Since GOP Gov. Brian Kemp signed a sweeping overhaul of Georgia’s election code into law, Democrats have equated it with “Jim Crow” laws while Republicans have claimed it actually expands voter access in the state.
On Tuesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki dodged questions from reporters about President Joe Biden’s incorrect claim that the new law ends voting at 5 p.m. — pointing instead to other aspects of the law she said makes it harder to vote. She also said the new law was “built on a lie” that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen” from former President Donald Trump — a reference to the baseless narrative that Trump actually won the election.
During the legislative process, Republicans said the bill was necessary, in part, because of diminished trust in Georgia’s elections. But there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in either the November or January elections in Georgia, which Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and top deputies affirmed repeatedly.
But the new law has become its own source of misinformation. Powerful entities on both sides of the political aisle have presented the law in ways that are at times inaccurate, misleading or omit relevant details, and Republicans and Democrats have accused the other of misrepresenting it to their political advantage.
So, what’s actually in the law versus what’s said about it? Here’s a breakdown of claims and how they stack up.
Claim: The law ‘ends voting hours early,’ affecting working Georgians’ ability to vote
Biden has repeatedly said this, but it’s wrong. In his initial statement about its passage, Biden said the law “ends voting hours early so working people can’t cast their vote after their shift is over.” In separate comments, the president has also said the law ends voting at “5 o’clock.”
This law did not change how long polling precincts are open on Election Day; all are open from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m. statewide. It also did not shorten mandatory voting hours for the early voting period, which starts four Mondays before primary and general elections and lasts until the Friday before the election.
Before the new law was signed, the code stated that advance voting must be held weekdays “during normal business hours.” This was interpreted to mean between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., but the new law clarifies that. The old law also mandated one day of Saturday early voting, from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m., and the new law requires it last until 5 p.m., and be held on two Saturdays. The new law also specifically states that counties have the option to extend advance voting hours to match Election Day hours of 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
There is, however, one provision of the law where the 5 p.m. time is important. If a voter shows up at the wrong polling place on Election Day, that voter cannot successfully vote unless it’s after 5 p.m. and they sign an affidavit affirming they are unable to get to their correct polling place in time. Under previous law, out-of-precinct voters could vote provisional ballots at any time on Election Day, and any votes for races they were eligible to vote in, like statewide races, would be counted.
Claim: There are more days of early voting now — and it’s more than other states
Kemp and other Republicans have repeatedly pointed this out when defending the law, and while it’s mostly true, they are making one major omission.
The new law mandates two Saturdays of early voting, instead of just one previously, for primary and general elections; it also leaves Sunday early voting up to each individual county’s discretion, the same as it was before, except now that’s clearly articulated in election code.
However, what Republicans aren’t talking about — but Democrats and voting rights activists are — is how it condenses the mandatory advance voting period for runoffs.
Excluding the presidential race, every candidate running for office in Georgia must get a majority of the vote to avoid a runoff election. Before this new law passed, the period between a primary or general election and runoff was nine weeks. Now, it will be just four weeks, and there are no mandatory weekend days of early voting before runoffs.
While counties are allowed to start early voting “as soon as possible” before the runoff, they are only required to allow people to vote Monday through Friday the week before.
After MLB’s announcement that it would move its All-Star game from Atlanta in protest of the law, Republicans started comparing Georgia’s election laws with those in other states. With the game now planned for Denver, GOP politicians are saying that Georgia offers more days of in-person early voting than Colorado, but they’re comparing apples and oranges.
Starting at least 15 days before an election, vote centers must be open in Colorado and stay open through Election Day, excluding Sundays and the first Saturday, for voters who want to cast ballots in person. Georgia does mandate more days of in-person early voting — 17 — than Colorado, but Colorado also has a completely different, universal vote-by-mail system. Every active registered voter is automatically mailed a ballot ahead of every election without having to specifically request one. Under Georgia’s new law, state and local election officials aren’t allowed to mail absentee applications to voters — which the secretary of state did for the June primary — unless they request one.
Claim: Voters must have a photo ID to vote by mail and this will lead to disenfranchisement
Before the new law was signed, Georgia voters were already required to present a photo ID when voting in person.
But under the new law, voters now must have some form of identification to vote by mail and for most, that identification will either be a driver’s license or state ID card, which is a photo ID. Republicans argue this is a more “objective” way to verify a voter’s identity than the “subjective” signature matching process, which Trump repeatedly targeted while spreading election disinformation.
When applying for an absentee ballot and returning a voted ballot, electors must now include either their driver’s license number or state ID number. If a voter does not have one of those, then they must include a photocopy of another accepted form of ID with their application. When returning the ballot, if a voter doesn’t have a driver’s license or state ID, they must note their date of birth and last four digits of their social security number; if the voter does not have a Social Security number, they must include a photocopy of another form of accepted identification.
During debate, Republican lawmakers said that 97% of Georgians eligible to vote have either a driver’s license or state ID card, and it’s true that Georgians can get a state ID for free. But critics of the law testified in hearings that the potential eligible voters who will face hurdles without a license or state ID number are also most likely to lack the alternative documents, like a birth certificate — which is what might have kept them from obtaining a state ID card to begin with.
