Summary
- Joe Biden outlined his administration’s renewed efforts to reach unvaccinated Americans. The president said in a speech this afternoon that the White House would expand door-to-door outreach efforts and partner with local pharmacies and doctors’ offices to convince hesitant Americans to get their shot. “The bottom line is: the virus is on the run, and America is coming back, and we’re coming back together,” Biden said. “But our fight against this virus is not over.”
- More than 90% of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan is now complete, the Pentagon said in a statement today. Afghan officials have complained that the withdrawal is being carried out too quickly to accommodate a politically motivated schedule, leaving the country vulnerable to Taliban attacks.
- The Pentagon announced it is dropping its $10bn cloud-computing contract with Microsoft. The “Jedi” cloud contract had caused controversy during Donald Trump’s presidency. Amazon filed a lawsuit over Microsoft winning the contract, alleging that Trump had interfered in the process because of his animosity toward Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post.
- Today marks six months since the Capitol insurrection. The anniversary comes as some of Trump’s supporters are working to deny the reality of that violent day, which resulted in five deaths.
- The death toll in the Surfside condo building collapse rose to 32, after four more bodies were recovered. Local officials said 113 people remain potentially unaccounted for, as search and rescue teams brace for heavy rains from Tropical Storm Elsa that could affect the disaster site.
- In the Democratic primaries for the New York mayoral race, former police captain Eric Adams has a lead of 1% over Kathryn Garcia, according to the latest count of ballots. The Associated Press has declared Adams the winner of the race. The unusual election began amid the pandemic and marked a major test of the system of ranked-choice voting. The race was marred by a vote tallying debacle, which led to an erroneous tally on 29 June before being corrected.
– Joan E Greve and Maanvi Singh
The election results have not been finalized, though Adams appears to be the likely winner.
The unusual election began amid the pandemic and marked a major test of the system of ranked-choice voting. The race was marred by a vote tallying debacle, which led to an erroneous tally on 29 June before being corrected.
AP: Eric Adams wins New York Democratic mayoral primary
In the Democratic primaries for the New York mayoral race, former police captain Eric Adams has a lead of 1% over Kathryn Garcia, according to the latest count of ballots. The Associated Press has declared Adams the winner of the race.
Adams leads Garcia by nearly 8,500 votes in the first mayoral race decided by ranked-choice voting. Adams also beat out Maya Wiley, the legal adviser who had the support of progressives including representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
The preliminary RCV round by round elimination report 2 is now live! Please visit https://t.co/y3JRuS6TiB We thank you for your patience.
— NYC Board of Elections (@BOENYC) July 6, 2021
Updated
‘The spirit of our ancestry’: how California’s Black Wall Streets are changing their cities
Abené Clayton reports:
Like hundreds of other shopping districts, Sacramento’s Florin Square had to shut its doors during the pandemic.
The space in California’s state capital is part cultural center and incubator and has been home to Black entrepreneurs since 2003. At the mercy of Covid-19 closures, evolving guidelines and elusive government aid, many similar operations failed to recover, with an estimated 200,000 more small businesses shuttering in 2020 than in the average year.
But, amazingly, out of more than 60 mostly Black-owned businesses in Florin Square, only one had to close for good. The hub’s owner, Tom Donaldson, says this feat is due to its unique approach to entrepreneurship, which has earned Florin Square the title of Sacramento’s Black Wall Street.
Donaldson and his marketing manager, Aaron Boyce, say their goal was always to balance “tough love” and high expectations with a grace and guidance rarely afforded to Black business owners.
“The systems in this country create roadblocks to success but not only did our tenants survive the pandemic, they also found a way to thrive and prosper,” said Donaldson.
One of the first things Donaldson did was waive his penalties for late rent payments and look for grants to help struggling businesses. Boyce also helped people increase their online presences.
“We get entrepreneurs coming to us with all kinds of stories about why things in their business aren’t working out, but if they’re not able to serve the community we have to give them some tough love,” Boyce said. “But it’s all a part of the incubation process.’’
Florin Square is just one of dozens of such districts in the US – from Denver, Colorado, to Baton Rouge, Louisiana – established to support Black entrepreneurs and develop commercial and cultural corridors for Black businesses.
Last summer’s reckoning with racism and inequality has put many of the central issues Black Wall Streets seek to address at the center of the national conversation. Black-owned banks have seen huge investment and can now “leverage that into $1.5bn to serve minority communities”, Robert E James II, chair of the National Bankers Association, told CNN Business recently. Elsewhere, as the #BuyBlack hashtag circulated on social media, US states added directories of Black businesses to their tourism websites and banks promised to address decades of economic racism.
All of this comes in the 100th anniversary year of the massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma’s Greenwood community, home to the best-known Black Wall Street. Greenwood, and the dozens of other Black Wall Streets that were born during the early 20th century, have long served as aspirational examples of cooperative economics among Black people, who have been shut out of US financial institutions for generations.
