Summary
- Liz Cheney said false election fraud claims “poison our democratic system” in a thinly veiled attack on the Trumpian wing of the Republican party. Cheney, the third-most powerful Republican in the House, repeated her assertion that the 2020 election was not fraudulent as she faces being stripped of her position within the GOP. Cheney’s fellow party members are said to be furious that she will not indulge the Trump-pushed lie that the election was stolen.
- Joe Biden said it was time for corporations and the richest Americans to “start paying their fair share” as he pitched his $4tn infrastructure and welfare plans at an event in Virginia. Biden is on a nationwide tour to make the case for increasing taxes on the wealthiest in the US to fund his $1.8tn American families plan and $2tn infrastructure plan. “I think it’s about time we started giving tax breaks and tax benefits to working-class families and middle-class families, instead of just the very wealthy,” Biden said.
- The funeral of Andrew Brown Jr, a Black man shot and killed by deputies in North Carolina, took place on Monday afternoon. Speaking at the memorial service, civil rights activist Al Sharpton called on police to release of body camera footage from the incident – authorities have said they will only do so in a month’s time – and said: “Let the world see what there is to see. If you’ve got nothing to hide, then what are you hiding?”
- The Biden administration will raise the number of refugees allowed into the US to 62,500 for this fiscal year. The announcement was a stark turnaround for the US president, who sparked outrage after announcing in April the administration would keep the number of refugees admitted to the US at the historical low of 15,000.
– Adam Gabbatt and Maanvi Singh
Updated
‘Decades ahead of his time’: history catches up with visionary Jimmy Carter
A new film rejects the popular narrative and recasts the former president, 96, as hugely prescient thinker, particularly on climate change.
When I reach Jimmy Carter’s grandson by Zoom, he answers wearing a Raphael Warnock campaign T-shirt. Jason Carter is a lawyer and politician himself, mid-40s, animated and well-read, with blue eyes reminiscent of his grandfather’s. He’s just got off the phone with his 93-year-old grandmother, Rosalynn. It’s a special day; Joe Biden is on his way to the Carter house in Plains, Georgia.
“My grandfather has met nearly everyone in the world he might want to,” Jason Carter says. “Right now, he’s meeting with the president of the United States. But the person he’d say he learned the most from was Rachel Clark, an illiterate sharecropper who lived on his family’s farm.
“He didn’t pity her,” Carter says. “He saw her power. My grandfather believes in the power of a single human and a small community. Protect people’s freedoms, he says, and they can do great things. It all comes back to an enormous respect for human beings.”
Carter is openly moved speaking about his grandfather, though it’s also clear he does so often. A spate of recent biographies and documentaries shows not just a renewed interest in the former president, but a willingness to update the public narrative surrounding his time in office. Recent biographer Jonathan Alter calls Carter “perhaps the most misunderstood president in American history”.
Carter, who lost his bid for re-election in a so-called landslide to Reagan in 1980, is often painted as a “failed president” – a hapless peanut farmer who did not understand how to get things done in Washington, and whose administration was marked by inflation, an energy crisis and the Iran hostage disaster.
Subsequent presidents, especially fellow southern Democrat Bill Clinton, kept a distance – assumably not wanting to be seen as part of a political narrative that emphasized piety over getting things done. Even Obama was apparently wary of being associated with the sort of soft-hearted ineffectuality ascribed to Carter.
But was Carter actually so ineffectual?
In his 2020 biography of Carter, Alter speaks to a more nuanced interpretation of Carter, calling him “a surprisingly consequential president – a political and stylistic failure, but a substantive and far-sighted success”. It is, perhaps, the far-sighted nature of Carter’s ambitions, particularly around energy, that allows us to appreciate him more four decades after his term concluded.
Read more:
CVS and Walgreens wasted 128,500 Covid vaccine doses, report finds
US pharmacy chains CVS and Walgreens are responsible for the vast majority of wasted vaccine doses, which total more than 180,000 reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), according to a story from Kaiser Health News.
As of late March, the CDC recorded 182,874 tossed doses. CVS and Walgreens combined wasted 128,500 doses – CVS wasted about half and Walgreens 21%.
