All of the races listed below could go either way, but it’s worth speculating on where the election could have an effect on immigration policy:

Majority leader: The Senate race between Sen. Harry Reid (D) and Sharron Angle (R) could open up the position of majority leader, which Reid currently holds. It’s unlikely Republicans will take over a majority of the Senate, but losing Reid would put another Democrat in charge of the push for immigration legislation. Luckily for reform supporters, both of the senators likely to take over as majority leader if Reid loses are equally strong supporters of immigration reform as Reid — perhaps even stronger.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), currently second in command, is the chief sponsor of the DREAM Act, which would provide legal residency states to some undocumented students and military service members, and supports comprehensive immigration reform. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is considered the favorite to take over as majority leader because of his past success as chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. He also supports comprehensive immigration reform, and wrote a blueprint for comprehensive immigration reform this spring with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).

Immigration subcommittee: Schumer heads the Judiciary subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees and Border Security, which will remain in the hands of Democrats unless Republicans take over a majority of the Senate. The committee could see some shifting if the current members lose their seats, but most who are up for re-election have comfortable leads. Schumer looks certain to win against Republican challenger Jay Townsend, while Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) looks like he’ll be safe against Republican candidate Len Britton and his five other challengers. The other Democrats on the committee — Durbin, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse — aren’t up for re-election this year.

On the Republican side, only Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is up for re-election. He is favored to win over Democratic challenger Roxanne Conlin. The other GOP members of the subcommittee — Texas Sen. John Cornyn, Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl and Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions — aren’t up for re-election. In the very unlikely event that Republicans win control of the Senate, Cornyn would be the chairman of the subcommittee on immigration.

Other immigration-related races: In the Senate especially, every member’s views on a given issue are important for passing legislation. A few races between pro- and anti-immigration reform candidates could make the difference for passing comprehensive immigration reform or, in lieu of that, smaller-scale legislation such as AgJOBS to create paths to legalization for some farm workers.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) faces a challenge from Republican Carly Fiorina, who supports the DREAM Act and reform of the guest worker system but argues against “amnesty” for illegal immigrants — the derisive term used by conservatives to refer to efforts to allow some undocumented immigrants already in the United States to earn legal status. Boxer, on the other hand, has been a consistent supporter of comprehensive immigration reform, arguing Congress should pass a bill increasing border security and enforcement efforts while also allowing some illegal immigrants in the country to remain here legally.

In New York, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), who was appointed to Hillary Clinton’s old seat, is favored to win over Republican Joseph J. DioGuardi. Gillibrand was originally considered an anti-immigrant pick for the Senate seat, but has since shifted to a pro-immigration reform view and advocates legislation that would allow some undocumented immigrants in the country to become legal residents.

Open seats could see the addition of some immigration hardliners. Rand Paul, a Republican running for Senate in Kentucky against Democrat Jack Conway, supports state-led solutions to illegal immigration such as Arizona’s SB 1070 immigration law. He also wants to built an electric fence between the United States and Mexico and move overseas military bases back to the country to man the border. Conway, on the other hand, said he supports more border agents but also paths to legalization. “Let’s take people out of the shadows and turn them into taxpayers,” he said during a debate.

Republican Mark Kirk and Democrat Alexi Giannoulias are facing off for Obama’s former seat in Illinois. If Giannoulias wins, the Democrats will have a nearly sure vote for comprehensive immigration reform as well as the DREAM Act. But Kirk has said that the Senate should tackle border security first, and that he would vote against the DREAM Act and other immigration reform.

The bill, the Oil Spill Victims Redress Act, would allow oil spill victims to sue other responsible parties including Transocean, which drilled the well, and Halliburton, which did the cementing of the well. Some Gulf lawyers have raised concerns about the issue, including whether oil spill victims that accept a final compensation payment from the Gulf Coast Claims Facility will have to waive their right to sue all responsible parties or just BP.

In a statement, Whitehouse said:

Some of those parties are trying to evade responsibility by arguing that current law only allows BP to be held accountable for damages caused by the spill.  This legislation will make clear that, going forward, liability extends to all responsible parties.  It will also protect victims and allow for a more timely resolution for those touched by these types of disasters.

