Evening summary
That’s all from me today. Here’s a rundown of the day’s biggest politics stories:
- The supreme court will take up a case challenging Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban. The case will present an opportunity for the court’s newly fortified conservative majority to reconsider Roe v Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that established the right to abortion access.
- The expanded child tax credit benefits included in the coronavirus relief package will start being distributed in July, the White House announced. The new benefits will send up to $300 a child to American families each month, and the payments are expected to help cut the country’s child poverty rate nearly in half.
- At least 200 Palestinians, including 59 children, have been killed after a week of attacks between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Eight adults and two children in Israel have also been among the victims of the violence. A number of senior US officials, including the Senate majority leader. Chuck Schumer, have called for a ceasefire to the rocket attacks.
- Joe Biden expressed mild “support” for a ceasefire in a call with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, but stopped short of demanding an immediate end to the violence. The White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, said today, “Our approach is through quiet, intensive diplomacy, and that’s where we feel we can be most effective.”
- The Biden administration will send 20m doses of US-approved coronavirus vaccines to foreign countries by the end of June. The shipments are in addition to the 60m doses of AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccines that the US has already promised to foreign allies, meaning the administration will ship 80m doses abroad over the next six weeks. Announcing the news this afternoon, Joe Biden said, “Our nation is going to be the arsenal of vaccines for the rest of the world.”
- Coronavirus cases are declining in all 50 US states for the first time since the pandemic started. By tomorrow, about 60% of American adults will have received at least their first coronavirus vaccine dose. States are also continuing to relax coronavirus-related restrictions, with New York becoming the latest state to drop its mask mandate for fully vaccinated residents.
- Joe Biden and Kamala Harris released their tax returns in a return to the tradition that Donald Trump scorned.
Updated
States are continuing to adjust to the new CDC guidance on masks.
Earlier today, New York governor Andrew Cuomo announced that fully vaccinated New Yorkers can stop wearing masks indoors on Wednesday, 19 May.
Washington DC mayor Muriel Bowser lifted the district’s mask mandate on Monday as well, according to the Washington Post.
But California officials said Monday that that the state will keep its mask rules in place until 15 June in order to allow people and businesses to adjust, and to ensure that the case rate stays low, according to the AP.
“This four week period will give Californians time to prepare for this change, while we continue the relentless focus on delivering vaccines particularly to underserved communities and those that were hard hit throughout this pandemic,” said Dr Mark Ghaly, the state’s health director.
CA has now administered over 35 MILLION vaccines.
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) May 17, 2021
We will implement the new CDC mask guidelines on 6/15, when we fully reopen our economy.
Protect yourself. Protect your loved ones. Get vaccinated.
Governor Gavin Newsom had previously announced 15 June as the target date for fully reopening the state’s economy.
Statewide, approximately 15.6m people (49% of the adult population) have been fully vaccinated, and another 4.7m are partially vaccinated.
Tennessee governor Bill Lee has signed an anti-transgender bathroom bill into law, in the latest attack on trans rights in a Republican-controlled state this year, the AP reports.
The bill would allow students, parents and employees to sue schools “for all psychological, emotional, and physical harm suffered” if the school allows a trans person to use a bathroom or locker room while someone else is using it.
Republican legislators across the country have unleashed an unprecedented attack on trans rights this year. Most of the bills have targeted trans youth, seeking to ban them from playing sports or from accessing the gender-affirming care that is supported by all the relevant medical association in the US supports.
Most states have avoided repeating the 2015 push to ban transgender people from accessing the bathroom, however. After North Carolina enacted such a ban in 2016, the state faced a boycott by sports leagues, corporations and artists that resulted in the loss of billions of dollars.
The ACLU of Tennessee said the bill was unconstitutional.
“Transgender students should be treated with respect and dignity, just like everyone else,” said the group’s executive director, Hedy Weinberg, in a statement. “Governor Lee’s decision to sign this bill sends the opposite message – that students should be able to discriminate against a group of their classmates by avoiding sharing public spaces with them, and sue their schools if they are prevented from doing so.”
The bathroom bill is just one of several anti-trans bills to pass the Tennessee legislature this year, the AP reported. Lee previously signed a bill to ban trans athletes from playing middle or high school girls sports, and a bill requiring schools to alert parents 30 days ahead of lessons about sexual orientation or gender identity.
Lee has not yet decided whether to sign bills to ban gender-affirming treatment for trans youth or requiring businesses to post a sign if they allow transgender people to use bathrooms or changing rooms.
Updated
The Guardian’s voting rights reporter Sam Levine on the latest developments in Arizona’s election audit:
Arizona Republicans are overseeing a “grift disguised as an audit,” the chairman of the Maricopa county board of supervisors said on Monday, just before officials released a blistering letter refuting accusations the county was hiding information from auditors.