CVS and Walgreens, which have outlets across the US, were tasked by the federal government to help distribute vaccines to residents and staff of long-term care facilities in the weeks after the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were approved for emergency use by the FDA.
CVS told Kaiser Health News that “nearly all” of its reported wasted vaccines came from that time. Both companies were initially criticized for the slow administration of the vaccines at these facilities.
Reasons for wasted doses included broken supplies, storage errors, and leftover doses that expired. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines both have a limited shelf life: a vial of Pfizer’s vaccine, which contains multiple doses, must be used within six hours, while Moderna’s must be used in 11 hours.
This means no-show appointments can affect distribution. Both vaccines also require extremely cold storage, and many of the wasted doses were due to freezer malfunctions or doses being left at room temperature for too long.
In statements to Kaiser Health News, the companies said the number of wasted doses accounted for a small percentage of the total amount of doses that they administered.
Read more:
An appeals court is considering the constitutionality of an Idaho law that bans transgender athletes from playing in girls’ and women’s sports teams in public schools, colleges, and universities.
Idaho was the first to enact such a law last year – but more than 20 other states are considering similar proposals. Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee and West Virginia have enacted such bans. In Kansas today, Republican lawmakers failed to override Democratic governor Laura Kelly’s veto of a ban on transgender athletes in girl’s school sports.
The ACLU and Legal Voice, a women’s rights group, sued to block the Idaho law on grounds that it violates the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.
Updated
The Biden administration’s announcement upping the refugee cap addresses only one of several major criticisms the president has faced on immigration policies.
Advocates have also been calling on the president to lift Title 42 restrictions that Donald Trump enacted amid the pandemic. Title 42 is a section of the Public Health Safety Act which allows the US to block noncitizens from entering the country “when doing so is required in the interest of public health.” Since Trump implemented the measure in March last year, it has allowed officials to expel more than 618,000 migrants at the southern border. The policy was enforced despite assertions from scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that there was no public health benefit to blocking migrants.
Biden has yet to overturn the policy, which human rights advocates say blocks migrants from asserting their right to seek asylum in the US.
Read more on the dire impacts of Title 42:
Deported by Biden: a Vietnamese refugee separated from his family after decades in US
The passengers on Tien Pham’s 15 March flight were scared and anxious. Some were distraught or in denial. Many seemed lost.
In the months leading up to his deportation, Pham, a 38-year-old California resident, had held out hope that he’d be able to stay in the country his family had called home since he was 13. But when he saw the 30 other Vietnamese Americans who would be flying with him from Texas to Vietnam that day, he knew it was over.
“I tried to accept it. I told myself to just look forward, don’t look back,” Pham recalled three weeks later from his cousin’s apartment in Ho Chi Minh City.
Pham is one of thousands of people who have been deported by Joe Biden’s administration.
Biden has pledged to undo Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda and deportation machine, and has issued some initial executive orders reining in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice). But in his first 100 days, he also maintained a controversial Trump-era rule to immediately expel the majority of people apprehended at the border and indicated he’d keep a historically low cap on refugees, before moving to lift it after public outcry. His deportation policies, focusing on people considered a “threat” to society, have continued to sweep up refugees with old criminal records like Pham, even after their home states have ruled that they posed no danger to public safety.
Read more:
The Food and Drug Administration could authorize the use of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine in children aged 12-15, the New York Times reports.
The authorization could come as early as late this week, according to the federal officials, who did not give their names because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. If it is granted, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory panel will likely meet the following day to review the clinical trial data and make recommendations for the vaccine’s use in adolescents.
The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine will also likely be available to 12- to 15-year-olds in Europe starting in June, the chief executive of BioNTech said. As the Guardian reported earlier, a US trial found the Pfizer jab prevented Covid-19 and was “well-tolerated” in 12- to 15-year-olds.
Updated
But Biden said he did not expect that the actual number of refugees admitted to the country would reach 62,500 this fiscal year, which ends in October.
“We are working quickly to undo the damage of the last four years... We have reopened the program to new refugees. And by changing the regional allocations last month, we have already increased the number of refugees ready for departure to the United States,” he said in his statement.
