President-elect Joe Biden has unveiled a $1.9 trillion proposal to boost the US economy and provide aid to those struggling in the pandemic. Dubbed the American Rescue Plan, it includes beefed-up stimulus checks, enhanced unemployment aid, an eviction moratorium and more assistance for small businesses, states and schools. The detailed plan will be one of the first tests of Biden’s power. Conservatives will likely balk at its cost, especially since Biden plans to unveil a follow-up recovery plan that will include billions more in spending. But Biden’s more progressive colleagues will likely keep the pressure on for more spending and widespread aid. Read more at CNN
Biden’s ambitious package, if enacted, would bring to $5.2 trillion the total fiscal stimulus delivered to the U.S. economy since the crisis began, equivalent to about a quarter of U.S. annual economic output (Reuters). No other nation has responded to the pandemic and its impacts with that kind of government support. [The Hill]
Vox: Biden’s economic stimulus proposals, explained.
By the time Biden is sworn in as president next week, 400,000 people across the country could be dead from Covid-19, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention predicts. Some hospital systems are now completely overwhelmed, and health care workers are scrambling to find places to store remains and begging their communities to stay home to stem the influx of patients and the rising death toll. In the UK, hospitals are so packed that nearby hotels are turning floors into Covid-19 recovery wards. The UK has also banned arrivals from some Latin American countries and Portugal following reports of a new coronavirus variant in Brazil. Read more at CNN
“FBI agents are coming to find you." That’s the message FBI Director Chris Wray had yesterday for violent Capitol insurrectionists. The Justice Department announced about 10 new charges in connection with last week’s riot, including for two people who allegedly hurt police officers and a man who shocked many by carrying a Confederate flag inside the Capitol. Police officers at the scene of the Capitol breach have shared harrowing accounts of the violence. One said rioters grabbed for his weapon and shouted, “Kill him with his own gun.” In the aftermath, some members of Congress have said they've gotten threats and fear for their lives. At the Defense Department, longstanding efforts to stamp out extremism among military members have taken on a new urgency after it became clear veterans were involved in last week’s violence. Read more at CNN
Security: Prior to the Capitol riots, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security had not conducted a formal threat assessment, despite open source warnings on social media, NPR reports. The bureau and the department completed such assessments before Black Lives Matter protests in Portland, Ore., and demonstrations tied to the murder of George Floyd last summer. [The Hill]
Lone Officer: Amid all the noise since a mob laid siege, an officer hailed as a hero for confronting the insurrectionists and leading them away from Senate chambers has remained silent. But the video speaks volumes. Capitol Police officer Eugene Goodman, a Black man facing an overwhelmingly white mob, is the only officer seen for a full minute of the footage. He retreated upstairs and led them away from Senate chambers where senators were still meeting at the time.
Some believe he saved their lives. Goodman hasn't publicly discussed his actions and he's asked those who know him to help him maintain privacy. A House bill introduced would give him the Congressional Gold Medal, Jeffrey Collins reports. Read more at AP
Racism Protests: Black activists have denounced a growing narrative among conservatives that equates the deadly siege with last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests. Republican lawmakers defending Donald Trump made the comparison again while building their case against impeachment. The two events were fundamentally different. One was an intentional, direct attack on a democratic institution, with the goal of overturning a fair and free election. The other was a nationwide protest movement focused on racial injustice that occasionally, but not frequently, turned violent, Julie Watson reports. Read at AP
Sedition: A little-used Civil War-era statute that outlaws waging war against the United States is getting a fresh look after the attacks on the Capitol. The last successful prosecution for seditious conspiracy in the U.S. was in 1995 in a case involving Islamic militants who plotted to bomb New York City landmarks. An Egyptian sheikh who died in prison in 2017 and nine of his followers were convicted, Larry Neumeister reports. Read at AP
The Associated Press: Capitol rioters included highly trained former military and police.
