Summary
From me and Joan E Greve:
- Joe Biden announced the US is on track to have enough coronavirus vaccines for all American adults by the end of May. The president had previously said the country would hit that crucial benchmark by the end of July. Biden’s announcement came hours after the White House said Merck would partner with Johnson & Johnson to expand production of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine, which was approved for emergency use over the weekend.
- The Republican governors of Texas and Mississippi announced they are rescinding mask mandates, despite concerns about a potential “fourth surge” in coronavirus cases. The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr Rochelle Walensky, said yesterday, “Now is not the time to relax the critical safeguards that we know can stop the spread of Covid-19 in our communities, not when we are so close.”
- Christopher Wray, the FBI director, said the bureau views the 6 January insurrection as a clear act of domestic terrorism. Testifying before the Senate judiciary committee, Wray said, “That attack, that siege, was criminal behavior, plain and simple, and it’s behavior that we, the FBI, view as domestic terrorism.”
- Neera Tanden has withdrawn her nomination to direct the Office of Management and Budget. “Unfortunately, it now seems clear that there is no path forward to gain confirmation,” she said in a letter to Biden.
- The Senate confirmed Gina Raimondo as the new secretary of commerce, in a vote of 84 to 15. Raimondo, who has served as the governor of Rhode Island since 2015, has pledged to make reinvigorating the US manufacturing sector a key focus of her tenure.
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The Senate confirmed Cecilia Rouse to chair the White House Council of Economic Advisers. She will be the first Black chair in the council in its 75-year history. The Senate voted 95-4, with 45 Republicans including Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and Mitch McConnell joining all Democrats in voting “yes”.
- The Biden administration approved sanctions against several Russian officials in connection to the poisoning of opposition leader Alexei Navalny. The announcement comes a month after Navalny was sentenced to two years and eight months in a prison colony, sparking international condemnation and protests across Russia.
Updated
The Senate has confirmed Cecilia Rouse to chair the White House Council of Economic Advisers. She will be the first Black chair in the council in its 75-year history.
The Senate voted 95-4, with 45 Republicans including Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and Mitch McConnell joining all Democrats in voting “yes”.
Rouse, 57, is a labor economist and former dean at Princeton. She served in the Obama and Clinton administrations.
Vowing to address wealth disparities, Rouse said more federal spending was needed to avoid a “downward spiral”.
Updated
Tanden’s letter to Biden requesting her withdrawal said:
Dear President Biden,
I am writing to you to withdraw my nomination for Director of the Office of Management and Budget. It has been an honor of a lifetime to be considered for this role and for the faith placed in me.
I appreciate how hard you and your team at the White House has worked to win my confirmation. Unfortunately, it now seems clear that there is no path forward to gain confirmation, and I do not want continued consideration of my nomination to be a distraction from your other priorities.
I am incredibly grateful for your leadership on behalf of the American people and for your agenda that will make such a transformative difference in people’s lives.
Sincerely,
Neera Tanden
The withdrawal marks the first cabinet nominee by Biden to fail to get confirmation.
“I have accepted Neera Tanden’s request to withdraw her name from nomination for Director of the Office of Management and Budget,” Biden said in a statement. “I have the utmost respect for her record of accomplishment, her experience and her counsel, and I look forward to having her serve in a role in my Administration. She will bring valuable perspective and insight to our work.”
Tanden faced increasingly steep odds toward confirmation. Republican senators opposed her nomination citing past tweets. Last week Senator Joe Manchin, a conservative Democrat, announced he would oppose her nomination citing those tweets as well. That left Tanden short of the majority of votes needed on the Senate floor and in the committees hearing her candidacy.
Tanden was an unexpected choice to run Biden’s budget team. She is a longtime ally of Hillary Clinton and oftentimes vocally criticized both Republicans and Democrats, especially supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders. Tanden has said in her confirmation hearings that she regretted the past statements but that wasn’t enough to sway the required number of senators.
Updated
Neera Tanden withdraws from her nomination to direct budget office
Tanden has withdrawn her nomination to direct the Office of Management and Budget.
“I appreciate how hard you and your team at the White House has worked to win my confirmation,” she said in a letter to Joe Biden. “Unfortunately, it now seems clear that there is no path forward to gain confirmation, and I do not want continued consideration of my nomination to be a distraction from your other priorities.”
The White House said it has accepted her withdrawal.
Miguel Cardona was sworn in as education secretary after the Senate confirmed his nomination yesterday.
Cardona, 45, is a former public school teacher. He’ll play a key role in helping schools reopen – sharing best practices and recommendations as school districts across the country debate how to resume in-person learning amid the pandemic.
As Connecticut’s education chief, Cardona made school reopenings in the state a priority and said at his confirmation hearing that there are “great examples throughout our country of schools that have been able to reopen safely.”
Teachers unions, however, have been wary of reopening before teachers have the vaccine.
NOW: @VP Kamala Harris swearing-in Education Secretary Miguel Cardona pic.twitter.com/tN3e3BBY9G
— Tim Perry (@tperry518) March 2, 2021
Catholics in New Orleans and St Louis told to avoid Johnson & Johnson vaccine
Jessica Glenza and Martin Pengelly report:
The archdiocese of New Orleans, as well as Roman Catholic leaders in St Louis, Missouri, have told local Catholics to avoid the Johnson & Johnson’s single-shot Covid-19 vaccine, because its early development used “morally compromised cell lines created from two abortions”.
The leadership in New Orleans said two other vaccines in use in the US, made by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna, were acceptable despite having been developed with “some lab testing that utilised the abortion-derived cell line”. The archdiocese made the announcement on Friday.
The statement put the archdiocese at odds with Pope Francis. In December, the Vatican said it was “morally acceptable to receive Covid-19 vaccines that have used cell lines from aborted foetuses in their research and production process”, as the use of such vaccines “does not constitute formal cooperation with the abortion from which the cells used in production of the vaccines derive”.
The archdiocese of St Louis on Tuesday, meanwhile, encouraged Catholics to seek out the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines and avoid the Johnson & Johnson version if possible. Like the New Orleans archdiocese statement, the St Louis statement called the Johnson & Johnson vaccine “morally compromised”.
However, the St Louis statement stressed that Catholics can get that vaccine “in good conscience if no other alternative is available”.
Cells derived from an elective abortion in the Netherlands in the 1970s are commonly used in medical research. Last October, it was widely reported that an experimental Covid-19 therapy given to Donald Trump, Regeneron, was developed using such cells.
Like most Republicans, the then president had courted anti-abortion groups and moved to restrict use of fetal tissue in research. Fetal tissue research has led to a number of important medical advances, especially in vaccine development.
Cell lines derived from aborted tissue were used in the development of the polio, chickenpox, hepatitis A and shingles vaccines. Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine subsidiary Janssen used PER.C6 cells, a proprietary cell line derived from aborted tissue in 1985.
Read more:
Dolly Parton, who helped fund the development of the Moderna vaccine for Covid-19, was pleased to get “a dose of her own medicine”.
