Summary
Here’s a recap of today, from me and Joanna Walters:
- The US House impeachment managers carried the article of impeachment – charging incitement – against Donald Trump to the Senate. Trump will be the first American president in history to face a second impeachment trial.
- Joe Biden announced that he hopes to ramp up vaccinations from a million shots a day to 1.5m, with the aim of vaccinating most people in the US “by the spring”. In the meantime, the president encouraged people to mask up: “If we wear masks between now and the end of April we can save 50,000 lives.”
- The Treasury Department is taking steps to get the project to put abolitionist Harriet Tubman on the US $20 bill back on track. The redesigned $20 bill was initially due to be unveiled last year, but those efforts were halted by the Treasury after the former president, Donald Trump, called them an example of “pure political correctness”.
- The US Department of Justice’s internal watchdog, inspector general Michael Horowitz, is launching an investigation in whether any department officials engaged in an improper attempt to alter the election result. The announcement came after the New York Times first reported that Jeffrey Clark, then the department’s acting assistant attorney general for the Civil Division, had plotted with Donald Trump in a failed attempt to oust then-Attorney General Jeff Rosen so that he could launch a probe of alleged voter fraud in Georgia.
- The Biden-Harris administration reversed Donald Trump’s ban on transgender people serving in the US military. “It’s simple: America is safer when everyone qualified to serve can do so openly and with pride,” Biden said.
- The Senate confirmed Janet Yellen as the first woman treasury secretary. Yellen, 74, received support from both Republicans and Democrats and was confirmed 84-15. She was the chair of the Federal Reserve from 2014 to 2018 and has longstanding ties to Capitol Hill lawmakers – making her an uncontroversial pick.
Updated
Mitch McConnell, the leader of Senate Republicans for over a decade, now finds himself in the position every caucus leader dreads: out of power in the chamber, in charge of an unruly bunch of politicians, and under pressure over how to handle the impeachment of Donald Trump.
And as McConnell became the Senate minority leader last week, he was confronted with two pressing concerns: retaining power through early negotiations with his Democratic counterpart Chuck Schumer, the new Senate majority leader, and figuring out how to proceed on the impeachment trial of Trump, which is set to begin in early February.
It’s a unique predicament for a senator regarded by Republicans as a strategic mastermind of Senate procedure – and one reviled by Democrats for obstructionism.
McConnell, now once again in the minority, will have to deal with anti-establishment colleagues such as Cruz and Missouri senator Josh Hawley. Those two senators led the challenge to certifying Joe Biden’s victory that resulted in a mob invading Capitol Hill. McConnell has butted heads with Cruz and allies before, and emerged victorious while effectively isolating Cruz as punishment. As his caucus knows, losing a fight with McConnell has its consequences.
He and other Republicans are weighing how to proceed on impeaching Trump. McConnell and other Republican leaders were horrified both by the certification challenge, and it further undermined the already strained ties between McConnell and Trump. Privately, McConnell has indicated that he is at least more open to a Trump impeachment conviction, which could facilitate barring him from becoming president again.
“The mob was fed lies. They were provoked by the president and other powerful people,” McConnell said earlier this week.
But it’s unclear whether there are the 17 votes needed among Republicans for the Senate to convict Trump, and how fraught with peril it might be for Republicans who do support impeachment. Some are already lobbying McConnell to move forward, even as the few House Republicans who supported impeachment in their chamber face primary challenges and growing blowback.
Read more:
Biden: Impeachment trial 'has to happen'
The impeachment trial of Donald Trump “has to happen,” Joe Biden told CNN.
The president has urged Senators to prioritize coronavirus relief legislation and approving his Cabinet nominees but acknowledged in an interview with the news network that the trial has to take place, even if chances that Republicans will vote to convict are slim.
“The Senate has changed since I was there, but it hasn’t changed that much,” Biden told CNN.
The Senate is split 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans. At least 17 Republican senators will have to vote with all the Democrats in order to convict the president, who the House has charged with inciting the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January.
House impeachment managers delivered the article of impeachment against Trump to the Senate today. Traditionally, the trial would kick off right afterward - but Republicans and Democrats agreed to a two-week delay to allow both sides to prepare arguments and give senators a fortnight to negotiate vital legislation and consider cabinet appointments in the meantime.
Trump, who has left Washington for his private resort in Florida, is accused of inciting the Capitol insurrection while trying to overturn his election defeat.
The impeachment article mentions his attempt to get Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, also a Republican, to “find” votes that would overturn the result there, as detailed in a recorded phone call that was obtained by reporters.
Senators are also likely to be asked to consider new reporting, first by the New York Times, which alleges that in Trump’s final weeks in office he considered replacing the acting attorney general with a Department of Justice (DoJ) lawyer ready to pursue unfounded claims of election fraud.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump pushed the DoJ to ask the supreme court to invalidate Biden’s win. Senior officials reportedly threatened to resign en masse if the acting attorney general was forced out.
Trump survived his first impeachment, over approaches to Ukraine for dirt on political rivals, last year. He became the first federal official to be impeached twice on 13 January, when every House Democrat and 10 Republicans voted to send him to the Senate for trial.
In a statement then, Pelosi said: “Exactly one week after the attack on the Capitol to undermine the integrity of our democracy, a bipartisan vote of the House of Representatives passed the article of impeachment, which is our solemn duty to deliver to the Senate.”
Though the Senate is now controlled by Democrats, two-thirds of senators must vote against Trump if he is to be convicted. That means 17 Republicans must go against a former president from their own party. As of Friday, according to a tally by the Washington Post, 42 senators had said they supported impeachment, 19 were open to conviction, 28 were opposed and 11 had made no indication.
Read more:
Trump's second impeachment trial: the key players
Trump’s counsel
Butch Bowers: Trump tapped Bowers, a South Carolina lawyer, to lead his legal team and defense in the senate. A friend of Trump ally Lindsey Graham, Bowers worked for Mark Sanford, then the South Carolina governor, when he was nearly impeached in connection to an affair over a decade ago. In 2012, he also represented Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor who went on to work in the Trump administration, in an ethics investigation. He also has helped defend North Carolina and South Carolina voter ID measures, according to the Post and Courier, and worked as a special counsel on voting matters in the justice department under George W Bush.
Trump reportedly struggled to find a legal team for the trial. Former White House counsel Pat Cipollone, and well-known lawyers like Jay Sekulow, Ken Starr, Alan Derschowitz, and Rudy Giuliani who helped defend the president during the first trial are not participating.
Senate party leaders
Mitch McConnell: The cunning House minority leader, McConnell won’t be making a case for or against Trump during the trial, but will remain one of the most powerful Republicans. In a significant move, McConnell has left the door open towards voting for impeaching Trump, which could encourage other Republicans following along. Even if they do get McConnell’s vote, Democrats would still need to get at least 16 other senators to vote for impeachment – a high bar.
Chuck Schumer: The newly elected Ssenate majority leader, Schumer will be responsible for keeping his caucus aligned and trying to win over Republican support, all while helping to maintain messaging during the trial. Schumer has been outspoken about the need to impeach Trump.
House impeachment managers
The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has tapped nine Democrats to be House impeachment managers and essentially serve as prosecutors against Trump. Here’s a look at some of the major players in the trial.
Read more about them here:
The impeachment article reads:
ARTICLE 1: INCITEMENT OF INSURRECTION
The Constitution provides that the House of Representatives “shall have the sole Power of Impeachment” and that the President “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment, for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” Further, section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution prohibits any person who has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against” the United States from “hold[ing] and office ... under the United States.’ In his conduct while President of the United States — and in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, provide, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed — Donald John Trump engaged in high Crimes and Misdemeanors by inciting violence against the Government of the United States, in that:
On January 6, 2021, pursuant to the 12th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, the Vice President of the United States, the House of Representatives, and the Senate met at the United States Capitol for a Joint Session of Congress to count the votes of the Electoral College. In the months preceding the Joint Session, President Trump repeatedly issued false statements asserting that the Presidential election results were the product of widespread fraud and should not be accepted by the American people or certified by State or Federal officials. Shortly before the Joint Session commenced, President Trump, addressed a crowd at the Ellipse in Washington, D.C. There, he reiterated false claims that “we won this election, and we won it by a landslide.” He also willfully made statements that, in context, encouraged — and foreseeably resulted in — lawless action at the Capitol, such as: “if you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore.” Thus incited by President Trump, members of the crowd he had addressed, in an attempt to, among other objectives, interfere with the Joint Session’s solemn constitutional duty to certify the results of the 2020 Presidential election, unlawfully breached and vandalized the Capitol, injured and killed law enforcement personnel, menaced Members of Congress, the Vice President, and Congressional personnel, and engaged in other violent, deadly, destructive and seditious acts.
President Trump’s conduct on January 6, 2021, followed his prior efforts to subvert and obstruct the certification of the results of the 2020 Presidential election. Those prior efforts included a phone call on January 2, 2021, during which President Trump urged the secretary of state of Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, to “find” enough votes to overturn the Georgia Presidential election results and threatened Secretary Raffensperger if he failed to do so.
In all this, President Trump gravely endangered the security of the United States and its institutions of Government. He threatened the integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transition of power, and imperiled a coequal branch of Government. He thereby betrayed his trust as President, to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.
Wherefore, Donald John Trump, by such conduct, has demonstrated that he will remain a threat to national security, democracy, and the Constitution if allowed to remain in office, and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with self-governance and the rule of law. Donald John Trump thus warrants impeachment and trial, removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.
The House impeachment managers are now being received at the Senate.
Maryland representative Jamie Raskin will read the article...
Impeachment article carried to Senate
The US House impeachment managers are marching the article of impeachment against Donald Trump to the Senate.
Trump will be the first American president in history to face a second impeachment trial.
A reading of the article – which charges incitement – will follow the formal procession.
Watch as the House Impeachment Managers, led by the House Clerk and the Acting House Sergeant at Arms, participate in a procession ceremony to deliver the article of impeachment against Donald Trump to the Senate. https://t.co/tjBAmFe44R
— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) January 26, 2021
Normally, the trial would begin as soon as the article is read. But Republicans and Democrats in the Senate reached a deal to allow Trump two weeks to mount a defense, while senators focus on Joe Biden’s legislative agenda and voting on his cabinet nominees.
Updated
Donald Trump, banned from Twitter, appears to have up an “office of the former president” in Florida.
Per a statement from the office:
The Office will be responsible for managing President Trump’s correspondence, public statements, appearances, and official activities to advance the interests of the United States and to carry on the agenda of the Trump Administration through advocacy, organizing, and public activism.
Antony Blinken’s nomination for secretary of state was approved by the Senate foreign relations committee, 15-3.
Republicans John Barrasso, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz voted against the nomination.
The Guardian’s Julian Borger wrote, on Biden’s pick of Blinken in November:
After four years of an administration that has separated migrant children from their parents and kept them in cages, Blinken’s arrival at the state department will mark a dramatic change, to say the least.
While Mike Pompeo has remained a domestic politician throughout his tenure as secretary of state, giving the lion’s share of his interviews to conservative radio stations in the midwest, for example, Blinken is very much a born internationalist.
He went to school in Paris, where he learned to play the guitar (he played Pink Floyd’s Another Brick in the Wall at graduation) and football, and harboured dreams of becoming a film-maker. Before entering the White House under Barack Obama, he used to play in a weekly soccer game with US officials, foreign diplomats and journalists, and he has two singles – love songs titled Lip Service and Patience – uploaded on Spotify.
Rob Malley, the president of the International Crisis Group, who was at school with Blinken in France, said: “He was an American in Paris, with a sense of what it meant to be an American with US culture and values at a time when there was a lot of anti-Americanism around. But he also saw what it was to be a French person looking at America.”
All those contacts and the urbane bilingual charm will be targeted at soothing the frayed nerves of western allies, reassuring them that the US is back as a conventional team player. Where Pompeo has been abrasive, Blinken is soft-spoken with a reputation for self-deprecatory humour. Those traits will be handy in the initial effort to rebuild relationships. The foreign policy priorities in the first days of a Biden administration will be rejoining treaties and agreements that Donald Trump left.
Read more:
Updated
Yellen sailed through a congressional hearing last week and had already been unanimously approved by the Senate finance committee and backed by all living former treasury secretaries.
She faces a monumental task. Only this week another 900,000 people filed for unemployment benefits – more than the population of San Francisco and four times the number of weekly claims made before the coronavirus pandemic struck.
Businesses are closing across the US amid a surge in infections. The US reported more than 188,000 new cases for Thursday, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, and close to 4,000 people are dying per day.
At the hearing, Yellen said it was imperative for the government to “act big” on the next coronavirus relief package and argued now is not the time to worry about the costs of a higher debt burden.
Tackling the fallout of Covid 19 would be her top priority, said Yellen, and especially its disproportionately hard impact on communities of color. Black and Latino workers are still experiencing far higher rates of unemployment, at 9.9% and 9.3%, compared with their white counterparts, 6%.
