Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell said he would fight Joe Biden’s $2tn infrastructure plan “every step of the way”. The president has expressed hope that the proposal will attract bipartisan support, but McConnell said he expected Republicans to oppose the plan, given Biden’s suggestion to raise the corporate tax rate to help pay for the project.
Biden held his first full cabinet meeting as president. Biden opened the meeting by announcing that he had asked five members of his cabinet– Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, Energy secretary Jennifer Granholm, Housing and Urban Development secretary Marcia Fudge, Labor secretary Marty Walsh and Commerce secretary Gina Raimondo – to take the lead on advancing his infrastructure plan.
Biden has asked the Department of Education to conduct a legal review on the president’s authority to cancel student debt, his chief of staff Ron Klain told Politico. The president will make a decision soon on whether to act on Democratic lawmakers’ prompts to cancel up to $50,000 in debt for each borrower via executive order.
Derek Chauvin’s trial continued in Minneapolis, where the former police officer faces murder charges over the killing of George Floyd. Courteney Ross, Floyd’s partner,testified this morning, and she acknowledged Floyd struggled with opioid addiction. However, prosecutors have said opioids did not cause Floyd’s death. They also argue that Floyd’s drug use does not justify Chauvin keeping his knee on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes.
The rise in coronavirus cases has intensified fears of a fourth wave of infections in the US. Even as vaccinations ramp up across the country, about half of US states have reported an increase in new coronavirus cases over the past week. Public health experts have repeatedly urged Americans to remain vigilant about limiting the spread of the virus.
The Virginia supreme court ruled Charlottesville can move forward with plans to take down two statues of Confederate generals. Charlottesville’s city council had voted to remove the statues of Robert E Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, but a group of residents sued to block the city from doing so. A lower court had ruled in favor of the residents, but the state supreme court overturned that decision.
Kentucky legislators have passed a measure to limit no-knock warrants, in the aftermath of the killing of 26-year-old Breonna Taylor last March. Lawmakers did not pass a more restrictive bill that would have ended no-knock warrants.
Analysis: Biden’s cabinet meeting proves the reality TV presidency wasn't renewed
David Smith
Poor old Joe Biden. He might have won the electoral college and the popular vote but he’ll never feel the love of his underlings like Donald Trump did.
The former president’s first full cabinet meeting in June 2017 remains an unparalleled opera of oleaginousness. Secretary after secretary all but flung themselves at his feet, sang songs of praise and paid homage to the divine emperor of the universe.
Has any parent ever known such undying adoration from their child? Only King Lear from Goneril and Regan, perhaps. And most telling was the fact that the world was allowed to see it. Trump made sure it was one more chapter in his reality TV presidency.
Not really Biden’s style. His first cabinet meeting on Thursday was relocated to the East Room because of coronavirus restrictions – the 16 permanent members wore face masks and sat in a giant square with empty chairs between them – but was otherwise a return to the staid old way of doing things.
The main item on the agenda was not the American president’s sculpted handsomeness, nor his towering intellect, nor his indubitable virility, nor his ability to hit holes in one, but merely his freshly announced $2tn infrastructure plan.
Flanked by the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and the defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, with the vice-president, Kamala Harris, opposite, Biden said he was asking five cabinet members to “take special responsibility to explain the plan to the American public”.
He took no questions from the media and, after less than two and a half minutes, reporters were ushered out. “I thank the press for being here, but I’ll talk to you all later.”
But even this brief glimpse behind the curtain spoke volumes about how much has changed. White men composed nearly three-quarters of Trump’s cabinet; they make up only a third of Biden’s.
On Thursday the East Room included Harris, the first woman and first woman of colour to service as vice-president; Janet Yellen, the first woman to lead the treasury department; Pete Buttigieg, the first openly gay secretary confirmed to the cabinet; and Deb Haaland, the first Native American in a president’s cabinet.
“This is the first in American history that the cabinet looks like America,” Biden said. “That’s what we promised we were going to do, and we’ve done it.”
If Trump represented a backlash against America’s first Black president, Biden’s cabinet represents a backlash against the backlash.
Matt Gaetz, the Republican representative of Florida who is being investigated on sex trafficking allegations, gained a reputation for bragging about his sexual exploits and sharing nude photographs of women with his colleagues CNN reports:
Behind the scenes, Gaetz gained a reputation in Congress over his relationships with women and bragging about his sexual escapades to his colleagues, multiple sources told CNN.
Gaetz allegedly showed off to other lawmakers photos and videos of nude women he said he had slept with, the sources told CNN, including while on the House floor. The sources, including two people directly shown the material, said Gaetz displayed the images of women on his phone and talked about having sex with them. One of the videos showed a naked woman with a hula hoop, according to one source. “It was a point of pride,” one of the sources said of Gaetz.