For the average worker who has lost her job since May 31, the cost of COBRA has tripled. (Flickr, Steve Rhodes)

In the first week of July, Andie Davis’ husband, who worked in manufacturing, lost his job, as hundreds of thousands of Michiganders have since the onset of the recession. Soon after, he started collecting unemployment insurance benefits that might last the family of four as long as 99 weeks. Davis hopes that the benefits will keep the family afloat — the mortgage paid, school lunches made, the electricity on — without forcing her to tap into the family’s savings.

[Economy1] But to keep the family financially stable while both she and her husband look for work, she has decided to forgo health insurance. The Davis family looked at how much COBRA would cost them, thinking the government would help pay for it. Had her husband lost his job just six weeks earlier, Washington would have footed about two-thirds of the premium bill. But since Davis’ husband lost his job after May 31, the young couple is on their own.

The change has gone little-noticed, both by the press and by the laid-off persons impacted by it. But a popular stimulus provision, the federal subsidy of COBRA benefits, expired for newly unemployed workers as of the first day of June. That means, for the average worker who has lost her job since May 31, the cost of COBRA has tripled.

COBRA — a provision created in the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985 — gives workers the option of buying into their old health-care plan when they lose their job. Before the recession, COBRA let workers who lost their job through no fault of their own pay the entire health-care premium plus a two-percent administrative fee to keep coverage, about $8,800 per year for the average enrollee. (Generally, COBRA lasted 18 months.)  As part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or the 2009 stimulus, Congress subsidized this coverage, given the massive number and economic hardship of laid-off workers. The subsidy paid for 65 percent of health-care premiums for up to 15 months, meaning an average enrollee paid less than $3,000 a year.

For the Davises, under COBRA, coverage might have been a manageable $400 a month. When Davis looked into enrolling her husband and herself, she found it would cost more than $1,100 a month — leaving the family just a few hundred dollars for the mortgage, utilities, gas and food. She sought information on other private plans, but considered all of them too expensive. For now, the Davises are purchasing barebones coverage that will help pay hospital bills in case they are in an accident.

She rationalizes: “Me and the husband, we’re young enough that we can go without visits to the dentist and the [gynecologist] for a year,” and she argues, “I just do not see how it would be worth paying that much money for coverage, when we’re looking at a lot of other problems.” She argues that if the choice is between routine care and paying the electric bill, she will choose the latter. In the meantime, she is praying that her husband’s asthma does not flare up in the fall and hoping that they find jobs soon.

The Davises are one of hundreds of thousands of families doing the same. According to a study of 200 very large employers by Hewitt Associates, the COBRA provision doubled the proportion of laid-off workers enrolling in the program. In the fall of 2008, before the subsidy, about 19 percent of laid-off employees enrolled in COBRA. During the first six months of the subsidy, 38 percent of laid-off workers chose to. Now, with the subsidy’s end, enrollment rates are plummeting.

“Enrollment rates will likely decline over time as workers can’t, or aren’t willing to, afford the high premiums associated with COBRA coverage,” Hewitt’s Karen Frost said in a statement. “It’s possible these laid off workers are simply seeking coverage with a new employer or through their spouse’s employer. Unfortunately, it’s also likely that some are just foregoing health insurance altogether.” The National Employment Law Project estimates that 144,000 individuals and families per month have lost out on the subsidy.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way, but the extension of the COBRA subsidy became caught up in the tax extenders bill — also known as the jobs bill or H.R. 4213 — a large package of popular stimulus provisions that eventually died at the hands of a Republican filibuster. Senate Democrats managed to move unemployment insurance benefits, but few other portions of the popular bill made it through a Senate allergic to deficit spending.

The COBRA subsidy is highly popular: Hart Research found that 70 percent of Americans support extending it.  And many on the Hill fought to keep it in the tax extenders bill or to push it through other provisions. “Millions of Americans have been hard hit by the recession and lost their jobs through no fault of their own,” Sen. Robert Casey (D-Pa.) argued. “If Congress turns its back on them, they will have an even more difficult time making ends meet. With no premium assistance, COBRA health care benefits would consume 75 percent of the monthly unemployment payment for a Pennsylvania family.”