Read more:
On the six-month anniversary of the 6 January attack on the capitol, Joe Biden said the breach was “a sad reminder that there is nothing guaranteed about our democracy”
Biden said:
Not even during the Civil War did insurrectionists breach our Capitol, the citadel of our democracy. But six months ago today, insurrectionists did. They launched a violent and deadly assault on the people’s house, on the people’s representatives, and on the Capitol police sworn to protect them, as our duly elected Congress carried out the sacred ritual of our republic and certified the Electoral College vote.
This was not dissent. It was disorder. It posed an existential crisis and a test of whether our democracy could survive—a sad reminder that there is nothing guaranteed about our democracy.
The capitol police today released a list of reforms and policy changes in an effort to be better prepared in the future, and to support officers who responded to the attack, including ramping up training and expanding officers’ access to trauma counseling and spiritual support services.
But as my colleague David Smith reported this morning, Republicans have spent the past six months denying and downplaying the attack:
Six months on from the mayhem on 6 January, when a mob of Donald Trump supporters stormed the heart of American democracy to disrupt the confirmation of Joe Biden’s election victory, Republicans and rightwing media have variously attempted to downplay the attack or blame it on leftwing infiltrators and the FBI.
Interviews with diehard Trump fans suggest that the riot denialism is working. Many refuse to condemn the insurrectionists who beat police officers, smashed windows and called for then Vice-President Mike Pence to be hanged. The swirl of conspiracy theories, combined with Trump’s deluded claims of a stole election, raise fears of a replay that could be even more violent.
“Rightwing media and some Republicans, including Republicans in the Senate and the House, are trying to make it seem as though what was a siege on the Capitol was not actually a siege on the Capitol,” said Monika McDermott, a political science professor at Fordham University in New York.
The Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, told constituents that the $1.9tn American Rescue Plan, which he opposed and which Democrats passed almost entirely along party lines, means, “you’re going to get a lot more money”.
Democrats have seized on the moment.
“Not a single member of my party voted for it,” McConnell said of the relief package that passed in March. “So, you’re going to get a lot more money. I didn’t vote for it. But you’re going to get a lot more money. Cities and counties in Kentucky will get close to $700 or $800m. If you add up the total amount that will come into our state, $4bn. That’s twice what we sent in last year.”
The White House press secretary, Andrew Bates, shared a clip of McConnell’s comments, made today at an event in Kentucky.
What he said.@LeaderMcConnell: “I didn’t vote for [the ARP], but you’re going to get a lot more money. Cities and counties in Kentucky will get close to $700 or $800 million. If you add up the total amount that will come into our state, $4 billion.” pic.twitter.com/A0MZcMOBMA
— Andrew Bates (@AndrewJBates46) July 6, 2021
McConnell has vowed to oppose Democrats’ efforts to pass legislation via budget reconciliation - and has successfully blocked efforts to pass a broader infrastructure plan and voting rights reform – and said he plans to oppose any additional covid relief efforts.
Updated
Delta variant rapidly gaining ground in US west as vaccination rates stagnate
Public health authorities across the US west are sounding the alarm that the Delta variant, a “hyper-transmissible” form of Covid-19 responsible for about 25% of new US infections, is rapidly gaining significant ground.
These concerns come amid stagnating vaccination rates in some communities, spurring still more concerns about heightened transmission.
In California, the Delta variant is on the rise, accounting for 35.6% of specimens sequenced that are categorized as “variants of concern” or “variants of interest” as of 21 June, up from 5.6% in May, according to the state’s public health department. Covid-19 cases have surged in excess of 20% in California since the state lifted the majority of coronavirus restrictions on 15 June, with the Delta variant spurring the greatest proportion of new cases, according to the San Francisco Chronicle,
Authorities in Los Angeles county said that the Delta variant was responsible for almost half of genetically sequenced variants, the New York Times reported. The county’s public health guidance said on 28 June that it “strongly recommends” masking indoors – regardless of vaccination status – due to increased circulation of the Delta variant.
“We have enough risk and enough unvaccinated people for Delta to pose a threat to our recovery, and masking up now could help prevent a resurgence in transmission,” Barbara Ferrer, the county’s public health director, was quoted by the Los Angeles Times as saying.
Grant Colfax, the San Francisco public health department director, said of the Delta variant: “It’s like Covid on steroids.”
“It’s about 30% of cases locally right now,” the San Francisco Chronicle quoted Colfax as saying. “Within just a few months, we expect it to be over 90% of our cases.”
Officials have repeatedly said that the surge in the Delta variant is all the more reason to get vaccinated. Almost 70% of Californians age 12 and older are partially or fully vaccinated, but some rural counties lag behind.
Read more:
Biden’s Bureau of Land Management pick grilled over 30-year old protest
Mike Jordan reports:
Joe Biden’s pick to lead the Bureau of Land Management is in danger of failing to be confirmed, over her involvement in an ecological protest more than 30 years ago which Republican senators say marks her as an environmental extremist.
