Summary
Here’s a review of today’s news, from me and Amanda Holpuch:
- Joe Biden signed an executive order reopening federal health insurance marketplaces, to help those who have lost employer-provided healthcare due to the economic crisis. He also signed another directing federal agencies to reconsider rules and other policies which limit access to healthcare and consider actions to improve access.
- Addressing abortion access, Biden signed an order ending the “global gag rule” that bans foreign non-government groups that receive US funding from providing abortions or information about abortion and a memorandum instructing the Department of Health and Human Services to reconsider a Trump-era rule that stopped clinics that received federal family planning funding from providing abortion referrals.
- South Carolina officials said two cases of the coronavirus variant first identified in South Africa had been detected in the state – the first time the variant has been found in the US. The news came as Novavax found preliminary evidence that its vaccine candidate was less effective against that variant than others. Pfizer and Moderna also said their vaccines were slightly less effective against the variant.
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The Senate voted to advance Joe Biden’s nomination as secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas. A final vote on his nomination is scheduled for Monday night.
- Survivors of the 2018 mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, asked congressional Republicans to publicly censure Marjorie Taylor Greene for suggesting the school shooting was a “false flag” and for harassing a teenage survivor on Capitol Hill in 2019. House Republicans this week announced that Greene, a newly elected Georgia congresswoman, had been appointed to the House education and labor committee.
Updated
Hours of scrolling, endless refreshing: US tech woes make scheduling vaccine a nightmare
Earlier this month, the New York-based photographer Hee Jin Kang woke up at 3am and went online to register her elderly parents for the coronavirus vaccine.
She created accounts on five different websites, including portals for state-run vaccination programs as well as hospitals, pharmacies and primary care locations. After hours of clicking through and refreshing various landing pages, she secured time slots for both parents.
“It’s just crazy,” she said. “There is no centralized system. I just couldn’t stop thinking, if you are not tech literate this would just be impossible – they make you jump through so many hoops.”
People across the United States have likened signing up for a vaccine shot in recent weeks to refreshing a page for highly coveted concert tickets. In Michigan, a website for vaccine sign-ups crashed almost immediately after the state expanded vaccine access to people 65 and older. The site, which processes 900 appointments on a typical day, saw more than 25,000 people trying to register. In Texas one website saw 9,000 appointments fill in less than six minutes. Users in Minnesota reported similar issues. Some health departments in Florida are using the ticketing site Eventbrite, leading to concerns about ticket scalpers buying up slots and reselling them.
The Trump administration promised in November that 20m Covid-19 vaccines could be distributed by 2021. As of this week just 18.5 million people have received at least one dose of the vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and about 3.2 million people have been fully vaccinated.
New vaccine doses can only be produced so quickly, but supply is just part of the problem. For Americans whose vaccines are not being arranged through their workplace, scheduling can be a major setback.
Most states have no centralized system to register for appointments and those that do exist are rife with glitches. Both these hurdles have made it difficult for those who aren’t tech savvy and people who don’t have time to refresh an online sign-up all day to get a potentially life-saving vaccine slot.
In fact, online sign-ups raise a number of ethics concerns, public health experts say. Most states in the US are in the second stage of vaccines, meaning people aged 65 and older are allowed to be vaccinated. That poses issues for elderly patients and others with little tech literacy, said Susan Lee, a primary care internist in New York. “The only elderly patients who have been able to get appointments – my parents included – are those who have someone able to advocate for them,” Lee said. “It is heartbreaking.”
Read more:
Here’s an update on the former president, from the AP:
Donald Trump has been living at his Mar-a-Lago club since leaving office more than a week ago — a possible violation of a 1993 agreement he made with the Town of Palm Beach that limits stays to seven consecutive days.
Town Manager Kirk Blouin said in an email Thursday that Palm Beach is examining its options and the matter might be discussed at the town council’s February meeting.
The South Florida town last month received a letter from an attorney representing a Mar-a-Lago neighbor demanding it enforce the agreement’s residency clause — something it rarely if ever did when Trump was president or before. The unnamed neighbor believes Trump’s residency would decrease property values, according to Reginald Stambaugh’s letter. Stambaugh did not return a call or email Thursday asking whether he has received a response.
Sarah Sanders, the former White House press secretary in the Trump administration, has raised $1m since announcing she was running to be Arkansas governor this week.
Sanders has joined two other Republicans – the lieutenant governor, Tim Griffin, and the attorney general, Leslie Rutledge – in the 2022 race for governor. No Democrat has yet announced their candidacy.
More from the AP:
Sanders announced on Monday she was running for Arkansas governor with a nearly eight-minute video that embraced former President Donald Trump, even as the Senate prepares for an impeachment trial on charges he incited the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
The fundraising haul shows how much more expensive the 2022 GOP race for Arkansas governor will become with Sanders in it. Griffin has raised $1.8m since March for the race while Rutledge has raised $1m since July.
Arkansas is a solidly red state, with Republicans holding all of its statewide and federal offices. Sanders, the daughter of former governor Mike Huckabee, left the White House in 2019 to return to her home state. Trump, who publicly encouraged her to run for Arkansas governor, endorsed her candidacy on Monday night.
Updated
Bounchan Keola, a California firefighter who was taken into US immigration custody last year, has been released.
NEWS: Bounchan Keola, the incarcerated firefighter who California sent to ICE for deportation, is free after 22 years.
— Sam Levin (@SamTLevin) January 28, 2021
He was released from ICE custody yesterday and is now reuniting with his family for the first time in decades: pic.twitter.com/6f2uImw8gR
Keola, 39, was working as an incarcerated firefighter in October when he suffered a near-death injury on the frontlines of a major blaze. He had just two weeks left in his prison term when he was crushed by a tree while battling a northern California fire. Days later, California prison officials notified federal immigration agents that his release would be coming up, and the state made arrangements to directly transfer him to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), the Guardian reported in November.
His case sparked national outrage, with critics calling for California to end its practice of handing over state prisoners to Ice. Keola, who was threatened with deportation to Laos, a country his family fled when he was four, was released from Ice custody on Wednesday, walking free for the first time in 22 years.
In a statement upon his release, Keola called on California’s governor to end the policy of coordinating transfers to Ice and urged him to pardon Kao Saelee, another refugee from Laoswho was taken into immigration detention after he served as an imprisoned firefighter.
More from our original coverage here:
Republicans considering more than 100 bills to restrict voting rights
After an election filled with misinformation and lies about fraud, Republicans have doubled down with a surge of bills to further restrict voting access in recent months, according to a new analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice.
There are currently 106 pending bills across 28 states that would restrict access to voting, according to the data. That’s a sharp increase from nearly a year ago, when there were 35 restrictive bills pending across 15 states.
Among the Brennan Center’s findings:
- More than a third of the bills would place new restrictions on voting by mail
- Pennsylvania has 14 pending proposals for new voter restrictions, the most in the country. It’s followed by New Hampshire (11), Missouri (9), and Mississippi, New Jersey and Texas (8)
- There are seven bills across four states that would limit opportunities for election day registration
- There are also 406 bills that would expand voting access pending across 35 states, including in New York (56), Texas (53), New Jersey (37), Mississippi (39) and Missouri (21)
The restrictions come on the heels of an election in which there was record turnout and Democrat and Republican election officials alike said there was no evidence of widespread wrongdoing or fraud. There were recounts, audits and lawsuits across many states to back up those assurances. Federal and state officials called the election “the most secure in American history”.
Read more:
And do sign up here to receive the weekly email newsletter from the Guardian’s Fight to Vote newsletter.
Los Angeles is vaccinating healthcare workers, first responders and residents older than 65. But as the region battles one of the worst coronavirus outbreaks in the US, people are chasing vaccine doses ahead of their allotted tier, queueing for hours, and visiting sites after the official time ends.