Next fiscal year, Biden said he will commit to further increase the cap to 125,000. “We are going to use every tool available to help these fully vetted refugees fleeing horrific conditions in their home countries,” he said.
In mid-April, Biden reneged on campaign promises when he announced he would keep the refugee cap at 15,000. He reportedly was reluctant to increase the cap amid news reports of a surge of migrants at the southern border.
The Washington Post had reported:
The president was particularly frustrated by the government’s struggle to deal with unaccompanied minors at the border and became increasingly concerned about the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s response to the crisis, the people said. The unit, housed at the Department of Health and Human Services, has responsibility for both unaccompanied minors at the border and the separate group of foreigners seeking refugee status due to persecution, war or oppression at home.
But allies, including Democratic politicians, and refugee advocates were appalled at the president’s decision, which reportedly went against the advice of top aides.
Updated
Biden increases refugee cap to 62,500
The administration will raise the number of refugees allowed into the US to 62,500 for this fiscal year.
“This erases the historically low number set by the previous administration of 15,000, which did not reflect America’s values as a nation that welcomes and supports refugees,” Biden said in a lengthy statement. “It is important to take this action today to remove any lingering doubt in the minds of refugees around the world who have suffered so much.”
The announcement stark turnaround for the US president, who sparked outrage after announcing in April the administration would keep the number of refugees admitted to the US at the historical low of 15,000. That announcement was also a reversal of the administration’s earlier decision – in February - to set the cap at 62,500. The news today, therefore, is a reversal of a reversal.
Updated
Today so far
- Liz Cheney said false election fraud claims “poison our democratic system” in a thinly veiled attack on the Trumpian wing of the Republican party. Cheney, the third-most powerful Republican in the House, repeated her assertion that the 2020 election was not fraudulent as she faces being stripped of her position within the GOP. Cheney’s fellow party members are said to be furious that she will not indulge the Trump-pushed lie that the election was stolen.
- Joe Biden said it was time for corporations and the richest Americans to “start paying their fair share” as he pitched his $4tn infrastructure and welfare plans at an event in Virginia. Biden is on a nationwide tour to make the case for increasing taxes on the wealthiest in the US to fund his $1.8tn American families plan and $2tn infrastructure plan. “I think it’s about time we started giving tax breaks and tax benefits to working class families and middle class families, instead of just the very wealthy,” Biden said.
- The funeral of Andrew Brown Jr, a Black man shot and killed by deputies in North Carolina, took place on Monday afternoon. Speaking at the memorial service, civil rights activist Al Sharpton called on police to release of body camera footage from the incident – authorities have said they will only do so in a month’s time – and said: “Let the world see what there is to see. If you’ve got nothing to hide, then what are you hiding?”
Updated
Richard Durbin, the Democratic chair of the Senate judiciary committee, has written to the head of the FBI demanding answers over why the agency failed to anticipate the January 6 Capitol insurrection, according to the Washington Post.
“Despite clear evidence that these violent extremists coordinated in advance, the FBI does not appear to have warned of potential violence targeting the January 6 Joint Session of Congress until Jan 5, 2021 – and even then, the FBI’s warning was limited to a Situational Information Report that you have characterized as ‘raw, unverified’ intelligence,” Durbin wrote to Christopher Wray, the director of the FBI.
Last week Reuters reported that the FBI had at least four sources within the extremist Proud Boys organization, whose members are suspected of having helped to plan the January riot.
Updated
The Rev Al Sharpton, speaking at the funeral for Andrew Brown Jr, a Black man shot and killed by deputies in North Carolina, has called on police to release of body camera footage from the incident.
“I know a con game when I see it. Release the whole tape and let the folks see what happened to Andrew Brown,” Sharpton told mourners in a scorching eulogy at the invitation-only service at a church in Elizabeth City.
“You don’t need time to get a tape out. Put it out! Let the world see what there is to see. If you’ve got nothing to hide, then what are you hiding?” he said, to loud applause.
A judge ruled last week that the video would not be released for another month pending a state investigation into the April 21 shooting of Brown, 42, by deputies attempting to serve drug-related search and arrest warrants.
