Summary
That’s all from the Guardian US politics liveblog, here’s what happened today:
- A new poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that among American adults who have not yet received a vaccine, 35% say they probably will not, and 45% say they definitely will not.
- The White House faced a raft of questions about how to vaccinate more Americans. Right now, about half the total population is vaccinated.
- New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio called on private employers, and particularly private hospitals, to consider mandating their employees to get vaccinated.
- Republican lawmakers are also under increasing pressure to encourage their base to get vaccinated, though some experts worry vaccine hesitancy may have already hardened to opposition.
- An exasperated Republican Governor Kay Ivey said it may be time to start “blaming” unvaccinated people for the rise in the variant.
- Finally, Mississippi filed a supreme court brief urging the nine-member bench to overturn Roe v Wade. If that happened, advocates believe half of states would move to outlaw the healthcare procedure.
Updated
Cameras, computer modeling, drones: the higher-tech ways to fight fires
As dozens of wildfires continue to burn in across the US, the Associated Press has a new report out on the new technology that firefighters are using to fight increasingly ferocious blazes. The AP writes:
As drought- and wind-driven wildfires have become more dangerous across the American West in recent years, firefighters have tried to become smarter in how they prepare.
That includes using new fire behavior computer modeling that can help assess risks before fires start, then project their path and growth.
When “critical weather” is predicted — hot, dry winds or lightning storms — the technology, on top of hard-earned experience, allows California planners to pre-position fire engines, bulldozers, aircraft and hand crews armed with shovels and chain saws in areas where they can respond more quickly.
In another effort to catch fires quickly, what once were fire lookout towers staffed by humans have largely been replaced with cameras in remote areas, many of them in high-definition and armed with artificial intelligence to discern a smoke plume from morning fog. There are 800 such cameras scattered across California, Nevada and Oregon, and even casual viewers can remotely watch wildfires in real time.
Fire managers also routinely summon military drones from the National Guard or Air Force to fly over fires at night, using heat imaging to map their boundaries and hot spots. They can use satellite imagery to plot the course of smoke and ash.
On the topic of old-school firefighting technology, our wildfires correspondent Gabrielle Canon recently spent some time in one of those aforementioned lookout towers. The one she visited is in Marin county, in northern California, and was built almost 100 years ago. Volunteers still spend long hours there, gazing out, looking for a telltale spark.
Check out that feature below:
Earlier today, my colleague Jewel Wicker covered a new report from the Brennan Center for Justice that found at least 18 states in the US have enacted laws that restrict voting access. The study describes the onslaught as “the most aggressive in more than a decade of tracking state voting laws”.
The report comes after Republicans in the Senate blocked the For the People Act, a major bill that would have shored up voting rights, and Democratic lawmakers in Texas staged a high profile walkout from the state legislature in an effort to thwart new voting restrictions.
Wicker writes:
The report found that the 30 laws that have been passed since 1 January “make mail voting and early voting more difficult, impose harsher voter ID requirements, and make faulty voter [roll] purges more likely, among other things”.
The laws were among the more than 400 bills introduced in 49 states during this year’s legislative session that would make voting more difficult.
Such proliferating and restrictive legislation contrasted sharply, however, with the report’s finding that no states produced evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 elections, despite continued claims by Donald Trump, backed by numerous Republican leaders, that he was not beaten by Joe Biden in the race to the White House.
In fact, officials at local, state and national level declared last November’s the most secure election in US history, while Trump fought in vain through the courts to overturn the result.
Read the full story here, and check out all of the Guardian’s voting rights coverage here.
The White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, delivered an update today on US efforts to share its Covid vaccine doses with other countries around the world. The news comes as domestic vaccination rates stagnate and the White House ramps up its efforts to fight vaccine hesitancy.
The AP reports:
White House press secretary Jen Psaki says the United States has shipped 22 million doses of the coronavirus vaccine to other countries this week.
The total was a weekly record as vaccines went to 23 countries. Psaki says the recipients included Pakistan, Vietnam, Guatemala, Panama, Senegal, Cameroon and Morocco, among other nations. By this weekend, roughly 80 million doses in total will have shipped from the United States to other countries.