Information about where to show up for extra doses and when is typically passed word of mouth.
Officially, there is no waiting or end-of-the day policy, county officials say. But given the dire health emergency, they also don’t want doses to go to waste. The gap between these two creates a space for “vaccine vultures” to swoop down.
It’s hard to put a number on how many people are scoring vaccine doses ahead of schedule, but it could be a few dozen each day at each of the six mega sites scattered around the 500 square miles of Los Angeles county.
That there are vaccines left over at all is due to several factors. About 10% of people with appointments do not show up for their shot, according to press reports. Vials containing the Moderna vaccine have to be used within six hours after opening before they have to be thrown out. And while vials are supposed to contain five doses, injectors can often coax six doses out of them.
In a mid-January statement, Los Angeles county said its department of public health “does not condone wasting of any precious vaccine doses and has not and is not directing providers to throw away unused doses”. The statement added that the county was moving to set up vaccine clinics on quick turnaround whenever it learned of potential vaccine expirations. (The county public health department did not respond to requests for comment for this story.)
Dr Monya De, an LA-area physician who volunteered at the Inglewood Forum, which is one of six mega sites for vaccine dispersal in LA county, said some family members accompanying seniors to get their shot asked if there were any available for them as well. “Our instructions are to vaccinate only the person who was registered,” she said. “It’s a volume issue: we have a large volume of people in LA who need to get vaccinated.”
But De said she did wonder about resource allocation and if the current approach is the best way to get the most needles in the most arms. “I could see potentially the instruction being changed to: yes, if you have an extra vaccine you can inject people who are coming along in the same family.”
At the end of her recent shift, De and the other injectors circled the Forum to get an accurate count of how much vaccine was left. They then got the go-ahead from the site administration to summon people who could quickly drive over for the extra doses. “We heard at least one person saying, ‘I think we’re going to throw some of this away,’” she recalled. “That was really concerning.”
Read more:
Updated
Novavax says its Covid-19 vaccine is 89% effective
Novavax Inc said its vaccine is 89% effective in early findings from an ongoing study of 15,000 people in the UK. But the vaccine appears to be less effective against the P1 variant first detected in South Africa. In a small South Africa trial with 4,400 people, it was only about 49% effective.
Novavax’s vaccine was among six supported by the US’ Operation Warp Speed.
The research is still at an early state. Of 15,000 participants in Britain, only 62 have had Covid-19. Six of those people had received the vaccine. The South Africa trial is too small to draw useful estimates of precisely how much protection the vaccine provides, the company said – but the early findings there have prompted Novavax to begin studying a new vaccine that’s more tailored toward the P1 Variant.
Earlier Thursday, the US reported its first cases of the P1 variant, in South Carolina. Moderna and Pfizer also said their vaccines are slightly less effective against the variant.
Updated
The American Medical Association has praised the Biden administration for beginning the process of reconsidering a Trump administration that overhauled the Title X federal family planning program.
Biden signed a memo directing the Department of Health and Human services to review the Trump administration’s rule, saying there were legal obstacles to fully rescinding the previous administration’s rule. The Title X overhaul by the Trump administration redirected tens of millions in funds from Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers to anti-abortion and religious groups.
“The American Medical Association (AMA) strongly applauds the Biden administration’s decision to consider reversing the Trump administration rule that imposed drastic changes on the Title X program,” said Susan R. Bailey, the AMA president. “Title X has an essential role in ensuring that all Americans – regardless of their location or economic situation – have access to quality, evidence-based reproductive health care.”
She said in a statement that rescinding the Trump-era rule “would also mean the government will no longer inappropriately interfere in the patient-physician relationship, and physicians will no longer be forced to violate the ethical standards of the medical profession.”
Per the rule, clinics that receive Title X funding are not to provide abortion referrals. The rule also lifted a requirement that clinics counsel on all reproductive options, including abortion – allowing anti-abortion organizations to become eligible for Title X funds.
Here’s more background on the impact of the rule:
The Senate banking committee is planning a hearing after trading platforms including Robinhood cut off or restricted small investors from buying more shares of GameStop.
“People on Wall Street only care about the rules when they’re the ones getting hurt. American workers have known for years the Wall Street system is broken – they’ve been paying the price,” said the committee chair, Sherrod Brown, in a statement. “It’s time for the SEC and Congress to make the economy work for everyone, not just Wall Street.”
Following Robinhood’s decision to curb its users, the progressive representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a member of the House financial services committee, said: “This is unacceptable. We now need to know more about Robinhood’s decision to block retail investors from purchasing stock while hedge funds are freely able to trade the stock as they see fit ... I’d support a hearing if necessary.”
Here’s more background:
Updated
Today so far
- Joe Biden signed two health-related executive orders in the Oval Office. He said the best way to describe the actions was “to undo the damage Trump has done”.
- The White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, confirmed the White House wants every American, including undocumented immigrants, to have access to the Covid-19 vaccine. She also confirmed that the immigration executive orders originally slated to be announced tomorrow, would be announced next week instead.
- The Senate voted today to advance Joe Biden’s nomination as secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas. A final vote on his nomination is scheduled for Monday night.
Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
Updated
In addition to rescinding the ‘global gag rule’ on Thursday, Joe Biden ordered funding restored to the UN population fund, UNFPA, which Trump stopped.
UNFPA said the US decision to restore funding will have an “enormous” impact on the agency’s work, particularly coming as the world continues to grapple with the coronavirus pandemic.
“The renewal of the strong partnership between UNFPA and the US government is a ray of hope for millions of people around the world who desperately need help,” said the agency’s executive director, Dr Natalia Kanem.
“Ending funding to UNFPA has become a political football, far removed from the tragic reality it leads to on the ground. Women’s bodies are not political bargaining chips, and their right to plan their pregnancies, give birth safely and live free from violence should be something we can all agree on.”
She said Covid-19 had hit particularly hard the vulnerable communities in which the UNFPA works. “US support will be instrumental in helping us build back better and fairer.”
It was a big day for the country’s first second gentleman, or as he is also known, the SGOTUS (yes).
Today, Kamala Harris’s husband, Douglas Emhoff, tweeted that the title “second gentleman” has been officially recognized by Merriam Webster’s dictionary and wrote: “I might be the first, but I won’t be the last.”
In another step for the future’s second gentleman, the White House on Thursday released Emhoff’s schedule. The White House does this almost every day for the president and vice president, and often the first lady, but today marked the first public schedule for second gentleman in US history.
One of his first orders of business on Thursday was teaching an entertainment law class at Georgetown University.
In the afternoon, he participated in his first solo event as second gentleman and visited a Washington DC nonprofit which supports healthy food distribution to people in need. Reporters asked Emhoff if food insecurity would be his issue.
“It’s got to be an issue for everybody,” Emhoff said. “So, I want to do what I can to amplify it. I think it’s something everyone needs to be concerned about.”
A West Virginia man armed with two handguns and 20 rounds of ammunition was arrested near the US Capitol on Wednesday, DC police said.
Police approached Dennis Westover, 71, when he was parked in the middle of an intersection near the Capitol and found and recovered the weapons. Westover was charged with having a handgun and unregistered ammunition
On Friday, 37-year-old Macias Santiago, of Texas, was arrested outside the White House last week for having a weapon and ammunition.
Yesterday, the homeland security department issued a national terrorism bulletin warning of the lingering potential for violence from people motivated by anti-government sentiment after Joe Biden’s election.
White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, said the Covid-19 vaccine should be made available to everyone, including undocumented immigrants.
Immigrant advocates have raised concerns over whether language about every “American” having access to vaccines included undocumented people, but Psaki confirmed the US intends to vaccinate every resident.
“We are focused on making sure we get the vaccine out broadly,” Psaki said.
