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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Maanvi Singh (now), Lauren Aratani and Martin Belam (earlier)

House approves bill giving Dreamers a path to citizenship - as it happened

The House passed a bill that gives undocumented immigrants, including Dreamers, a path to citizenship.
The House passed a bill that gives undocumented immigrants, including Dreamers, a path to citizenship. Photograph: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

Summary

Here’s a recap of the day, from me and Lauren Aratani:

  • The House passed a bill to give undocumented immigrants, including Dreamers, path to citizenship. The House voted 228 to 197, largely along party lines, to set up a legal pathway to citizenship for about 2.5m.
  • Joe Biden said the US is on track to reach 100m administered vaccine doses by tomorrow, his 58th day in office. The president had initially set the goal of reaching 100m doses by his 100th day in office.
  • Vladimir Putin responded to comments Biden made last night calling Putin a killer. Putin said that people tend to view others as they see themselves and wished Biden good health.
  • Dr Anthony Fauci raised concerns about a potential surge of Covid-19 in the US even as the vaccine rollout continues. Fauci noted that in past surges, the vaccine had plateaued before inching up in numbers and surging. During Senate testimony, Fauci also got into a spar with Republican senator Rand Paul, who called wearing a mask “theater”.
  • Two Biden appointees were confirmed by the Senate today. Xavier Becerra was confirmed as health and human services secretary, the first Latino to serve in that role, while William Burns was confirmed as the new director of the CIA.

The woman seeking to unseat Republican extremist Marjorie Taylor Greene

“I’m taking on the queen of Qanon: Marjorie Taylor Greene,” reads one tweet from Holly McCormack. “Retweet if you think Marjorie Taylor Greene is an embarrassment to our country,” says another.

America’s midterm elections may be 20 months in the future, but a campaign is already under way to unseat the extremist Republican congresswoman and Donald Trump devotee. In a rural district of Georgia that Taylor Greene won last November with three-quarters of the vote, effectively unopposed after her Democratic opponent quit the race, no one thinks it is going to be easy.

But McCormack, 36, an insurance agent, singer-songwriter and Democrat, thinks her opponent’s far-right shock tactics have run their course. “People are sick of it,” she told the Guardian. “People are tired of the rhetoric and the division, and people are hungry for a real person who treats people well, and actually shows empathy with action and not words. She claims to be a Christian and then she shows us with her actions the hate.”

Taylor Greene, 46, has been throwing procedural wrenches in the works of Congress since she was stripped of her committee assignments last month for antisemitic and other inflammatory statements.

Read more:

Even if it were to pass through the Senate, The American Dream and Promise Act has limitations.

The act seeks to provide access to citizenship for more than 800,000 immigrants who are part of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca), which offered temporary protection from deportation to undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children.

But it includes provisions around criminal history that could bar some young immigrants from legal status if they have committed a misdemeanor, and give the Department of Homeland Security discretion over which youths can be excluded from the path to citizenship, based on alleged gang affiliation or dispositions in juvenile court.

“If we learned anything in 2020, it’s that the policing and mass incarceration systems in this country are fundamentally rigged against Black and Latinx people,” said Jacinta Gonzalez, senior campaign organizer for the advocacy group Mijente. The bill “is designed to strip access to Biden’s promise of immigration reform from people who have experienced police contact. Criminalization born of a racist system cannot be the measure by which we determine who belongs and who goes.”

Human Rights Watch and other groups have written to Democratic legislators asking them to strike provisions that would bar young immigrants who have been criminalized from becoming citizens. “The letter explains that the types of offenses that would bar otherwise eligible youth under the proposed bill are disproportionately imposed against youth of color,” Human Rights Watch said.

Updated

House passes bill to give undocumented immigrants, including Dreamers, path to citizenship

The House voted 228 to 197, largely along party lines, to set up a legal pathway to citizenship for about 2.5m undocumented immigrants, including Dreamers and immigrants who have fled war or disasters. Nine Republicans joined Democrats in support of the measure.

The House will vote on another bill today to grant legal status for undocumented farmworkers. Both measures passed in 2019, as well, with some Republican support – but the measures are likely to join a growing list of legislation that will hit a wall in the evenly divided Senate, where Republicans have vowed to block proposals with the filibuster.

The AP explains both bills:

The “Dreamer” bill would grant conditional legal status for 10 years to many immigrants up to age 18 who were brought into the U.S. illegally before this year. They’d have to graduate from high school or have equivalent educational credentials, not have serious criminal records and meet other conditions.

To attain legal permanent residence, often called a green card, they’d have to obtain a higher education degree, serve in the military or be employed for at least three years. Like all others with green cards, they could then apply for citizenship after five years.

The measure would also grant green cards to an estimated 400,000 immigrants with temporary protected status, which allows temporary residence to people who have fled violence or natural disasters in a dozen countries.