The comments from Jack Sellers, a Republican and the chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, marked the latest shot in a closely-watched fight in an unprecedented review of the 2.1m ballots cast in Maricopa county in 2020. Even though the county conducted multiple audits affirming the results of the 2020 race, the Arizona senate, controlled by Republicans are conducting their own audit of the vote. The contractor the senate hired to oversee the audit is a company called Cyber Ninjas that has little experience in elections and whose CEO has voiced support for conspiracy theories that the 2020 election was stolen.
Last week, the Arizona senate accused county officials of deleting files on hardware and asking them to hand over passwords to routers. The auditors also alleged that there were discrepancies between the number of ballots the county said were on boxes and what was actually counted.
Maricopa county said in its letter Monday the claims were “are false, defamatory, and beneath the dignity of the Senate.” The county did not delete any data from the server it handed over to the auditors in April, the county said. Cyber Ninjas had only provided proof that its workers were unable to locate data, not that anything was deleted. There could be numerous explanations for this, the county wrote, suggesting that workers may have improperly executed their search or copied it in such a way that was unreadable.
“Regardless, the failure of your so called “auditors” to locate data files on the copy they made of the County’s server speaks more to their ineptitude than it does to the integrity and actions of our dedicated public employees who effectively and accurately run the elections in the fourth largest county in the United States,” the county wrote.
County officials also said Cyber Ninjas were misreading the sheets that have the total number of ballots and in some cases. The number on the sheets Cyber Ninjas referenced reflect the total number of ballots that were submitted for tabulation, but there may have been ballots that were not readable by tabulators, which could explain the discrepancy.
Maricopa county says Cyber Ninjas is just straight miscounting ballots https://t.co/riK3xBi6l3 pic.twitter.com/vM5Wa9XjnX
— Sam Levine (@srl) May 17, 2021
In another instance, Cyber Ninjas claimed there were 218 ballots in a batch that should have had just 200. Maricopa county officials said they checked tabulation records and were confident there were 200 ballots in the box, suggesting auditors had just miscounted. An audit observer with the secretary of state’s office told the Guardian earlier this month she was concerned there were not quality checks to ensure that data entry workers were correctly inputting data without typos.
The county also blasted auditors for requesting access both to voting machine equipment and county routers. Giving the auditors access to routers, the county said, would put sensitive law enforcement operations at risk. It also said the passwords to election equipment the auditors wanted were not needed to run elections and that only the equipment vendor, Dominion voting systems, had them.
“We cannot give you a password that we do not possess any more than we can give you the formula for Coca Cola. We do not have it; we have no legal right to acquire it; and so, we cannot give it to you,” they wrote.
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris released their tax returns Monday, in what the White House called a continuation of “an almost uninterrupted tradition”.
Biden and his wife, Jill Biden, reported a joint income of $606,336 and paid $157,414 in federal income tax, a 25.9% rate.
Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, reported a joint income of $1,695,225 and paid $621,893 in federal income tax, a 36.7% rate.
Both couples also paid state taxes.
According to Bloomberg News reporter Jennifer Epstein, Biden’s 2020 income was “dramatically” lower than prior years, as he stopped accepting speaking engagements in order to campaign for president.
SCOOP: President Biden’s income fell dramatically to $607,336 in 2020 as he dropped lucrative speaking engagements to campaign, but he still earned enough to pay the higher tax rates he’s proposed for wealthy people. The Bidens paid $157,414 in federal income tax, 25.9%.
— Jennifer Epstein (@jeneps) May 17, 2021
What to make of Joe Biden’s “support for a ceasefire” in a call with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu?
My colleague Julian Borger describes the readout of the call as a “mildly worded statement, supporting but not demanding a ceasefire”. The statement also did not suggest that the ceasefire should begin immediately, Julian notes.
Biden expresses support for ceasefire on call with Netanyahu
Joe Biden “expressed his support for a ceasefire” and “encouraged Israel to make every effort to ensure the protection of innocent civilians” in a phone conversation with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu today, the White House said.
The White House readout of President Biden's call this afternoon with Prime Minister Netanyahu: "He encouraged Israel to make every effort to ensure the protection of innocent civilians." pic.twitter.com/oC8ttM27Ea
— Daniel Strauss (@DanielStrauss4) May 17, 2021
According to the White House readout of the call, Biden “discussed US engagement with Egypt and other partners” toward achieving a ceasefire. He also “welcomed efforts to address intercommunal violence” and “discussed progress in Israel’s military operations against Hamas and other terrorist groups in Gaza”.