Parton, 75, had donated $1m to Vanderbilt University to help find a coronavirus cure. after getting her jab, the country music icon sang, to the tune of “Jolene”: “Vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine... I’m begging of you please don’t hesitate.”
Dolly gets a dose of her own medicine. @VUMChealth pic.twitter.com/38kJrDzLqC
— Dolly Parton (@DollyParton) March 2, 2021
Joe Biden said Vernon Jordan “knew the soul of America, in all of its goodness and all of its unfulfilled promise”.
“He liked to say that we had torn down what Dr. King called ‘sagging walls of segregation,’ but we still had to deal with ‘the rubble’—with systemic racism, with inequity, with the injustice still faced by so many Black Americans,” Biden said. To honor the civil rights leader, who died at 85, “we must continue to do the same”.
“Jill and I extend our deepest condolences to Ann, Vickee, and the entire Jordan family,” Biden said.
Today so far
That’s it from me today. My west coast colleague, Maanvi Singh, will cover the blog for the next couple of hours.
Here’s where the day stands so far:
- Joe Biden announced the US is on track to have enough coronavirus vaccines for all American adults by the end of May. The president had previously said the country would hit that crucial benchmark by the end of July. Biden’s announcement came hours after the White House said Merck would partner with Johnson & Johnson to expand production of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine, which was approved for emergency use over the weekend.
- The Republican governors of Texas and Mississippi announced they are rescinding mask mandates, despite concerns about a potential “fourth surge” in coronavirus cases. The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr Rochelle Walensky, said yesterday, “Now is not the time to relax the critical safeguards that we know can stop the spread of Covid-19 in our communities, not when we are so close.”
- FBI Director Christopher Wray said the bureau views the January 6 insurrection as a clear act of domestic terrorism. Testifying before the Senate judiciary committee, Wray said, “That attack, that siege, was criminal behavior, plain and simple, and it’s behavior that we, the FBI, view as domestic terrorism.”
- The Senate confirmed Gina Raimondo as the new secretary of commerce, in a vote of 84 to 15. Raimondo, who has served as the governor of Rhode Island since 2015, has pledged to make reinvigorating the US manufacturing sector a key focus of her tenure.
- The Biden administration approved sanctions against several Russian officials in connection to the poisoning of opposition leader Alexei Navalny. The announcement comes a month after Navalny was sentenced to two years and eight months in a prison colony, sparking international condemnation and protests across Russia.
Maanvi will have more coming up, so stay tuned.
Joe Biden also confirmed that he received a briefing on the situation at the US-Mexican border this afternoon.
Asked by a reporter what he learned from the briefing, the president simply said, “A lot.”
The briefing comes a day after Biden had a virtual meeting with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
After concluding his remarks, Joe Biden answered a couple of questions that reporters shouted at him.
The president was asked once again when he expected things to get back to normal in the US. “I’ve been cautioned not to give an answer to that because we don’t know for sure,” Biden said.
The president previously said he expected the country to be mostly back to normal by Christmas. Today, Biden told reporters, “My hope is, by this time next year, we’re going to be back to normal, and before that.”
Biden emphasized that the timeline for relaxing restrictions largely depended on people being “smart” about limiting their risk of contracting coronavirus over the coming months.
Joe Biden encouraged all Americans to continue wearing masks to limit the spread of coronavirus, saying that “now is not the time to let up”.
“There is light at the end of the tunnel,” the president said. “It’s not over yet.”
The president’s comments came hours after the Republican governors of Texas and Mississippi announced plans to abandon mask mandates, despite health experts’ concerns about a potential “fourth surge” in coronavirus cases.
Joe Biden added that he wants every educator and school employee to get at least the first dose of a vaccine by the end of this month.
The president, who has faced criticism over the continued closure of many schools, said the country needed to treat in-person learning like the “essential service that it is”.
Criticizing the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic, Biden said, “We’re making progress from the mess we inherited.”
US is on track to have vaccines for all Americans by end of May, Biden says
President Joe Biden is now delivering remarks on the distribution of coronavirus vaccines, after his administration announced Merck would team up with Johnson & Johnson to expand production of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine.
The president described the partnership between the two companies as a “major step forward” in expanding vaccine access to every American.
“This is the type of collaboration we saw between companies during World War II,” Biden said.
With the planned partnership between Merck and Johnson & Johnson, Biden said the US will now “have enough vaccine supply for every adult in America by the end of May”.
Biden had previously said the country would have enough vaccines for all Americans by July, and he credited his administration’s diligent efforts with moving up that timeline.
Lina Hidalgo, the Democratic judge of Harris county, which includes Houston, described Governor Greg Abbott’s decision to lift the statewide mask mandate as “a cynical attempt to distract Texans from the failures of state oversight of our power grid”.
At best, this is wishful thinking, that COVID is somehow less dangerous than it was yesterday. At worst, it is a cynical attempt to distract Texans from the failures of state oversight of our power grid.https://t.co/w5C0GW9u7p
— Lina Hidalgo (@LinaHidalgoTX) March 2, 2021
The Texas Democratic party released a statement condemning Governor Greg Abbott’s decision to lift the statewide mask mandate and allow the state’s businesses to fully reopen.
“What Abbott is doing is extraordinarily dangerous,” said Texas Democratic party chair Gilberto Hinojosa. “He is the worst Governor in modern Texas history. This will kill Texans. Our country’s infectious disease specialists have warned that we should not put our guard down even as we make progress towards vaccinations. Abbott doesn’t care.”
Hinojosa added, “Make no mistake: opening Texas prematurely will only lead to faster COVID spread, more sickness and overcrowding in our hospitals, and unnecessary deaths. There is no economic recovery without beating the coronavirus pandemic. This will set us back, not move us forward. ...
“By removing all previous state mandates and opening the state to 100 percent, Governor Abbott, who has never taken this pandemic seriously, is doing what he does best: leaving Texans to fend for themselves.”
Texas and Mississippi rescind mask mandates despite concerns about potential surge in cases
The governor of Texas has just announced that he is rescinding the statewide mask mandate and allowing businesses to reopen at full capacity starting next week, despite ongoing concerns about the coronavirus pandemic.
“Too many Texans have been sidelined from employment opportunities,” Greg Abbott, a Republican, said at a press conference. “Too many small business owners have struggled to pay their bills. This must end. It is now time to open Texas 100%.”
Abbott argued that the decrease in coronavirus hospitalizations and the increase in vaccinations meant the previous state orders, which will officially be lifted next Wednesday, are no longer necessary.
Gov. Abbott (R-TX) announces all businesses in the state can reopen and ends the statewide mask mandate. pic.twitter.com/3RyGdMVXvD
— The Recount (@therecount) March 2, 2021
Mississippi is similarly rescinding all mask mandates starting tomorrow, the state’s Republican governor, Tate Reeves, announced at a press conference this afternoon.
Reeves said Mississippi businesses would also be allowed to reopen at full capacity, without any state-imposed restrictions.
The Mississippi governor is replacing the current state orders on coronavirus guidelines with recommendations. Reeves noted that Mississippi residents are still encouraged, though not required, to wear face masks and practice social distancing.