The other bill would let immigrant farm workers who’ve worked in the country illegally over the past two years — along their spouses and children — get certified agriculture worker status. That would let them remain in the U.S. for renewable 5 1/2-year periods.

To earn green cards, they would have to pay a $1,000 fine and work for up to an additional eight years, depending on how long they’ve already held farm jobs.

The legislation would also cap wage increases, streamline the process for employers to get H-2A visas that let immigrants work legally on farm jobs and phase in a mandatory system for electronically verifying that agriculture workers are in the U.S. legally.

Immigrant rights groups celebrated the news that the “Dreamers” bill passed. “This is a result of years of organizing and pressure from the immigrant rights movement, but we’ll continue to hold our celebration until the very end,” tweeted advocacy group Raices.

Cuomo scandal: sexual harassment rife in New York state capitol, female reporters say

Female reporters have said that sexual harassment is “as pervasive as air” in New York’s statehouse in Albany, amid Governor Andrew Cuomo’s harassment scandal.

Cuomo is facing allegations that he sexually harassed or behaved inappropriately towards several women, including former employees and at least one reporter. The claims include making the workplace uncomfortable for young women and one Cuomo aide accused him of groping her.

Cuomo has resisted calls for his resignation, denied the misconduct allegations and said he has never touched a woman inappropriately.

Female journalists who covered New York politics said the behavior described by former staffers is in keeping with what they experienced while reporting on his administration.

Last week, journalist Jessica Bakeman, who covered the New York statehouse, wrote an essay for New York Magazine accusing Cuomo of sexual harassment and said that his departure from office “will not end the legacy of sexual harassment in Albany”.

Bakeman described numerous instances of Cuomo touching her inappropriately during her years in Albany and said she was only able to speak out because she now worked in Florida.

“It wasn’t about sex,” Bakeman wrote. “It was about power. He wanted me to know that I was powerless, that I was small and weak, that I did not deserve what relative power I had: a platform to hold him accountable for his words and actions.”

Read more:

Native American communities make vaccines available for all Oklahoma residents

As Covid-19 infection rates tick up again in several states, indigenous communities in Oklahoma are reporting a different problem: not enough people to vaccinate.

Earlier this month, several Native American communities, including the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Osage and Choctaw, opened up free vaccinations to all Oklahoma residents, not just the hundreds of thousands of nation members spread across the midwestern state.

Increasing availability from the Indian Health Service of the three coronavirus vaccines currently approved in the US, Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson, also allowed the nations to push immunizations into more areas, many of them rural and remote.

Now, however, several nations are reporting they have supplies far in excess of demand.

“We’re running out of people to vaccinate,” Brian Hail, head of the Cherokee Nation’s vaccination program, told the New York Times this week. “We’re struggling to get people to come in.”

By midweek, the Cherokee program had administered more than 33,000 vaccinations at its nine distribution sites across Oklahoma. But on one day at the start of the week, the Times reported, 823 available appointments went unclaimed.

Read more:

Today so far

Here’s a recap of everything that’s happened today.

  • Joe Biden said the US is on track to reach 100m administered vaccine doses by tomorrow, his 58th day in office. The president had initially set the goal of reaching 100m doses by his 100th day in office.
  • Vladimir Putin responded to comments Biden made last night calling Putin a killer. Putin said that people tend to view others as they see themselves and wished Biden good health.
  • Dr Anthony Fauci raised concerns about a potential surge of Covid-19 in the US even as the vaccine rollout continues. Fauci noted that in past surges, the vaccine had plateaued before inching up in numbers and surging. During Senate testimony, Fauci also got into a spar with Republican senator Rand Paul, who called wearing a mask “theater”.
  • Two Biden appointees were confirmed by the Senate today. Xavier Becerra was confirmed as health and human services secretary, the first Latino to serve in that role, while William Burns was confirmed as the new director of the CIA.

Updated

A new Quinnipiac poll finds that less New Yorkers believe governor Andrew Cuomo should remain in office, though only a slightly higher percentage of people believe he should resign. Six women have come forward with sexual assault and harassment allegations against the governor, and Cuomo has also come under criticism for his mishandling of deaths in nursing homes during the pandemic.

Though Cuomo’s approval rating is the lowest it’s ever been at 39%, with 48% of voters disapproving of his performance, New Yorkers are split on whether their governor should resign

In a poll released this afternoon, 49% of New York voters said that Cuomo should not resign, down from 55% when the poll was last administered in the beginning of March. While 43% said that he should resign, that is only a 3% increase compared to the previous poll. A slight majority of voters (55%) said the governor should be impeached or removed from office.

The vast majority (74%) of those who took the poll said they agreed more with elected officials who say they will wait until the New York attorney general’s investigation into the sexual assault and harassment allegations compared to the elected officials who called for Cuomo’s immediate resignation.

Illinois and Maryland recently announced that within the next two months, all adults will be eligible to receive the Covid-19 vaccine, joining at least seven other states who said they can open up eligibility in March and April.