Earlier today, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer joined a bipartisan call for a ceasefire in Gaza, following dozens of Democratic senators.
But the Biden administration seemed wary of such calls earlier Monday, with White House press secretary Jen Psaki responding to a question about the ceasefire by saying they were focused on “quiet, intensive diplomacy.”
Two hundred Palestinians, including 59 children, have been killed over the past week as Israel launched airstrikes on Gaza. Ten people in Israel, including two children, have also been killed.
Read the latest report by my colleagues in Gaza and Jerusalem here:
Updated
The number two official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will retire this summer, in the latest departure for the public health agency.
Anne Schuchat, the principal deputy director of the CDC, confirmed to the Washington Post that she will step down from the agency after 33 years “for a retirement that I hope will allow more time for creative passions.”
On Friday another longtime CDC official, Nancy Messonnier, also announced her resignation. In February 2020, Messonier famously warned, “It’s not a question of if this will happen, but when this will happen,” about the coronaviruses spread across the US, a statement that prompted a massive backlash from Donald Trump.
Schuchat was also targeted by Trump. Officials told the Post that they were concerned that her departure may dampen the morale of the agency, which was placed under extraordinary pressure by the Trump administration.
Andrew Cuomo, the New York governor, will earn $5.1m from his book about the coronavirus pandemic, the embattled politician revealed in financial disclosures Monday.
Cuomo was paid a $3.1m advance for the book, American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the Covid-19 Pandemic, and will receive an additional $2m over the next two years, according to the AP.
The governor’s spokesman said he had donated $500,000 to the United Way of New York State and would put the rest in a trust for his adult daughters.
The book has been something of an embarrassment for the governor, who oversaw one of the worst outbreaks in the world in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, but received praise from the press for his media briefings.
It has sold just 50,000 copies, according to the New York Times. More than 52,000 New Yorkers have died of Covid-19.
“Last June, millions of New Yorkers were struggling to keep their families safe, and thousands of seniors were struggling to survive in the state’s nursing homes, while the governor was having his staffers write a book that would make him millions off of the still-raging public health crisis,” the state director of the Working Families Party, Sochie Nnaemeka, told the AP.
News of Cuomo’s coronavirus cash-in comes as the governor faces multiple investigations. The state attorney general is investigating allegations of sexual harassment from multiple women. The FBI is investigating whether Cuomo and his aides covered up the true number of deaths from Covid-19 among New York’s nursing home residents.
Updated
Hello everyone this is Julia Carrie Wong in Oakland, California picking up the politics blog for the rest of your Monday afternoon. Stay tuned for more news...
Today so far
That’s it from me today. My west coast colleague, Julia Carrie Wong, will take over the blog for the next few hours.
Here’s where the day stands so far:
- The supreme court will take up a case challenging Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban. The case will present an opportunity for the court’s newly fortified conservative majority to reconsider Roe v Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that established the right to abortion access.
- The expanded child tax credit benefits included in the coronavirus relief package will start being distributed in July, the White House announced. The new benefits will send up to $300 per child to American families each month, and the payments are expected to help cut the country’s child poverty rate nearly in half.
- The Biden administration will send 20 million doses of US-approved coronavirus vaccines to foreign countries by the end of June. The shipments are in addition to the 60 million doses of AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccines that the US has already promised to foreign allies, meaning the administration will ship 80 million doses abroad over the next six weeks. Announcing the news this afternoon, Joe Biden said, “Our nation is going to be the arsenal of vaccines for the rest of the world.”
- Coronavirus cases are declining in all 50 US states for the first time since the pandemic started. By tomorrow, about 60% of American adults will have received at least their first coronavirus vaccine dose. States are also continuing to relax coronavirus-related restrictions, with New York becoming the latest state to drop its mask mandate for fully vaccinated residents.
- At least 200 Palestinians, including 59 children, have been killed after a week of attacks between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Eight adults and two children in Israel have also been among the victims of the violence. A number of senior US officials, including Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, have called for a ceasefire to the rocket attacks, but the White House has not yet echoed those demands. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said today, “Our approach is through quiet, intensive diplomacy, and that’s where we feel we can be most effective.”
Julia will have more coming up, so stay tuned.
200 Palestinians killed in a week, officials say as Gaza violence continues
The Guardian’s Hazem Balousha in Gaza and Oliver Holmes in Jerusalem report:
Two hundred Palestinians, including 59 children, have been killed during a week of attacks in Gaza, health officials in the territory have said, as Benjamin Netanyahu signalled Israel’s bombardment would rage on despite mounting global pressure to stop the bloodshed.
Early on Monday, warplanes launched more heavy airstrikes on Gaza City, rocking apartment blocks and sending fireballs into the air. Israel said it had “struck 110 targets” overnight, including in a densely populated neighbourhood.
