WASHINGTON — In his first prime-time address as president Thursday night, Joe Biden will direct all states to make all American adults eligible to receive COVID-19 vaccines no later than May 1, according to a senior administration official.
And if Americans “all do our part” in the coming weeks, friends and families will be able to join together in small groups in time for Fourth of July celebrations, the president plans to say.
“The next phase of our wartime effort will help get us closer to normal by July 4, Independence Day,” the official said.
Biden will give his address at 8 p.m. EST one year after the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 breakout a pandemic, and hours after the president signed his $1.9 trillion stimulus package into law.
Biden will speak about “where we’ve been, how far we’ve come” and “the path ahead of the United States,” the official said.
The May 1 directive comes after Biden last week said the U.S. will have enough vaccine supply for every American adult by the end of May, two months sooner than expected.
The administration official stressed Biden’s latest directive does not mean all Americans will receive a shot immediately in May, but they should be eligible.
The president will also announce new steps to increase the number of vaccinators and places where people can get vaccinated. That includes deploying 4,000 additional military troops to support vaccination efforts, bringing the total number deployed to 6,000, and expanding the pool of vaccinators to include dentists, paramedics, veterinarians and other medical professionals.
Biden will also announce the federal government will begin distributing the vaccine directly to 700 additional community health centers, bringing the total to 950, and doubling the number of pharmacies where the vaccine is available to 20,000. The number of federally run mass vaccination centers will also be doubled, Biden plans to say.
To accelerate vaccinations, the federal government will launch a new federal website to help set up vaccination appointments, Biden will say, according to the official.
Biden will also talk about the reopening of schools, including steps to help schools implement regular COVID-19 screening tests following passage of the stimulus bill, dubbed the American Rescue Plan.
Around one-quarter of all Americans have received a COVID-19 vaccination, including 65% of Americans 65 or older, the most vulnerable population to the virus. When Biden entered office, only 8% of seniors had been vaccinated.
The nation’s vaccine supply received a boost this week when the White House announced the purchase of an additional 100 million doses of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine. The additional doses, when added to the vaccines from other sources, is more than enough to inoculate every American.
Johnson & Johnson has partnered with Merck, another pharmaceutical company, to help accelerate the production of vaccines.
The measure includes direct payments of up to $1,400 for individuals, billions to help schools and colleges reopen, and funding for vaccine distribution – along with many other measures aimed at helping America recover from the pandemic.
“I believe this… historic legislation is about rebuilding the backbone of this country and giving people of this nation – working people, middle class folks, people that built the country – a fighting chance,” Biden said, before signing the bill from the Oval Office as Vice President Kamala Harris stood behind him. “I’m going to have a lot more to say about that tonight and the next couple days.”
Shortly after, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the direct payments could start showing up in people’s bank accounts as early as this weekend.
The White House moved up the bill signing to Thursday from Friday after Congress finalized the bill sooner than expected.
“We want to move as fast as possible,” Ron Klain, Biden’s chief of staff, tweeted when the new time was announced.
Biden will still hold a celebratory signing event with congressional leaders on Friday.
The signing comes days before a federal boost to unemployment benefits was set to expire on Sunday.
No Republican voted for the legislation, which passed the House on Wednesday and the Senate on Saturday. One Democrat, Rep. Jared Golden of Maine, voted against it.
Republicans complain the bill is too expensive and is packed with provisions not directly related to combating the pandemic.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., criticized the bill as a “laundry list of leftwing priorities that predate the pandemic and do not meet the needs of American families.”
Democrats say it is one of the largest anti-poverty bills in a generation, aiming to deliver on Biden’s promise to send aid to millions of Americans grappling with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Biden said an “overwhelming percentage” of the American people support the package.
In his primetime address, the first of his presidency, Biden is expected to talk about the more than 500,000 American lives lost, and the millions of people whose lives have been changed, in the year since the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak to be a pandemic.
Biden is also likely to boast about what his administration’s efforts to speed up vaccine production and vaccinations.
And he will talk about what else needs to be done to get the pandemic under control.
Those steps include implementing the relief package, including getting the direct payments out quickly as a top priority.
“People can expect to start seeing direct deposits hit their bank accounts as early as this weekend,” Psaki said.
“People can expect to start seeing direct deposits hit their bank accounts as early as this weekend,” Psaki said, “and payments to eligible Americans will continue throughout the course of the next several weeks.”
Biden is expected to appoint someone to oversee implementation, similar to the role he played in 2009 when President Barack Obama made him the “sheriff” of that year’s economic recovery package.
“He knows directly that the passage and signing of the bill is just the beginning,” Psaki said.
Employing another lesson from 2009 when the Obama administration felt it failed to fully explain to the public the administration’s efforts to rescue the economy, the Biden administration is undertaking a major sales campaign.
The president, vice president, first lady and second gentlemen will, along with members of the cabinet, be hitting the roads and the airways to talk to the public about the relief package’s benefits. The administration will also be deploying governors, mayors, local community leaders and others to explain the package.
The benefits include:
Giving most Americans earning up to $75,000 a $1,400 check.
Extending a $300 weekly federal boost to unemployment benefits through August.
Sending $350 billion to state and local governments whose revenue has declined because of COVID-19’s impact on the economy.
Allocating $130 billion to help fully reopen schools and colleges.
Allotting $30 billion to help renters and landlords weather economic losses.
Devoting $50 billion for small-business assistance.
Dedicating $160 billion for vaccine development, distribution and related needs.
Expanding the child tax credit up to $3,600 per child.
Expanding premium subsidies for people who buy health insurance on their own instead of getting it from an employer or a government program like Medicare or Medicaid.
The road trips by members of the administration, which the White House is calling the “Help is Here tour,” will include a visit by Biden and Harris to Georgia next week.
The two Senate seats that Democrats picked up there in January gave them control of the Senate, making passage of the rescue package possible without GOP support. All previous COVID-19 relief packages passed with bipartisan support
Biden is also expected to travel to Pennsylvania on Tuesday.
First lady Jill Biden is heading to New Jersey on Monday while Harris and second gentleman Douglas Emhoff travel to Nevada.
Harris and Emhoff are going to Colorado on Tuesday with Emhoff also visiting New Mexico on Wednesday.
“They’re eager to get out there on the road,” Psaki said Thursday.
While the police department’s actions are part of standard procedure, the situation underscored the potential criminal exposure Mr. Cuomo faces if the aide decided to pursue charges for unwanted touching.