“We need to make sure that people aren’t going hungry in America, that they can put food on the table, that they’re not losing their homes and ending up out on the street because of evictions,” Yellen said. “We really need to address those forms of suffering, and I think we shouldn’t compromise on it.”
Senate confirms Janet Yellen as Treasury Secretary
Janet Yellen has been confirmed as Treasury Secretary. She’s the first woman to take the post.
Yellen, 74, received support from both Republicans and Democrats and was confirmed 84-15. She was chair of the Federal Reserve from 2014 to 2018 and has longstanding ties to Capitol Hill lawmakers – making her an uncontroversial pick.
Updated
First case of variant detected in Manaus, Brazil surge found in Minnesota
Minnesota officials said they’ve found the first known Covid-19 case associated with the P.1 variant found amid the outbreak in Manaus, Brazil.
The variant was found to have infected “a Minnesota resident with recent travel history to Brazil.” The individual tested positive on 9 January, and genomic sequencing has since revealed that they were carrying the P.1 variant.
Other cases of the P.1 variant could have gone undetected, as the US lacks a robust system for monitoring variants.
Impeachment guide: how will Donald Trump's second Senate trial unfold?
In a bit over an hour, the article of impeachment against Donald Trump will be walked over to the Senate. What’s next?
What happens on today?
Pelosi will send the article of impeachment – the charge of incitement laid out and approved by the House – to the Senate at 7pm EST. The charge will be carried by Democratic impeachment managers in a small, formal procession through National Statuary Hall, where just weeks ago rioters paraded, waving Trump flags. In the Senate, Jamie Raskin, a Democrat from Maryland and the lead impeachment manager, will read the article of impeachment on the floor of the chamber.
What happens next?
Traditionally the trial would begin almost immediately upon receipt of the impeachment article. But Senate leaders have agreed on a two-week delay, allowing time for Joe Biden to install his cabinet and begin pursuing a legislative agenda.
Under the deal struck by Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, and Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, the president’s team and the House managers will have until the week of 8 February to draft and exchange written legal briefs.
Trump’s legal team must submit an answer to the article by 2 February, the same day House managers must provide their pre-trial brief. Trump’s pre-trial brief will be due on 8 February and the House will have until 9 February for a rebuttal, allowing for the trial to begin.
What is the charge?
Trump is accused of “inciting violence against the government of the United States”, for his statements at a rally prior to his supporters launching the attack on the Capitol in which five people died. The House impeached Trump for “high crimes and misdemeanors” on 13 January, exactly one week after the siege. The final vote was 232 to 197, with 10 Republicans joining Democrats.
Will witnesses be called?
That is not yet known. In Trump’s first impeachment trial, over approaches to Ukraine for dirt on political rivals, the Republican-held Senate refused to call witnesses. Now the Senate is in Democratic hands but many in the party are hoping for a speedy trial so as not to distract from Biden’s first weeks in the White House. Some Democrats have said they do not expect to call witnesses, given that lawmakers bore witness to –and were the victims of – the attack on the Capitol.
Who runs the trial?
The chief justice of the supreme court, John Roberts, oversaw Trump’s first trial in February 2020. However, the constitution only stipulates that the chief justice must preside over the trial of a current president, leaving scholars divided over who should lead the chamber during the proceedings this time. If Roberts declined to preside, the task would likely fall to the president of the Senate: Kamala Harris, the vice-president. In the event she preferred not to become involved with the proceedings, which overlaps with her first weeks in her new job, the job could fall to Patrick Leahy, a Democratic senator from Vermont and the Senate president pro tempore, a position decided by seniority.
Read more:
Updated
California lifts its statewide Covid stay-at-home orders
The Guardian’s Vivian Ho reports from San Francisco:
California lifted its stay-at-home order statewide Monday after four-week projections showed intensive care unit capacity to be above 15% in beleaguered regions for the first time in weeks.
“Today we can lay claim to starting to see some light at the end of the tunnel as it relates to case numbers,” said the California governor Gavin Newsom during a press briefing on Monday.
Monday’s change moves counties back to a tiered system of reopening, with most regions across the state expected to move into the most restrictive tier. It lifts an evening curfew and, in many areas, will allow restaurants and churches to resume outdoor operations and hair and nail salons to reopen. Local officials still could choose to impose stricter rules.
The decision came amid improving trends in the state’s rate of infections, hospitalizations and intensive care unit capacity as well as vaccinations. Newsom said on Monday that California averaged 23,283 new coronavirus cases per day over the past week, and its positivity rate was down to 8%, below that of Texas, Florida and Arizona.
Monday’s announcement follows months of a relentless case surge that exhausted the healthcare system statewide and made California the first US state to record 3m Covid-19 infections. It also comes as more than 50 wine country-based restaurants and wineries have filed a lawsuit against Newsomover the state’s restrictions on outdoor dining.
Public officials in some of California’s major cities and counties indicated they could soon lift local restrictions.
“We will be moving forward with some limited re-openings, including outdoor dining and personal services,” said the San Francisco mayor London Breed in a tweet.
Orange county planned to lift some restrictions as well, said Jessica Good, a spokesperson for the county health agency. In Los Angeles county, home to 10 million people, the Republican district supervisor Kathryn Barger expressed support for opening outdoor dining, personal care services and other industries and said the state must balance public health with “devastating social, emotional and economic impacts of this virus”.Los Angeles county public health officials are expected to hold a briefing later Monday.
Others expressed dismay at how the order will affect low-income communities of color that have already been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic because so many work as essential workers in service industry jobs.
“This new executive order is surprising,” tweeted Lena Gonzalez, a California state senator. “My quintessential question: How are low income communities of color and essential workers being impacted by this order? Why do I have to keep asking this question?
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Today so far
It’s been a busy day so far in US politics and the best drama is yet to come, with the article of impeachment due to be marched from the House to the Senate at 7pm ET. Many apologies to all our readers that there wasn’t a summary in the middle of the day, the blog got carried away with so many events at the White House.
My Guardian colleague on the west coast, Maanvi Singh, will take over in a moment to carry you through the next few hours in her inimitable style.
Here are the main events so far today:
- Joe Biden announced he is very keen to step up vaccination efforts in hopes of increasing from a million shots a day to 1.5m and getting most Americans vaccinated “by the spring”.
- The president signed an order to close loopholes and oblige the US government itself to made more effort to make its purchases from American-made manufacturers. He’s creating a new figure in the budget office.
- The Treasury Department is taking steps to get the project to put abolitionist Harriet Tubman on the US $20 bill back on track.
- The US Department of Justice’s internal watchdog, inspector general Michael Horowitz, is launching an investigation in whether any department officials engaged in an improper attempt to alter the election result.
- The Biden-Harris administration, with the strong support of the newly-sworn-in defense secretary Lloyd Austin, reversed Donald Trump’s ban on transgender people serving in the US military.
Updated
In a little over two hours, the House of Representatives impeachment managers, led by Maryland congressman Jamie Raskin, will ceremoniously walk the article of impeachment against Donald Trump across the Capitol to the Senate, ahead of the former president’s trial for high crimes and misdemeanors.
It is a single article, accusing Trump of “incitement of insurrection” because he exhorted the supporters at his rally near the White House on January 6 to “fight” to overturn the election result.
But there’s also the Georgia element.
Here are some condensed extracts from the article (my bold), you can read the whole thing here.
“On January 6, 2021, the House and Senate met at the US Capitol to count the votes of the electoral college. In the months preceding, President Trump repeatedly issued false statements asserting that the results were the product of widespread fraud and should not be accepted or certified by officials.
“Shortly before the joint session, Trump addressed a crowd in Washington, DC. There, he reiterated false claims that ‘we won this election and we won it by a landslide’. He also willfully made statements that, in context, encouraged - and foreseeably resulted in - lawless action at the Capitol, such as: ‘if you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country any more.’
“Thus incited by President Trump, members of the crowd he had addressed, in an attempt to interfere with the joint session [of Congress], unlawfully breached and vandalized the Capitol, injured and killed law enforcement personnel, menaced members of Congress, the vice president [Mike Pence] and congressional personnel, and engaged in other violent, deadly, destructive and seditious acts.”
Then it refers back a little before January 6, when it said his conduct followed “prior efforts to subvert and obstruct” the certification of election results, including:
“A phone call on January 2 during which President Trump urged the secretary of state of Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, to ‘find’ enough votes to overturn the Georgia presidential election results and threatened Raffensperger if he failed to do so.”
It then goes on to say that “Trump gravely endangered the security of the US...threatened the integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transition of power.......he betrayed his trust as president.”
The White House press briefings will from now on regularly include an American Sign Language (ASL) interpreter for what seems to be the first time in history.
Jen Psaki, press secretary, announced the change today, noting that an interpreter named Heather was translating the conference virtually in a concurrent livestream.
“The president is committed to building an America that is more inclusive, more just and more accessible for every American,” she said.
White House Press Sec. Jen Psaki announced daily press briefings will now have an American Sign Language interpreter to make them more accessible.
— AJ+ (@ajplus) January 25, 2021
Last year, a judge had to order the Trump administration to provide an ASL interpreter for #COVID19 briefings. pic.twitter.com/Q3pG0Z7epl
About one million Americans use ASL as their primary language of communication.
Without access to the language and interpreters, many deaf people suffer job discrimination or underemployment.
The Trump administration had been sued over the lack of accessibility of its press conferences, as NPR pointed out.
A judge had required the press briefings to include sign language at coronavirus briefings last September.
Biden’s inauguration ceremony, meanwhile, included a sign language interpreter and such interpretation was seen on his presidential campaign trail last year.
A New Jersey Democrat is calling on Joe Biden to fire top officials at the US Postal Service over what he called “their silence and complicity” in attempts by Donald Trump to undermine the electoral process back in the late summer, the Hill reports.
“Today I am calling on President Biden to fire the entire Postal Board of Governors for their silence and complicity in trump and dejoy’s attempts to subvert the election and destroy the Post Office,” Representative Bill Pascrell tweeted, referring to postmaster general Louis DeJoy.
The tweet accompanied a letter from Pascrell, a fierce Trump critic, to Biden saying the Postal Service’s Board of Governors “sat silent” while DeJoy implemented “efforts to dismantle mail sorting machines, cut overtime, restrict deliveries, and remove mailboxes,” which he noted the Postal Service inspector general had blamed for reductions in both the timeliness and quality of the nation’s mail delivery service.
Today I am calling on President Biden to fire the entire Postal Board of Governors for their silence and complicity in trump and dejoy’s attempts to subvert the election and destroy the Post Office. pic.twitter.com/VGaXM8MyXT
— Bill Pascrell, Jr. (@BillPascrell) January 25, 2021
Biden aiming to get bulk of Americans vaccinated 'by spring'
“If we wear masks between now and the end of April we can save 50,000 lives,” Biden said about curbing the spread of coronavirus, just now at the White House.
The president said the government is racing towards its initial goal to get a million Americans vaccinated per day and would like to increase to getting 1.5m shots into arms across the US daily.
President Biden now says he believes everyone who wants a vaccine can get one by this spring (further than Trump officials estimated) and hopes to raise daily vaccinations to 1.5 million soon, upping his goal of one million per day given that threshold was reached last week.
— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) January 25, 2021
Jonathan Reiner, professor of medicine and surgery at George Washington University School of Medicine & Health Sciences thinks the vaccinations could and should double from one to two million shots administered every day.
US #PresidentJoeBiden has vowed to get 100 million #CovidVaccine shots in arms in his first 100 days in office, but @JReinerMD says he needs to double that to 2m shots a day. I ask him how that can be done given supplies are low right now. #coronavirus #COVID19 pic.twitter.com/iQVgjqOvr0
— Rosemary Church (@rosemaryCNN) January 25, 2021
The White House event with the president has just ended.
Updated
Biden wants to make the Senate debate again
Joe Biden is still talking at the White House, now taking press questions. He has complained that the division in government has actually led to less heated discussion on Capitol Hill, not more - at least in terms of lawmakers talking to each other across the aisle.
“There were very few debates on the Senate floor last year on any issue”, Biden said, turning to his vice president, Kamala Harris, standing close by, for affirmation.
Harris, who until she became veep was a Democratic Senator for California, nodded in agreement.
Biden continued: “I’m optimistic that. It may take some time, but if we treat each other with respect...we are going to argue like hell, but I think we can do it in a way where we can get things done for the American people.”
“The middle class built this country and the unions built the middle class, so let’s invest in them again,” US president Joe Biden just said.
He’s now signing an executive order to push the government to buy American. Now he’s going to Q&A from the press.
The first question concerns Chicago teachers who are refusing to return to in-person teaching in the classroom because they are at risk from coronavirus, while the vaccination program is behind.
Biden said: “We should make our school classrooms safe and secure” for teachers and children. He wants better ventilation, better sanitization, more testing, plastic dividers between desks and some other measures.
“They just want to work in a safe environment, and we can do that, and we should be able to open up these schools if we do this,” Biden said.
