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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Lois Beckett in Los Angeles and Joan E Greve

US failing to offer ‘Havana syndrome’ sufferers adequate care, diplomats say – as it happened

The US embassy in Havana in this 2017 picture. Last month, reports said there had been more than 130 incidents of Havana syndrome among US diplomats and spies.
The US embassy in Havana in this 2017 photo. Last month, reports said there had been more than 130 incidents of Havana syndrome among US diplomats and spies. Photograph: Desmond Boylan/AP

Evening summary

We’re wrapping up our US politics coverage for tonight. It was a relatively quiet day, with the news of a mass shooting in San Jose that left eight people and the gunman dead prompting renewed mourning, but no political shifts.

Here’s an updated summary of today’s key events:

  • Joe Biden has asked the intelligence community to “redouble” its efforts to study the origins of coronavirus. The president is requesting a follow-up report on the issue within 90 days. The request comes days after the Wall Street Journal broke the news of a previously undisclosed US intelligence report about three Wuhan researchers being hospitalized with coronavirus-like symptoms in November 2019. The report intensified speculation that the virus started spreading as a result of a laboratory accident.
  • A shooting at a railyard in San Jose, California, left eight people dead, in addition to the shooter, who was identified as an employee of the Valley Transportation Authority. Biden has been briefed on the shooting, and the vice-president, Kamala Harris, described it as “absolutely tragic”.
  • The justice department released a strategy for combatting homicide and violence, pledging to support community prevention and intervention programs, focus law enforcement action narrowly on the people and locations driving current violence, and measure the success of US attorneys’ efforts not on the raw number of people arrested or incarcerated for committing violent crimes, but on whether violence actually goes up or down.
  • US diplomats sent a letter to the state department complaining that those with “Havana syndrome” are being denied proper care, according to NBC News. The diplomats are calling for the Biden administration to take the condition more seriously, NBC reported.
  • A new survey found that a majority of Asian Americans feel unsafe in public at least some of the time because of their race.
  • Michigan election official Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, warned that election-focused conspiracy theories and disinformation are likely to intensify in 2022 and 2024, a trend that threatens to undermine the legitimacy of US democracy.
  • Senate Republicans will soon propose a counteroffer in the ongoing negotiations over an infrastructure package. The Republican negotiators are expected to propose spending $1tn on an infrastructure bill, which is still far less than the $1.7tn that Biden called for last week, when he issued his own counteroffer.
  • Karine Jean-Pierre made history as the first openly gay person and the second Black woman to ever hold a White House briefing. The principal deputy White House press secretary held her first formal briefing with reporters this afternoon.

Updated

Ohio announces first winners of vaccine incentive lottery

Ohio has announced the first winners of the state’s Vax-a-Million incentive prizes, which include $1m for those 18 and older and a full-ride college scholarship for teens, as the Associated Press reported earlier.

The state’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, announced the program 12 May to boost lagging vaccination rates. More than 2.7 million adults registered for the money prize and more than 100,000 children ages 12 to 17 entered for the scholarship, which includes tuition, room and board, and books, the Associated Press reported.

The concept seemed to work, at least initially. The number of people in Ohio age 16 and older who received their initial Covid-19 vaccine jumped 33% in the week after the state announced its million-dollar incentive lottery, according to an Associated Press analysis.

But the same review also found that vaccination rates are still well below figures from earlier in April and March.

Four more winners of the $1m and a college scholarship will be announced each Wednesday for the next four weeks.

Updated

Los Angeles Times journalists file lawsuit against Minnesota state patrol

A Los Angeles Times reporter and photographer have filed a lawsuit against Minnesota state patrol troopers over injuries they received while covering protests over George Floyd’s murder by police last year, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports.

One of the journalists, Molly Hennessy-Fiske, tweeted that she is seeking “information and accountability” for the state patrol “attacking us while we were covering protests a year ago.”

NYT seeks ‘hard fact’ editor to oversee weddings coverage, fact-check dating claims

Most media job postings don’t get much attention. But a new job listing from the Styles section of The New York Times was unusually candid.

The paper is seeking a new editor for weddings coverage who is “highly skilled at hard fact editing.”

“Listen,” the listing read, “If you think that the D.C. bureau or the politics desk deals with people lying to them or hiding facts, wait till you start asking someone about their dating history.”

