WASHINGTON — President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., racing against a surge in coronavirus cases and the emergence of a new variant that could worsen the crisis, is planning a vaccination offensive that calls for greatly expanding access to the vaccine while using a wartime law to increase production.
In a speech on Friday in Wilmington, Del., Mr. Biden told Americans that “we remain in a very dark winter,” allowing, “the honest truth is this: Things will get worse before they get better.”
“I told you,” he said, “I’ll always level with you.” But he also tried to offer hope for an end to a pandemic that has taken nearly 390,000 American lives and frayed the country’s economic and social fabric.
“Our plan is as clear as it is bold: get more people vaccinated for free, create more places for them to get vaccinated, mobilize more medical teams to get the shots in people’s arms, increase supply and get it out the door as soon as possible,” he said, calling it “one of the most challenging operation efforts ever undertaken by our country.”
He pledged to ramp up vaccination availability in pharmacies, build mobile clinics to get vaccines to underserved rural and urban communities and encourage states to expand vaccine eligibility to people 65 and older. Mr. Biden also vowed to make racial equity a priority in fighting a virus that has disproportionately infected and killed people of color.
“You have my word,” he declared, “we will manage the hell out of this operation.”
But the president-elect’s expansive vision is colliding with a sobering reality: With only two federally authorized vaccines, supplies will be scarce for the next several months, frustrating some state and local health officials who had hoped that the release of a federal stockpile of vaccine doses announced this week could alleviate that shortage.
Mr. Biden is clearly prepared to assert a role for the federal government that President Trump refused to embrace, using the crisis to rebuild the nation’s public health services and Washington’s money to hire a new health work force and deploy the National Guard. But many of his bold promises will be difficult to realize. Read more at New York Times
Federal health officials warned on Friday that a far more contagious variant of the coronavirus first identified in Britain could become the dominant source of infection in the United States by March, and would likely lead to a wrenching surge in cases and deaths that would further burden overwhelmed hospitals.
This dire forecast from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made plain what has been suspected for weeks now: The nation is in an urgent race to vaccinate as many Americans as possible before the variant spreads across the country. Read more at New York Times
A growing number of Democrats are raising concerns about pro-Trump groups spotted inside the Capitol complex in the days before a mob invaded the building last week in what was a stunning failure of intelligence and police planning.
Many Democrats were shocked that people in the mob were able to find offices of top Democratic leaders, including an unmarked, third-floor office used by House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.), the highest-ranking Black lawmaker in Congress.
“The perpetrators, the terrorists, were able to find locations in the Capitol that I probably could not find,” Rep. Kim Schrier (D-Wash.) said Thursday in an interview with the news outlet Cheddar.
It’s unclear whether people marauding through the Capitol found offices simply by walking around and randomly opening doors, or if there was more planning involved.
Some Democrats are pointing to tours of the Capitol and constituent visits to nearby House and Senate office buildings. They question whether any of those visits were used to scope out the sprawling Capitol complex ahead of the violent attack on the building.
Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.), who served as a Navy helicopter pilot and a federal prosecutor before joining Congress, on Wednesday brought together nearly three dozen House Democrats to sign a letter urging investigators to scour any visitor log books or video footage for possible links to the breach that resulted in five deaths, including the killing of a Capitol Police officer.
She likened Capitol tours she witnessed on Jan. 5 to “reconnaissance.” Read more at The Hill
Right-wing groups on chat apps like Telegram are swelling with new members after Parler disappeared and a backlash against Facebook and Twitter, making it harder for law enforcement to track where the next attack could come from.
After the attack on the U.S. Capitol last week, major tech companies clamped down on right-wing extremists, kicking thousands of conspiracy theory accounts off Twitter and shutting down the social network Parler. But those conversations usually took place in the open on well-documented, public-facing channels.
Now, conversations about potential attacks and protests around Inauguration Day are taking place on a wide mix of public and private feeds and chats on Dubai-based Telegram and other services like MeWe, according to law enforcement officials and extremism researchers. Read more at Washington Post
WASHINGTON — As he prepares to leave office, President Donald Trump's job approval marks are on a downward spiral, led by sinking support among his Republican base, following last week's riot at the Capitol and subsequent impeachment.