Updated
Biden creates new post of "Director of Made in America"
The president is creating a new role in the White House Office of Management and Budget, the director of Made in America, to oversee the administration’s efforts to maximize the US government buying American when it spends money.
One of the jobs will be to stop federal agencies waiving rules on the government buying American made goods “with impunity”, Biden just said.
The US government is the world’s biggest single buyer of goods and services. Biden just said, for example, that the government is a huge purchaser of vehicles and he wants those vehicles to become electric vehicles that are made in the US.
This afternoon, I’m taking action to ensure the future is made in America by all of America’s workers. Tune in. https://t.co/zyGtHwqFmj
— President Biden (@POTUS) January 25, 2021
Joe Biden is back in front of the cameras at the White House, this time to promote his Made in America initiative to, according to officials, harness the purchasing power of the US government, the world’s biggest single buyer of goods and services, to strengthen domestic manufacturing and union jobs and create markets for new technologies.
Biden will sign an executive order aimed at closing loopholes in existing “Buy American” provisions.
Updated
Here’s some more detail and context on the Justice Department’s internal watchdog launching an investigation on whether current or former department officials made an “improper attempt” to seek to alter the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Horowitz is launching an investigation to examine whether any former or current department officials “engaged in an improper attempt” to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Photograph: Jacquelyn Martin/AP
The announcement by Inspector General Michael Horowitz came after the New York Times first reported that Jeffrey Clark, then the department’s acting assistant attorney general for the Civil Division, had plotted with Donald Trump in a failed attempt to oust then-Attorney General Jeff Rosen so that he could launch a probe of alleged voter fraud in Georgia.
Clark, Reuters reports this afternoon, was sympathetic to Trump’s so-called “Stop the Steal” campaign to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden.
Clark met with Congressman Scott Perry of Pennsylvania to discuss a plan to have the department launch election fraud investigations to help achieve Trump’s goal of overturning Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.
Perry has since confirmed that he introduced Clark to Trump.
“Throughout the past four years, I worked with Assistant Attorney General Clark on various legislative matters. When President Trump asked if I would make an introduction, I obliged,” Perry said in a statement.
The plan to oust Rosen and replace him with Clark so that the department could pursue investigations of Trump’s baseless voter fraud claims collapsed after senior department leaders pledged to resign in protest, current and former Justice Department officials told Reuters.
The reports about Clark and Trump’s failed plan “raise deeply troubling questions regarding the Justice Department’s role in Trump’s scheme to overturn the election,” wrote nine Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
According to current and former officials, Clark tried to pressure Rosen and former acting Deputy Attorney General Rich Donoghue to hold a press conference to announce they were pursuing allegations of election fraud. They said he also advocated for them to send a letter he had penned to Georgia state officials announcing they were launching a probe.
Rosen and Donoghue rejected both requests.
Clark has left the Justice Department and has not responded to multiple requests for comment.
Ryan to run for Portman's seat in Ohio?
Tim Ryan, who briefly ran for the Democratic nomination for president in the 2020 election, says he’s “looking seriously” at running for Senate in 2022 to represent Ohio, after Republican Senator announced his retirement earlier today.
I’m overwhelmed by supporters who are reaching out to encourage me to run for Senate. I haven’t made a decision yet but I’m looking seriously at it. Ohio deserves leaders who fight for working people. #OHSen https://t.co/FzRIn9bHfw
— Tim Ryan (@TimRyan) January 25, 2021
Ryan ran as a moderate in the Democratic primary contest. The congressman was always a long-shot. When he ended his campaign in the fall of 2019, he said:
“I got into this race in April to really give voice to the forgotten people of our country: the workers who have been left behind, the businesses who have been left behind, the people who need health care or aren’t getting a quality education, or are saddled by tremendous debt.”
“I’m proud of this campaign because I believe we’ve done that. We’ve given voice to the forgotten communities and the forgotten people in the United States.”
Joe Biden came from behind to win the nomination and then the presidency in November 2020. Rob Portman announced earlier today that he won’t run for re-election.
More on the venerable Patrick Leahy, Democratic Senator from Vermont, on his upcoming role presiding over the Senate impeachment trial of Donald Trump.
D) Leahy: When I preside over the impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump, I will not waver from my constitutional and sworn obligations to administer the trial with fairness, in accordance with the Constitution and the laws.
— Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) January 25, 2021
A quick reminder of the timeline. The article of impeachment (charge against Donald Trump of incitement to insurrection) will be delivered from the House of Representatives across the halls of Congress to the Senate this evening.
Senators will be sworn tomorrow in as jurors. Then there’s a pause in the proceedings and the trial begins on Monday February 8. It’s not known yet how long the trial is expected to last, but it should be pretty swift, perhaps wrapping up that same week.
Here’s my colleague Lauren Gambino:
Another flashback to January 6 and the deadly insurrection at the US Capitol by pro-Trump supporters egged on by the-then president.
Just watched the video that George Conway tweeted. The footage is pretty brutal in reference to Mike Pence.
This is truly horrifying. The president of the United States could have gotten his vice-president killed. Do GOP senators really believe Trump should hold office again? https://t.co/fICwr433ne
— Lois Romano (@loisromano) January 25, 2021
More on Harriet Tubman.
The redesigned $20 bill was initially due to be unveiled last year, but those efforts were halted by the Treasury after the former president, Donald Trump, called them an example of “pure political correctness”, whatever the heck that means in this context.
Here’s a depiction of what the new bill could look like.
Twenty-dollar bill going from Andrew Jackson to Harriet Tubman — one symbol of difference between Trump and Biden. Proposed new design below: pic.twitter.com/e6xaukiSJJ
— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) January 25, 2021
As a presidential candidate, Trump suggested Tubman would be better-suited for the $2 bill, a note that is not widely circulated, Reuters further reports.
Former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told lawmakers in May 2019 that he was focused on redesigning the bills to address counterfeiting issues, not making any changes to their imagery.
Tubman, who was born into slavery and grew up on a Maryland plantation before escaping in her late 20s, would replace Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the United States, on the front of the $20 bill.
Tubman returned to the South many times to help hundreds of slaves to freedom and later worked as a Union spy during the Civil War. She died in 1913.
There have been no women depicted on US bills since former first lady Martha Washington, who was featured on the $1 silver certificate from 1891 to 1896, and Native American woman Pocahontas, who was included in a group image on the $20 bill from 1865 to 1869.
Other women, including Native American interpreter Sacagawea, suffragist Susan B. Anthony and author and activist Helen Keller have been featured on coins, Reuters reminds us.
In the redesign announced in 2016, Andrew Jackson would have remained on the back of the $20 bill.
Treasury officials had no immediate comment.
Jen Psaki’s White House briefing having wrapped up, and indeed former press secretary Sarah Sanders having confirmed her run for governor in Arkansas earlier today, it seems as apposite a time as any to check in with the Washington Post’s fact checkers, who have released their final count of Donald Trump’s lies in office, whether from the White House podium, from stages at rallies or, who knows, in tweets sent from the bath:
The final tally of Trump’s presidency: 30,573 false or misleading claims – with nearly half coming in his final year.
So writes Glenn Kessler in a valedictory post, released late on Friday night, that is of course well worth reading.
For more than 10 years, the Fact Checker has assessed the accuracy of claims made by politicians in both parties, and that practice will continue. But Trump, with his unusually flagrant disregard for facts, posed a new challenge … the database became an untruth tracker for the ages, widely cited around the world as a measuring stick of Trump’s presidency – and as of noon Wednesday it was officially retired.
Whether such a tracker will be necessary for future presidents is unclear. Nonetheless, the impact of Trump’s rhetoric may reverberate for years.
“As a result of Trump’s constant lying through the presidential megaphone, more Americans are skeptical of genuine facts than ever before,” presidential historian Michael Beschloss said.
Psaki’s briefings have started smoothly, the experienced press secretary riffling through her binder, stating the administration’s position, deflecting if caught off guard and, today, complimenting one reporter’s mask. Psaki also announced the return of regular Covid briefings, a practice which fell victim to Trump’s extraordinary appetite for untruth.
Nor were reporters subjected to attacks from the podium as they were under Sanders. Her campaign announcement, inevitably, included an attack on the media:
Here’s more on South Africa and coronavirus travel restrictions in relation to the US.
The White House confirmed Joe Biden is signing an order today imposing a ban on most non-US citizens entering the country who have recently been in South Africa, starting on Saturday.
Spokeswoman Jen Psaki also confirmed Biden will re-impose an entry ban on nearly all non-US-citizen travelers who have been in Brazil, the United Kingdom, Ireland and 26 countries in Europe that allow travel across open borders - a ban that was set to expire tomorrow.
“With the pandemic worsening and more contagious variants spreading, this isn’t the time to be lifting restrictions on international travel,” Psaki said at a news briefing, Reuters reports.
The briefing is just about to wrap up.
Updated
Time for Tubmans
The Treasury Department is taking steps to put Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill, as was planned in the Obama administration.
Psaki says the Treasury Department is taking steps to put Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill, as was planned in the Obama administration.
— Geoff Bennett (@GeoffRBennett) January 25, 2021
Harriet Tubman was an American abolitionist and political activist who as a young age escaped slavery herself and subsequently made incredibly dangerous missions back to slaveholders’ estates to rescue enslaved people, using the network of activists and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad.
Barack Obama decided that Tubman should replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill, leading to celebrations that an escaped slave would be honored over a slaveowner president, as the Guardian put it at the time, 2016.
Donald Trump, who placed a portrait of “bloody, bloody” Andrew Jackson, murderous enemy of Native Americans, prominently in the Oval Office, squished that plan. Now it looks like Joe Biden has revived it (as well as replacing the Jackson portrait in the Oval with one of Benjamin Franklin).
NEW: White House says Treasury Dept. is "taking steps to resume efforts" to put Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill.
— NBC News (@NBCNews) January 25, 2021
Press Sec. Psaki says the Biden admin. is "exploring ways to speed up that effort." pic.twitter.com/c4bARsGf1Z
Obama at one point nicknamed what he hoped would be the forthcoming new $20 bills as “Tubmans”.
As my colleague Amanda Holpuch wrote:
Among 200-year-old facts that will be new to many is that Tubman was the first woman in US history to plan and lead an armed expedition, liberating nearly 750 enslaved men and women in the process.
She also fought for decades to gain compensation for her work as a spy, scout and nurse during the US civil war and was an advocate for both women’s suffrage and proper care of the elderly.
Updated
Confusion over vaccine supplies
The US federal government under the new president, Joe Biden, does not know exactly how many doses of coronavirus vaccines are in the federal supply or immediately incoming right now.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki just said that the administration was in a mode of “eyes wide open” about the lack of organized plan it inherited from the Trump administration on vaccine supplies, distribution and administration (shots actually getting into arms).
“We knew we were not walking into circumstances where there was going to be a concrete plan presented to us,” she said.
The new head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Rochelle Walensky, said this morning that the agency “does not know how much vaccine we have or how much is coming [from producers Pfizer and Moderna] in the next two to three weeks.”
Meanwhile, Psaki said public officials will hold Covid-19 briefings three times a week, beginning on Wednesday.
Psaki just announced that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has been dispatched to assist at an under-staffed vaccination site.
More details shortly.
Psaki just confirmed that Joe Biden tore up Donald Trump’s ban on transgender people serving in the military.
And Biden is to maintain travel restrictions on Europe, Britain, Ireland and Brazil and add South Africa restrictions, to try to curb the spread of variants of the coronavirus disease.
An update, the vaccination center was in West Virginia, MSNBC reports.
Jen Psaki says FEMA has been deployed in West Virginia to assist with vaccinations efforts.
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) January 25, 2021
Updated
The White House press briefing has just begun. Press sec Jen Psaki just announced that from now on, her briefings will be accompanied by someone delivering the material using sign language.
The White House briefings will have an American Sign Language interpreter. Today's interpreter is joining virtually. pic.twitter.com/lis4YewAuQ
— Jan Wolfe (@JanNWolfe) January 25, 2021
Updated
Five days after the end of Donald Trump’s presidency, the supreme court today halted lawsuits accusing him of violating the US Constitution’s anti-corruption provisions by maintaining ownership of his business empire, including a hotel near the White House while in office.
The action means that after four years of litigation the top US judicial body will not rule on the meaning and scope of the Constitution’s so-called emoluments provisions, a largely untested area of constitutional law.
The provisions bar presidents from accepting gifts or payments from foreign and state governments without congressional approval.
The justices threw out lower court rulings that had allowed the lawsuits to proceed, Reuters reports, and ordered the two cases dismissed because they became moot with Trump leaving office.
One of the cases was filed by the District of Columbia and the state of Maryland, while the other by plaintiffs including the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). Trump had appealed the lower court rulings.
“Only Trump losing the presidency and leaving office ended these corrupt constitutional violations and stopped these groundbreaking lawsuits,” CREW Executive Director Noah Bookbinder said in a statement.