So, while photo IDs are not required per se, some voters could be barred from voting if they don’t have the right documents or a Social Security number.
Claim: It’s a crime to give food or beverage to voters waiting in line
Democrats and voting rights advocates seized on this provision in the law. There are specifics around what’s allowed and what isn’t, but effectively, it bans “line warming” by making it a misdemeanor for any non-election worker to give voters waiting in line food or beverages, including water.
Electioneering was already banned inside polling places, within 150 feet of them and within 25 feet of any voter waiting in line. But this law added that giving or offering to give any money or gifts, including food and beverages, to voters within those perimeters is illegal, too. Poll workers are still allowed to do this and self-service water stations can be set up within the perimeter.
While it was not an issue on Nov. 3, long lines are a familiar occurrence for Georgia voters, most significantly in the Atlanta metro area. For the June primary, many Georgians stood in hours-long lines to vote and volunteers brought those voters food and water while they waited.
Claim: Drop boxes will be allowed under state law for the first time
This is true, but the context is important.
In 2020, drop boxes were introduced to many Georgia voters for the first time. Under an emergency rule enacted by the State Election Board in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, counties were given permission to have secure ballot drop boxes, which were required to be under 24/7 video surveillance and on “government property generally accessible to the public.”
Drop boxes were optional, and many counties opted against them. Since the new law requires every county have at least one drop box, some voters will have the option to use them for the first time. But for many voters, especially those living in the large metro counties that took advantage of the emergency rule, the rules around drop boxes are much more stringent now.
Unless the governor declares a health emergency, drop boxes must now only be placed inside early voting locations. Voters can also only access them during the early voting period when the locations are open. Because of the early voting period requirement, drop boxes will now be unavailable for the three days preceding an election and on Election Day — the time when mailing a ballot back is riskiest because it might not arrive on time. There is also a formula to calculate the maximum number of drop boxes allowed per county.
During his press conference Saturday blasting the MLB decision, Kemp noted that he used a drop box in November, saying, “You can do like I did because I was under COVID quarantine and didn’t want to go in the polling location — I went and dropped mine into a drop box. You can still do that. It’s in a secure location now.”
But since Kemp dropped his ballot in a box on Election Day, he could not have done so under the new law. Voters can still hand-deliver their voted absentee ballots to county election and registration offices, but those singular locations may be less accessible for some voters.
Claim: This bill allows for a ‘takeover’ of county election boards and the State Election Board
After the bill passed, Fair Fight Action CEO Lauren Groh-Wargo said the bill “allows for a complete takeover of county boards of election and the State Elections Board itself by partisan politicians in the state legislature,” calling it “a disgraceful power grab.”
The State Election Board has oversight over elections and investigatory powers, including referring potential election law violations to the attorney general or relevant district attorney.
Under the new law, the Republican-majority General Assembly does gain new powers over elections.
By a simple majority vote, the legislature elects three — a change from two — of the State Election Board’s five voting members, and that now includes the chairperson. The secretary of state, who Georgians elect to office, becomes a non-voting member of the board and loses his chairmanship.
The State Election Board also gained the power to temporarily suspend county or municipal election “superintendents.” In Georgia, the county boards of elections, and sometimes probate judges, are the “superintendents.” This means the board could suspend the people responsible for certifying election results and transfer all of their legal responsibilities, including decisions over election personnel, to a temporary replacement.
Minneapolis Police Lt. Johnny Mercil, a use-of-force instructor with the department’s training unit, said Chauvin’s kneeling on Floyd’s neck is not a trained neck restraint tactic. While neck restraints may be allowed on suspects actively resisting, they are not to be done with the knee and they would not be authorized on a suspect who is handcuffed and under control, he said. Officers are taught to only use force that is proportional to the threat. He also testified that handcuffed suspects can have difficulty breathing on their stomachs. He said officers are trained to move suspects into a side recovery position — “the sooner the better.”
However, Mercil said in cross-examination that Chauvin’s position might be considered “using body weight to control,” a tactic in which officers place a knee on a prone suspect’s shoulder blades to handcuff them. He acknowledged that some screen grabs of police body-camera footage show Chauvin with his knee on Floyd’s shoulders.
Minneapolis Police Sgt. Ker Yang, the crisis intervention training coordinator for the department’s training unit, testified about the importance of recognizing when someone is in crisis and de-escalating the situation. Officers are trained in a critical decision-making model to address people in crisis that calls on them to continually assess and reassess what is needed in the situation, he said. Chauvin took a 40-hour course on crisis intervention training in 2016 in which actors portrayed people in crisis and officers had to de-escalate the situation, Yang testified.
In cross-examination, Yang said that the crisis intervention model can potentially apply to the suspect as well as nearby observers. The training advises officers to appear confident, stay calm, maintain space, speak slowly and softly and avoid staring or eye contact, he said.
Minneapolis Police Officer Nicole Mackenzie, a medical response coordinator and CPR instructor, testified that officers are required to render first aid and request emergency services when someone needs medical help. The department teaches officers to determine the level of responsiveness for a person needing help. If the person is unresponsive, then the officer is required to check their airway, breathing and circulation, and if the person has no pulse, the officer should start CPR immediately. She also said it’s not accurate to say if someone can talk then they can breathe. In cross-examination, she said that a hostile crowd could make it difficult to focus on a patient.