An independent autopsy commissioned by his family said Brown was shot five times, including once in the back of the head. The shooting sparked days of protests in the city in rural northeastern North Carolina.
Other speakers included Brown’s sons as well as civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is representing Brown’s family. Calling Brown’s death an “unjustifiable, reckless shooting,” Crump told mourners the legal team would continue fighting for justice and transparency.
“We are here to make this plea for justice because Andrew was killed unjustifiably, as many Black men in America have been killed: shot in the back. Shot, going away from the police. And because Andrew cannot make the plea for justice, it is up to us to make the plea for justice,” Crump said.
A long line of mourners filed into the church for the funeral, many wearing white T-shirts with Brown’s image and the words, “Say his name.” In the lobby, a wreath of red and white flowers with a ribbon bearing the message, “Rest in Peace Drew,” referring to Brown’s nickname, stood next to a tapestry with images of him. As the service started, an ensemble sang songs of praise including, “You’re the Lifter,” while some mourners stood and clapped.
– from the Associated Press
Updated
Here’s video from Joe Biden’s speech earlier, when he said the wealthiest Americans must “start paying their fair share” as he pitched his $4tn infrastructure and welfare packages.
“I think it’s about time we started giving tax breaks and tax benefits to working class families and middle class families, instead of just the very wealthy,” Biden said.
Liz Cheney says false election fraud claims 'poison our democratic system'
Liz Cheney, the Wyoming Republican who voted to impeach Donald Trump, is coming under fire from members of her own party, in a spat that illustrates the split between Republicans loyal to Trump and those willing to criticize the former president.
Cheney, the third most senior membership of the GOP’s House leadership, has been heavily criticized by fellow Republicans in recent months for pushing back on Trump’s nonsense claims that the election was stolen, and for her impeachment vote.
Trump-ist representatives in Congress have been pushing for Cheney, the House Republican conference chair, to be removed from that powerful position, which could be achieved if House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy called for a vote on Cheney’s future.
The tension between the most-extreme and less-extreme members of the Republican party has increased in recent days, after Cheney – a member of the latter group – said those who supported the Trump-backed challenges to the certification of the 2020 election should be disqualified from becoming the 2024 Republican nominee.
Cheney risked further upsetting her fellow party members on Monday. In a sign of the state of the Republican party, she did so by stating that Trump did not lose the election due to a vast conspiracy or widespread voter fraud.
“The 2020 presidential election was not stolen,” Cheney tweeted. “Anyone who claims it was is spreading THE BIG LIE, turning their back on the rule of law, and poisoning our democratic system.”
The 2020 presidential election was not stolen. Anyone who claims it was is spreading THE BIG LIE, turning their back on the rule of law, and poisoning our democratic system.
— Liz Cheney (@Liz_Cheney) May 3, 2021
Cheney’s latest refusal to lie is unlikely to go down well. Politico reported on Monday morning that there is “a coordinated effort by Kevin McCarthy to box [Cheney] out”.
Updated
Rudy Giuliani, the eccentric some-time lawyer to Donald Trump, has told Fox News the FBI is “trying to frame” him after it emerged authorities are examining whether he illegally lobbied the Trump administration.
In an interview Giuliani, who is not known as a reliable narrator, told the right-wing news channel that the execution of a search warrant at his private apartment in New York, was “out of control”.
Federal authorities have been examining whether Giuliani illegally lobbied the Trump administration in 2019 on behalf of Ukrainian officials and oligarchs, who at the same time were helping him search for dirt on Trump’s political rivals.
The Foreign Agents Registration Act (Fara) makes it a federal crime to try to influence or lobby the US government at the request of a foreign official without informing the justice department.
Investigators seized some of Giuliani’s electronic devices from the Upper East Side residence, and from his law office on Park Avenue, early on Wednesday, the New York Times reported.
Giuliani claimed the investigation was driven by “hatred of [former] President Trump”.
Biden claimed there is “overwhelming bipartisan support” for his spending plans this afternoon, a claim which might come as a surprise to anyone who has heard Republicans discuss the president’s proposals, but which has some evidence.