The aide, who is younger than Mr. Cuomo, was summoned to the governor’s private residence on the second floor to assist him with a technical issue when Mr. Cuomo reached under her blouse and began touching her, The Times Union said.
On Wednesday, the governor denied any wrongdoing.
“I have never done anything like this,” Mr. Cuomo said in a statement, adding that the report was “gut-wrenching.”
Mr. Cuomo, a third-term Democrat, said that he would not “speak to the specifics of this or any other allegation,” citing an ongoing investigation overseen by the state attorney general, Letitia James.
“I am confident in the result of the attorney general’s report,” Mr. Cuomo said.
A female supervisor in the office became aware of the aide’s allegation on March 3 when Mr. Cuomo, following multiple allegations of sexual harassment and inappropriate behavior, gave a televised apology in which he denied touching anyone inappropriately. The newspaper reported that the supervisor noticed the aide become emotional during the governor’s address and that the aide subsequently told the supervisor about her encounter with the governor.
The aide had not filed a formal complaint with the governor’s office, the newspaper reported, but the allegation was forwarded this week to Ms. James.
The renewed push is the latest effort by Democrats – and some Republicans – who have repeatedly tried, and failed, to pass tougher gun control laws since the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut that killed 20 children and six educators. While enhanced background checks are generally popular with the American public, even with some conservatives, Congress has so far not been able to find compromise on the issue. It is unclear whether Senate Democrats could find deep enough support among Republicans to pass new gun control legislation in a 50-50 Senate, as they would need 60 votes to do so.
Still, the bills are part of an effort by Democrats to move on several major legislative priorities while they hold both chambers of Congress and the White House. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Thursday that the Republican “legislative graveyard is over” and that the bill to require background checks on all firearms sales will have a vote in the Senate.
“A vote is what we need,” Schumer said, and they will find out where Republicans stand.
“Maybe we’ll get the votes,” he said. “And if we don’t, we’ll come together as a caucus and figure it out how we are going to get this done. But we have to get it done.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who has been working on gun legislation with Schumer since the 1990s when they were in the House together, said she and her colleagues have promised survivors of shootings and family members of those who have died that “we are not going away” until the background checks legislation passes.
“The gun violence crisis in America is a challenge to the conscience of our country – one that demands that we act,” Pelosi said during floor debate on the bills Wednesday. “These solutions will save lives.”
President Joe Biden has called for Congress to strengthen gun laws, including requiring the background checks on all gun sales and banning assault weapons.
“We owe it to all those we’ve lost and to all those left behind to grieve to make a change,” Biden said as he marked the three-year anniversary of the Parkland school shooting massacre in Florida, which killed 17. “The time to act is now.”
The first bill, which passed 227-203, is designed to close loopholes to ensure background checks are extended to private and online sales that often go undetected, including at gun shows. The legislation includes limited exceptions allowing temporary transfers to prevent imminent harm, for use at a target range and for gifts from family, among others.
The second bill, which passed 219-210, would extend the review period for background checks from three to 10 days. Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., introduced the legislation after a shooter killed nine people at a Charleston, S.C., church in 2015. The FBI said afterward that a background check examiner never saw the shooter’s previous arrest report because the wrong arresting agency was listed in state criminal history records, and the gun dealer was legally permitted to complete the transaction after three days.
While the House bills have Republican cosponsors and won a handful of GOP votes, most Republicans voted against them. During the floor debate, Republicans argued that the background checks would not stop most mass shootings and would mistakenly prevent some lawful gun owners from purchasing firearms.
Pennsylvania Rep. Scott Perry said the bill would lead to more crime because there would be “less people out there defending themselves.”
At the same time, Democrats are hoping that there’s a gradual political shift among voters that could help them win GOP votes. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who has introduced a companion bill expanding background checks in the Senate, said he doesn’t think Democrats should just accept that there aren’t 60 votes.
“I just think we are living in a different world than 2013,” Murphy said ahead of the House vote, referring to failed congressional efforts after the Newtown school shooting.
Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who has pushed gun control legislation with Murphy since then, said “what’s changed is we now have a president who can put pressure on our colleagues.”
Democrats also point to troubles at The National Rifle Association, the long-powerful advocacy group that poured tens of millions of dollars into electing Donald Trump in 2016. The organization has been weakened by infighting as well as legal tangles over its finances.
But change does not come easy in the Senate as many in the GOP base are still viscerally opposed to any new gun control. Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a moderate, have worked together for years to find compromise on background checks but have yet to propose anything that will pass.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Toomey said the senator remains supportive of a previous bipartisan proposal with Manchin but believes “progress is only possible on this issue if the measure in question is narrow and protects the rights of law-abiding gun owners.”
The spokesman, Steve Kelly, did not say whether the House bills meet that standard.
Schumer did not say when the Senate would schedule a vote. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said this week that his committee plans to have hearings on gun policy.
Democrats will “test the waters and see what the sentiment is in the Senate,” Durbin said.
Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill added the charge after Minnesota’s Supreme Court denied an appeal from Chauvin Wednesday. Cahill had earlier rejected the charge as not warranted by the circumstances of Floyd’s death, but an appellate court ruling in an unrelated case established new grounds for it. Chauvin already faced second-degree murder and manslaughter charges.
Potential jurors in Chauvin’s trial return Thursday to continue the selection process. Five jurors had been seated by Wednesday after just two days of screening by Cahill, Special Attorney for the State Steven Schleicher and Chauvin’s attorney, Eric Nelson.
The dispute over the third-degree murder charge in Chauvin’s case revolves around the conviction of another former Minneapolis police officer in the unrelated killing of an Australian woman. The appeals court affirmed Mohamed Noor’s third-degree murder conviction in the 2017 shooting death of Justine Ruszczyk Damond.
Cahill reiterated Thursday that Noor and Chauvin are factually different cases, but because the Court of Appeals has defined that third-degree murder can be targeted at a single person, the judge is bound by the law in Minnesota right now.
“I am granting the motion because although these cases are factually different – that is Noor and the case before us – I don’t think there is a factual difference that denies the motion to reinstate,” Cahill said.
“When the intent is directed at a single person, then third-degree murder may apply,” the judge continued, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported. “Single acts directed at a single person fall within the gambit of third-degree … accordingly, I am bound by that.”
The state argued that the Noor affirmation established precedent for the third-degree murder charge under the circumstances of Floyd’s death. If the Minnesota Supreme Court had taken up Chauvin’s appeal, it might have meant months of delay in his trial. After their ruling, the Court of Appeals rejected as moot the state’s request to pause the trial pending the appeal.