Psaki stressed at Friday’s White House news briefing that the United States is “donating more to the world than any other country.” Still, there is a global vaccine gap between wealthier nations and poorer ones, a reflection of the economic might of American and European countries as well as the pressure to address the needs of domestic populations.
Amid growing concerns about rising Covid-19 cases across the US, reporter Erin McCormick took a closer look at one state experiencing an alarming spike: California.
The Golden State has had some of the strictest lockdowns during the pandemic, and now has some of the highest vaccination rates. But just over a month after the governor lifted the last of the state’s Covid restrictions, case numbers are climbing, and some counties are bringing back mask mandates.
She writes:
In Los Angeles, county figures show that Covid-19 infections have increased twentyfold in a month. In San Francisco, they’ve almost tripled in two weeks and, overall, California’s hospitalization numbers have increased by 58%, according to New York Times data.
Despite the fact that California is one of the country’s most vaccinated states, experts blame the highly contagious Delta variant for a new surge that has disrupted businesses’ and politicians’ plans to celebrate the state’s reopening.
“Primarily we’re seeing infections in the unvaccinated,” said George Rutherford, an epidemiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, citing earlier statistics from Los Angeles which found 99.6% of new cases there were in the unvaccinated. “We’re seeing the Delta variant’s extra strength.”
Even with New York Times figures showing nearly 77% of the state’s adults having gotten at least one shot of vaccine, that leaves plenty of unprotected people to transmit the virus, Rutherford said.
Read the full story here.
Updated
After arrest in Los Angeles, Trump inauguration chair ordered freed on $250m bail
The chair of the former president Donald Trump’s inaugural committee was ordered freed Friday on $250m bail to face charges he secretly worked as an agent for the the United Arab Emirates to influence Trump’s foreign policy, the Associated Press reports.
Tom Barrack, 74, will be subject to electronic monitoring and largely confined to his residence after he is arraigned Monday in a New York courtroom. He was arrested Tuesday in Los Angeles near his home.
Barrack is expected to plead not guilty to conspiring to influence US policy on the UAE’s behalf during Trump’s 2016 campaign and while Trump was president. Barrack, the founder of private equity firm Colony Capital, was among three men charged in the case.
Prosecutors said Barrack used his long personal friendship with Trump to benefit the UAE without disclosing his ties to the US government.
Longtime Trump associate Tom Barrack, who was indicted on charges of illegal foreign lobbying, has been freed on $250 million bailhttps://t.co/nEJjEfb3eU
— CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) July 23, 2021
Updated
Fact-checking claims about HIPAA and vaccination status
As various public figures invoke a federal medical records privacy law to explain why they will not comment if they have received the Coronavirus vaccine, journalists are providing a fact-check about why that claim ...just does not make sense!
It is not, dear reader, HIPAA -- https://t.co/aznpzk6XFf https://t.co/KCqgYs6XFf
— city nolan (get your 💉!!!) (@ndhapple) July 23, 2021
Aishvarya Kavi’s succinct HIPAA explainer is worth a read.
No, HIPAA doesn't make it illegal to ask someone if they've been vaccinated. https://t.co/oypbFt6Awo
— Aishvarya Kavi (@AishvaryaKavi) July 23, 2021
Poll: 45% of Americans without Covid vaccine say they ‘definitely’ wont get it
This is Lois Beckett, picking up our live US politics coverage from our Los Angeles office.
Most Americans who haven’t been vaccinated against COVID-19 say they are unlikely to get the shots and doubt they would work against the aggressive delta variant despite evidence they do, according to a new poll that underscores the challenges facing public health officials amid soaring infections in some states, the Associated Press reports.
Among American adults who have not yet received a vaccine, 35% say they probably will not, and 45% say they definitely will not, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Just 3% say they definitely will get the shots, though another 16% say they probably will.
What’s more, 64% of unvaccinated Americans have little to no confidence the shots are effective against variants — including the delta variant that officials say is responsible for 83% of new cases in the U.S. — despite evidence that they offer strong protection.