She said it was important for everyone to have access to the vaccine for “moral” reasons, as well as public health reasons.
Democratic representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Republican senator Ted Cruz “almost had me murdered 3 weeks ago,” after the senator unexpectedly agreed with her position on financial regulation on Twitter.
Cruz had responded to an Ocasio-Cortez tweet about regulations and said “fully agree,” but the representative was quick to point out that there were some lingering issues between several Republicans, like Cruz, who contested the presidential election results and Democrats.
“I am happy to work with Republicans on this issue where there’s common ground, but you almost had me murdered 3 weeks ago so you can sit this one out,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. “Happy to work w/ almost any other GOP that aren’t trying to get me killed. In the meantime if you want to help, you can resign.”
Seven Democratic senators filed a formal complaint last week urging the Senate ethics committee to investigate Cruz, and senator Josh Hawley, because of their efforts to overturn the election results.
Ocasio-Cortez is one of several prominent figures to blame Cruz for his role in inciting the insurrection at the US Capitol earlier this month. At least one of the people charged in the attack had posted death threats against Ocasio-Cortez online.
“While you conveniently talk about ‘moving on,’ a second Capitol police officer lost their life yesterday in the still-raging aftermath of the attacks you had a role in,” she said. “This isn’t a joke. We need accountability, and that includes a new senator from Texas.”
You haven’t even apologized for the serious physical + mental harm you contributed to from Capitol Police & custodial workers to your own fellow members of Congress.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) January 28, 2021
In the meantime, you can get off my timeline & stop clout-chasing. Thanks.
Happy to work with other GOP on this.
The Senate voted today to advance Joe Biden’s nomination as secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas.
A final vote on his nomination is scheduled for Monday night. He is expected to be confirmed.
Republicans objected to efforts to quickly confirm Mayorkas, but Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer was ultimately able to use Senate procedure to end the Republican filibuster on the nomination.
Mayorkas would be the first immigrant and first Latino to hold the post.
Former DHS secretaries Janet Napolitano and Michael Chertoff told reporters they were concerned Republicans were holding up the confirmation over political differences.
Chertoff, who was appointed by George W Bush, said: “Let’s not let Ali Mayorkas’ nomination become a hostage to the fact that some people don’t like a policy.”
White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, is holding a briefing with reporters and said the health care executives order signed today build on Biden’s efforts to put “equity at center of response to Covid-19.”
She also highlighted the health department’s move on Wednesday to allow recently retired doctors and nurses to administer vaccines. “This is an effort to put more vaccinators in the field,” Psaki said.
Psaki was also asked about the White House’s position on a decision by Pakistan’s supreme court. The court on Thursday ordered the release of Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, the British-born Islamist militant who had been sentenced to death for the murder of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002.
Psaki said the US was “outraged by the Pakistani supreme court’s decision” and said it is “is an affront to terrorism victims everywhere, including in Pakistan.”
Psaki confirmed that the immigration executive orders originally slated to be announced tomorrow, would be announced next week instead.
Humanitarian aid and women’s rights groups have celebrated the roll-back of the ‘global gag rule,’ but said it is only the first step in expanding access to women’s health care across the world.
The head of Médecins Sans Frontières task force on safe abortion care, Dr Manisha Kumar, said MSF was relieved to see the end of the global gag rule, but much more was needed to mitigate its effects. MSF does not accept US government funding so it was not directly affected by the policy.
“However, we see the harmful impacts these types of policies have on limiting women’s access to essential health care. In 2019, MSF treated more than 25,800 women and girls with abortion-related complications, many of which resulted from unsafe attempts to end a pregnancy.
“We’ve seen women who have used pens, broken glass, or sticks to try to induce an abortion. We’ve seen women who drank chlorine or poisons. We have treated women who received medicines from private pharmacies but weren’t given the correct pills, or the right information or appropriate support they needed. These are examples of what women will turn to when they don’t have access to safe abortion care.
The National Women’s Law Center president and CEO, Fatima Goss Graves, said reversing the policy was an important first step.
“But let’s be clear: we are facing a reproductive health care crisis, compounded by the COVID-19 crisis and underlying systemic racism,” Graves said. “The new administration must do more to urgently address the dire gaps in pregnancy related care, including abortion and birth control. We’re ready to work with this administration to accomplish more sweeping change.”
Now that the ‘global gag rule’ has been rescinded, it’s worth returning to this December piece by the Guardian’s Liz Ford on the expected end of the policy:
Nelly Munyasia breathed a huge sigh of relief when Joe Biden won the US election in November.
“I am excited and I am hopeful that things are going to be better. We are going to access funding and we are going to save the lives of women and girls,” she says, before explaining how tough the past four years has been.
Munyasia is executive director of Reproductive Health Network Kenya (RHNK), which promotes health services, including offering information about abortion. All of its funding came from the US, via Planned Parenthood Global (PPG), which had refused to sign the global gag order. RHNK lost as much as $1m a year. Munyasia had to stop outreach programmes to marginalised communities and halt the training of more than 500 health workers. Thousands of women couldn’t get contraceptives, HIV tests or cancer screening. Teenage pregnancies increased, and women resorted to unsafe abortions. Foetuses were found on riverbanks, Munyasia says.
The organisation went from seeing 300,000 women and girls a year to just 150,000 over two years – thanks only to money secured through the SheDecides movement.
“We lost 100% of our funding. It was devastating. We were in the process of renewing our contracts … when we were told by PPG that they were not able to give us funding.”
Biden signs executive orders to expand healthcare access and end 'global gag rule'
Joe Biden just signed two health-related executive orders in the Oval Office. He said the best way to describe the actions was “to undo the damage Trump has done.”
He said there is nothing new in the orders. “This is going back to what the situation was prior to the [former] president’s executive orders,” Biden said.
The two actions:
- End the Mexico City policy, also known as the “global gag rule”. This policy bans foreign non-government groups that receive US funding from providing abortions or from providing information about abortions.
- Open the health insurance market on the federal government’s healthcare.gov from 15 February to 15 May. The Trump administration resisted calls to open the market outside of the usual six-week window for enrollment in the fall, which would have helped people seeking health insurance after losing work during the recession.
- Direct federal agencies to reconsider rules and other policies which limit access to health care and consider actions to improve access.
Biden said: “We got a lot to do and the first thing I have to do is get this Covid package passed.”
Updated
Afternoon summary
- At 1.30pm ET, Biden is set to sign executive actions to improve access to healthcare and end the so-called “global gag rule”, which bars US funding for international non-profit organizations that provide abortion counseling.
- The US economy saw its worst year for growth since second world war. The US economy shrank by 3.5% in 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic brought the country to a shuddering halt.
- South Carolina state health officials said on Thursday that two cases of the coronavirus variant identified in South Africa had been detected in the state – the first time the variant has been found in the US.
- Ohio representative Marcia Fudge and Princeton University economist Cecilia Rouse testified in confirmation hearings before a Senate committee this morning. Biden nominated Fudge to be secretary of housing and urban development and Rouse to lead the White House council of economic advisers.
- Survivors of the 2018 mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, asked congressional Republicans to publicly censure Marjorie Taylor Greene for suggesting the school shooting was a “false flag” and for harassing a teenage survivor on Capitol Hill in 2019
Updated
A key player in Fox News’ decision to call Arizona for Joe Biden on election night who came under fire from Donald Trump before losing his job has defended his role in the drama.
“I was proud of our being first to project that Joe Biden would win Arizona,” former Fox News politics editor Chris Stirewalt wrote for the Los Angeles Times, “and very happy to defend that call in the face of a public backlash egged on by former President Trump.
“Being right and beating the competition is no act of heroism; it’s just meeting the job description of the work I love.”