Cahill finished by saying the third-degree murder charge reinstatement does not apply to the case against Chauvin’s three other co-defendants – Thomas Lane, J. Kueng and Tou Thao. Cahill will address that at a later date. They are scheduled for trial in August.
Floyd’s May 25 death last year sparked sometimes violent protests in Minneapolis and beyond, leading to a nationwide reckoning on race. In moments captured on cellphone video, Chauvin could be seen holding his knee against Floyd’s neck for about nine minutes.
Days after Floyd’s death, the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office charged Chauvin with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. On June 3, 2020, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison added a charge of second-degree murder against Chauvin.
On Oct. 22, 2020, Hennepin County District Court upheld the charges of second-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter against Chauvin – in addition to the charges of aiding and abetting second-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter against his co-defendants. But Cahill dismissed the charge of third-degree murder against Chauvin at that time.
In a precedential opinion on Feb. 1, the Minnesota Court of Appeals upheld the conviction for third-degree murder of former Minneapolis police officer Mohamed Noor in the 2017 death of Justine Ruszczyk Damond. The court also ruled that Minnesota’s third-degree murder statute is applicable in the case of force being applied to a single person, a summary provided to Fox News by Ellison’s office said.
In response, on Feb. 4, state prosecutors moved to reinstate the charge of third-degree murder. On Feb. 11, the district court denied the motion. The state filed a notice of appeal to the Minnesota Court of Appeals on Feb. 12. The Court of Appeals held oral arguments on March 1. On Friday, March 5, the Court of Appeals ruled that the district court erred in not granting the state’s motion to reinstate the charge of third-degree murder against Chauvin in the death of Floyd.
On Wednesday, the Minnesota Supreme Court denied Chauvin’s petition for review of the Court of Appeals decision. In response, the Court of Appeals ordered judgment in its March 5 ruling to be immediately entered. On Thursday, the district court reinstated the third-degree murder charge.
The Los Angeles Police Department mishandled the unrest that erupted on L.A. streets after the death of George Floyd, a result of poor planning, inadequate training and a disregard for rules on mass arrests and crowd control that were established after past failures to manage protests, according to a new report commissioned by the City Council.
“It is unfortunate that the same issues have arisen again and again, with the department being unable or unwilling to rectify the problem,” the report, prepared by a team of former LAPD commanders, stated.
Hundredsof people were injured or alleged their rights were violated during the summer protests. Officers were sent into the streets with hard-foam projectile weapons that they weren’t adequately trained to use, and police commanders without up-to-date training in crowd control tactics were put in charge of volatile scenes, according to the report.
Secret “shadow teams” of undercover officers were sent into crowds without sufficient means of relaying their intelligence to commanders. And high-level leaders swooped into conflicts and gave orders that contradicted those already disseminated to officers, the report found.
Meanwhile, protesters accused of minor offenses that only warranted citations in the field were subjected to hours-long detentions, all part of a “last-minute, uncoordinated effort” by officers to arrest thousands without any clear plan for transporting or jailing those they were rounding up, the report found.
Report on LAPD’s handling of George Floyd protests describes “shadow teams,” lack of training and poor planning.
At times, even the LAPD’s own command staff didn’t know who was in charge, which “led to a chaos of command,” the review stated.
“When confronted by multiple large scale events, it is important that there be a clear chain of command, where everyone knows who is in charge, and those in charge provide clear direction,” the report said. “This did not consistently occur during the protests.”
LAPD Chief Michel Moore and other police officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.
Councilman Marqueece Harris-Dawson said the report made clear that inadequate planning by the LAPD had “jeopardized the health and safety of officers as well as protesters.”
Harris-Dawson said he was especially concerned that many of the problems were not new and that the city had already been sued and paid out settlements over such issues in the past.
The LAPD is being sued for violence against protesters — again. The department committed to policy changes after incidents in 2000 and 2007.
“Seeing these problems resurface almost 10 years later suggests costly stagnation or worse,” he said.
The report is the first of three being produced on the LAPD’s handling of the late May and early June protests, which were sparked by police killings of Black people, including George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Ky.
It was conducted on behalf of the City Council by a panel of former Police Department commanders led by Gerald Chaleff, an attorney and former member of the LAPD and the L.A. Police Commission who has helped review the department’s handling of past unrest.
Chaleff said in an interview that the LAPD was not prepared for the unrest and “didn’t have the training and experience that was necessary” to handle it. A better response would not have totally prevented what occurred, he said, but could have “mitigated or minimized” many problems.
LAPD used violence to quell protests over police brutality, using batons and ‘less lethal’ bullets in ways that probably violated protocols.
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The LAPD is also producing its own report, and the L.A. Police Commission has contracted the National Police Foundation to conduct a third review. Both reports are pending.
In one of the largest lawsuits, brought by Black Lives Matter Los Angeles, the National Lawyers Guild and others, protesters alleged the LAPD brutalized them with projectiles and batons and violated their constitutional rights by subjecting them to hours of inhumane treatment for infractions that only warranted street citations.
The Times has talked to multiple individuals who were badly wounded after being shot with 40-millimeter hard foam projectiles at close range despite apparently representing little or no threat to officers. One was shoved and then shot in the groin while holding a banner in a crosswalk. Another was shot in the head while standing with his arms in the air after backing away from advancing officers.
Carol Sobel, an attorney representing protesters in the BLM-L.A. lawsuit, said the new report “reinforces” their claims that officers without proper training were shooting projectiles into crowds, and highlighted as they have that the LAPD’s mistreatment comes despite past rebukes for the same actions.
“How many times do you have to be sued on the same issues before you develop a policy?” she asked.
Melina Abdullah, cofounder of BLM-L.A., said the report addressed some of the wrongs that were perpetrated against protesters, but “what it doesn’t do is really critique the notion that LAPD should be putting down righteous protests in the first place.”
The new report does not address claims of individual harm done by officers. Its authors were “primarily concerned with institutional issues and not individual ones,” they wrote, and therefore did not assess the use of force by individual officers.
However, the report does highlight broader failures of the department by providing new details from dozens of interviews with top-level commanders.
The council report faulted the department for scant training on the hard foam projectile weapons, even after it expanded the number of officers allowed to use them in crowds four years ago. Many officers received only two hours of training on the weapon, which involved “firing the weapon only a few times at a stationary target” — a far different challenge than firing at a specific target within a moving crowd.
