Right before all this, Jon was being floated as a serious presidential nominee in 2024 ... an idea JS continues to shoot down -- but it's hard to argue his impassioned, vocal pressure didn't play a role in the Senate turnaround.

The reversal also came after Democrats struck a surprise deal to push through a sweeping climate, energy and tax plan this month over unified Republican opposition — a central piece of their domestic agenda that Republicans have derided as a spending spree.

“These veterans don’t have time! They’re running out of time. They need health care now, and if they don’t get it, they’re dying!” said Natalia Kempthorne-Curiel, who traveled with her father Nathan Kempthorne to the demonstration.

Last week, Senate Republicans blocked the passage of the PACT Act, which would expand health care access to veterans exposed to burn pits. Their opposition — ostensibly because they wanted to vote on an amendment offered by Sen. PAT TOOMEY (R-Pa.), but difficult to divorce from the broader context of Democrats’ breakthrough on reconciliation talks

“We fought for this country freely, and we expect now that people will fight for us and fight for our basic health care,” said Samantha Turner, an Army veteran who served near burn pits in Kuwait. Turner, who has sleep apnea, now uses a machine to breathe at night.

Biden said on the FaceTime call that the country has a “sacred obligation” to care for those who go into war and care for them and their families after they return. He said opposing the legislation is “despicable,” and he has to believe that the bill’s opponents are “going to make up for the mistake they made.”

And Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he would schedule another procedural vote to break a GOP filibuster on Monday, trying to force the Republicans to let it pass. As of Thursday afternoon, Schumer had not formally scheduled a vote for Monday but has the ability to call for a vote at any time.

Obviously, voting to deny health care to sick vets (and fist-bumping afterward) is obviously far more disrespectful to vets than kneeling during the anthem. But just for fun, let’s take a look at what GOP senators who blocked the burn pit bill in protest had to say about Kaepernick.

Eight Republicans joined all 48 of the Democrats present in supporting the bill, but that fell short of the 60-vote supermajority required to end the GOP filibuster. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer changed his vote to no at the last minute for procedural reasons, enabling him to force another vote in the future. The final vote was 55-42.

“My concern about this bill has nothing to do with the purpose of the bill,” Toomey said. “This budgetary gimmick is so unrelated to the actual veterans issue that has to do with burn pits, that it’s not even in the House version of this bill.”

Republican lawmakers who had previously voted against the measure, including Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., reiterated objections to how the money connected to the measure (about $300 billion over 10 years) would be accounted for in the regular appropriations process.

Toomey said Thursday he is still concerned about the funding shift and is “likely” to object to any unanimous consent request to let the veterans bill sail through, but that no one has presented him with any proposal yet so “these are procedural hypotheticals.”

“You know, they, the BA says the D-O-D the government says, no, you, your spouse did not die as a result of, of his service. So you get nothing. We need people to know that this is what the VA is doing to our war heroes, who willingly went off to war and fought for our country. And when they, if they returned sick, it's tough luck you're on your own.”

"Senator Toomey has blocked it. And now he wants to introduce amendments completely rewriting the way that it's paid for out of some false and very convenient fiscal concern that he never had for the defense budget or for the wars that created these toxic exposure difficulties in the first place," comedian and activist Jon Stewart said in an interview with Fox News.