He added: “The rebellion on the populist right against the results of the 2020 election was partly a cynical, knowing effort by political operators and their hype men in the media to steal an election or at least get rich trying. But it was also the tragic consequence of the informational malnourishment so badly afflicting the nation.
“When I defended the call for Biden in the Arizona election, I became a target of murderous rage from consumers who were furious at not having their views confirmed.”
Stirewalt left Fox News last week. The company said it had “realigned its business and reporting structure to meet the demands of this new era”. In the LA Times, Stirewalt referred to “my firing last week”.
Trump, it has been widely reported, reacted furiously to the call on election night, which Fox News made first, surprising even its own anchors, and did not retract despite White House pressure. The Associated Press followed hours later but other outlets did not call Arizona for Biden for days. By then, Pennsylvania had given the Democrat victory in the electoral college.
Arizona became one state subject to Trump’s efforts to overturn announced results – efforts repeatedly thrown out of court but in support of which a pro-Trump mob attacked the US Capitol in Washington on 6 January.
Graffiti including “Murder the Media” was found inside the Capitol, where some rioters reportedly searched for lawmakers to kidnap or kill. Five people died, one a police officer struck with a fire extinguisher.
“The lie that Trump won the 2020 election wasn’t nearly as much aimed at the opposing party as it was at the news outlets that stated the obvious, incontrovertible fact,” Stirewalt wrote.
He said he was “confident that the current depredations of the digital revolution will pass, just as those of the telegraph, radio and broadcast television did”.
But he added: “What tugs at my mind after seeing a mob of enthusiastic ignoramuses sack the Capitol, though, is whether that sophistication will come quickly enough when outlets have the means to cater to every unhealthy craving of their consumers.”
South Carolina detects first known US case of Covid-19 variant from South Africa
South Carolina state health officials said Thursday that two cases of the coronavirus variant identified in South Africa had been detected in the state- the first time the variant has been found in the US.
South Carolina’s department of health and environmental control said the two cases don’t appear to be connected and the two people affected did not have a history of recent travel. One was detected by the state’s public health lab and the other by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The department’s interim public health director, Dr Brannon Traxler, said in a statement: “The arrival of the Sars-CoV-2 variant in our state is an important reminder to all South Carolinians that the fight against this deadly virus is far from over. While more Covid-19 vaccines are on the way, supplies are still limited. Every one of us must recommit to the fight by recognizing that we are all on the front lines now. We are all in this together.”
“We know that viruses mutate to live and live to mutate,” Dr Traxler said. “That’s why it’s critical that we all continue to do our part by taking small actions that make a big difference. These include wearing our masks, staying at least six feet apart from others, avoiding large crowds, washing our hands, getting tested often, and when we can, getting vaccinated. These are the best tools for preventing the spread of the virus, no matter the strain.”
Survivors of the 2018 mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, asked congressional Republicans to publicly censure Marjorie Taylor Greene for suggesting the school shooting was a “false flag” and for harassing a teenage survivor on Capitol Hill in 2019.
House Republicans this week announced that Greene, a newly elected Georgia congresswoman, had been appointed to the House Education and Labor Committee.
Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, said on Thursday: “Assigning her to the education committee when she has mocked the killing of little children at Sandy Hook, when she mocked the killing of teenagers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas - what could they be thinking?”
The committee chair, Democrat Bobby Scott, said in a strongly-worded statement that House Republicans must explain why they appointed Greene to the committee, after her documented history of promoting conspiracy theories.
House EdLabor committee chair @BobbyScott on Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s appointment to the committee:
— adam harris (@AdamHSays) January 28, 2021
“House Republicans have appointed someone to this Committee who claimed that the killing of 20 children and six educators at Sandy Hook... was a hoax” pic.twitter.com/VoPgJ3tSLF
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New York attorney general Letitia James said governor Andrew Cuomo’s administration may have underreported nursing home deaths related to Covid-19 by as much as 50% in a report on Thursday. According to the AP:
James has, for months, been examining discrepancies between the number of deaths being reported by the state’s department of health, and the number of deaths reported by the homes themselves.
Her investigators looked at a sample of 62 of the state’s roughly 600 nursing homes. They reported 1,914 deaths of residents from Covid-19, while the state department of health logged only 1,229 deaths at those same facilities.
If that same pattern exists statewide, James’ report said, it would mean the state is underreporting deaths by nearly 56%.
Part of the gap is explained by a decision by New York’s health agency to exclude from its count the number of nursing home patients who die after being transferred to hospitals. Hospital and nursing home officials say the state has ready access to that figure.
Health Commissioner Howard Zucker has said at times that the state is working on compiling that data. His department has not responded to repeated requests by the Associated Press for that figure in recent weeks.
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The Biden administration has each day this week announced executive orders falling under themes including racial equity (Tuesday) and healthcare (today). Tomorrow is expected to be a day of new immigration action , but NBC News is reporting that might be delayed, citing two anonymous sources.
One of the expected announcements for Friday was the formation of a presidential task force to reunite migrant families separated by Donald Trump’s administration at the US-Mexico border.
Biden is also expected to expand refugee admissions to the US after Trump lowered refugee admissions to the lowest levels since 1980; to unwind Trump programs which severely limited asylum processing, including the program known as Remain in Mexico; and to review the “public charge” rule which made it difficult for poor immigrants to secure benefits and stay in the country.
After some technical difficulties, representative Marcia Fudge has been sworn-in to testify in her confirmation hearing as nominee for secretary of the department of housing and urban development (Hud).
Fudge began by introducing her family, who are in the room with her as she testifies from in her home state of Ohio. The group includes her 87-year-old mother, Marian L Garth Saffold, a retired union organizer for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
“It bears mentioning, particularly in this moment of crisis, that Hud — perhaps more than any other department — exists to serve the most vulnerable people in America,” Fudge said in her opening remarks. “That mandate matters a great deal to me. It is consistent with my own values, and it is precisely what has always motivated me to service.”
If you’d like to know more about Fudge, I really recommend this Cleveland Plain Dealer profile from December.
The Senate committee on banking, housing and urban affairs is also considering the nomination of Cecilia Rouse to be chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. The Princeton University economist would be the first Black woman to lead the council. She is an expert on the impact of education on the labor force and long-term unemployment and has also championed paid sick leave.
Attorney Merrick Garland has submitted the paperwork necessary for his nomination to be attorney general. A confirmation hearing has not yet been scheduled for Garland, whose 2016 supreme court nomination was blocked by Senate Republicans.
Garland’s 107-page questionnaire is essentially an extremely long CV, which also includes details about recent speeches and remarks he has made.
Amid the expected law schools speeches and ceremonial appearances, Garland has also listed his participation in a performance of Midsummer Night’s Dream, via Zoom, as spotted by Washington Post reporter Seung Min Kim.
Thanks to some investigative work by the Guardian’s Joan Greve, we now know Garland’s appearance was at an annual mock trial hosted by Shakespeare Theatre in Washington DC which examines a fictional event.
The mock trial considered the effects in a Midsummer Night’s Dream after a play within the play was canceled because one of the lead actors is turned into a donkey. Garland was one of the judges to rule on the case.
Artistic director Simon Godwin told local news station WTOP that several supreme court justices have participated in previous mock trial events.
New Jersey representative Andy Kim, a Democrat, was pictured in a viral photo on his hands and knees cleaning up the ruins left after the US Capitol insurrection. The congressmen spent an hour and a half filling trash bags with debris in the Capitol rotunda and other rooms in the building.
On Twitter today, he shared a photo of his first trip to the building as a child and wrote: “Many of you asked me why I cleaned the Capitol on Jan 6. I want to show you this photo. This is my mom, an immigrant from Korea, bringing me to DC for the first time. She took me to the Capitol and taught me to love and care for this nation that gave us everything.”
