The Full Belmonte, 1/7/2022
Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via AP
“President Biden on Thursday decried the violent mob of Trump supporters who breached the Capitol a year ago, saying that ‘democracy was attacked’ and urging Americans to ensure such an attack ‘never, never happens again.’ Biden took direct aim at former president Donald Trump, who he said could not accept his loss and ‘created and spread a web of lies about the 2020 election.’
In a searing speech — and his most direct challenge to Trump — Biden vowed to defend American democracy and said Jan. 6 represents not its end but rather a rebirth of ‘liberty and fair play.’
‘I did not seek this fight brought to this capital one year ago today, but I will not shrink from it, either. I will stand in this breach. I will defend this nation and allow no one to place a dagger at the throat of democracy,’ Biden said.
Democratic House leaders have planned a full day of commemorative activities, including testimonials from lawmakers, commentary from historians and a prayer vigil. Senate Democrats are delivering floor speeches about the day. Both chambers held moments of silence. Most Republicans are not participating in the day’s events.” Read more at Washington Post
Troops in Almaty yesterday.Mariya Gordeyeva/Reuters
“MOSCOW — Kazakhstan’s president said Friday he had ordered his troops to ‘shoot to kill without warning’ in an effort to quash anti-government protests that have been raging since the weekend.
Chaotic and violent scenes persisted in the resource-rich Central Asian country of 19 million, as the first ‘peacekeeping’ troops from a Russia-led military alliance arrived following the leader’s request for foreign intervention to deal with widespread protests over a decrepit political system and dramatic energy price hikes. Some protesters have also issued a list of demands for peaceful political change.
Dozens have been killed across the country so far, with authorities saying that nearly 4,000 ‘riot participants’ had been detained and at least 18 police officers were dead.
In his speech, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said the lives of ‘hundreds of civilians and servicemen’ had been damaged, dismissed calls ‘from abroad’ for negotiations as ‘stupidity,’ and vowed to crush the demonstrations.
‘What negotiations could there be with criminals and murderers? We had to deal with armed and trained bandits and terrorists, both local and foreign. Therefore, they need to be destroyed, and this will be done in the near future,’ he said in a televised address.
Here’s what you need to know about Kazakhstan’s unrest and Russian intervention
He said that more than 20,000 bandits with ‘high combat readiness and animal-like cruelty’ had attacked Almaty alone.
In contrast to this portrait of the demonstrators as hardened militants, several thousand demonstrated peacefully in the city of Zhanaozen, one of the first hotspots of the riots, on Friday. They issued the most specific list of demands up to date, asking for a change in power, freedom for civil rights activists, and a return to a 1993 version of the constitution, which is considered to have a more democratic tone and a clearer division of power than the current one.” Read more at Washington Post
“At a time when the omicron variant is causing COVID-19 infections to soar, the Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments Friday in challenges to two federal vaccine requirements covering tens of millions of workers. President Joe Biden's administration unveiled a series of mandates in November, including for large employers, federal contractors and health care workers. All of those rules have been put on hold by courts as lawsuits challenging them are reviewed. The justices thus far have repeatedly turned away challenges to state and local COVID-19 vaccine mandates. But the court's conservatives, which now enjoy a 6-3 majority, have been much more skeptical about the power of federal agencies – all but guaranteeing the Biden administration a tough reception.” Read more at USA Today
“Most American businesses are holding back on requiring vaccines or testing for employees. Now the Supreme Court will decide whether the Biden administration can force their hands, Axios' Emily Peck writes.
Why it matters: Omicron outbreaks are forcing business closures, flight cancellations and staffing shortages — a chaotic business environment that's not great for the economy or employers.
The Supreme Court will hear arguments this morning over two of the Biden administration's flagship COVID policies:
An emergency vaccinate-or-test rule covering an estimated 80 million employees at large companies, issued by OSHA.
A vaccine mandate for health care workers at facilities that receive Medicare or Medicaid funds.
Where it stands: Only about 18% of businesses require vaccinations, according to a November survey from Willis Towers Watson.
The recent rise in cases, and looming mandates, have pushed some to act: Starbucks this week announced all employees must either be vaccinated or submit to regular testing.