White supremacists, militia and hate groups by themselves are not new threats in America, reports The Associated Press. But the mixology is a new hazard. “This merging of groups you see in Charlottesville and that you saw at the Capitol last week doesn’t usually happen,” said Lecia Brooks, chief of staff of the Southern Poverty Law Center. “But they’re desperate. They are convinced that they’re this grave minority that is being threatened and needs to stick together and rally under the moniker of hatred.” [The Hill]
The Washington Post: The threat from Trump-inspired extremism is likely to remain and grow beyond Inauguration Day, according to experts. Some Trump supporters are abandoning plans to show up at events in Washington and in state capitals because of suspicions that federal authorities are trying to trap them. [The Hill]
The Associated Press and Reuters: Guns packed in luggage will be barred on flights headed to the Washington area before the Inauguration, major airlines announced on Thursday. [The Hill]
No fly: Customers who recently harassed Sens. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Delta Air Lines flights have been banned from flying again with the airline, Delta CEO Ed Bastian said Thursday. Read more at Reuters
Some Trump allies in the House, including Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz, are calling on Liz Cheney to resign from her post as the No. 3 House Republican. Cheney voted to impeach Trump. Read more at New York Times
Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, said the House had acted “appropriately” in impeaching President Trump, a sign that she may vote to convict him at trial. Other Republican senators have said they oppose impeachment. Read more at New York Times
Arrests: A federal judge on Thursday ordered retired firefighter Robert Sanford, 55, of Chester, Pa., to be detained pending trial, after prosecutors filed charges alleging he hurled a fire extinguisher (captured on video) that hit three police officers during last week’s mob attack on the U.S. Capitol (Reuters). ... A former occupational therapist with the Cleveland, Ohio, school system was arrested on federal charges after being identified as a participant in breaching the Capitol. Christine Priola, 49, appears in a photograph without a mask standing at the main desk in the Senate chambers clutching a placard. Priola, who is among dozens of people charged since the siege, was arrested on Thursday and accused of knowingly entering or remaining in a restricted building; violent entry; and unlawful activities on Capitol grounds (Cleveland.com).
Many of the people arrested to date were seen on social media bragging about taking part in the siege. The FBI has been combing through more than 100,000 videos and photographs. [The Hill]
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The Hill’s Cristina Marcos reports that trust between the two parties has reached an all-time low — and the mood is raising questions about how the two parties can work together in the new session of Congress. So far, House lawmakers are clashing over magnetometer compliance in the chamber, gun-toting colleagues, impeaching the president and investigating GOP lawmakers over claims that rioters had insider help before storming deep into the Capitol.
The vast majority of Americans say they oppose the actions of the rioters who stormed and ransacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, while smaller majorities say President Trump bears responsibility for the attack and that he should be removed from office and disqualified from serving again, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll. Read more at Washington Post
Olympic gold-medalist Klete Keller turned himself in to federal authorities on Thursday, and he was charged with three crimes in U.S. District Court in Denver for his role in the riot last week at the U.S. Capitol that left at least five people dead.
Keller, 38, is a three-time Olympic swimmer, who earned five medals overall, including gold medals in the 2004 and 2008 Summer Games for Team USA. Read more at USA Today
Fast-food workers across the country plan to strike Friday to send a message to the incoming Biden administration as well as their employers to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour . Employees of McDonald's, Wendy's and other fast-food chains will stay home or walk off the job in roughly 15 cities, said a spokesperson for the "Fight for $15 and a Union" movement, which has staged walkouts since 2012 and is backed by the Service Employees International Union. The federal minimum wage of $7.25 hasn't budged since 2009; President-Elect Joe Biden has made a minimum wage of $15 an hour a key goal. Read more at USA Today
Another federal death row inmate was executed yesterday after the Supreme Court denied his legal team’s last-ditch effort for a stay of execution. Lawyers for Corey Johnson argued he had an intellectual disability and that executing him while he was recovering from Covid-19 would amount to cruel and unusual punishment. Johnson was sentenced to die after he was convicted of killing seven people in 1992 as a part of the drug trade in Virginia. As Biden prepares to take office, dozens of members of Congress are pushing to abolish the death penalty in all jurisdictions. Biden himself has pledged to abolish the federal death penalty, which was renewed in practice by the Trump administration. One more person, Dustin Higgs, is scheduled to be executed during Trump's presidency. Higgs' execution is set for today. Read more at CNN
Move to privatize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac falters. The Treasury Department has decided not to restructure the taxpayers’ stake in the two mortgage giants, effectively ending the Trump administration’s push to ensure that they are eventually returned to private hands. Read more at Wall Street Journal
The New York State attorney general is suing the N.Y.P.D. over what she said were widespread abuses during last summer’s protests after the killing of George Floyd. Read more at New York Times
An earthquake in Indonesia killed at least 35 people. It was the third deadly disaster in the country in a week, after a plane crash and landslides. Read more at New York Times
U.S. Figure Skating will pay $1.45 million to a former skater who accused the organization of failing to protect him from a coach’s sexual abuse. Read more at New York Times
Lives Lived: Siegfried Fischbacher, half of the German-born magician team Siegfried & Roy, captivated Las Vegas audiences with performances alongside big cats, elephants and other exotic animals. Fischbacher died at 81, eight months after the death of his partner, Roy Horn. Read more at New York Times
Dr. Harold N. Bornstein, who for a time was President Donald J. Trump’s personal physician and who had attested that Mr. Trump would be “the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency,” died on Friday. He was 73.