White House faced questions on Covid-19, mayors push for vaccine and mask mandates
Today had a front and center focus on Covid-19, as cases attributed to the contagiousness of the Delta variant rise across the south and midwest.
- The White House faced a raft of questions about how to vaccinate more Americans. Right now, about half the total population is vaccinated.
- New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio called on private employers, and particularly private hospitals, to consider mandating their employees to get vaccinated.
- Republican lawmakers are also under increasing pressure to encourage their base to get vaccinated, though some experts worry vaccine hesitancy may have already hardened to opposition.
- An exasperated Republican Governor Kay Ivey said it may be time to start “blaming” unvaccinated people for the rise in the variant.
- Finally, Mississippi filed a supreme court brief urging the nine-member bench to overturn Roe v Wade. If that happened, advocates believe half of states would move to outlaw the healthcare procedure.
Let’s go back to Mississippi’s surprising brief to the supreme court, in which it argued the nine-member bench should overturn Roe v Wade.
Roe v Wade, decided in 1973, is a landmark decision that legalized abortion up to the point a fetus can survive outside the womb. That point is widely regarded as roughly 24 weeks.
In October, the court will consider a Mississippi law that bans abortion after 15 weeks. Even taking up the case has signaled the court, which leans conservative, could intend to reconsider foundational aspects of the right to abortion in the US.
“Under the Constitution, may a State prohibit elective abortions before viability? Yes. Why? Because nothing in constitutional text, structure, history, or tradition supports a right to abortion,” the Mississippi attorney general, Lynn Fitch, and four of her attorneys wrote in the brief.
That push to invalidate Roe, and move abortion rights to the states, was one reproductive rights advocates said they had been warning about for years. If the justices overturn Roe, reproductive rights advocates expect almost half the states to immediately outlaw abortion.
“Today’s brief reveals the extreme and regressive strategy, not just of this law, but of the avalanche of abortion bans and restrictions that are being passed across the country,” said Nancy Northup, CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is arguing the case before the court.
“Their goal is for the supreme court to take away our right to control our own bodies and our own futures – not just in Mississippi, but everywhere.”
Most women of reproductive age live in states that are hostile to abortion rights. Abortion is a common health procedure, most often performed very early in pregnancy. Nearly one-in-four women who live in the US will have an abortion by age 45.
As we saw in the White House press briefing, one of the most closely watched statistics in the last few days is the number of vaccinations distributed daily.
There is some anecdotal evidence to suggest that the increase in cases attributed to the Delta variant may encourage people to get vaccinated. The hope, as this tweet shows, is that we could begin to see a slight increase in daily vaccinations.
The number of people getting the first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine is no longer decreasing and may even be showing signs of increasing slightly, in the face of growing cases, hospitalizations, and deaths.https://t.co/W0SXWcSdRN pic.twitter.com/WvIqPGvxdw
— Larry Levitt (@larry_levitt) July 23, 2021
New York City mayor calls on employers to "mandate" vaccines
In other Bill de Blasio news, the mayor is urging private city employers to require their employees to get a Covid-19 vaccination.
Last week, the de Blasio administration announced workers at the city’s public hospitals would need to get vaccinated or get a weekly Covid-19 PCR test. This takes the mayor’s urging one step further, after he said he felt the city had done everything possible in “purely voluntary” terms.
I’m calling upon all New York City employers, including our private hospitals, to move immediately to some form of mandate,” said de Blasio on WNYC... Whatever the maximum you feel you can do, any form of mandate, including the type we’re doing,” he said.
The mayor said he was frustrated in particular that New Yorkers, who are eligible to be vaccinated in their homes as part of the distribution drive, had not had better uptake.
It’s time for more mandates,” he said.
Updated
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio won’t have to testify in a judicial inquiry into the 2014 police chokehold death of Eric Garner, a judge ruled today, dashing a long-running quest by Garner’s relatives to have the mayor questioned under oath.