The Mayo Clinic fired 700 of its employees (about 1% of staff) who refused to be vaccinated.
Plenty of others are waiting on the Court, said Jeff Levin-Sherz, a population health leader at Willis Towers Watson: 32% of companies said they'd only require vaccination if it was a federal rule.
Zoom out: This case is a key front in the Republican war against Biden's vaccine requirements. 183 GOP members of Congress, including 47 senators, filed an amicus brief at the Court arguing against the vaccine mandates.
One side: Mandate opponents say the requirements are executive overreach.
They claim COVID is not a workplace hazard, per se, but something that's all around us.
Another argument is that mandates would push workers to quit, exacerbating labor shortages.
The other side: The administration, public health experts and former OSHA staff say the agency is explicitly authorized to take emergency measures to protect workplace safety.
Requiring masks, testing or vaccination is less intrusive than some other OSHA rules, they say.
What's next: The Court is expected to move relatively fast — possibly issuing a ruling by month's end.” Read more at Axios
“The Supreme Court session is happening amid another massive COVID-19 surge in the U.S., led by the omicron variant. Fortunately, we're beginning to know more about the new variant, its severity and its symptoms.
Symptoms come more quickly once infected with omicron. Loss of taste and smell isn't as common anymore, but nausea, night sweats and lower back pain is.
The risk of ending up in the hospital after being infected with omicron appears lower than with the delta variant.
For those that do end up on the hospital, omicron appears to be easier on the lungs than previous variants.” Read more at NPR
“More than 60 million people are under winter weather alerts across the US as several storm systems grip the country. On the West Coast, record-breaking rain and snowmelt in Washington and California are causing river flooding and avalanches. Across much of the South, dropping temperatures are causing icy road conditions that have led to massive backups and accidents in states like Kentucky, where a more than 20 car pile-up yesterday brought traffic to a halt. On the East coast, a fast-moving winter storm is expected to drop several inches of snow on New York, Massachusetts and parts of the mid-Atlantic this weekend. Forecasters say this will create even more disruptions, including school closures, flight cancellations and problems for emergency responders.” Read more at CNN
“U.S. mortgage rates rose this week to the highest level since May 2020, Freddie Mac said:
A 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 3.22%, with an average 0.7 point. That's up from 3.11% last week.
A year ago, it was 2.65%. That was the low in data going back 50 years.
Why it matters: ‘Ultralow interest rates have been a major force in the housing boom of the last two years,’ The Wall Street Journal notes.” Read more at Axios
“On the day President Biden was inaugurated, the advisory board of health experts who counseled him during the presidential transition officially ceased to exist. But its members have quietly continued to meet regularly over Zoom, their conversations often turning to frustration with Mr. Biden’s coronavirus response.
Now, six of these former advisers have gone public with an extraordinary, albeit polite, critique — and a plea to be heard. In three opinion articles published on Thursday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, they are calling for Mr. Biden to adopt an entirely new pandemic strategy — one that is geared to the “new normal” of living with the virus indefinitely, not to wiping it out.
The authors are all big names in American medicine; several, including Dr. Luciana Borio, a former acting chief scientist at the Food and Drug Administration, have held high-ranking positions in government. The driving force behind the articles is Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, an oncologist, medical ethicist and University of Pennsylvania professor who advised former President Barack Obama.
They say the first thing the administration needs to do is to step back and take a broader vision, by recognizing that Covid-19 is here to stay. In one article, Dr. Emanuel and two co-authors — Michael T. Osterholm, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota, and Dr. Celine Gounder, an infectious disease expert at New York University — pointedly note that in July, Mr. Biden proclaimed that ‘we’ve gained the upper hand against this virus,’ which in retrospect was clearly not the case.
Now, they say, with the Omicron variant fueling a dramatic new surge, concerns have risen about the United States becoming stuck in ‘a perpetual state of emergency.’ To be better prepared for inevitable outbreaks, they suggest that the administration lay out goals and specific benchmarks, including what number of hospitalizations and deaths from respiratory viruses, including the coronavirus, that should trigger emergency measures.
‘From a macro perspective, it feels like we are always fighting yesterday’s crisis and not necessarily thinking what needs to be done today to prepare us for what comes next,’ Dr. Borio said in an interview.