It was unclear how many people might have been killed. During the past week, Israeli attacks have destroyed a health clinic, hit the home of an aid worker, killed two doctors, destroyed high-rise residential towers, blown up a mattress factory and flattened the offices of international news organisations.
Israel says its strikes target militants. Hamas, the Islamist group that rules inside the strip, has stationed its fighters in and fired rockets from civilian areas. Ten people in Israel, including two children, have been killed by militants, who have launched over 3,000 rockets during the past week.
President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi of Egypt, which has long acted as a mediator between Israel and Hamas, said on Monday a ceasefire could be within reach. “Hope still exists that a collective action could end the conflict,” he told reporters.
Updated
Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer’s comments in support of a Gaza ceasefire are even more notable in comparison to the much more muted response from the White House.
Asked why the Biden administration has not yet come out in favor of a ceasefire, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said today, “The prism we are making all of our decisions through is: How can we help bring an end to the violence and bring an end to de-escalate the situation on the ground?
“And our calculation at this point is that having those conversations behind the scenes, weighing in with our important strategic partnership we have with Israel, also with other countries in the region, is the most constructive approach we can take.”
Psaki added, “Our approach is through quiet, intensive diplomacy, and that’s where we feel we can be most effective.”
WH Press Sec. Jen Psaki on why the U.S. isn’t yet calling for a ceasefire:
— The Recount (@therecount) May 17, 2021
“Our approach is quiet, intensive diplomacy.” pic.twitter.com/0JvKELddrM
Updated
Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer has joined a bipartisan call for a ceasefire in Gaza, as airstrikes continue to cause devastation in the region.
Schumer told reporters on Capitol Hill that he agrees with a statement put out last night by Democratic senator Chris Murphy and Republican senator Todd Young calling for a ceasefire.
“I want to see a ceasefire reached quickly and mourn the loss of life,” the Democratic leader said, per CNN.
Chuck Schumer, long-time defender of Israel, joined a bipartisan call for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) May 17, 2021
"I agree with the statement put out by Sens. Murphy and Young last night in its entirety. I want to see a ceasefire reach quickly and mourn the loss of life.”
In their statement last night, Murphy and Young, the chairman and ranking member of the Senate foreign relations subcommittee on Near East, South Asia, Central Asia and counterterrorism, said Israel and Hamas must deescalate their attacks.
“We are encouraged by reports that the parties are exploring a ceasefire. We hope that this ceasefire can be reached quickly and that additional steps can be taken to preserve a two-state future,” the two senators said.
Dozens of Democratic senators, led by Jon Ossoff of Georgia, have also put out a statement calling for an immediate ceasefire.
Updated
The US supreme court agreed on Monday to consider a major challenge to reproductive rights, saying it will take up Mississippi’s bid to enforce a ban on almost all abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy.
It will be the first abortion case to come before the court since the confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a devout Catholic, gave conservatives a 6-3 majority. It could lead to the landmark Roe v Wade precedent being gutted after nearly half a century.
The Mississippi law, enacted in 2018, was blocked by lower courts as inconsistent with supreme court precedent that protects a woman’s right to obtain an abortion before the foetus can survive outside her womb.
When the only abortion clinic in Mississippi, Jackson Women’s Health Organization, sued to try to block the measure, a federal judge in 2018 ruled against the state. In 2019 the New Orleans-based fifth US circuit court of appeals reached the same conclusion, prompting the state to appeal to the supreme court.
The court will hear arguments in the case in its next term, which starts in October, and may not arrive at a decision until the spring or summer of 2022 – setting up a politically explosive showdown months before the midterm elections for Congress.
Former president Donald Trump’s transformation of the judiciary included the appointment of three supreme court justices, most recently with Barrett replacing the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal champion of reproductive rights.
Steve Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas, told CNN: “This will be, by far, the most important abortion case the court will have heard since the Casey decision in 1992.
A pair of senators, Democrat Joe Manchin and Republican Lisa Murkowski, have sent a letter to congressional leaders calling for a bipartisan reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act.
In their letter, Manchin and Murkowski that the supreme court’s decision in the 2013 case Shelby v Holder “effectively gutted one of the federal government’s most effective tools to preserve confidence in our nation’s elections”.
The two senators argue that the state laws passed since 2013 demonstrate the danger of not reauthorizing the VRA.
“Protecting Americans’ access to democracy has not been a partisan issue for the past 56 years, and we must not allow it to become one now,” Manchin and Murkowski write.
“We urge you to join us in calling for the bipartisan reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act through regular order. We can do this. We must do this.”