Some readers who have personally submitted wedding announcements to the Times confirmed that the fact-checking process was unusually intense (though, as others noted, not without slip-ups.)

And others noted that the job listing sounded like a pretty good premise for a romantic comedy.

Cate Doty, a former New York Times weddings writer, has a just-published new memoir dishing about the inside drama of the Times’ wedding section.

Dangerous battles over election results coming in 2024, Michigan election official warns

Michigan’s Democratic secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, was on the front lines of the protests and election disinformation fueled by Trump’s “big lie” about election fraud as the battleground state’s chief election official.

In a new interview with the Associated Press, Benson warns that the ongoing disputes and conspiracy theories around the 2020 election are only the beginning of what she sees as a sustained attack on American democracy that will culminate in a renewed attack on election legitimacy in 2024.

Here’s a key exchange from the full interview:

AP: Across the country, we are seeing several GOP-controlled legislatures seeking to exert more control over election officials. How concerned are you that we could end up seeing more of these outside ballot reviews like in Arizona or even takeovers of local election offices?

BENSON: I feel very strongly that the battles that we saw around 2020’s election ... was just the beginning of what is clearly turning out to be a multi-year, strategic, nationally coordinated, partisan assault on the vote in our country and on our democracy. And we will see another battle in the 2022 elections around that truth and around the security of the vote, around access to the vote. But it’s also all going to culminate, I believe, in an effort to try again in 2024 what those democracy deniers attempted to do in 2020 but failed. And in 2024, the bad actors, I believe, will be more coordinated, more strategic, better funded and will have the benefit of doing this work for a number of years. I’m deeply concerned about the future health of our democracy.

Updated

Democrats Move to Fulfill Biden’s Election Promise on Healthcare ‘Public Option’

Two Congressional Democrats are pushing to create a “public option” for healthcare coverage to compete with private health insurance plans, and aim to introduce legislation by the end of the year, NBC News reports.

The health insurance public option, a Biden campaign pledge, was “billed as a moderate alternative to rival Bernie Sanders’ plan to scrap private coverage and put all Americans in Medicare”, per NBC.

There will be plenty of opposition, and the bill will be “very tough to pass”, NBC’s Sahil Kapur reports.

Updated

Most Asian Americans feel unsafe in public sometimes because of their race, poll finds

A majority of Americans think discrimination against Asian Americans has increased over the past year, and many are concerned that incidents of violence are up as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, the Associated Press reports.

Most Asian Americans feel unsafe in public because of their race at least sometimes.

Only 16% of White Americans who responded to the survey described feeling unsafe in public at least sometimes because of their race, compared with 57% of Asian Americans, 63% of Black Americans, and 44% of Hispanic Americans.

The nationwide poll of 1,842 adults was conducted between 20 April and 3 May. More details on the survey methodology here.

Updated

Insurrection math: will enough Republicans support a 6 January commission?

Will enough Republican senators break with their party to support the creation of a 9/11-style commission to investigate how a mob of Trump supporters broke into a poorly-defended Capitol building on 6 January, forcing lawmakers of both parties to flee?

NBC News’ Sahil Kapur is tracking senators’ statements on the issue, and created a useful emoji infographic:

Susan Collins, the Maine Republican who has come out in support of the commission, also has some proposed changes in how it would operate:

Updated

Democrats fight over bill that would reform the military’s approach to sexual assault

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a New York Democrat, has made the problem of sexual assault in the military one of her key policy issues. She’s now fighting against another Democrat, Senator Jack Reed, to get a vote on her bipartisan legislation, which would change military law to take authority for deciding military sexual assault cases out of the control of military commanders.

The change has attracted support from key Republicans, including Senator Joni Ernst, who has spoken out about her own experience of sexual assault. But it’s being blocked by Reed, the Democratic chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Politico reports.

More context here from The Hill:

Updated

In response to rising homicides, the justice department focuses on prevention

This is Lois Beckett, picking up our live US politics coverage from Los Angeles.

Homicides surged across the United States during the coronavirus pandemic, in what could be the worst single-year increase in killings in decades. While final national data will not be available for months, one expert estimates the country may have seen an estimated 4000 additional murders in 2020, compared with 2019.

