“The House took the extraordinary step Thursday to strip Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee posts over a series of incendiary comments and actions by the controversial GOP lawmaker, including endorsing the assassination of Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
It is extremely rare for one party in the House to intervene in another’s personnel affairs. But the vote, which occurred mostly along party lines, came after GOP leaders refused to act on their own. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has denounced Greene’s past actions but rebuffed calls to take away her committee assignments, only offering to reassign her.
‘If anybody starts threatening the lives of members of Congress on the Democratic side, we’d be the first to eliminate them from committees. They had the opportunity to do so,’ Pelosi said Thursday.
Pelosi later told reporters that she was ‘profoundly disturbed’ that Republicans were continuing to allow Greene, a known conspiracy theorist, to sit on those panels.
‘You would think the Republican leadership in the Congress would have some sense of responsibility to this institution,’ Pelosi said.
Eleven Republicans joined all Democrats in voting to remove Greene from the House Education and Budget committees. Republicans, including McCarthy, vowed retribution whenever the GOP is next in the majority.
‘If this is the new standard, I look forward to continuing out the standard,’ McCarthy said in a floor speech before the vote.
The action against Greene comes after her racist and anti-Semitic comments and social media posts — most from before her time in Congress — surfaced over the last week. Greene has also closely aligned herself with QAnon until just recently and was one of the most vocal promoters of baseless election fraud claims touted by former President Donald Trump in the lead up to a violent mob attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Democrats have taken particular issue with her sitting on the Education Committee after she said the Sandy Hook and Parkland school shootings were staged. Greene was also filmed harassing David Hogg, a teenage school shooting survivor.
The vote comes at a critical moment for the Republican Party as it grapples with its identity in a new era where Trump is out of office — and recently out of sight — but still looms large and wields significant power. McCarthy’s efforts to carefully balance the competing factions was on full display during the meeting Wednesday, where he stood by Greene while simultaneously offering a forceful defense of No. 3 Republican Liz Cheney amid attempts to oust her from leadership for voting to impeach Trump.
Greene delivered her first public response to the resolution on the floor Thursday, just hours before the vote. But her remarks — which fell short of an apology for spreading conspiracies or endorsing violence against sitting members of Congress — didn’t appease Democrats.
In a roughly five-minute speech, Greene distanced herself from her record of promoting conspiracy theories including QAnon, declaring, ‘I walked away from those things,’ and she said she did ‘regret’ believing those falsehoods.
‘School shootings are absolutely real. ... I also want to tell you 9/11 absolutely happened,’ Greene said in what many considered an extraordinary set of remarks for the House floor.
But Greene also used her speech to attack Big Tech, ‘cancel culture’ and Black Lives Matter, while describing ‘a media that is just as guilty as QAnon of presenting lies that divide us.’
Her attacks on American journalism quickly drew a rebuke from House Rules Chair Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) on the floor, who said in rebuttal, ‘To equate the media to QAnon is beyond the pale.’” Read more at Politico
“Senate lawmakers gave their support to President Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus package just before sunrise on Friday, clearing a major hurdle for the legislation to proceed without Republican support after an overnight voting session that stretched for about 15 hours.
Vice President Kamala Harris arrived early in the morning to the Senate dais, where she cast her first tiebreaking vote, and the Senate adopted the resolution along party lines, 51-50, at about 5:30 a.m.
In the marathon session — known as a vote-a-rama and for which more than 800 amendments were drafted — Senate Democrats maneuvered through a series of politically tricky amendments that Republicans wanted to attach to a coronavirus relief package as lawmakers pressed forward with a budget plan that includes Mr. Biden’s economic aid proposal.
The resolution will go to the House, where Democrats do not require Republican support to approve it.” Read more at New York Times
“Former President Donald Trump said Thursday he will not testify in the Senate impeachment trial, denying a request from Democratic prosecutors who want him to answer questions under oath.
Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a former constitutional law professor leading the Democrats' case, wrote a letter to Trump saying his response to the article of impeachment earlier this week had ‘denied many factual allegations,’ and therefore Democrats requested he testify as early as next Monday and no later than next Thursday.
‘If you decline this invitation, we reserve any and all rights, including the right to establish at trial that your refusal to testify supports a strong adverse inference regarding your actions (and inaction) on January 6, 2021,’ Raskin wrote, referring to the Capitol riots last month.