The announcements comes one day after the director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr Rochelle Walensky, warned that the US could face a “fourth surge” in cases if people stop taking the necessary precautions to limit the spread of coronavirus.
“At this level of cases, with variants spreading, we stand to completely lose the hard-earned ground we have gained,” Walensky said, during a briefing from the White House coronavirus response team.
“Now is not the time to relax the critical safeguards that we know can stop the spread of Covid-19 in our communities, not when we are so close. We have the ability to stop a potential fourth surge of cases in this country.”
Updated
Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski says she remains undecided about whether to support Neera Tanden’s nomination to lead the Office of Management and Budget.
Murkowksi noted that she recently had a long meeting with Tanden, during which the Alaska senator discussed the unique needs of her state.
New @lisamurkowski on @neeratanden: “I spent a lot of time talking about Alaska’s rather unique situation, because she's not familiar with Alaska.”@lisamurkowski said she hasn’t made up her mind yet.
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) March 2, 2021
Murkowski’s comment led to some questions about what the senator was hoping to receive for Alaska if she supports Tanden’s nomination, especially given that Tanden would oversee the federal budget if she were confirmed.
But Murkowski told reporters on Capitol Hill, “I am not asking the administration to make any accommodations to me or to Alaska for the Tanden nomination, or any nomination.”
If Murkowski does not support Tanden’s nomination, there is likely no path to confirmation for her.
Senate confirms Gina Raimondo as commerce secretary
The Senate has just confirmed Gina Raimondo as the next secretary of commerce, in a vote of 84 to 15.
Raimondo has served as the governor of Rhode Island since 2015, and she is expected to play a key role in advancing Joe Biden’s economic agenda.
Confirmed, 84-15: Executive Calendar #8 Gina Marie Raimondo to be Secretary of Commerce @CommerceGov
— Senate Cloakroom (@SenateCloakroom) March 2, 2021
When Biden announced Raimondo’s nomination in January, he described her as “one of the most effective and forward-thinking governors in the United States of America”.
“She has put Rhode Island on a path of achieving 100% renewable energy, and she will be a key player in helping position the United States as the global leader in the 21st Century clean energy economy,” Biden said.
During her confirmation hearing, Raimondo also pledged to make reinvigorating the US manufacturing sector a central goal of her tenure.
The House is currently debating the For the People Act, Democrats’ election reform bill and the party’s top legislative priority.
House majority whip Jim Clyburn stopped to talk to reporters about the significance of the bill. While noting that the legislation faces obstacles in the evenly-divided Senate, Clyburn said Democrats are committed to seeing the bill become law.
"Nobody thought that day that one of those little 20 year olds arrested on that day would be standing here today. We are not going to give up on this."
— Sarah Ferris (@sarahnferris) March 2, 2021
"If the other side wants to spend their time wallowing in the past, we’re going to do what’s necessary to highlight that."
Clyburn, the highest-ranking African American lawmaker in the House, noted that he was arrested 60 years ago today while trying to integrate a lunch counter. Earlier today, a monument went up on the street corner where Clyburn and 190 others were arrested.
“If the other side wants to spend their time wallowing in the past, we’re going to do what’s necessary to highlight that,” Clyburn said, per Politico.
Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer expressed confidence that Democrats would be able to pass the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill.
“We’ll have the votes we need to pass the bill,” Schumer told reporters moments ago.
The Democratic leader said earlier today that the Senate would take up the relief bill “as early as tomorrow”.
Once the Senate passes its version of the relief bill, it will go back to the House so the lower chamber can also pass the final version of the package.
Joe Biden has said he wants to sign the bill by March 14, when extended unemployment benefits are currently set to expire.
As the Supreme Court considers a voting rights case involving Arizona, here’s more on that story, as concerns about voter suppression are sweeping the United States.
Justice Samuel Alito, a leader of the court’s more conservative wing, expressed concern that states could be subject to a wave of attacks under section 2 if a policy resulted in even a small burden against a minority group.
“What concerns me is that your position is going to make every voting rule subject to attack under Section 2,” Alito told Bruce Spiva, a lawyer for the DNC, which is challenging the restrictions. Chief Justice John Roberts, a key vote in the case, also noted that states had an interest in restricting ballot collection to prevent fraud.
Jessica Ring Amunson, a lawyer representing Arizona secretary of state Katie Hobbs, a Democrat who agreed with the 9th circuit ruling, noted repeatedly that bringing a section 2 challenge requires showing more than just a statistical disparity.
“Statistical disparities alone are not enough to make out a section 2 violation,” she said. “You would have to show it is in fact imposing a discriminatory burden on minority voters that it is not imposing on [non-minority voters].”
The case arrived at the court as concerns about voter suppression are sweeping the United States. There are more than 253 bills to restrict voting in 43 states, according to a Brennan Center tally.
And one exchange during the case noted how politicized the fight over voting has become in the United States. When Justice Amy Coney Barrett pressed Carvin on what interest the RNC had in preserving Arizona’s restrictions, he noted that his party would be harmed if those policies would be lifted.
“It puts us at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats. Politics is a zero sum game. Every extra vote that they get through unlawful interpretations of Section 2 hurts us. It’s the difference between winning an election 51-49 and losing an election.”
Notably, however, the court’s conservative justices didn’t seem particularly eager to embrace the most restrictive view of Section 2, put forth by Carvin and the Arizona GOP, that the law can’t be used to challenge the “time, manner, or place” or elections.
In a series of hypotheticals, Justice Elena Kagan, pointed out how such an approach would allow states to enact discriminatory laws. When she asked Carvin if a state could require counties to only offer one polling place, leading Black voters in crowded urban areas to wait longer in line to vote, Carvin conceded that it would not be an equally open system.
He also conceded that a state could not only offer polling places in a country club if it meant Black voters had to travel longer into hostile territory.
The exchange prompted Justice Amy Coney Barrett to note that Carvin’s position “had some contradictions in it,” because polling place locations are regulations that involve the “time, manner, and place” of elections.
Supreme Court considers voting rights case
After nearly 2 hours of oral argument, the US supreme court appears divided on how exactly courts should interpret a key provision of the Voting Rights Act designed to protect minority groups against discriminatory voting policies.
That’s the question at the heart of the case that was argued in the case at the court today, Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee.
The case involves two voting policies in Arizona, a ban on third-party collection of absentee ballots - sometimes called ballot harvesting - and a policy that requires election officials to reject provisional ballots cast in the wrong precinct.
The US court of Appeals for the 9th circuit, sitting en banc, said last year that both policies violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which bans voting laws that discriminate on the basis of race.
The court’s conservative majority seemed skeptical that the Arizona law did violate the Voting Rights Act.
They appeared sympathetic to arguments put forth by Mark Brnovich, Arizona’s Republican attorney general, and Michael Carvin, representing the state Republican party, that very few minority voters were affected by the policies and that the state had a legitimate interest in enforcing them.
In an exchange with Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Michael Carvin, a lawyer representing the Republican party, explained the GOP's interest in maintaining Arizona's policy of discarding ballots cast in the wrong precinct. pic.twitter.com/zA4ZygsE3r
— Sam Levine (@srl) March 2, 2021
But the larger question looming over the case is how courts should evaluate whether a voting law violated Section 2 - the court seemed more unsure.