Biden’s justice department announced its new violent crime strategy today. Department officials who briefed reporters ahead of the announcement emphasized the importance of non-law enforcement prevention programs, and made clear that US attorneys across the country would not be allowed to measure their success simply in terms of how many people they locked up, rather than whether there was evidence that violence was actually falling.

The officials who briefed reporters emphasized principles and rhetoric straight out of the decades of academic research on violence prevention, including the importance of focusing on the relatively tiny number of people and places responsible for the majority of fatal violence.

The Guardian investigated the intense concentration of America’s gun violence problem in 2017, and explored the strategies behind the dramatic decline in murders in California’s Bay Area in 2019.

Updated

Today so far

That’s it from me today. My west coast colleague, Lois Beckett, will take over the blog for the next few hours.

Here’s where the day stands so far:

  • Joe Biden has asked the intelligence community to “redouble” its efforts to study the origins of coronavirus. The president is requesting a follow-up report on the issue within 90 days. The request comes days after the Wall Street Journal broke the news of a previously undisclosed US intelligence report about three Wuhan researchers being hospitalized with coronavirus-like symptoms in November 2019. The report intensified speculation that the virus started spreading as a result of a laboratory accident.
  • A shooting at a railyard in San Jose, California, left eight people dead, in addition to the shooter, who was identified as an employee of the Valley Transportation Authority. Biden has been briefed on the shooting, and vice-President Kamala Harris described it as “absolutely tragic”.
  • US diplomats sent a letter to the state department complaining that those with “Havana syndrome” are being denied proper care, according to NBC News. The diplomats are calling for the Biden administration to take the condition more seriously, NBC reported.
  • Senate Republicans will soon propose a counteroffer in the ongoing negotiations over an infrastructure package. The Republican negotiators are expected to propose spending $1tn on an infrastructure bill, which is still far less than the $1.7tn that Biden called for last week, when he issued his own counteroffer.
  • Karine Jean-Pierre made history as the first openly gay person and the second Black woman to ever hold a White House briefing. The principal deputy White House press secretary held her first formal briefing with reporters this afternoon.

The blog will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

Updated

“Hi, everybody! Welcome!”

So, with a rustle of papers, began a new chapter in the White House briefing room on Wednesday when Karine Jean-Pierre became the first openly gay person to address reporters on behalf of the US president.

She was also the first Black woman to do so since Judy Smith, a deputy press secretary for President George H W Bush – and inspiration for Olivia Pope in the TV drama Scandal – stood at the podium some 30 years ago.

White House principal deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre speaks during a press briefing.
White House principal deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre speaks during a press briefing. Photograph: REX/Shutterstock

The briefing was widely seen as an audition by Jean-Pierre, who is currently principal deputy press secretary, for the top job of presidential spokesperson. The incumbent, Jen Psaki, who has been briefing almost daily, said recently she intends to leave the post after a year.

Did Jean-Pierre pass the audition? Joe Biden will be the ultimate judge of that but it would fair to say that she observed the first rule for press secretaries: do no harm. Her replies were noncommittal, uncontroversial and not likely to generate unwanted headlines.

Vice-President Kamala Harris, a former senator of California, described today’s mass shooting in San Jose as “absolutely tragic”.

Speaking at the beginning of a meeting with members of Congress on investing in broadband infrastructure, Harris noted she has family members who live in San Jose and has worked with the mayor and police department there.

“My prayers and my thoughts are with all of those families affected,” Harris told reporters.

Updated

Joe Biden has been briefed on the mass shooting today at a railyard in San Jose, California, the White House said in a statement to the press pool.

“The President has been briefed on the mass shooting and the tragic loss of life in San Jose by his Homeland Security Advisor, Liz Sherwood-Randall. The White House continues to monitor the situation and remains in close contact with local officials to offer any assistance as needed,” the statement said.

Local authorities said eight people were killed in the attack, in addition to the shooter, who was identified as an employee of the Valley Transportation Authority. Multiple other people were injured in the shooting, and a police spokesperson warned the death toll could still rise.

Diplomats say 'Havana syndrome' sufferers not receiving adequate care

US diplomats and other officials experiencing symptoms that appear to be consistent with the unexplained brain injury known as Havana Syndrome have written a letter to the US state department saying those affected are being denied appropriate care.