Manchin announced in an interview last week that he does not support the For the People Act, Democrats’ broader election reform bill, but he did call for reauthorizing the VRA.
But as of now, it’s not clear whether a VRA reauthorization has the 60 votes necessary to overcome a Senate filibuster.
Giuliani complains about treatment by prosecutors
Lawyers for former New York mayor, candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, lawyer to President Donald Trump and victim of Borat Rudy Giuliani complained on Monday that federal prosecutors are treating him “as if he was the head of a drug cartel or a terrorist”.
Giuliani’s attorneys made the claim in a letter to a Manhattan judge which was made public on Monday.
In the words of the Associated Press, recent raids on Giuliani’s residence and office “pertain to a federal investigation examining Giuliani’s interactions with Ukrainian figures and whether he violated a federal law that governs lobbying on behalf of foreign countries or entities without registering with the US government”.
Giuliani’s exertions in and in regard to Ukraine, seeking dirt on Joe Biden, contributed to the first of Trump’s two impeachments, both of which he survived when enough Republican senators stayed loyal.
The AP continues: “Giuliani’s lawyers say the judge should wait to appoint someone to oversee a review of seized materials until deciding whether the government has acted constitutionally and legally in pursuit of the materials. They cited their ‘serious concern over the broad and sweeping nature of the searches’.
“… Giuliani’s lawyers wrote that the surprise raids were not necessary because Giuliani had made clear in 2019 that he would answer any questions without restrictions, except for privileged matters, as long as his lawyers knew what subjects would be discussed.
“They said prosecutors instead ‘simply chose to treat a distinguished lawyer as if he was the head of a drug cartel or a terrorist, in order to create maximum prejudicial coverage of both Giuliani, and his most well known client - the former President of the United States’.”
A spokesperson for prosecutors declined comment to the AP, while an attorney for Giuliani, Robert Costello, said prosecutors have another week to respond.
Here’s David Smith:
New York drops mask mandate for the fully vaccinated
New Yorkers who have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19 can stop wearing masks even indoors from Wednesday.
Governor Andrew Cuomo announced the change on Monday, from Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan, one of the venues which will reopen to vaccinated audiences.
“Let’s get back to life,” Cuomo said. “If you are vaccinated, you are safe. No masks. No social distancing.”
Cuomo said the state would adopt CDC guidance issued last week – which has been contentious to say the least. (Reporting from a highly non-representative and extremely boujee co-op in Washington Heights, I can confirm that the weekend just gone featured rather heated arguments in the kids’ playground about whether masks should be worn. The kids got on with playing while the adults argued. It was depressing.)
Unvaccinated and immunocompromised New Yorkers will still have to wear masks and everyone will need one in schools, nursing homes and on public transport.
As the AP reports, “new cases of the virus have been plummeting in New York in recent weeks and are down 78% since the end of March.
“Radio City Music Hall will reopen in June at full capacity but only for vaccinated people with a red carpet event for the TriBeCa Film Festival. The city’s two basketball teams, the Knicks and the Nets, will be allowed to expand attendance capacity for playoff games, with a majority of seats set aside for people who have gotten vaccines.
“As for the subway’s full reopening, the first morning of uninterrupted train service went well, Metropolitan Transportation Authority Chairman Pat Foye said. The system was shut down between 1am and 5am starting 30 April 2020, so trains and stations could be disinfected. The overnight closure was scaled back to 2am to 4am in February.”
Also, here’s a very New York touch to the good news about the subway, lest anyone get too delighted: Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city would add 250 police officers to the subway system to battle a spike in crime, including several slashings last week. Foye said the MTA would add 100 officers and 100 private security contractors.
After concluding his prepared remarks on the coronavirus pandemic and vaccination efforts, Joe Biden took one question from a reporter.
The reporter asked whether the president would support calling for a ceasefire in Gaza as violence between Israel and Hamas escalates.
Biden noted he will be speaking to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in an hour, and he said he may have an update after their conversation.
US to send 80 million vaccine doses overseas by end of next month, Biden says
Joe Biden confirmed that his administration will send 20 million doses of US-approved coronavirus vaccines overseas by the end of June.
In combination with the 60 million doses of AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine that the US has already promised to foreign allies, the Biden administration will send 80 million vaccine doses abroad over the next six weeks.
“Our nation is going to be the arsenal of vaccines for the rest of the world,” Biden said.
The president noted that the US will be sending more vaccine doses to foreign countries than either China or Russia has, and he emphasized his administration will not be asking for “favors” from allies in exchange for the vaccines.
Coronavirus cases down in all US states while vaccinations rise, Biden says
Joe Biden celebrated the news that coronavirus cases are decreasing in all 50 US states for the first time since the pandemic started, marking a crucial moment in the country’s fight against the virus.