Maryland attorney general Brian Frosh and District of Columbia attorney general Karl Racine said in a joint statement that their case was significant because a lower court “ruled on the meaning of ‘emoluments’ for the first time in American history.”
Frosh and Racine said Trump and his Justice Department appointees who defended him “went to extreme lengths to prevent us from uncovering the true extent of his corruption.”
The Justice Department, now under Democratic president Joe Biden’s administration, declined to comment on the Supreme Court’s action.
In one of the cases, plaintiffs including CREW, a hotel owner and a restaurant trade group said the Republican former president’s failure to disentangle himself from his businesses had made him vulnerable to inducements by officials seeking to curry favor.
The plaintiffs said that they lost patronage, wages and commissions from clients who chose Trump’s businesses over theirs because of the ability to gain his favor. After a federal judge initially threw out the case, the New York-based 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals revived it in 2019.
A 2020 decision by the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th US circuit court of appeals allowed the similar lawsuit by the District of Columbia and Maryland to proceed. That suit focused on the Trump International Hotel in Washington, which became a favored lodging and event space for some foreign and state officials visiting Washington.
A third lawsuit filed by congressional Democrats against Trump ended last year after the Supreme Court refused to hear their appeal of a lower court ruling that the lawmakers lacked the necessary legal standing to pursue the case.
Walter Shaub, the former top US government ethics watchdog, who resigned early in the Trump administration, was sharply critical of the Scotus decision. today.
That’s insane. They’re not moot. He still has the money. When any other federal employee violates the emoluments clause they have to forfeit the money. https://t.co/09kAERxBB7
— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) January 25, 2021
Shaub had previously strongly criticized the president over his failure to divest from his business holdings, saying he was “extremely troubled” that Trump simply turned over his investments to his two oldest sons.
Updated
It looks as though Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy will preside over Donald Trump’s impeachment trial in the senate next month.
New - Sen. Patrick Leahy, the Senate pro tempore, is expected to preside in impeachment trial, two sources tell me and @JoanBiskupic - not Chief Justice John Roberts
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) January 25, 2021
Senators preside when the person facing trial isn’t the current president of the United States, per one source
It was known that it wouldn’t be Supreme Court chief justice John Roberts, as it was during Trump’s 2019 impeachment trial when Trump was a sitting president, and there was growing speculation that vice-president Kamala Harris, as the president of the Senate, would not preside over the upcoming melodrama.
So it looks like Leahy will be in charge, as president pro tempore.
The senate describes the role of president pro tempore as: the person who presides over the [senate] chamber in the absence of the vice president. The president pro tempore (or, “president for a time”) is elected by the Senate and is, by custom, the senator of the majority party with the longest record of continuous service.
Leahy is also a movie star.....having appeared in Batman films.
Major changes.
Champ has since been joined in the Biden household by a much younger dog, Major, who just became the first rescue dog to inhabit the White House. Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
Some more details on that new investigation by the DoJ watchdog:
The Justice Department’s inspector general is launching an investigation to examine whether any former or current department officials “engaged in an improper attempt” to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Inspector General Michael Horowitz said today that the investigation will investigate allegations concerning the conduct of former and current Justice Department officials - but will not extend to other government officials, The AP reports.
The investigation comes after The New York Times reported that a former assistant attorney general, Jeffrey Clark, had been discussing a plan with the then-president, Donald Trump, to oust the acting attorney general, try to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential race and suggest falsely that there had been widespread election fraud.
The announcement of the investigation comes two days after Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer demanded the inspector general launch a probe “into this attempted sedition.”
The New York Democrat, Schumer, said it was “unconscionable a Trump Justice Department leader would conspire to subvert the people’s will.”
Election officials across the country, along with Trump’s former attorney general, William Barr, have confirmed there was no widespread fraud in the election.
Republican governors in Arizona and Georgia, key battleground states won by Biden, also vouched for the integrity of the elections in their states.
The vast majority of the legal challenges from Trump and his allies have been dismissed by judges, including two tossed by the Supreme Court, which includes three justices nominated by Trump.
Well that jogged things along. Joe Biden just signed the executive order at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office reversing Donald Trump’s ban on transgender people serving in the military.
Today, I repealed the discriminatory ban on transgender people serving in the military. It’s simple: America is safer when everyone qualified to serve can do so openly and with pride.
— President Biden (@POTUS) January 25, 2021
Biden said he would take questions later in the day, from gathered media. This was just a ‘spray’ as it’s known - a brief witnessing by members of the selected press pool of the president meeting someone or announcing something at the White House, etc.
Biden was wearing a mask to prevent the spread of coronavirus, as was the vice-president Kamala Harris, and the new defense secretary, Lloyd Austin.
Austin is the first Black American to serve as US defense sec and, of course, Harris is the first female and first Black veep, as Biden continues to mark the changes from the Trump era.
Updated
As we await Joe Biden and Kamala Harris appearing at the White House for an event with Lloyd Austin (20 mins behind published schedule, and counting....), here are some details from the WH fact sheet released with the announcement that the president is dropping Donald Trump’s ban on transgender people serving openly in the military, thanks to my Washington colleague Joan Greve for pinging that on in full.
President Biden signed today an Executive Order that sets the policy that all Americans who are qualified to serve in the Armed Forces of the United States should be able to serve. The All-Volunteer Force thrives when it is composed of diverse Americans who can meet the rigorous standards for military service, and an inclusive military strengthens our national security.
President Biden believes that gender identity should not be a bar to military service, and that America’s strength is found in its diversity. This question of how to enable all qualified Americans to serve in the military is easily answered by recognizing our core values. America is stronger, at home and around the world, when it is inclusive. The military is no exception. Allowing all qualified Americans to serve their country in uniform is better for the military and better for the country because an inclusive force is a more effective force. Simply put, it’s the right thing to do and is in our national interest.
In 2016, a comprehensive study requested by the Department of Defense found that enabling transgender individuals to serve openly in the United States military would have only a minimal impact on military readiness and healthcare costs. The study also concluded that open transgender service has had no significant impact on operational effectiveness or unit cohesion in foreign militaries.
These facts were confirmed by testimony in 2018 to Congress by the then-serving Chief of Staff of the Army, Chief of Naval Operations, Commandant of the Marine Corps, and Chief of Staff of the Air Force that they were not aware of any issues of unit cohesion, disciplinary problems, or issues of morale resulting from open transgender service. In addition, former United States Surgeons General, who served under both Democratic and Republican Presidents, supported this posture, noted in 2018 that “transgender troops are as medically fit as their non-transgender peers and that there is no medically valid reason -- including a diagnosis of gender dysphoria -- to exclude them from military service or to limit their access to medically necessary care.”
Today’s executive action revokes the Presidential Memorandum of March 23, 2018 (Military Service by Transgender Individuals), and also confirms the revocation of the Presidential Memorandum of August 25, 2017 (Military Service by Transgender Individuals).
We paws for happy news.
Champ and Major have joined us in the White House! 💕🐾 pic.twitter.com/R035YnavVo
— Jill Biden (@FLOTUS) January 25, 2021
DoJ watchdog to investigate possible internal collusion with attempts to overturn Joe Biden's election victory
The US Department of Justice’s internal watchdog has said today that his office is launching an investigation in whether any department officials engaged in an improper attempt to alter the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
This news just snapped on Reuters and clearly refers to the New York Times report at the weekend that said Trump plotted with an official at the Department of Justice to fire the acting attorney general, then force Georgia Republicans to overturn his defeat in that state.
Reuters adds that the investigation will be into whether current or former department officials made an “improper attempt” to seek to alter the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Updated
Meanwhile, Joe Biden has brought back Dr. Kevin O’Connor as his physician, replacing Donald Trump’s doctor with the one who oversaw Biden’s care when he was vice president.
The White House confirmed that Dr Sean Conley, the Navy commander who served as the head of the White House Medical Unit under Trump and oversaw his treatment when he was hospitalized with Covid-19, will assume a teaching role at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, The AP reports.
O’Connor, a retired Army colonel, was Biden’s doctor during his entire tenure as vice president, having remained in the role at Biden’s request. He remained Biden’s physician while assuming a role on the faculty of George Washington University.
The White House said O’Connor was being commissioned by the president but was not rejoining the military. He is the first non-active duty doctor to serve as physician to the president in almost three decades.
Conley faced intense scrutiny over his lack of transparency during Trump’s illness with Covid-19.
Then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said at the time that Trump’s condition was worse than Conley had let on.
Scoop: Joe Biden has chosen long-time physician Dr. Kevin O’Connor to be his WH Doc.
— Molly Nagle (@MollyNagle3) January 25, 2021
He’ll take over for Dr. Sean Conley in the position that came under intense scrutiny during President Trump’s time in office over transparency ⬇️ https://t.co/VRFLuaQmAj
Some recent history. It’s been just under a decade since Bill Clinton’s awful compromise law on gays in the military “Don’t ask, don’t tell” formally ended.
Clinton introduced the “DADT” law in 1993 as a compromise step to full equality, DADT allowed gay and lesbian members of the military to serve only if their sexuality remained secret or was not reported.
The Service-members Legal Defence Network estimated that since the law’s introduction and its end, 13,000 gay men, lesbians and queer troops more widely had been discharged after their sexual orientation was revealed.
Barack Obama had pledged to overturn “DADT” during his 2008 election campaign, but action on the issue appeared stalled until his January 2010 state of the union speech, when he said: “This year, I will work with Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are.”
The call was met with stony silence from members of the military seated in front of the president, who is also commander-in-chief of the armed forces.
Obama was behind the curve compared with Joe Biden on making gay marriage legal in the US. But he made steady progress on all things queer and gender non-conforming as his years in the White House went on, and in the summer of 2016 the Obama administration ended the ban on openly transgender troops serving in the military.
Six months after taking office, Donald Trump went smartly about face on that.
The then freshly-minted 45th president tweeted at the time: “After consultation with my generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States government will not accept or allow … transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the US military.”
Today is a new day for LGBTQ members and aspiring members of the US military.
And there it is-- the White House announces an executive action repealing Trump's ban on trans service members in the military, writing, "President Biden believes that gender identity should not be a bar to military service, and that America’s strength is found in its diversity." pic.twitter.com/cj0Fkn2Lyo
— DJ Judd (@DJJudd) January 25, 2021
Updated
'Right thing to do'
More on that:
Joe Biden has overturned a controversial ban by his predecessor on transgender individuals serving in the US military, a move that fulfills a campaign promise and will be cheered by LGBTQ advocates, Reuters reported seconds ago.
“President Biden believes that gender identity should not be a bar to military service, and that America’s strength is found in its diversity,” the White House said in a statement.
“Allowing all qualified Americans to serve their country in uniform is better for the military and better for the country because an inclusive force is a more effective force. Simply put, it’s the right thing to do and is in our national interest,” it said.
As one transgender man, who was forced to abandon joining the military after Trump's 2017 Tweet, said today : "I know there are thousands of other people out there just like me who have been counting down to this day waiting to be able to start our careers and start our lives." https://t.co/vFxqW4rUj2
— Idrees Ali (@idreesali114) January 25, 2021
Former Democratic president Barack Obama in 2016 allowed trans people to serve openly and receive medical care to transition genders, but Republican president Donald Trump froze their recruitment while allowing serving personnel to remain.
Human Rights Campaign: "For years, transgender patriots were forced to continue to hide their identity while serving in our military. But today, thanks to Pres. Joe Biden, Secy. Lloyd Austin, and pro-equality voters across America, they may live and serve openly as themselves."
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) January 25, 2021
Here’s a vital read on this topic from the Guardian in 2019.
Updated
Biden overturns US military transgender ban
Speculation that Joe Biden will issue an executive order today to reverse a Pentagon policy that largely bars transgender individuals from joining the military appears to be about to come to fruition.
Reuters just pinged out a own-line snap, which backs up earlier reporting that the Biden/Harris administration plans on dumping a ban ordered by former president Donald Trump in a tweet during his first year in office.
The move to reverse the policy has the support of Biden’s newly confirmed defense secretary, retired Army General Lloyd Austin, who spoke of the need to overturn it during his Senate confirmation hearing last week.
“I support the president’s plan...to overturn the ban,” Austin said. “If you’re fit and you’re qualified to serve and you can maintain the standards, you should be allowed to serve.”
The decision comes as Biden plans to turn his attention to equity issues that he believes continue to shadow nearly all aspects of American life. The move to overturn the transgender ban is also the latest example of Biden using executive authority in his first days as president to dismantle Trump’s legacy.
It was unclear at present how quickly the Pentagon can put a new policy in effect, and whether it will take some time to work out details. Over the weekend Austin announced that he had ordered a comprehensive review of the sexual harassment prevention efforts within the US military.
The Guardian reported in 2019 that in the US, all four military service chiefs had testified before Congress that there were no known negative effects during the three years in which president Barack Obama opened the doors of the military to trans people.
Trump’s policy was a ridiculous, cruel mess.
California to ease lockdown restrictions
California governor Gavin Newsom will lift regional stay-at-home orders later today and announce the state is returning to a system of county-by-county restrictions intended to stem the spread of the coronavirus amid the ongoing pandemic crisis, two administration officials with knowledge said.