NBC News, which obtained the letter, reports that staffers have claimed that the Biden administration has continued to “invalidate our injuries and experiences,” and they are calling for the condition to be treated more seriously.

Last month, The New York Times reported that there had been more than 130 incidents of Havana syndrome among US diplomats, spies and defence officials, some of them very recently. The Times said three CIA officers had reported serious symptoms since December, following overseas assignments.

The Guardian’s world affairs editor, Julian Borger, reported at the time:

In December, the National Academy of Sciences published a report saying that the brain injuries suffered by US government employees in Cuba and China were most likely the result of some form of directed energy.

Cheryl Rofer, a former chemist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, has questioned the study’s conclusions, and the claim by victims and some experts that some kind of microwave weapon developed by an adversary is responsible for Havana syndrome.

‘The evidence for microwave effects of the type categorized as Havana syndrome is exceedingly weak,’ Rofer wrote in Foreign Policy.

Updated

Republican Senator Tim Scott said Congress must reach a deal on the policing reform bill next month, as bipartisan negotiations over the legislation continue.

“It’s June or bust,” Scott told a PBS Newshour reporter. “We’ve got three weeks in June to get this done.”

Scott is one of three lawmakers, along with Democratic congresswoman Karen Bass and Democratic Senator Cory Booker, who are involved in the negotiations over the bill.

Joe Biden had originally said he hoped to sign the bill by the one-year anniversary of the death of George Floyd, the Black man who was murdered by a white Minneapolis police officer last May.

But that anniversary came and went yesterday without a final deal on the policing bill. Biden met yesterday with some of Floyd’s family members, who urged Congress to pass the legislation as quickly as possible.

Speaking to reporters this afternoon, deputy White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said policing reform remains a “top priority” for the president.

“He is going to continue to work on this today, tomorrow and every day,” Jean-Pierre said.

President Joe Biden has paid tribute to former Virginia Republican senator John Warner who died on Tuesday aged 94, saying he “lived an extraordinary life of service and accomplishment”.

In a statement issued Wednesday, Biden said: “I had the privilege of serving alongside John in the Senate for three decades. The John Warner I knew was guided by two things: his conscience and our Constitution. And, when acting in accordance with both, he neither wavered in his convictions nor was concerned with the consequences.”

He added: “When told that if he voted in a way that was not in line with his party’s position—as he did numerous times on issues of rational gun policy, women’s rights, and judicial nominees—that “people would say,” his favorite rejoinder was, “Let ‘em say it.”

“Indeed, that was his response when, in one of the great honors of my career, he crossed party lines to support me in the 2020 election.”

Biden ended the statement by saying “our hearts and prayers are with his family”.

White House reportedly finalizing plans for Biden to meet the Queen

The White House is reportedly finalizing plans for president Joe Biden to meet with Queen Elizabeth II during his first trip abroad next month, according to CNN.

“This face-to-face greeting, during which Biden would be joined by first lady Jill Biden, is expected to take place before the president leaves the United Kingdom following the Group of 7 summit,” CNN reported, citing an unnamed US official.

The official reportedly said the White House and Buckingham Palace were finalizing details on Wednesday, and an announcement was expected in the coming days.

The Queen, who is 95 years-old and is the world’s longest-reigning monarch, has met every US president since Harry Truman, with the exception of Lyndon Johnson. If the meeting goes ahead, Biden would be the 13th American president she has met.

Updated

Karine Jean-Pierre indicated the Biden administration will also continue to press the World Health Organization to gather information on the origins of coronavirus.

“We’ve been very clear with the WHO to continue to get to the bottom of this,” the deputy press secretary said. “We’re going to continue working with the WHO.”

Jean-Pierre noted Joe Biden brought the US back into the WHO after Donald Trump withdrew from the organization, and she said the president made that decision partly to hold the group accountable when it comes to investigating the origins of coronavirus.

The White House press briefing has now concluded.

A reporter pressed Karine Jean-Pierre on what has changed recently to make Joe Biden call for a 90-day intelligence community review of the potential origins of coronavirus.

The New York Times reporter noted that Jean-Pierre’s boss, press secretary Jen Psaki, had been emphasizing the World Health Organization’s investigation (rather than a domestic investigation) as recently as last week.

Jean-Pierre insisted nothing has changed in recent days, telling reporters, “We don’t speak about everything under review.”