A majority of the court did seem receptive to the idea, advanced by Mark Brnovich, the Arizona attorney general, that litigants should have to meet a higher standard to show a law or policy violated Section 2.
In general, the court seemed appeared to agree with the idea that litigants should have to show there is a substantive burden on minority voters not being placed on non-white voters and that burden exists even given all of the other ways to vote in the state.
A majority of justices also seemed to embrace the idea that states should be able to use anti-fraud justification to rebut a Voting Rights Act claim of discrimination.
The case arrived at the court as concerns about voter suppression are sweeping the United States. There are more than 253 bills to restrict voting in 43 states, according to a Brennan Center tally. More in the next post.
Today so far
The White House press briefing has now concluded. Here’s where the day stands so far:
- FBI Director Christopher Wray testified about the Capitol insurrection before the Senate judiciary committee. Wray said of the January 6 riot, “That attack, that siege, was criminal behavior, plain and simple, and it’s behavior that we, the FBI, view as domestic terrorism.”
- The White House announced a partnership between Merck and Johnson & Johnson to expand production of Johnson & Johnson’s coronavirus vaccine. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Joe Biden will invoke the Defense Production Act to help Merck facilities access the necessary resources to start manufacturing the vaccine.
- The Biden administration approved sanctions against seven Russian officials in connection to the poisoning of opposition leader Alexei Navalny. The announcement comes a month after Navalny was sentenced to two years and eight months in a prison colony, sparking international condemnation and protests across Russia.
The blog will have more coming up, so stay tuned.
Updated
For the second day in a row, White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked about the sexual misconduct allegations against New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.
A reporter noted that the third woman who has accused Cuomo of inappropriate behavior actually worked for Joe Biden’s campaign.
“Every woman coming forward should be heard, should be treated with dignity and treated with respect,” @PressSec Jen Psaki said about the allegations against New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo https://t.co/afNIpIydKY pic.twitter.com/oCbxpokYA1
— Bloomberg Quicktake (@Quicktake) March 2, 2021
“Every woman coming forward should be heard, should be treated with dignity and treated with respect,” Psaki said.
The White House press secretary would not say whether Biden or Kamala Harris would be addressing this issue themselves, simply saying that her comments reflect their views on the matter.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked about some Americans’ concerns regarding the varying efficacy rates of the three approved coronavirus vaccines.
The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines have been shown to be more effective than the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, but the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is easier to store and can be administered in one dose, rather than two.
Echoing recent statements from public health experts, Psaki encouraged Americans to receive whatever vaccine they are offered in their states.
“Whatever vaccine you have access to, you should take that vaccine,” Psaki said.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked why the Biden administration is not sanctioning Vladimir Putin himself over the poisoning of opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
A reporter noted that the White House similarly chose not to sanction the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Psaki replied by listing the sanctions against other foreign officials and citing the administration’s need to “maintain a relationship” with those governments moving forward.
White House confirms Russian sanctions in response to Navalny poisoning
White House press secretary Jen Psaki confirmed that the Biden administration has approved sanctions against seven Russian officials in connection to the poisoning and imprisonment of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.
Psaki said the department of commerce and the state department would soon release statements detailing the sanctions.
“The intelligence community assesses with high confidence that officers of Russia’s Federal Security Service used a nerve agent in the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny,” Psaki said.
Joe Biden fiercely criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin last month, when Navalny was sentenced to two years and eight months in a prison colony, sparking protests across Russia.
Biden said last month, “I made it very clear to President Putin in a manner very different from my predecessor that the days of the United States rolling over in the face of Russian aggressive actions, interfering with our elections, cyberattacks, poisoning its citizens, are over.”
Defense Production Act will be invoked to expand vaccine production, White House says
Joe Biden’s press secretary, Jen Psaki, is now holding her daily briefing with reporters at the White House.
Psaki previewed Biden’s remarks on the pandemic response this afternoon, when the president is expected to announce a partnership between Merck and Johnson & Johnson to expand production of Johnson & Johnson’s coronavirus vaccine.
The press secretary noted Biden will be invoking the Defense Production Act to equip Merck facilities with the necessary resources to manufacture the vaccine.
Psaki also announced that the weekly distribution of Moderna and Pfizer vaccine doses to states is increasing from 14.5 million to 15.2 million.
FBI Director Christopher Wray noted that there have been many instances of people reporting family members to the bureau for extremist behavior.
Wray acknowledged that such acts are “heartbreaking” for the families involved, but he said sometimes they are necessary to prevent violence or off-ramp that person away from extremism.
The director said those reports are reflective of the advice, “If you see something, say something.”
Wray acknowledged that phrase usually conjures up an image of an abandoned backpack at a bus station, but sometimes it means raising concerns about a loved one.
FBI Director Christopher Wray said he was “pleased that the inauguration went smoothly,” despite social-media “chatter” about potential violence in connection to the event.
Wray said the FBI worked diligently, in coordination with a number of other law enforcement agencies, to ensure that the January 6 attack was not repeated as Joe Biden took the oath of office.
FBI Director Christopher Wray described the difficulties of assessing which threats shared on social media are legitimate and which are merely bluster.
Wray encouraged anyone who sees a worrisome social media post that could point to potential violence to contact local law enforcement or an FBI field office.
“If Americans see something on social media that crosses that line, then they need to say something,” Wray told senators.
FBI Director Christopher Wray has declined to provide additional details about the death of Capitol police officer Brian Sicknick, who died the day after the January 6 insurrection.
Wray previously said there was an “ongoing investigation” into Sicknick’s death, and he said he did not want to get ahead of that investigation.
But the FBI director made a point to note that he believed the US Capitol police had correctly characterized Sicknick’s passing as a line of duty death.
Some right-wing commentators have tried to raise doubts about whether Sicknick really died as a result of his injuries from the Capitol insurrection, but the USCP has consistently said Sicknick died in the line of duty.
Updated
Members of the Senate judiciary committee are pressing the FBI director, Christopher Wray, on how the bureau tried to communicate the information from a January 5 field office report, which warned of potential violence at the Capitol the next day.
Wray noted that there are five Capitol police officers on the joint terrorism task force, which was alerted about the Norfolk field office’s report.
The FBI director also reiterated that the bureau verbally briefed the command post before the Capitol attack.
Updated
Senate holds confirmation hearing for OMB deputy director nominee
Elsewhere on Capitol Hill, the Senate budget committee is holding a confirmation hearing for Shalanda Young, who has been nominated for deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget.
The hearing got started on a bipartisan note, with Republican Senator Lindsey Graham praising Young as a “highly qualified person for the job”.
Young, a longtime Hill staffer, has been consistently mentioned as a potential nominee for OMB director, if Neera Tanden cannot be confirmed by the Senate.
Asked whether she feels qualified to serve as OMB director, Young emphasized she was appearing before the committee to be confirmed as the deputy director of the agency.
“I hope after today you find me qualified for that position,” Young said.
