A bi-partisan Senate passed a resolution to force rail workers to accept a labor agreement hammered out – to use the standard news cliché – between unions and railroads by the White House last September. President Biden Friday signed the bill, which passed 80-15, Roll Call reports, to avert a strike set for December 9 that would have devastated a slowly recovering economy just ahead of the holidays.

The Senate rejected a measure provided in the House version that would have provided seven days of paid sick leave to rail workers, with a 52-43 vote falling short of the 60-vote threshold necessary to avert a filibuster. Rail workers get one day per year of sick leave in the labor agreement reached in December. While labor unions had approved the September agreement, it was rejected by rank-and-file members in several rail unions. 

Scroll down this column to left-column pundit Ken Zino’s commentary on how a Justice Department indictment of ex-President Trump for the January 6 Capitol insurrection could be next, after the late-December conviction of Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes III for seditious conspiracy. 

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