“President Biden urged governors and mayors to keep or reinstate mask mandates, warning that ‘reckless behavior’ had caused the recent rise in coronavirus cases.” Read more at New York Times
“Biden says in the next three weeks, 90% of the adult US population will be eligible for the vaccine.” Read more at CNN
“Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the C.D.C., said she was worried the uptick in infections could turn into a fourth wave and implored Americans to ‘hold on a little while longer.’” Read more at New York Times
“The Moderna and Pfizer coronavirus vaccines are proving highly effective in real-world conditions: The shots prevent 90 percent of infections after two doses, the C.D.C. found.” Read more at New York Times
“In Canada, the country’s health leaders have halted distribution of the AstraZeneca vaccine among people under 55 after reports of rare but serious blood clots.” Read more at New York Times
“Texas and five other states have begun providing vaccines to everyone 16 or older, regardless of health conditions. New York will expand eligibility to all adults next week.” Read more at New York Times
“New York must offer vaccines to all incarcerated people, a judge ruled.” Read more at New York Times
“Ethnic divide | Britain’s rapid vaccine rollout belies a significantly lower take-up among Black and Asian communities. Misinformation, personal experience of poor treatment and discrimination by the medical establishment are among the hurdles that need to be overcome to address the issue, James Paton reports. Otherwise, the risk is of ongoing illness and death among some of the U.K.’s most ethnically diverse and underprivileged areas.” Read more at Bloomberg
“A joint inquiry by the World Health Organization and China revealed no new insights into how the pandemic began, and it wasn’t clear whether Beijing would allow outside experts to investigate further. ‘We may never find the true origins,’ an expert said.” Read more at New York Times
“1.5 million — The approximate number of Covid-19 vaccine doses that have been distributed to the Philippines, a nation of 110 million people. In the U.S. and some other wealthy nations, rapid vaccine rollouts have raised the prospects of returning to normal life. In poorer ones where shots are scarce, like the Philippines, daily caseloads recently have exceeded last year's peaks.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“A pandemic treaty? World leaders have called for an international treaty to cover preparedness and response to future pandemics in a joint statement published on Monday.
The statement, which includes the World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus as a signatory, called for an ‘all-of-government and all-of-society’ approach to dealing with future pandemics, which would include cooperation on ‘alert systems, data-sharing, research, and local, regional and global production and distribution of medical and public health counter measures, such as vaccines, medicines, diagnostics and personal protective equipment.’ Although German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson signed on to the statement, there was no representation from China, the United States, or Russia.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“USA Today: Major League Baseball relaxing COVID-19 protocols for fully vaccinated players, staff.”
“The Biden administration has extended the federal ban on evictions due to the ongoing pandemic. The moratorium was put in place last year to protect renters and is now in effect through the end of June.” Read more at AP
“The trial of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer charged in the killing of George Floyd, began yesterday.
The prosecution argued that Chauvin acted with excessive force, and played a video that showed him kneeling on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes. ‘You can believe your eyes that it’s homicide,’ a prosecutor told the jury.
The defense argued that Floyd’s death was caused by underlying medical conditions and a drug overdose, and urged jurors to consider evidence beyond the video.
This two-minute video shows key moments from the first day of the trial.” Read more at New York Times
“President Joe Biden will lay out the first of a sweeping two-pronged infrastructure and jobs proposal on Wednesday. The proposal will likely cost between $3 trillion and $4 trillion, but will include things like badly needed repairs for the country’s physical infrastructure. It won’t, however, include a gas or mileage tax -- a possibility that raised concerns for low-income Americans or those who travel a lot for work. Yesterday, Biden also announced a massive effort to bolster offshore wind energy projects to create more jobs and address the climate crisis. Meanwhile, the White House will host a bipartisan briefing for House members on Wednesday to discuss the worsening situation at the US-Mexico border. The administration is struggling to find space to house the record number of unaccompanied minors, and has even asked federal workers to volunteer at facilities to house and care for the children.” Read more at CNN
“Georgia’s new controversial and restrictive voting law has faced swift backlash. Two federal lawsuits have been filed to challenge the law: one brought by a Democratic election attorney on behalf of racial justice groups, and another by a collective of several civil rights and voting rights groups. The lawsuits allege the new laws, which do things like limit ballot drop boxes and make it illegal to give water to those waiting in line to vote, are unconstitutional and violate the Voting Rights Act. Justice groups are urging sports organizations, like the PGA Tour and Major League Baseball, to reconsider holding upcoming major events in the state.” Read more at CNN