Illinois governor JB Pritzker said today that all residents 16 and older will be eligible to receive the vaccine starting 12 April. Meanwhile, Maryland’s governor, Larry Hogan, said on Tuesday that all adults should be eligible by 27 April.

Last week, Joe Biden set the ambitious goal of having all adults eligible for the vaccine by 1 May, a high task for states, which are responsible for creating their own vaccine rollout plans. At least five states, including Wisconsin, Virginia and North Carolina, said they will be able to meet that goal. Seven others, including Massachusetts, Michigan and Ohio, said they will be able to beat that goal and open eligibility in March or April.

According to CDC data, over 150m vaccine doses have been delivered around the country. Over 75m people have received at least one dose of the vaccine while 40m have been fully vaccinated.

The Senate just confirmed William Burns to be director of the CIA. Burns is the former deputy secretary of state in the Obama administration and has held multiple roles within the State Department.

While Burns’ nomination received widespread support from Democrats and Republicans, senator Ted Cruz had temporarily blocked what would have been a quick confirmation as Cruz was hoping to send a message to Biden over the Russia-Germany natural gas Nord Stream 2 pipelines, a controversial energy project that critics fear will give more political power to Russia.

In response to Cruz, secretary of state Antony Blinken said that there “is bicameral, bipartisan, and whole of government commitment in the United States to stopping Putin’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline.”

William Burns
William Burns Photograph: Tom Williams/AFP/Getty Images

Biden: US to reach 100m administered vaccine doses by Friday

Joe Biden is speaking now on the progress of the Covid-19 vaccine in the US. Biden spoke about setting the goal of 100m vaccine doses in his first 100 days of office and announced that tomorrow, on his 58th day in office, the US will have successfully administered 100m vaccine doses.

“That’s weeks ahead of schedule, and even with the setbacks we faced during the winter storms,” he said.

Biden said that 65% of those 65 or older have at least one dose of the vaccine while 36% have been fully vaccinated. He pointed out that the US has increased the pace of vaccine from 1m shots to 2.5m shots being administered a day, “outpacing the rest of the world significantly”.

Biden said he used the power of the Defense Production Act to speed up the production of critical materials needed to manufacture the vaccine. He reiterated that the US will have enough doses for all adult Americans by the end of May.

He recalled a trip he took to a vaccination site in Arizona.

“One of the nurses on that tour injecting people, giving vaccinations, said that each shot was like administering a dose of hope,” Biden said. “Behind these 100m shots are millions of lives changed when people receive that dose of hope.”

Updated

Joe Biden plans to nominate former Florida senator Bill Nelson to be the next administrator of NASA, according to the Washington Post

Nelson, a Democrat from Florida, is a long-time friend and supporter of Biden. He oversaw NASA’s space programs during his time in Congress. In 1986, while he was a US representative, he became the second sitting member of Congress to go into space, spending about 6 days on the space shuttle.

Biden is considering Pamela Melory, a former NASA astronaut and retired Air Force colonel as the agency’s deputy administrator, though the decision is not final yet, according to the Post.

Bill Nelson
Bill Nelson Photograph: Joe Skipper/Reuters

A new Pew Research poll shows that most Americans believe the prosecution of those who took part in the US Capitol insurrection on 6 January is very important, but partisan divides still remain.

Nearly 70% of poll respondents said it is important to prosecute the Capitol rioters, and 47% believe that rioters will receive punishments that are less severe than they should be. The vast majority of Democrats (86%) believe the prosecution of rioters is important, while 50% of Republicans believed the same.

A majority of Republicans (54%) believe that too much attention is being paid to the insurrection at the Capitol and its impact while 40% of Democrats believe there’s been too little attention given to the event.

The FBI has released a stockpile of footage from the insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January in hopes of identifying 10 people it says were “involved of the most violent attacks on officers” who were trying to tame the riots, according to a statement from the bureau.

The FBI says that over 300 people have been arrested for taking part in the insurrection, more than 65 of whom are being accused of assaulting law enforcement officers.

The Biden administration is finalizing plans to send 4m doses of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine to Mexico and Canada.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said during a press conference today that the federal government has 7m “releasable doses” of AstraZeneca available. She said the administration is working to finalize plans to release 2.5m doses to Mexico and 1.5m doses to Canada. Both countries have requested help with vaccine supply.

AstraZeneca has said it could have about 50m vaccines doses available to the US government by the end of April, all which cannot be administered in the US since the vaccine is still going through clinical trials. AstraZeneca has not yet applied for emergency use authorization.

Donald Trump is scheduled to sit for a dozen interviews with authors who are writing books about his presidency, including some who are writing sequels to books they already published, according to Politico.

Many of the authors are reporters who covered his presidency, including Maggie Haberman from the New York Times and Phillip Rucker and Carol Leonnig from the Washington Post. Michael Wolff, author of two books about Trump’s time in the White House, will also be interviewing Trump. The authors will be interviewing Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, his post-presidency home base.

