President Biden addresses the nation from the White House last evening.
“President Biden signed into law the sweeping $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package yesterday, putting to rest months of Congressional rancor and debate. Americans could start seeing those much-awaited $1,400 stimulus payments as early as this weekend. In addition to direct payments, the package’s key measures are predicted to slash the poverty rate by about a third through enhanced food stamp benefits, housing and unemployment assistance, and reliable streams of income for struggling families and workers. The bill passed with no Republican support, and now Congressional Democrats are settling in for a period of internal clashes as they take on the next big items on Biden’s agenda, from shoring up infrastructure to tackling the climate crisis and immigration issues.” Read more at CNN
“Things may be looking up in the Covid-19 fight, but experts warn that tens of thousands more people in the US will die before we get to a recovery phase -- perhaps reaching a pandemic total of 598,000 by July 1, according to one prominent model. The figure has risen from previous forecasts due to declining mask use and more contagious variants. Biden took the stage for his first prime-time speech to the nation yesterday, asking Americans to do their part to keep coronavirus dangers at bay. He also directed all states to open vaccination opportunities to all adults by May 1. If all goes well, he said, the nation could start to be back to normal by the July 4 holiday. Even then, one vaccine expert predicts that if we don’t reach a high rate of herd immunity, we could risk another outbreak in the winter.” Read more at CNN
“Takeaways from Biden's speech: Small gatherings by July 4, denouncing racist attacks and a contrast to Trump.” Read more at USA Today
“Money for colleges, libraries and clubs: 10 things you might not know are in Biden's COVID-19 relief package.” Read more at USA Today
“The European Union approved Johnson & Johnson’s Covid vaccine, the fourth to receive the bloc’s approval. Vaccination rates in most E.U. countries remain low. (This map tracks vaccinations around the world.)” Read more at New York Times
“The U.S. is sitting on tens of millions of AstraZeneca vaccine doses that the rest of the world needs.” Read more at New York Times
“China has agreed to provide coronavirus vaccines for participants who need them before this summer’s Tokyo Olympics.” Read more at New York Times
“Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt announced Thursday he will roll back his few remaining COVID-19 restrictions , despite the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention saying it's too soon for states to start undoing virus prevention measures. Stitt said he will issue a new executive order Friday to eliminate the restrictions on public gathering limits, attendance limits at indoor sporting events and a mandate that state employees working and visitors to state buildings wear masks. In California, Los Angeles County, once the epicenter of the pandemic, may soon open up indoor dining, movie theaters and gyms . The county could move to the ‘red tier’ in California's tier-based system as early as Monday if the state reaches its goal of administrating two million vaccine doses to residents in its disadvantaged areas — which appears likely to happen Friday, according to the Los Angeles Times.” Read more at USA Today
“Biden focused the majority of his speech on the recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, but he also took time to denounce violent attacks against Asian Americans during the pandemic as un-American, calling for the attacks to end immediately.” Read more at USA Today
“Ex-Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin now faces an additional murder charge in the death of George Floyd after a state judge reinstated a count of third-degree murder. Sometimes called ‘depraved mind’ or ‘depraved heart’ murder, third-degree murder generally applies to a case in which a person does something eminently dangerous to others without regard for human life. The added charge provides another potential pathway to conviction in the high-profile case. Chauvin is already facing charges of second-degree unintentional murder and second-degree manslaughter. He has pleaded not guilty to all three charges. Chauvin was the officer who knelt on Floyd’s neck during an attempted arrest in Minneapolis last spring. Jury selection began this week in his trial. Three other officers also face charges in connection with Floyd’s death.” Read more at CNN
“Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office notified the Albany Police Department about a female aide’s claim that the governor had groped her. The police said the accusation might rise ‘to the level of a crime.’” Read more at New York Times
“And New York State lawmakers opened an impeachment investigation into Cuomo.” Read more at New York Times
“Cuomo aides called former staffers to discredit accuser. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office called at least six former employees either to find out if they had heard from a woman who accused him of sexual harassment or to glean information about her in conversations that some said they saw as attempts to intimidate them.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Georgetown University fired a law professor who made ‘abhorrent’ remarks about Black students.” Read more at New York Times
“Mississippi Republican Gov. Tate Reeves has signed the first statewide anti-trans law of 2021. The law bans transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports in the state’s public schools and colleges. Similar bills are percolating in other statehouses, with one now on the desk of South Dakota’s GOP governor. The bans are considered discriminatory by LGBTQ activists, who have likened them to the so-called ‘bathroom bills’ of a few years ago. In Arizona, another type of controversial legislation is gaining steam in the form of a handful of bills that would restrict voting access in the state. More than 250 similar bills are in circulation nationwide, spurred on by Republican legislators in response to false claims of voter fraud during the 2020 election.” Read more at CNN
“Amazon won’t sell books framing LGBTQ+ identities as mental illnesses. The company said it recently removed a three-year-old book about transgender issues from its platforms because it decided not to sell books that frame transgender and other sexual identities as mental illnesses.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“The Hill’s Niall Stanage writes that Biden’s new definition of bipartisan governance — delivering policies that have majority public support rather than hunting in vain for bipartisan collaboration in a narrowly divided Congress — worked in response to a public health crisis. Two-thirds of the population approves of Biden's handling of the pandemic and 75 percent backed the just-enacted American Rescue Plan, according to a CBS News poll released Thursday.” Read more at The Hill
“Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. won't run for a fourth term and plans to leave office on Dec. 31, he told The New Yorker's Jane Mayer in a wide-ranging interview published this morning.