The LAPD used “a great deal” of such munitions during the protests, the report found: Chaleff and his team reviewed inventory records and found more than 9,700 rounds of “less lethal” munitions were never returned to the department armory, including more than 3,500 40-millimeter rounds.
Chaleff’s report also found that a slew of planning failures contributed to shoddy conditions for arrestees, another major focus of the lawsuits against the city.
People were “detained at the scene of the arrests for hours, handcuffed on the pavement, detained in buses, and taken to remote locations, without water or the use of bathroom facilities,” the report found.
Some were held for hours even though they were cited under a city code — failing to obey a lawful order — that does not allow people to be detained at length, the review found. Because the LAPD failed to quickly get buses to move people, some arrestees sat handcuffed on curbs for “exceedingly long periods of time.”
The report also found that police didn’t set up a “field jail” to handle arrestees until days into the protests, worsening the delays. When they did set one up, first at a UCLA stadium and then in the San Fernando Valley, they ended up releasing people far from where they were arrested, at late hours past a city curfew imposed in response to the unrest.
The report also outlined other logistical problems: The LAPD required police officers to report to Dodger Stadium before heading out to protests, forcing them to waste time driving there and back. Police were slow to set up a command post for the protests and failed to warn bureaus outside downtown to prepare for possible demonstrations. And officers battled sleep deprivation, working up to 20-hour days, because the department lacked adequate plans to relieve them, the review found.
Chaleff and his team repeatedly noted that many of the issues they identified were not new to the LAPD, but the same ones that had been called out and ordered corrected in multimillion-dollar legal settlements of the past.
In settlements that followed LAPD clashes with protesters at the Democratic National Convention in 2000, in MacArthur Park in 2007, at the Occupy LA encampment in 2011 and after Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014, the Police Department agreed to better train officers on crowd control tactics and maintain that training, better target individual troublemakers before declaring entire gatherings unlawful, restrict the use of projectile weapons and avoid restraining arrestees for extended periods of time.
By summer 2020, however, the LAPD had abandoned some of those reforms and allowed training to lapse, including by failing to provide commanders with crowd control training for several years, the report found.
To prevent such problems in the future, the report made nearly two dozen recommendations, including hiring a new “strategic emergency manager” to ensure ongoing training and preparation for future events. Chaleff and his team also recommended regular audits to check whether the LAPD is adhering to settlements, and clamping down on which officers can use the hard foam projectiles in crowds.
Abdullah of BLM-L.A. said she was troubled by the idea of the new manager position, saying it sounded like an effort to create “an entire unit that is committed to nothing but criminalizing protests and figuring out how to put down protests.”
Councilman Mike Bonin called the report “damning and disturbing,” and said it shows that the LAPD “has not learned from the mistakes of its past and was woefully unprepared for last year’s demonstrations.”
He said the council will need to receive “a full and detailed presentation of this and other after action reports” to determine fixes.
WASHINGTON – The House passed two bills Thursday that would tighten gun sales regulations, sending the measures to a divided Senate.
H.R. 8 would expand background checks on individuals seeking to purchase or transfer firearms, and the Enhanced Background Checks Act of 2021 would close the “Charleston loophole,” a gap in federal law that lets gun sales proceed without a completed background check if three businesses days have passed.
“This bill is a critical step toward preventing gun violence and saving lives,” Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Calif., who sponsored H.R. 8, said before its passage.
That bill, titled the Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2021, passed 227-203. It received eight Republican votes, and one Democrat voted against. In 2019, the bill was passed with eight votes from Republicans, five of whom cosponsored the package.
The other bill passed Thursday, H.R. 1446, is linked to a shooting in 2015 in Charleston, South Carolina, where a white supremacist used the loophole to obtain firearms he used to kill nine Black people during a Bible study at Mother Emanuel AME Church. The bill would extend the initial background check review period from three to 10 days.
The bill, which was passed 219-210, with two Democrats opposed and two Republicans in support, was written by House Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C., who called it “an important step Congress must take to address the epidemic of gun violence in this country.”
“If people can’t be safe in Bible study, then they can’t be safe anywhere,” Clyburn said at a news conference Thursday morning.
“Gun violence is a public health crisis,” the White House said in a statement endorsing Clyburn’s legislation.
“The federal gun background check system is a proven tool to reduce gun violence and save lives. This system … has kept millions of guns out of potentially dangerous hands,” the statement said.
What H.R. 8 does and doesn’t do
H.R. 8, a background checks package meant to enhance reviews of those seeking to acquire firearms, would not create a firearms registry or other federal mechanisms for review.
Instead, the legislation would expand the cases in which a background check is required for the sale or transfer of a firearm, including for private individuals and groups selling or transferring firearms, closing the “Gun Show Loophole.” The requirements would apply to online sales.
The bill would make it illegal for anyone who is not a licensed firearm importer, manufacturer or dealer to trade or sell firearms to another person; current federal law requires background checks only for licensed gun dealers.
Nonlicensed individuals who would like to sell or trade weapons could do so through a licensed firearms dealer who would run the necessary background checks.
As with much legislation today, the bill faces an uncertain future in the Senate, where Republican lawmakers largely remain obstinate to any gun control measures. The bill passed with a few Republican votes, signaling there may be support among the GOP for such measures.
People could still temporarily trade and share firearms at shooting ranges, on hunting trips and when it is “necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm” under the new regulations.
‘Charleston loophole’ bill first passed House in 2019
Clyburn’s legislation would extend the initial background check review period to 10 days, after which, if a background check was not completed, a purchaser would have t ask the FBI to complete its investigation before receiving authorization.
Originally approved by the House in 2019, the bill stalled in the then-Republican-controlled Senate. This time, it passed with just two Republican votes.
Conservatives and gun rights groups argued the three-day time constraint on background checks is necessary to incentivize federal law enforcement to investigate background checks in a timely manner. The bill’s proponents said the policy allows for potentially grievous and deadly oversight.
“Enacting common-sense gun control measures is a priority for President Biden and this Democratic Congress, and this legislation is a good first step,” Clyburn said upon reintroducing the bill. “This legislation is needed to keep weapons out of the hands of those who should not have them and save lives.”
Schumer vows to bring gun control bill to Senate vote
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said he would put the background check legislation on the Senate floor despite opposition from Republicans.
When he was majority leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., blocked the enhanced background check legislation in the last session of Congress, but Schumer vowed, “H.R. 8 will be on the floor of the Senate, and we will see where everybody stands. No more hopes and prayers.”
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., predicted Republicans might support the bill.