People attend a memorial event for Eric Garner, who was killed by New York City police in 2014, in Staten Island, New York, U.S., July 17, 2021. Photograph: Eduardo Muñoz/Reuters
Garner’s death, on 17 July 2014, became a focal point for national conversations on race and policing. Garner’s last words, “I can’t breathe”, were chanted by protesters across the US, and echoed in many protests in the years since.
They were also among the last words of George Floyd when he was murdered by then-police officer Derek Chauvin in 2020.
The police officer implicated in Garner’s death was never charged with a crime. Supporters and relatives of Garner have fought a prolonged battle for full accountability for Garner’s killing.
The officer, Daniel Pantaleo, was fired in 2019.
On Friday, the Associated Press reported that in addition to De Blasio being excused:
Judge Erika Edwards also excused Police Commissioner Dermot Shea, the city’s chief medical examiner and other high-ranking current and former city officials from testifying, ruling that other witnesses have more direct knowledge of the case.
Edwards ordered 13 witnesses to testify in the inquiry, scheduled to start Oct. 25, including the NYPD’s chief spokesperson, the head of its internal affairs unit and the president of the police officers union.
Four officers and four sergeants who were involved in Garner’s arrest were also ordered to testify, but not the officer who placed Garner in the chokehold, Daniel Pantaleo. The NYPD fired him in 2019 after a department disciplinary trial.
Garner’s mother, Gwen Carr, and sister, Ellisha Flagg Garner, allege that de Blasio and other city officials neglected their duties in their handling of Garner’s death.Carr said in a statement Friday that she was disappointed that de Blasio and Shea won’t have to testify, but heartened that the judge is forcing the city to turn over troves of previously undisclosed documents related to his July 17, 2014, death.
“It’s been seven years since Eric was murdered, and in spite of what Mayor de Blasio has said to me personally or to New Yorkers, he and other top city officials are still blocking transparency but now the court has ordered them to finally turn over information,” Carr said.
The Garner inquiry is focused on several main issues, including the factors leading to his stop, arrest and the use of force, whether officers lied on official documents, the leak of Garner’s arrest history and medical conditions, and allegations that officers failed to provide Garner with medical care.
The city sought to cancel the judicial inquiry, but a state appeals court ruled last week that Garner’s death was the “rare case in which allegations of significant violations of duty” warranted such a review.
Joe Biden plans to nominate Caroline Kennedy, daughter of the late president John F. Kennedy, as the American ambassador to Australia, CNN reported this afternoon, citing three unidentified people familiar with the process.
The White House did not immediately return a request for comment on the report.
Kennedy threw her support behind Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign in February of that year, writing that the former vice president was more prepared for the job than his rivals.
Kennedy previously served as US ambassador to Japan under Barack Obama.
The first female US ambassador to Japan, Kennedy was an early and prominent supporter of Obama in his initial quest for the presidency in 2008, and also campaigned for him.
CNN reports:
Kennedy’s appointment to Australia reflects the high priority the Biden administration is placing on the Asia-Pacific as it deals with an increasingly assertive China in the region and on the world stage.
The US and Australia share close trade ties and a robust military relationship, fighting side by side in every major conflict since World War I.
The two countries are also members of the “Five Eyes alliance,” an intelligence sharing arrangement between the English speaking democracies of the US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK.
If confirmed, Kennedy would come to the job with prior experience specific to the region. A graduate of Harvard University and Columbia University Law School, Kennedy served as ambassador to Japan from 2013 to 2017 as an Obama administration appointee.
In Tokyo, Kennedy worked on military and trade, among other issues, and became the second US ambassador to attend an annual memorial service marking the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
Donald Trump’s billionaire ally Thomas Barrack has reached a deal with prosecutors that will allow for his release from custody while he awaits trial on federal charges including illegal foreign lobbying, a prosecutor said during a court hearing today.
Barrack played a leading role in the Trump’s presidential inauguration events in 2017 and was arrested in California earlier this week on charges of acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government, specifically the United Arab Emirates.
A seven-count indictment was unveiled in federal court after an announcement by the Department of Justice, which also charged Barrack, 74, with obstruction of justice and making multiple false statements during a June 20, 2019, interview with federal law enforcement agents.