Tracy Stone-Manning is currently a senior adviser at the National Wildlife Federation. She acknowledges that in early 1989 she borrowed a typewriter to copy an anonymous letter given to her by environmental activists who claimed to have driven hundreds of metal spikes into trees in the Clearwater national forest, in Idaho.
Her purpose in typing and mailing a copy of the letter to the authorities, Stone-Manning testified when the matter came to court, was to warn the US Forest Service that anyone attempting to cut down trees in the forest would be in danger of harm.
Stone-Manning testified against the activists who claimed to have spiked the trees, after law enforcement raided student housing. Her testimony resulted in federal convictions for two people.
Stone-Manning has risen to political prominence in Montana. Before joining the National Wildlife Federation, she was chief of staff for the former Montana governor Steve Bullock and also worked for Democratic senator Jon Tester.
A Republican senator from Wyoming, John Barrasso, has emerged as a leading opponent to Stone-Manning’s nomination for the Bureau of Land Management, calling for Biden to withdraw it and alleging she lied to the Senate about her involvement in the tree-spiking incident.
“Tracy Stone-Manning collaborated with eco-terrorists who had booby trapped trees with metal spikes,” a Barrasso statement read. “She mailed the threatening letter for them and she was part of the cover-up. She did not cooperate with investigators until she was caught.”
Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, another Republican, said Stone-Manning’s political affiliations were of concern.
At her confirmation hearing, Stone-Manning encountered heavy questioning by Republicans regarding a role on the board of directors of Montana Conservation Voters, a nonprofit which claims to be nonpartisan but which endorsed Bullock’s unsuccessful Senate run against the Republican Steve Daines last year.
“Can you speak from your heart?” Cassidy asked. “Because it seems like your heart is that you really don’t particularly care for Republicans.”
Tester praised Stone-Manning, calling her “a good person that has a good heart” and who understands the value of public lands.
“I would not be here today, introducing her, if I thought she was the person that you described,” Tester told Barrasso.
Jeff Fairchild, who served time in prison for his role in the tree-spiking incident, has defended Stone-Manning. In an interview with the Washington Post, he called her “a bridge builder” and a moderating voice against activities that could distract from resolving environmental disagreements.
Read more:
Report: Republic National Committee systems breached by Russian hackers
The Republican National Committee’s computer systems were breached by Russian hackers, Bloomberg reports, based on two anonymous sources.
From Bloomberg’s William Turton and Jennifer Jacobs:
The government hackers were part of a group known as APT 29 or Cozy Bear, according to the people. That group has been tied to Russia’s foreign intelligence service and has previously been accused of breaching the Democratic National Committee in 2016 and of carrying out a supply-chain cyberattack involving SolarWinds Corp., which infiltrated nine U.S. government agencies and was disclosed in December.
It’s not known what data the hackers viewed or stole, if anything. An RNC spokesman on Tuesday denied its systems were breached and referred to a statement citing IT provider Synnex Corp. released on Saturday.
“Microsoft informed us that one of our vendors, Synnex, systems may have been exposed,” Mike Reed, a spokesman for the RNC, said in the earlier statement. “There is no indication the RNC was hacked or any RNC information was stolen. We are investigating the matter and have informed DHS and the FBI.”
Today so far
That’s it from me today. My west coast colleague, Maanvi Singh, will take over the blog for the next few hours.
Here’s where the day stands so far:
- Joe Biden outlined his administration’s renewed efforts to reach unvaccinated Americans. The president said in a speech this afternoon that the White House would expand door-to-door outreach efforts and partner with local pharmacies and doctors’ offices to convince hesitant Americans to get their shot. “The bottom line is: the virus is on the run, and America is coming back, and we’re coming back together,” Biden said. “But our fight against this virus is not over.”
- More than 90% of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan is now complete, the Pentagon said in a statement today. Afghan officials have complained that the withdrawal is being carried out too quickly to accommodate a politically motivated schedule, leaving the country vulnerable to Taliban attacks.
- The Pentagon announced it is dropping its $10bn cloud-computing contract with Microsoft. The “Jedi” cloud contract had caused controversy during Donald Trump’s presidency. Amazon filed a lawsuit over Microsoft winning the contract, alleging that Trump had interfered in the process because of his animosity toward Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post.
- Today marks six months since the Capitol insurrection. The anniversary comes as some of Trump’s supporters are working to deny the reality of that violent day, which resulted in five deaths.
- The death toll in the Surfside condo building collapse rose to 32, after four more bodies were recovered. Local officials said 113 people remain potentially unaccounted for, as search and rescue teams brace for heavy rains from Tropical Storm Elsa that could affect the disaster site.
Maanvi will have more coming up, so stay tuned.
News from Ohio, via the Associated Press:
The Ohio supreme court has announced it will not consider an appeal over the firing of a white police officer who shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice outside a Cleveland recreation center in 2014.
The appeal was filed in April by the Cleveland Police Patrolment’s Association on behalf of former officer Timothy Loehmann. Cleveland fired Loehmann in 2017 not for killing Tamir, who was Black, but for providing false information on his job application. An arbitrator and a county judge upheld his firing.