His death was announced on Thursday in a paid notice in The New York Times. The notice did not give a cause or say where he died.
Loquacious, hirsute and eccentric, Dr. Bornstein, a gastroenterologist, was Mr. Trump’s personal physician from 1980 to 2017. He had inherited Mr. Trump as a patient from his father, Dr. Jacob Bornstein, with whom he shared a medical practice on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, at Park Avenue and 78th Street.
When Mr. Trump was elected president in 2016, Dr. Bornstein had hoped to be named White House physician and suggested as much to a longtime Trump assistant. But he was expelled from the Trump orbit after he disclosed to The Times that the president was taking medication to make his hair grow. Read more at New York Times
As the federal government girds against threatened riots in Washington this weekend and possible violence at the inauguration and state capitals across the country, it’s dealing with an unprecedented gap at the top: All of the nation’s top Cabinet departments overseeing the nation’s security are run by acting officials who have been in the job just weeks—or even hours. Read more at Politico
The Trump administration and then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions barreled forward with their “zero tolerance” border crackdown in 2018 knowing that the policy would separate migrant children from their parents and despite warnings that the government was ill-prepared to deal with the consequences, according to a long-awaited report issued Thursday by the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General.
The report called the Justice Department and the attorney general’s office a “driving force” in making sure the Department of Homeland Security aggressively prosecuted adults arriving with children, findings that cast doubt on statements made by Sessions that the government “never really intended” to separate families.
The bureaucratic chaos and trauma for families that resulted from the policy were not unanticipated consequences, the inspector general found. “DOJ officials were aware of many of these challenges prior to issuing the zero tolerance policy, but they did not attempt to address them until after the policy was issued,” the report states. Read more at Washington Post
2.8 million — The number of people the pandemic has killed world-wide, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of data from 59 countries and jurisdictions that offers the most comprehensive view yet of Covid-19’s global impact. In the U.S., the pandemic led overall deaths to climb at least 10% last year, sharply higher than the typical 1.6% annual increase as the population grows and ages. Read more at Wall Street Journal
965,000 — The new U.S. jobless claims that the Labor Department recorded last week, the highest level in nearly five months. The jump in layoffs suggests the nation’s record levels of coronavirus cases are weighing on the labor-market recovery. Overall, the U.S. economy lost 140,000 jobs in December. Read more at Wall Street Journal
Biden picked Jaime Harrison, a veteran of South Carolina politics, to lead the Democratic National Committee, and Dr. David Kessler, a former head of the F.D.A., to help lead the government’s efforts to accelerate the development of virus vaccines. Read at New York Times
Republicans will emerge from the Trump era gutted financially, institutionally and structurally. The losses are stark and substantial:
They lost their congressional power.
Their two leaders, Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy, are hamstrung by corporate blacklisting of their election-denying members.
The GOP brand is radioactive for a huge chunk of America.
The corporate bans on giving to the 147 House and Senate Republicans who voted against election certification are growing and virtually certain to hold.
The RNC is a shell of its former self and run by a Trump loyalist.
Democrats crushed them in fundraising when they were out of power. Imagine their edge with it.