Gaetz is being investigated over an alleged relationship with a 17-year-old child. My colleague Richard Luscombe reports:
The prominent Republican congressman’s reported relationship with a 17-year-old girl remained under scrutiny on Wednesday, despite his insistence in an appearance on Fox News that the allegation was “verifiably false”.
The Florida politician, a close ally of Donald Trump, claimed during the Tuesday night interview that he was the victim of an extortion plot by a former justice department official, and questioned the motivation behind Tuesday’s original reporting by the New York Times.
Gaetz, 38, claimed his lawyers had been informed that he was the subject of an FBI inquiry “regarding sexual conduct with women” and that the official was attempting to extort $25m from his family “in exchange for a commitment that he could make this investigation go away”.
Kentucky legislators have passed a measure to limit no-knock warrants, in the aftermath of the killing of 26-year-old Breonna Taylor last March.
Taylor died after police entered her home with a search warrant that did not require them to knock or announce themselves, and gunned her down after her boyfriend, startled by the forced entry, fired a warning shot toward the officers.
Several cities and states have sought to reform or ban no-knock warrants following Taylor’s killing. In Kentucky, the legislation – which is awaiting a signature from the state’s governor – limits but does not ban no-knock warrants. The bill would require officers to provide “clear and convincing evidence” that an alleged crime is violent, and assurances that not having a no-knock warrant would endanger lives in order to obtain the authority to break into a home unannounced. The measure would also ban no-knock warrants for searches conducted after 10pm and overnight.
Lawmakers did not pass a more restrictive bill that would have ended no-knock warrants. Attica Scott, a state lawmaker who introduced that bill called the legislation passed today that passed “an example of performative politics” that will fail to prevent what happened to Taylor from happening again.
The tally, which is nearly double the state’s official count, comes from an investigation of reports from medical examiners, justices of the peace and Department of State Health Services, as well as lawsuits and news stories.
The state count, which is preliminary, has yet to incorporate some deaths already flagged by medical examiners as storm-related.
The 194 deaths identified by the Chronicle so far include at least 100 cases of hypothermia that killed people in their homes or while exposed to the elements, at least 16 carbon monoxide poisonings of residents who used dangerous methods for heat, and at least 22 Texans who died when medical devices failed without power or who were unable to seek life-saving care because of the weather.
Joe Biden has asked the Department of Education to conduct a legal review on the president’s authority to cancel student debt, his chief of staff Ron Klain told Politico.
Biden will look at that legal authority, he’ll look at the policy issues around that, and then he’ll make a decision” on canceling debt, Klain told Politico. “He hasn’t made a decision on that, either way, in fact, he hasn’t yet gotten the memos that he needs to start to focus on that decision.”
Democrats are increasingly pressuring Biden to address the student debt crisis using his executive authority. Lawmakers lack Republican support to easily pass debt cancellation measures via congress.
Biden has said he’d support canceling $10,000 in student debt for borrowers, but lawmakers, student advocates, civil rights organizations and consumer protection groups have pushed on the president to go further, and cancel up to $50,000 federal student loan debt.
As my colleague, Lauren Aratanni reported earlier this year:
About 45 million Americans have student debt worth over $1.5tn. The Federal Reserve has reported that 43% of adults who went to college, about 30% of all adults in the country, took on debt to pay for their education. Race also plays a big role in who has debt: Black and Hispanic Americans with student debt are more likely to be behind on their loans than their white peers.
The pandemic has left even more Americans unemployed and without the means to repay their student debt. The $2tn Cares Act, passed during the Trump administration, put a pause on payment requirements and waived interest for some student loans – and Biden extended those provisions. But for millions of Americans, unless Biden acts, repayment will have to resume after September this year.
US may be in early stages of fourth wave as Covid cases rise, reports say
Victoria Bekiempis
The US could be in the early stages of a fourth wave of the Covid-19 pandemic that is taking renewed hold across the country, with coronavirus cases increasing in 25 states, according to reports.
The US has tallied, on average, 63,000 new cases daily over the past week–an increase of 17% from the week prior, news website Axios reported. Only five states have recently seen declines in new cases. The third wave of the pandemic, which peaked in January, saw about 250,000 people daily testing positive for Covid-19, the Hill reported.
This new rise in cases is most pronounced in Michigan and New York but is becoming widespread across large swaths of the country. The threat of a fourth wave comes as many states have loosened Covid-19 restrictions – disregarding public health officials’ many warnings that doing so was premature.
Dr Rochelle Walensky, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director, said Monday that a fourth wave is all but guaranteed, remarking: “I’m going to lose the script, and I’m going to reflect on the recurring feeling I have of impending doom.”
