Biden's 1st 100 days live updates: Senate passes COVID relief bill along party lines

The Senate Energy committee advanced Rep. Deb Haaland's, D-Ariz., nomination on Wednesday morning to serve as secretary of the interior to the Senate floor. Haaland was reported favorably out of the committee by a vote of 11-9. If confirmed, she will be the first Native American Cabinet secretary. 

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, was the only Republican on the committee to vote in her favor. While Haaland earned scant Republican support in committee, there is a clear path emerging for her confirmation with several moderate members, including Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V. Support from moderates eases concerns that Haaland would face a more challenging road to confirmation.

Haaland has been a controversial choice with some GOP senators for her support of the Green New Deal and her opposition to fossil fuel projects including the Keystone Dakota Access pipeline. Her nomination will now be taken up for a vote of the full Senate. The timing of the final confirmation vote is not yet clear.

-ABC News' Allison Pecorin

Biden released a statement Thursday morning praising the House for passing the "For the People Act," which Democrats say would protect voting rights. Democrats have pushed for the bill as GOP-controlled legislatures in Georgia and other red states scramble to change voting laws after the 2020 presidential elections.

"In the wake of an unprecedented assault on our democracy; a coordinated attempt to ignore, undermine, and undo the will of the American people never before seen in our history; and a new wave of aggressive attacks on voting rights taking place in states across the country, I applaud Speaker Pelosi and the House of Representatives for passing H.R. 1, the For the People Act of 2021," Biden said.

The would automatically register Americans to vote, restore the right to vote for felon and expand absentee and early voting. Biden, in the statement, also praised that the bill would curtail "outrageous gerrymandering" and the right for the Justice Department to crack down on racially motivated voting laws. The bill is expected to hit a roadblock in the Senate, where Democrats will need to win the support of 10 Republicans to get the bill on to Biden’s desk. Still Biden stressed that he "look forward to signing it into law after it has passed through the legislative process, so that together we can strengthen and restore American democracy for the next election and all those to come."

-ABC News' Molly Nagle

Biden, Harris, and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg meet with bipartisan House members in the Oval Office this afternoon. As Biden gets ready for his final push for COVID-19 relief, he is setting his sights on his next big legislative goal: infrastructure.

But tackling that will be no small feat for Biden. Infrastructure was something former President Donald Trump wanted to tackle, even pitching a $1.5 trillion plan, but was never able to achieve. The American Society of Civil Engineers released the 2021 Infrastructure Report Card this week, published every four years, and gave American infrastructure a C- grade for the first time in 20 years. That’s up from a D+ in 2017.

After that meeting, the president will participate in a virtual call to congratulate the NASA Perseverance team on the successful Mars landing. White House press secretary Jen Psaki will hold a press briefing at 12:45 p.m., and will be joined by Secretary of Veterans Affairs Denis McDonough.

The House passed a massive police reform bill late Wednesday on a party line vote, 219-213. The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act is aimed at preventing police misconduct and was named after George Floyd, a Black man who died last summer in Minnesota at the hands of police. 

Two Democrats voted against the bill: Reps. Ron Kind of Wisconsin and Jared Golden of Maine. One Republican supported the bill: Rep. Lance Gooden of Texas, but he said later on Twitter that it was an accident and that he had corrected the record to reflect his opposition to the legislation.

The House was supposed to vote on the bill Thursday, but leadership moved up the vote amid new threats aimed at the Capitol. 

The bill would establish a national standard for the operation of police departments, mandate data collection on police encounters, reprogram existing funds to invest in transformative community-based policing programs and streamline federal law to prosecute excessive force and establish independent prosecutors for police investigations. The measure would also ban chokeholds and no-knock warrants and requires that deadly force be used only as a last resort and requires officers to employ de-escalation techniques first.

The bill now heads to the Senate.

-ABC News' Mariam Khan