“You can’t compare 2013 to 2021,” he said, referring to a previous push for gun control. “There are a lot of Republican senators that are thinking about voting for a proposal that allows them to get right on this issue.”
It is unclear whether there will be enough Republican votes to bypass a procedural roadblock known as a filibuster, which would require at least 10 Republicans to vote with all 50 Democrats in the Senate to advance the legislation.
The bill could face opposition from Senate Republicans or conservative Democrats who do not support more restrictions on guns.
Andy Slavitt, White House senior adviser for COVID-19 response, says fingers are not being pointed at the Trump administration’s handling of the vaccine.
President Biden is set to deliver his first primetime address to the nation since taking office Thursday night, to mark one year since the World Health Organization designated the novel coronavirus a pandemic and shutdowns started across the country.
Since March 11, 2020, 29.15 million Americans have been infected with COVID-19, and more than 529,000 Americans have died.
The president’s speech will take place on his 50th day in office, a day after the House of Representatives passed the Senate version of his $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, The American Rescue Plan, in his first legislative victory.
“The president will deliver his first primetime address to commemorate the one year anniversary of the COVID-19 shutdown on Thursday,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Monday. “He will discuss the many sacrifices the American people have made over the last year, and the grave loss communities and families across the country have suffered.”
The carefully scripted speech comes, however, as Biden has taken heat for going 50 days without a formal press conference.
On Monday, Psaki said the president “will look forward, highlighting the role that Americans will play in beating the virus and moving the country toward getting back to normal.”
A White House source said Biden will use his speech to “talk about the sacrifices made by the American people, the more than 500,000 lives lost, and the millions of people whose lives have been changed by the pandemic.”
“He will speak about how this has been the greatest operational challenge the country has faced and the work his team has done to rapidly increase the number of vaccinations, vaccinators and vaccinations sites up and running,” the source said. “And he will lay out the next steps he will take to get the pandemic under control, level with the American people about what is still required to defeat the virus and provide a hopeful vision of what is possible if we all come together.”
The Biden White House has touted its efforts combating the coronavirus pandemic since taking office, rolling out vaccine distribution and setting a goal on Biden’s first day in office to vaccinate 100 million Americans by his 100th day in office.
But former President Trump released a statement Wednesday reminding people that the vaccines were developed during his watch. “I hope everyone remembers!” he wrote.
Psaki this week said that the U.S. is now vaccinating 2.17 million Americans per day.
Biden, this week, ordered 100 million more COVID-19 vaccine doses from Johnson & Johnson, just weeks after the one dose vaccine received its Emergency Use Authorization from the Food and Drug Administration.
Meanwhile, the president’s is expected to sign the American Rescue Plan into law on Friday, which passed the House Wednesday, and is the second-largest stimulus package in history.
No Republicans voted “yes” on the legislation. Republicans said the legislation was unnecessary, too big and filled with unrelated liberal priorities, such as $350 billion for state and local governments.
The package calls for $1,400 stimulus checks for individuals earning up to $75,000 and $2,800 checks for couples earning $150,000 or under. Households will receive an additional $1,400 for each dependent child.
For the unemployed, the legislation extends $300-per-week enhanced federal benefits through Sept. 6 and allows the first $10,200 of jobless benefits to be tax-free to households with incomes under $150,000.
And unlike past coronavirus relief bills, this legislation establishes a “child allowance” worth upwards of $300 per month for each child under the age of six, or $3,600 a year. For older children up to age 17, families would get $3,000 a year in the new child tax credit program.
In addition to the direct payments, the legislation also includes an expanded benefit to parents paying for child care worth up to $8,000 in a refundable tax credit. Other provisions of the bill include hundreds of billions for COVID-19 vaccines and treatments, schools, food programs, rental assistance and ailing industries from airlines to concert halls.
The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll found last week that 70% of Americans back Biden’s response to the virus, including a hefty 44% of Republicans.
Fox News’ Peter Doocy, Marisa Schultz and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
President Biden talks to recently vaccinated Army Staff Sgt. Marvin Cornish as he visits a COVID-19 vaccination site at the VA Medical Center in Washington, D.C., on Monday.
Patrick Semansky/AP
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Patrick Semansky/AP
President Biden talks to recently vaccinated Army Staff Sgt. Marvin Cornish as he visits a COVID-19 vaccination site at the VA Medical Center in Washington, D.C., on Monday.
Patrick Semansky/AP
There is no more pressing issue for the U.S. — or the world — right now than the COVID-19 pandemic.
And politically, how President Biden is perceived to be handling it over the next year or so could define his presidency and his chances for reelection, if he runs.
So far, he’s off to a good start, according to the latest NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist survey, out Thursday. Sixty-two percent of Americans approve of how Biden is handling the pandemic.
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The results come as Biden prepares Thursday to sign into lawhis $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill and then address the nation Thursday night. Democrats passed the measure through a legislative maneuver that required only majority support, because all Republicans opposed the bill in both the House and Senate.
“There’s a sense of progress,” noted Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion, which conducted the poll. “We may not be there, but we may be getting closer to getting out from under [the pandemic]. … There are Trump people, who obviously didn’t vote for [Biden], but have come on board because of COVID.”
In fact, 30% of Republicans and 22% of Trump supporters say they approve of Biden’s handling of the pandemic.
The survey of 1,227 adults was conducted March 3 through Monday. Respondents were contacted on mobile and landline phones by callers who conducted interviews live in English and Spanish. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points. In other words, results could be 3.4 percentage points lower or higher than the result.
The White House says Biden is set to promote the passing of the legislation in a way that former President Barack Obama never did with the 2009 Recovery Act. Many Democrats believe that Obama’s not touting the bill more publicly and forcefully hurt the perception of the bill, didn’t give Obama enough credit for helping the country out of the Great Recession and allowed Republicans to dictate the narrative around it.
Conservatives say Biden’s measure is bloated and not as targeted to coronavirus relief as it should have been. Their opposition may be part of an effort to turn around the widely positive perception of the legislation.
Consider that in this new survey, just a third of Americans say the bill goes too far, while most respondents say it is about right (37%) or doesn’t go far enough (21%).
Surveys showing strong approval of the legislation are why the White House and Democrats have had such a confident stance in doing an end run around the Senate filibuster, which requires 60 votes for most legislation to advance to a floor vote.
The question for Biden is: What’s next and how does he achieve it? He and Democrats won’t be able to pass everything through budget reconciliation, the process used to pass the COVID-19 relief bill in the Senate.