Biden’s announcement came days after the Wall Street Journal broke news of a previously undisclosed US intelligence report about three Wuhan researchers being hospitalized with coronavirus-like symptoms in November 2019, intensifying speculation that the virus spread as the result of a lab accident.

Asked if the US intelligence community has ruled out the possibility of a deliberate release of coronavirus, Karine Jean-Pierre replied, “We haven’t ruled out anything yet.”

The deputy White House press secretary repeatedly emphasized that the administration will have more information to offer on the investigation into the origins of coronavirus once the 90-day intelligence community review is completed.

Jean-Pierre repeatedly criticized China for not being transparent with its information on the origins of the virus, echoing comments from other senior administration officials and international leaders.

Eight victims killed in San Jose shooting, officials say

Deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked about the White House’s response to the shooting this morning at a railyard in San Jose, California.

“Our hearts go out to the victims and their families,” Jean-Pierre said. “There is an ongoing investigation, as we all know. We will continue to stay in close contact with them and offer any assistance as needed.”

San Jose officials have just confirmed that eight people died in the shooting, in addition to the shooter, who reportedly died by suicide after the attack.

A police spokesperson warned that the number of victims could change, as multiple other people were injured in the attack.

One reporter asked Karine Jean-Pierre to reflect on her history-making appearance at the White House briefing room podium today.

“It’s a real honor to just be standing here today. I appreciate the historic nature” of this moment, the deputy White House press secretary said.

But Jean-Pierre emphasized that this administration is not about any one person and is instead focused on the collective efforts to improve American lives. She also promised to be “truthful” and “transparent” while speaking to the press.

“Clearly, the president believes representation matters, and I appreciate him giving me this opportunity,” Jean-Pierre said.

No surprise here: the first questions at the White House briefing focused on Joe Biden’s announcement that he is asking the intelligence community to “redouble” efforts to study the origins of coronavirus.

Deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre would not say whether the report will be made public when it is completed.

“We’ll have more to share after the 90 days,” Jean-Pierre said, referring to the deadline set by the president for completing the report.

Karine Jean-Pierre becomes just second Black woman to hold White House briefing

Deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is now holding her first formal briefing with reporters in the White House briefing room.

Jean-Pierre’s appearance at the briefing room podium makes her just the second Black woman to hold a White House briefing, after Judy Smith did so 30 years ago while serving in George HW Bush’s administration.

Jean-Pierre has been mentioned as a potential successor to press secretary Jen Psaki, who has said she only wants to stay in the job for one year.

if Jean-Pierre were selected to succeed Psaki, she would be the first Black woman to serve as White House press secretary.

Testifying before a Senate appropriations subcommittee today, Dr Anthony Fauci reiterated that he is “very much in favor” of further investigation into the origins of coronavirus.

Fauci, the president’s chief medical adviser, and some of his colleagues from the National Institutes of Health said they still believed coronavirus most likely came about from human contact with an infected animal.

Fauci told Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, “I feel the likelihood is still high that this is a natural occurrence, but since you cannot know 100% whether it is or is not -- other possibilities exist -- and for that reason, I and my colleagues have been saying that we are very much in favor of a further investigation.”

Today so far

Here’s where the day stands so far:

  • Joe Biden has asked the intelligence community to “redouble” its efforts to study the origins of coronavirus. The president is requesting a follow-up report on the issue within 90 days. The request comes days after the Wall Street Journal broke the news of a previously undisclosed US intelligence report about three Wuhan researchers being hospitalized with coronavirus-like symptoms in November 2019. The report intensified speculation that the virus started spreading as a result of a laboratory accident.
  • A shooting at a railyard in San Jose, California, left multiple people dead. Authorities said the shooting resulted in “multiple injuries and multiple fatalities,” and the shooter is now dead. The victims include Valley Transportation Authority employees.
  • Senate Republicans will soon propose a counteroffer in the ongoing negotiations over an infrastructure package. The Republican negotiators are expected to propose spending $1 trillion on an infrastructure bill, which is still far less than the $1.7 trillion that Biden called for last week, when he issued his own counteroffer.

The blog will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

Joe Biden’s request to intensify the investigation into the origins of coronavirus comes days after the Wall Street Journal reported on a previously undisclosed US intelligence report about three Wuhan researchers being hospitalized with coronavirus-like symptoms in November 2019.