Los Angeles Police Department Sgt. Jody Stiger, a use-of-force expert, testified that the force used by Chauvin on Floyd was excessive. “My opinion was that the force was excessive,” he told the court. Stiger reviewed materials from the incident after Floyd’s death and has conducted approximately 2,500 use-of-force reviews during his career.
That has left technology executives like Stanley Campbell in the lurch. His firm, EagleForce, which specializes in health records, has created “myVax,” a digital platform that, he said, might even be used by farmers to screen their workers. Mr. Campbell, a Florida native, pitched the idea to Florida’s agriculture commissioner last week — a day before Mr. DeSantis issued his ban.
“It’s not really a political football, which is what they keep using this thing as,” said Mr. Campbell, whose wife, Cheryl Campbell, is also a health care technology expert and recently joined the Biden administration. “It’s sad because Florida could lead the nation in this if we just took a minute to talk and think it through.”
Mr. DeSantis’s order has already altered the back-to-school plans for Nova Southeastern University, based in Fort Lauderdale, which had announced a policy for returning students to be vaccinated. The university’s president and chief executive officer, George Hanbury, said the university was reviewing the order and planned to follow it.
“We’re not trying to do anything but protect our students,” he said.
Republican critics say vaccine passports raise the specter of centralized databases of vaccinated people, which they view as a government intrusion on privacy.
“A vaccine passport—a unified, centralized system for providing or denying access to everyday activities like shopping and dining—would be a nightmare for civil liberties and privacy,” Justin Amash, a former Republican congressman who is now a libertarian, wrote on Twitter last week.
“For too long, some in this country have been deprived of full participation in the political process,” he said in a statement at the time. He hailed the decision, Citizens United, as “an important step” in “restoring the First Amendment rights of these groups.”
On Jan. 5, the group received a permit for a rally the following day on the Ellipse, just outside the White House, and for an another “March for Trump.” Speaking to a crowd the morning of Jan. 6, Kremer repeated Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud, saying, “You guys, we cannot back down.”
Some of the country’s highways were built through existing Black and brown communities. President Biden’s infrastructure plan aims to address racial inequities.
Richard Baker/Corbis via Getty Images
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Richard Baker/Corbis via Getty Images
Some of the country’s highways were built through existing Black and brown communities. President Biden’s infrastructure plan aims to address racial inequities.
Richard Baker/Corbis via Getty Images
In his $2 trillion plan to improve America’s infrastructure, President Biden is promising to address the racism ingrained in historical transportation and urban planning.
Biden’s plan includes $20 billion for a program that would “reconnect neighborhoods cut off by historic investments,” according to the White House. It also looks to target “40 percent of the benefits of climate and clean infrastructure investments to disadvantaged communities.”
Planners of the interstate highway system, which began to take shape after the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, routed some highways directly, and sometimes purposefully, through Black and brown communities. In some instances, the government took homes by eminent domain.
It left a deep psychological scar on neighborhoods that lost homes, churches and schools, says Deborah Archer, a professor at the New York University School of Law and national board president of the American Civil Liberties Union. Archer recently wrote for the Iowa Law Review about how transportation policy affected the development of Black communities.
She says the president will face major challenges in trying to rectify historical inequities.
“What is not clear is whether and how that money will be distributed in a way that will address the racial inequalities that are built into our transportation system and our infrastructure,” she tells NPR’s Morning Edition.
“I think it’s also important for us to think about how we will shift culture within the relevant agencies so that white middle-class and affluent neighborhoods will not continue to be favored at the expense of communities of color, producing lopsided and skewed patterns of infrastructure development.”
Here are highlights from Archer’s interview with NPR:
Why would officials have targeted thriving vibrant communities? Was it just because the people who lived there were Black and or brown?
Some of the time, yes, that was actually the case. The highways were being built just as courts around the country were striking down traditional tools of racial segregation. So, for example, courts were striking down the use of racial zoning to keep Black people in certain communities and white people in other communities. And so the highway development popped up at a time when the idea, the possibility of integration in housing was on the horizon. And so very intentionally, highways were sometimes built right on the formal boundary lines that we saw used during racial zoning. Sometimes community members asked the highway builders to create a barrier between their community and encroaching Black communities.
As I read your paper, I was astonished to realize how many places this happened. Was there any successful resistance?
There was certainly successful resistance. We can see good examples in Greenwich Village in New York. There were examples from Washington, D.C., which is where the phrase “no white men’s roads through Black men’s homes” came from. That was the rallying cry for folks in D.C. who resisted it. And there was also a successful effort in New Orleans.
But I think it’s important to point out the most successful efforts to stop the highways were not those that focused on racial justice or those that were put in place to protect Black communities. The people who were most successful were the ones that focused on environmental justice and protecting parks and their communities in that way.
If this initiative works, in what ways do you see the country being different in five or 10 years?
I think that right now, we can see that race frequently explains which communities receive the benefits of our transportation system and infrastructure and which communities were forced to host the burdens.