And while about half of Americans view him positively — his job approval rating is at 49%, which is higher than former President Donald Trump’s ever was — that’s not extraordinarily high, and it’s lower than approval for the coronavirus bill. It signals that everything legislatively after this is likely going to be tougher, especially with the 60-vote threshold to overcome a filibuster still in effect for most legislation.
The next six months or so are going to be critical politically for the relief bill to start showing benefits for the economy.
“There’s a double-digit group that’s unsure and waiting,” said Barbara Carvalho, director of the Marist Poll, referring to the 10% of respondents who say they are unsure of the job Biden is doing overall and the 13% who didn’t give an opinion of how Biden is doing on the economy. “That’s where he’s going to make or break his presidency — with people who are still on the fence.”
The way forward is also complicated by the fact that Americans, in general, still value compromise. In this survey, two-thirds of Americans said that it is more important for Biden to compromise with Congress to find solutions rather than stick to his position on issues, even if doing so means gridlock. Of course, people say they want compromise but mostly mean they want others to come to their position.
That said, Biden and Democrats retain some advantage over Republicans when it comes to their brands. Forty-one percent of voters approve of the job Democrats are doing in Congress, a fairly mediocre share. But it’s higher than the 28% approval that congressional Republicans are receiving for the job they’re doing.
Vaccination is a top priority, as more Americans say they will get the shot
The coronavirus has touched a lot of American lives. In the survey, three-quarters say they know someone who has gotten sick from the virus, and 36% say they know someone who has died from it.
In dealing with the pandemic, Americans generally agree that vaccine distribution is the top priority, but there is a sharp split along party lines. Overall, 43% say vaccine distribution is most important, followed by reopening schools, financial relief to small businesses, direct payments to individuals and extending unemployment benefits.
For Democrats and independents, vaccine distribution is the top priority, but for Republicans, it’s reopening schools, followed by vaccines.
More Americans are getting vaccinated: About1 in 5 survey respondents say they have gotten at least one shot, and 10% of Americans are now fully vaccinated, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In this survey, two-thirds of Americans say they either have gotten the vaccine or will get it. Only 30% now say they won’t, which continues a downward trend since September of last year, when 44% said they would not get it.
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Republican men and Trump supporters remain the most against getting a vaccine. But a significant 37% of Latinos and those under 45 also say they will not get the shot.
Latinos and those under 45 are also the most likely groups to say they have lost a job or income as a result of the pandemic (both 44%). Latinos were also among the groups most likely to say they personally know someone who died from the virus (44%).
Just a quarter of Black Americans say they won’t get a vaccine, about the same as whites.
Most Americans say they think the vaccine rollout is going about as they expected, while 1 in 5 says it’s going better than expected. Just 18% say it’s going worse than expected.
When it comes to getting a shot, about a third say it hasn’t been very difficult for themselves or someone they know who is eligible, while just 29% say it has been difficult. Another third say they haven’t tried to get an appointment.
The balancing act of the virus and economy
A third of Americans say they or someone in their household has lost a job or income as a result of the pandemic.
A slight majority of Americans (51%) say it’s more important that their state prioritize controlling the spread of the coronavirus even if it hurts the economy, as opposed to prioritizing restarting the economy even if it hurts efforts to control the spread of the virus.
There’s a sharp partisan split, however: Three-quarters of Democrats think it’s better to prioritize stopping the spread of the virus, while three-quarters of Republicans say the economy should be the priority. Independents are split.
Biden gets just 46% job approval on the economy, and independents are split on what they think of his approach to it.
So he has to hope that the economy improves over the next year to help that number. If not, that figure could decline and affect Democrats’ chances in the 2022 and 2024 elections.
“He needs to try and convert some of the goodwill he’s building on handling the virus to handling the economy,” Marist’s Miringoff said. “That was always Trump’s stronger suit during the campaign, and it’s still a vulnerability that Biden has.”
Washington — The House approved the final version of President Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill on Wednesday, handing the new president a significant legislative victory as he works to stabilize an economy still struggling to rebound from the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The bill, known as the American Rescue Plan Act, passed by a vote of 220 to 211. One Democrat — Representative Jared Golden of Maine — joined all Republicans in voting against the measure. Golden had previously voted against the House version of the bill which passed last week. The legislation will soon head to Mr. Biden’s desk, where he will sign it on Friday, the White House said. The Senate approved the bill along party lines following a marathon voting session on Saturday.
Just 49 days into his presidency, Mr. Biden has secured what could prove to be the defining domestic policy accomplishment of his presidency, injecting hundreds of billions of dollars into the economy and bolstering his administration’s efforts to accelerate vaccinations, reopen schools and get jobless Americans back to work. The president, Vice President Kamala Harris and first lady Dr. Jill Biden plan to travel to promote the package once it clears Congress and is signed into law Friday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said.
Mr. Biden celebrated the passage of his plan in the wake of the House’s vote and lauded House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, calling her “the finest and most capable speaker in the history of our nation” as she shepherded the package through Congress and maintained unity among House Democrats.
“This legislation is about giving the backbone of this nation – the essential workers, the working people who built this country, the people who keep this country going – a fighting chance,” the president said.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi wields her gavel ahead of the final passage of President Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill on March 10, 2021.
JOSHUA ROBERTS / REUTERS
Democratic members of the House and Senate gathered after the bill’s passage for an enrollment ceremony, during which Democratic leaders signed the legislation in the final step before it heads to the White House for Mr. Biden’s signature.
“This is a momentous day in the history of our country because we have passed historic, consequential and transformative legislation,” Pelosi said in remarks, noting that for many Democrats “this is the most consequential legislation that many of us will ever be a party to.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Democrats have followed through on their promise to provide the American people with relief if Georgia voters elected a pair of Democrats to the upper chamber, securing a 50-50 split, with Harris casting tie-breaking votes.
“What do we say to America?” he said. “We say to America, ‘Help is on the way.'”
The bill’s swift passage is reminiscent of former President Barack Obama’s successful push for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act soon after taking office in 2009 to address the Great Recession. But that bill cost less than half of the American Rescue Plan, and Mr. Biden, who was vice president at the time, appears to have concluded that going bigger is better, even if it means sacrificing some bipartisan support.
The American Rescue Plan provides $1,400 direct payments to individuals making up to $75,000 annually, $350 billion in aid to state and local governments and $14 billion for vaccine distribution. The bill also provides $130 billion to elementary, middle and high schools to assist with safe reopening.