A state appellate court earlier this year dismissed Loehmann’s appeal, citing the union’s failure to serve notice on outside attorneys hired by the city.
Loehmann, a rookie, shot Tamir within seconds of a cruiser skidding to a stop near a gazebo where the child had been sitting. Officers responded to a call from a man who said someone was waving a gun around. The man also told a dispatcher the gun could be a fake and the person might be a juvenile.
A state grand jury declined to indict Loehmann in Tamir’s shooting and, in December, federal authorities announced they would not bring federal criminal charges.
“I am glad that Loehmann will never have a badge and gun in Cleveland again,” Tamir’s mother, Samaria Rice, said in a statement.
More on Tamir Rice and other similar cases, here:
Updated
In case you missed it earlier today: the Problem Solvers Caucus, a bipartisan group in Congress, came out in favor of the bipartisan infrastructure framework.
“In light of the bipartisan, bicameral genesis of the framework, we encourage an expeditious, stand-alone vote in the House and thank our bipartisan Senate partners and the Biden Administration for working so closely with us to demonstrate that cooperation is still possible in Washington,” the caucus said in a statement.
The caucus’ support means that Democrats can likely afford to lose the votes of some progressives, who have voiced reservations about the framework, and still pass the plan. Those progressives have argued the framework does not adequately address the climate crisis.
Joe Biden has already indicated his support for the framework, and he is traveling to Illinois tomorrow to promote the proposal, as lawmakers scramble to translate the framework into an actual bill.
Congressional leaders have signaled they want to pass the bill by the end of the month, but much work remains to be done to meet that goal.
Democrats are also working to quickly craft a reconciliation package, which would enact elements of Biden’s American Jobs Plan and American Families Plan that did not make it into the bipartisan proposal.
More than 90% of US withdrawal from Afghanistan is complete, Pentagon says
The Guardian’s Emma Graham-Harrison in Kabul and Peter Beaumont report:
US forces plunged their main operating base in Afghanistan into darkness and abandoned it to looters when they slipped away in the middle of the night after two decades at the site without notifying their Afghan allies.
The furtive departure from Bagram airbase, which is vital to the security of Kabul and holds about 5,000 mostly Taliban prisoners, infuriated the Afghans. Many saw it as emblematic of a withdrawal they say is being carried out entirely to fit an American political schedule, with no heed for the collapsing security situation on the ground.
“People are saying: ‘The Americans didn’t ask Afghans about coming here, and they didn’t consult Afghans about leaving’,” said one senior official.
Much of northern Afghanistan, once an anti-Taliban stronghold, has fallen to the group in the last two weeks, and the militants have made substantial advances across the rest of the country. Afghanistan has just over 400 districts, and the Taliban now hold nearly half, and are fighting for many more.
With Bagram and its two runways no longer in American hands, the main US mission in Afghanistan is in effect over already. The Pentagon said in a statement on Tuesday that the withdrawal was more than 90% completed.
As part of the Biden administration’s new efforts to reach unvaccinated Americans, the White House is partnering with 42,000 local pharmacies, as well as family doctors and pediatricians, to convince people to get their shot.
The administration has also encouraged employers to give their workers paid time off to get vaccinated, and it is expanding mobile clinic efforts to make the vaccines more accessible than ever.
Speaking at the White House moments ago, Joe Biden said, “Think about where you were last year, where you are today. What you were able to do last year at this time and do today. It’s a year of hard-fought progress. We can’t get complacent now.”
Joe Biden took one question from reporters after finishing his prepared remarks on his administration’s renewed outreach efforts to get more Americans vaccinated against coronavirus.
Asked about the latest ransomware attack that affected hundreds of businesses around the world, Biden said he was briefed on the incident this morning and was told it caused “minimal damage to US businesses”.
Biden added that his administration is still gathering information on the incident, noting he would have more to say on the matter “in the next several days”. With that, Biden walked away from the podium.
Joe Biden emphasized that getting vaccinated is the “best thing you can do to protect yourself and your family,” as the delta variant of coronavirus spreads across the US.
The president celebrated the progress his administration has made in getting people vaccinated, but he warned that millions of eligible Americans have not yet gotten their shot.
“Let’s finish the job — finish it together,” Biden said as he wrapped up his prepared remarks.
Joe Biden lamented that younger Americans seem particularly reluctant to get vaccinated, putting them more at risk of contracting the delta variant of coronavirus.
The president noted that the delta variant is now responsible for almost half of new coronavirus cases in many parts of the US.
“Seems to me, it should cause everyone to think twice,” Biden said of the delta variant.
Encouraging all eligible Americans to get vaccinated as soon as possible, the president said, “Do it now, for yourself and for the people you care about.”
Updated
Biden outlines new steps to reach unvaccinated Americans: 'Our fight against this virus is not over'
Joe Biden is now delivering remarks on his administration’s plans to launch targeted outreach efforts in communities with lower rates of vaccination against coronavirus.