Our transportation systems have really led to racial disparities and discrimination, which are reinforced daily from highways, roads, bridges to sidewalks and public transit. We make it harder for Black people and other people of color to access and take advantage of opportunities.
So I would hope that at the end of this project — at the end of this plan — as you say in five years, that race would not be a way to explain who gets the benefits and who gets the burdens. It would not be a way to explain who has access and who doesn’t.
Marc Rivers and Simone Popperl produced and edited the audio interview. Digital Content intern Farah Eltohamy produced for the Web.
Mr. Gaetz has denied having sex with a 17-year-old or paying for sex. A spokesman denied that he privately requested a pardon in connection with the continuing Justice Department inquiry.
“Entry-level political operatives have conflated a pardon call from Representative Gaetz — where he called for President Trump to pardon ‘everyone from himself, to his administration, to Joe Exotic’ — with these false and increasingly bizarre, partisan allegations against him,” the spokesman said in a statement. “Those comments have been on the record for some time, and President Trump even retweeted the congressman, who tweeted them out himself.”
Though Mr. Gaetz had little formal power in the House, where he remains a backbencher, he offered Mr. Trump what he craved and what Republican congressional leaders would not always offer: fierce loyalty and a taste for bare-knuckle political combat.
In his memoir published last fall, “Firebrand: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the MAGA Revolution,” Mr. Gaetz recalled his first one-on-one phone call with the president in late 2017. Mr. Trump had seen Mr. Gaetz on Fox News attacking Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, and thought he had heard an ally.
“I need warriors, you know what I mean?” the president told him.
Mr. Gaetz knew precisely. Though he came from the more conservative Florida Panhandle, the young congressman shared Mr. Trump’s taste for boasts, particularly about sexual exploits, and a knack for self-promotion. Neither was particularly impressed by the trappings of traditional power in Washington, and both were sons of powerful men. Mr. Gaetz’s father, Don Gaetz, was the president of the Florida Senate and a wealthy businessman, and Mr. Trump’s father a successful real estate developer in New York.
After Democrats took back the House in 2018 and began cranking up pressure on the Trump administration, Mr. Gaetz emerged as a standout in what he called the “warrior class” of lawmakers who made it their mission to protect the president.
“The president has called me when I was in my car, asleep in the middle of the night on my Longworth Office cot, on the throne, on airplanes, in nightclubs, and even in the throes of passion (yes, I answered),” Mr. Gaetz boasted in his book.
The new law does lay out the hours that are required as a minimum on election day, saying “voting shall be conducted beginning at 9:00 A.M. and ending at 5:00 P.M.”, as opposed to “during normal business hours” stated in the old law.
Newsom said Tuesday that California can reopen June 15 — if there is enough vaccine supply for everyone over 16 who wants to be inoculated and if hospitalization rates remain stable and low.
It’s a risk because a virus — particularly this one — doesn’t behave predictably like Republicans and Democrats do. If another spike in infections causes California to go back into lockdown mode before June 15, a lot of people are going to be looking for someone to blame. And the most likely choice will be Gavin Newsom.
It’s a gamble, and Newsom has made and won big gambles before. He was at the forefront of the legalization of same-sex marriage and marijuana before it was politically cool to do so.
But this is different. Those were social issues involving political stakes and political players. This is a virus. There are no rules or boundaries.
If we’ve learned anything over the last year, it’s to not try to predict how the virus will act.
People creating models of the virus’ behavior “are really accurate in predicting what’s going to happen in four or six weeks. Then, after that, their accuracy drops off dramatically,” said John Swartzberg, an infectious disease expert at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health.
“No one can tell you what things will look like June 15 on April 6,” he said. “They’re guessing.”
Newsom acknowledged Tuesday that California needs to be cautious about “spiking the football” too early or prematurely putting up a “Mission Accomplished” sign, a reference to the infamous banner hung behind President George W. Bush when he gave an upbeat — and tragically premature — speech about progress in the Iraq War.
But that’s essentially what Newsom did Tuesday. California is on the 5-yard line of overcoming the pandemic, and the governor busted into his touchdown celebration dance.
Why is that risky? Because if there’s one other thing we’ve learned over the past year, it’s that when things are going well, don’t tell Americans that things are going well. Too many toss away the masks, if they were wearing them in the first place, and kick into spring break mode.
“The question is the timing of this,” Swartzberg said. True, the public health trend lines in California are as good as they’ve been since last May, he said.
“But why announce this (June 15 reopening date) now, at the beginning of April? Why not announce it at the beginning of May, when you can be much more sure about what we know?
“By saying this now,” Swartzberg said, “people are going to hear what they want to hear. And they’re going to start behaving differently and not wait until June 15.”
There are a lot of factors that could derail those favorable California trend lines. The virus is exploding in India and in many parts of Europe. Not to mention Michigan.
Nevertheless, Newsom is making his bet. Why not, said recall expert Joshua Spivak.
“There’s some hope that this will be done with by October,” when the recall vote is likely to be held, said Spivak, a senior fellow at the Hugh L. Carey Institute for Government Reform at Wagner College in New York and the founder of the Recall Elections Blog. “He’s making the claim now that, ‘I’m the guy who did this.’”