Many of you asked me why I cleaned the Capitol on Jan 6. I want to show you this photo. This is my mom, an immigrant from Korea, bringing me to DC for the first time. She took me to the Capitol and taught me to love and care for this nation that gave us everything. pic.twitter.com/PecgTb5HWB
— Andy Kim (@AndyKimNJ) January 28, 2021
After the insurrection, Kim told NBC News the rotunda is his favorite room in the building: “I was just overwhelmed with emotion. It’s a room that I love so much — it’s the heart of the Capitol, literally the heart of this country. It pained me so much to see it in this kind of condition.”
At 10am ET today, Biden’s nominee for secretary of housing and urban development (Hud), Marcia Fudge, will appear before a Senate committee for her confirmation hearing.
Fudge is a Democratic representative for Ohio and the former chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus. If confirmed, she is expected to seek to improve fair housing protections, expand access to affordable housing and to address the urgent need for households at risk of eviction, according to her prepared remarks.
Fudge will be appear at the hearing via video chat from her home in Warrensville Heights, Ohio.
Advocacy group, the National Low Income Housing Coalition, said Fudge:
Must work to repair the significant harm done by the current administration – by reinstating and furthering fair housing regulations, reinforcing protections for LGBTQ+ people experiencing homelessness, protecting immigrant families in public housing, reinvigorating and reinforcing the purpose of HUD with a depleted and demoralized workforce, and advocating for the level of investments in HUD programs that match the scale of the need.
Survivors of the 2018 mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, are asking congressional Republicans to publicly censure Marjorie Taylor Greene for suggesting the school shooting was a “false flag” and for harassing a teenage survivor on Capitol Hill in 2019, reports the Guardian’s Lois Beckett.
Greene, the newly elected Georgia congresswoman who is known for her support of the pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy theory, was filmed in March 2019 as she followed 18-year-old David Hogg, one of the students who survived the shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas high school, outside Capitol Hill.
In the video, Greene also echoes false yet frequently spread conspiracy claims that mass shooting survivors and family members of victims are “crisis actors” and the attacks that killed their loved ones were staged as a plot to pass gun control laws.
Fred Guttenberg, whose 14-year-old daughter, Jaime, was among the 17 students and staff killed in the shooting, told the Guardian: “She hasn’t disowned any of it. She hasn’t said, ‘I was wrong.’ She hasn’t said, ‘I’m sorry to the families I’ve hurt.’ She hasn’t said, ‘I accept the truth around Parkland, Sandy Hook, and 9/11.’ She has let the lie live. That makes her incapable of serving as a representative in Congress.”
US economy sees worst year for growth since Second World War
Those fourth quarter economic figures that came out earlier work out to the US having the worst year for growth since the end of the Second World War. It’s a dismal coda to the Trump presidency, during which he frequently boasted of building the greatest economy in history. Rachel Siegel and Andrew Van Dam write for the Washington Post:
The economy shrank by 3.5 percent last year as the novel coronavirus upended American business and households, making 2020 the worst year for economic growth since 1946. It is the first time the economy has contracted for the year since 2009, when Gross Domestic Product shrank by 2.5 percent during the depths of the Great Recession.
This is the last GDP report from former president Donald Trump’s tenure. Until the pandemic, Trump was on track for an economic record that put him near the middle of the pack among recent presidents. But the covid-19 crisis has ensured that he is likely to have overseen the slowest economic growth of any president in the period since the Second World War.
It may have been on the receiving end of a lot of jokes, but Robert Burns reports for the Associated Press that Trump’s Space Force is likely to survive through the Biden era.
The reason Space Force is unlikely to go away is largely this: elimination would require an act of Congress, where a bipartisan consensus holds that America’s increasing reliance on space is a worrying vulnerability that is best addressed by a branch of the military focused exclusively on this problem. The service celebrated its one year anniversary in December.
The new service also is linked to an increasing US wariness of China, which is developing capabilities to threaten US satellites in space and which has become, in the minds of some, the singular national security challenge. Russia, too, stands accused by Washington of seeking to challenge American dominance in space.
“They’re building capabilities to use space against us. We have to be able to respond to that,” Gen. John Hyten, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the National Security Space Association, an advocacy group, last week, referring to Russia and China.
Joe Biden has not publicly commented on his intentions with Space Force. His defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, has been noncommittal, while also stressing the strategic importance of space.
Although some see it as a Trump vanity project, in the military it’s seen more soberly as an affirmation of the need to more effectively organize for the defense of US interests in space.
While far smaller than any other branch of the military, Space Force is acquiring the standard trappings of a service, including an official flag, logo, seal and doctrine. It has launched commercials to attract recruits. The force is planning to expand its ranks from 2,400 active-duty members to 6,400 by the end of this year.
Still, there have been mis-steps along the way. Social media and Marvel Comics fans were incredibly amused when, after lengthy debate, it was decided last month that Space Force members would be called “guardians”, echoing the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise.
Number of Americans filing first-time unemployment claims falls slightly to 847,000
The US economy grew at an annual rate of 4% in the fourth quarter, following 33.4% growth in the previous quarter, when the economy bounced back after sharp declines earlier in the year caused by the coronavirus pandemic, according to the advance estimate from the US Commerce Department.
That’s essentially the last verdict on the Trump era, writes Courtenay Brown at Axios.
It shows a sharp slowdown in growth compared to the previous quarter, as the pandemic got worse and government aid petered out.
Meanwhile other data just out shows that the number of Americans filing for first-time unemployment claims fell slightly to 847,000 last week. Lucy Bayly at NBC News notes:
Economists had predicted a total of 875,000 claims for the week ended 23 January.
Ten months into the pandemic, the weekly figure — which is a proxy for layoffs — continues to hover just below 1 million. That’s five times higher than its pre-pandemic average, though far lower than the March peak of 7 million.
“Thanks to Covid-19, there are still 10 million jobs missing from the economy, and there are still 14.5 million people claiming unemployment benefits. People need help,” said Dan North, chief economist at Euler Hermes North America. “Maintaining stimulus spending, in particular, income support, has been the right thing to do all along and it still is.”
There will be more follow-up to these figures on our business live blog today:
Nina Lakhani has also written for us today on the theme of demands on Joe Biden’s environmental policies:
Border communities and environmentalists are urging Joe Biden to take immediate steps to remediate the environmental and cultural destruction caused by construction of the border wall during the previous administration.
Donald Trump sequestered $15bn – most of it from military funds – to partially fulfill an anti-immigration campaign promise to build a “big beautiful wall” along the southern border with Mexico.
As a result, hundreds of miles of the borderlands – including sacred Native American sites and protected public lands – have been bulldozed, blasted and parched over the past four years, with little environmental assessment or oversight thanks to waivers suspending dozens of federal laws in order to expedite construction.
Biden ordered construction to pause on his first day in office, but community leaders and experts consulted by the Guardian warned that urgent action is needed to stop the damage to fragile biodiverse landscapes and scarce water sources getting worse. They are urging Biden to:
- Cancel the outstanding contracts, most of which the army corps of engineers awarded to a handful of firms with little transparency. Top officials at these firms are regular donors to the Republican party. The Government Accountability Office will soon publish its audit of the army corps’ role in the wall including the contracts and status of construction.
- Deploy a team of experts including hydrologists, ecologists, zoologists and botanists, community and tribal advocates to assess the damage, and formulate a plan to restore critical habitat, waterways, wildlife migration corridors and tribal cultural sites.
- Tearing down the wall where safe to do so, and allocate federal funds for the clean-up to ensure hundreds of tonnes of metal, concrete and barbed wire are safely disposed of.
- Rescind the waivers which suspended 84 federal laws that mandate protections relating to clean air and water, endangered species, public lands, contracts and the rights of Native Americans.