A person takes a photo of a mass Covid-19 vaccination site at Dodger Stadium, with the downtown skyline in the background, on January 22, 2021 in Los Angeles, California. California has become the first state in the nation to record 3 million known coronavirus infections. Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty Images
The decision comes with improving trends in the rate of infections, hospitalizations and intensive care unit capacity as well as vaccinations, The Associated Press reports.
The order had been in place in the San Francisco Bay Area, San Joaquin Valley and Southern California. The change will allow businesses such as restaurants to resume outdoor operations in many areas.
During the weekend, San Francisco Bay Area ICU available capacity improved to 23% while the San Joaquin Valley increased to 1.3% - its first time above zero in the current surge of infections. The huge Southern California region, the most populous, remains at zero ICU capacity, however.
The change is based on projections, but the state has not disclosed the data behind the forecasts.
Early last year, the state developed a system of color-coded tiers that dictated the level of restrictions on businesses and individuals based on virus conditions in each of California’s 58 counties.
Then, as Covid-19 infections and hospitalizations rocketed, Newsom put in place a new system that grouped counties into five regions: Southern California, San Joaquin Valley, Bay Area, Greater Sacramento and Northern California.
Stay-at-home orders took effect if a region’s ICU capacity fell below 15%.
Here’s more from the Cincinnati Enquirer’s report about Ohio’s GOP Senator Rob Portman winding down his career in Congress.
Portman, 65, will be sworn in tomorrow as a juror in Donald Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate.
Portman said he hasn’t decided how he will vote on impeachment during former President Donald Trump’s trial.
“I’m a juror, it’s going to happen,” Portman said. “As a juror, I’m going to listen to both sides. That’s my job.”
Portman said Trump contributed to partisan gridlock in Washington, and he also laid blame on Trump for the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
“I don’t excuse anything President Trump did on Jan. 6 or in the runup to it,” Portman said.
(In a statement) he said, in part: “I don’t think any Senate office has been more successful in getting things done, but honestly, it has gotten harder and harder to break through the partisan gridlock and make progress on substantive policy, and that has contributed to my decision.”
The Enquirer further reports that “after three decades in Washington, Portman has grown tired of the incivility in politics and the increasing partisan divide. One of Greater Cincinnati’s most prominent politicians, he was once expected to be headed to national office. He sticks to policy and refrains from personal attacks”.
But the timing from Portman seems extraordinary.
Updated
GOP Senator who criticized Trump in relation to Capitol insurrection won't seek re-election
Republican Senator Rob Portman of Ohio said today he won’t seek re-election and plans to end a career in federal government spanning more than three decades.
Portman’s announcement comes the same day the Senate is receiving the House impeachment article against former the Republican president, Donald Trump.
While some Republican senators have criticized going ahead with the trial next month with Trump out of office, Portman said last week he would listen to both sides before making a decision on how to vote, The Associated Press reports.
Portman, who turned 65 last month, is among establishment Republicans who clearly struggled with supporting Trump.
Ohio's U.S. Sen. Rob Portman won't run for re-election; Republican cites 'partisan gridlock' https://t.co/CE2Fl0QdA0 via @enquirer
— Jessie Balmert (@jbalmert) January 25, 2021
Once dubbed “The Loyal Soldier” in a front-page profile story in his hometown newspaper the Cincinnati Enquirer, Portman usually supported Trump in carefully worded statements. After Trump called the presidential election rigged, Portman said Trump had a right to a probe of any irregularities.
But in the immediate aftermath of the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol, Portman said Trump needed to go on national TV to address his supporters and tell them to refrain from violence.
“Both in his words before the attack on the Capitol and in his actions afterward, President Trump bears some responsibility for what happened on January 6,” Portman said.
Portman was elected handily twice to the US Senate, but was considered likely to face primary opposition in 2022.
Portman, who served in the presidential administrations of both Bushes (George HW and George W), was under consideration by both the late John McCain and Mitt Romney to be their running mates in their respective presidential bids.
Portman also helped them and other GOP presidential candidates practice for debates by playing their Democratic rival.
He was elected to Congress from southern Ohio in a 1993 special election and won six more elections before being tapped by president George W. Bush to serve as US trade representative in 2005. Bush then nominated him to be his White House budget director in 2006.
Portman stepped down in 2007, then returned to politics in 2010 with a successful US Senate run, and won again in 2016, both times by landslide margins in a traditional swing state.
Updated
The United States is “proud to be back” in international efforts to slow the climate crisis, Washington’s new special climate envoy John Kerry told a summit of leaders earlier today.
Joe Biden’s administration is this week expected to release more policies it believes are needed to tackle climate change after rejoining the 2015 Paris climate agreement that predecessor Donald Trump quit saying it was too costly to the US economy, Reuters reports.
“We’re proud to be back. We come back with humility for the absence over the last four years and we will do everything in our power to make up for it,” Kerry told the Climate Adaptation Summit by video link.
Kerry was joined by China’s Deputy Prime Minister Han Zheng, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and other leaders.
“President Biden has made fighting climate change a top priority of his administration. We have a president now, thank God, who leads, tells the truth and is seized by this issue,” Kerry said.
Leaders stressed the importance of having Washington back at the table.
“Since I’m the first to take the floor after John Kerry, a warm welcome to the US back in the Paris Agreement,” said International Monetary Fund managing director Kristalina Georgieva.
“To tackle this great challenge we need all hands on deck and certainly the US is so critical for success.”
The online event, hosted by the Netherlands, aims to set out practical solutions and plans for dealing with climate change in the vital period until 2030.
As secretary of state under former US president Barack Obama in 2015, Kerry helped bring China to the table at the UN climate conference in Paris.
Grateful to be a diplomat again driving @POTUS Biden's work combating climate change's existential threat. Five years ago, we negotiated the Paris Agreement. Today we'll all increase our ambition in pursuit of its goals, building back better -- together.
— Special Presidential Envoy John Kerry (@ClimateEnvoy) January 22, 2021
The Senate is aiming to pass additional Covid-19 economic relief and healthcare funding legislation before the former, Donald Trump’s impeachment trial begins in early February, a lawmaker said this morning.
The news comes amid growing signs of agreement on the need to speed up vaccine distribution and administration services, which have had a very rocky start since the first vaccines received federal emergency authorization in December.
A day after some Republicans pushed back on the size of Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion relief proposal, Senator Angus King said the Senate plans to consider a bill in the next two weeks, while it also moves to confirm Biden’s Cabinet ahead of Trump’s trial start during the week of February 8, Reuters reports.
“We’re going to try to do something between now and the time of the impeachment trial beginning. That’s a tall order, because we also have to do the confirmations,” King, a Maine independent who caucuses (ie including the way he generally votes) with Democrats who lead the Senate, told National Public Radio.
“Two weeks would be an aggressive schedule but I think that’s where we’re going to be going,” he added.
It was not clear whether the Senate would try to pass the entire Biden proposal before February 8 or focus on legislation with a more limited scope.
King and Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, who both participated in a call about Covid-19 relief with Biden administration officials yesterday, said there is broad agreement about the need to move forward on vaccinations.
“We can all agree: we need to have money out there for vaccines,” Cassidy told Fox News on Monday. “And testing, we can accept that.”
Today’s call between the White House and members of Congress was a bipartisan discussion focused on policy solutions – which is notable in itself. Let's keep working together to speed vaccine distribution and support Americans during this pandemic. https://t.co/E19gh16nvs
— Senator Angus King (@SenAngusKing) January 24, 2021
King said there was a general consensus on Sunday’s call to do “whatever we have to do to speed up the vaccination process. I don’t think there’s going to be any debate about that.”
He added that the group on Sunday’s call would speak again on today or tomorrow.
In addition to the size of Biden’s plan, Republicans and some Democrats are concerned about a proposal to send $1,400 stimulus checks to most Americans, even some with fairly high incomes.
While Congress has already authorized $4 trillion to respond, the White House says the additional $1.9 trillion is needed to cover the costs of responding to the virus and provide enhanced jobless benefits and payments to households.
House committees are expected to work on legislation this week, with the aim of being ready to put a bill on the House floor during the first week of February.
Here are some updated times for events expected at the White House today.
Just after midday eastern time (ET), Joe Biden and veep Kamala Harris are due to hop in front of the cameras with the newly-confirmed defense secretary Lloyd Austin and the military’s chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Mark Milley.
We expect a ceremonious swearing-in of Austin and there is speculation that today could be the day the Biden/Harris administration reverses Donald Trump’s policy of effectively banning transgender people from joining the armed forces.
Biden has a tendency to run late, so stay tuned. White House press secretary Jen Psaki is due to hold a press briefing at 1pm ET.
And at 3.45pm the US president is due to sign further executive orders, the latest aimed at boosting US manufacturing with a fresh Made in America campaign.
Later, we expect Janet Yellen, former chair of the federal reserve, to be confirmed by the Senate around 5.30pm and then at 7pm the impeachment managers will deliver the charge of incitement of insurrection against Donald Trump to the Senate prior to his February trial there.
We’ll have a live stream of some of these events.
Biden's Made in America push
Joe Biden will take steps on Monday to harness the purchasing power of the United States government, the world’s biggest single buyer, to increase domestic manufacturing and create markets for new technologies, a senior administration official told Reuters.
Biden will sign an executive order aimed at closing loopholes in existing “Buy American” provisions, which structure the $600 billion in goods and services the federal government buys each year, making any waivers more transparent, and creating a senior White House role to oversee the process
Increasing US manufacturing, a central tenet of Biden’s presidential campaign, has proven a vexing challenge for previous administrations, including that of former president, Donald Trump.
Lower wages and weaker environmental standards have triggered the exodus of key manufacturing capabilities to China and other countries in recent decades, including medical equipment, resulting in critical gaps laid bare during the Covid-19 pandemic.
China overtook the US as the world’s top manufacturer in 2010, and was responsible for 28% of global output in 2018, according to United Nations data.
Rebuilding critical supply chains and developing new ones is critical to US growth, trade experts say.
The US trade deficit surged to $68 billion in November, its highest level in 14 years, as businesses scrambled to fill shelves with foreign goods and supply domestic factories reliant on foreign parts, offsetting a rise in exports.
“The US spends about $600 billion a year on contracts, and that is money that...can also serve to spur a revitalization of our industrial strength and help to create markets for new technologies,” the official said.
The order directs federal agencies to reevaluate the threshold used to determine US content, to prevent companies it buys from from importing largely foreign-made goods and selling them as US-made after making just minor tweaks.
It sets a deadline of 180 days for regulators to finalize changes once proposed, and orders up a new website to ensure transparency about any waivers granted. The official gave no new percentages for required US content, saying they would be determined as a result of the process being launched on Monday.
The move is part of Biden’s broader push to drive up wages, create more union jobs and strengthen US supply chains, the official said.
“He does not accept the defeatist idea that automation, globalization mean that we can’t have good-paying union jobs here in America,” the official said.
The challenge in buying more US-made goods is partly a reflection of the erosion of many basic industries. Major US retailers, including Wal-Mart, have launched high profile “Made in America” campaigns, only to court foreign manufacturers afterward to get the goods consumers wanted. In 2015, the retailer faced a probe by the Federal Trade Commission for labeling products that were only partly made in the country.
Updated
More than 130 police officers injured during 6 January Capitol pro-Trump insurrection
This is Joanna Walters in New York taking over the live blog on US political news from my colleague Martin Belam in London. It’s already a busy day and will evolve into an historic one with the processing of the article of impeachment across the Capitol from the House to the Senate this evening. Stay tuned!
Details about the January 6 riots and invasion of the US Capitol in Washington, DC, continue to be flushed out, following then-president Donald Trump’s exhorting of his followers at a rally near the White House to march on Congress in a (futile) attempt to overturn his election loss.
A new Department of Justice filing in court today, reported by NBC, states that, during the deadly insurrection that resulted, in which one Capitol Police officer was killed, a further 81 US Capitol Police officers were injured and so were 58 officers from the District of Columbia’s Metropolitan Police Department in Washington.
NEW: US Justice Dept court filing says 81 US Capitol Police officers and 58 DC Police officers are injured from the US Capitol Insurrection on Jan 6 pic.twitter.com/bd6pHcD6VI
— Scott MacFarlane (@MacFarlaneNews) January 25, 2021
On the day, as a result of an apparently conscious lack of law enforcement preparation, police officers were grossly outnumbered as thousands of rioters swarmed and ultimately overran the Capitol and the chambers of Congress, as members of the House and Senate, who were meeting to certify Joe Biden’s presidential win, were evacuated.
Updated
Spike Lee likened Donald Trump to Hitler in acceptance speech
Spike Lee has likened Donald Trump to Hitler in an acceptance speech at a film critics awards show, adding that “the whole world is laughing at the United States”.
The director made his comments when he accepted a special award from the New York Film Critics Circle for his short film New York, New York. The film was released in May 2020 and Lee described it as a “love letter to its people”.