Trump's attorneys responded to the request by blasting it as a ‘public relations stunt.’ In a letter to Raskin and House prosecutors, Bruce Castor Jr. and David Schoen argued that needing testimony from the former president shows Democrats ‘cannot prove your allegations against the 45th President of the United States, who is now a private citizen.’
‘The use of our Constitution to bring a purported impeachment proceeding is much too serious to try to play these games,’ the attorneys wrote.” Read more at USA Today
“Shifting sands | Biden announced a major reversal of key Trump-administration foreign policy initiatives, including support for the Saudi-led offensive in Yemen and U.S. troop cuts in Germany that stunned European allies. Declaring that ‘diplomacy is back,’ he told the State Department the U.S. will take a firm stand in dealing with China and Russia and raise the cap on refugee admittance.” Read more at Bloomberg
“J&J seeks FDA authorization for one-shot vaccine. If the FDA follows the same timeline as for the first two Covid-19 vaccines, it could reach a decision on J&J’s vaccine by the end of the month.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Early in the pandemic, countries with populist, right-wing governments were suffering some of the worst outbreaks. These countries had big differences from one another — the list included Brazil, Britain, Russia and the U.S. — but their problems all stemmed partly from leaders who rejected scientific expertise.
More progressive and technocratic countries — with both center-left and center-right leaders, like Australia, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea — were doing a better job containing the pandemic. The pattern seemed to make sense: Politicians who believed in the ability of bureaucracies to accomplish complex jobs were succeeding at precisely that.
But over the last few weeks, as vaccination has become a top priority, the pattern has changed. Progressive leaders in much of the world are now struggling to distribute coronavirus vaccines quickly and efficiently:
Europe’s vaccination rollout ‘has descended into chaos,’ as Sylvie Kauffmann of Le Monde, the French newspaper, has written. One of the worst performers is the Netherlands, which has given a shot to less than 2 percent of residents.
Canada (at less than 3 percent) is far behind the U.S. (about 8.4 percent).
Within the U.S., many Democratic states — like California, Illinois, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York and tiny Rhode Island — are below the national average. ‘The parts of the country that pride themselves on taking Covid seriously and believing in government are not covering themselves in glory,’ The Times’s Ezra Klein has written.
At the same time, there are clear success stories in places that few people would describe as progressive.
Alaska and West Virginia and have the two highest vaccination rates among U.S. states, with Oklahoma and the Dakotas also above average. Globally, Israel and the United Arab Emirates have the highest rates. Britain — run by Boris Johnson, a populist Conservative — has vaccinated more than 15 percent of residents.
A health worker administering a Covid-19 vaccine in Hod Hasharon, Israel.Jack Guez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
International patterns are rarely perfect, and this one has plenty of exceptions (like Iowa and Idaho, two red-state laggards, or New Mexico, a blue state that’s above average). So far, though, it’s hard to find many progressive governments that are vaccination role models.
Why? A common problem seems to be a focus on process rather than on getting shots into arms. Some progressive leaders are effectively sacrificing efficiency for what they consider to be equity.
The European Union has taken a ponderous, risk-averse approach that tries to avoid upsetting its member countries, Kauffmann points out. Similarly, many U.S. states have delegated decisions to local health officials and have suffered from ‘confusion and competition among localities,’ William Galston of the Brookings Institution has written. State leaders in Alaska and West Virginia have taken a more top-down approach, Elaine Povich of Stateline has reported.
Some blue states have also created intricate rules about who qualifies for a vaccine and then made a big effort to keep anybody else from getting a shot. These complicated rules have slowed vaccination in both California and New York.
‘Across New York State,’ my colleague Dana Rubinstein has written, medical providers have had ‘to throw out precious vaccine doses because of difficulties finding patients who matched precisely with the state’s strict vaccination guidelines — and the steep penalties they would face had they made a mistake.’
The world has one new, and very high-profile, progressive government with a chance to show it can do better: the Biden administration.
The Trump administration fell far short of its own goal for vaccination speed, but by its final days it did get the country close to President Biden’s stated goal of 1 million shots per day. Biden has since suggested his new goal is 1.5 million per day.
By The New York Times | Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
To make this happen, the administration is pushing Moderna and Pfizer to accelerate production, as well as helping states open mass-vaccination clinics and expand drugstore programs, according to The Times’s Sheryl Gay Stolberg. If the government gives Johnson & Johnson permission to begin distributing its vaccine this month, as appears likely, that will help, too.