The report intensified speculation that coronavirus may have spread as a result of a laboratory accident in China.

The Journal reported:

Three researchers from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care, according to a previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report that could add weight to growing calls for a fuller probe of whether the Covid-19 virus may have escaped from the laboratory.

The details of the reporting go beyond a State Department fact sheet, issued during the final days of the Trump administration, which said that several researchers at the lab, a center for the study of coronaviruses and other pathogens, became sick in autumn 2019 ‘with symptoms consistent with both Covid-19 and common seasonal illness.’ ...

Current and former officials familiar with the intelligence about the lab researchers expressed differing views about the strength of the supporting evidence for the assessment. One person said that it was provided by an international partner and was potentially significant but still in need of further investigation and additional corroboration.

Another person described the intelligence as stronger. ‘The information that we had coming from the various sources was of exquisite quality. It was very precise. What it didn’t tell you was exactly why they got sick,’ he said, referring to the researchers.

Biden asks intelligence community to 'redouble' efforts to study Covid origins

Joe Biden has asked the US intelligence community to “redouble” its efforts to study the origins of coronavirus.

The president said he received a report earlier this month with the “most up-to-date analysis of the origins of COVID-19,” and he has asked for additional follow-up within 90 days.

Biden noted that the US intelligence community has not yet coalesced around a common theory as to whether coronavirus came about from human contact with an infected animal or from a laboratory accident.

“I have now asked the Intelligence Community to redouble their efforts to collect and analyze information that could bring us closer to a definitive conclusion, and to report back to me in 90 days. As part of that report, I have asked for areas of further inquiry that may be required, including specific questions for China,” Biden said.

The president said he has also asked the intelligence community to keep Congress apprised of its work on this matter.

“The United States will also keep working with like-minded partners around the world to press China to participate in a full, transparent, evidence-based international investigation and to provide access to all relevant data and evidence,” Biden said.

Deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre will soon hold her first formal briefing in the White House briefing room.

Jean-Pierre is only the second Black woman to lead a briefing in the briefing room, after Judy Smith did so 30 years ago while serving in George HW Bush’s administration.

Symone Sanders, who serves as chief spokesperson for Vice-President Kamala Harris, congratulated Jean-Pierre on the significant moment.

“I will be raising my coffee cup during the WH press briefing in celebration of representation, aptitude and brilliance,” Sanders said on Twitter. “The ancestors are proud.”

The suspect in the San Jose shooting died by suicide, according to CBS News. It’s still unclear how many people were killed in the attack, although a sheriff’s office spokesperson confirmed there were “multiple fatalities”.

Guardian staff and agencies report:

The San Jose shooting took place at a light rail facility that is nextdoor to the Santa Clara county sheriff’s department and across a freeway from the airport. The facility is a transit control center that stores trains and has a maintenance yard.

A spokesperson for the Valley Transportation Authority did not immediately respond to multiple requests for comment.

Railyard shooting leaves multiple people dead in San Jose, California

A shooting at a railyard in San Jose, California, has left multiple people dead and several others injured, a spokesperson for the Santa Clara County sheriff’s office said.

The spokesperson would not say the exact number of victims, but he confirmed to reporters that there were “multiple injuries and multiple fatalities” from the shooting. The victims include Valley Transportation Authority employees.

The mayor of San Jose, Sam Liccardo, previously said on Twitter that the shooter is now dead and the facility has been evacuated. He said more information would be made available in about 30 minutes.

California Governor Gavin Newsom also said in a tweet that he is closely monitoring the situation and remains in contact with local law enforcement officials.

Second gentleman Douglas Emhoff will travel tomorrow to Albuquerque, New Mexico, the White House has just announced.

According to Politico, the vice-president’s husband is traveling to the state to campaign for Melanie Stansbury, the Democratic congressional candidate who is running to fill Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s seat in the House.

Politico reports:

The second gentleman will be heading to New Mexico to campaign with Democratic congressional candidate Melanie Stansbury ahead of the special election on Tuesday, according to two sources with knowledge of the planning. An administration official says the event will take place on Thursday. ...

This won’t be the first political event for Emhoff who joined DNC Chair Jaime Harrison in March for the latter’s first virtual fundraiser. It is, however, his first campaign event since the November election.