In a new poll from the Pew Research Center, only 29% of Americans said they approve of how Trump is handling his job – the lowest of his tumultuous presidency and down 9 percentage points from August. Sixty-eight percent said they disapprove of his job performance.
Driving the decline, only 60% of Republicans and voters who lean Republican approve of Trump's job performance, the poll found, a drop from 77% in August. Trump's positive marks from Democrats – already near rock bottom – dropped one percentage point to 4% from 5%. Read more at USA Today
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar issued a harsh rebuke of President Trump in his departure letter over the president's role in inciting last week’s violent riot at the Capitol.
Azar sent the White House a letter announcing his departure from the administration on Jan. 20, the day President-elect Joe Biden will be inaugurated. It is standard practice for government appointees to send a departure letter at the end of an administration. In his, the HHS secretary said Trump’s evidence-challenged claims that the election was fraudulently stolen from him and the subsequent mob on the Capitol could “tarnish” the administration’s achievements. Read more at The Hill
A federal judge ordered the continued detention of the Arizona man who stormed the Capitol last week in a coyote tail headdress, holding that the self-described “QAnon Shaman” posed a flight risk and a danger to the community.
The decision Friday afternoon followed a hearing in Arizona federal court at which prosecutors said that 33-year-old Jacob Chansley had left a menacing note for Vice President Mike Pence on the Senate dais and that Mr. Chansley had plans to return to Washington, D.C., for President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration. Read more at Wall Street Journal
Vice President Pence spoke with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris on Thursday to offer his assistance ahead of next week's inauguration, a source familiar with the call confirmed to The Hill.
The conversation marked the first time the two leaders have spoken since they debated in October, and it comes just days before Harris is set to take office.
President Trump still has not called President-elect Joe Biden nor expressly conceded the race. He said last week for the first time that there will be "a smooth, orderly and seamless transition." Read more at The Hill
President Trump, isolated and watching the clock count down on his time in the White House, spent a few minutes of it on Friday with the C.E.O. of MyPillow, Mike Lindell, who brought some notes with him.
White House officials said nothing came of the roughly five-to-ten-minute meeting between Mr. Lindell and Mr. Trump, which Mr. Lindell said came after he’d been asking to get on the president’s calendar for days.
But notes that Mr. Lindell brought with him, captured by a news photographer as Mr. Lindell waited before entering the White House, sparked hours of concern on social media about what was taking place with a president who as recently as Friday insisted to White House officials that he had won an election that he lost. Read more at New York Times
ATLANTA — Prosecutors in Georgia appear increasingly likely to open a criminal investigation of President Trump over his attempts to overturn the results of the state’s 2020 election, an inquiry into offenses that would be beyond his federal pardon power. Read more at New York Times
WASHINGTON — Senator James Lankford, Republican of Oklahoma, apologized on Thursday to Black constituents who were offended by his decision to join President Trump in trying to discredit the victory of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., saying he had not realized the effort would be seen as a direct attack on the voting rights of people of color. Read more at New York Times
Donald Trump is set to leave the White House and Republicans are about to relinquish control of the Senate, but experts are warning the US is facing a wave of rightwing ‘Christian nationalist’ legislation in 2021, as the religious right aims to thrust Christianity into everyday American life.
With the supreme court now dominated by Trump-appointed conservative justices, elected officials in states across the country are set to introduce bills which would hack away at LGTBQ rights, reproductive rights, challenge the ability of couples to adopt children, and see religion forced into classrooms, according to a report by the American Atheists organization. Read more at The Guardian
The clothing company Ralph Lauren has terminated its sponsorship of Justin Thomas as a result of the American golfer’s use of a homophobic slur during the third round of the Sentry Tournament of Champions.
Thomas, the world No 3, was heard using the derogatory word towards himself after missing a par putt on the fourth hole at Kapalua last weekend. The 27-year-old later apologised for the remark. He told the Golf Channel: “There’s just no excuse. I’m an adult, I’m a grown man. There’s absolutely no reason for me to say anything like that. It’s terrible. I’m extremely embarrassed.”
'It's inexcusable': Justin Thomas apologises for using homophobic slur
But Ralph Lauren has announced it has severed ties with the golfer. In a statement, the American clothing brand said: “We are disheartened by Mr Thomas’s recent language, which is entirely inconsistent with our values. Read more at The Guardian
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