Politico reports that some close to Trump are worried that the series of interviews is a bit of an over-exposure, and the sheer number of books will hurt his own ability to monetize books of his own, should he choose to write them.

Senate confirms Xavier Becerra as secretary of health and human services

The Senate in a 50-49 vote just confirmed Xavier Becerra as Joe Biden’s new secretary of health and human services. Becerra, who was most recently the attorney general of California, will have a prominent role in the administration’s rollout of the Covid-19 vaccine as Biden aims to have all US adults vaccinated by the summer. He is the country’s first Latino health and human services Cabinet secretary.

Xavier Becerra
Xavier Becerra Photograph: Reuters

The White House announced Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will be cancelling a planned rally in Atlanta tomorrow, where they were going to promote the American Rescue Plan, instead focusing on meeting with Asian American leaders and visiting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Rand Paul and Dr Anthony Fauci just got into a bit of a spar as Fauci and other federal officials testify in front of the Senate health, education, labor and pensions committee today.

Paul expressed frustration over guidance from Fauci and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that says everyone, including those who have been vaccinated and have recovered from Covid-19, need to wear masks.

“If we’re not spreading the infection, isn’t it just theater?” Paul asked Fauci. “You’ve had the vaccine and you’re wearing two masks, isn’t that just theater?”

Fauci went on to say that Covid-19 variants make “a good reason to wear a mask”

Paul doubled down, saying “you’ve been vaccinated and you parade around in two masks for show. You can’t get it again.” Paul said that people would be more likely to get vaccinated if they are told they don’t need to wear a mask after they’ve been vaccinated.

“I completely disagree with you,” Fauci said, clearly annoyed with Paul, before moving on to discuss the risk variants can pose to those already with immunity.

Deb Haaland, Biden’s new interior secretary, has just been sworn in by Kamala Harris. Haaland is the first Native American cabinet secretary in US history.

Somah Haaland, the secretary’s daughter, held the Bible as Haaland took her oath.

Deb Haaland and her family
Deb Haaland and her family Photograph: Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images

Updated

Joe Biden has asked senator Chris Coons of Delaware to travel to Ethiopia to meet with the country’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed Ali. On behalf of Biden, Coons will convey “grave concerns about the humanitarian rights abuses in the Tigray region and the risk of broader instability in the Horn of Africa”, according to a statement from the White House.

Coons was shortlisted as a potential pick for Biden’s secretary of state, but the role ultimately went to Antony Blinken as Democrats hold a tight grip on their slim majority in the Senate. Coons serves as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s African affairs subcommittee.

The trial of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer who is charged with the death of George Floyd, is continuing. Jury selection has been momentarily paused as the district court judge overseeing the case is hearing from Chauvin’s defense several motions, including whether a previous encounter Floyd had with Minneapolis police in 2019 could be used as evidence in the case.

Details of the encounter were released for the trial, including body camera footage from the three officers who were responding to a traffic stop. Officers initially responded aggressively to Floyd, who was not complying, but the situation quickly de-escalated. Floyd was taken into police custody, where he acknowledged that he was addicted to painkillers and had swallowed prescription narcotics upon being stopped by the police. Floyd was then taken to the hospital.

Judge Peter Cahill had previously blocked the encounter from being mentioned but is now reconsidering his decision. Cahill will also be considering limiting the testimony of a forensic psychiatrist, who prosecutors hope will highlight how humans respond to trauma.

Seven of the 12 jurors needed for the case have been selected. Yesterday, two jurors were dismissed over concerns their impartiality was tainted over news that Minneapolis awarded Floyd’s family a $27m settlement.

Homelessness was on the rise even before the pandemic hit the US, according to recent figures from the Department of Housing and Urban Development released today.

On a single night in January 2020, months before the pandemic hit the US in full force, 580,000 people were homeless – a 2% increase compared to a single night the year before.

Over 106,000 children were homeless that night, including 11,000 who were living outside, not living in shelters. A disproportionate number of those homeless were Black, making up 39% of the total people who were homeless that night.

In a video statement that came with the report, housing and urban development secretary said the pandemic “has only made the homelessness crisis worse.”

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will meet with Asian American leaders in Atlanta tomorrow, the White House recently confirmed. A visit to the city was already on their schedule as part of their tour promoting the American Rescue plan, but tomorrow will speak to state legislators and community advocates about the rise of anti-Asian violence.

In remarks on Wednesday, Biden acknowledged that “Asian Americans are very concerned” and said the rise in brutality against Asian American is “very, very troubling”.

This is Lauren Aratani taking over for Martin Belam. The Washington Post counted up all the lawsuits that Donald Trump faces as he adjusts to life outside the White House: Trump faces 29 cases that are pending in court, including some that came out of the insurrection at the US capitol.

Many of the suits are directed as his real estate companies, which have been under trouble during the pandemic. So far, no charges have come from these investigations, and the Post pointed out that Trump has raised $31m for his post-presidential political action committee, which he can tap into to help pay for legal feed.