- Withdraw scores of lawsuits against private landowners on the border that seek to strip them of their land through eminent domain.
Read more of Nina Lakhani’s report here: Biden faces call to heal environmental and cultural scars of Trump border wall
Back to more serious matters, and on the environment, Nick Estes, a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, writes for us today to say that Joe Biden doesn’t get a climate pass yet just for cancelling the Keystone XL pipeline:
There is every reason to celebrate the end of a decade-long fight against Keystone XL. Tribal nations and Indigenous movements hope it will be a watershed moment for bolder actions, demanding the same fates for contentious pipeline projects such as Line 3 and the Dakota Access pipeline.
Biden has also vowed to review more than 100 environmental rules and regulations that were weakened or reversed by Trump and to restore Obama-era protections to two Indigenous sacred sites, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, which are also national monuments in Utah. And he issued a “temporary moratorium” on all oil and gas leases in the Arctic national wildlife refuge, sacred territory to many Alaskan Natives.
None of these victories would have been possible without sustained Indigenous resistance and tireless advocacy.
But there is also good reason to be wary of the Biden administration and its parallels with the Obama administration. The overwhelming majority of people appointed to Biden’s climate team come from Obama’s old team. And their current climate actions are focused almost entirely on restoring Obama-era policies.
Biden’s policy catchphrases of “America is back” and “build back better” and his assurance to rich donors that “nothing would fundamentally change” should also be cause for concern. A return to imagined halcyon days of an Obama presidency or to “normalcy”– which for Indigenous peoples in the United States is everyday colonialism – isn’t justice, nor is it the radical departure from the status quo we need to bolster Indigenous rights and combat the climate crisis.
Read more here: Nick Estes – Biden killed the Keystone Pipeline. Good, but he doesn’t get a climate pass just yet
It takes all sorts to make the world go around, and I note that for our books desk New York writer and journalist J Oliver Conroy has taken on the unenviable task of reading the weirdest Trump-era erotica so you don’t have to.
In recent years, Amazon’s e-books market has nurtured a flourishing cottage industry of self-published romance and erotic literature – and the Trump years have inspired many to put pen to paper. The most successful authors (most write under pseudonyms) are known for their prolific publication, thesaurus-aided descriptions of the human anatomy, and responsiveness to current events. The surreality of the past four years was particularly generative of their creative juices. With the Trump era now drawn to a chaotic close, we decided to review four of the most memorable entries in this niche literary genre.
I’m strangely drawn to the title “My Antifa Lover”, although slightly disappointed that Conroy opted to review Chuck Tingle’s “Pounded In The Butt By The Handsome Physical Manifestation Of Tromp’s [sic] Twitter Ban That Should’ve Come Years Sooner But Fine Now That It’s Here High Five” rather than the frankly superior “Domald Tromp [sic] Pounded In The Butt By The Handsome Russian T-Rex Who Also Peed On His Butt And Then Blackmailed Him With The Videos Of His Butt Getting Peed On”. No, I have no idea how the internet got us here either, really.
Read more here: ‘My Antifa Lover’: I read the weirdest Trump-era erotica so you don’t have to
The Biden administration already has a very different approach to promoting Covid information to what went on before under Donald Trump. Dr Anthony Fauci described himself as “the skunk at the picnic” under that administration, but the new president has promised a new era of openess, with regular briefings from officials.
Fauci will be up before an audience again today – he will be joining a virtual event hosted by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).
AFT president Randi Weingarten and National Education Association president Becky Pringle will also take part in the online “town hall” style event, which will discuss the Covid-19 pandemic and its specific impact on educators, students and schools.
Fauci will answer questions from educators around the country and engage in an in-depth conversation with Weingarten and Pringle about reopening schools safely, testing, and vaccines roll-out. It takes place at 6 pm EST, you can submit questions in advance, and watch it either on Facebook or on YouTube.
The regulatory changes Biden is asking federal health officials to undertake today aren’t likely to happen overnight, because hastily written rules are more easily overturned in court, as the Trump administration repeatedly found out. Time and again, federal judges ruled that Trump officials had ran roughshod over legal requirements for regulators, such as demonstrating they’ve considered all sides of an issue.
The idea of reopening Obamacare’s health insurance markets for a period of time has broad support though, including from consumer groups, professional medical associations, insurers and business organizations.
Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar writes for the Associated Press that although the number of uninsured Americans has grown because of job losses in the coronavirus economy, the Trump administration did little to address the issue.
The Obama-era Affordable Care Act law covers more than 23 million people through a mix of subsidized private insurance sold in all states, and expanded Medicaid adopted by 38 states, with Southern states being the major exception. Coverage is available to people who don’t have job-based health insurance, with the Medicaid expansion geared to those with low incomes.
Of some 28 million uninsured Americans before the pandemic, the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation has estimated that more than 16 million were eligible for some form of subsidized coverage through the health law.
Experts agree that number of uninsured people has risen because of layoffs in the coronavirus economy, perhaps by 5 million to 10 million, but authoritative estimates await government studies due later this year.
The role that race should play in deciding who gets priority for the Covid-19 vaccine in the next phase of the rollout is being put to the test in Oregon as tensions around equity and access to the shots emerge nationwide, reports Gillian Flaccus for the Associated Press.
An advisory committee that provides recommendations to Oregon’s governor and public health authorities will vote later today on whether to prioritize people of color, target those with chronic medical conditions or focus on some combination of groups at higher risk from the coronavirus. Others, such as essential workers, refugees, inmates and people under 65 living in group settings, are also being considered.
The 27-member committee in Oregon, a Democratic-led state that’s overwhelmingly white, was formed with the goal of keeping fairness at the heart of its vaccine rollout. Its members were selected to include racial minorities and ethnic groups, from Somalian refugees to Pacific Islanders to tribes. The committee’s recommendations are not binding but provide critical input for Gov. Kate Brown and guide health authorities crafting the rollout.
“It’s about revealing the structural racism that remains hidden. It influences the disparities we experienced before the pandemic and exacerbated the disparities we experienced during the pandemic,” said Kelly Gonzales, a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and a health disparity expert on the committee.
The virus has disproportionately affected people of color. Last week, the Biden administration reemphasized the importance of including “social vulnerability” in state vaccination plans with race, ethnicity and the rural-urban divide at the forefront and asked states to identify “pharmacy deserts” where getting shots into arms will be difficult.
Overall, 18 states included ways to measure equity in their original vaccine distribution plans last fall and more have likely done so since the shots started arriving, said Harald Schmidt, a medical ethicist at the University of Pennsylvania who has studied vaccine fairness extensively.
Some, such as Tennessee, proposed reserving 5% of its allocation for “high-disadvantage areas,” while states like Ohio plan to use social vulnerability factors to decide where to distribute vaccine, he said.
Attempts to address inequities in vaccine access have already prompted backlashes in some places. Dallas authorities recently reversed a decision to prioritize the most vulnerable ZIP codes primarily communities of color after Texas threatened to reduce the city’s vaccine supply. That kind of pushback is likely to become more pronounced as states move deeper into the rollout and wrestle with difficult questions about need and short supply.
To avoid legal challenges, almost all states looking at race and ethnicity in their vaccine plans are turning to a tool called a “social vulnerability index” or a “disadvantage index.” Such an index includes more than a dozen data points everything from income to education level to health outcomes to car ownership to target disadvantaged populations without specifically citing race or ethnicity.
“The point is not, ‘We want to make sure that the Obama family gets the vaccine before the Clinton family.’ We don’t care. They can both safely wait,” he said. “We do care that the person who works in a meatpacking plant in a crowded living situation does get it first. It’s not about race, it’s about race and disadvantage.”