Why it matters: That leaves Vance with just nine months to make a charging decision in the biggest case of his career — a criminal investigation of Donald Trump and his business empire.” [Axios]
“One of the biggest snowstorms in years, perhaps decades, is forecast to blast the Denver metro area with several feet of snow this coming weekend. The storm should be a long-duration event, from Friday through Sunday, that could result in snowfall totals nearing two feet in Denver and piling as high as three feet in places west of Denver, AccuWeather said. ‘The storm has the potential to rank among the biggest on record in Denver,’ AccuWeather meteorologist Bernie Rayno said. Heavy snow will stretch north into Wyoming and Nebraska, where as much as 5 feet could fall in some spots, according to meteorologist Ryan Maue, who called the looming storm a ‘blockbuster blizzard.’ The weather will feel ‘all the more shocking’ because of the recent springlike weather in some places, AccuWeather said, where temperatures of 70 degrees were recorded this week.” Read more at USA Today
Joe Biden arrives with General Jacqueline Van Ovost and Lieutenant General Laura Richardson during an International Women's Day event in the White House on March 8, 2021.BY KEVIN DIETSCH/UPI/BLOOMBERG
“In a past life, Tucker Carlson used the presence of women in the military to needle Democrats; when Barack Obama’s administration lifted a ban on women in frontline combat roles, Carlson tweeted, ‘The administration boasts about sending women to the front lines on the same day Democrats push the Violence Against Women Act,’ implying that the two entirely unrelated policies were somehow contradictory. This week, he returned to the topic, this time to disparage the women themselves. On Tuesday night, the Fox News host responded to Joe Biden’s praise of female service members this week by accusing the president of trying to force the U.S. military to be ‘more feminine.’ On International Women’s Day, Biden had said that the military is ‘designing body armor that fits women properly, tailoring combat uniforms for women, creating maternity flight suits, updating requirements for their hairstyles.’
In a typical bad faith overreaction, the host warned that ‘pregnant women are going to fight our wars.’ He further asserted that this is why China’s military-readiness is surpassing the U.S.’s. ‘While China’s military becomes more masculine as it’s assembled the world’s largest navy, our military needs to become, as Joe Biden says, more feminine, whatever feminine means anymore, since men and women no longer exist.’ Carlson continued: ‘The bottom line is it’s out of control, and the Pentagon is going along with this. Again, this is a mockery of the U.S. military and its core mission, which is winning wars.’
Carlson’s remarks quickly led to an adverse reaction from top military officials. Major General Patrick Donahoe, who heads Ft. Benning's Maneuver Center of Excellence, reacted by posting a reenlistment video dedicated to ‘the tens of thousands of women who serve in our Army’ and writing that the clip is just one ‘reminder that [Carlson] couldn't be more wrong.’ Lieutenant General Ted Martin, who is the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command's deputy commanding general, tweeted a photograph of his service member daughter. ‘Contrary to what you may be hearing this WOMAN & 1000's of WOMEN like her are NOT ‘making a mockery of our military,'‘ Martin wrote. ‘So BACK OFF.’ Army Sergeant Major Michael Grinston chimed in by noting that ‘Women lead our most lethal units with character. They will dominate ANY future battlefield we’re called to fight on. [Carlson’s] words are divisive, don’t reflect our values. We have THE MOST professional, educated, agile, and strongest NCO Corps in the world.’