It includes an additional $300 billion in weekly jobless benefits through September and an expanded tax credit of up to $3,600 per child, initially distributed in monthly installments. The child tax credit could raise 4 million children out of poverty, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
More than $50 billion will be distributed to small businesses, including $7 billion for the Paycheck Protection Program. The bill also provides $25 billion for relief for small and mid-sized restaurants, which have suffered significantly during the pandemic.
The measure expands eligibility for subsidies to purchase health insurance to people of all incomes under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), a provision that was particularly controversial for Republicans who oppose the bill. It also incentivizes states to expand Medicaid under the ACA by having the federal government pay for new recipients. Several million people could save hundreds of dollars in health care costs once the bill becomes law.
Psaki told reporters on Tuesday that many Americans will start receiving their stimulus checks by the end of the month, and they will not bear Mr. Biden’s signature. Former President Donald Trump had his name printed on relief checks under earlier rounds of aid.
Democrats have heralded the economic relief package as one that provides a desperately needed lifeline to families hit hardest by the pandemic. But Republicans in both chambers have criticized the measure for its $1.9 trillion price tag and scope, as well as Democrats’ decision to push the plan through Congress without GOP support.
A version of the president’s relief plan passed the House last week, but the Senate amended the package and approved it in a 50-49 party-line vote. The lower chamber voted Wednesday on the Senate-amended measure.
Changes in the Senate-amended measure include lowering an unemployment insurance benefit from $400 per week to $300 per week, but extending it through September 6 instead of ending the additional aid in August. It also made the first $10,200 in unemployment benefits non-taxable for households making under $150,000.
The bill amended by the Senate also limited the eligibility for the direct checks. These compromises were negotiated to satisfy moderate Democrats in the Senate, particularly Senator Joe Manchin. As Democrats have a 50-seat majority in the Senate, they require support from all 50 Democrats to pass any controversial legislation, meaning that members like Manchin need to be appeased in order for bills to be approved.
Lawmakers used a process known as budget reconciliation to usher the relief plan through both chambers, which allowed it to pass the Senate with just a simple majority and without relying on Republican support. But the package had to comply with certain rules governing the reconciliation process, which led to a $15 minimum wage hike being stripped from the original proposal that had passed in the House.
Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont who caucuses with Democrats, introduced an amendment to the final bill raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025, but it failed in a 42-58 vote.
LONDON (Reuters) – Prince William said on Thursday that Britain’s royals were not racist after Meghan, wife of his younger brother Harry, said one unnamed member of the family had asked how dark their son Archie’s skin might be.
Meghan, 39, made the allegation during an explosive tell-all interview that she and Harry, 36, gave to Oprah Winfrey and which was aired on Sunday, plunging the British monarchy into its biggest crisis since the 1997 death of Princess Diana, William and Harry’s mother.
On a visit to a school in east London, William said he had not talked to Harry since the interview was broadcast just over three days ago.
“I haven’t spoken to him yet but I will do,” William, 38, said.
Asked by a reporter if the royal family was racist, William said: “We’re very much not a racist family.”
In the two-hour show, nearly three years after their star-studded wedding in Windsor Castle, Meghan said the royals had ignored her pleas for help while she felt suicidal, while Harry said his father, heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles, had let him down and that he had felt trapped.
On Tuesday, Buckingham Palace issued a statement on behalf of 94-year-old Queen Elizabeth, the princes’ grandmother, in which she said the family were saddened by how challenging the couple had found the last few years.
But it was the couple’s accusation that one of the royals had made a racist comment which has dominated coverage and has the potential to cause lasting damage to the 1,000-year-old monarchy.
WHO SAID IT?
Meghan, whose mother is Black and father is white, said while she was pregnant with Archie there were “concerns and conversations about how dark his skin might be when he’s born.”
Neither she nor Harry said who had made the remark, although Winfrey later clarified that Harry had said it was not the queen or her 99-year-old husband Philip, who has been in hospital for three weeks while the crisis unfolds.
“That conversation, I’m never going to share,” Harry said during the interview. “But at the time, it was awkward. I was a bit shocked.”
In the statement from the queen, the palace said issues of race were concerning and would be treated very seriously, but pointedly stated “some recollections may vary”.
The Palace has said that it was a family matter that should be dealt with privately.
During the interview, Harry also laid bare how distant he had become from the other members of his family, saying his father had stopped taking his calls at one point, and that there was “space” in his relationship with William.
“Much will continue to be said about that … as I said before, you know, I love William to bits, he’s my brother, we’ve been through hell together and we have a shared experience,” he said. “But we’re on different paths.”
The interview, watched by 12.4 million viewers in Britain and 17.1 million in the United States, has proved divisive among the British public.
Some believe it showed how outdated and intolerant the institution was, while others decried it as a self-serving assault that neither Elizabeth nor her family deserved.
Reporting by Michael Holden; editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Raissa Kasolowsky
WASHINGTON – Now that Congress’ final passage of President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill is out of the way, the White House is laying the groundwork to move forward on Biden’s other priorities.
The president will make his first address to the nation Thursday evening, marking one year since the coronavirus pandemic fundamentally changed the day-to-day lives of Americans. It’s an opportunity to mark a somber anniversary but also a chance to promote the signature legislative accomplishment of his nascent presidency.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Wednesday that Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and their spouses will be “hitting the road” to tout the benefits of their plan. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told House Democrats to highlight the bill in the next few weeks by holding events on the legislation and sending email newsletters and mailers to constituents “to help its benefits be understood and enjoyed.”
The White House is looking ahead to Biden’s initiatives for the next phase of recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, which include a big infrastructure package the president dubbed “Build Back Better.” Capitol Hill Democrats have other ideas.
Over the past several weeks, Biden has been meeting with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to garner support for the infrastructure plan. But Democrats are poised to move on a flurry of bills differing from the White House’s stated priority. Their bills addressing gun control, women’s rights and immigration could face roadblocks in the Senate.
“Those are the things that we want to be judged by,” Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., a member of House Democratic leadership, said Tuesday of the bills the House would take up.
Before a meeting last week with a bipartisan group of House lawmakers, Biden said they were going to discuss “what we’re going to do to make sure we once again lead the world across the board in infrastructure.”
“It not only creates jobs, but it makes us a hell of a lot more competitive around the world if we have the best infrastructure in the world,” Biden said.
Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., who chairs the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said after the meeting that the president “wants to move as quickly as possible” on infrastructure legislation.
“He wants it to be very big, and he feels that this is the key to the recovery package,” DeFazio said. He did not give details on how the legislation would be paid for but said “we talked about it.”