“We have so much to look forward to, so much promise and potential of where we are, and so much reason for hope. But right now I’m scared,” Walensky also said during an emotional moment of a White House briefing.
Joe Biden has implored regional officials to keep or reinstate mask their mandates, because of the alarming trend in US case numbers.
“I’m reiterating my call for every governor, mayor, and local leader to maintain and reinstate the mask mandate,” the president said hours after Walensky’s comments. “Please, this is not politics. Reinstate the mandate if you let it down.”
Mitt Romney, a Republican senator of Utah, has come out against the White House and Democrats’ plan to pass the $2tn infrastructure plan via the budget reconciliation process.
After Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell vowed to obstruct Biden’s infrastructure plan, Democrats signaled they’d pass it with or without Republican support. The Senate is split 50-50 between parties, with vice-president Kamala Harris serving as the tie-breaking vote. Through a process called reconciliation, Democrats can pass budget-related measures with just 51 votes – circumventing the 60-vote threshold needed to pass most other major legislation in the Senate.
Romney, who has been somewhat more willing to vote with Democrats than his other Republican colleagues, has killed any hopes that Democrats could pass the ambitious infrastructure proposal with bipartisan support.
A Senate evenly split between both parties and a bare Democratic House majority are hardly a mandate to “go it alone.” The President should live up to the bipartisanship he preached in his inaugural address.
That’s it from me today. My west coast colleague Maanvi Singh will take over the blog for the next few hours.
Here’s where the day stands so far:
Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell said he would fight Joe Biden’s $2tn infrastructure plan “every step of the way”. The president has expressed hope that the proposal will attract bipartisan support, but McConnell said he expected Republicans to oppose the plan, given Biden’s suggestion to raise the corporate tax rate to help pay for the project.
Biden held his first full cabinet meeting as president. Biden opened the meeting by announcing that he had asked five members of his cabinet – Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Marcia Fudge, Labor Secretary Marty Walsh and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo – to take the lead on advancing his infrastructure plan.
Derek Chauvin’s trial continued in Minneapolis, where the former police officer faces murder charges over the killing of George Floyd. Courteney Ross, the partner of Floyd, testified this morning, and she acknowledged Floyd struggled with opioid addiction. However, prosecutors have said opioids did not cause Floyd’s death. They also argue that Floyd’s drug use does not justify Chauvin keeping his knee on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes.
The rise in coronavirus cases has intensified fears of a “fourth wave” of infections in the US. Even as vaccinations ramp up across the country, about half of US states have reported an increase in new coronavirus cases over the past week. Public health experts have repeatedly urged Americans to remain vigilant about limiting the spread of the virus.
The Virginia supreme court ruled Charlottesville can move forward with plans to take down two statues of Confederate generals. Charlottesville’s city council had voted to remove the statues of Robert E Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, but a group of residents sued to block the city from doing so. A lower court had ruled in favor of the residents, but the state supreme court overturned that decision.
Apple chief executive Tim Cook joined the chorus of business leaders who have come out in support of voting rights in light of voting restrictions Georgia’s governor signed into law last week.
“The right to vote is fundamental in a democracy. American history is the story of expanding the right to vote to all citizens, and Black people, in particular, have had to march, struggle and even give their lives for more than a century to defend that right,” Cook said in a statement to Axios.
“Apple believes that, thanks in part to the power of technology, it ought to be easier than ever for every eligible citizen to exercise their right to vote. We support efforts to ensure that our democracy’s future is more hopeful and inclusive than its past.”
Cook’s statement is just the latest from companies who, after calls from voting rights activists, are starting to speak out against a law that restricts voting access in Georgia that was passed last week.
Joe Biden has just wrapped up his first full cabinet meeting as president, after speaking to his team for about two hours.
The president opened the meeting by announcing that he has asked five members of his cabinet to take the lead on advancing his $2tn infrastructure package through Congress.
Those cabinet members are Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Marcia Fudge, Labor Secretary Marty Walsh and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.
After he made that announcement, reporters were escorted out of the East Room, so the rest of the cabinet meeting was conducted privately.
A White House reporter spotted some senior officials leaving the meeting, and one of them said it “went well”.
NOW: First Cabinet meeting breaks up after two hours. Seen in the hall: @RonaldKlain, Merrick Garland and other cabinet members. “Went well” is only comment offered.
Paramedic describes failed attempts to resuscitate Floyd
Chris McGreal
George Floyd’s girlfriend has told the Derek Chauvin murder trial that the couple shared an addiction to opioid painkillers that they struggled to overcome in the weeks before his death.