“Arkansas House Bill 1570, which would ban gender confirmation surgeries and hormone prescriptions for anyone younger than 18 in the state, is headed to the governor's desk. It also does not have a provision for youth who are currently transitioning.” Read more at USA Today
“First responders and supporters lined overpasses for miles along the I-25 interstate as the Colorado State Highway Patrol escorted Officer Eric Talley’s mother from New Mexico to Boulder for her son’s funeral . Talley was the first police officer to respond to frantic 911 calls during a deadly shooting at a King Soopers grocery store in Boulder, where he was one of 10 killed in the attack. A funeral mass for Talley was held Monday in Denver for close friends, family and fellow officers, and a public memorial service is scheduled for 11 a.m. MT on Tuesday. It will be live-streamed at bouldercolorado.gov. Talley, 51, had seven children and had been with the Boulder police since 2010.” Read more at USA Today
“The Kentucky legislature on Monday night overrode a veto by Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear and changed the way the state picks replacements for U.S. senators who leave office before their term is up. The new process is supported by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
The action by the Republican-dominated state legislature means that if McConnell leaves office early, the seat will stay in GOP hands. McConnell, 79, was just reelected to another six-year term in November.” Read more at Punchbowl News
“The proportion of Americans who consider themselves members of a church, synagogue or mosque has dropped below 50 percent, according to a poll from Gallup released Monday. It is the first time that has happened since Gallup first asked the question in 1937, when church membership was 73 percent.
In recent years, research data has shown a seismic shift in the U.S. population away from religious institutions and toward general disaffiliation, a trend that analysts say could have major implications for politics, business and how Americans group themselves. In 2020, 47 percent of Americans said they belonged to a church, synagogue or mosque. The polling firm also found that the number of people who said religion was very important to them has fallen to 48 percent, a new low point in the polling since 2000.
For some Americans, religious membership is seen as a relic of an older generation, said Ryan Burge, an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University and a pastor in the American Baptist Church. Gallup’s data finds that church membership is strongly correlated with age: 66 percent of American adults born before 1946 belong to a church, compared with 58 percent of baby boomers, 50 percent of Generation X and 36 percent of millennials.
Burge said many Christians still attend church but do not consider membership to be important, especially those who attend nondenominational churches. But no matter how researchers measure people’s faith — such as attendance, giving, self-identification — Americans’ attachment to institutional religion is on the decline.” Read more at Washington Post
“Ballot counting begins today in a landmark union drive at Amazon, the second largest U.S. employer and the world’s fourth most valuable company. The campaign is small in scale but—judging by the company’s fierce pushback—highly significant, as workers in Amazon’s Bessemer, Alabama, facility decide on whether to form a union.
Amazon’s executives argue a union is unnecessary, citing the company’s $15.30 per hour entry wages and health insurance benefits. The workers behind the union push have dismissed the company talk, and have spoken out against grueling work shifts, relentless employee tracking, as well as safety concerns related to COVID-19.
Despite its anti-union stance, Amazon has room to be generous amid a coronavirus-fueled boom in sales: Profits were up 84 percent last year, and the company’s founder, Jeff Bezos, saw his personal wealth balloon grow by $72 billion in 2020.
District of Amazon. In fighting back against the union, Amazon does not just have U.S. labor laws in its favor. Amazon spent the second most on U.S. government lobbying of any single company in the United States in 2020, beaten only by Facebook. Its head of public relations, Jay Carney, was White House press secretary for President Barack Obama as well as a communications director for then-Vice President Biden. It’s also planning a permanent foothold in the Washington area by establishing a ‘second headquarters’ across the Potomac River in Arlington, Virginia.
So it was all the more eyebrow raising when U.S. President Joe Biden came out in support of the union drive, in a video in which he did not name Amazon but referenced “workers in Alabama” and called on workers to ‘make your voice heard’ while admonishing union-busting tactics. ‘Let me be clear: It’s not up to me to decide whether anyone should join a union,’ Biden said. ‘But let me be even more clear: It’s not up to an employer to decide that either.’
A glimpse into the future? In working to defeat the push, Amazon is hoping to avoid opening up another front in its battle with workers. Much of Amazon’s workforce in Europe, unbound by strict U.S. requirements, already has union representation and has made its presence felt over the course of the pandemic. Workers in France helped bring the company’s warehouse operations to a halt over safety concerns last March, and in July secured a pay raise.