But wouldn’t that also make him the guy to blame if it all goes sour?
“If it’s not over by October, then he’s got problems anyway. So why not take credit for it?” Spivak said. “If you’re going to get blamed for the drought, why not take credit for the rain?”
George Rutherford, an infectious disease expert at UCSF, said that from a public health point of view, “it’s quite reasonable to give people a timeline.”
“You’ve got to show people there is a light at the end of the tunnel,” Rutherford said. “Otherwise, people get burned out on virus fatigue.”
Many Californians already have virus fatigue. Which is why Newsom is betting his future against an unpredictable enemy.
It’s unclear whether Gaetz or the White House was aware of the Justice Department inquiry when he made the pardon request, The Times said. Although Trump was informed about the request, it was also unclear whether Gaetz had spoken directly with him about the matter.
However, a week ago, the congressman had denied that he had sought a pardon from Trump when asked about the possibility by POLITICO. Reached by phone on Tuesday night, Gaetz stood by that statement but said he had not read the Times article.
“The recent false allegations against me are not something I’ve ever discussed with Trump, pardons or otherwise,” he previously told POLITICO.
Gaetz said that he and other lawmakers had met with Trump to discuss a broader pardon strategy after the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, an exchange in which he advised the former president to pardon himself, his family, administration officials and others who supported Trump’s election claims from a charge of insurrection.
Trump was later impeached by the House on a charge of inciting an insurrection, but acquitted in the Senate. In his final hours in office, Trump issued dozens of pardons for people ranging from his former adviser Steve Bannon to rappers Lil Wayne and Kodak Black.
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President Biden said that Georgia needs to “smarten up” to avoid business leaving its state over recent voting legislation.
“It is reassuring to see that for-profit operations and businesses are speaking up about how these new Jim Crow laws that are just antithetical to who we are,” the president tools reporters Tuesday.
“There’s another side to it too. When they in fact move out of Georgia, people who need help most, people who are making hourly wages, sometimes get hurt the most,” Biden said.
He said he supports however businesses decide to protest the law. “I think it’s a very tough decision for a corporation to make or group to make, I respect them when they make that judgment, I support whatever judgment they make. The best way to deal with this is for Georgia and other states to smarten up. Stop it, stop it,” he said.
Last week, Major League Baseball announced it would pull its All-Star Game out of Atlanta, and before that Biden said he would “strongly support” players pushing to move the game.
“I think today’s professional athletes are acting incredibly responsibly. I would strongly support them doing that,” Biden told ESPN last week. “People look to them. They’re leaders. The very people who are victimized the most are the leaders in these various sports.”
Other corporations issued statements condemning the new legislation, including Coca-Cola, J.P. Morgan and Delta.
Georgia enacted sweeping election reform last week that required voter ID for absentee voting rather than relying on signature matching for verification, limited ballot drop boxes to one per county or one per 100,000 voters, expanded early voting days, and standardized early voting hours to a minimum of 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and a maximum of 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. The legislation barred outside groups from passing out food and water to those in line within 150 feet.
The law also handed more election authority to the GOP-controlled state legislature. It states that the General Assembly is to select the chair of the state elections board, rather than the board being chaired by the Georgia secretary of state. It also shortens run-offs from nine weeks to four.
Last month, Biden said the new voting law in Georgia would end voting at 5 p.m., making it difficult for people working. The Washington Post, however, gave that claim “four Pinocchios,” because that section of the law gives counties the option to extend voting hours.
But in California, cases have been declining since hitting a peak early this year, with the state now averaging around 2,700 new cases a day, the lowest figure since June. The C.D.C. said that, as of Tuesday, 35 percent of the state’s total population had received at least one vaccine shot, and 18 percent were fully vaccinated.
“With more than 20 million vaccines administered across the state, it is time to turn the page on our tier system and begin looking to fully reopen California’s economy,” Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, said in a statement. “We can now begin planning for our lives post-pandemic.”
Many public health experts say that the nation is in a race between the vaccines and the variants and that, for the moment at least, the vaccines appear to have the upper hand. But public health officials are worried that future iterations of the virus may be more resistant.
At the same time, they are watching an uptick in cases among young people, particularly those ages 18 to 24. Dr. Walensky told reporters on Monday that the C.D.C. was working with states to investigate outbreaks in young people that she said may be related to extracurricular activities or sports.
Mr. Biden spoke on Tuesday after visiting a vaccination clinic at the Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Va., which is working with community health centers to offer inoculations. Making the rounds of the makeshift clinic, he showed flashes of his old self — the sunny retail politician who likes to get close to people, with a pat on the arm or a squeeze on the shoulder.
“He’s gonna be hard — he’s got so much muscle mass there,” the president joked to a nurse as he squeezed the shoulder of a muscular man who was about to get his shot. “I tell you what, I could have been an All-American if I had those.”
But his lightness belied the seriousness of the message he would later deliver at the White House. There, he marked a milestone: Since Mr. Biden has been in office, more than 150 million Covid-19 shots have been administered to Americans, which puts the nation on track to reach his goal of 200 million shots by his 100th day in office, at the end of this month.