Mr. Biden published a pandemic strategy when he came into office, and recently released a new winter strategy to battle the coronavirus, just as the Omicron variant began spreading in the United States. But the authors say the administration needs a new and broader vision for the future, though they concede that it is impossible to know whether the coronavirus will become a seasonal infection, ‘or whether even more transmissible, immune-evading or virulent variants will arise after Omicron.’
In the three articles — one proposing a new national plan, the others suggesting improvements to testing, surveillance, vaccines and therapeutics — the authors also call for every person in the United States to have access to low-cost testing, saying the Biden administration’s purchase of 500 million rapid tests is not enough; for ‘comprehensive, digital, real-time’ data collection by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; for next-generation Covid-19 vaccines that would target new variants or perhaps take new forms, like nasal sprays or skin patches; and major upgrades to the nation’s public health infrastructure.
The authors also said that vaccine mandates should be imposed more broadly, including for schoolchildren, and that N95 masks should be made free and readily available to all Americans, as should oral treatments for Covid.
In interviews, the authors said they had made their views known to Biden officials, but had sometimes felt unheard. The articles reflect both their frustrations and their desire to help, they said. They also recognize that they have the luxury of taking a 30,000-foot view while administration experts are slogging it out in the trenches.” Read more at New York
“An unknown donor paid a ransom to the Haitian gang that captured a group of Christian missionaries, leading to the release of three of the missionaries on December 5.” [Vox] Read more at AP / Peter Smith
“The Australian government insists world tennis men’s No. 1 Novak Djokovic isn’t being held against his will, as the vaccine-mandate critic stays in a hotel used to house refugees and asylum seekers. Djokovic “is free to leave at any time that he chooses to do so and Border Force will actually facilitate that,” Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews said. Djokovic’s lawyers are challenging a federal decision to overrule a state vaccine exemption for the tennis champion.” Read more at Bloomberg
A pro-Djokovic rally in front of Serbia’s National Assembly in Belgrade yesterday.
Photographer: Srdjan Stevanovic/Getty Images Europe
“LONDON — Prime Minister Boris Johnson suffered a stinging rebuke from his ethics adviser on Thursday over the costly refurbishment of his Downing Street apartment, after the British leader blamed a change of cellphones for his failure to disclose messages about the makeover.
In a scathing letter to Mr. Johnson, Christopher Geidt, who advises the prime minister on ethics in public life, said it was ‘plainly unsatisfactory’ that he was not told of text messages in which Mr. Johnson petitioned a prominent Conservative Party donor to arrange financing for the outfitting of his apartment.
While Mr. Geidt said the missing messages did not change his earlier judgment that Mr. Johnson had not violated the ethics code governing his office, he expressed deep disappointment in the prime minister and warned that the case could undermine public confidence in high public officials.
For Mr. Johnson, the decision spares him the prospect of potentially losing his job because of a breach of the ministerial code. But Mr. Geidt’s harsh words add to the perception of a prime minister who has treated ethical issues carelessly and who has been clouded by allegations of petty corruption since the beginning of his tenure.” Read more at New York Times
“Six people were killed and more than 20 hospitalized after inhaling toxic gascaused by an illegal dump of waste chemicals at a dyeing and printing mill in India. Local officials say they think the chemicals, which were offloaded from a tanker near the mill, reacted with other chemicals in the water to produce the deadly leak. Police are investigating, but have yet to make any arrests. In 1984, India suffered the world's worst industrial disaster when methyl isocyanate gas leaked from a pesticide factory in the city of Bhopal, killing more than 5,000 people and injuring more than half a million others.” Read more at CNN
“Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has threatened to arrest citizens not vaccinated against Covid-19 if they violate a stay-at-home order.” [Vox] Read more at South China Morning Post
“Auctioning women | Indian police arrested four college students for their alleged role in an app that ‘auctioned’ hundreds of Muslim women, including journalists, activists and critics of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. As Upmanyu Trivedi and Sudhi Ranjan Sen write, the case reflects rising anti-Muslim sentiment as Modi’s party pushes a Hindu nationalist agenda ahead of state polls in the next two months.” Read more at Bloomberg
“The U.K. sent 200 military personnel to hospitals in London to relieve staff shortages due to a surge in omicron cases.” Read more at Bloomberg
“China fined the company that runs 7-11 convenience stores for identifying Taiwan as an independent state on its website, the latest crackdown against companies over Beijing’s stance on disputed territories.” Read more at Bloomberg
“Pope Francis lamented Wednesday that many couples are choosing to have more pets than more children, saying that a trend of forgoing child-rearing ‘takes some of our humanity away.’