Last week in Italy, Amazon workers joined with third-party delivery providers in a 24-hour strike over working conditions. This week, Verdi, the union representing Amazon’s German warehouse workers called for a four-day strike between Monday and Thursday to pressure the company to commit to a collective bargaining agreement observed by the German retail and mail order sector.
Results of the Alabama vote are likely later in the week, with a victory for union organizers expected to inspire a surge of Amazon union drives across the United States. Meanwhile, the company’s workers have already begun organizing globally: Amazon Workers International (AWI), formed in 2015, is working on expanding to Asia and Latin America.” Read more at Foreign Policy
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is among President Biden’s first slate of 11 judicial nominees. (Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post)
“President Biden announced his first slate of judicial nominees on Tuesday, elevating U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the influential appeals court in Washington to succeed Merrick Garland as part of the largest and earliest batch of court picks by a new administration in decades.
Jackson, often mentioned as someone who could become the first Black woman on the Supreme Court, is among Biden’s 11 nominations that include three Black women for appeals court vacancies and the first Muslim American to serve on a District Court. The group is designed to send a message about the administration’s desire for more diversity on the federal bench and how rapidly the president wants to put his mark on it.
Biden previously pledged to name the first Black woman to the high court, and his picks signal an early departure from the Trump administration, which successfully reshaped the federal courts with nominees who were overwhelmingly White and male.” Read more at Washington Post
“68 — The minimum number of current judicial vacancies on the federal district and circuit courts that President Biden is aiming to fill. That number is lower than the 116 vacancies former President Donald Trump had available early in his term, however, and there are few vacancies for appellate judges, whose power is surpassed only by the Supreme Court. Trump's term saw 54 new appeals-court judges placed.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“China's government has passed a new law that will drastically restrict the right of Hong Kongers to stand for election, giving Beijing even more control over the supposedly semi-autonomous city. The new law reshapes Hong Kong’s 70-seat legislature, adding 20 seats and changing its makeup so that most of the seats would be controlled by a government-appointed Election Committee or groups loyal to Beijing. This makes it impossible for any opposition party to gain a majority, especially since anyone hoping to gain a seat must also secure nomination from the committee. Chinese and Hong Kong officials say these changes are necessary to ensure ‘patriots governing Hong Kong’ prevail, but others fear it’s just another tool of political suppression.” Read more at CNN
“Coronavirus is crippling Brazil, and the country’s President Jair Bolsonaro is making moves that appear designed to secure greater loyalty amid the crisis. Six ministers resigned yesterday, including the country’s defense minister, secretary of state and Attorney General Andre Levi, who refused to sign Bolsonaro's lawsuit to lift three state governors' lockdown orders. Marcelo Queiroga, Brazil's fourth health minister since the beginning of the pandemic, was also sworn in quietly just last week. Yesterday’s changes appear to put several army generals closer to Bolsonaro in more strategic positions. Criticism of Bolsonaro’s coronavirus response has grown in recent weeks as a new variant rips through the country, seriously sickening even younger people. So far, 312,206 people in Brazil have died of the virus.” Read more at CNN
“Guatemala declared a state of emergency across swathes of the country to halt a caravan of Honduran migrants expected to depart today for the border between both countries heading toward the U.S.” Read more at Bloomberg
“Nearly 200 tortoises, all younger than three months old, were found inside a suitcase wrapped in plastic at an airport on the Galapagos Islands, a province of Ecuador, over the weekend in what officials say was an attempt to smuggle the animals off the islands.” Read more at USA Today
“Singer Lil Nas X collaborated with streetwear company MSCHF on the limited release of Satan Shoes and just 666 pairs of shoes went on sale Monday for $1,018, a reference to Luke 10:18, a Bible verse about Satan's fall from heaven. The shoes immediately sold out, according to MSCHF, and caused a social media furor. Nike has since filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against MSCHF.” Read more at USA Today
“A man attacked a 65-year-old woman on a Manhattan sidewalk yesterday in an anti-Asian hate crime. The victim is in the hospital, and the police are searching for the attacker.” Read more at New York Times
“1 in 4 Asian Americans has experienced a hate incident, and more than two-thirds have been asked "where they're really from," Axios Today host Niala Boodhoo writes from a poll by Survey Monkey and AAPI Data.