On Thursday morning, Fort Hood Deputy Commanding General John B. Richardson IV jumped into the conversation by praising America’s ‘Mothers in uniform [who] fight & win our nation’s wars. Fathers in uniform fight & win our nation’s wars. Soldier is not a gendered noun.’ Marine Corps Master Gunnery Sergeant Scott H. Stalker, who is the U.S. Space Command’s senior enlisted leader, stated in a video response that Carlson’s program is merely ‘drama TV,’ before reminding viewers that the host’s criticisms are ‘based off of actually zero days of service in the armed forces.’
‘What we absolutely won’t do is take personnel advice from a talk show host or the Chinese military,’ Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said at Thursday’s briefing. ‘Now, maybe those folks feel like they have something to prove. That’s on them.’ And in a seeming response to Carlson, the U.S. Army’s official Twitter account shared a picture of a woman service member with a caption that read, ‘I am an American Soldier. I am a Warrior and a member of a team.’ Even the Canadian military appeared to jab at Carlson’s remarks; its official Twitter account wrote in a post: ‘*tightens ponytail*.’
As I noted last week, Fox’s reflexive return to petty cultural grievances may well turn out to be a hallmark of the post–Trump era. The network’s stars spent a good chunk of last week obsessing over the gender of a children’s toy, and the supposed cancellation of a children’s book author (are we seeing a theme here?). Both of these topics, according to Media Matters reports, were covered exhaustively at the expense of topics like the coronavirus pandemic still afflicting the country. But, in the surest sign yet that power has changed hands, neither topic made its way into presidential tweets, or into the political messaging emanating from the Biden administration.” Read more at Vanity Fair
“More people are dying in Myanmar every day as the military junta in control there tries to crack down on peaceful protests. In the small town of Myaing, police shot into a crowd, killing at least eight and leaving the streets streaked with blood. A top UN official has said the situation is ‘likely meeting the legal threshold for crimes against humanity.’ The UN special rapporteur for human rights in Myanmar called on UN member states to stop the flow of revenue and weapons to the junta, saying multilateral sanctions should be imposed on parties responsible for the coup and ensuing violence. More than 2,000 people have been arbitrarily detained since the coup, according to one advocacy group, and the whereabouts of many of them are unknown.” Read more at CNN
“More students abducted in Nigeria. Gunmen kidnapped dozens of female students from a college in northwestern Nigeria, state officials said, the fourth mass abduction in as many months in a region that is suffering from a worsening security breakdown.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Geoffrey Hill, a professor, bird curator and expert on bird coloration, confirmed Illinois couple Chelsea and Richard Curry have spotted a rare yellow cardinal. Hill said in 2019 that people have a ‘one-in-a-million’ chance to spot one. The rare bird actually visits the Curry household three to four times a day, even during bad weather.” Read more at USA Today
“Lou Ottens, the engineer who oversaw the development of the cassette tape, died at the age of 94 in the Netherlands on March 6, according to a local report. The onetime head of product development at Philips Electronics, Ottens oversaw the creation of the cassette recorder as an alternative to cumbersome reel-to-reel tapes. The music recording and playback format, which hit its peak in the '80s, led to ubiquitous portable music listening and endless sharing of mixtapes. Our friend Mike Snider looked back at the impact the cassette tape had on his life, including his memories of ‘painstakingly creating 90-minute cassette recordings of my favorite songs for my soon-to-be wife, Julie, to play in her Honda station wagon and on the boombox in her condo.’ Read more at USA Today
Lou Ottens, who oversaw the creation of the compact cassette tape, when he was head of Philips Electronics' product development department, with the first audiocassette.
“A new effort to crack down on shared Netflix passwords has been rolled out among a select number of users — for now. The streaming giant is testing a feature in which a message pops up for viewers asking them to verify their account via a text or email sent to them. Users who can't confirm will get a prompt to set up a new account that comes with a 30-day free trial. The feature comes as the company faces increasing competition from Disney+, HBO Max and Hulu. It's estimated that about a third of Netflix users have shared their passwords with others. “ Read more at USA Today
“Ken is turning 60, two years after his best friend Barbie did.
Mattel launched a reproduction of the original Ken doll on Thursday to commemorate his 1961 debut. That slender doll with blond felt hair wears a red bathing suit and comes with red sandals and a yellow towel. Over the years, Ken’s body type, hair textures and fashion choices have become more diverse.
The company said it is working with several fashion designers to celebrate Ken’s birthday and showcase him as an influencer. The designs will be viewable on Instagram with the handle @BarbieStyle.” Read more at AP