He offered an amendment to keep the subsidy within the jobs packages, and along with Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) has offered it as a standalone bill. The Extend COBRA Premium Assistance Program Act of 2010 provides a six-month subsidy for workers laid off between May 31 and Nov. 30. The provision is entirely deficit-neutral, eliminating a tax break on annuity trusts as a pay-for. (The bill is one of many that would extend COBRA. On the House side, Rep. Susan Davis (D-Calif.), for instance, introduced a bill doing so until relevant portions of Obama’s health care bill come into effect in 2014.)

Casey and Brown’s bill is popular — cosigned by Democratic Senators John Kerry (Mass.), Carl Levin (Mich.),  Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.), Debbie Stabenow (Mich.), Patrick Leahy (Vt.), Christopher Dodd (Ct.), Al Franken (Minn.), Roland Burris (Il.) and Daniel Akaka (Hi.) and supported by a slew of others. But it is caught in committee, and its likelihood of passage any time soon is small.

That means that the popular provision is likely dead, and for families like the Davises, health care coverage will remain an unaffordable luxury.

Franken said the court under Chief Justice John Roberts has repeatedly practiced judicial activism, always in favor of corporate interests.

“Your rights are harder to defend today than they were five years ago,” he said.

Whitehouse ripped into the court over its recent decisions in a number of cases, including Citizens United v. FEC.

“Sadly, the Supreme Court seems to be buying what the corporations are selling,” he said.

Franken also discussed the Citizens United case, noting that he was concerned that it would make it difficult for communities to pass laws without a “permission slip from big business.”

In the meantime, 903,000 unemployment insurance recipients have stopped receiving extended federal benefits. The National Employment Law Project has been blasting out one story a day from an unemployed worker facing poverty due to the joblessness crisis and Congressional inaction. Here’s today’s, from a broadcast radio worker laid off 18 months ago in Birmingham, Mich., the state with the second-highest unemployment rate in the country:

I had a radio show in Detroit for 15 1/2 years. I was let go recently due to budget cuts.  When I found out I was going to be let go, I offered to stay for LESS than one-half my pay but I was told even that was too much to satisfy the budget cuts. A few months later, the company hired me back to do a part-time show paying $15.00 an hour for 25 hours a week. When I found out about this opportunity, I was ecstatic.  Although it wasn’t a full-time job, it was income coming in that my family desperately needed to survive. However, this opportunity soon fell through…I was devastated.

I can’t find another job. I send out hundreds of applications a day, no call backs.  Radio stations use voice tracking, which eliminates the need for real human beings.  The full-timers tape the weekend shows so there aren’t even part-time positions anymore. And to add increased strain on my family life, my husband is now unemployed as well. He has an MBA and worked for years as an engineer.

During these past few years, we’ve lost 2 houses; it’s been awful.  Unemployment insurance has helped keep food on the table when I had no clue where my family’s next meal was going to come from…and without the COBRA subsidy, I would have gone this entire time without health coverage. However, with my COBRA subsidy ending in July, I can’t afford health insurance for myself or my family….it’s too expensive.

The impasse has Democrats incensed. Yesterday, for instance, Democratic Sens. Ben Cardin (Md.), Kay Hagan (N.C.) and Bob Casey (Pa.) led a fiery press conference on the matter. “Continued obstruction in the Senate could lead to 20,000 layoffs in Pennsylvania alone and poses a threat to public safety and schools,” Casey said. “Despite majority support, states around the country are facing harmful real world consequences because a minority of senators are blocking funding.” Democratic Sens. Casey, Debbie Stabenow (Mich.), Jeff Merkley (Ore.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.) argued for immediate passage of the bill on the floor yesterday night. Still, no movement yet. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) hopes to be able to move the bill this week.

Thus, the competitive activities of health insurers and medical malpractices insurers remain effectively unchecked.  While there are divergent views on the best way to introduce choice and competition into health insurance market, we can surely agree that health and medical malpractice insurers should not be allowed to collude to set prices and allocate markets.

