Refusing to acknowledge the overwhelming scientific consensus, Senate Republicans on Thursday tabled a proposal by Sen. Bernie Sanders to say global warming is a real, man-made threat to the planet. President Barack Obama delivered his State of the Union address on Tuesday. Sanders welcomed initiatives to help working families afford child care and college. At a news conference on Wednesday, Sanders disagreed with Obama’s push for a new trade deal like others that shuttered American factories. Also on Wednesday’s fifth anniversary of one of the worst Supreme Court decisions in history, Sanders filed a constitutional amendment to undo the ruling in Citizens United. And on Thursday witnesses at a Senate hearing on Obamacare warmed up to Sanders’ idea to provide better health care with less hassle for employers.

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Global Warming Senate Republicans killed Sanders’ amendment that said climate change is real, is caused by humans and wreaks devastation. The measure also would have called on the federal government to lead the way in a national transition away from fossil fuels. The vote was 56 to 42 to table the amendment to a bill that would allow construction of a controversial oil pipeline from Canada’s tar sands region to refineries along the Gulf Coast. Sanders argued that the pipeline would promote the use of some of the dirtiest oil on the planet. “The issue here in the Senate is whether we listen to the scientists and the people who know most about the issue or whether you listen to the powerful special interests and the campaign contributors who want to tell that you climate change is not real,” Sanders said in an interview after the vote. Watch

Trade Deal Sanders joined House leaders at a news conference on Wednesday to resist a trade agreement  that would hurt American workers. They promised to build a bipartisan coalition and work with organized labor, environmental groups and others to defeat the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership. “Since 2001, the U.S. has lost more than 60,000 factories and millions of good-paying jobs,” Sanders said. “While not all of these losses can be attributed to trade policy, a lot of it can be. What corporations have done is shut down factories in this country and moved abroad where they pay workers pennies an hour. Forcing American workers to compete against Vietnamese workers who earn 56 cents an hour is a failed policy,” Sanders said in a report on CBS News. Watch, Read more

State of the Union In his sixth annual address to a special joint session of Congress, President Obama took credit for an economy that has rebounded from the recession he inherited from President George W. Bush.  “We are better off than we were six years ago but anyone who thinks the economy is where it should be today is terribly mistaken,” Sanders said in a CNN interview after the address. Obama laid out proposals to revamp the tax code by raising taxes and fees on the wealthiest Americans and using the money for a $500 tax credit for married couples in which both spouses have jobs and to pay for free tuition for two years of community college. Sanders agreed and would go further by making the first two years at any public university tuition-free. As the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, Sanders said he also looked forward to working with the administration to adopt a tax system that eliminates unfair tax loopholes that only benefit the wealthiest people and largest corporations. Watch CNN, Watch MSNBC

Citizens United Warning that “American democracy is under attack,” Sanders introduced a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court ruling that allowed unrestricted and secret campaign spending by corporations. The 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission undermined democracy by opening the floodgates to unlimited, unregulated campaign spending. As a result, a record $7 billion was spent in the 2012 election cycle and $3.7 billion in the 2014 cycle.

Obamacare The hearing of the Senate health committee was about Obamacare. Republicans had picked witnesses to talk about how providing insurance for their employees was a hassle. But before the hearing was over, the witnesses warmed up to Sanders’ idea to provide better health care with less paperwork for employers. Here’s how The Huffington Post’s Michael McAuliff set the scene: “In Republicans' ongoing efforts to roll back or hamstring Obamacare, this is probably not what they hoped for in their first Senate hearing on the matter: The Senate's self-described "democratic socialist" got GOP witnesses to back a key argument for universal health care.” Read more, Watch Sanders at the hearing