Emhoff is no stranger to the trail. He was a mainstay of Vice President Kamala Harris’ primary bid and did solo events during the general election after she joined the Biden ticket.

Joe Biden endorsed Stansbury in a statement yesterday, saying she has “the grit and determination to deliver real results for all New Mexicans”. The seat is considered safely Democratic, given that Biden won it by 23 points in November.

Patriots deny Trump offered senator money in 2008 to drop investigation into team

New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft has denied allegations he and Donald Trump attempted to pay a senator money in order to drop an investigation into a cheating scandal involving the team.

According to a report published on Wednesday by ESPN, Trump met with late senator Arlen Specter in 2008 and offered him “money in Palm Beach” if he dropped his investigation into the Spygate scandal, in which the Patriots were disciplined by the NFL for filming a rival team’s coaching signals. Trump had not started his political career at the time and was well-known as the star of reality show The Apprentice. ESPN says Trump was acting on behalf of Kraft, a claim those close to the former president and the team deny.

“This [report] is completely false,” Jason Miller, a senior adviser to Trump, told ESPN when asked about the story. “We have no idea what you’re talking about.”

A spokesman for the Patriots also denied the allegations to ESPN. “Mr Kraft is not aware of any involvement of Trump on this topic and he did not have any other engagement with Specter or his staff,” the spokesman said via email.

Specter was senator for Pennsylvania at the time and ran as a Democrat and Republican during his political career. He was also a personal friend of Trump. Trump himself has been on friendly terms with several prominent members of the Patriots including Kraft, head coach Bill Belichick and former quarterback Tom Brady. Both Brady and Belichick have distanced themselves from Trump recently. In January, following the US Capitol invasion, Belichick turned down Trump’s offer of the presidential medal of freedom.

Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said the flags around the Senate side of the US Capitol will be lowered to half-staff in honor of the late senator John Warner, who died last night at the age of 94.

“On behalf of the Senate, I want to express our condolences to his family and his friends, and our gratitude for amazing service to America throughout his life,” the Democratic leader said in a floor speech moments ago.

Updated

Virginia Governor Ralph Northam described the late senator John Warner as “the best of what public service and elected leadership should be”.

“Virginia, and America, have lost a giant,” the Democratic governor said in a statement. “As a sailor, a senator, a statesman, and a gentleman, former U.S. Senator John Warner spent his life in public service.”

Northam offered his prayers to Warner’s family members as they mourn his death at the age of 94.

“John helped build up his political party and always remained an independent voice. He used that voice in the Senate to forge bipartisan compromise, knowing how and when to reach across the aisle. And he always put Virginia first,” Northam said. “Our prayers for comfort go out to his wife Jeanne, his three children, grandchildren, scores of friends, and all those who loved him.”

Former Republican senator John Warner dies at 94

John Warner, the longtime former Republican senator of Virginia who clashed with George W Bush over the Iraq War, has died of heart failure at 94.

Reuters reports:

Warner died late on Tuesday, with his wife and daughter at his side, his chief of staff, Susan Magill, said in an email to family and friends, according to a Politico report on Wednesday. The Washington Post said he died in Alexandria, Virginia.

Warner was an influential voice in Congress on military policy and served in the US Senate for five terms from 1979 to 2009. He was also the sixth husband of the actor Elizabeth Taylor.

A former chairman of the Senate armed services committee, Warner openly criticized President George W Bush’s handling of the Iraq war and called on him in 2007 to begin withdrawing US troops from Iraq.

The decision put Warner in the center of a growing debate in Congress over the conflict. Warner spent months trying to develop an approach to US policy in Iraq that was supported by Republicans and Democrats.

Lawmakers of both parties responded to the news of Warner’s death by offering admiring condolence messages to the his family.

Current Virginia Senator Mark Warner, who was not related to the late senator, said of him, “John Warner was a consummate statesman and a public servant who always put Virginia before politics; who put the nation’s security before partisanship; who put the country’s needs above his own.”

Updated

When deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre holds her first formal White House briefing this afternoon, she will be only the second Black woman to ever do so, according to a CBS News reporter.

Alexandra Villarreal reports on how white male minority rule has overtaken US politics:

From county officials and sheriffs to governors and senators, white male minority rule pervades politics in the United States, according to a new report published on Wednesday.