The pontiff started his weekly address at the Vatican by praising the paternal virtues of the biblical Joseph. But his reflection on the importance of parenthood shifted to a warning about dwindling birthrates, encouraging people to ‘take the risk of welcoming children,’ biological or adopted.
T’oday … we see a form of selfishness,’ the pope said, according to translations in multiple reports. ‘We see that some people do not want to have a child.’
Or, he said, they may have one or two kids — b’ut they have dogs and cats that take the place of children.’
Countries around the world, including the United States, have been reporting annual drops in birthrates in recent years. Population powerhouses in the developing world are also posting low growth. In 2020, data from Indian authorities indicates, the country’s fertility dropped below ‘replacement rate,’ needed to maintain a stable population over time. In China, three decades of stringent family-planning policies have left the country’s birthrates plummeting.
The pope, who has called for the adoption process to become easier, said people who do not have children “are lacking something, something fundamental, something important.” And he cautioned that countries may soon be forced to grapple with the consequences of lower birthrates — such as lower tax revenue and shrinking economies.
More Americans say they’re not planning to have a child, new poll says, as U.S. birthrate declines
The pope’s remarks drew criticism from many on social media who insisted that having children is a personal choice. Dana Nessel, Michigan’s attorney general, referenced her experience with the foster care system, tweeting that having kids out of a feeling of obligation can lead to ‘terrible outcomes for both the kids & parents.’
And many noted that Catholic priests themselves are not permitted to marry or have children….Last month, the pontiff warned that Italy’s declining number of births, which reached its nadir since the 1860s, may threaten the country’s future, Reuters reported.
The 85-year-old leader of the Catholic Church has largely been seen as a liberal figure, making numerous statements that have raised the eyebrows of the Church’s more hard-line members.” Read more at Washington Post
“Peter Bogdanovich, the Oscar-nominated director and screenwriter of ‘The Last Picture Show’ and ‘Paper Moon,’ has died. He was 82.
He died Thursday at his home in Los Angeles of natural causes, Creative Artists Agency confirmed to USA TODAY.
With a career in Hollywood spanning more than 50 years, Bogdanovich is best known for directing a beloved run of comedies and dramas in the late '60s and '70s, including 1972 screwball hit ‘What's Up, Doc?’ starring Barbra Streisand, Ryan O'Neal and Madeline Kahn.
He reunited with O'Neal the following year on Depression-era road movie ‘Paper Moon,’ featuring the actor's daughter, Tatum O'Neal, who at age 10 won the best supporting actress Oscar for her performance. To date, she's still the youngest person in history to win a competitive Academy Award.” Read more at USA Today
“N.Y. Times columnist Nick Kristof was ruled ineligible to run for Oregon governor because the state's constitution requires candidates to be a resident for at least three years.” Go deeper. Read more at Axios
“The N.Y. Times bought The Athletic in a deal valuing the sports media startup at $550 million, Axios' Sara Fischer reports.” Read more at Axios
“Over the last few years, meatless meat has gone mainstream, in large part due to the popularity of plant-based burgers from Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods that taste more like beef than the veggie burgers of the past.
Now, plant-based chicken is getting its turn in the spotlight. Starting January 10, Beyond Fried Chicken will be available at KFC’s nearly 4,000 US locations, the first — and biggest —nationwide rollout of plant-based poultry at a major chicken chain. It will be served as part of a combo meal, or in six- or 12-piece orders. (KFC says the six-piece order will start at $6.99 but may vary by location. For comparison, an eight-piece order of Chick-fil-A chicken nuggets cost $8.39 at a location near me in Maryland.) Beyond Fried Chicken will be available for a ‘limited time only, while supplies last.’ But Kevin Hochman, CEO of KFC, says he’s optimistic it will be a sustainable success.” Read more at Vox