Courteney Ross said that Floyd had been clean for a while after she took him to hospital when he overdosed, but that he started using again about two weeks before his arrest by Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer, last May.
The bulk of Ross’s often tearful testimony on the fourth day of the trial focused on the pair’s opioid use, as the prosecution sought to head off defense claims that Floyd was killed by drugs because he had opioids and methamphetamine in his system.
Paramedic Seth Bravinder testified that when he arrived on the scene, George Floyd didn't appear responsive and that his partner indicated Floyd was in cardiac arrest.
"Cardiac arrest" indicates someone is not breathing, has no pulse and their heart has stopped, he said. pic.twitter.com/SApJ74hJOp
Seth Bravinder, a paramedic who treated Floyd at the scene of his arrest, testified that his ambulance was called to the scene for “someone with a mouth injury”. He said the call was a “code two” that suggested it was not a life-threatening emergency, which did not require lights and sirens. But less than two minutes later, the call was upgraded requiring a more urgent response.
On arrival, he saw Chauvin and other police officers on top of Floyd.
“I didn’t see any breathing or movement,” he said.
Bravinder said his partner checked for a pulse, did not detect one and said he thought Floyd had suffered a cardiac arrest, a term he said is used for anyone whose heart has stopped.
Bravinder said they tried to resuscitate Floyd but failed.
The trial was shown police body-camera footage showing that Chauvin continued to kneel on Floyd’s neck even as the paramedics attempted to revive him. The police officer only removed it immediately before is lifted onto a stretcher and moved to the ambulance.
House speaker Nancy Pelosi said that Republican congressman Matt Gaetz should be removed from the judiciary committee if the sex-trafficking allegations against him are true.
“If in fact these allegations are true, of course being removed from the judiciary committee is the least that could be done,” the Democratic speaker said during her weekly press conference.
Pelosi added, “From what we have heard so far, this would be a matter for the ethics committee.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says allegations against Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) "would be a matter for the Ethics Committee." pic.twitter.com/TvdF4fUU9W
Gaetz has denied he engaged in any illegal behavior, despite reports that the justice department is investigating him for allegedly having a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old and paying for her to travel with him.
Richard Luscombe reports:
The Florida politician, a close ally of Donald Trump, claimed during a Tuesday night interview that he was the victim of an extortion plot by a former justice department official, and questioned the motivation behind Tuesday’s original reporting by the New York Times.
Gaetz, 38, claimed his lawyers had been informed that he was the subject of an FBI inquiry ‘regarding sexual conduct with women’ and that the official was attempting to extort $25m from his family ‘in exchange for a commitment that he could make this investigation go away’.
On Wednesday, David McGee, the former justice department employee named by Gaetz, now a lawyer in Pensacola, Florida, told the Washington Post that the politician’s claims of an extortion plot were ‘completely false’.
‘This is a blatant attempt to distract from the fact he’s under investigation for sex trafficking of minors,’ McGee, formerly an attorney in the department’s organized crime taskforce, said.
‘I have no connection with that case at all, other than one of a thousand people who have heard the rumors.’
Pfizer vaccine has 91% efficacy for up to six months, trial shows
Ian Sample
The coronavirus vaccine developed by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech protects against symptomatic Covid for up to six months, an updated analysis of clinical trial data has found.
In a statement released on Thursday, the companies reported efficacy of 91.3% against any symptoms of the disease in participants assessed up to six months after their second shot. The level of protection is only marginally lower than the 95% achieved soon after vaccination.
The findings are the first to demonstrate that the vaccine remains effective for many months, an outcome that doctors and scientists had desperately hoped for because it suggests that people being vaccinated now should be protected at least until the autumn when boosters may be ready.
Jen Psaki was asked about Joe Biden’s comments to faith leaders today telling them to encourage their community members to get vaccinated.
Earlier today, the president joined the office of faith-based and neighborhood partnerships and the office of public engagement’s weekly faith and community engagement call.
Biden told the more than 1,000 faith and community leaders on the call, “We need you to spread the word, let people in our communities and your community know how important is to get everyone vaccinated when it’s their turn, and soon they’ll just be able to just line up and just get their name on a list.”
Psaki said she was not trying to “scare people” about coronavirus, but she emphasized that Americans needed to continue to be vigilant about limiting the spread of the virus.
“We are still at war” with coronavirus, Psaki told reporters.
Jen Psaki was asked about the mass shooting in Orange, California, yesterday, which resulted in four deaths.
The White House press secretary described the attack as “yet another example of senseless gun violence” in America.
In terms of ways to address that violence, Psaki noted Joe Biden continues to urge the Senate to pass the two background checks bills already approved by the House.
Psaki also said the president is conducting an “ongoing review” of possible executive actions he could sign to help end gun violence.