Lee said the comments about Trump were recorded on 6 January, the day of the Capitol breach, which he said was “a very sad day in the history of America”.
“We are living in a very serious time in America,” said the director. “His president, President Agent Orange, will go down in history with the likes of Hitler … all his boys, they are going down on the wrong side of history.”
Lee has a history of sparring with Trump, including calling him a “motherfucker” over Trump’s response to the 2017 Charlotteville protests, during which activist Heather Heyer was murdered by white supremacist James Fields. Trump accused him of a “racist hit on your president” after an earlier acceptance speech by Lee at the 2019 Oscars.
I mentioned Sen. Josh Hawley briefly earlier. As well as using the front page of the New York Post to complain that cancel culture has silenced him, Hawley has used his position as a Senator of the United States to issue a letter today in which he is calling on the Senate Committee on Ethics to investigate seven Democratic party members of the Senate for filing what he describes as “an unprecedently frivolous and improper ethics complaint against me and Senator Cruz.”
He is requesting an investigation into the conduct of Sens. Whitehouse, Wyden, Smith, Blumenthal, Hirono, Kaine, and Brown “in preparing and filing this baseless and destructive complaint” and then asking the committee to take disciplinary action against them.
You can read Hawley’s complaint in full here, although I should warn you that if you click on the link and read his words you will be undermining his earlier claim to have been silenced.
One of the most familiar – and exasperated – voices in the media during the Donald Trump era was Glenn Kessler, whose duty it was to run the fact-checking blog at the Washington Post. He posted over the weekend a little bit about what it was like to maintain an operation like that in the face of Trump’s untruths.
Over time, Trump unleashed his falsehoods with increasing frequency and ferocity, often by the scores in a single campaign speech or tweetstorm. What began as a relative trickle of misrepresentations, including 10 on his first day and five on the second, built into a torrent through Trump’s final days.
Trump averaged about six claims a day in his first year as president, 16 claims day in his second year, 22 claims day in his third year — and 39 claims a day in his final year. Put another way, it took him 27 months to reach 10,000 claims and another 14 months to reach 20,000. He then exceeded the 30,000 mark less than five months later.
What started as a weekly feature — “What Trump got wrong on Twitter this week” — turned into a project for Trump’s first 100 days. Then, in response to reader requests, the Trump database was maintained for four years, despite the increasing burden of keeping it up. False and misleading claims about the coronavirus pandemic emerged in 2020, so that by year’s end he had made more than 2,500 coronavirus-related claims.
The database became an untruth tracker for the ages, widely cited around the world as a measuring stick of Trump’s presidency — and as of noon Wednesday it was officially retired.
Read more here: Washington Post – Trump made 30,573 false or misleading claims as president. Nearly half came in his final year
David Runciman, professor of politics at Cambridge University in the UK, offers us his thoughts today on what Joe Biden understood by “democracy” in his inaugural address, and whether that matched up to the ideas of the founding fathers:
The three words that stood out in Joe Biden’s powerful inaugural address, if only for the number of times he used them, were “democracy”, “unity” and “truth”. he founding fathers of the American republic, whose history and institutions Biden also repeatedly invoked, might have been surprised to hear him run the three together. They believed they were founding a state that was designed to keep democracy at arm’s length.
They viewed the voting public as notoriously fractious and prone to believe all sorts of nonsense. The point of establishing a republic rather than a democracy was to ensure there were safeguards against populism in all its forms.
Biden clearly meant something different by democracy than the people gone wild. He was invoking a different, and much later tradition, that sees democracy as defined by the peaceful transfer of power. In academic circles this is sometimes called the minimalist theory of democracy. It says that it is sufficient for democracy if incumbents, who control the armed forces, hand over that control to the people who defeat them at the ballot box. The guns change hands when the voters change sides.
The trouble with this view is that it is so minimal, unity and truth are optional extras. There are many places around the world where democracy has failed even this test and defeated incumbents have refused to leave, leading to dictatorship or civil war. But when the test is passed it leaves unresolved most of the questions about how to do politics better.
Coming just two weeks after an attempt to storm the Capitol and prevent the certification of the election result, Biden’s inauguration took place in the shadow of the most serious threat to this minimal definition of democracy in recent American history. The country had come dangerously close to failing the test. What Biden could also have said, but didn’t, was that the founders were in part to blame.
Read more here: David Runciman – Biden wants unity and democracy. But in the US these have always been in conflict
Biden to drop Trump’s military transgender ban
President Joe Biden is set to issue an executive order to reverse a Pentagon policy that largely bars transgender individuals from joining the military, dumping a ban ordered by former president Donald Trump in a tweet during his first year in office, a person briefed on the decision has told the Associated Press.
It is believed that the White House could announce the move as early as today. The move to reverse the policy has the support of Biden’s newly confirmed defense secretary, retired Army Gen. Lloyd Austin, who spoke of the need to overturn it during his Senate confirmation hearing last week.
“I support the president’s plan or plan to overturn the ban,” Austin said. “If you’re fit and you’re qualified to serve and you can maintain the standards, you should be allowed to serve.”
The decision comes as Biden plans to turn his attention to equity issues that he believes continue to shadow nearly all aspects of American life. The move to overturn the transgender ban is also the latest example of Biden using executive authority in his first days as president to dismantle Trump’s legacy.
It was unclear at present how quickly the Pentagon can put a new policy in effect, and whether it will take some time to work out details. Over the weekend Austin announced that he had ordered a comprehensive review of the sexual harassment prevention efforts within the US military.
Yesterday, I ordered a comprehensive review of the sexual harassment prevention efforts within the U.S. military. As I said in my order, we all must do more, and we cannot be afraid to get creative. pic.twitter.com/rOm7rU21BQ
— Lloyd Austin (@LloydAustin) January 24, 2021
Biden is scheduled to hold a ceremonial swearing-in ceremony today at the White House for Austin, who became the nation’s first Black defense secretary.
Pressure is on the Biden administration to ramp up the administration of the Covid vaccines in the US, but Reuters have an exclusive report this morning on a setback – the world’s largest syringe maker does not have the capacity to substantially increase US supplies of specialty syringes needed to squeeze more doses from Pfizer vaccine vials in the coming weeks.
The vaccine made by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech is shipped in vials initially indicated to hold five doses. Six doses can be drawn with special syringes, called low dead space, which minimize the amount of vaccine left in the syringe after use.
If healthcare providers can reliably extract the sixth dose it would allow supplies to be stretched 20% further. The S government has begun giving healthcare providers new syringe kits to extract six shots from each vial. It said that three of the low dead space syringes in each six-needle kit would allow extraction, according to an email reviewed by Reuters. A CDC spokeswoman said the new kits would contain a “majority” of low dead space syringes.
Syringe maker Becton Dickinson has contracted with the US government to provide 286 million syringes for use with COVID-19 vaccines, including around 40 million low dead space syringes, and is fully prepared to deliver on that agreement, Troy Kirkpatrick, the company’s senior director of public relations, told Reuters.
“We are ready to support the US government but we are trying to make sure everyone understands that those devices are not something we have infinite capacity to produce and bringing up new lines does take time,” Kirkpatrick said.
The Franklin Lakes, New Jersey-based company is the largest syringe and needle maker in the world and Kirkpatrick said it has boosted overall production capacity by about 1 billion syringes for 2021, with most of the capacity allocated.
A new production line for syringes will be functional by July but was not designed to produce additional low dead space syringes, he said.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) told providers in an email reviewed by Reuters it has started giving healthcare providers packages including both types of needles. The email said early testing showed that three low dead space syringes used in combination with three standard syringes may yield the sixth dose.
“Every effort is being made to reconfigure the ancillary kits with syringes that enable the six dose draw without impacting the availability or slowing the delivery of supplies to jurisdictions,” the email said.
You have not been able to move on the internet since Joe Biden’s inauguration without encountering the Bernie Sanders’ mitten meme, and I’m delighted to tell you that I’ve just noticed that this morning we have published Ellie Violet Bramley’s guide to how to make your own.
Get your knitting started here: How to make Bernie Sanders’ inauguration mittens
For Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate, the first few days of Joe Biden’s presidency has not been about fighting the new Democratic majority in government, it’s been about gaming out how much power he now has.
McConnell, the leader of Senate Republicans for over a decade, now finds himself in the position every caucus leader dreads: out of power in the chamber, in charge of a somewhat unruly bunch of politicians, and under pressure over how to handle the impeachment of the last Republican president.
Just as McConnell became the Senate minority leader last week, he was confronted with two pressing concerns: retaining power through early negotiations with counterpart Chuck Schumer, the new Senate majority leader, and figuring out how to proceed on the impeachment trial of Donald Trump, which is set to begin in early February.
It’s a unique predicament for a senator regarded by Republicans as a strategic mastermind of Senate procedure and one reviled by Democrats for obstructionism.
Democrats often point to McConnell’s vow to make then-president Barack Obama a “one term president” as the perfect encapsulation of him. Republicans like to highlight that McConnell was able to usher through over 230 conservative judges onto the federal judiciary. And all the while the ultra-savvy Kentucky Republican has staved off criticism from the insurrectionist elements of his party – like Senator Ted Cruz of Texas.
McConnell, now once again in the minority, will have to deal with anti-establishment colleagues like Cruz and Missouri senator Josh Hawley. Those two senators led the challenge to certifying Joe Biden’s victory that resulted in a mob invading Capitol Hill. McConnell has butted heads with Cruz and allies before and emerged victorious while effectively isolating the Texas senator as punishment. As his caucus knows, losing in a fight with McConnell has its consequences.
But the situation now is different. McConnell has been in ongoing negotiations with Schumer over rules for the Senate over the next two years and added protections for the filibuster, one of the most valuable and powerful stalling tools for the party in the minority in the Senate. The filibuster is a legislative maneuver that allows any senator to delay or even block legislation through ongoing debate unless 60 senators agree to end debate. The 60 senator threshold, especially in a partisan and evenly split Senate makes it especially difficult to advance legislation.
Read more of Daniel Strauss’ analysis here: Mitch McConnell ‘plays the long game’ to retain some power as it slips away
Dominion Voting Systems file defamation lawsuit against Rudy Giuliani
Dominion Voting Systems have today filed a defamation lawsuit against Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani.
The 107-page filing with the Federal District Court in Washington seeks damages of more than $1.3 billion. It bases the claim on more than 50 statements made by Giuliani at legislative hearings, on his podcast, on his Twitter account and in the media.
As part of the lawsuit, Dominion cite the Capitol riot on 6 January as an example of the consequences of Giuliani’s claims. Thomas A. Clare, a lawyer representing Dominion, said: “From a defamation law perspective, it just demonstrates the depth to which these statements sink in to people. That people don’t just read them and tune them out. It goes to the core of their belief system, which puts them in a position to take action in the real world.”
The company has previously begun legal proceedings against another lawyer associated with Donald Trump’s campaign to overturn the 2020 election result, Sidney Powell. Their lawsuit against Powell opened:
Powell’s wild accusations are demonstrably false. Far from being created in Venezuela to rig elections for a now-deceased Venezuelan dictator, Dominion was founded in Toronto for the purpose of creating a fully auditable paper-based vote system that would empower people with disabilities to vote independently on verifiable paper ballots.
A crucial part of today’s lawsuit notes that Giuliani never repeated his allegations about the Dominion voting machines in court, where he could have faced ramifications to his legal career for making false claims in court.
Last week a group of prominent lawyers asked New York’s judiciary to suspend Rudy Giuliani’s law licence for making false claims in post-election lawsuits and urging Donald Trump’s supporters to engage in “trial by combat” shortly before they stormed the US Capitol.
Giuliani will not be representing Donald Trump at the former president’s impeachment trial in the Senate, since he has had to recuse himself as he also took part in the rally on the morning of the Capitol riot where Trump is accused of “incitement of insurrection”.
Sarah Sanders officially launches bid to become next Governor of Arkansas
As expected, Sarah Sanders has launched her bid to become the next Governor of Arkansas.
Andrew DeMillo of the Associated Press reports that the former White House press secretary, who left the job in 2019 to return to her home state, has launched the bid less than a week after the end of Trump’s time in office and as the ex-president faces an impeachment trial.
But her announcement reflected how much she expected voters in solidly red Arkansas to continue to embrace the former president and his rhetoric.
“With the radical left now in control of Washington, your governor is your last line of defense,” Sanders said in a video announcing her bid. “In fact, your governor must be on the front line. So today I announce my candidacy for governor of Arkansas.”
I'm in —> https://t.co/8bmfl3ZPgp
— Sarah Huckabee Sanders (@SarahHuckabee) January 25, 2021
Watch ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/khDPEk0orU
The daughter of former Gov. Mike Huckabee, Sanders had been widely expected to run for the office after leaving the White House and has been laying the groundwork for a candidacy, speaking to Republican groups around the state.