The trade-offs between equity and efficiency are real: Rapid vaccination programs will first reach many relatively privileged people. But the trade-offs may be smaller than that sentence suggests. Covid has exacted a terribly unequal toll partly because people in vulnerable groups have suffered more severe versions of the disease, as a result of underlying health conditions.
The most effective way to save lives is probably to vaccinate people as quickly as possible.” Read more at New York Times
“The Brazilian mining giant Vale signed an agreement on Thursday to pay $7 billion in compensation to the state of Minas Gerais, two years after the collapse of one of its dams killed 270 people, also causing vast environmental damage. Eleven people are still missing.
While the amount to be paid was less than what the state government initially demanded, state officials still called it the biggest settlement in Brazilian history.
The dam burst destroyed almost 300 acres of native forest and polluted 200 miles of the local Paraopeba River, rendering it useless as a water supply for the state. Traces of the toxic sludge that came out of the dam were found in the São Francisco River, which supplies water to five different states.
The dam, built to hold waste from a nearby iron ore mine, collapsed on Jan. 25, 2019, in the city of Brumadinho, burying homes, hotels, rivers and the company’s facilities under a wave of mud. In only a few days, it became clear that the company had been warned that the structure was unsafe multiple times, internal documents revealed.” Read more at New York Times
“Jeff Zucker, CNN’s president since 2013, said he would step down at the end of this year.” Read more at New York Times
“The NBA will require players, coaches and staff members to wear KN95, KF94 or FFP2 face masks during games beginning Friday, according to a league memo sent to all 30 teams in hopes to strengthen the league’s health and safety protocols related to the coronavirus pandemic. The NBA has postponed 23 games this season because of issues related to positive COVID-19 tests and subsequent contact tracing. All teams are required to have at least eight healthy players to participate in a game. And as for the new face mask requirement, the memo stated it ‘will impose penalties on any player or team staff member who fails to comply with these rules.’” Read more at CNN
“45% — The drop in hiring rates for entry-level college-graduate positions since the start of the pandemic, more than for any other category of education. Experts say the trend is especially troubling because the first job after graduation is critical to launching a career, and those who graduate into unemployment are five times more likely to be stuck in mismatched jobs for years.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
Paul Ratje/Agence France-Presse/AFP via Getty Images
“After four years of cuts from former President Trump, President Joe Biden will issue an executive order raising the refugee ceiling, allowing the US to accept more global refugees.” [Vox] Read more at Reuters / Steve Holland and Ted Hesson
“The Trump administration set a historically low cap of 15,000 refugees for this year. On the campaign trail, Biden pledged to raise it to 125,000 while campaigning, but plans to wait until the new fiscal year begins in October. He has not specified how many refugees he plans to accept.” [Vox] Read more at CNN / Priscilla Alvarez and Kevin Liptak
“Trump’s actions will take time to undo. In order to increase the refugee ceiling, Biden will need to reopen the more than one-third of offices Trump closed and workers he let go of.” [Vox] Read more at The Associated Press / Matthew Lee and Julie Watson
“Experts say the global refugee situation is worsening, with the UN estimating there are 26.3 million in the world. Further complicating matters, some 40,000 refugees have already been screened but are stuck in limbo due to Trump’s gutting of the relevant agencies.” [Vox] Read more at The New York Times / Lara Jakes, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Maggie Haberman and Michael D. Shear
Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
“Smartmatic's defamation lawsuit is here, targeting Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Fox News, and hosts Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro.
The big picture: The $2.7 billion suit is the second big defamation case against Powell and Giuliani, who were sued by Dominion last month, Axios' Sara Fischer and Oriana Gonzalez report.
The 285-page lawsuit accuses the defendants of lying about Smartmatic to convince the public that the 2020 presidential election was plagued with fraud.
‘They needed a villain. … Without any true villain, Defendants invented one.’
Fox News statement: ‘FOX News Media is committed to providing the full context of every story with in-depth reporting and clear opinion. We are proud of our 2020 election coverage and will vigorously defend this meritless lawsuit in court.’
Flashback: Earlier this week, NewsMax co-anchor Bob Sellers cut off MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, a Trump ally, when he tried to make such claims.
Following threats from Dominion in December, Fox News aired a video interview debunking claims made on the network that Smartmatic software was used to ‘delete, change or alter anything to related to vote tabulation.’” Read more at Axios
“Lawyers for Dominion Voting Systems have asked Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Parler to preserve posts about the company, even if the material was already removed for spreading misinformation.