Sheldon Adelson, the party's biggest donor, died Monday.
The NRA is weaker than it has ever been, after massive leadership scandals.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, once controlled by rock-ribbed Republicans, also gave to Democrats in 2020.
Rank-and-file Republicans are now scattered on encrypted channels like Signal and fearful of Big Tech platforms.
The big picture: Conservatives hold power in the courts and state legislatures, two foundational pieces to rebuilding their party. But they likely will face a raging internal war over policies and political leaders as they grapple with a post-Trump world — whenever that might be. Read more at Axios
A pigeon that was thought to have traveled 8,000 miles from Oregon to Australia will live, after a U.S. bird organization declared its identifying leg band was fake . The band had suggested the bird found in a Melbourne backyard on Dec. 26 and named Joe, after President-elect Joe Biden, was a racing pigeon that had left Oregon two months earlier. Australian authorities considered the bird a disease risk and planned to kill it. But Deone Roberts, of the Oklahoma-based American Racing Pigeon Union, said on Friday that the band was fake. The band number belongs to a blue bar pigeon in the United States which is not the bird pictured in Australia, she said. Australia’s Agriculture Department, which is responsible for biosecurity, agreed that Joe was wearing a “fraudulent copy” leg band. “Following an investigation, the department has concluded that Joe the Pigeon is highly likely to be Australian and does not present a biosecurity risk,” it said in a statement. Phew, Joe! You had us worried there. Read more at USA Today
The next chair of Germany’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), and possibly the next leader of the country, will be decided over the next two days, as 1,001 party delegates meet virtually to select a successor to Chancellor Angela Merkel as party leader. Read at Foreign Policy
Overheating. 2020 was the hottest year ever recorded, according to NASA calculations, as scientists blame the increasing buildup of greenhouse gases in the earth’s atmosphere. The record differs from the conclusion reached by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), who said that 2020 was the second hottest year. Regardless of rankings, the seven hottest years on record have all taken place in the last seven years. Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said the news was “a precursor of more to come.” Read more at Foreign Policy
Yemen’s famine risk. Humanitarian experts have warned the United Nations of a wide scale famine in Yemen, affecting millions, if the U.S. designation of Yemen’s Houthi insurgents as a terrorist group goes ahead. The designation is scheduled to come into effect the day before President-elect Joe Biden assumes office. Mark Lowcock, the emergency relief coordinator for the United Nations, said that licenses and exemptions—touted by the Trump administration as a way for humanitarian groups to continue working—were insufficient and the only way to prevent famine was a complete reversal of the U.S. decision. Read more at Foreign Policy
Vaccine passports? Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has proposed establishing a vaccine passport in order to allow those who have received the jab to travel freely around the European Union. The proposal is expected to be discussed at a virtual meeting of EU leaders next week. Greece’s tourism-dependent economy would receive a boost from any increase in travel, however Mitsotakis’s plan is opposed by other European governments, including Berlin. Read more at Foreign Policy
The U.S. Secret Service has been renting a $3,000-per-month studio apartment near the property of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner to use as a restroom after the couple banned agents from using any of their six bathrooms, the Washington Post reports.
The unusual expenditure was necessary after several backup plans fell through. Agents had been using a spare bathroom in former President Barack Obama’s garage, as he lives a few houses down from the Kushners, before they were banned by Obama’s security detail after one agent allegedly left behind “an unpleasant mess.” A port-a-potty set up outside the Kushner property was removed after residents complained, while journeys to the residence of Vice President Mike Pence were deemed too far.
Although the revelation is an embarrassment for the Secret Service and Kushner family, the story highlights the more urgent problem of access to public toilets in the U.S. capital. The D.C. Department of Human Services lists just seven public facilities in the entire downtown area. Read more at Foreign Policy
What began as a free alternative to encyclopedias has become a testament to the power of the open Web — and turns 20 today, Scott Rosenberg and Ina Fried write in Axios Login.
By the numbers:
Wikipedia has 55 million articles, across 300 languages.
More than 280,000 volunteers help update the site.
Wikipedia is edited 350 times per minute, and read more than 8,000 times a second. Read more at Wikipedia
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