White men represent 30% of the population but 62% of officeholders, dominating both chambers of Congress, 42 state legislatures and statewide roles across the nation, the analysis shows.

By contrast, women and people of color constitute 51% and 40% of the US population respectively, but just 31% and 13% of officeholders, according to the research by the Reflective Democracy Campaign, shared exclusively with the Guardian.

“I think if we saw these numbers in another country, we would say there is something very wrong with that political system,” said Brenda Choresi Carter, the campaign’s director.

“We would say, ‘how could that possibly be a democratic system with that kind of demographic mismatch?’”

Read Alexandra’s full report here:

Today will also mark an important first at the White House. Principal deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre will be doing her first full briefing from the briefing room podium this afternoon.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Twitter, “Today is a big day in the press office and @WhiteHouse. My partner in truth--@KJP46 is doing her first full briefing from the podium today making history in her own right. But doing her real justice means also recognizing her talent, her brilliance and her wonderful spirit.”

Jean-Pierre has done briefings with reporters aboard Air Force One before, usually as the president flies across the country promoting his American Rescue Plan or American Jobs Plan. But this will be her first official appearance at the briefing room podium.

Reporters will be watching Jean-Pierre closely because she has been suggested as a potential successor to Psaki, who has indicated she only wants to serve as press secretary for one year. If Jean-Pierre did get the job, she would be the first Black woman to hold the post.

Joe Biden has reportedly signaled to Republican senators working on infrastructure negotiations that he would be willing to accept a $1 trillion counteroffer.

CNN reports:

Two key GOP negotiators -- Sens. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and Roger Wicker of Mississippi -- both indicated on Tuesday that Biden has signaled openness to that price tag, a reason why they plan to make a counteroffer around that amount on Thursday, even as there are still sharp disagreements on how to pay for the massive proposal.

‘The President indicated he would accept that number,’ Wicker told CNN, referring to $1 trillion.

The upcoming Senate GOP offer is a sign that negotiations with the White House aren’t over yet even as talks are teetering on the edge ahead of a Memorial Day deadline. GOP negotiators met Tuesday behind closed doors, telling reporters that they planned to offer a new infrastructure proposal Thursday that will approach $1 trillion in part because they believe the two sides could find agreement there.

‘He used that figure with us, yes,’ Capito said when asked if Biden showed a willingness to accept a $1 trillion proposal, adding that the President also suggested a package of investments over an eight-year time frame. ‘We’re responding to what he proposed.’

The White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, would not confirm yesterday whether Biden had signaled he would be comfortable with $1 trillion as the topline number for the infrastructure package.

“I’m not going to read any more specifics of a private conversation,” Psaki told reporters. “But I will just reiterate that the proposal put forward last Friday, that we put out transparently to all of you, that brought the price tag down by $550 billion was directed, signed off on by the president of the United States.”

Republicans set to propose counteroffer on infrastructure

Greetings from Washington, live blog readers.

Senate Republicans are expected to propose a counteroffer tomorrow in the ongoing negotiations over an infrastructure package, and their plan is expected to cost around $1 trillion.

“We’re going to hit a figure very close to what the president said he would accept, and it will end up being the most substantial infrastructure bill ever enacted by the federal government,” Republican Senator Roger Wicker told reporters yesterday. “And if the president gets to make the decision, he will accept it.”

Joe Biden meets with a group of Republican senators to discuss the administration’s infrastructure plan.
Joe Biden meets with a group of Republican senators to discuss the administration’s infrastructure plan. Photograph: TJ Kirkpatrick/EPA

The new offer comes almost a week after Joe Biden proposed a smaller infrastructure bill than he had originally proposed, lowering the overall cost of his plan from $2.25 trillion to $1.7 trillion.

Republicans complained that price tag was still too high for them, but Democrats have insisted the plan must include items like massive investments in green energy, which the Republican plans have largely omitted.

If Biden does not like Republicans’ latest offer, Democrats could still try to pass an infrastructure bill using reconciliation, thus avoiding a Senate filibuster. But Democrats’ key 50th Senate vote, Joe Manchin, may not be on board for that, so all eyes will be on the Republicans’ as they propose their counteroffer.

The blog will have more details on the Republican offer coming up, so stay tuned.

Updated

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