Celebrating his administration’s vaccination efforts so far, Biden said at the White House, “We’re closer than ever to declaring our independence from this deadly virus.”
The president noted that more than 160 million Americans will be vaccinated by the end of this week, just a few days after the July 4 deadline that Biden set for that milestone.
New coronavirus cases and deaths are also down 90% since January, allowing Americans to start “living their lives as they did before,” Biden said.
“The bottom line is: the virus is on the run, and America is coming back, and we’re coming back together,” Biden said. “But our fight against this virus is not over.”
The White House said earlier today that it would expand door-to-door outreach efforts in communities with lower vaccination efforts. The administration is also working to deliver more vaccine doses to primary care doctors and pediatricians, so Americans can get their shot from their own physicians.
Updated
Joe Biden will soon deliver remarks on his administration’s ongoing efforts to vaccinate more Americans against coronavirus.
The Biden administration has already said it will launch more targeted outreach efforts in communities with lower vaccination rates, amid concerns about the spread of the delta variant of the virus.
The president also just received a briefing from members of his coronavirus response team, including chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci and CDC director Rochelle Walensky.
The Hillbilly Elegy author turned Republican Ohio Senate candidate JD Vance has apologised for a former political position: critic of Donald Trump.
“Like a lot of people, I criticised Trump back in 2016,” Vance told Fox News. “And I ask folks not to judge me based on what I said in 2016, because I’ve been very open that I did say those critical things and I regret them, and I regret being wrong about the guy.”
Vance’s need to address the subject came out of good digging by CNN, which unearthed deleted tweets. However, Vance’s dislike of Trump and intent to vote for the independent conservative Evan McMullin was widely known in 2016.
As Hillbilly Elegy surged up the charts, for example, Vance spoke to the journalist Matt Lewis.
“The reason, ultimately, that I am not” a Trump voter, he said, “is because I think that [Trump] is the most-raw expression of a massive finger pointed at other people.”
Of course, back then Trump did not have a stranglehold on the Republican party of the kind which meant anyone running for office as a Republican anywhere had to kiss the ring to stand any chance of winning a nomination.
Full story:
Pentagon drops controversial 'Jedi' cloud contract
The Pentagon has announced it has dropped a $10bn cloud-computing contract with Microsoft that caused a huge political kerfuffle when Donald Trump was in the White House, over the question of whether Trump intervened to steer the contract away from Amazon, the owner of the Washington Post.
The Department of Defense said on Tuesday the contract for the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure – or Jedi, Star Wars fans – no longer met its needs.
Microsoft won the contract in 2019 – and Amazon sued to block it.
In a statement not light on defenseworld newspeak, John Sherman, acting DoD chief information officer, said: “Jedi was developed at a time when the department’s needs were different and both the CSPs technology and our cloud conversancy was less mature. In light of new initiatives like JADC2 and AI and Data Acceleration (ADA), the evolution of the cloud ecosystem within DoD, and changes in user requirements to leverage multiple cloud environments to execute mission, our landscape has advanced and a new way-ahead is warranted to achieve dominance in both traditional and non-traditional warfighting domains.”
He added: “The department intends to seek proposals from a limited number of sources, namely the Microsoft Corporation (Microsoft) and Amazon Web Services (AWS), as available market research indicates that these two vendors are the only Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) capable of meeting the Department’s requirements.”
Here’s an in-depth read on Amazon’s move into the defense industry:
Jen Psaki said the administration does not currently plan to set any new goals in terms of administering coronavirus vaccines.
The US failed to reach Joe Biden’s goal of having 70% of American adults at least partially vaccinated by July 4. About 67% of US adults have received at least one vaccine dose as of today.
The administration is now launching more targeted outreach efforts in communities with lower vaccination rates, and the president will deliver a speech outlining those plans in a speech this afternoon.
The White House press briefing has now concluded.
Asked about the crafting of the reconciliation package, Jen Psaki said this week will include “a lot of behind-the-scenes bill-writing” and “long nights and lots of coffee” for Democratic staffers on Capitol Hill.
Democratic congressional leaders hope to include many elements of Joe Biden’s American Jobs Plan and American Families Plan in the package.
A number of Biden’s proposals were not included in the bipartisan infrastructure framework, and the reconciliation package is a second chance to enact those policies.
Because the bill will be passed via reconciliation, Democrats will not need to attract any Republican support in order to get the legislation to Biden’s desk.
Jen Psaki said Joe Biden will convene an interagency meeting tomorrow to address the administration’s ongoing efforts to respond to ransomware attacks.
The meeting follows a series of high-profile ransomware attacks on major companies, which have been blamed on groups based in Russia.
The White House press secretary also said that “a high level of our national security team” has been in touch with senior Russian officials to engage in discussions about preventing such attacks.
“If the Russian government cannot or will not take action against criminal actors residing in Russia, we will take action or reserve the right to take action on our own,” Psaki said.
