U.S. Senate Majority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer and U.S. Senate Majority Whip Sen. Dick Durbin walk to start a press conference at the US Capitol on March 10, 2021 in Washington, DC. In a final vote, the House passed U.S. President Joe Biden's revised $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill, named the American Rescue Plan, in the administration's first major legislative achievement.
Universal Music Group swiftly applauded the development. “Hate and violence against the Asian American Pacific Islander community must end now," reads"Heartened by today’s overwhelmingly bipartisan Senate passage of the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act, we call on the House to pass the bill and the President to sign it into law.”
Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, the legislation’s lead sponsor, said the measure is incredibly important to Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, “who have often felt very invisible in our country, always seen as foreign, always seen as the other.” She said the message of the legislation is as important as its content and substance.
It’s unclear whether the bipartisan bill is a sign of things to come in the Senate, where Republicans and Democrats have fundamental differences and often struggle to work together. Under an agreement struck by Senate leaders at the start of the year, Republicans and Democrats pledged to at least try to debate bills and see if they could reach agreement through the legislative process. The hate crimes legislation is the first byproduct of that agreement. Some said it doesn’t need to be the last.
Republicans said last week that they agreed with the premise of the legislation and signaled they were willing to back it with minor changes, an unusual sign of comity amid frequent standstills in the polarized Senate. Hirono worked closely with Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, to incorporate some additional Republican and bipartisan provisions, including better reporting of hate crimes nationally and grant money for states to set up hate crime hotlines.