The president also announced that tomorrow’s data will show 60% of American adults have received at least one coronavirus vaccine dose.
Biden has set a goal of getting 70% of American adults at least partially vaccinated by July 4, and the president emphasized that unvaccinated Americans still face the risk of infection.
“Ultimately, those who are not vaccinated may end up paying the price,” Biden said. “We’re not done fighting this virus.”
Joe Biden is now delivering remarks on the coronavirus pandemic and vaccination efforts at the White House.
The president started his speech by touting his administration’s announcement that the enhanced child tax credit benefits, which were included in the coronavirus relief package, will start going out to American families in July.
The announcement comes on Tax Day, the deadline for Americans to file their federal tax returns.
“As you file your taxes today, know that your tax cut is coming,” Biden said.
The president noted that families will start getting monthly payments on July 15th and the 15th of every month until the benefit runs out. Families will receive up to $300 per child each month.
Biden said the money sent a message to America’s working families that “help is here”.
Bloomberg News was the first to report on Joe Biden’s plans to send 20 million doses of US-approved coronavirus vaccines to foreign countries.
Bloomberg has these details as well:
Biden will also announce that he is putting Jeff Zients, who has served as the White House coronavirus response coordinator, in charge of his effort to beat back the pandemic globally, the official said. Zients will work with the National Security Council and other agencies to steer doses abroad. ...
The Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines are authorized for use in the U.S., but AstraZeneca’s shot is not. It wasn’t immediately clear which countries would receive U.S. shipments.
Mexico and Canada have already received doses of the U.S. AstraZeneca stockpile, and Pfizer has begun shipping doses of its U.S.-produced vaccine to countries including Mexico, Canada and Uruguay, apart from the Biden administration’s plans to share doses.
Today so far
The White House press briefing has now ended. Here’s where the day stands so far:
- The supreme court will take up a case challenging Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban. The case will present an opportunity for the court’s newly fortified conservative majority to reconsider Roe v Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that established the right to abortion access.
- The expanded child tax credit benefits included in the coronavirus relief package will start being distributed in July, the White House announced. The new benefits will send up to $300 per child to American families each month, and the payments are expected to help cut the country’s child poverty rate nearly in half.
- The Biden administration will send 20 million doses of US-approved coronavirus vaccines to foreign countries by the end of June. The shipments are in addition to the 60 million doses of AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccines that the US has already promised to foreign allies. Joe Biden will formally announce the news when he delivers his remarks on the coronavirus pandemic, which are expected to start at any moment.
The blog will have more details on Biden’s speech coming up, so stay tuned.
Jen Psaki said the White House will “soon” be releasing Joe Biden’s tax returns, although she did not specify whether it would be happening today.
Psaki says White House will "soon" be releasing President Biden's tax returns, even if he is being audited
— CBS News (@CBSNews) May 17, 2021
"We will continue to release the president's tax returns, as should be expected by every president of the United States." pic.twitter.com/oI19khoeCW
Asked whether Biden will be releasing his tax returns even if he is audited, the White House press secretary replied, “We will continue to release the president’s tax returns, as should be expected by every president of the United States.”
The response seemed to be an implicit criticism of Donald Trump, who refused to publicly release his tax returns because he claimed a long-running audit prevented him from doing so. (Many tax experts said that an audit would not block him from publicly releasing his returns.)
Biden to send 20 million doses of US-approved coronavirus vaccines abroad
Joe Biden will send 20 million doses of US-approved coronavirus vaccines to foreign countries by the end of June, Jen Psaki just announced.
Those 20 million doses are in addition to the 60 million doses of AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine that Biden had already pledged to send abroad, the White House press secretary said.
The president is expected to formally announce the deal in his remarks on the pandemic this afternoon.
Many US allies have called on the Biden administration to send more vaccine doses to other countries, noting that the pandemic will not truly come to an end until vaccines are widely available around the world.
Biden said last week that almost half of the world’s leaders have contacted his administration asking for help in getting access to more vaccine doses.
“I literally have, virtually 40% of the world leaders calling and asking, can we help them,” Biden said. “We’re going to try.”
US is engaged in 'quiet, intensive diplomacy' to bring end to Gaza violence, Psaki says
The White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, is now holding her daily briefing with reporters.
A reporter asked Psaki whether Joe Biden has reconsidered his comment from last week that Israel had not engaged in a “significant overreaction” as it continues to launch rocket attacks that have claimed hundreds of Palestinian lives.
Psaki replied that the president and his team are engaging in diplomatic negotiations to try to reduce the violence in Gaza, and she reiterated Biden’s statement that Israel has a “right to defend itself”.