The Arkansas state legislature voted Tuesday to override a veto by Gov. Asa Hutchinson on a bill that would ban gender-affirming treatments for transgender youths in the state.
The House voted 71-24, and the Senate 25-8, to override the governor’s veto a day after it was announced.
The “Save Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act” bars doctors from providing gender-affirming health care to transgender minors, including hormones, puberty blockers and transition-related surgeries.
During a press briefing Monday, Hutchinson called the bill “government overreach,” and called on state leaders to rethink the issue again before acting.
“You are starting to let lawmakers interfere with health care and set a standard for legislation overriding health care,” the Republican governor said. “The state should not presume to jump into every ethical health decision.”
The SAFE Act is one of dozens of state bills introduced this year that LGTBQ advocates say diminish the rights of transgender Americans. Arkansas is the first state to pass a bill restricting transgender minors access to gender-affirming health care.
LGBTQ rights groups say the legislation, which would go into effect this summer, is unnecessary and detrimental for trans youth. Following the Senate vote, the ACLU tweeted, “We are preparing litigation as we speak.”
“Attempting to block trans youth from the care they need simply because of who they are is not only wrong, it’s also illegal, and we will be filing a lawsuit to challenge this law in court,” Holly Dickson, ACLU of Arkansas executive director, said in a statement. “We are hearing from concerned families all over the state who are afraid about the impact of this bill and others like it. We are committed to doing all we can to support these families and ensure they know how to continue to fight for their rights and get the care and resources they need.”
Sponsors say the bill is meant to protect minors, who they say are too young to make decisions on transition-related medical care.
“These children need to be protected,” Republican Rep. Robin Lundstrum, the lead sponsor of the act, told reporters Monday, The Associated Press reported.
Human Rights Campaign President Alphonso David called the SAFE Act “deeply dangerous” and that it would prevent children from seeking potentially lifesaving treatments.
“By overriding the veto on this legislation, Arkansas would put itself in the lead of a race to the bottom, fueled by fear and disinformation,” he said during a press briefing Tuesday ahead of the vote.
The American Academy of Pediatrics has spoken out against bills like the SAFE Act that target transgender youth.
“The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that youth who identify as transgender have access to comprehensive, gender-affirming, and developmentally appropriate health care that is provided in a safe and inclusive clinical space,” AAP President Dr. Lee Savio Beers said in a statement last month. “[The] legislation would allow policymakers rather than pediatricians to determine the best course of care for our patients, and in some medically underserved states, it could mean losing an already limited number of pediatric practitioners who care for transgender youth.”
ABC News’ Meg Cunningham and Ivan Pereira contributed to this report.
The men were arrested after attempting to illegally cross the border. ‘Fox & Friends Weekend’ co-host Will Cain with insight.
EXCLUSIVE: House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday requested a classified briefing from the FBI and CIA for congressional leadership and Vice President Harris about suspected terrorists apprehended at the U.S. Southern Border, sounding the alarm about “the number of bad actors” that have escaped arrest and could currently be residing in the United States.
This week, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced that two Yemeni men had been apprehended and identified on a terror watch list in the El Centro Sector in California in the last two months. The first arrest, in January, involved a 33-year-old illegal Yemeni who was on both the FBI’s Terrorism Watch List and a No-Fly List.
The second occurred last week in the same sector. The 26-year-old was also won both lists. The first was handed over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) while the second was being held in federal custody.”
In a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray and CIA Director William Burns, exclusively obtained by Fox News, McCarthy, R-Calif., requested a “classified briefing regarding certain individuals apprehended by the U.S. Border Patrol” for himself, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, as well as Vice President Harris, citing her recent appointment to lead the Biden administration’s efforts on the border crisis.
“I hope she, along with Congressional leaders, could benefit from this briefing,” McCarthy wrote.
“Through conversations with the Border Patrol and media reports, I have learned of the apprehension of foreign nationals on the Terrorism Watch List who were attempting to illegally cross our southern border,” McCarthy wrote. “This highlights the ongoing national security risk posed by the border crisis.”
Last month, McCarthy and a Republican delegation traveled to El Paso, Texas to see the “humanitarian and security crisis that has emerged” along the southern border “firsthand.”
In this Jan. 21, 2021, photo, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Calif., speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington. Just two weeks ago, McCarthy declared then-President Donald Trump culpable in the attack on the nation’s Capitol as Washington leaders recoiled from the violence. But on Jan. 28, McCarthy was meeting with Trump at Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring of a man who remains the undisputed leader of the Republican Party. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
“The agents of the U.S. Border Patrol provided us with an eye-opening tour and briefings regarding the current crisis in El Paso and the operational challenges they face each day,” McCarthy wrote.
McCarthy went on to add that “during the briefings, the agents conveyed to us that they have apprehended individuals from not only Mexico and Central America, but also countries including China, Iran, Yemen, and Turkey.”
McCarthy said officials “conveyed that they had apprehended individuals who are on the Terrorism Watch List.”
“These revelations were shocking and concerning, and for those reasons, I felt compelled to share them with the nation,” he continued.