Here’s more from the Washington Post:

The sheer volume of these legal problems indicates that — after a moment of maximum invincibility in the White House — Trump has fallen to a point of historic vulnerability before the law.

He has lost the formal immunities of the presidency and the legal firepower of the Justice Department, but he is also without some of the informal shields that protected him even before he was president: his reputation for endless wealth and his clout as a political donor in New York.

Now, prosecutors roam free in his financial records. New lawsuits keep arriving. Some of his key lawyers have quit. A man who once used the law to swamp his enemies, overwhelming them with claims and legal bills, is finding himself on the other side of the wave, unable to control what comes next.

Updated

Number of Americans filing new unemployment benefit claims unexpectedly rises

The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly rose last week, but the labor market is regaining its footing as an acceleration in the pace of vaccinations leads to more businesses reopening, reports Lucia Mutikani for Reuters

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits totaled a seasonally adjusted 770,000 for the week ended 13 March, from 725,000 in the prior week, the labor department said on Thursday. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 700,000 applications in the latest week.

Economists will be closely monitoring claims for Texas and Mississippi after they completely rolled back their states’ Covid-19 mitigation measures this month.

The labor market recovery is also being underpinned by the monetary and fiscal policy evidenced by Joe Biden’s $1.9tn rescue plan, which is sending fresh aid to businesses and households.

Unemployment claims have dropped from a record 6.867 million in March 2020, but are still above their 665,000 peak during the 2007-09 Great Recession.

Updated

It is the north-east of the country that is currently causing particular concern to health officials monitoring the coronavirus pandemic. Will Wright reports overnight for the New York Times that:

In New York and New Jersey, new cases per capita are at least double the national average. New cases rates are raising concern in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut, as well. And, as of last week, a variant of the virus that was first detected in New York City recently made up a growing proportion of new cases there.

Despite expansive vaccination efforts, the citywide seven-day average rate of positive test results has not been able to dip below six percent in months, according to city data.

While variants might be playing a role, a willingness to gather in groups, unmasked, might also be increasing as the weather warms and more people become vaccinated, he said.

“I think it is a race against time,” Dr. Stephen J. Thomas, Upstate Medical University’s chief of infectious disease, said. “Every single person that we can get vaccinated or every single person that we can get a mask on is one less opportunity that a variant has.”

Read more here: New York Times – As the US makes headway against the virus, troubling trends persist in the north-east

Fauci says US is in 'a race between the vaccine and the potential surge'

Dr Anthony Fauci is a much more regular face on television during the Biden administration than he was during the Trump administration, and this morning he has been speaking to Savannah Guthrie and expressing a concern about a potential future Covid surge in the US, based off the numbers currently being seen in Europe. Fauci said:

I don’t want to just be a worrywart, and we have to take this very coldly and examine it in a very scientific way, but this is what happens when you would plateau, and start to inch up. History has shown us through three surges that we’ve had, that’s what happens. That’s the dynamics of the virus in the community. It starts to go down, then it plateaus and inches up, and then you get a surge. It really is going to be a race between the vaccine and the potential surge. That’s the good part of this equation, every day we’re getting two to three million people vaccinated in this country which is the good news.

One overnight development is that a man was arrested near the vice-president’s residence yesterday, and was found to have a rifle and a large amount of ammunition. Doha Madani reports for NBC News:

A man was arrested after he was stopped by the Secret Service near the Naval Observatory in Washington, traditionally the home of the vice president, and later found to have had a gun in his car.

Agents detained the man, Paul Murray, 31, as a possible suspicious person after they spotted him near the observatory around noon, DC Metropolitan Police said. Murray was the subject of an intelligence bulletin from Texas that circulated to police in the area.

Police officers searched Murray’s car, where they found a rifle and a large amount of ammunition, police said. It was unclear why Murray was in Washington from Texas or why he was near the observatory.

Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, have not been living at the observatory since the inauguration as it has been undergoing repairs.

Read more here: NBC News – Man arrested near vice president’s residence in DC had rifle and ammunition, police say

Updated

Today could be quite significant for US foreign policy. The secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and defense secretary, Lloyd J Austin III, were still on their tour of the Asia-Pacific region this morning, where respects have been paid to those who lost their lives in conflict in the Korean Peninsula.

Blinken has been meeting with young Korean leaders, and has also pointedly met with journalists and praised “Free and robust journalism from a variety of voices” as “a hallmark of strong democracies”, a phrase no doubt intended to land in the diplomatic ears of nearby North Korea and China.

Next on Blinken’s agenda? A meeting with national security adviser Jake Sullivan and China’s top two diplomats, the state councilor Wang Yi and Chinese Communist party foreign affairs chief Yang Jiechi in Anchorage, Alaska.

Matthew Lee reports for the Associated Press that no agreements are expected. “This really is a one-off meeting,” said a senior administration official. “This is not the resumption of a particular dialogue mechanism or the beginning of a dialogue process.”