They should have addressed their concerns to Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.). Why? Well, the House health-reform bill already includes a repeal of the anti-trust exemption, and the Senate bill would have, except that Reid was forced to scrap it to satisfy Nelson, a former insurance industry executive.

Thursday’s letter was signed by Democratic Sens. Pat Leahy (Vt.), John Kerry (Mass.), Jay Rockefeller (W.Va.), Joe Lieberman (Conn.), Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), Russ Feingold (Wis.), Ron Wyden (Ore.), Mary Landrieu (La.), Charles Schumer (N.Y.), Maria Cantwell (Wash.), Frank Lautenberg (N.J.), Bernie Sanders (Vt.), Claire McCaskill (Mo.), Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.), Roland Burris (Ill.), Ed Kaufman (Del.), Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.), Michael Bennet (Col.) and Al Franken (Minn.).

There are some powerful folks on that list, which represents nearly a third of the Democratic caucus. Cruelly, however, it just takes a single “no” vote from Nelson to sink the entire bill. That means that if Nelson insists that the provision is out, then the provision will be out.

Lincoln Chafee Monday will formally announce his bid for Rhode Island governor Monday.

The former Republican senator-turned-independent will officially jump into the race at an event in Warwick, where he once served as mayor.

The 56 year old Chafee lost his U.S. senate seat in 2006 to Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse after a bitter Republican primary battle against Stephen Laffey.  Chafee eventually left the GOP and is now an independent.

Congress has held two hearings already on the cases of Ashcroft v. Iqbal and Bell Atlantic v. Twombly, which introduced a new “credibility” requirement in pleading standards that civil rights advocates and some Democratic lawmakers complain leaves the fate of discrimination victims to the prejudices of a particular judge assigned to the case. Now, instead of simply having to state clearly what the claims are, plaintiffs have to convince the judge that those claims are credible at the outset, before even having had an opportunity to collect evidence to support them.

While that pleases some conservatives who view most civil rights lawsuits with skepticism, civil rights experts say it rewards employers and others who discriminate but have learned to cover their tracks.

As the Times puts it today: “The practical impact in, say, an employment discrimination case is to disadvantage the wronged employee, who is unlikely to have access at the outset to the records needed to prove wrongful conduct.”

The Times cites John Payton, president of the NAACP legal defense fund, who recently testified that some of the landmark cases of the civil rights era might never have survived the Supreme Court’s new standard. In his written testimony submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this month, Payton cites specific examples of potentially meritorious cases that didn’t survive the new standard because the plaintiffs couldn’t convince a skeptical judge that employment, voting or housing discrimination is “credible.”

As Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), a former U.S. Attorney, put it at that Senate hearing, “In my experience, misconduct is inherently implausible” because we generally expect people to act decently, fairly and lawfully.

Nadler’s legislation acknowledges the fact that sometimes, they don’t live up to that standard.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (WDCpix)

Last year, an Arizona housing developer known for building affordable homes for Hispanics filed a complaint against the City of Yuma, which denied his application to build homes for low to moderate income families in a predominately white high-income neighborhood. The developer sued for discrimination under the Fair Housing Act, charging that the decision was racially motivated. But the federal court dismissed the case before the developer could even gather evidence, ruling that the discrimination the developer alleged was not “plausible.”

[Law]In the past, merely stating the allegations would have been enough to allow the developer to at least begin gathering information to try to prove his case. But two recent Supreme Court decisions have made bringing discrimination cases far more difficult by demanding not only that the claim clearly meet the requirements of the law, but also that a judge find it “plausible” before allowing the plaintiff to begin collecting evidence. The consequence is that many people who in the past might have won their cases on the merits now won’t even get past the entrance gate.

That’s either a sea change in the way the courts handle lawsuits and particularly civil rights claims, as several witnesses and senators argued on Wednesday at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the subject, or it’s merely a clarification of the longstanding procedural requirements, as some Republicans at the hearing argued.

Attorney General Eric Holder (WDCpix)

Attorney General Eric Holder surely knew he’d be facing a tough audience when he prepared to testify to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. That may be why instead of delivering the written testimony he’d prepared, he focused his opening remarks on explaining his decision, announced last Friday, to try the alleged co-conspirators of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in a New York federal court.