McCarthy said that when he shared his concerns, his colleagues in Washington “cast doubt” on them with one “even accusing me of lying.”
“However, shortly thereafter, staff from U.S. Customs and Border Protection confirmed the accuracy of my comments and further reporting provided greater insight into the situation,” McCarthy said. “In fact, the threat has only grown.”
“Just yesterday, in a now-deleted, publicly-released statement, U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced the arrest of two Yemeni individuals caught illegally crossing the border in the Border Patrol’s El Centro sector, hundreds of miles from El Paso,” McCarthy wrote. “Like the cases we were briefed on in El Paso, these El Centro suspects were on the Terrorism Watch List.”
CBP issued a press release on the apprehensions this week, but has since deleted it, and its accompanying tweet.
“Part of the Border Patrol’s mission states we will protect the country from terrorists,” said Chief Patrol Agent Gregory K. Bovino in the now-deleted press release. “Today, like every other day, our agents did that. These apprehensions at our border illustrates the importance of our mission and how we can never stop being vigilant in our everyday mission to protect this great country.”
CBP and DHS did not immediately respond to requests from Fox News about the deletion of the press release, as well as an accompanying tweet.
Meanwhile, McCarthy said that “approximately 1,000 people each day are evading capture by the U.S. Border Patrol,” citing reporting from the Washington Post.
“While I am grateful to the Border Patrol for doing all they can, I have great concern about the number of bad actors that have escaped arrest and are residing in the United States,” McCarthy wrote. “We simply have no way of knowing if other terrorists have crossed the border undetected.”
Fox News reported last month that at least four foreign nationals — including the Yemeni man arrested in January — whose names match those on the terror watch list, had been picked up by Border Patrol trying to enter the country illegally since October.
A CBP spokesperson told Fox in a statement at that time that security efforts at the border “are layered and include multiple levels of rigorous screening that allow us to detect and prevent people who pose national security or public safety risks from entering the United States.”
“DHS works with our international partners to share intelligence and other information, including to prevent individuals on the terrorist watchlist from entering the United States. CBP adjudicates individuals encountered at and between our ports of entry against several classified and unclassified databases to determine if they pose a threat to national security, consistent with the law,” the spokesperson said. “While encounters of known and suspected terrorists at our borders are very uncommon, they underscore the importance of the critical work our agents carry out on a daily basis to vet all individuals encountered at our borders.”
The White House on Tuesday said that such apprehensions were “uncommon” and a sign that officials were doing their jobs.
“They do underscore the importance of the critical work that is done on a daily basis to vet those at the border. DHS works, not just at the border as you know, but also with international partners to share intelligence and other information including to prevent individuals on certain watchlist from entering the United States,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said. “They adjudicate individuals encountered at and between ports of entry against several classified and unclassified databases.”
She added: “So while this is rare, this is a reflection of them doing their jobs.”
McCarthy’s request and the confirmation of the apprehensions comes as the Biden Administration is grappling with a migrant surge at the U.S. southern border.
The Biden Administration has cast the situation as a “challenge,” and blamed the Trump administration for its immigration policy.
But initial CBP numbers for last month indicate that the agency is on track to have encountered more than 171,000 migrants in March—a 15 year high.
The Santa Monica Pier welcomed outdoor visitors on Monday as Los Angeles County entered the less-restrictive orange tier. The following day, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a target statewide reopening date of June 15, provided certain public health criteria are met.
Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
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Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
The Santa Monica Pier welcomed outdoor visitors on Monday as Los Angeles County entered the less-restrictive orange tier. The following day, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a target statewide reopening date of June 15, provided certain public health criteria are met.
Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
California could lift most statewide COVID-19 restrictions by June 15 if vaccine supply is sufficient and hospitalizations are low, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced on Tuesday.
Newsom said the state would lift its tiered system of risk and restriction, known as the Blueprint for a Safer Economy, contingent on those public health indicators, with its mask mandate and other “commonsense health measures” to remain in place.
“We are seeing bright light at the end of the tunnel,” Newsom said at a news conference. “And on June 15, all things being equal and we continue that good work, we’ll have moved beyond that blueprint and we’ll be opening up this economy at business as usual.”
He stressed that Californians should remain vigilant, especially given the relatively high case count of coronavirus variants recorded in the state. But he said California could soon be ready to take another step in its pandemic recovery, citing the lower number of hospitalizations and an expected increase in the availability of vaccines provided by the federal government.
The state crossed two important thresholds on the day of the announcement, according to Newsom: It has administered 20 million doses, including 4 million under its health equity metric.
He said officials are designing a system that will be able to administer some 5.8 million doses on a weekly basis, more than double the capacity of the approximately 2.5 million it received last week from the federal government. That number is expected to increase, with Newsom anticipating that more than 30 million doses will have been administered by the end of the month.
Eligibility for the vaccine is also increasing. People age 50 and older became eligible for the vaccine on April 1 and will be joined by those 16 and up starting on April 15. The state has administered over 7 million more doses than any other U.S. state, Newsom said.
“With more than 20 million vaccines administered across the state, it is time to turn the page on our tier system and begin looking to fully reopen California’s economy,” Newsom said. “We can now begin planning for our lives post-pandemic.”