Just a day before the meeting, Blinken announced new sanctions on officials over China’s crackdown on pro-democracy advocates in Hong Kong. China, not unexpectedly, slammed the US criticism of the move to give a pro-Beijing committee power to appoint more of Hong Kong’s lawmakers

The imposition of sanctions “fully exposes the US side’s sinister intention to interfere in China’s internal affairs, disrupt Hong Kong and obstruct China’s stability and development,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian told reporters at a daily briefing.

The White House set low expectations for Blinken and Sullivan’s meeting, which officials say will be an initial opportunity to address intense disagreements.

Updated

Putin reacts to Biden comments that he will 'pay a price' for Russian interference

Away from the fall-out from the Atlanta shooting for a moment, on a foreign policy front, there’s been a reaction from Vladimir Putin to Joe Biden’s words this week.

Reuters report that Russia’s president said today that people tend view others as they actually see themselves, after the US president said he thought Putin was a killer. Putin was speaking on national television and quipped that he wished Biden good health.

Here’s a reminder of those strong words yesterday from Biden about his Russian counterpart. Biden condemned Putin, saying he thinks the Russian leader is a killer and that he told him he did not have a soul.

Biden’s remarks were made on ABC News in an interview with George Stephanopoulos. The interview coincided with the release of a declassified US intelligence report that bolstered allegations Putin was behind Moscow’s interference in the 2020 election. When pressed on the allegations against Russia, Biden said Putin “will pay a price” for the attempts to swing the vote in Donald Trump’s favor.

Updated

Marie Solis reports for us on how the Atlanta shootings has fuelled fears over anti-sex-work ideology:

Following an interview with authorities, the Cherokee county sheriff, Frank Reynolds, maintained that Long “gave no indicators” that his crimes were racially motivated. “We asked him that specifically and the answer was no,” Reynolds said on Wednesday.

This idea is ludicrous to many who have observed the surge in racist violence against Asian Americans during the pandemic: in the past year, there have been 3,800 reported incidents of anti-Asian violence, roughly 503 of which took place during 2021 alone, according to the group Stop AAPI Hate. Women make up the vast majority of those attacked. And some argue that it is equally absurd to exclude discussion of anti-sex-work sentiment from the conversation about these most recent attacks on the Asian community.

Though it is not yet known whether any of the victims of Tuesday’s shooting provided sexual services at their workplaces, Long told police that the spas he opened fire on represented a “temptation he wanted to eliminate”, suggesting that he at least believed that they did. Advocates say this reveals the way racism, sexism, and anti-sex-work sentiment work together to produce anti-Asian violence: no matter what, they say, his crime was ultimately one against sex workers.

“Even if they were providing non-sexual massages, this ends up being a sex work issue,” said Esther K, a co-director of Red Canary Song, a grassroots Chinese massage parlor worker coalition. “The women are de facto being seen as sex workers and being scapegoated as such.

“Removing the anti-sex-work component really removes the crux of what this specific kind of racism is about: the fetishization of Asian women’s bodies, the objectification of their bodies, and the assumption that Asian women are obviously going to be providing sexual services at massage parlors,” she continued. “The conflation of massage parlors and sex workers without any nuance is very specific to anti-Asian racism against Asian women.”

The Sex Workers Project of the Urban Justice Center wrote in a statement on Wednesday, responding to the Atlanta shootings: “At SWP we provide immigration legal services as part of our broader work to end the criminalization and stigmatization of adult consensual sex work, and to create a world in which all workers are free from all forms of exploitation including human trafficking.”

Read more of Marie Solis’ report here: ‘A specific kind of racism’: Atlanta shootings fuel fears over anti-sex-work ideology

One of the reasons that the wider Asian American community has expressed doubts about the role of law enforcement in dealing with the aftermath of the Atlanta shootings was the performance yesterday of Capt Jay Baker.

He offended many yesterday with his press conference words that appeared to characterise the actions of Robert Aaron Long, the 21-year-old charged with killing eight people in Atlanta, six of them women of Asian descent, as “having a really bad day”.

His social media past is also a source of some attention. Several news outlets reported that he had previously shared images on Facebook of T-shirts that contained a racist slogan about China and the coronavirus.

BuzzFeed News reported that in 2020, Baker shared an image of T-shirt with a logo that parodied Corona beer and read “Covid 19: imported virus from Chy-na”. BuzzFeed reported that the post was reportedly hidden after the outlet inquired about it.

The Daily Beast reported that the posts on Baker’s Facebook account were first noticed by a Twitter user, and that the T-shirts appeared to have been made by a company that was owned by a former deputy sheriff for Cherokee county.

Read more here: Georgia officer condemned for saying Atlanta shooter was ‘having a bad day’

CNN this morning have some more on the identity of the victims of the Atlanta shooting, which includes some harrowing eye-witness detail:

After her father was shot by a gunman alleged to have attacked three spas, 9-year-old Yoseline Gonzalez watched medics load him into an ambulance in Acworth, Georgia.