Sanders joins a Republican primary that already includes two statewide elected leaders, Lt. Gov. Tim Griffin and attorney general Leslie Rutledge. The three are running to succeed current Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican who is unable to run next year due to term limits. No Democrats have announced a bid to run for the seat.
During her nearly two-year tenure as Trump’s chief spokesperson, daily televised briefings led by the press secretary ended. But Trump’s tumultuous exit from the presidency or the legacy of her actions in the White House may do little damage to Sanders in Arkansas. Republicans hold all of Arkansas’ statewide and federal seats, as well as a solid majority in both chambers of the Legislature.
Trump in November won the state by nearly 28 percentage points, and Sanders’ nearly 8-minute video prominently features photos of Trump, along with references to his favorite targets such as “cancel culture,” socialism and the Green New Deal.
Sanders, who published a book last year and joined Fox News as a contributor after leaving the White House, enters the race with a much higher profile than any of the other candidates. She remains an unknown on many of the state’s biggest issues, though in her announcement she called for reducing state income taxes and cutting off funding for cities that violate immigration laws. The gubernatorial election is in November 2022.
NPR have a piece teeing up the second impeachment of Donald Trump from Barbara Sprunt this morning, and in it she reminds us of what Rep. Joaquin Castro told NPR yesterday. The Texas congressman from San Antonio will act as one of the House impeachment managers.
Rep. Joaquin Castro says he thinks the case for convicting Trump in the Senate trial will become stronger in the days ahead.
“As the days go on, more and more evidence comes out about the president’s involvement in the incitement of this insurrection, the incitement of this riot, and also his dereliction of duty once it was going on,” he told NPR’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro.
Castro said he’s “confident” the case will be strong enough to convince Republican senators who haven’t yet indicated how they’ll vote on a conviction.
“I would hope that, first of all, they keep their powder dry, that they listen to all the evidence and wait for the case to be presented,” he said. “But most of all, at the end of the day, what we need is for people to put country over person, in other words, over Donald Trump and also country over party, Republican or Democrat.”
Read more here: NPR – House poised to transmit article of impeachment against Trump to Senate
Natalia Abrahams has an interesting piece for NBC News this morning looking at groups trying to keep young voters engaged in the political process post-election:
By the next presidential election, millennials will be entering their 40s, showing up to vote with kids instead of the youthful enthusiasm that helped Democrats in the 2010s. The focus on young voters has turned to Generation Z.
It won’t be easy. Young people have always voted in lower numbers than their older cohorts. And with the oldest president in history sitting in the Oval Office, convincing them that the president and the party see their issues could be difficult.
“As a country, we can do so much more to support young people to participate in democracy more than we do,” said Abby Keisa, the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning & Engagement at Tufts University’s director of impact. She said the data found “that communities where young people vote, volunteer, help their neighbors and belong to groups or associations can be more prosperous and resilient places.”
“The way that we campaign is a huge testament to the shift that young people have been able to bring to the table,” said Bushra Amiwala, 23, who is a member of a school board in Chicago. “Social media is something that predominantly is used by young people, and mobilizing folks on there is something that, I think, is a tactic that young people championed and coined.”
But finding first-time voters can be tricky, because they often aren’t registered to vote and therefore aren’t on the rolls traditional political organizations use to find people. Finding young voters of color, who face other systemic barriers to participation, can be even tougher.
Read more here: NBC News – Looking ahead, liberal groups try to keep young voters engaged
By the way, in case you were wondering what Sen, Josh Hawley had been up to overnight, he was complaining about having been muzzled and canceled on *checks notes* the front page of the New York Post which was promoting *checks notes again* his lengthy column for them complaining that he had been silenced.
It's time to stand up against the muzzling of America https://t.co/rrTrtfrYZn via @nypost
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) January 25, 2021
David Litt, former speechwriter for Barack Obama, writes for us today, warning that Republicans will try to create an ‘ethics’ trap for Democrats, and Democrats shouldn’t fall for it:
The Biden administration has unveiled the strictest ethics pledge in history, building on president Obama’s lobbying bans by covering not just registered lobbying but also the so-called “shadow lobbying” that long served as an ethics loophole. It’s another big step forward. But it’s also a reminder that Democrats and Republicans are on two entirely different trajectories. If past is prologue, Biden will face more criticism if he fails to perfectly implement his high standards than Trump faced for having practically no standards at all. And rather than feel any political or moral obligation to follow Biden’s example, the next Republican administration will pick up right where the last president of their party left off.
In other words, Democrats and Republicans are playing by different set of rules. And not just when it comes to ethics pledges and lobbying bans. We now know that many of the principles we once imagined were pillars of our democratic society – a respect for truth; a belief in the importance of a free press; the rejection of nepotism; a commitment to honor the results of elections not just in victory but in defeat – are propped up almost entirely by the good faith of politicians. And as we learned over the last four years, in American politics, bad faith is hardly in short supply.
That’s why it’s not enough to usher in an administration that models good behavior. We must ensure that we create high standards that apply to everyone.
That starts with changing political incentives that currently punish leaders who try to act responsibly and reward those who don’t. Some members of the press will surely be tempted to return to their own version of normalcy – one where Obama’s tan suit is a scandal, Joe Biden’s Peloton is a political liability, and it’s generally assumed that Republicans will behave like arsonists while Democrats behave like adults. Yes, the press should hold the Biden administration accountable. But it would do the American public a disservice to pretend the last four years didn’t happen.
Read more here: David Litt – Republicans will try to create an ‘ethics’ trap for Democrats. Don’t fall for it
With Democrats controlling the Senate, progressives want to repeal the Trump administration’s Wall Street-friendly rules, but they may struggle to win enough votes in a thinly divided Congress and risk obstructing President Joe Biden’s agencies from writing stricter new rules, Pete Schroeder and Michelle Price report for Reuters.
Sherrod Brown, expected chair of the Senate Banking Committee, said this month he was drawing up a list of rules passed by Trump regulators that he hopes to kill using the Congressional Review Act (CRA), a 1996 law that allows Congress to reverse recently finalized federal regulations.
Since 2017, regulators have eased dozens of rules created following the 2009 financial crisis and in the decades before, arguing they were outdated and stymied economic growth. Opponents say the changes saved Wall Street tens of billions of dollars while increasing systemic risks and hurting consumers.
Reversing rules through an agency’s internal process can take years whereas the CRA allows Congress to swiftly kill rules passed during the final 60 working days of the previous Congress with a simple majority and the president’s approval. However, with a wafer-thin Congress margin, Brown may struggle to win vital support from moderate Democrats, especially from those whom have publicly supported similar rule-changes in the past.
Additionally, issues related to bank capital requirements and liquidity may be too arcane to compete for limited Senate floor time with healthcare, labor and immigration measures, said Gregg Gelzinis, a senior policy analyst at liberal Washington think tank the Center for American Progress, which is discussing CRA issues with lawmakers.
Before Trump took office, the CRA had been used successfully once. Republicans subsequently used it to reverse 16 rules created by Barack Obama administration regulators, according to Daniel Perez, senior policy analyst at George Washington University’s Regulatory Studies Center.
Democrats, however, have never successfully used the CRA, according to Perez, and may veer into novel legal territory where their ultimate goal is to make rules tougher rather than scrap them. That’s because once a rule is reversed using the CRA, agencies cannot write a “substantially” similar rule.
“Where perhaps Democrats might want to do something more stringent, I think that might give them pause,” he said. Progressives may want to rewrite some rules but could risk legal challenges arguing the new rule is substantially similar.
A year into the pandemic, more than 13,500 Covid-19 patients are languishing in hospitals across Texas. With only 586 ICU beds left statewide and some regions already running out of space, “hospitals can’t take much more”, the Department of State Health Services (DSHS) recently tweeted.
Yet Covid is still raging: about one in six molecular tests in Texas comes back positive right now, well over the 10% threshold Greg Abbott, the state’s Republican governor, once viewed as a “warning flag” for high community spread.
“The Covid-19 pandemic is at its worst in Texas,” DSHS wrote online earlier this month, and “it’s likely never been easier to catch”.
Abbott has categorically rejected another lockdown, a successful but blunt instrument that would undoubtedly cause him political grief. And, though he has instituted business occupancy reductions and bar closures in regions with high hospitalizations, those restrictions have proven half-baked and mostly ineffective.
In fact, other than championing therapeutic treatments and boasting about the state’s vaccine rollout, Abbott’s administration has made shockingly little effort to mitigate the virus’s carnage in recent months, even as a new, highly contagious variant threatens further devastation.
“Republican politicians are acting like it’s business as usual,” said Abhi Rahman, communications director for the Texas Democratic party. “They’re acting like the pandemic never existed in the first place.”
Last March, Dan Patrick, Texas’s lieutenant governor, stoked widespread backlash when he advocated for a swift reopening, insinuating that the nation’s elderly were willing to put their lives on the line to save the US economy. But despite Texas’s hasty emergence from lockdown in May, its struggling workforce has failed to bounce back, with the unemployment rate still lingering at 7.2% as of December, compared to 3.5% the year before.
Read more of Alexandra Villarreal’s report here: Texas governor’s hands-off approach to Covid-19 has allowed the virus to thrive
Total coronavirus pandemic caseload in the US passes 25 million
Yesterday there were 132,537 new coronavirus cases recorded in the US, and 1,775 further deaths. Numbers are often lower than average on Sunday due to different data collection practices around the US at the weekend. The total caseload, according to Johns Hopkins university figures is now over 25 million. The death toll stands at 418,887. There are still over 20 states showing a more than 5% week-on-week increase in cases.
There’s slightly better news on hospitalization levels, as according to the Covid Tracking Project the number of people in hospital in the US with Covid has fallen again to 110,628. While it is still true that at least 100,000 people have been in hospital with coronavirus every day since 2 December 2020, it marks the 11th consecutive day that the number has dropped.
Mutated versions of the coronavirus are causing experts concern. “The best way to prevent the emergence of new variants is to do all of the things we’ve been talking about for months,” infectious disease expert Dr. Celine Gounder told CNN Sunday night. “The more you let the virus spread, the more it mutates, the more variants you’ll have.”
It remains likely that it will be months until a vaccine is widely rolled out in the US. Gounder went on to say to CNN that “We’re looking at probably middle of the summer, end of the summer before the average, healthy, young American has access to vaccination.”
If there’s a ‘y’ in the day, then you can guarantee that China’s foreign ministry will have had something to say about relations with the US. Today Reuters snap that foreign ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian, has been criticising US military activity in the region.
After a US aircraft carrier group sailed into the disputed South China Sea, China has said the United States often sends ships and aircraft into the area to “flex its muscles” and this is not good for peace.
Trillions of dollars in trade flows each year through the waterway, which has long been a focus of contention between Beijing and Washington. The US carrier group led by the USS Theodore Roosevelt and accompanied by three warships, entered the waterway on Saturday to promote “freedom of the seas”, the US military said, just days after Joe Biden became president.
“The United States frequently sends aircraft and vessels into the South China Sea to flex its muscles,” the foreign ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian, told reporters, responding to the mission. “This is not conducive to peace and stability in the region.”
China has repeatedly complained about US navy ships getting close to islands it occupies in the South China Sea, where Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Brunei and Taiwan all have competing claims.
The carrier group entered the South China Sea at the same time as Chinese-claimed Taiwan reported incursions by Chinese air force jets into the southwestern part of its air defence identification zone, prompting concern from Washington.
China has not commented on what its air force was doing, and Zhao referred questions from reporters to the defence ministry. He reiterated China’s position that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China and that the United States should abide by the “one China” principle.
Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen visited a radar base in the north of the island on Monday, and praised its ability to track Chinese forces, her office said.
“From last year until now, our radar station has detected nearly 2,000 communist aircraft and more than 400 communist ships, allowing us to quickly monitor and drive them away, and fully guard the sea and airspace,” she told officers.
Taiwan’s defence ministry added that just a single Chinese aircraft flew into its defence zone earlier today, an anti-submarine Y-8 aircraft.
Biden’s new administration has said the US commitment to Taiwan is “rock-solid”. Like most countries, it no formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan but is the democratic island’s most important international backer and main arms supplier, to China’s anger.
What do we know so far about the key players in Donald Trump’s upcoming second impeachment trial? Sam Levine in New York has these pen pics:
Trump’s counsel
Butch Bowers: Trump tapped Bowers, a South Carolina lawyer, to lead his legal team and defense in the senate. A friend of Trump ally Lindsey Graham, Bowers worked for Mark Sanford, then the South Carolina governor, when he was nearly impeached in connection to an affair over a decade ago. In 2012, he also represented Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor who went on to work in the Trump administration, in an ethics investigation. He also has helped defend North Carolina and South Carolina voter ID measures, according to the Post and Courier, and worked as a special counsel on voting matters in the justice department under President George W Bush.
Trump reportedly struggled to find a legal team for the trial. Former White House counsel Pat Cipollone, and well-known lawyers like Jay Sekulow, Ken Starr, Alan Derschowitz, and Rudy Giuliani who helped defend the president during the first trial are not participating.