The myth of the "perpetual foreigner" remains as strong for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders as it has for Latinos: 64% of Asian Americans said they've encountered questions that assume they're not American.” Read more at Axios
“Federal prosecutors charged Ghislaine Maxwell with sex trafficking of a minor, accusing her of grooming a 14-year-old girl to engage in sexual acts with Jeffrey Epstein.” Read more at New York Times
“The Biden administration plans to expand offshore wind turbines along the East Coast, aiming to generate enough energy to power 10 million homes by 2030.” Read more at New York Times
“President Biden is preparing to go to the mat for four tax increases worth about $1.8 trillion to help pay for his infrastructure and social safety net plans, advisers tell Axios' Hans Nichols.
Biden will begin to outline an array of tax proposals in Pittsburgh tomorrow as he unveils his Build Back Better infrastructure package.
It'll be an opening bid ahead of months of negotiations, mostly within the Democratic Party. His four priorities:
The biggest-ticket item would raise the corporate rate from 21% to 28%. That's worth $730 billion over 10 years, according to the Tax Policy Center.
Impose a global minimum tax on profits from foreign subsidiaries: $550 billion.
Tax capital gains as regular income for the wealthy and tax unrealized capital gains at death: $370 billion.
Return the top individual rate for those making more than $400,000 to the pre-Trump rate of 39.6%: $110 billion.” Read more at Axios
“Top GOP operatives have formed a group to fight President Biden's plans to raise taxes to pay for his infrastructure package, Jonathan Swan reports.
Why it matters: The Coalition to Protect American Workers is the first major conservative group formed exclusively to block Biden's tax agenda. Its leaders include Marc Short, who was former Vice President Pence's chief of staff.
The group plans to spend at least $25 million on TV and digital ads and organizing. It'll target members of Congress considering backing Biden's plans, including moderate and vulnerable House Dems in swing districts.” Read more at Axios
“Volkswagen will announce today that it's changing its brand in the U.S. to ‘Voltswagen,’ as it shifts production toward electric vehicles.” Read more at Axios
“New York lawmakers could vote to legalize recreational marijuana Tuesday — which would make it the 15th state to permit the drug for recreational use. The vote comes after Senate and Assembly leaders announced on Saturday an agreement with Gov. Andrew Cuomo's office on a plan to legalize and regulate cannabis products for adult use in the state. If the legislation is approved, retail marijuana sales would be taxed at 13%, with 9% going to the state and 4% going to local and county governments. Criminal penalties for possession of less than three ounces would be removed, and those with prior convictions would see their records automatically expunged. The legislation is expected to pass the Democrat-controlled Legislature, and Cuomo has pledged support as well.” Read more at USA Today
“After a deadly and devastating weekend of flooding in portions of the South, another round of rain is forecast for the region Tuesday and Wednesday . Over the weekend, surging water battered the Nashville area, killing at least five people and forcing scores to flee their homes. Showers and thunderstorms are forecast along the Gulf Coast and are expected to expand north into Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky on Tuesday night, AccuWeather said. Unlike weather systems in recent weeks which spawned dozens of tornadoes and wide swaths of wind damage across the South, a large-scale outbreak of severe weather is not anticipated, according to AccuWeather.” Read more at USA Today
“NCAA faces a reckoning on pay. The National Collegiate Athletic Association stands to lose control of its empire’s future over an issue its member schools long hoped to avoid: athlete compensation.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“The Houston Cougars advanced to the national semifinals of the N.C.A.A.’s men’s basketball tournament for the first time since 1984. In the women’s tournament, UConn snuck past Baylor to make it to the Final Four.” Read more at New York Times
"I don't think my words matter, but after the games today, tomorrow, there’s four teams left I think on the men's side and the women's side. They need to dump the COVID testing."
“Baylor women's basketball coach Kim Mulkey said Monday night that the NCAA should stop COVID testing at both the men's and women's tournaments ahead of the Final Four so no player runs the risk of testing positive and being ruled out. Columnist Nancy Armour, while noting that Mulkey had COVID-19 earlier this year, says that, ‘to suggest that a basketball game, even one in the Final Four or for the national title, is more important than a player or coach's health is as troubling as it is ignorant.’” Read more at USA Today
“Lives Lived: A fierce advocate for New York’s disabled, Edith Prentiss fought to make the city she loved more navigable for everyone. She died at 69.” Read more at New York Times
“A study published this month suggests much of Mars' water may have been absorbed into the ground, not lost to space, as scientists thought for decades, Axios Space author Miriam Kramer writes.
NASA is scratching the surface of the big question of whether life ever existed on Mars, after the Perseverance rover — the first mission dedicated to hunting for past Martian life — made it to Mars in February.
Rovers have found Mars is scattered with layered rocks. Scientists' best guess is these layers formed through erosion, wind, water and ice.” Read more at Axios