Updated
Questions to White House about the push to get more Americans vaccinated
This press conference was really an ongoing series of questions about Covid, how to get more people vaccinated, and about an increase in cases in low-vaccination states.
Psaki has just gotten a question about how to coordinate with Republican governors who have criticized the administration strategy to combat Covid, including with vaccines.
She said the reasons people might not have been vaccinated range from “misinformation, some of it is fear, some of it is time, some of it is they are young and they may feel they are Superman or Superwoman,” said Psaki.
“Our objective to communicate to people this is not a political issue, the virus does not discriminate between political party affiliation,” said Psaki. “We rely on and we’re funding and empowering local trusted voices who aren’t seen through a political prism”.
Updated
Now we’re onto another question about the Covid-19 forecasting we mentioned earlier, with the potential for an October peak in new cases. Psaki said encouraging vaccination is “the most powerful role he can play”.
Even more on vaccinations here – Psaki is asked how to get more people vaccinated amid the frustration expressed by Republican Alabama Governor Kay Ivey:
“We always knew it would be harder as more people got vaccinated,” said Psaki. “That’s the stage we’re in now, but we also believe there is still opportunity ... to get more people vaccinated there are a range of factors”.
Factors contributing to more people getting vaccinate might be the role of the Delta variant, “fears of the transmissibility of the Delta variant, family members who are getting sick and getting hospitalized,” said Psaki.
Psaki also confirmed the purchase of another 200 million Pfizer vaccine shots.
“We have made that purchase,” said Psaki. “Here’s the bottom line, we’ve always prepared for every scenario”. Those vaccines are to be delivered in the fall 2021 and spring 2022, and would potentially be used for either booster shots or vaccinations for children younger than 12.
Currently, children younger than 12 are not eligible for Covid-19 vaccinations.
In another Covid question, Psaki is asked whether more testing would help reduce Covid transmission.
“[The president] relies on the guidance of his health and medical experts,” said Psaki.
Today, Mississippi filed paperwork with the Supreme Court asking it to overturn a decision that provided Americans with the right to an abortion up to the point a fetus can live outside the womb.
That decision, called Roe v Wade, is under threat from a Mississippi law before the court.
Psaki said: “We are supporters, the president is a supporter, of preserving Roe v Wade”.
In a filing, Mississippi said Roe v Wade and decision that flow from it are, “egregiously wrong,” NPR reported, and that “the conclusion that abortion is a constitutional right has no basis in text, structure, history or tradition.”
Now, we have a question about whether the president is safe while traveling the country.
Psaki said federal Covid-19 guidelines say, “If you’re vaccinated you’re very much protected from severe illness from the virus, and the president will continue to be a model in following those guidelines”.
Asked whether the federal government should take a harsher tone with unvaccinated people, citing Republican Alabama Governor Kay Ivey’s comments about people who have not yet been vaccinated, Psaki said:
“I don’t think our role is to place blame, what we can do is release accurate information,” said Psaki.
She continued: “If you’re a young person, you may think you’re superman or super woman and immune from getting the virus – that’s not true, that is not accurate.”
However, Psaki also said, “We understand her frustration”.
Here we go – at the top Psaki said the Biden-Harris administration has “shipped a record number of doses to a record number of countries,” including 22 million doses to 23 countries including many African and Latin American countries.
And the first question is about Covid-19, vaccine hesitancy, and that AP poll we just mentioned.
“We’re going to continue our efforts to go community by community, case by case to convey the accurate information about the efficacy of vaccines,” Psaki said.
Poll shows challenge of convincing people to get vaccinated
A new poll from the Associated Press underscores the challenges public health officials face in trying to get people vaccinated.
The poll shows most Americans who haven’t been vaccinated against the coronavirus say they are unlikely to get the shots. About 16% say they probably will get the vaccine.
Most also doubt they would work against the aggressive delta variant, despite evidence they do. Those findings underscore the challenges facing public health officials as soaring infections in some states threaten to overwhelm hospitals.
The poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found 35% of adults who have not yet received a vaccine say they probably will not, and 45% say they definitely will not.
That means “that there will be more preventable cases, more preventable hospitalizations and more preventable deaths,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease specialist at Johns Hopkins University.
Updated
White House press secretary Jen Psaki’s daily briefing is expected to start any minute. Here a livestream of the briefing to follow along.
Long-range Covid forecast predicts peak in October
Ahead of White House press secretary Jen Psaki’s briefing, expected just at 12:30pm ET, let’s take a look at the latest long-range coronavirus forecasts released by the Covid-19 Scenario Modeling Hub.
These models pull together multiple mathematical projections on detailing how the coronavirus might spread. On Thursday, they released a new data. The forecasts are, as NPR rightly put it, deflating.
“What’s going on in the country with the virus is matching our most pessimistic scenarios,” Justin Lessler, an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina who helps run the modeling hub, told NPR. “We might be seeing synergistic effects of people becoming less cautious in addition to the impacts of the delta variant.
In the most likely scenario, the Delta variant is 60% more transmissible than earlier strains of Covid-19, and 70% of the American public is vaccinated. Should that be the case, scientists expect Covid-19 cases to peak in October, with roughly 60,000 new cases per day, according to NPR.
As a point of comparison, during the peak of the pandemic in winter 2021, about 250,000 people per day were diagnosed with Covid-19.
Updated
Listen to the latest episode of the Guardian's Politics Weekly Extra podcast. @SamTLevin gives details on the anti-trans bills being pushed by Republican legislators across the country, and we hear from one of the trans kids affected by those proposals. https://t.co/tTYgFZfkos
— Joan Greve (@joanegreve) July 23, 2021
Dr Peter Hotez, a vaccine researcher and the dean of the national school of tropical medicine at Baylor University, is one of the loudest proponents of vaccination in the US.
In the Houston Chronicle, he again urged people to get vaccinated. In Texas, 43% of the total population is fully vaccinated, below the national average of 49%.
When you’ve got this as the dominant variant, if you’re unvaccinated and you’ve been lucky enough not to get COVID so far, you have to recognize there’s a good chance your luck’s about to run out, and you will likely get get COVID. You should get vaccinated yesterday, right? This is not the time to wait, because the spread of delta is accelerating very quickly.”
Health authorities in Philadelphia are strongly recommending everyone – including vaccinated people – wear masks in public, indoor settings. The recommendation came after health authorities saw a “small but disturbing” increase in hospitalizations among children, according to radio station WHYY.
“Kids under 12 cannot yet be vaccinated,” said acting health commissioner Dr Cheryl Bettigole, in a statement. “They need you to step up.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidance says vaccinated people do not need to mask because they are at low risk of transmitting or contracting Covid-19, but recommends people who are immune-compromised or have underlying health conditions continue to mask.
The CDC’s guidelines, found here, have been the subject of intense criticism as local health authorities chart the rise of Covid-19 cases associated with the Delta variant.
As the Tokyo Olympics opening ceremony comes to an end, First Lady Jill Biden cheers from the stands. On Saturday, she is expected to attend the USA v France women’s 3x3 basketball game and the USA v Nw Zealand women’s soccer game.
. @FLOTUS stands to cheer as #TeamUSA enters the arena. pic.twitter.com/XM0xiSzqxb
— Kate Bennett (@KateBennett_DC) July 23, 2021
First Lady @DrBiden will attend the following Olympic events in Tokyo on Saturday, per the White House:
— Monica Alba (@albamonica) July 23, 2021
- USA v France women's 3x3 basketball game
- Various swimming races
- USA v New Zealand women's soccer game
The bust of a man who was a Confederate general, Ku Klux Klan leader and slave trader was removed from the Tennessee state capitol this morning, a year after the governor said it was high time it was gone.
Nathan Bedford Forrest had been immortalized at the Tennessee capitol in Nashville since the late 1970s.