The state will continue contact tracing and testing, and testing or vaccination verification requirements will remain in certain settings, he said in a news release. He cautioned that the tentative plan is subject to vaccine supply and hospitalization rates, adding that officials will monitor those metrics “with the option to revisit” the target date if needed, though he did not specify any numbers.
Dr. Mark Ghaly, California’s health and human services secretary, said officials would pay close attention not just to the rate of hospitalizations but to who exactly is being admitted and how many patients had already been vaccinated.
While the number of hospitalizations is low across the state — with 20 patients currently hospitalized with COVID-19 in San Francisco, for example — Ghaly said there is a race between vaccines and variants, and he urged the public to take public health precautions like wearing a mask and signing up for the vaccine once eligible.
California’s public health department said the statewide seven-day positivity rate was 1.6% as of Monday. As of the Blueprint for a Safer Economy’s latest update on Tuesday, the majority of the state’s counties are in the “substantial” or “moderate” tiers of risk, with two classified as “widespread” and two as “minimal.”
In a memo outlining the transition, state public health officials said business sectors will be able to return to usual operations with “limited” public health restrictions.
Unless testing or vaccination status is verified for all attendees, conventions will be capped at 5,000 people until Oct. 1, and international convention attendees will be allowed only if fully vaccinated.
Schools and institutions of higher education should conduct full-time, in-person instruction in compliance with state and federal health guidelines, the memo added. Newsom said there is an expectation that students will return to in-person learning but stopped short of calling it a requirement.
Californians and visitors will be subject to state and federal travel restrictions, which have also eased slightly in recent days, though nonessential trips remain discouraged.
The state’s updated travel advisory as of April 1 no longer includes a recommendation that Californians not travel more than 120 miles from their place of residence, though it continues to discourage nonessential travel outside the state.
The announcement comes as the governor faces political pressure from a recall effort that he dismissed last month as partisan and Republican. Critics of Newsom have taken issue with his handling of the pandemic and business restrictions and are frustrated by worsening housing and homelessness issues and high taxes, as CapRadio reports.
It’s one of several such efforts to have been filed since Newsom was reelected in 2018, and it would be California’s first gubernatorial recall in nearly two decades. Organizers said they had collected enough signatures by the mid-March deadline to force a special election, and county election officials have until the end of the month to verify them.
Leonnig, who is writing a new book about Trump’s last year in office with colleague Philip Rucker, points out that leaks aren’t just about West Wing soap operas. They serve an important role in the political journalism ecosystem, providing details on how a policy has evolved, whose interests it may favor, and whether rules, norms or laws have been broken in the process. Try to imagine the Watergate reporting of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, she said, without the leaks provided by Mark Felt, the FBI official who was the anonymous source nicknamed “Deep Throat.”
“There’s an allegation here that Mr. Floyd ingested a controlled substance as police were removing him from the car — a car, by the way, that has been searched twice and, to my understanding, drugs have been found in that car twice,” she said.
WASHINGTON — California plans to reopen its economy by June 15 so long as there are enough Covid-19 vaccine shots for everyone who wants them and hospitalizations remain stable, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Tuesday.
“With more than 20 million vaccines administered across the state, it is time to turn the page on our tier system and begin looking to fully reopen California’s economy,” Newsom said in a statement. “We can now begin planning for our lives post-pandemic. We will need to remain vigilant and continue the practices that got us here – wearing masks and getting vaccinated – but the light at the end of this tunnel has never been brighter,” he added.
Newsom’s announcement comes a little more than a year after California, the nation’s most populous state, shut down its economy due to the unfolding health pandemic.
Last month, a slew of states across the nation relaxed restrictions to varying degrees.
Texas rolled back its mask mandate and allowed businesses to reopen at 100% capacity as of March 10. The Lone Star State also welcomed the nation’s first full-capacity sporting event with the Texas Rangers’ home opener Monday against the Toronto Blue Jays, which sold out with more than 38,000 fans sitting side by side.
Arizona’s governor also ended capacity limits on businesses and continued to recommend masks, but didn’t require them.
Alabama’s governor said the state would lift its mask mandate after April 9. South Carolina lifted the state’s mask mandate in government buildings but recommended that restaurants continue to require face coverings.
The latest revelation comes as federal health officials warn that Americans should still continue to adhere to public health measures as warmer summer months approach.
“You might remember a little bit more than a year ago when we were looking for the summer to rescue us from surges. It was, in fact, the opposite,” the White House’s chief medical advisor, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said during a coronavirus briefing Monday.
“We saw some substantial surges in the summer. I don’t think we should even think about relying on the weather to bail us out of anything we’re in right now,” he added.
Fauci also said Monday that Americans should continue to get both doses of the Pfizer and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines, despite a recent study that suggests only one dose may be enough.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has also recommended that Americans continue to hold off from traveling due to coronavirus cases nationwide.
“We know that right now we have a surging number of cases. I would advocate against general travel overall,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said last week. “We are not recommending travel at this time, especially for unvaccinated individuals,” she added.
Correction: Arizona’s governor continues to recommend masks for businesses, but doesn’t require them. An earlier version misstated the state’s current measures.
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