Biden made the claim in his speech in Virginia, hours after Mitch McConnell poured cold water over the idea of his colleagues backing Biden’s plans.
President Biden claims there is "overwhelming bipartisan support" for his huge social spending plan.
— Sebastian Smith (@SebastianAFP) May 3, 2021
"Now I just have to get some of my Republican colleagues to support it," he says.
“I think it’s worth talking about but I don’t think there will be any Republican support — none, zero — for the $4.1 trillion grab bag which has infrastructure in it but a whole lot of other stuff,” McConnell said in a press conference in Kentucky, according to the Hill.
But despite McConnell’s distaste for the plan, FiveThirtyEight reports that there is general support among Americans for both the $2tn American Jobs Plan and the $1.8tn American Families Plan.
The American Jobs Plan, a $2 trillion bill to improve infrastructure, is [...] popular, but recent polls disagree on how much. According to Fox News, which was in the field April 18-21, the plan is fairly divisive: Although a plurality (49 percent) of respondents support it, almost as many (41 percent) oppose it.
However, it received higher support in other polls, such as CBS News/YouGov on April 21-24 (58 percent support, 42 percent opposition) and ABC News/Washington Post (52 percent support, 35 percent opposition). Monmouth University’s April 8-12 survey, which detailed that the proposal would spend money on “roads, bridges and trains, internet access, power grid improvements, and clean energy projects,” gave the proposal its gaudiest numbers. A full 68 percent of adults said they supported the plan, while only 29 percent opposed it.
Wednesday was the first time we learned details about the American Families Plan, which would put $1.8 trillion toward universal prekindergarten, federal paid leave, child-care subsidies, free community college and more. However, we have known it was coming for some time, so Monmouth was able to poll the popularity of “a large spending plan to expand access to healthcare and childcare, and provide paid leave and college tuition support.” That proposal also garnered widespread enthusiasm, with 64 percent support and 34 percent opposition.
Biden has finished speaking and will be heading back to Washington shortly. Today’s trip was the latest leg of the president’s “Getting America Back on Track Tour”, which will see Biden head to Louisiana next week.
Georgia, Ohio, Virginia and North Carolina are among the other destinations for either Biden personally or members of his entourage, as they bid to sell the public on his rebuild packages.
Here are some clips from Biden’s speech this afternoon.
Pres. Biden: "For too long we've had an economy that gives every break in the world to the folks who need it the least. It's time to grow the economy from the bottom up." https://t.co/preGJjCONe pic.twitter.com/c9myxlgDYx
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) May 3, 2021
https://twitter.com/CBSNews/status/1389273941445910535
"Do we want to give the wealthiest people in America another tax cut, or do you want to give every high school graduate the ability to earn a community college degree?," President Biden says during a presser promoting the American Families Plan pic.twitter.com/OGFMjRKT5v
— CBS News (@CBSNews) May 3, 2021
Biden makes case for increasing taxes on wealthy
Joe Biden said it is time for corporations and the richest Americans to “start paying their fair share” as he pitched his $4tn infrastructure and welfare plans at an event in Virginia.
Speaking at a community college in Norfolk, Biden made the case for increasing taxes on the wealthiest in the US to fund his $1.8tn American families plan and $2tn infrastructure plan. The packages would provide funds for childcare, invest in free universal pre-school and rebuild America’s transport and public housing.
“I think it’s about time we started giving tax breaks and tax benefits to working class families and middle class families, instead of just the very wealthy,” Biden said.
Discussing the profits wealthy corporations have made in the past year, Biden said he’s not “anti-corporate”, but “it’s about time they started paying their fair share”.
Biden said the American families plan, which would dedicate $1tn in spending on education and childcare over 10 years, and $800bn in tax credits aimed at middle- and low-income families would not increase taxes on most people.
“It is paid for by making sure corporate America and the wealthiest 1% of ... just pay their fair share,” he said. Biden said the plan would benefit 65m children, and “cut child poverty in half this year”.
The plan would also allocate $200 billion for free, universal preschool and $109 billion for free community college, regardless of income for two years, Reuters reported.