Los Angeles is vaccinating health care workers, first responders and residents older than 65. But as the region battles one of the worst coronavirus outbreaks in the US, people are chasing vaccine doses ahead of their allotted tier, queuing in lines for hours, visiting sites after the official time ends. Information about where to show up for extra doses and when is typically passed word of mouth.
Officially, there is no waiting or end-of-the day policy, county officials say. But given the dire health emergency, they also don’t want doses to go to waste. The gap between these two creates a space for “vaccine vultures” to swoop down.
It’s hard to put a number on how many people are scoring vaccine doses ahead of schedule, but it could be a few dozen each day at each of the six mega sites scattered around the 500 square miles of Los Angeles county.
That there are vaccines left over at all is due to several factors. About 10% of people with appointments do not show up for their shot, according to press reports. Vials containing the Moderna vaccine have to be used within six hours after opening before they have to be thrown out. And while vials are supposed to contain five doses, injectors can often coax six doses out of them.
In a mid-January statement, Los Angeles county said its department of public health “does not condone wasting of any precious vaccine doses and has not and is not directing providers to throw away unused doses”. The statement added that the county was moving to set up vaccine clinics on quick turnaround whenever it learned of potential vaccine expirations. (The county public health department did not respond to requests for comment for this story.)
Dr Monya De, an LA-area physician who volunteered at the Inglewood Forum, which is one of six mega sites for vaccine dispersal in LA county, said some family members accompanying seniors to get their shot asked if there were any available for them as well. “Our instructions are to vaccinate only the person who was registered,” she said. “It’s a volume issue: we have a large volume of people in LA who need to get vaccinated.”
But De said she did wonder about resource allocation and if the current approach is the best way to get the most needles in the most arms. “I could see potentially the instruction being changed to: yes, if you have an extra vaccine you can inject people who are coming along in the same family.”
Read more of Katharine Gammon’s report here: Los Angeles residents stalk Covid vaccine sites in hopes of leftover doses
Trevor Hunnicutt at Reuters provides this breakdown of the actions on healthcare we are expecting from Joe Biden later today:
- Biden will restore access to Healthcare.gov with an executive order on Thursday afternoon. The order will allow people to sign up for insurance through the government exchange from 15 February to 15 May. The program is normally accessible for just six weeks a year.
- Biden also plans to direct federal agencies to “re-examine” Trump-era policies like work requirements that made it more difficult for people to qualify for Medicaid, the government-run health insurance program for low earners.
- He will rescind the “Mexico City Policy” – also known as the “Global gag rule” – that bans US funding for international non-profit organizations that provide abortion counseling.
Biden has vowed to shore up the Healthcare.gov and other programs created under former President Barack Obama’s sweeping 2010 Affordable Care Act. He has argued that the changes are more urgent because of the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 400,000 Americans.
Republicans have long opposed the healthcare restructuring law, criticizing the cost and quality of care as well as extensive government involvement in healthcare markets.
The nomination of Alejandro Mayorkas as Joe Biden’s preferred secretary of Homeland Security looks like it is the first cabinet position to get mired in Republican delaying tactics in the Senate, as Manu Raju and Veronica Stracqualursi report for CNN:
In confirming Republican plans to filibuster, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas told reporters yesterday on Capitol Hill that “there’s a number of problems” with Mayorkas’ nomination.Republicans argue that Mayorkas hasn’t been properly vetted on immigration issues and are calling for an additional hearing into his nomination.
The Senate has scheduled a procedural vote to break the filibuster at 1:45pm ET today. After the Senate breaks the filibuster – which requires 51 votes – the final confirmation vote will be Monday evening.
Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri attempted to block Mayorkas’ quick consideration after last week’s hearing, arguing in a statement that Mayorkas had inadequately explained how he will secure the US southern border.
In a letter Tuesday, Cornyn led seven other Republican senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee in demanding a hearing for Mayorkas before their panel. They argued that Mayorkas spoke about “immigration priorities at length” during his 19 January hearing proving that immigration issues will be a “top focus” of his, and that the Senate Judiciary Committee has jurisdiction over immigration matters.
Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, who is set to chair the Judiciary Committee, told CNN, “I don’t see why that’s necessary” and called the request for a hearing “totally political.”
Read more here: CNN – GOP threatens filibuster for Mayorkas nomination to be DHS secretary
John Hudson had this overnight at the Washington Post, on newly-confirmed secretary of state Antony Blinken:
Blinken’s attempt to overhaul the combative relationship between State Department officials and the media is among the decisions he is facing about what to keep or discard from the Trump era.
In an early change, Blinken said he would resume the department’s daily news briefing starting next week — a practice that ended during the Trump administration as spokespeople feared contradicting the president’s rapidly shifting positions.
He also pledged to allow journalists access to him during trips abroad once the coronavirus pandemic subsides, something that secretaries of state Mike Pompeo and Rex Tillerson sharply curtailed during their tenures.
While the Biden administration has begun overturning several Trump-era actions, on foreign policy, Blinken has pledged not to throw out all of the previous policies, such as moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem.
On Yemen, Blinken said he would move quickly to review the Trump administration’s decision to label the country’s Houthi rebels a terrorist organization, acknowledging concerns from aid groups that the designation would worsen what the United Nations considers the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
Read more here: Washington Post – Blinken turns away from Trump-era approaches, starting with media relations
Also on the foreign policy front, Joe Biden said in a presidential debate last October that he would only agree to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un if he agreed to “draw down” North Korea’s nuclear capacity.
South Korea’s prime minister Chung Sye-kyun has today said North Korea and the United States should seek an initial denuclearisation deal that includes a halt to the North’s nuclear activity and a cut in its programme in exchange for some sanctions relief.
In his first interview with a foreign media outlet since taking office a year ago, the prime minister told Reuters that “creative” thinking and mutual incentives were needed to get negotiations going again and prevent another breakdown.
Kim Jong Un and former US president Donald Trump promised to build new relations and work towards the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula at their first summit in 2018, but a second summit and ensuing working-level talks fell apart.
North Korea had offered to dismantle its main nuclear complex in exchange for the lifting of major UN sanctions but the United States said North Korea should also hand over its nuclear weapons and bomb fuel.
“We can begin with a freeze in all nuclear activities and reduction of some of their programme,” Chung said. “It would be best if we could get rid of all of it, once and for all, but it’s not easy and we need an alternative.”
Biden has not yet announced any new policy for North Korea.
Chung said limited sanctions relief could help revive and sustain the momentum of any talks as that was the most attractive incentive for North Korea. “South Korea and the United States know what North Korea wants,” he said.
Chung’s remarks came days after South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in called for new US president to build on progress made by Kim and Trump.
US takes aim at China territorial claims as Biden vows to back Japan
Joe Biden has vowed to strengthen the US’s alliance with Japan to counter growing Chinese military activity in the volatile Asia-Pacific region, including a commitment to defend the Senkakus, a group of islands in the East China sea administered by Tokyo but claimed by Beijing.
The US president and Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga agreed during a phone call that their countries’ security alliance was “the cornerstone of peace and prosperity in a free and open Indo-Pacific”.
Biden’s vow to strengthen security arrangements in the region contrasted with the approach taken by Donald Trump, who publicly mulled withdrawing troops from Japan and South Korea, both key US allies.
Trump also complained that Tokyo and Seoul were not paying enough towards their own security and called on them to buy more US-made defence equipment.
“We managed to have substantial exchanges,” Suga said after his 30-minute call with Biden. “We agreed to strengthen our alliance firmly by having more phone calls like this.”
Biden reaffirmed the US commitment to provide “extended deterrence” to Japan, a reference to the US nuclear umbrella, the White House said in a statement.
They also agreed on the need for the complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula, as speculation mounts over how Biden intends to engage with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, over his nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.