Psaki says "high level" of U.S. national security has been in touch with top Russian officials about $70 million ransomware attack by a Russia-linked hacking group
— CBS News (@CBSNews) July 6, 2021
She says if Russia doesn't take action against cyber criminals residing there, "we will" https://t.co/6096ZKXN39 pic.twitter.com/GLhelp2Wyg
Jen Psaki confirmed an earlier Wall Street Journal report that national security adviser Jake Sullivan will meet with Saudi Arabia’s deputy defense minister in Washington this week.
The Saudi deputy defense minister, Prince Khalid bin Salman, is the son of Saudi Arabia’s King Salman and a younger brother of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The Biden administration has implicated the crown prince in the 2018 killing of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and Psaki indicated that issue could possibly come up during the Saudi official’s meeting with Sullivan.
Jen Psaki gave some details on Joe Biden’s trip tomorrow to Crystal Lake, Illinois, saying he will promote the bipartisan infrastructure framework.
The press secretary said Biden will also explain the need to enact his American Families Plan, which congressional Democrats hope to pass via reconciliation, meaning they will not have to get any Republican support to approve the proposal.
Biden has made several trips in recent weeks to promote his infrastructure plans, most recently traveling to La Crosse, Wisconsin, last week.
The White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, is now holding her daily briefing, and she opened her remarks with a preview of Joe Biden’s speech this afternoon.
Psaki said the president will outline the administration’s reinvigorated efforts to get more Americans vaccinated against coronavirus, which she said is critically important because “fully vaccinated people are protected against the Delta variant”.
The press secretary explained that the administration is launching door-to-door outreach efforts in communities with lower vaccination rates and working to get more doses to primary care doctors and pediatricians in those communities.
Psaki also announced that the US is shipping 1.5 million doses of the Moderna coronavirus vaccine to Guatemala and 2 million doses of the Moderna vaccine to Vietnam, confirming an earlier report.
Today so far
Here’s where the day stands so far:
- Joe Biden will deliver an update this afternoon on his administration’s ongoing efforts to vaccinate more Americans against coronavirus. The update comes after the country missed Biden’s goal of having 70% of Americans adults at least partially vaccinated by July 4. A senior administration official said the president will outline the White House’s plans to launch targeted outreach efforts in communities with lower vaccination rates.
- Today marks six months since the Capitol insurrection. The anniversary comes as some of Donald Trump’s supporters are working to deny the reality of that violent day, which resulted in five deaths.
- The death toll in the Surfside condo building collapse rose to 32, after four more bodies were recovered. Local officials said 113 people remain potentially unaccounted for, as search and rescue teams brace for heavy rains from Tropical Storm Elsa that could affect the disaster site.
The blog will have more coming up, so stay tuned.
The US continues to distribute more coronavirus vaccines to other nations, with 2 million doses being shipped to Vietnam today.
AFP reports:
The Moderna vaccine shipment -- part of a first 80 million doses that President Joe Biden has pledged to allocate worldwide -- should arrive in Vietnam this weekend, a White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP.
‘This is just the beginning of doses being shipped to southeast Asia,’ the official said.
A million doses went to Malaysia on Monday and last week the White House announced delivery ‘soon’ of four million doses to Indonesia.
Biden had initially pledged to ship 80 million vaccine doses abroad by the end of June, but the White House fell short of that goal.
Jeff Zients, the coordinator of the White House pandemic response team, said on Friday that the White House was working to deliver tens of millions of additional doses over the next couple of months.
The journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones said on Tuesday she will join Howard University, a prominent historically black college in Washington, as its Knight chair in race and journalism, turning down a similar position at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill even though it reversed a controversial decision to deny her tenure.
Howard has also appointed the award-winning writer Ta-Nehisi Coates as writer-in-residence.
Hannah-Jones is a journalist for the New York Times best known for creating the Pulitzer-winning 1619 Project, which focuses on the place of slavery in American history.
She has been at the center of a tense fight in academia since the UNC board of trustees denied her tenure, despite her having the support of faculty and students.
Hannah-Jones was offered a five-year contract at the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media that did not initially include tenure.
In her first interview about the controversy, Hannah-Jones told CBS on Tuesday every Knight chair before her at UNC “received that position with tenure”.
“This is my alma mater,” she said of UNC. “I love the university … it was embarrassing to be the first person to be denied tenure. It was embarrassing, and I didn’t want this to become a public scandal.”
Surfside death toll rises to 32 after four more victims recovered
The death toll in the Surfside condo building collapse has risen to 32, after rescue crews discovered four more bodies in the rubble.
Miami-Dade County mayor Daniella Levine Cava announced the news at a press conference this morning, noting that 113 people remain potentially unaccounted for.
LATEST from Surfside building collapse:
— ABC News (@ABC) July 6, 2021
- Four more victims recovered
- Death toll rises to 32; 26 identified
- 191 people accounted for
- 113 potentially unaccounted for
Read more: https://t.co/3X2kcOrSwu pic.twitter.com/ugldhxKs0X
Of those 113 people, detectives have only been able to confirm that 70 of them were definitely in the building when it collapsed, so that number may change as investigation efforts continue.