The posts need to be kept ‘because they are relevant to Dominion’s defamation claims relating to false accusations that Dominion rigged the 2020 election,’ according to the demand letters from Dominion’s law firm Clare Locke. Dominion sued Rudolph W. Giuliani and Sidney Powell for more than $1.3 billion each in January, alleging that the lawyers defamed Dominion by saying the machines were used to steal the election from President Donald Trump.” Read more at Washington Post
“Amanda Gorman, the 22-year-old who made history in January as the youngest inaugural poet in U.S. history , will appear on the cover of Time magazine. Hitting newsstands on Friday will be her interview with former first lady Michelle Obama, who said she felt "proud" and "profoundly moved" watching the young poet read her work at President Joe Biden's inauguration. Gorman wears a crown headband and a yellow dress on the cover of the edition. And the Harvard graduate and National Youth Poet Laureate has plenty more up her sleeve: books slated to hit stores later this year, talk show appearances, and future political aspirations.” Read more at CNN
“Unemployment Fraud: Unemployment agencies across the U.S. were bombarded with so many claims during the pandemic that many struggled to distinguish the correct from the criminal. Simple tax forms — barely enough to fill a half-sheet of paper — are now revealing the extent of the identity theft that made state-run unemployment offices lucrative targets for fraud after millions of people lost their jobs, Adam Beam reports.” Read more at AP
“A predicted baby boom driven by lockdown idleness has failed to materialize, according to figures released by Italy’s statistics agency. Birth rates for December 2020—9 months after the first lockdowns were announced—were down 21.6 percent across a sample of 15 Italian cities.
Germany’s statistics office has also warned that in 2020 Germany’s population likely failed to grow for the first time since 2011.
In the United States, researchers at the Brookings Institution have projected 300,000 fewer U.S. births this year as a result of the pandemic.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“The Justice Department is dropping a discrimination lawsuit against Yale that accused the university of violating federal civil rights law by discriminating against Asian American and white undergraduate applicants.” Read more at Axios
“Wisconsin’s GOP legislature repealed Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ statewide face mask mandate. (He immediately issued a new order.)” Read more at Axios
“Hong Kong has introduced a broad set of new national security rules for how schools operate, renewing fears among parents and students in the semi-autonomous city of a shift toward China-style “patriotic education.” The new policies detail how national security issues should be taught across a range of subjects, from biology to music, and how to discipline students who don’t respect the rules. Educators are encouraged to censure teachers and students who don’t cooperate, even possibly involving the police. The policies support the controversial national security laws introduced in Hong Kong last year and have sent a wave of dread through the city.” Read more at CNN
“Lives Lived: Sandie Crisp was a transgender actress and model. Under her stage name, the Goddess Bunny, she served as a muse to artists, gay punks and other denizens of the West Hollywood avant-garde. She died, from Covid-19, at 61.” Read more at New York Times
“You know you’re losing the media war when your supporters start burning effigies of teenage environmental campaigner Greta Thunberg on the streets of New Delhi.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was already on the back foot over his administration’s contentious new agriculture laws, with tens of thousands of protesting farmers dug in for months on the outskirts of the capital.
Modi’s offer to defer the laws for 18 months — a significant move by a leader unused to compromise — was rejected by the farmers, who say the legislation will boost the role of corporations in the agricultural sector, which employs around 60% of the population.
Now his government’s moves to restrict Internet and phone access at the protest sites have attracted criticism from celebrities and activists alike, and drawn a rebuke from the U.S. in the first public comment on India from President Joe Biden’s administration.
Earlier in the week, Thunberg and pop star Rihanna tweeted their supportfor the farmers, spurring an online barrage from the ruling party’s hardline digital army, followed by pro-government rallies.
Modi, who has a big parliamentary majority, is left with no good options. Farmers are an influential voting bloc and have shown their determination through Delhi’s bitterly cold winter to see these laws overturned. Now the weather’s warming and they’re still there, with fresh protests planned for tomorrow.
It’s not clear where Modi can turn next.” Read more at Bloomberg
“March for Our Lives co-founder David Hogg is launching a pillow company to compete against Mike Lindell's MyPillow, reports Axios' Ursula Perano.
Hogg tweeted that he and software developer William LeGate hope to ‘sell $1 million of product within our first year’ and to launch in about six months.
‘Mike isn't going to know what hit him—this pillow fight is just getting started.’
Lindell told Axios: ‘Good for them. .... Nothing wrong with competition that does not infringe on someone's patent.’ Read more at Axios