“I don’t really know what to do. I try to calm myself down,” Yoseline told CNN affiliate WGCL, wiping away her tears.

Her father, Elcias Hernandez-Ortiz, was the sole survivor among the nine victims in shootings at three different spas in the Atlanta-area on Tuesday. Of the eight people killed, six were Asian women.

The victims of the Cherokee County shooting were identified as Delaina Yaun, 33, of Acworth; Paul Andre Michels, 54, of Atlanta; Xiaojie Yan, 49, of Kennesaw; and Daoyou Feng, 44. The Atlanta victims have not yet been identified.

People have been contributing to a fundraiser for the family of Delaina Yaun, which says:

During a simple couple massage with her husband after work. Delaina Yaun lost her life after the parlor was shot up. Her husband made it safely out but she leaves behind two beautiful children Mia And Mayson. Her husband Mario along with her mother and siblings are all mortified and there’s nothing anyone could do to help with the pain.

Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta, Asian American Advocacy Fund, 9to5 and Korean American Coalition Metro Atlanta have all also said that they are gathering resources and funds for those impacted.

Read more here: CNN – A trip to the spa that ended in death. These are some of the victims of the Atlanta-area shootings

Two jurors dismissed from Derek Chauvin murder trial

The slow process of selecting a jury for the murder trial of Derek Chauvin suffered a setback yesterday as two previously seated jurors were dismissed. It follows the city of Minneapolis agreeing to pay $27m to settle a civil lawsuit from George Floyd’s family over the Black man’s death in police custody. Bill Hutchinson and Whitney Lloyd report for ABC News overnight:

Two jurors said they had inadvertently heard of the settlement announced on Friday, but felt they could set aside what they heard or saw about the civil court action and maintain impartiality and decide the case based solely on the evidence presented during the trial.

But two jurors Judge Cahill excused from the panel said the dollar amount the city agreed to give the Floyd family confirmed the reservations they already had about Chauvin’s culpability in the death of Floyd.

Asked by Cahill how knowledge of the settlement would affect his ability to be impartial in this case, one of the dismissed jurors, a Hispanic man, who had been referred to in court as Juror 36, said, “It will impact it a lot.”

He reminded Cahill that he had been questioned extensively about “my strong opinions” against Chauvin. “Clearly the city of Minneapolis has some strong opinions as well and this just kind of confirms the opinions that I already have,” he said. “I think it will be hard to be impartial.”

The second dismissed juror, a white man known as Juror 20, described the $27 million settlement as “kinda shocking.”

“That kinda sent the message the city of Minneapolis felt something was wrong and they wanted to make it right to the tune of that dollar amount,” he said before being removed from the case.

Read more here: ABC News – Derek Chauvin trial setback: 2 jurors dismissed over knowledge of $27 million settlement to George Floyd family

Vivian Ho reports for us from San Francisco on reaction there to the Atlanta shootings:

The morning after the Atlanta spa shootings, a man struck an elderly Asian woman on San Francisco’s Market Street in a seemingly unprovoked attack.

Over the past few months, the Asian American community in the San Francisco Bay Area has been inundated with reports of attacks like these – from robberies to burglaries to deadly assaults.

So when eight people, six of whom were Asian women, were killed after a shooter sought out three Asian-owned businesses in the Atlanta area, many in the Bay Area Asian American community were all too familiar with the pain and fear that followed.

“It’s so stupid,” Betty Louie, the adviser to the San Francisco Chinatown Merchants Association, said. “I’m able-bodied. I’m OK, I’m safe. But I’m afraid to go and do my afternoon walk. I don’t feel safe anywhere at this point.”

In San Francisco’s Chinatown, where foot traffic is slowly beginning to return after a year of shelter-in-place and pandemic-related economic downturn, the local merchants have a WeChat channel where they warn each other of perceived dangers and imminent robberies and assaults.

To Jennifer, a Chinatown shop owner who asked not to disclose her last name out of fear for her safety, that was really all they could do to keep each other safe. Her own shop has been burgled several times in snatch-and-grab attacks: a group of kids would enter and overwhelm her and then run out with items before she could stop them. When she’d call the police, there were never any repercussions.

“I got so scared,” she said. “I feel hopeless. Even when you call the cops, it doesn’t work out. How do you feel? Nobody can help you. I’m trying to go get a gun license. I need something here. I don’t know what I will do.”

Read more of Vivian Ho’s report here: San Francisco’s Chinatown reckons with Atlanta attacks: ‘I don’t feel safe anywhere’

We’re not really Americans, we’re perpetually foreigners, and that idea plays out with women as being oversexualized. All of that had to have played out in this man’s own mind. In addition to the unspoken notion that Asian people are easy targets.