Graham replied, “You’ll get my support, maybe for both jobs.”
The Senate judiciary committee’s hearing on the Capitol insurrection continues, but there is also some news on the coronavirus relief package.
The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, just said the chamber would take up the relief bill “as early as tomorrow”.
The Senate bill is not expected to include the $15 minimum wage provision, after the Senate parliamentarian ruled the proposal did not meet the requirements for passage via reconciliation.
The House passed its version of the relief bill on Saturday morning. But assuming the Senate approves a bill without the minimum wage provision included in it, the House will have to again pass the final version of the bill, which will likely happen next week.
Joe Biden has said he wants to sign the relief package by March 14, when extended unemployment benefits are currently set to expire.
Updated
White supremacists make up 'the biggest chunk' of domestic terrorists, Wray says
FBI Director Christopher Wray has repeatedly emphasized the danger of white supremacy-motivated domestic terrorism in the US during today’s hearing.
Wray described white supremacist extremism as a “persistent, evolving threat” that has grown since he took control of the FBI in 2017.
White supremacists make up “the biggest chunk of our domestic terrorism portfolio overall,” Wray told members of the Senate judiciary committee.
Wray added that white supremacists “have been responsible for the most lethal attacks over the last decade.”
Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy asked FBI Director Christopher Wray whether there was any evidence of antifa involvement in the Capitol insurrection.
“We have not to date seen any evidence of anarchist violent extremists or people subscribing to antifa in connection with the 6th,” Wray replied.
FBI Director Wray: "We have not to date seen any evidence of anarchist violent extremists or people subscribing to Antifa in connection with the 6th." pic.twitter.com/iQbrhvU0Dm
— NBC News (@NBCNews) March 2, 2021
Some on the right have tried to shift blame for the Capitol insurrection away from Donald Trump’s supporters, despite clear evidence that people went from the former president’s January 6 rally to the Capitol.
Wray has also noted that many of those arrested for the Capitol attack so far have had connections to far-right extremist groups.
Senator Chuck Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate judiciary committee, asked FBI Director Christopher Wray why he has not provided lawmakers with a copy of the January 5 field office report that warned of potential violence at the Capitol.
“That information is law enforcement sensitive,” Wray replied.
The FBI director said he would confer with other bureau leaders to determine whether the Norfolk field office’s report can be released.
Senate judiciary committee chairman Dick Durbin asked FBI Director Christopher Wray whether the bureau believes the Capitol insurrection was carried out by “fake Trump protesters”.
“We have not seen evidence of that as this stage,” Wray replied.
The question comes two weeks after Republican Senator Ron Johnson amplified baseless claims that provocateurs and fake Trump protesters carried out the Capitol attack during a separate Senate hearing on the insurrection.
A number of those facing federal charges for their involvement in the Capitol insurrection have ties to far-right extremist and militia groups.
The attack also occurred shortly after Donald Trump encouraged his supporters attending a DC rally to march to the Capitol as lawmakers certified Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election.
No surprise here: the first question from Senate judiciary committee chairman Dick Durbin focused on a January 5 report from the FBI Norfolk field office, which warned of potential violence at the Capitol the next day.
FBI Director Christopher Wray said the intelligence contained in the January 5 report was raw and uncorroborated, based on posts shared online before the Capitol attack.
Wray also noted that the FBI shared the report with the US Capitol Police and the Metropolitan Police Department of Washington, in an email to a terror task force and verbally at a command post briefing.
FBI views the Capitol insurrection as 'domestic terrorism,' Wray says
FBI Director Christopher Wray said the bureau views the Capitol insurrection as a clear act of domestic terrorism.
“That attack, that siege, was criminal behavior, plain and simple, and it’s behavior that we, the FBI, view as domestic terrorism,” Wray said.
The FBI director added, “It’s got no place in our democracy, and tolerating it would make a mockery of our nation’s rule of law.”
Wray said the FBI is aggressively pursuing those who carried out the Capitol attack, and he noted that investigations are underway in 55 of the FBI’s 56 field offices.
More than 200 people have already been federally charged for participating in the insurrection.
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Wray sworn in at Senate judiciary committee hearing
FBI Director Christopher Wray has now been sworn in at the Senate judiciary committee hearing on the Capitol insurrection.
In his opening statement, Wray said he was “appalled” by the January 6 attack, which resulted in five deaths.
The FBI director noted that the insurrection was part of a pattern of rising domestic extremism across the US.
“January 6 was not an isolated event,” Wray said. “The problem of domestic terrorism has been metastasizing across the country for a number of years now, and it’s not going away any time soon.”
Senator Chuck Grassley, the top Republican on the judiciary committee, focused his opening comments on condemning the antifa movement.
Grassley noted he did not disagree with anything that Democratic chairman Dick Durbin said about the danger of domestic extremism and white supremacy, but he argued that the federal government must confront extremism “wherever it falls on the political spectrum”.
It should be noted the Capitol insurrection, which resulted in five deaths, was carried out by a pro-Trump mob who was incited by the then-president.
It’s also worth recalling FBI Director Christopher Wray’s testimony about antifa in September, when he told House members, “It’s not a group or an organization. It’s a movement or an ideology.”
In his opening statement, Senate judiciary committee chairman Dick Durbin called on his Republican colleagues to condemn the “big lie” that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election.
Durbin said he has been alarmed about the recent rise in domestic extremism in the US, which has resulted in a number of deadly attacks in recent years, including the Capitol insurrection.
FBI director Wray testifies before Senate judiciary committee on Capitol breach
The Senate judiciary committee hearing, featuring testimony from FBI Director Christopher Wray, is now underway.
Wray will testify about the 6 January insurrection at the Capitol, and he is expected to be pressed on his bureau’s failure to prevent the attack.
The hearing comes as more than 200 people face federal charges over their involvement in the insurrection.
The blog will have more updates and analysis on the hearing as it unfolds, so stay tuned.
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Vernon Jordan worked for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and campaigned for voting rights before becoming president of the National Urban League.
“Today, the world lost an influential figure in the fight for civil rights and American politics,” said Derrick Johnson, president of the NAACP, in a statement.
“An icon to the world and a lifelong friend to the NAACP, his contribution to moving our society toward justice is unparalleled. In 2001, Jordan received the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal for a lifetime of social justice activism. His exemplary life will shine as a guiding light for all that seek truth and justice for all people.”
CNN first reported Jordan’s death. Jordan’s daughter, Vickee Jordan Adams, told CBS News: “My father passed away last night around 10pm surrounded by loved ones, his wife and daughter by his side.” The cause of death was not immediately known.
Jordan was close to both Bill and Hillary Clinton and advised the former in his run for the presidency in 1992, while governor of Arkansas. Jordan also endorsed Hillary Clinton in her two runs for the Democratic presidential nomination, in 2008 and 2016.
Civil rights activist Vernon Jordan dies at 85
Civil rights activist Vernon Jordan, who became a key adviser to Bill Clinton, has died at 85, his family said in a statement.
The New York Times has more on Jordan’s life:
Mr. Jordan began his civil rights career after graduating from Howard University School of Law, and was selected to head the Urban League in 1971 while still in his 30s.
