
“Since my stroke five months ago, one of the best parts of this campaign has been the unbelievable number of Pennsylvanians who have shared their own stories with us about the major health problems they’ve faced and overcome in their lives,” Fetterman said in a statement upon releasing the doctor’s letter. “It reminds me why I’m fighting to slash health care costs and make it so every Pennsylvanian can spend more time with the people they love.”
Fetterman’s health has become a political target of his Republican opponent Dr. Mehmet Oz who has accused him of a lack of transparency leading up to the election. Several newspaper editorial boards have also called on Fetterman to release his medical records.
Fetterman’s campaign has accused Oz of rooting against his recovery.
“It’s not easy recovering from a stroke in public — let alone doing it while running in the top Senate race in the country — but John has worked hard to get here, and it shows,” Fetterman campaign senior adviser Rebecca Katz said in a statement.
Fetterman is slated to appear alongside Oz for the first and only general election debate in the Pennsylvania Senate race on Oct. 5.
After an interview showed John Fetterman using a closed captioning device to read questions, the Democrat, who is running for Pennsylvania’s open Senate seat, tackled the subject that has been front and center on the campaign trail — his health.
“The elephant in the room for a lot of folks is that I had a stroke,” he said during a Facebook Live session on Wednesday. “And there are — there’s no secret that sometimes I’m going to miss words, and sometimes I’m going to mush two words together. And that’s the truth.”
The lieutenant governor’s health has become a political target for his Republican challenger, Trump-backed Dr. Mehmet Oz, who continues to press Fetterman to disclose his medical records.
Fetterman will use a closed captioning device during their upcoming debate on Oct. 25.
“I sometimes will hear things in a way that’s not perfectly clear. So I use captioning so I’m able to see what you’re saying on the captioning,” he told NBC in Tuesday’s interview.
For Fetterman and others who suffer a stroke, the recovery can be difficult, including how it affects verbal exchanges.
CBS News contributor Dr. David Agus explained that the stroke likely affected the area of the brain that handles auditory processing, “taking words or sounds and converting them to words that the brain can understand. So he can’t make that conversion well.”
Sources close to Fetterman told CBS News that they are confident that voters understand that he is facing health challenges but will conclude he is ready to serve. Their latest strategy is to keep having him engage with voters, reporters and with Oz.
Veteran Democrats say the polls remain tight and this latest flash point might not move the needle.
“They see in John Fetterman, who they want to see — whether he is a courageous, sympathetic candidate or whether you see him as a person who is just not physically capable of carrying out the job,” said Democratic strategist Larry Ceisler.
The filibuster is a term used frequently by people in Washington, but few Americans understand it, at least according to recent polling. The procedural tactic has been used by Democrats and Republicans at key moments in modern U.S. history to prevent legislation from being considered in the Senate.
In popular culture, the most famous example of a filibuster came from Hollywood, when fictional Sen. Jefferson Smith, played by Jimmy Stewart, staged one in the 1939 film, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” That was the traditional filibuster, in which a senator monopolizes the floor for as long as he or she can talk while standing. A sympathetic Senate colleague might give the filibustering senator some relief by asking the senator to pause for a question, enabling the filibusterer to make a quick run to the bathroom.
Sen. Huey P. Long of Louisiana filibustered several times in the 1930s over economic matters, and Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina famously staged one for 24 hours and 18 minutes — still the record — against civil rights legislation in 1957.
The filibuster is grounded in the tradition of unlimited debate, the basis of the U.S. Senate’s claim to being “the world’s greatest deliberative body.” Its defenders note that the ability to talk at length is designed to protect minorities from potential overreach of the majority, or to at least slow down consideration of sweeping legislation. It could ostensibly also give parties time to forge a compromise, though the most prominent recent example of this is probably also fictional — from the second season of “The West Wing” (it has a terrific explanation of the filibuster).
In this Aug. 29, 1957, file photo, Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., waves as he leaves the Senate chamber at end of his 24 hour, 18 minute filibuster against the Civil rights Act.
/ AP
Trying to cut off unlimited debate was a real issue back in the 19th and early 20th centuries. At different times, senators sought to prolong debate indefinitely — over establishing a national bank, or ratifying treaties, or, perhaps most famously, over civil rights legislation in the 1950s and 1960s — in order to prevent those measures from becoming law.
In 1917, frustrated by the extended debate of several issues, senators took steps to stop filibusters by passing a rule allowing two-thirds of members to invoke “cloture,” which would bring an end to debate and allow a bill to receive a Senate vote. But frustrations persisted because it was so difficult to get that many senators to agree to end debate, so in 1972, senators voted again to lower the threshold to three-fifths of all senators — 60 out of 100.