“Do we want to give the wealthiest people in America another tax cut, or do you want to give every high school graduate the ability to earn a community college degree?” Biden said.
Continuing the theme of taxing the rich, Biden said: “If you asked the top 1% to pay the same tax rate they paid in 2001 when George Bush was president, that would generate around $13bn a year.”
Updated
The Senate judiciary committee is pressing the FBI to explain how it failed to anticipate the January 6 attack on the US Capitol by Donald Trump-supporting extremists, despite having contact with several members of the far-right Proud Boys in prior months.
The Reuters news agency reports:
Committee chair, Illinois Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, wrote to Federal Bureau of Investigation director Christopher Wray today asking whether the agency had adequately pushed its sources in the extremist group, in order to understand their plans before the Capitol attack that sought to block the certification of Joe Biden’s election as president.
Durbin’ letter came after Reuters reported last week that the FBI had received information from at least four sources in the Proud Boys over the years since 2019. The Judiciary Committee has oversight of the FBI.
“Given the FBI’s apparent relationship with Proud Boys sources,” the Illinois senator asked Wray, “why did the FBI fail to detect the threat that the Proud Boys and other similar militia violent extremists posed to the Capitol on January 6?”
The FBI did not immediately respond to media questions today about the letter.
In court filings, prosecutors have described the Proud Boys as among the instigators of the fatal riot on January 6, in which extremists sought to keep Donald Trump in office despite his electoral defeat.
At least 18 Proud Boys have been arrested on charges ranging from conspiracy to assaulting police officers. At least six others associated with or accompanying the group have been charged.
As Reuters reported last week, Proud Boys leader Joseph Biggs declined to discuss his plans for January 6 when the news agency interviewed him two days before the Capitol attack.
But he said he would have told an FBI agent he knew, if he’d been asked.
Citing that report, Durbin asked Wray: “Did the FBI ask its Proud Boys sources for their plans for January 6? If not, why not?”
Even before January 6, the Proud Boys had become a well-known right-wing group that calls itself “Western chauvinist” and often engages in street fighting and violence.
Updated
Summary
- Joe and Jill Biden are in Virginia to promote the president’s $4tn infrastructure and welfare plans. Biden is due to speak at 1.30pm. He has said he hopes to work with Republicans to pass the legislation, but that seems unlikely.
- The Virginia trip comes after the Biden administration said it is beginning to re-unite families that were separated at the Mexico border during Donald Trump’s presidency. Four families, which include mothers separated from their children in 2017, will be reunited in the US this week.
- Mourners are gathering for the funeral of Andrew Brown Jr, a Black man shot and killed by deputies in North Carolina, with eulogists planning to celebrate his legacy and reflect on his life. Members of the families of George Floyd and Eric Garner, two Black men also killed by police officers.
Mourners are gathering for the funeral of Andrew Brown Jr, a Black man shot and killed by deputies in North Carolina, with eulogists planning to celebrate his legacy and reflect on his life.
The invitation-only service at noon in a church in Elizabeth City follows public viewings that drew scores of people the previous day. The Rev Al Sharpton is to deliver the eulogy, and other speakers include Brown’s relatives as well as civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is representing Brown’s family, and the Rev. William Barber II, leader of the Poor People’s campaign.
Ahead of Monday’s service, funeral home workers brought floral arrangements into the church. In the lobby, a wreath of red and white flowers with a ribbon bearing the message, “Rest in Peace Drew,” referring to Brown’s nickname, stood next to a tapestry with images of him.
Brown, 42, was shot and killed on April 21 by deputies attempting to serve drug-related search and arrest warrants, sparking days of protests in the city in rural northeastern North Carolina. An independent autopsy commissioned by his family said that he was shot five times, including once in the back of the head.
Brown’s family asked Sharpton to deliver the eulogy because they felt the civil rights leader would properly honor his legacy. Sharpton recently delivered the eulogy for Daunte Wright, who was shot and killed by a police officer in Minnesota.
Sharpton told The Associated Press that he wants to both celebrate Brown’s life and help call attention to larger problems with policing that need to be addressed.
“I would want to get across that this is a human being. And for us, it’s part of a continual abuse of police power,” he said.
