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The Senate is back from its summer recess today, and it has quite a fall agenda ahead. The to-do list includes voting rights legislation, funding the government, potentially raising the debt ceiling, must-pass defense bills, and a high-profile grilling of Biden Administration members over the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal, which begins in the House today. But the immediate focus is President Biden's two-part spending package, which includes the roughly $1 trillion Senate-passed infrastructure bill and the yet-to-be-finalized $3.5 trillion social spending bill.

• — The Democratic-only social spending bill includes such top party priorities as combating climate change, expanding Medicare, and immigration reform. Democratic leadership has set a soft deadline of Wednesday for Senate committees to finish drafting the bill and for House Democrats to finish with committee votes on the various pieces of the proposal.
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• — House Democrats hope to pass the $3.5 trillion bill by Sept. 27, to synch with its deadline for a vote on the infrastructure deal that passed the Senate last month. But that deadline is meeting with skepticism from some Democrats, as they face significant divisions between their moderate and progressive wings and between the two chambers. "There's no way we can get this done by the 27th if we do our job," said Sen. Joe Manchin, who opposes the legislation in its current form.
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• — Even as the House moves forward with its version of the bill, many of its ideas—including how to pay for the legislation—still need to be worked out with the Senate. With Democrats' razor-thin margins, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi can ultimately lose only three Democrats. In the Senate, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer can lose none, which will surely put his optimistic prediction that Democrats would "all come together" to the test. Stay tuned. —The Hill

Mancuso: A bipartisan blueprint for climate action

"Thoughtfully crafted solutions where both sides are counted in governance requires party members to put the country ahead of partisan politics. Passage of the Senate infrastructure package was a start; now it's time to do it again and this time working together tackling the climate crisis. Neither America nor the world can afford for the efforts on the infrastructure bill to be a one-hit wonder of bipartisanship." —Mary Anna Mancuso on RealClearEnergy

Mary Anna Mancuso is a political strategist and a spokesperson for RepublicEn.org.

MORE: Report: Climate change could see 200 million move by 2050 —Associated Press

Armed white supremacist arrested in DC

U.S. Capitol Police arrested a California man on weapons charges today after finding multiple illegal knives in his pickup outside the Democratic National Committee's Capitol Hill headquarters. An officer on patrol spotted a bayonet and machete in Donald Craighead's vehicle shortly after midnight. Craighead espoused white supremacist rhetoric while he was pulled over, and his truck was adorned with white supremacist iconography—Nazi swastikas on a side mirror, a pentagram on the steering wheel, the word "confederate" across the dashboard, and other symbols. Capitol Police are further investigating the incident but do not initially believe it is linked to the far-right "Justice for J6" rally planned in Washington, D.C., later this week. —Politico

MORE: U.S. Capitol Police announce six disciplinary cases against officers from Jan. 6 insurrection —CNN

Pentagon program ends as curiously as it began

A Pentagon program that delegated management of a huge swath of the Internet to a mysterious Florida company—at precisely 11:57 a.m. on Inauguration Day, three minutes before President Biden took office—has ended, with the Defense Department retaking control of 175 million IP addresses. The program had drawn scrutiny because of its unusual timing and its scale. At its peak, the company, Global Resource Systems, controlled almost 6% of a section of the Internet called IPv4. Further, company registration records showed Global Resource Systems was only a few months old, having been established in September 2020, with no publicly reported federal contracts, no obvious public-facing website, and no sign on the shared office space it listed as its physical address. The Pentagon's announcement of the end of the program sheds little new light on exactly what it was doing or why it has now ended. Hmm. —The Washington Post

MORE: Biden orders 18 Trump appointees off service academy boards —Military.com

Stolberg: The politicization of vaccine mandates

"Resistance to vaccine mandates was once a fringe position in both parties, more the realm of misinformed celebrities than mainstream political thought. But the fury over Biden's mandates shows how a once-extreme stance has moved to the center of the Republican Party. The governors' opposition reflects the anger and fear about the vaccine among constituents now central to their base, while ignoring longstanding policy and legal precedent in favor of similar vaccination requirements." —Sheryl Gay Stolberg in The New York Times

Sheryl Gay Stolberg is a Washington correspondent at The New York Times covering health policy.

MORE: America has remained unusually vaccine skeptical —The Economist

Focus on voting rights

Senate Democrats are close to an agreement on updated voting rights legislation that can get the support of all 50 Democratic-voting senators, three Democratic aides familiar with negotiations say. The For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act were introduced in Congress in 2019 and 2021, respectively. Since their introductions, both have been voted on along party lines. Their urgency has become more pronounced amid the passage of restrictive new voting laws in states like Georgia and Texas.

• — The bills are part of a broad campaign to strengthen voting laws at the federal level. The For the People Act is a sweeping package that would end partisan gerrymandering, expand early voting, make Election Day a federal holiday, and make it easier to vote by mail, among other significant reforms. The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would require states with a history of voter discrimination to receive preclearance for any intended changes to voting laws. Opponents say they take too much power away from states to manage their own elections.
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• — Filibuster buster? In the Senate, any voting rights legislation would require the votes of 60 senators, including 10 Republicans, and it's unlikely that Democrats will get enough Republican supporters. The conundrum has led to talk of eliminating the Senate's filibuster rule—even temporarily—to allow the legislation to pass with a simple majority. That is not likely to happen, however, as some moderate Democrats oppose any change to the filibuster.

1. — Once again, Manchin could make or break. There's still a chance that some Republicans could hop on board. "We've been talking to quite a few different Republicans who are very interested in doing something that makes sense," Sen. Joe Manchin said yesterday. Specifically, he has been working with Sen. Lisa Murkowski on the issue, but no details of those discussions have been made public. Perhaps all hope is not lost. —NBC News

Greenwood & Dickman: PA Republicans should reject election 'fraudit'

"Most Pennsylvania Republican State Senators seem hell bent to follow in the unguided footsteps of their brethren in Arizona into Trump lunacy land to perform a so-called 'forensic audit' of the 2020 election. The Commonwealth Republican Leadership should reject such a crazy idea. For many months now, the Harrisburg leadership has responsibly rejected the calls of many of Trump's followers to perform such a fruitless exercise. The fig leaf for this bizarre exercise is '… to improve our election system going forward.' But the goal is more nefarious. Its advocates believe the effort would—if the election counts in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, and Michigan reverse the results of their presidential elections—lead to Donald Trump being declared the winner and reinstated as president." —Jim Greenwood & Murray Dickman in Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Jim Greenwood represented Pennsylvania in the U.S. House of Representatives, and was also a member of the Pennsylvania State House and Senate. Murray Dickman served as the Pennsylvania Secretary of Administration under Gov. Dick Thornburgh and is a former member of the Republican Leadership Committee.

MORE: Republicans lob accusations of voter fraud ahead of CA recall —The Sacramento Bee

The Democrats absolutely should change the filibuster rule or scrap it. The hypothetical value of the filibuster is not great relative to the threat of the loss of democracy in this country. We MUST pass voting reform that ensures that all qualified voters have easy access and fair processing of their votes. The potential for losing our democracy is very real. The danger must not be minimized. The most noticeable effect of the filibuster has been to create insurmountable gridlock. —Ken R., Washington

I support keeping the filibuster as a tool to prevent the tyranny of the majority. However, we should revert to the "talking" filibuster, which would require those opposing the legislation to hold the floor, rather than what has happened in recent years, where 40+ senators can simply vote against invoking cloture, causing a tyranny of the minority. —Ron T., Texas

The views expressed in "What's Your Take?" are submitted by readers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff or the Stand Up Republic Foundation.