“We continue to urge all of the families who are missing loved ones to please reach out and connect with us so that our detectives can file missing persons reports with the police, and we want to confirm every single account,” Levine Cava said.
The press conference came as local officials braced for potentially heavy rains from Tropical Storm Elsa, which could complicate the search and rescue efforts.
Hundreds of anti-abortion protesters lined blocks along a four-lane thoroughfare called Indian School Road in Phoenix, Arizona, enduring the suck of whooshing cars and blistering late June desert heat to advocate for their cause – effectively, theocracy in America.
Rising temperatures promised a sweaty, nauseous apex of 104F for the protest in front of Camelback Family Planning and abortion clinic. Their ranks were defined by gruesome and bloody signs, some taller than the protesters who held them, a microphone and an amplifier.
“This is a slaughterhouse!” a man’s voice growled. Some protesters leaned into car windows going into the clinic parking lot. “This is unnatural for a mother to do this to a child!” one cried.
This is the national conference for Operation Save America (OSA), one in a network of extreme anti-abortion groups gaining increasing sway with rightwing lawmakers. In some sense, they’re not news – their homophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic, misogynist leadership has harassed abortion providers for decades.
But, like the world around them, they’ve evolved.
Once at the fringes, but moving into legislative efforts are protesters like these, abortion “abolitionists” who advocate for women and doctors to be prosecuted under murder statutes. Their name is an appropriation of a term used by anti-slavery organizers before the American civil war.
In his remarks this afternoon, Joe Biden will also note that nearly 160 million Americans are expected to be fully vaccinated against coronavirus by the end of the week.
As of today, 157.3 million Americans are fully vaccinated, representing 47.4% of the total population, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Biden had previously set a goal of having 160 million Americans fully vaccinated by US independence day on July 4, but the country fell short of that objective.
Biden to outline renewed vaccination outreach efforts amid concerns about delta variant
Joe Biden will use his speech this afternoon to outline five major areas where his administration is doubling down on community outreach efforts to get more Americans vaccinated, a senior administration official said.
The White House official said, “After the President is briefed by his COVID-19 response team, he will speak to the American people about the strong progress that the country has made in recovery because of its robust vaccination campaign, as well as the importance of every eligible American getting vaccinated, especially as the Delta variant continues to grow among unvaccinated people across the country.”
The official noted that Biden will describe how his administration is continuing to work with state and local leaders “to get more Americans vaccinated by making vaccines available in more health care settings, and respond to hotspots”.
Specifically, the White House is working to distribute more vaccine doses to primary care doctors and pediatricians, so local leaders in the medical community can directly explain the benefits of the vaccines to their patients.
The administration is also expanding targeted community outreach efforts, mobile vaccine clinics and vaccination sites at workplaces to make it as easy as possible for Americans to get their shot.
Democratic congressman Andy Kim, who famously cleaned the halls of Congress after the January 6 insurrection, is donating the suit he wore that day to the Smithsonian Institution.
In a Twitter thread, Kim described how he wore the suit on January 6 to celebrate Democrats flipping the Senate, after their two victories in the Georgia runoff races.
“I bought it to be a suit of celebration, and I thought what better way to give the suit meaning than to wear it when I confirm the electoral college and then later to the inauguration,” Kim said.
6 months ago today I wore this blue suit as I cleaned the Capitol after the insurrection, now I just donated it to the Smithsonian. Jan6 must never be forgotten. While some try to erase history, I will fight to tell the story so it never happens again. Here is one story…(THREAD) pic.twitter.com/GKePd1ZMrr
— Andy Kim (@AndyKimNJ) July 6, 2021
Kim noted that he only wore the suit one more time after January 6 -- when he voted to impeach Donald Trump for incitement of insurrection on January 13. After that, he could barely bring himself to even look at the suit.
“In the following days, I started to receive thousands of cards from across the country,” Kim said. “They talked about the blue suit. The suit meant something different to them than it did to me.”
Kim said he hoped the suit would be one piece of an exhibit that tells the truth of January 6, as many Trump supporters try to deny the reality of that violent day.
“I told the Smithsonian yes to donating the blue suit because the telling of the story of [January 6] isn’t optional, it is necessary,” Kim said. “We cannot heal as a nation unless we have truth. Let truth be truth.”
In the following days, I started to receive thousands of cards from across the country. Many from kids. Strangers who wanted to tell me how they felt when they saw the photo of me. They talked about the blue suit. The suit meant something different to them than it did to me.7/17 pic.twitter.com/5BCe6VJaH7
— Andy Kim (@AndyKimNJ) July 6, 2021
Six months after January 6, Republican efforts to deny the Capitol attack are working
It has been described as America’s darkest day since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. But whereas 9/11 is solemnly memorialised in stone, a concerted effort is under way to airbrush the US Capitol insurrection from history.