That’s Helen Kim Ho, a Korean American and a founder of the advocacy group Asian Americans Advancing Justice in Atlanta, speaking to the Washington Post. Of the discussion over the motives of the Atlanta shooting, they report:

The gunman’s intent seemed crystal clear to Asians living in Atlanta and across the nation who have long had to confront stereotyping, hateful harassment and even violence — and who say things have gotten even worse amid the coronavirus pandemic.

As soon as Crystal Jin Kim heard about the shooting, she reached out to her mother and father, who immigrated to the United States from Korea. In a text, she urged them “to be safe, to be careful, and to pray.”

She thought about rescheduling one of their upcoming doctor appointments, and she worried about her mother going to work at a small business in the Atlanta area — she asked that the type of business not be named for fear of her mother being targeted.

“Since I was a kid I’ve heard racial slurs yelled at me or my parents, or witnessed my parents being treated as if they were stupid because their English isn’t perfect, even though my mom’s English is really good,” said Kim, a second-generation Korean American. “Those small moments really add up. I don’t think we’ve ever spoken up against those small moments. . . . It’s easier to try not to think about it, or to try to let it go. To try to bury the hurt.”

Read more here: Washington Post – Asian Americans see shooting as a culmination of a year of racism

FBI under pressure to tackle anti-Asian hate crime in wake of Atlanta shootings

The FBI and other police forces are facing criticism for levels of reporting of hate crimes that remain abysmally low, despite several attempts by Congress to highlight the outrages.

Asian American community leaders expressed dismay on Wednesday, a day after the shootings at three massage parlors, that the discrimination and harassment historically faced by their communities continued to be downplayed.

“It’s taken six Asian American women dying in one day to get people to pay attention to this,” Sung Yeon Choimorrow, executive director of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum (NAPAWF) told the Guardian. “Record keeping of hate crimes against Asian Americans is so low because they are not even willing to accept that we are discriminated against and harassed because of our race.”

In the latest statistics for hate crimes compiled by the FBI for 2019, a total of 4,930 victims were identified where race or ethnicity was the motive. Of those, 4.4% were victims of anti-Asian bias, compared with 48.5% of anti-black and 14.1% of anti-Hispanic bias.

The data is widely accepted to be a gross understatement of the hate crime problem in America today, including for Asian Americans. A federal law has been in place since 1990 requiring records to be kept on hate crimes, but it is largely ineffective as individual police forces are under no obligation to participate.

As a result, almost 90% of the law enforcement organizations involved in the 2019 hate crimes study reported no incidents at all – a blank filing that many civil rights advocates regard as frankly unbelievable. On top of that, a federal report released in February found that more than 40% of hate crimes are never reported to authorities.

“We don’t even have a clear picture of the true amount of hate crime in the US. The FBI can tell you how many bank robberies occurred last year, but they can’t tell you a real assessment of bias crimes,” said Michael German of the Brennan Center for Justice who worked in the 1990s as an undercover FBI agent infiltrating white supremacist groups.

German pointed out that between 2017 and 2018 there were 230,000 violent hate crimes, according to a Department of Justice survey of victims. Yet over the same period the DoJ only prosecuted 50 hate crime cases.

Read more of Ed Pilkington’s report here: FBI under pressure to tackle anti-Asian hate crime in wake of Atlanta shootings

Good morning, here’s our live coverage of US politics for the day. Let’s start with a catch-up on where we are, and a little of what is in the diary for Thursday.

  • A Georgia officer has been condemned for saying the Atlanta shooter was “having a bad day” and it emerged that he had posted anti-Asian messages on Facebook.
  • Asian American community leaders expressed dismay, a day after the shootings at three massage parlors, that the discrimination and harassment historically faced by their communities continued to be downplayed.
  • Joe Biden said the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, “will pay a price” for his efforts to influence the 2020 election.
  • Senate leader Chuck Schumer said he will introduce the For The People Act to protect voting rights. “Democracy reform must be a top priority of this Congress,” he said.
  • The House reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act. Though the measure received bipartisan support in the House, it faces an uphill battle in the Senate, where Republicans oppose certain provisions, including those that protect trans women.
  • The recall campaign against California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, said it had collected more than 2.1m signatures ahead of yesterday’s deadline to submit them. They need 1.5m. The signatures will now go through a verification process.
  • Katherine Tai was unanimously confirmed as the first Asian American US trade representative.
  • There were 56,930 new coronavirus cases in the US yesterday, taking the total to 29,577,975. There were 1,138 further deaths. At least 73.7 million people have now received a first dose of a Covid vaccine.
  • At 3.15pm EDT (1915 GMT) Joe Biden will give remarks about the US Covid vaccination program in the East Room of the White House. Earlier this week he called taking a Covid shot “patriotic”.
  • Biden will also received the President’s Daily Brief, and has private briefing sessions with his Covid response team and the weekly economic brief.
  • Jen Psaki’s press briefing is at 12.30pm today and she’ll be joined by Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Marcia Fudge.

Updated

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