From Associated Press.
Joe and Jill Biden have arrived in Virginia for their ongoing sales tour.
“Teachers are an extraordinary force for good in our nation,” Biden said in a tweet this morning.
“I’m lucky enough to be married to one and have seen firsthand how hard they work for their students. This year teachers have gone above and beyond to help children learn through the pandemic. So please, thank a teacher.”
Beyond that, the president hasn’t yet said anything of note. Biden is due to speak at 1.30pm, and in the meantime here are some photos.
Biden hops out of motorcade in Yorktown to greet supporters gathered outside the local high school pic.twitter.com/flO9U9BdCq
— Justin Sink (@justinsink) May 3, 2021
Introducing themselves to the class, First Lady Jill Biden and President Joe Biden asked students questions about their projects, what they want to be when they grow up and how this year has been. pic.twitter.com/yLWtZooqea
— Em Holter (@EmHolterNews) May 3, 2021
In a new memoir Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts senator and 2020 presidential candidate, has reflected on her 2020 run for president, and pondered the impact sexism may have played in her losing campaign.
Warren dropped out of the Democratic presidential primary in March 2020, having failed to make an impact despite having been briefly the frontrunner.
CNN writes that in Warren’s memoir – titled ‘Persist’ – the senator questions whether she “wasn’t good enough” for American voters to win the primary, as she reflects on gender and her loss.
“I didn’t want to run for president to make a point,” Warren writes in Persist, according to CNN.
“I wasn’t carefully measuring how hard to hit a glass ceiling. I didn’t need to be heralded as the First Something. I just wanted a chance to fight for the things I cared about – economic opportunity, racial justice, halting climate change, combating Washington corruption, improving our education system. I had been talking about these issues for a long time.”
Warren continues: “But there’s always another possibility, a much more painful one: in this moment, against this president, in this field of candidates, maybe I just wasn’t good enough to reassure the voters, to bring along the doubters, to embolden the hopeful.”
Throughout her memoir – the third book Warren has written as a politician – she reflects on the role her gender played in her presidential campaign.
While she never directly blames sexism for losing the nomination, it’s a theme that comes up again and again in anecdotes of her life that are intertwined with decisions she’s made or views she has on issues.
In one, she recounts thinking as she lay in bed after her first day fundraising for her presidential bid, “I wondered whether anyone said to Bernie Sanders when he asked for their support, ‘Gore lost, so how can you win?’ I wondered whether anyone said to Joe Biden, ‘Kerry lost, so clearly America just isn’t ready for a man to be president.’”
She added: “I tried to laugh, but the joke didn’t seem very funny.”
Washington DC has a population of 700,000 – more than the states of Wyoming and Vermont – but does not have any representation in Congress.
Residents, and non-residents, have campaigned for years for DC to be bequeathed the two Senators assigned to US states, and in April the House passed a statehood bill with a record number of co-sponsors. Joe Biden has offered a full-throated endorsement of the proposal, but Republicans are dead against it.
“The issue of race is front and center,” my colleague Joan Greve writes today: “Given that DC’s citizens are predominantly people of color and their full rights as Americans are being curtailed mostly by Republicans in the Senate, who skew heavily white.”
Previously dismissed by its critics as a regional issue, DC statehood has gained national prominence in recent years, and that increased attention has now translated into legislative action. Late last month, the House passed a DC statehood bill with a record number of co-sponsors, and Joe Biden has offered a full-throated endorsement of the proposal.
This momentum has given activists hope that now – with Democrats controlling the White House and both chambers of Congress – DC statehood may finally become a reality. However, numerous challenges remain in the evenly divided Senate, and Republicans are determined to keep just 50 stars on the American flag.
For statehood advocates, this moment feels like an opportunity to correct a 200-year-old injustice. The District’s population of 700,000 is more than that of Wyoming and Vermont, and DC residents pay more in federal taxes than their counterparts in 22 states, yet they do not have congressional representation. Perhaps even more infuriating for statehood supporters is the fact that DC laws are subject to congressional review, meaning lawmakers from around the country have an effective veto on local proposals.