Six months on from the mayhem on 6 January, when a mob of Donald Trump supporters stormed the heart of American democracy to disrupt the confirmation of Joe Biden’s election victory, Republicans and rightwing media have variously attempted to downplay the attack or blame it on leftwing infiltrators and the FBI.
Interviews with diehard Trump fans suggest that the riot denialism is working. Many refuse to condemn the insurrectionists who beat police officers, smashed windows and called for then Vice-President Mike Pence to be hanged. The swirl of conspiracy theories, combined with Trump’s deluded claims of a stole election, raise fears of a replay that could be even more violent.
“Rightwing media and some Republicans, including Republicans in the Senate and the House, are trying to make it seem as though what was a siege on the Capitol was not actually a siege on the Capitol,” said Monika McDermott, a political science professor at Fordham University in New York.
“We all saw it. We saw them breaking down doors. We saw our members of Congress running for cover and trying to get away. We saw Mike Pence being shuttled out of the chamber. All of these frightening things that we saw happen are now being denied or being or being laid at the feet of Antifa or the FBI or some other source, which just seems at this point ludicrous.”
Jeff Zients, the coordinator of the White House pandemic response team, acknowledged that lower vaccination rates among younger Americans contributed to the US missing its July 4 vaccination goal.
On the White House missing its July Fourth vaccination goal, COVID-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients tells @MarthaRaddatz young adults "have felt less vulnerable to the disease," adding they were made eligible for the vaccine later as well. https://t.co/j3J01CTcMy pic.twitter.com/3sOnuibc6Y
— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) July 5, 2021
Speaking to ABC News on Sunday, Zients said the country still had “a lot to celebrate” for its independence day, noting that 67% of American adults have received at least one vaccine dose.
He went on to say, “Younger people, particularly those in their 20’s, have felt less vulnerable to the disease and therefore less eager to get shots.”
Zients noted the dangers for unvaccinated Americans as the delta variant spreads, saying, “We need to continue to vaccinate everyone, particularly young people, because what we know is, if you are vaccinated, you’re protected. And if you’re not vaccinated, you’re not protected. And that’s particularly important for everyone, including young people, in light of the delta variant.”
But according to a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll, 74% of unvaccinated Americans say they will not get a shot.
In his address over the weekend to mark US independence day, Joe Biden urged all Americans to get vaccinated as quickly as possible, arguing it is the “patriotic” thing to do.
“We all know powerful variants have emerged, like the Delta variant, but the best defense against these variants is to get vaccinated,” the president told an audience at the White House, where invited frontline workers gathered to celebrate the holiday.
“My fellow Americans, it’s the most patriotic thing you can do. So, please, if you haven’t gotten vaccinated, do it. Do it now for yourself, for your loved ones, for your community, and for your country.”
Biden’s speech came as vaccination rates lag in many Republican-led states that he did not win in November, intensifying concerns that political polarization is affecting the country’s pandemic response.
Updated
The Guardian’s Edward Helmore reports:
Several Republican governors with lagging vaccine rates in their states have urged residents to accept the shots as the Biden administration comes under pressure to reopen US borders to overseas visitors.
The Arkansas governor, Asa Hutchinson, West Virginia’s Jim Justice and Spencer Cox of Utah warned against vaccine hesitancy, which some disease experts, including the White House chief medical adviser, Anthony Fauci, said could create “two types of America”.
“We are in a race,” Hutchinson said on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday. About 32% of people in Arkansas are fully vaccinated, compared with 47.9% nationwide, according to Johns Hopkins University. “If we stopped right here, and we didn’t get a greater per cent of our population vaccinated, then we’re going to have trouble in the next school year and over the winter.” The solution, he said, “is the vaccinations”.
Justice told ABC’s This Week: “Red states probably have a lot of people that are very, very conservative in their thinking and they think, ‘Well, I don’t have to do that.’ But they’re not thinking right.”
Biden to speak on Covid response after US misses July 4 vaccination goal
Greetings from Washington, live blog readers.
Joe Biden will speak this afternoon on his administration’s ongoing efforts to get Americans vaccinated against coronavirus.
The speech comes two days after the country failed to meet Biden’s goal of having 70% of American adults at least partially vaccinated by July 4, the US independence day.
According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 67.1% of American adults have now received at least one vaccine dose, and 58.2% of adults are fully vaccinated.
WATCH: Dr. Fauci says Covid-19 vaccination rate disparities could create 'two types of America' #MTP pic.twitter.com/jFHF2L9OBC
— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) July 2, 2021
However, there are large regional disparities in vaccination rates. The CDC director, Dr Rochelle Walensky, noted last week that there are about 1,000 US counties where less than 30% of the community is vaccinated.
As the more highly contagious delta variant of coronavirus continues to spread, those communities could be at much higher risk of outbreaks, as Dr Anthony Fauci warned in an interview on Sunday.
“Fortunately, we have a substantial proportion of the population vaccinated. So it’s going to be regional,” Fauci told NBC News. “We’re going to see, and I’ve said, almost two types of America.”
The blog will have more coming up, so stay tuned.