“There needs to be a two-state solution over time,” Psaki said. “It is going to require both parties wanting to engage in that.”
Asked why the US is not joining other nations in calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, Psaki said the administration is engaging in “quiet, intensive diplomacy” to bring an end to the violence.
Updated
There were no cameras allowed inside the federal courtroom as Joel Greenberg entered his guilty plea, but a CNN reporter shared this sketch of Greenberg, an associate of Republican congressman Matt Gaetz, conferring with his lawyer.
No cameras in federal court but this is a sketch of Gaetz associate Joel Greenberg conferring with his defense attorney Fritz Scheller in hearing today where Greenberg admitted to soliciting a minor & paying her for sex. pic.twitter.com/OVEo7bxEGz
— Paula Reid (@PaulaReidCNN) May 17, 2021
A plane with a banner reading “Tick tock Matt Gaetz” flew over the Orlando courthouse where the Republican congressman’s associate, Joel Greenberg, just pleaded guilty to sex-trafficking.
Matt Gaetz attracted even more controversy over the weekend, after the Republican congressman compared the sex-trafficking allegations against him to legislative earmarks.
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R) in OH, ahead of his associate’s expected sex-trafficking guilty plea:
— The Recount (@therecount) May 17, 2021
“I am being falsely accused of exchanging money for naughty favors, yet Congress has reinstituted a process that legalizes the corrupt act of exchanging money for favors through earmarks.” pic.twitter.com/byj6zaiHSy
“I’m being falsely accused of exchanging money for naughty favors,” Gaetz said at the Ohio Political Summit on Saturday. “Yet, Congress has reinstituted a process that legalizes the corrupt act of exchanging money for favors, through earmarks, and everybody knows that that’s the corruption.”
At the risk of stating the obvious, there is absolutely no comparison between legislative earmarks and sex-trafficking.
Earmarks are a legal way for lawmakers to direct funds in bills toward their districts for specific projects, while sex-trafficking is a federal crime that can result in decades-long prison sentences.
Updated
Gaetz associate pleads guilty to sex-trafficking charge
Joel Greenberg, an associate of Republican congressman Matt Gaetz, has pleaded guilty to six federal criminal counts, including sex-trafficking of a 17-year-old girl.
Greenberg’s guilty plea may cause more legal trouble for Gaetz, who was already facing sex-trafficking allegations as well. (The Florida congressman has denied those accusations.)
The AP reports:
Joel Greenberg, a longtime associate of Gaetz, appeared in federal court in Orlando. He pleaded guilty to six of the nearly three dozen charges he faced, including sex trafficking of a minor, and he admitted that he had paid at least one underage girl to have sex with him and other men.
Gaetz was not mentioned in the plea agreement or during the court hearing. But Greenberg’s cooperation — as a key figure in the investigation and a close ally of Gaetz — may escalate the potential legal and political liability that the firebrand Florida congressman is facing.
Federal prosecutors are examining whether Gaetz and Greenberg paid underage girls or offered them gifts in exchange for sex, according to two people familiar with the matter. Investigators have also been looking at whether Gaetz and his associates tried to secure government jobs for some of the women, the people said. They are also scrutinizing Gaetz’s connections to the medical marijuana sector, including whether his associates sought to influence legislation Gaetz sponsored.
Gaza rocked by fresh airstrikes after Netanyahu vows to keep attacks at ‘full force’
The Guardian’s Oliver Holmes, Bethan McKernan, Julian Borger and agencies report:
Israeli warplanes have launched what appeared to be the heaviest airstrikes yet on Gaza City, hours after the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, signalled the bombardment would rage on.
The series of attacks early on Monday rocked the city from north to south for 10 minutes and was more intense, covered a broader area and lasted longer than the raids 24 hours earlier in which 42 Palestinians were killed – the deadliest single attack in the latest violence between Israel and the Hamas militant group that rules Gaza.
Local media reports said the main coastal road west of the city, security compounds and open spaces were among the targets hit early on Monday. The power distribution company said the airstrikes damaged a line feeding electricity from the only power plant to large parts of southern Gaza City. There were no immediate reports of injuries.
The Israeli army spokesperson’s office said the strikes targeted Hamas’s “underground military infrastructure”. As a result of the strike, “the underground facility collapsed, causing the civilian houses’ foundations above them to collapse as well, leading to unintended casualties”, it said.
On Sunday, air-raid sirens sounded for the seventh consecutive day across southern Israel as Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza launched more rocket attacks into the country – and reaching further – than in the entirety of the 2014 war.
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The selection of cases currently before the supreme court means that justices could theoretically create a constitutional right to carry a concealed firearm and overturn Roe v Wade by next June, just months before the 2022 midterms, as a writer for Slate notes.