While there, he regularly began to associate with and provide advice to leading political figures.
His closest relationship was with Bill Clinton, whom he had befriended years before he was elected president in 1992. Mr. Jordan was chosen to be co-chairman of the transition effort and became at once the confidant and golfing buddy of the president, a member of many corporate boards and a highly-paid lawyer-lobbyist at one of Washington’s most politically-engaged law firms.
The House is now debating the For the People Act, Democrats’ election reform bill and the party’s top legislative priority.
The House is now debating for up to one hour H.R. 1 - For the People Act of 2021.
— House Press Gallery (@HouseDailyPress) March 2, 2021
The bill is expected to pass the House, but it faces a very uncertain future in the Senate, where Democrats would need ten of their Republican colleagues to join them in supporting the legislation to overcome a filibuster.
There have been discussions among Democrats about eliminating the Senate filibuster, and it may be politically easier to do so over a broadly popular issue like election reform.
This is Joan Greve in Washington, taking over for Martin Belam.
FBI Director Christopher Wray will testify before the Senate judiciary committee this morning, marking his first public appearance since Joe Biden announced in January that Wray would stay on as director of the bureau.
Wray will be questioned about the January 6 insurrection, which has already resulted in federal charges being filed against more than 200 people.
The FBI director will likely be pressed on why one of his bureau’s field offices issued a January 5 report warning of potential violence at the Capitol the next day but failed to prevent the deadly attack.
Asked yesterday about what questions he would have for Wray, Dick Durbin, the Democratic chairman of the Senate judiciary committee, said, “What did he know? And when did he know it? And who did he tell? Those are questions that have been raised in other hearings. But he is the man of the hour. As head of the FBI, I think he has a special position, place, to answer the question.”
That hearing will start in about an hour, so stay tuned.
Now that he is no longer in the White House, Donald Trump is facing a number of legal probes into his policies, finances, and his attempts to overturn the presidential election result. CNN has rounded up five separate challenges facing the former president, reporting that:
Five independently elected investigators have turned their attention to former president Donald Trump, a sign his legal woes are mounting as he no longer enjoys the protections once afforded to him by the Oval Office.
Trump is now facing inquiries run by elected officials from Georgia to New York to Washington with only their constituents to answer to. Most are Democrats, but one key investigation was launched by a Georgia Republican who has faced heavy criticism from Trump since the election.
And the former President’s actions on his way out of office, including his attempts to overturn the 2020 election results and to stir up his supporters with baseless claims of fraud until they stormed the US Capitol on a harrowing January day, have only added to his legal problems.
In New York, meanwhile, investigators led by Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance won their battle to obtain Trump’s tax returns after the Supreme Court denied Trump’s latest attempt to prevent their release.
This represents a major boon to Vance’s investigation into Trump’s alleged financial misdemeanours including tax fraud, insurance fraud and providing false information to financial institutions or banks about the value of certain buildings and assets.
In Georgia, Republican secretary of state Brad Raffensperger is investigating Trump for seeking to overturn the state’s election results.
According to CNN, Raffensperger has offered a more critical take on Trump’s actions “since the rioting at the US Capitol on 6 January”. In January, he told the network that “Many of the actions that he’s taken since then are not what you would expect from a president.”
Read more here: CNN – Trump is facing probes from 5 independently elected investigators
The Washington Post this morning is previewing the expectation of a historic collaboration between Merck & Co and Johnson & Johnson to increase supplies of the latter’s one-shot Covid vaccine. Laurie McGinley and Christopher Rowland report:
President Biden will announce that pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. will help make Johnson & Johnson’s single-shot coronavirus vaccine — an unusual pact between fierce competitors that could sharply boost the supply of the newly authorized vaccine.
Officials told the Washington Post they began scouring the country for additional manufacturing capacity after they realized in the first days of the administration that Johnson & Johnson had fallen behind in vaccine production. They soon sought to broker a deal with Merck, one of the world’s largest vaccine makers, which had tried and failed to develop its own coronavirus vaccine.
Under the arrangement, Merck will dedicate two facilities in the United States to Johnson & Johnson’s shots. One will provide “fill-finish” services, the last stage of the production process during which the vaccine substance is placed in vials and packaged for distribution. The other will make the vaccine itself, and has the potential to vastly increase supply, perhaps even doubling what Johnson & Johnson could make on its own, the officials said.
Read more here: Washington Post – Biden to announce ‘historic partnership’: Merck will help make Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine, officials say
It is an important day for voting rights as US supreme court justices will today consider whether to uphold two Republican-backed voting restrictions in Arizona in a case that could further weaken the Voting Rights Act, a landmark 1965 federal law that barred racial discrimination in voting.
The important voting rights case comes before the justices at a time when Republicans in numerous states are pursuing new restrictions after former president Donald Trump made false claims of widespread fraud in the 3 November election that he lost to Joe Biden.
Andrew Chung and Lawrence Hurley report for Reuters that the justices will hear arguments in appeals by Arizona’s Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich and the state Republican Party of a lower court ruling that found that the voting restrictions at issue disproportionately burdened Black, Hispanic and Native American voters.
One of the measures made it a crime to provide another person’s completed early ballot to election officials, with the exception of family members or caregivers. The other disqualified ballots cast in-person at a precinct other than the one to which a voter has been assigned.
Community activists sometimes engage in ballot collection to facilitate voting and increase voter turnout. The practice, which critics call “ballot harvesting,” is legal in most states, with varying limitations. Voting rights advocates said voters sometimes inadvertently cast ballots at the wrong precinct, with the assigned polling place sometimes not the one closest to a voter’s home.
A broad ruling by high court, whose 6-3 conservative majority includes three justices appointed by Trump, endorsing the restrictions could impair the Voting Rights Act by making it harder to prove violations. Such a ruling could impact the 2022 mid-term elections in which Republicans are trying to regain control of the House of Representatives and Senate.
A ruling is due by the end of June.
At issue in the Arizona case is the Voting Rights Act’s Section 2, which bans any rule that results in voting discrimination “on account of race or color.” This provision has been the main tool used to show that voting curbs discriminate against minorities since the court in 2013 gutted another section of the statute that determined which states with a history of racial discrimination needed federal approval to change voting laws.
The San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals last year found Arizona’s restrictions violated the Voting Rights Act, though they remained in effect for the 3 November election. The 9th Circuit also found that “false, race-based claims of ballot collection fraud” were used to convince Arizona legislators to enact that restriction with discriminatory intent, violating the US Constitution’s prohibition on denying voting rights based on race.
Michael Sainato reports for us on how delays, backlogs of claims and errors have left workers without any unemployment benefits while out of work due to Covid:
Before the pandemic hit Stephanie Gaither worked as a driver for Uber and Lyft in Indianapolis, Indiana, making around $600 to $900 weekly. Now she is facing eviction and has her utilities shut off.
Like millions of other Americans who have seen their work dry up as the virus has spread, Gaither has fallen through the huge holes in the US’s unemployment benefits system. Her unemployment benefits expired in December 2020 and she has waited several weeks without any benefits while caring for her children who are currently learning remotely.