Here’s a statement from the desk of Donald Trump this morning. *Shrugs shoulders*:
The news that the Biden administration has reunited four immigrant families separated under Donald Trump will bring hope to thousands of people seeking asylum in the US – even if Biden’s border policy comes with a pretty big caveat.
The reunited families include mothers who were separated from their children in late 2017, one Honduran and another Mexican, Alejandro Mayorkas, the Homeland security secretary said. Mayorkas described them as children who were 3 years old at the time and “teenagers who have had to live without their parent during their most formative years”.
Parents will return to the United States on humanitarian parole while authorities consider other longer-term forms of legal status, Michelle Brane, executive director of the administration’s Family Reunification Task Force, said, according to Associated Press. The children are already in the US.
More than 5,400 children were separated from their parents during the Trump administration going back to July 1, 2017, according to the ACLU. As of October last year, lawyers were still struggling to find the parents of 545 children separated from them under Trump’s “zero-tolerance” immigration policy. The Biden administration believes more than 1,000 families remain separated.
While Biden has criticized Trump’s immigration policies – most recently in his address to Congress on Wednesday – Vox reported that the president “has kept in place a Trump-era policy” that enabled the US to turn away the vast majority of immigrants arriving at the southern border, “on the grounds that they could spread Covid-19, even though they may have legitimate claims for humanitarian protection”.
More than 100 days into his first term, Biden so far has not overturned the Title 42 section of the Public Health Safety Act, Vox reported, which enables the US to block non-citizens from entering the country on public health grounds.
The policy has allowed US immigration officials at the southern border to rapidly expel more than 618,000 migrants. Though Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) scientists initially opposed the policy, arguing that there was no legitimate public health rationale behind it, then-Vice President Mike Pence ordered them to follow through with it anyway.
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Biden is on his way to south-eastern Virginia this morning to promote those infrastructure and welfare plans, as the president aims to win at least a bit of Republican support for his trillion dollar bills.
Biden announced his $1.8tn American Families Plan last week. It would include $1tn in spending on education and childcare over 10 years, and $800bn in tax credits aimed at middle- and low-income families. It would also allocate $200 billion for free, universal preschool and $109 billion for free community college, regardless of income for two years, Reuters reported.
If the president has his way, the American Families Plan would be joined by a $2tn infrastructure plan, which would see huge investment in transport, housing and commercial buildings, green jobs and social care.
Biden and his wife, Jill Biden, are pitching up at an elementary school in Yorktown this morning, and the pair are due to deliver remarks at Tidewater Community College in Norfolk, Virginia, this afternoon.
The president has said he wants to work with Republicans to pass the legislation, but there seems scant chance of that. Biden’s biggest achievement so far was the passage of a $1.9tn Covid relief package, but not a single Republican in Congress voted for it.
Democrats hold narrow majorities in the House and the Senate, which means they could push through legislation without Republican approval – if no Democrats waver.
The party of the president traditionally struggles in the mid-term elections – the next ones are in November 2022 – so the clock is ticking for Democrats to get their bills passed.
Biden to tout $4tn infrastructure and welfare plan
Good morning and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of today’s political news.
•Joe Biden is continuing the sales tour for his trillion dollar social welfare and infrastructure spending plans today. The president is traveling to Virginia to speak at a community college, as he bids to win support – from politicians and the public – for nearly $4tn of investment.
•The Biden administration is beginning to re-unite families that were separated at the Mexico border during Donald Trump’s presidency. Four families, which include mothers separated from their children in 2017, will be reunited in the US this week, Associated Press reported, in what Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said was “just the beginning” of a broader effort.
•Facebook is set to announce whether it will let Trump return to the platform, the social media giant said. Facebook will reveal its decision on Wednesday. Trump was banned from Facebook, Twitter and YouTube following the Capitol riots in January. Twitter has said Trump will not be allowed to return.
•The funeral for Andrew Brown Jr will take place in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, today. Brown, a Black man, was shot dead by police on April 21, one day after Derek Chauvin was convicted of killing George Floyd. Brown’s death has prompted protests in North Carolina over the past two weeks. Members of the families of George Floyd and Eric Garner will attend, CNN reported.