HAPPENING NOW: Crews are starting the process of removing the Nathan Bedford Forrest bust from the capitol. @WKRN #GMN pic.twitter.com/8HwOG3zsoY
— Julia Palazzo WKRN (@JuliaPalazzoTV) July 23, 2021
The Tennessean reported:
The State Building Commission on Thursday gave approval for the relocation of the Forrest bust to the Tennessee State Museum, a final step in a process that has taken more than a year since Gov. Bill Lee first said it was time for the statue to be moved.
“It’s been a year long journey, and this is an appropriate step in that process,” Lee said prior to the Building Commission meeting Thursday morning. “It’s most important to me that we followed the process. We talked about that from the very beginning.”
Members of the legislative Black Caucus gathered outside the hearing room, and then by the bust, after the vote to celebrate.
The Tennessee lieutenant governor Randy McNally, who is also the state senate speaker, had voted against the removal of the bust of Forrest and accused the left of demanding that people “kneel at the altar of political correctness”.
Wheeled away.
The bust of Confederate Gen. and KKK leader Nathan Bedford Forrest is off its pedestal and being wheeled out of the Tennessee Capitol. pic.twitter.com/dgAg4isvxw
— Natalie Allison (@natalie_allison) July 23, 2021
Updated
Republican lawmakers are under increasing pressure to tell their constituents Covid-19 vaccines are safe and effective amid spread of the new, more contagious Delta variant.
Covid-19 vaccines are highly effective against the Delta variant, and remain the single most tool available to prevent infection with the highly contagious disease.
However, more than a year of mixed messages and misinformation have experts worried Republican’s Covid-19 vaccine messages will be, at best, muddled, and that skepticism has hardened among the Republican base.Here’s more from the Associated Press:
In recent news conferences and statements, some prominent Republicans have been imploring their constituents to lay lingering doubts aside. In Washington, the so-called Doctors Caucus gathered at the Capitol for an event to combat vaccine hesitancy. And in Florida, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis this week pointed to data showing the vast majority of hospitalized Covid-19 patients hadn’t received shots.
“These vaccines are saving lives,” said DeSantis, who recently began selling campaign merchandise mocking masks and medical experts.
The outreach comes as Covid-19 cases have nearly tripled in the US over the last two weeks, driven by the explosion of the new delta variant, especially in pockets of the country where vaccination rates are low. Public health officials believe the variant is at least twice as contagious as the original version, but the shots appear to offer robust protection against serious illness for most people.
Indeed, nearly all Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. are now people who haven’t been vaccinated. Nonetheless, just 56.2% of Americans have received at least one vaccine dose, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Overall, only 51% of Republicans said in mid-June that they had received at least one vaccine dose, versus 83% of Democrats, according to an AP-NORC poll. And many appeared to have made up their minds. Forty-six percent of those who had not been vaccinated said they definitely would not. Among Republicans, even more 53% said they definitely wouldn’t; just 12% said they were planning to.
“I think they’ve finally realized that if their people aren’t vaccinated, they’re going to get sick, and if their people aren’t vaccinated, they’re going to get blamed for Covid outbreaks in the future,” said GOP pollster Frank Luntz, who has been working with the Biden administration and public health experts to craft effective messaging to bring the vaccine hesitant off the fence.
But Luntz, who conducted another focus group Wednesday evening with vaccine holdouts, said there has been a discernible shift in recent weeks as skepticism has calcified into hardened refusal.
“The hesitation has transformed into opposition. And once you are opposed, it is very hard to change that position. And that’s what’s happening right now,” he said.
For months now, many conservative lawmakers and pundits have been actively stoking vaccine hesitancy, refusing to take the shots themselves or downplaying the severity of the virus. Republican governors have signed bills protecting the unvaccinated from having to disclose their status and tried to roll back mask mandates. And on social media, disinformation has run rampant, leading President Joe Biden to claim platforms like Facebook were “killing people” a claim he later walked back.
At a recent conservative gathering, attendees cheered the news that the Biden administration was falling short of its vaccination goals. Invoking the nation’s top infectious-disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., warned, the government: “Don’t come knocking on my door with your Fauci Ouchie! You leave us the hell alone.”
...