“I don’t get help from anyone so it’s really stressful. So many nights I can’t sleep. We’re running out of dog food and food for us. I do get food stamps and thankfully they just increased it, but I’m always running out. My credit is now shot. I’m depressed, I have no motivation, I feel hopeless,” said Gaither.
“I have absolutely nowhere to go if I’m evicted. That means we won’t be able to keep our dog we’ve had for eight years and my kids will lose most or all of their stuff. We’ll be living in my van in the middle of winter. If I’m evicted, I won’t be able to take much with me. I still haven’t taken down Christmas decorations. What’s the point? If I’m evicted I lose all that too. All of this could have been avoided if they sent out more stimulus checks and I received unemployment.”
State unemployment systems continue experiencing long delays, backlogs of unemployed claims, errors and long arbitration periods that have left millions of workers in the US without any unemployment benefits while they are out of work due to the coronavirus pandemic.
According to a Washington Post analysis in January 2021, more than 1.2 million Americans were waiting on appeals to denied unemployment claims or for their initial claims to be processed.
Officially the US unemployment rate is 6.3% but as the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, noted last month the real unemployment rate in the US is closer to 10% when misclassification errors are taken into account.
Read more of Michael Sainato’s report here: ‘I don’t have money for food’: millions of unemployed in US left without benefits
Florida’s Rep Val Demmings has added her voice again this morning to the Democrats applying pressure on their Senate colleagues to find a way to get the $15 federal minimum wage measure through Congress. “The Senate needs to figure out how to do the right thing” she said in a tweet.
We kept the $15 minimum wage in the #AmericanRescuePlan because Americans deserve a living wage. The Senate needs to figure out how to do the right thing.
— Rep. Val Demings (@RepValDemings) March 2, 2021
Those extremist connections among the mob who stormed the US Capitol will likely be one of the topics of conversation when FBI director Christopher Wray appears before the Senate judiciary committee today in Washington DC. The session starts at 10am (1500 GMT). It’s the first time Wray has appeared before Congress since the January assault.
Eric Tucker at Associated Press predicts that questions about the FBI’s preparations for the riot, and investigations into it, are expected to dominate. He’s also likely to be pressed on how the FBI is confronting the national security threat from white nationalists and domestic violent extremists and whether the bureau has adequate resources to address the problem.
Wray has kept a notably low profile since the violent mob of insurrectionists stormed the Capitol two months ago, though he has briefed lawmakers privately and shared information with local law enforcement.
The FBI is facing questions over how it handled intelligence in the days ahead of the riot and whether warnings it had of potential violence reached the correct officials.
Last week, for instance, the acting chief of the Capitol Police said a 5 January report from the FBI made its way to investigators within the police force and to the department’s intelligence unit but was never sent up the chain of command. The report warned about concerning online posts foreshadowing a “war” in Washington the following day. The FBI has said the report, which it says was based on uncorroborated information, was shared through its joint terrorism task force.
Wray may also face questions about the FBI’s investigation into the massive Russian hack of corporations and US government agencies, which happened when hackers injected malicious code into a software update.
The George Washington University’s Program on Extremism has examined the court documents from over 200 people involved in the 6 January assault on the Capitol, and come to the conclusion that over half of them were not connected to extremist groups or to one another. Pete Williams reports for NBC News:
[The study] concluded that 33 of those charged were involved with militant networks and that 82 were connected with others through networks of like-minded believers. But the remaining 142 planned to go to the Capitol on their own, “inspired by a range of extremist narratives, conspiracy theories, and personal motivations.”
The authors said the findings show that “conspiracy communities” are playing an expanding role in right-wing extremism that leads to violence, as followers of online theories mobilize in the real world.
While only about three dozen of those charged were part of extremist groups, their participation “was likely a necessary precondition for the escalation of violence from an angry riot into a breach of Capitol security,” the report said. Prosecutors have accused members of three groups — the Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters and the Proud Boys — of conspiring to come to Washington and stage violent protesters.
Read more here: NBC News – Most charged in Capitol riot had no connection to extremist groups or one another, report finds
Moira Donegan also writes her column for us today on the topic of New York governor Andrew Cuomo:
The new accusations of sexual harassment by the governor are being treated differently because of the gendered nature of such abuse. But Cuomo’s alleged treatment of Boylan and Bennett is not unrelated to his non-sexual degrading, humiliating and controlling treatment of other subordinates, or to his more generalized sense of entitlement and impunity in the exercise of his own power. Rather, the sexually harassing behavior that Cuomo allegedly directed towards Boylan and Bennett seems to be an extension of his pattern of manipulation and degradation more broadly. Sexual harassment is its own phenomenon with its own dynamics, but it is also part of a spectrum of abusive behaviors alleged against the governor, all of which stem from the same origin: his desire to assert his own power by degrading those around him.
There have been widespread calls for an investigation into the women’s claims, but little agreement about what that investigation should look like. Cuomo seems weak-willed and indecisive about how the allegations will be treated, asserting authority over the future investigation that he does not have and changing his position in response to pushback. First, Cuomo called for an investigation, but named as his preferred investigator a former federal judge with close ties to his administration. When that choice was criticized, he said that he would ask the elected attorney general, Letitia James, to appoint an investigator in concert with the chief justice of the state supreme court, a gubernatorial appointee. When James rejected this idea, Cuomo backed off again, conceding that the attorney general alone had the authority to appoint an investigator. Why the governor has become aware of the powers of the attorney general’s office only now has not been made clear.
Under mounting pressure, Cuomo issued a statement on Sunday night that can’t quite be characterized as an apology. Cuomo asserts that his behavior was well-intentioned and merely socially clumsy, casting himself in the role of the affable but incompetent man who harasses women by accident – a trope that the writer Lili Loofbourow has identified as “the myth of the male bumbler”. But this version of events strains credulity, if for no other reason than that it undersells Cuomo’s own skills. As a politician with a long career in the public eye, the governor is adept at tailoring his own message and anticipating how it will be received.
Read more here: Moira Donegan – The Cuomo sexual harassment claims appear to follow a disturbing pattern
If you are unsure how New York governor Andrew Cuomo has gone in the space of a year from being a national voice of reason on the Covid-19 pandemic to facing calls for his resignation, Miranda Bryant in New York breaks down for us the allegations he faces:
The governor was first accused of sexual harassment by former aide Lindsey Boylan in December, and she gave further details last week. In a Medium post she claimed he subjected her to an unwanted kiss and made comments about her appearance, allegations which Cuomo has denied.
On Saturday, a second former aide, Charlotte Bennett, 25, also accused the governor of sexual harassment. She alleged in the New York Times that Cuomo asked her about her sex life, including whether she had ever had sex with older men, and made comments that she interpreted as assessing her interest in an affair. Cuomo has said he wanted to mentor her.
Separately, his administration was forced to revise its figures for nursing home deaths after it was revealed they were severely undercounted by thousands. He was also accused of threatening to “destroy” the Democratic assemblyman Ron Kim over the scandal, which a Cuomo adviser has denied. There is a federal inquiry into the nursing home deaths.
