So, the folks who tried to prevent a black girl from going to school in 1957 are opposed to their grandchildren learning about how they tried to prevent a black girl from going to school in 1957.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and other House Democrats on Saturday responded to their moderate colleagues who took aim at Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) for not bringing the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package to the floor for a vote this week.

“The Speaker didn’t break any promises,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted Saturday after Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) accused Pelosi of breaking a promise to House moderates.

“The arbitrary date 9 people insisted on was in the Aug rule vote to proceed on a $3.5T bill. That bound $3.5T w/ Sept date. Challenging $3.5 also challenged their date. That’s ok! Right > rushed. We can still Build Back Better… together!” Ocasio-Cortez added.

Gottheimer went after Pelosi late Friday for delaying the vote on the bipartisan bill amid threats from House progressives to withhold support until the larger “human infrastructure” proposal was passed.

...

President Biden visited House Democrats on Friday, during which he made it clear that the reconciliation bill and infrastructure bill were linked, sealing the win for progressives who wanted the two measures passed together.

After the meeting, Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) tweeted “this afternoon @POTUS stood with @SpeakerPelosi and 95% of the @HouseDemocrats and said the opposite: that his historic vision for America first requires a Build Back Better reconciliation deal. That’s the way a bipartisan infrastructure bill will win the votes to become law.”

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/575012-progressives-hit-back-after-moderates-take-aim-at-pelosi

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) on Saturday slammed the decision to delay a vote this week on the bipartisan infrastructure deal that she helped negotiate, calling it “inexcusable.”

Good-faith negotiations, the Arizona centrist argued, "require trust."

"Over the course of this year, Democratic leaders have made conflicting promises that could not all be kept — and have, at times, pretended that differences of opinion within our party did not exist, even when those disagreements were repeatedly made clear directly and publicly," Sinema said in a statement.

“Canceling the infrastructure vote further erodes that trust. More importantly, it betrays the trust the American people have placed in their elected leaders and denies our country crucial investments to expand economic opportunities,” Sinema continued.

In August, the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill passed through the Senate in August in a 69-30 vote. The bill sought to provide funding for "traditional" infrastructure such as repairing bridges and roads. The bill was negotiated by President Biden as well as Senate moderates from both sides of the aisle.

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/575026-sinema-slams-delay-of-infrastructure-vote-inexcusable

U.S. COVID-19 death toll hits 700,000

Oct 1 (Reuters) - The United States surpassed 700,000 coronavirus-related deaths on Friday, according to a Reuters tally, as officials roll out booster doses of vaccines to protect the elderly and people working in high-risk professions.

The country has reported an average of more than 2,000 deaths per day over the past week, which represents about 60% of the peak in fatalities in January, a Reuters analysis of public health data showed.

The United States still leads the world in COVID-19 cases and deaths, accounting for 19% and 14% of all reported infections and fatalities, according to Reuters tally. Globally, the pandemic is set to surpass 5 million deaths.

The highly transmissible Delta variant has driven a surge in COVID-19 cases that peaked around mid-September before falling to the current level of about 117,625 cases per day, based on a seven-day rolling average.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-covid-19-death-toll-hits-700000-2021-10-01/