Senate party leaders
Mitch McConnell: The cunning House minority leader, McConnell won’t be making a case for or against Trump during the trial, but will remain one of the most powerful Republicans. In a significant move, McConnell has left the door open towards voting for impeaching Trump, which could encourage other Republicans following along. Even if they do get McConnell’s vote, Democrats would still need to get at least 16 other senators to vote for impeachment - a high bar.
Chuck Schumer: The newly elected Senate majority leader, Schumer will be responsible for keeping his caucus aligned and trying to win over Republican support, all while helping to maintain messaging during the trial. Schumer has been outspoken about the need to impeach Trump.
House impeachment managers
Jamie Raskin: House speaker Nancy Pelosi tapped Raskin, a Maryland congressman first elected in 2016, to be the lead House impeachment manager to make the case for convicting Trump. A longtime constitutional law professor at American University, Raskin has been unsparing in his criticism of the role Trump played in inciting the 6 January riot. He reportedly began drafting the article of impeachment against the president hours after the attack.
Raskin is taking on the role at a time when his family is in mourning – his 25-year-old son Tommy died by suicide on New Year’s Eve. Raskin has pointed to his son as one of the reasons why he chose to take on leading the impeachment effort. “I’ve devoted my life to the constitution and to the republic. I’m a professor of constitutional law, but I did it really with my son in my heart, and helping lead the way. I feel him in my chest,” he told the Guardian.
Read more details here, including profiles of the rest of the House impeachment managers: Trump’s second impeachment trial – the key players
Schumer promises quick but fair trial as Trump impeachment heads to Senate
The single article of impeachment against Donald Trump will this evening be delivered to the Senate, where Democratic majority leader Chuck Schumer is promising a quick but fair trial.
“It will be a fair trial but it will move relatively quickly,” Schumer, from New York, told reporters on Sunday. The trial would not take up too much time, he said, because “we have so much else to do”.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi will walk the article from the House, through the Capitol and to the Senate at 7pm ET (midnight GMT), marking the formal start of the impeachment trial. But there will be a two-week lull in proceedings, after Schumer and Republican minority leader Mitch McConnell reached an agreement on Friday.
“During that period,” Schumer said, “the Senate will continue to do other business for the American people, such as cabinet nominations and the Covid relief bill, which would provide relief for millions of Americans who are suffering during this pandemic.”
The delay will give both legal teams two more weeks to prepare. Pelosi has named the House managers who will prosecute Trump, led by Jamie Raskin. An attorney from South Carolina, Karl “Butch” Bowers, will lead Trump’s defense.
Bowers’ most high-profile cases to date include defending a controversial Republican-backed transgender bathroom bill in North Carolina and representing a governor of his own state, Mark Sanford, when he faced impeachment.
Though the Senate is now controlled by Democrats, two-thirds of senators must vote against Trump if he is to be convicted. That means 17 Republicans must go against a former president from their own party. As of Friday, according to a tally by the Washington Post, 42 senators had said they supported impeachment, 19 were open to conviction, 28 were opposed and 11 had made no indication.
Read more of Amanda Holpuch’s report here: Schumer promises quick but fair trial as Trump impeachment heads to Senate
Biden to sign executive order to increase federal spending on US-manufactured goods
Joe Biden on Monday will sign an executive order that aims to fulfill his “Buy American” campaign promise by tightening the rules to increase federal spending on products that are manufactured in the United States.
During his campaign, Biden vowed that his administration would invest an additional $400nn in federal purchases of domestically-made products as a way of reviving American manufacturing. Previewing the directive on Sunday night, an administration official emphasized that the order was only a “first step” toward that goal.
The order directs agencies to increase domestic content requirements and close existing loopholes available for purchases of foreign products. It also creates a central review of waivers to the Buy American rules that allow agencies to purchase products manufactured overseas.
As a candidate, Biden offered his “Buy American” plan as a direct counter to Trump’s “America First” agenda, as they competed for support from white working class voters. Trump signed an executive order early in his presidency to buy American products and hire American workers, but the Biden administration official on Sunday said Biden’s directive contained more mechanisms for enforcement.
“The prior administration issued numerous releases and orders but when you look at the outcome, there was no real material change,” the official said.
Key elements of the executive order will include:
- Updating how government decides if a product was sufficiently made in America.
- A change in the price threshold over which the government can buy non-US manufactured goods.
- Appointing a Director of Made-in-America at the Office of Management and Budget to oversee the implementation.
In a statement, the administration say that:
This order is deeply intertwined with the president’s commitment to invest in American manufacturing, including clean energy and critical supply chains, grow good-paying, union jobs, and advance racial equity.
Monday’s order is the latest in a rush of executive action Biden is taking to unwind what the administration views as the “gravest” pieces of his predecessor’s legacy as well as to create early momentum around his legislative agenda. Biden has said his first priority is to confront the coronavirus and the economic pain it has caused, emphasizing equity as a part of his response. More directives are expected throughout the week on advancing racial and gender equality, combatting the climate crisis, expanding access to healthcare and reforming aspects of the immigration system.
Protests in Tacoma, Washington, after police car drove through crowd of pedestrians
Protesters marched in protest late last night in response to a police car driving through a crowd in Washington state the day before, which had left at least two people injured.
The Associated Press report that the demonstrators gathered near the intersection in Tacoma where the police car plowed through a crowd of pedestrians while responding to a reported street race Saturday evening. Video of the incident was widely shared online and appeared to show at least one person being run over.
Both injured people went to hospitals with injuries not considered to be life threatening. One person has since been released, news outlets reported.
Sunday evening demonstrators gathered at a park then marched through downtown. Several items were set up to create a barricade in the street, and the demonstrators also passed by the Pierce County Jail.
There were no known injuries from the demonstration, police said in a tweet, adding that the protest was cleared around 11pm.
The demonstration has broken up and the roadways are clear. There are no known injuries in relation to the demonstration. Thank you for your patience. pic.twitter.com/OAHjTYgzSK
— Tacoma Police Department (@TacomaPD) January 25, 2021
The officer involved in the incident Saturday is a 58-year-old man who has been with the department for 29 1/2 years, Tacoma police said. He had been surrounded by a crowd after arriving at the reported street race. Police claim the officer feared for his safety and drove forward through the crowd, then stopped and called for medical aid.
The officer has been placed on paid administrative leave. Protesters told news outlets they want the officer to be fired, and criticized the city for what they said was a lack of transparency.
The Tacoma Community’s Police Advisory Committee scheduled a virtual meeting Monday at 6pm to discuss the incident. Tacoma is located about 30 miles (48 kilometers) south of Seattle.
Chris McGreal has been in Kansas City for us talking to activists who are hopeful but cautious as president Joe Biden acknowledges that the ground has shifted in the US on racial justice after the police killing of George Floyd:
Jeanelle Austin, an African American activist who lives a few blocks from where George Floyd was killed and who tends his memorial constructed piecemeal in the street, said that the early promises of police reform in Minneapolis have come to little.
“Nothing has really changed. That’s why we’re still filling the street,” she said. “They’ve only offered verbiage in terms of what they want to do or the ideas that they have. We haven’t seen anything concrete in terms of reforming the Minneapolis police department.”
“Racism is deep within the DNA and the bones of the structures of our nation, and so it is a tall order for any one person to change it. Now, the president has a lot more power than anyone else to be able to set right some of the systems and policies and structures,” she said.
“It will be interesting to see which systems Biden plans on addressing head on because race impacts everything. The police, the education system, the financial system, the housing system, the criminal justice system, the health care system. He’s going to have to decide what he’s going to push.”
Read more of Chris McGreal’s report here: ‘Racism is in the bones of our nation’: Will Joe Biden answer the ‘cry’ for racial justice?
Sarah Sanders to run for Arkansas governor – reports
There’s quite a few ex-Trump staffers looking for something to do next. Sarah Sanders is one who appears to have made a plan. Donald Trump’s former chief spokeswoman and one of his closest aides, is running for Arkansas governor, according to multiple reports.
Sanders, who left the White House in 2019 to return to her home state, planned to announce her bid on Monday, according to Associated Press and Reuters, citing anonymous sources.
The former White House press secretary is launching her bid less than a week after the end of Trump’s presidency and as the ex-president faces an impeachment trial. But Sanders is running in a solidly red state where Republicans tend to embrace the former president.
The daughter of former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, Sanders had been widely expected to run for the office after leaving the White House – and Trump publicly encouraged her to make a go. She’s been laying the groundwork for a candidacy, speaking to Republican groups around the state.
Sanders, 38, joins a Republican primary that already includes two statewide elected leaders, lieutenant-governor Tim Griffin and attorney general Leslie Rutledge. The three are running to succeed current governor Asa Hutchinson, a Republican who is unable to run next year due to term limits. No Democrats have announced a bid to run for the seat.
Sanders was the first working mother and only the third woman to serve as White House press secretary. But she also faced questions about her credibility during her time as Trump’s chief spokesperson.
Read more here: Sarah Sanders, former Trump press secretary, to run for Arkansas governor – reports
Brian Stelter made a couple of interesting points about Donald Trump’s impeachment in his overnight newsletter for CNN:
When Congressman Michael McCaul, a Republican from Texas, announced that he would vote against the second impeachment earlier this month, he hinted that he might regret it someday.
McCaul said he wanted more time to review “the facts and the evidence” about the events leading up to the Capitol riot. He said he opposed impeachment “at this time” but he added, “I truly fear there may be more facts that come to light in the future that will put me on the wrong side of this debate.”
That quote has been rattling around in my brain all weekend. We’re hearing more and more about the assault on the Capitol. I was struck by this WaPo story the other day, titled “Self-styled militia members planned on storming the U.S. Capitol days in advance of 6 January attack, court documents say,” because it quoted messages that one of the accused ring-leaders received during the riot. “When he posted a one-word message, ‘Inside,’ he received exhortations and directions describing tunnels, doors and hallways, the FBI said.” Directions from whom? How? There is so much we still don’t know.
Similarly, this NYT story described how a Capitol Police lieutenant scrambled to protect House lawmakers by piling tables and chairs into a makeshift barricade. “He had 31 rounds for his service weapon, and he has told others that he feared he might need them all.” I can’t help but wonder: Is this new info sinking in? Or have most people made up their minds about 1/6?
There’s also this little nugget:
“Trump has started to believe there are fewer votes to convict than there would have been if the vote had been held almost immediately after 6 January,” Maggie Haberman reported Sunday night, citing people familiar with his thinking...
Impeachment guide: how will Donald Trump's second Senate trial unfold?
Here is a run-down of some of what we know so far about Donald Trump’s historic second impeachment:
What happens on today?
Democratic House speaker Nancy Pelosi will send the article of impeachment to the Senate at 7pm EST (at midnight in the UK). The charge will be carried by Democratic impeachment managers in a small, formal procession through National Statuary Hall, where just weeks ago rioters paraded, waving Trump flags. In the Senate, Jamie Raskin, a Democrat from Maryland and the lead impeachment manager, will read the article of impeachment on the floor of the chamber.
What happens next?
Traditionally the trial would begin almost immediately but under the deal struck by Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, and Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, the president’s team and the House managers will have until the week of 8 February to to draft and exchange written legal briefs.
What is the charge?
Trump is accused of “inciting violence against the government of the United States”, for his statements at a rally prior to his supporters launching the attack on the Capitol in which five people died.
Will witnesses be called?
That is not yet known. In Trump’s first impeachment trial, over approaches to Ukraine for dirt on political rivals, the Republican-held Senate refused to call witnesses. Now the Senate is in Democratic hands but many in the party are hoping for a speedy trial so as not to distract from Biden’s first weeks in the White House.
If Trump is convicted what happens next?
If Trump is convicted, there will be no immediate consequences as he has already left office. However, lawmakers could hold another vote to block him from running again. A simple majority would be needed to block him from holding “any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States”, blocking a White House run in 2024.
Read more of Lauren Gambino’s explainer here: Impeachment guide – how will Donald Trump’s second Senate trial unfold?
Welcome to our live coverage of US politics for another week, on the day when we expect the next step in impeaching former president Donald Trump to take place. Here’s a quick catch-up on where we are and what we can expect to see today…
- Nancy Pelosi and the House of Representatives will send their article of impeachment over the storming of the US Capitol to the Senate today. The former president is charged with ‘incitement of insurrection’. The move is expected to happen around 7pm ET (that’s around midnight in the UK).
- President Joe Biden is expected to issue at least one more executive order today. It is anticipated to address the way federal government orders goods that are manufactured in the US.
- Sarah Sanders is expected to announce a run to be Arkansas governor. She is Trump’s former press secretary.
- Dr Antony Fauci has described himself as the ‘skunk at the picnic’ in Trump’s Covid team. In a candid interview he said “I felt it would be better for the country and better for the cause for me to stay, as opposed to walk away.”
- Yesterday the US recorded 130,485 new Covid cases and 1,769 further deaths. Numbers are often lower on Sundays due to the way the data is collected.