Following the sexual harassment allegations, New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, said on Monday that she had received a formal referral from the executive chamber which gave her the authority to “move forward with an independent investigation into allegations of sexual harassment claims made against Governor Cuomo”. She said the investigation’s findings would be made public in a report.
Read more of Miranda Bryant’s explainer here: What allegations does Andrew Cuomo face and could they bring him down?
Sanders vows again to force Senate vote on $15 minimum wage
Another point of contention in the $1.9 trillion Covid economic package is the move to raise the federal minimum wage to $15. It has been set at $7.25 since 2009. Last week Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough ruled that the increase could not feature as part of the Covid bill. Senator Bernie Sanders is not having it. He said yesterday that her ruling should be ignored:
My personal view is that the idea that we have a Senate staffer, a high-ranking staffer, deciding whether 30 million Americans get a pay raise or not is nonsensical. We have got to make that decision, not a staffer who’s unelected, so my own view is that we should ignore the rulings, the decision of the parliamentarian.
Given the enormous crises facing this country and the desperation of working families, we have got to as soon as possible end the filibuster. We cannot have a minority of members define what the American people want.
To the best of my knowledge, there will be a vote on the minimum wage, and we’ll see what happens. I intend to offer the bill that will raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. If we fail in this legislation, I will be back. We are going to raise that minimum wage very shortly to $15 an hour.
President Joe Biden is involved in intense diplomacy within the Democratic party this week on the progress of his much-vaunted $1.9 trillion Covid rescue package. Getting it passed will be a crucial early sign of how effective his presidency will be. Overnight Erica Werner and Jeff Stein at the Washington Post outlined the effort he is putting in:
Democrats don’t have a vote to spare in the Senate, but several moderate-leaning senators have raised concerns about the structure of unemployment insurance benefits and Biden’s plan to send $350 billion to state and local governments, among other issues.
Biden convened a group of these Democrats on a conference call Monday afternoon, the first in a days-long outreach campaign that will also include calling into the weekly Senate Democratic lunch on Tuesday and addressing the House Democratic caucus on Wednesday evening.
Among the policies discussed at the meeting included tightening income eligibility for the $1,400 stimulus payments. House Democrats added new restrictions to the payments for affluent Americans but ultimately rejected proposals to prevent single Americans earning between $50,000 and $75,000 from receiving the stimulus payments.
The White House and congressional Democrats are staring down a 14 March deadline when enhanced unemployment benefits will expire unless the relief legislation is signed into law first. The House passed the bill on Saturday, allowing just two weeks to get it through the Senate.
Read more here: Washington Post – Biden works to unify Senate Democrats on $1.9 trillion relief bill
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Biden finance picks Gary Gensler and Rohit Chopra to face Senate banking committee hearing
Christopher Wray isn’t the only person facing a questioning in Congress today. Joe Biden’s nominees to head two key financial watchdogs will be questioned by lawmakers today on how they plan to tackle racial and income inequality, climate change, fintech regulation, cryptocurrencies, corporate enforcement and other issues.
Gary Gensler, the White House’s nominee to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and Rohit Chopra, nominated to be director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), will appear before the Democratic-led Senate banking committee.
Progressives see the agencies as key to advancing policy priorities on climate change and social justice and expect the pair, both experienced corporate regulators, to take a tough line on Wall Street. Reuters report that Republicans have criticized Biden for bowing to leftists and have warned that Gensler and Chopra will be divisive if confirmed to the positions.
“These are both going to be key officials setting financial policy for Team Biden. For Gensler, the focus will be on investor protection and how the SEC should respond to GameStop-related market volatility. For Chopra, it will be about his vision for the agency and his enforcement priorities,” said Jaret Seiberg, an analyst at Cowen Washington Research Group.
In prepared remarks posted on Monday, the two nominees vowed to be diligent stewards of the watchdogs without delving into specifics.
As head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Gensler implemented new swaps trading rules created by Congress in 2010 in response to the global financial crisis, developing a reputation as a tough operator willing to stand up to powerful Wall Street interests.
Currently a commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission, where he campaigned for tougher consumer privacy and enforcement penalties, Chopra helped establish the CFPB, which was formally launched in 2011.
Democrats will want to know Chopra’s plans for reviving the agency after the Trump administration weakened enforcement and several rules. Republicans are likely to query him on whether the CFPB overstepped its authority in the past.
Chopra will also likely be asked about gaps in minorities’ access to credit, exorbitant lending rates and abusive debt-collection practices, analysts said.
FBI director Christopher Wray to testify over Capitol insurrection
FBI director Christoper Wray will be up before the Senate judiciary committee at 10am today (1500 GMT) in Washington DC, where the topic of discussion will be “the 6 January insurrection, domestic terrorism, and other threats”. Kevin Johnson at USA Today notes that:
The last time Christopher Wray testified before a congressional committee, the FBI director offered a now-prescient warning of the threat posed by domestic extremists.
“Trends may shift, but the underlying drivers for domestic violent extremism – such as perceptions of government or law enforcement overreach, sociopolitical conditions, racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, misogyny, and reactions to legislative actions – remain constant,” Wray said in a written statement to the Senate Homeland Security Committee.
Six months later, the director returns to the Senate after the deadly Capitol assault that involved some of the very classes of extremists featured in Wray’s stark warning in September.
He will be facing a committee that includes those sceptical of the FBI’s performance in countering that threat. Last week the committee’s chairman Sen Richard Durbin said that “Unfortunately, the FBI appears to have taken steps in recent years that minimize the threat of white supremacist and far-right violence.”
Johnson writes that “Wray is expected to be pressed by lawmakers on an array of questions, from law enforcement’s response to the 6 January siege and how the bureau shared intelligence before the attack to its capacity to deal with a domestic terror threat that has now outstripped the risk posed by international operatives.”
Updated
Welcome to our live coverage of US politics for Tuesday. Here’s a catch-up on where we are, and what we are expecting to see today.
- Congress continues its investigations into the events of 6 January, when a pro-Trump mob stormed the US capitol. FBI director Christopher Wray will testify before the Senate judiciary committee at 10am EST (1500 GMT).
- CDC director Rochelle Walensky warned that a recent increase in coronavirus cases indicated a “fourth surge” could occur before a majority of the US is vaccinated.
- The Senate will take up the coronavirus relief bill “this week,” majority leader Chuck Schumer announced.
- Joe Biden has got two key events in his diary for today – both Covid-related. At 1.10pm EST (1810 GMT) he will participate in a meeting by phone with Senate Democrats, where the progress of the $1.9 trillion rescue package will be discussed. He will then deliver remarks about the coronavirus pandemic at 4:15pm.
- There were 57,439 new coronavirus cases recorded in the US yesterday, and the total death toll rose to 514,291, with 1,431 further fatalities.
- New York governor Andrew Cuomo is under increased pressure to resign over sexual harassment claims.
- Miguel Cardona, a former public school teacher and the first Latino to serve as education commissioner for the state of Connecticut was confirmed as the next US education secretary.
- The White House press briefing from Jen Psaki will be at 12:30pm today.
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