That’s why there’s so much talk about a “super majority” and the need to secure 60 votes to pass certain pieces of legislation and why in the modern era, having 50 senators plus the vice president’s tie-breaking vote — as Democrats currently do — isn’t nearly enough to achieve certain legislative goals.
The rise of the silent filibuster
You won’t see much actual filibustering on the Senate floor anymore, thanks to a 1972 rule instituted by the Senate that made filibustering far easier: the two-track system. This enabled senators to filibuster while considering other legislation, ushering in what’s known as the “silent” filibuster. Instead of talking on the floor for hours on end, a senator may stop a bill from being considered merely by notifying Senate leaders that he or she intends to block a vote — with the support of at least 40 other senators. That rule remains in effect today.
In more recent times, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas held the Senate floor for hours at a time in opposition to budget legislation, but it was not considered a formal filibuster, since he didn’t have the support to stop the bill from passing — eventually. And in 2013, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky and others held the floor for a day over concerns over the use of unmanned aerial drones.
Can a filibuster be used to block presidential nominees?
Not anymore. A series of rules changes adopted in the 2010s allow a simple majority of senators to end debate on legislative and judicial nominees. That takes much of the political drama out of fights over Cabinet or U.S. Supreme Court nominees — if the party that controls the White House also controls the Senate. What happens when the White House and Senate are controlled by different parties?
Ask Attorney General Merrick Garland. After the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in Feb. 2016, Garland, then the chief judge on the D.C. Court of Appeals, was nominated to the Supreme Court by Democratic President Barack Obama. At the time, the Senate was controlled by Republicans, and GOP Sen. Mitch McConnell was majority leader. He never allowed Garland to receive a confirmation vote, arguing at the time that the American people should weigh in on the next Supreme Court justice. The seat remained open until then-President Donald Trump selected Judge Neil Gorsuch to fill the vacancy.
But the partisan split appears strongly connected to more immediate policy concerns. Of the Democrats who feel it’s very important to pass a federal voting rights bill, an even higher portion, seven in 10, would generally end the filibuster. That, of course, is the measure over which some Democratic leaders have discussed ending it.
President Joe Biden has called on the Senate to make an exception to its filibuster rules to allow Congress to codify abortion protections and privacy rights previously afforded under Roe v. Wade.
In March, he voiced his support for temporarily changing Senate rules to allow a simple majority to pass the bill, something he generally opposes.
“The most important thing to be clear about is, we have to change — I believe we codify Roe v. Wade in the law, and the way to do that is to make sure Congress votes to do that,” Mr. Biden told reporters at a news conference at the NATO conference in Madrid. “And if the filibuster gets in the way, it’s like voting rights, it should be — we provide an exception for this. We require an exception to the filibuster for this action.”
But there appear not to be enough votes in the Senate to allow for such a rule exception.
Do most Americans even know what a filibuster is?
Well, it isn’t exactly on every American’s mind: Our January poll found a third of Americans haven’t heard enough about it to say whether it should be kept or ended. That shouldn’t be surprising, since outside of the most politically engaged, most Americans don’t closely follow Senate procedure.
Younger people under 30 are the most likely to have not heard enough about it to offer an opinion; older Americans mainly have, the poll found.
By the way, where does the word filibuster come from?
According to the Senate Historian’s Office, the term began appearing in American legislative debates in the 1850s. It’s derived from the Dutch word for “freebooter” and the Spanish word “filibusteros,” pirates who raided Caribbean islands. The historian notes one early usage of the term by Mississippi Senator Albert Brown, in 1853, who observed “my friend standing on the other side of the House filibustering.”
Democrats in key Senate races have been breaking records with their fundraising — signaling they’ll have substantial resources available to them in the final weeks of the election season. And yet, last month, Republicans outspent them on air, largely thanks to outside groups.
The shift in spending has come up on the campaign trail. It hasn’t escaped the notice of the Democrats that they’re getting hammered by GOP ads, and they may be having an effect: polls have tightened in recent weeks in multiple battleground races.
Ad spending in the general election for the Senate has now topped more than $1 billion, and more than half of that has gone into four races: Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
When it comes to the Senate races, Democrats have been able to exceed or match Republicans on the airwaves in terms of the reach of their ads in most weeks since the general election began, according to a source tracking media buys. That’s in part because candidate campaigns receive better rates on advertising. In other words, they’re paying less than outside groups for the same air time. Even if they are being outspent by outside groups, Democrats have maintained the advantage in who’s seeing those ads, at least so far.
Raphael Warncok, left, and Herschel Walker.