Biden’s agenda could face headwinds on Capitol Hill even before a bill is unveiled. The Senate’s 50-50 split gives any one senator an enormous amount of influence, and rules requiring at least 60 senators to vote to advance legislation and break a filibuster mean at least 10 Republicans would have to join all Democrats in supporting a bill.
Asked Tuesday how Democrats would move their legislation past the filibuster, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said there were “conversations going on in the House,” but the issue was largely one for the Senate.
Democrats might use a legislative process called budget reconciliation to pass the bill, which would require only a simple majority in the Senate. Doing so places constraints on the legislation and could bring opposition from some lawmakers. The process was used to pass the American Recovery Act this week.
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., a moderate who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and a pivotal vote for much of the Democrats’ agenda, said on “Axios on HBO” he would block Biden’s jobs and infrastructure package unless enough Republicans were included in the process to avoid a filibuster.
“I’m not going to do it through reconciliation,” he said, adding he would not “get on a bill that cuts (Republicans) out completely before we start trying.”
Some Democrats have discussed changing or getting rid of the filibuster to ensure that legislation can be passed without bipartisan support. Biden does not support abolishing the filibuster.
House Budget Committee Chairman Rep. John Yarmuth, D-Ky., whose panel would oversee reconciliation, said Tuesday he believed the infrastructure bill might not come until September because Democrats were waiting on the White House to submit a budget and install a budget chief.
“That’s the most realistic timeframe,” he said.
Psaki said Monday that Biden believes there will be a path forward on infrastructure. She noted that no bill is being considered on that yet.
“The American people want their roads, rails and bridges to be reformed,” Psaki said. “(Biden) is having discussions to hear ideas, hear good ideas from members of both parties, and once we have a bill, we are happy to have a discussion on how to have it moving forward.”
What else is on the agenda
Aside from infrastructure, Democrats on Capitol Hill are pushing forward on legislation regardless of its potential fate in the Senate.
After passing Biden’s relief plan, the House is set to pass two major pieces of gun control legislation this week – both unlikely to see action in the Senate.
Next week, the House is set to vote on renewing the Violence Against Women Act, which has been stalled since 2018, in addition to several bills that would create a pathway to citizenship for farmworkers and recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which allows people brought to the USA illegally as children to remain. Biden’s comprehensive immigration bill also could be moved on.
The Violence Against Women’s Act, which Biden cosponsored when he was in the Senate, stalled after two provisions were added. One would prohibit individuals who abused current or former dating partners from having firearms, and another would bar individuals who were convicted of felony stalking charges from accessing guns.
The two immigration bills were introduced by Democrats in the last Congress. Both passed the House, only to be blocked by the Senate, when the Republicans had control.
Though Democrats control the Senate now, the bills face an uncertain future.
Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., who is spearheading Biden’s comprehensive immigration bill in the Senate, told USA TODAY he was concerned about moving forward individual portions of immigration legislation. Some parts of Biden’s agenda, such as changing rules for farmworkers or a pathway to citizenship for DACA recipients, might be popular among Republicans, he said, but if those parts were passed and enacted separately, “how do you deal with the rest of the question?”
Asked whether immigration might be included in a reconciliation bill, as Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and other liberal Democrats advocated, Menendez said “all options” were on the table.
Former President Donald Trump is seeking credit for the swift rollout of multiple coronavirus vaccines, saying if it wasn’t for him “you wouldn’t be getting that beautiful ‘shot’ for 5 years, at best.”
“I hope everyone remembers when they’re getting the COVID-19 (often referred to as the China Virus) Vaccine, that if I wasn’t President, you wouldn’t be getting that beautiful ‘shot’ for 5 years, at best, and probably wouldn’t be getting it at all,” the ex-president said in a statement released by his office Wednesday evening. “I hope everyone remembers!”
The statement came hours after President Biden announced his administration would order another 100 million doses of the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine to bolster the nation’s efforts to get shots into arms.
Biden announced the new J&J doses a week after unveiling the landmark partnership between rivals J&J and Merck to produce the former’s vaccine and after vowing the U.S. would have enough first doses for every adult by the end of May.
There are now more than 62 million people in the United States have received at least vaccine dose and nearly 33 million who are fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s shot tracker. That’s about 19% and 10% of the population, respectively, according to data last updated on Wednesday.
Both Pfizer and Moderna’s two-dose coronavirus vaccines were developed and authorized for emergency use while Trump was in office. Moderna received funding for design and testing under Trump’s Operation Warp Speed, while Pfizer had an advance-purchase agreement. J&J, which was authorized for use after Biden took office, also had a pre-existing federal production deal made under the Trump administration.
Trump and his wife, both of whom contracted COVID-19 last fall, reportedly received vaccines at the White House in January.
Don McLaughlin Jr. talks about the impact Biden’s immigration policies are having on Uvalde, Texas.
Texas mayor Don McLaughlin Jr. said the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border is going to get bad fast and warned the 2019 immigration surge will seem like a “cakewalk” compared to what will happen under President Biden.
McLaughlin Jr. said Wednesday during an appearance on “America Reports” that his city of Uvalde is experiencing a dramatic surge in immigrant-related apprehensions and crimes, including an increase in high-speed car chases between police and smugglers.
“We’re having 10 to 12 chases, high-speed chases, through our communities a week now,” McLaughlin said. “We’ve never seen this before.”
McLaughlin added the chases ranged anywhere from 95 to 105 miles an hour and also noted an increase in break-ins throughout the region by illegal immigrants. He said fault lies with the federal government for failing to anticipate and handle the rise in migrant crossings.
McLaughlin added the Biden administration needs to shut down the border immediately and have people enter the country through legal processes, or local governments in Texas will continue to deal with the fallout, including an influx of COVID-positive migrants.
Despite this, the Biden administration continues to reject calling the situation a “crisis.”
Asked about the issue during her press conference Tuesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki pushed back on adding labels to the “challenging” situation.
Psaki has maintained the administration sought to abide by COVID-19 protocols, but it’s unclear how much authorities were screening migrants for the virus.
According to Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, last week, thousands of migrants haven’t been tested.
“Over 10,000 people have come in through the lower Rio Grande Valley,” Cuellar said to KTXS 12. “Those folks are not being tested.”
Border agents disagreed, telling the outlet that “CBP personnel conduct initial inspections for symptoms or risk factors associated with COVID-19 and consult with onsite medical personnel, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or local health systems as appropriate.”
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