I had expected the conservative justices to put off blockbuster cases until after the midterm elections to deprive Democrats of ammunition for court reform. But nope: SCOTUS is poised to create a constitutional right to concealed carry AND overturn Roe by June 2022.
— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) May 17, 2021
Mary Ziegler, a legal expert who specializes in the history of reproduction laws, said the Mississippi abortion case is a threat to Roe v Wade.
But she added that the case could also give the supreme court the opportunity to reconsider how it determines the legality of abortion bans, which could have vast implications for the country.
Everyone will interpret this (rightly) as a real threat to Roe. The alternative? That SCOTUS will jettison viability as the point at which bans are possible. And that could be almost as big of a deal. https://t.co/4WXXFn6uvP
— Mary Ziegler (@maryrziegler) May 17, 2021
The supreme court will likely hear arguments in the Mississippi abortion case this fall, setting up a decision for next year.
If the decision is announced in late June, which is when the court usually issues rulings in its most high-profile cases, the news would come about four months before the 2022 midterm elections.
The AP has more details on the Mississippi abortion case and how it will be a test of the supreme court’s newly fortified conservative majority:
The justices had put off action on the case for several months. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, an abortion-rights proponent, died just before the court’s new term began in October. Her replacement, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, is the most open opponent of abortion rights to join the court in decades.
Barrett is one of three appointees of former President Donald Trump on the Supreme Court. The other two, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, voted in dissent last year to allow Louisiana to enforce restrictions on doctors that could have closed two of the state’s three abortion clinics.
Chief Justice John Roberts, joined by Ginsburg and the other three liberal justices, said the restrictions were virtually identical to a Texas law the court struck down in 2016.
But that majority no longer exists, even if Roberts, hardly an abortion-rights supporter in his more than 15 years on the court, sides with the more liberal justices.
The supreme court will likely hear arguments in the Mississippi abortion case this fall, setting up a decision announcement sometime next year.
The 15-week abortion ban has so far been blocked by lower courts as inconsistent with previous supreme court decisions on the issue, including Roe v Wade.
Supreme court to take up major abortion case in opportunity to reconsider Roe
The supreme court has agreed to take up a case challenging a Mississippi law that bans most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
The case could give the majority-conservative court the chance to reconsider Roe v Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that established the right to access abortion.
The blog will have more coming up, so stay tuned.
BREAKING: The Supreme Court agrees to take up a major abortion case that will give the court an opportunity to reconsider Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The case involves the constitutionality of Mississippi’s ban on most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) May 17, 2021
There were initial concerns that the IRS would not be able to start sending the monthly child tax credit payments in July because of the demands of tax season and the rest of the coronavirus relief package.
However, IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig said at a Senate hearing last month that his agency was on track to meet the original timeline for distributing payments.
“We fully expect to launch in July. We expect to launch with payments going out on a monthly basis,” Rettig told senators.
But the IRS commissioner acknowledged there may be some troubleshooting that needs to be done to improve the portal built to aid distribution of the funds.
“It is going to be as user-friendly as possible,” Rettig said of the portal.
According to the treasury department, roughly 39 million American households will start receiving monthly payments from the enhanced child tax credit starting in July.
NEW: The first monthly payment of the expanded and newly-advanceable Child Tax Credit (CTC) from the American Rescue Plan will be made on July 15.
— Treasury Department (@USTreasury) May 17, 2021
Roughly 39 million households—covering 88% of children in the US—are slated to begin receiving monthly payments automatically.
The monthly payments are meant to help families with children budget with the tax credit in mind, rather than receiving the money as one lump sum.
The enhanced payments are phased out for married couples filing jointly who make more than $150,000 a year, heads of household who make more than $112,500 a year and any other single filers who make more than $75,000 a year.
The benefits are expected to cover about 88% of children in the US and will is expected to help reduce child poverty nearly in half across the country.
Updated
Child cash benefits from Covid relief bill to start in July
Greetings from Washington, live blog readers.
The White House has announced that the enhanced child tax credit benefits included in the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package will start being distributed in July.
With the benefits in effect, about 90% of Americans will receive monthly payments of up to $300 for each child in their families. The payments are expected to help significantly reduce child poverty.
“The American Rescue Plan is delivering critical tax relief to middle class and hard-pressed working families with children,” Joe Biden said in a statement celebrating the news.
The president also called on Congress to pass his American Families Plan to “ensure that working families will be able to count on this relief for years to come,” as the bill would make these benefits permanent.
“For working families with children, this tax cut sends a clear message: help is here,” Biden said.
The president will likely tout the news when he delivers remarks on the pandemic later today, so stay tuned for updates on that.