Paras Griffin/Getty Images, Megan Varner/Getty Images
In Georgia, Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock raised more than $26 million in the third quarter of the year. Pennsylvania and Lt. Gov. John Fetterman raised $22 million, and Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes raked in over $20 million, while Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan raised $17 million in the same period.
Among Republicans, only Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania and Herschel Walker in Georgia have released totals so far. Oz brought in just over $17 million, but that figure included a $7 million personal loan; Walker said he raised $12 million.
From April until the end of June, Democrats outraised Republicans in nearly every battleground Senate race, with the exception of Wisconsin — in some cases they raked in nearly twice as much as their opponents. Meanwhile, Republicans outspent Democrats in the Senate races last month with more than $178 million compared to Democrats’ $164 million, according to AdImpact.
But most of that Republican money — $133 million last month — came from outside groups, while candidates put up $33 million. For Democrats, more money was spent directly by candidates.
Here’s what that meant in some of the biggest races:
In Georgia, Warnock was the largest TV and cable spender in one of the nation’s most competitive Senate races in July and August with nearly $10 million. But Republicans last month outspent Democrats in the race in support of Republican Herschel Walker. Overall, however, Democrats’ ads aired more often because of the more favorable rates for candidates.
A similar pattern has played out in Pennsylvania. Fetterman was the bigger spender on TV and cable in the first two months of the third quarter; Democrats outspent Republicans overall. That shifted in September to Republicans with the spending edge.
Republican ads have been slamming Fetterman on crime. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s group, the Senate Leadership Fund dropped nearly $11 million in the race last month on TV and cable. It led to a dramatic uptick in Republican ads airing in the state in September. But overall Democrats’ maintained their advantage in the number of ads airing in the race.
The shift to greater GOP spending more in the races after Democrats had the spending advantage could also be seen last month in North Carolina, Nevada and Ohio. The number of GOP ads understandably increased, but in all of them, Democrats maintained an edge in the number of ad airings, according to AdImpact.
The situation was slightly different in Wisconsin, where incumbent Republican Sen. Ron Johnson led Barnes, his Democratic opponent, in fundraising for the second quarter, though Barnes was in the middle of a crowded Democratic primary. While Johnson has not yet released his fundraising numbers from July through September, Republicans have been flooding the airwaves and spending millions to back their only GOP incumbent up for re-election in a state President Joe Biden won.
In September, Republicans collectively outspent Democrats on TV and cable advertisements in Wisconsin: $18.3 million to $13.9 million, according to AdImpact. Democrats spent over $1 million more in August and about $3 million more in July, but with Democrats going through their primary process in those months. In July and August, more Republican ads aired than Democrats’. That was not the case last month but it was much closer in number than in other states.
Anthony Chergosky, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, said the outside spending from Republicans has played a “major role” in the campaign. He said while sometimes outside group spending can “hijack” the candidates’ message and focus, the Republican ads have “reinforced” Johnson’s messaging against Barnes on crime and law enforcement.
“You turn on the TV in Wisconsin and every commercial break features Mandela Barnes getting absolutely pummeled over the issues of policing and crime,” he said. “The Republican outside groups know exactly what to do in terms of targeting Mandela Barnes’ weak spots.”
When it comes to the rise in GOP ads, the McConnell-aligned Senate Leadership Fund was the biggest player in some battleground Senate races last month. A spokesperson for the group said it was “furiously litigating Democrats’ records.”
“As voters learn about Democrats’ lockstep support for the agenda destroying their quality of life, they are desperately searching for candidates who will be a check on these out-of-control liberal policies,” communications director Jack Pandol said in a statement.
One of the few major Senate races where Republicans spent less than Democrats last month was in Arizona, where Democrats spent nearly $9 million more than Republicans. Incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly contributed more than $9 million of the $19.4 million spent by Democrats on television and cable ads.
Arizona Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, left, Republican challenger Blake Masters, right, and Libertarian Marc Victor, back, pause on the stage prior to a televised debate in Phoenix, Thursday, Oct. 6, 2022.
Ross D. Franklin / AP
While the ad spending dynamic may have shifted over the third quarter to more Republican spending, Democrats are getting some help from outside groups, too. While it did not spend as much as the Senate Leadership Fund, the Senate Majority PAC dropped roughly $27 million last month – making it the largest spender for Senate Democratic candidates, according to AdImpact. It was followed by candidates Warnock and Kelly among top Democrats spending on television.
The filing deadline for candidates to report their third quarter fundraising totals with the Federal Election Commission is October 15.
Two Russians who said they fled the country to avoid compulsory military service have requested asylum in the U.S. after landing on a remote Alaskan island in the Bering Sea, according to information from Alaska U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s office
JUNEAU, Alaska — Two Russians who said they fled the country to avoid compulsory military service have requested asylum in the U.S. after landing on a remote Alaskan island in the Bering Sea, Alaska U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s office said Thursday.