Read more of Justin McCurry’s report from Tokyo: US takes aim at China territorial claims as Biden vows to back Japan
If today is all about healthcare from the Biden administration, yesterday was all about the climate crisis. As well as the executive orders signed by the president, Biden’s climate envoy John Kerry also spoke.
He said that US workers have been fed a false narrative on climate change over the last few years. Kerry highlighted job growth in renewable energy as evidence of a misled belief that had spread that resolving climate change would come at a cost to workers. Here’s the clip…
Associated Press have this brief vaccine story today, that Oregon health workers who got stuck in a snowstorm on their way back from a Covid-19 vaccination event went car to car injecting stranded drivers before several of the doses expired.
Josephine County Public Health said on Facebook that the “impromptu vaccine clinic” took place after about 20 employees were stopped in traffic on a highway after a vaccination clinic.
Six of the vaccines were getting close to expiring so the workers decided to offer them to other stranded drivers.
The shots were meant for other people, but “the snow meant those doses wouldn’t make it to them before they expired,” the health department said.
Not wanting to waste them, staff walked from vehicle to vehicle, offering people a chance to receive the vaccine. A county ambulance was on hand for safety.
All the doses were administered, including one to a Josephine County Sheriff’s Office employee who had arrived too late for the vaccination clinic but ended up stopped with the others, officials said.
Josephine County Public Health Director Mike Weber said it was one of the “coolest operations he’d been a part of.”
Rachana Pradhan and Fred Schulte of Kaiser Health News report for us this morning on concerns over gaps in the data collection around the vaccination program:
As they rush to vaccinate millions of Americans, health officials are struggling to collect critically important information, such as race, ethnicity and occupation, of every person they jab.
The data being collected is so scattered that there’s little insight into which healthcare workers, or first responders, have been among the people getting the initial vaccines, as intended – or how many doses instead have gone to people who should be much further down the list.
The gaps – which experts say reflect decades of underfunding of public health programs – could mean that well-connected people and health personnel who have no contact with patients are getting vaccines before front-line workers, who are at much higher risk for illness. Federal and state officials prioritized health workers plus residents and staffs of nursing homes for the first wave of shots.
Although officials leading president Joe Biden’s Covid response have pledged to tackle racial equities as they seek to control the pandemic, lapses in reporting race or ethnicity could hinder efforts to identify and track whether minorities hit especially hard by the pandemic are getting shots at a high-enough rate to achieve hoped-for levels of herd immunity. So far, limited data in multiple states shows Black residents are getting vaccinated at lower rates than whites.
“Every state knows where they’ve sent vaccine, and every provider has to report inventory. But as far as who is being vaccinated, that one is a little more tricky,” said Claire Hannan, executive director of the Association of Immunization Managers.
Data that eventually makes its way to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other federal systems is “only going to be as good as whatever you can get out of the vaccine registries” that vary by state, said Dr Marcus Plescia, chief medical officer for the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. “They’re all different and, going into this, they were all at different stages of how robust they were.”
Read more here: Data gaps make it hard to know if priority health workers got vaccines first
Yesterday there were 152,478 new coronavirus cases recorded in the US, and 3,943 further deaths. The total death toll, according to Johns Hopkins University figures, has risen to 428,865. Experts have projected it will reach 500,000 by the end of February. Yesterday’s death toll puts it among the ten worst days since the pandemic began, and January’s death toll is already the worst on record.
There continued to be brighter news on hospitalizations, with the number of people in hospital in the US falling to 107,444. It is the fifteenth consecutive day the number has fallen, and the lowest level seen since 11 December.
CDC figures state that 24.6m doses of vaccine have been administered out of the 47.2m distributed. Madeline Holcombe and Theresa Waldrop report for CNN that this discrepancy is due to shots being held back to give people a second dose.
“I think it’s important that when you’re looking at states’ inventories that you recognize that some of that inventory is being held for the very important second shot,” White House Covid-19 Response Coordinator Jeff Zients said yesterday.
Some of the distributed doses may have also just arrived at their destination or may still be on the way, and there’s also a lag in reporting the number of shots given, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said in a CNN town hall Wednesday night.
Still, a bottleneck remains, she said.
“When you do all that math, you still end up with some millions of doses that are sitting on the shelves and have not yet been administered,” Walensky said. “And in fact, that’s one of the ways that we have to get resources to the states to make sure that they can quickly administer the vaccines that are on the shelves.”
Biden to re-open HealthCare.gov sign-up and expand access to Medicaid
Here’s a reminder of what we are expecting from Joe Biden today when he addresses the issue of healthcare access at 1:30pm EST (6:30pm GMT). As the Washington Post reported, he will reopen federal marketplaces selling Affordable Care Act health plans and lower recent barriers to joining Medicaid:
Under one order, HealthCare.gov, the online insurance marketplace for Americans who cannot get affordable coverage through their jobs, will swiftly reopen for at least a few months. Ordinarily, signing up for such coverage is tightly restricted outside a six-week period late each year.
Another part of Biden’s scheduled actions is intended to reverse Trump-era changes to Medicaid that critics say damaged Americans’ access to the safety-net insurance. It is unclear whether Biden’s order will undo a Trump-era rule allowing states to impose work requirements, or simply direct federal health officials to review rules to make sure they expand coverage to the program that insures about 70 million low-income people in the United States. Biden has been saying for many months that helping people get insurance is a crucial federal responsibility.
The most ambitious parts of Biden’s campaign health-care platform would require Congress to provide consent and money. Those include creating a government insurance option alongside the ACA health plans sold by private insurers, and helping poor residents afford ACA coverage if they live in about a dozen states that have not expanded their Medicaid programs under the decade-old health law.
Much criticism of “Green New Deal” and environmental policies in the US from Republicans has focussed on the cost to the economy and specifically to jobs. Joe Biden has been attempting to sell his program for dealing with the climate crisis as specifically good for the creation of well-paid union jobs.
When I think of climate change I think of jobs. We're going to tackle the climate crisis and create good-paying, union jobs at the same time. https://t.co/2VXwVmp7QZ
— President Biden (@POTUS) January 28, 2021
Here’s a reminder of what the president said yesterday about the climate crisis. In a sharp 180-degree turn from the Trump administration, Biden signed a series of executive orders to address the ‘existential threat’ of the climate crisis. He insisted his climate plan would create millions of new ‘clean’ jobs to replace those lost in the coal and oil industries.
Welcome to our US politics live blog for Thursday. Here’s a quick catch-up on where we are, and what we can expect to see today.
- During the first Covid-19 briefing with Biden administration experts, officials said the US coronavirus death toll would hit 500,000 by February. Yesterday there were 152,478 new cases and 3,943 further deaths in the US. Hospitalizations in the US fell slightly to 107,444.
- Joe Biden will sign executive orders on expanding access to healthcare at 1:30pm EST (6:30pm GMT). Jen Psaki will hold a press briefing an hour later.
- The president signed a flurry of executive orders to address the climate crisis yesterday, by focusing on creating good-paying jobs in renewable energy. “We must do this, we can do this, we will do this,” Biden said.
- Democratic senator Tim Kaine told reporters he is considering a resolution to formally censure Donald Trump. It is an acknowledgment that the impeachment trial is unlikely to result in a conviction.
- The White House is said to be ‘monitoring’ the GameStop share surge as hedge fund Melvin Capital Management pulls out.
- In the latest Republican in-fighting, Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz is expected in Wyoming to denounce colleague Rep. Liz Cheney who voted for impeachment.
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Three nominees for cabinet secretary posts faced Senate committee hearings yesterday. There appears to be Republican resistance to the appointment of Alejandro Mayorkas as secretary of Homeland Security.
- Housing and Urban Development secretary nominee Marcia Fudge will appear before the Senate Banking and Urban Affairs Committee today at 10am.
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