But there were signs that messaging was changing this week, as conservative leaders advocated for the shots. On Fox News, host Sean Hannity implored his viewers to “please take Covid seriously,” saying, “Enough people have died.” Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley on Twitter encouraged “ALL eligible Iowans/Americans to get vaccinated.”
“The Delta variant scares me so I hope those that haven’t been vaccinated will reconsider,” he wrote.
Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise, the House Republican whip, distributed pictures of himself receiving his first dose of the vaccine last weekend after months of holding out.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, a polio survivor who has consistently advocated on behalf of the COVID-19 shots, this week urged the unvaccinated to ignore “all these other voices that are giving demonstrably bad advice.”
But the news conference convened by House GOP leaders on Thursday highlighted Republicans’ competing messages on the virus.
Initially billed as an event where Republican doctors in Congress would address the rapidly spreading delta variant, the group instead spent most of its time railing against China and making unverified claims that the coronavirus came from a lab leak in Wuhan, a theory initially popular in far-right circles but now being seriously considered by scientists. They also attacked Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Biden administration, for not doing more to get to the bottom of the lab leak theory.
“The question is, Why are Democrats stonewalling our efforts to uncover the origins of the COVID virus?” said New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, the No. 3 Republican in the House.
Eric Ward, a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center who studies extremism, blamed vaccine reluctance on “nearly a year-and-a-half of right-wing rage machine rhetoric.”
“Even conservative leaders now are having a hard time figuring out how to rein in what had primarily been a propaganda campaign, and they are now realizing their constituencies are particularly vulnerable,” he said.
Republican Governor Kay Ivey has joined a growing chorus of Republicans urging people to get vaccinated. According to local TV station WKRG, she told a press conference Thursday:
The new cases of Covid are because of unvaccinated folks. Almost 100% of the new hospitalizations are with unvaccinated folks. And the deaths are certainly occurring with the unvaccinated folks. These folks are choosing a horrible lifestyle of self-inflicted pain,” said Gov. Ivey.
When asked how the state can get more shots into the arms of residents, Ivey did not hold back her displeasure with the lack of success previous plans have had.
“I don’t know, you tell me. Folks are supposed to have common sense. But it’s time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks, not the vaccinated folks. It’s the unvaccinated folks that are letting us down,” she said. “I’ve done all I know how to do. I can encourage you to do something but I can’t make you take care of yourself.”
Tennessee removes capital bust of "brutal" Confederate general and KKK leader
Tennessee’s building commission has voted 5-2 to remove a bust of a confederate general with a “brutal” reputation from the capital building.
Nathan Bedford Forrest was one of the first grand wizard’s of the KKK. During the Civil War, Bedford had a “reputation for killing Black soldiers after they had surrendered”, local news station WTVF reported.
Before the bust was removed, a sign was placed at the base of the pedestal, “Thank you to all the protesters who made this happen”.
HAPPENING NOW: Crews are starting the process of removing the Nathan Bedford Forrest bust from the capitol. @WKRN #GMN pic.twitter.com/8HwOG3zsoY
— Julia Palazzo WKRN (@JuliaPalazzoTV) July 23, 2021
Updated
Happy Friday, and welcome to the Guardian’s politics liveblog.
Much of the world is watching the opening of the Tokyo Olympic ceremony (follow live here).
The summertime tradition, already delayed one year by the global Covid-19 pandemic, begins as Americans are increasingly warned about a rise in cases tied to the highly contagious Delta variant.
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) head Dr Rochelle Walensky warned Americans are in “another pivotal moment” in the pandemic. The most powerful tool to prevent infection – vaccines – are now at hand, but daily distribution rates have plateaued.
- Republican Alabama governor Kay Ivey joined a growing chorus of conservatives urging their base to get vaccinated. Republicans have been among the most vaccine resistant group in the country.
- Covid-19 forecasts released Thursday evening found new Covid-19 cases will probably accelerate through the summer and peak in October, in a dispiriting new projection about cases driven by the Delta variant among the unvaccinated. Reminder: vaccines are highly effective against the Delta variant.