Karina Borger, a spokesperson for Murkowski, said by email that the office has been in communication with the U.S. Coast Guard and Customs and Border Protection and that “the Russian nationals reported that they fled one of the coastal communities on the east coast of Russia to avoid compulsory military service.”
Spokespersons with the Coast Guard and Customs and Border Protection each referred a reporter’s questions to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which did not immediately respond Thursday.
Alaska’s senators, Republicans Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, on Thursday said the individuals landed at a beach near Gambell, an isolated community of about 600 people on St. Lawrence Island. The statement doesn’t specify when the incident occurred though Sullivan said he was alerted to the matter by a “senior community leader from the Bering Strait region” on Tuesday morning.
A Sullivan spokesperson, Ben Dietderich, said it was the office’s understanding that the individuals had arrived by boat.
Gambell is about 200 miles (320 kilometers) southwest of the western Alaska hub community of Nome and about 36 miles (58 kilometers) from the Chukotka Peninsula, Siberia.
Twitter’s former security chief painted the social media company as a data-grabbing behemoth that risks exploitation by “teenagers, thieves and spies” in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.
“Twitter leadership is misleading the public, lawmakers, regulators and even its own board of directors,” Peiter Zatko said in his testimony.
“They don’t know what data they have, where it lives and where it came from, and so, unsurprisingly, they can’t protect it,” Zatko said. “It doesn’t matter who has keys if there are no locks on the doors.”
“A decade behind”
Zatko, who was Twitter’s security head from November 2020 to January 2022, when he was fired, first laid out his allegations in a whistleblower complaint last month.
On Tuesday, he said the company was “almost a decade behind cybersecurity standards.” Twitter users give up far more of their personal information than they — or sometimes even Twitter itself — realize, Zatko testified.
Engineers, who make up half of Twitter’s employees, can access personal data of any user, Zatko said, adding the company did not keep logs of activities that enable it to track who logged into its internal systems. Executives do not fully understand Twitter’s security issues and don’t have the incentives to fix them, Zatko said.
When it comes to federal regulation, the Federal Trade Commission “is in a little over their head,” Zatko said: “They’re left letting companies grade their own homework.”
Many of Zatko’s claims are uncorroborated and appear to have little documentary support. Twitter has denied his allegations.
“Today’s hearing only confirms that Mr. Zatko’s allegations are riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies,” a company spokesperson said in a statement.
Among Zatko’s most attention-grabbing assertions Tuesday was that Twitter knowingly allowed the government of India to place its agents on the company payroll, where they had access to highly sensitive data on users. Twitter’s inability to monitor how employees accessed user accounts made it hard for the company to detect abuses, Zatko said.
Zatko said that Twitter had at least one foreign agent from China on its payroll, and expressed “high confidence” that the Indian government had placed an agent at Twitter to “understand the negotiations” between the country’s ruling party and Twitter regarding new social media restrictions.
Zatko also said that Twitter’s advertising sales to Chinese companies, despite the service being banned in the country, raised concerns among some employees.
“Employees were disturbed that, in a country where the service was not allowed to be used, money was provided to organizations associated with the Chinese government,” he said, adding that Amazon executives overruled those concerns.
Zatko described similar concerns about Russia. He said he was “surprised and shocked” by an exchange with Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal in which the executive, who was chief technology officer at the time, asked if it would be possible to “punt” content moderation and surveillance to the Russian government, since Twitter lacks “the ability and tools to do things correctly.”
Zatko’s revelations offer additional ammunition to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who is set to face Twitter in court after trying to back out of a $44 billion deal to buy the company. Musk has subpoenaed Zatko to testify at the trial, which is set to begin on October 17.
Separately on Tuesday, Twitter shareholders voted overwhelmingly to approve Musk’s acquisition, according to multiple media reports. Shareholders have been voting on the issue for weeks, although the vote was largely a formality, given the court case.
One issue that didn’t come up in the hearing was the question of whether Twitter is accurately counting its active users. One of Musk’s key contentions is that Twitter is lying about how many bots it has on the platform — an assertion that Zatko seemed to back up in his whistleblower complaint.
Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat who heads the Judiciary Committee, said the flaws Zatko described “may pose a direct threat to Twitter’s hundreds of millions of users as well as to American democracy.”
“Twitter is an immensely powerful platform and can’t afford gaping vulnerabilities,” Durbin said.
Zatko, 51, first gained prominence in the 1990s as a pioneer in the ethical hacking movement and later worked in senior positions at an elite Defense Department research unit and at Google. He joined Twitter in late 2020 at the urging of then-CEO Jack Dorsey.
