With California’s full economic reopening days away, there remains one question that has not been fully resolved in the minds of many eager to get back to normal life: To mask, or not to mask?

Beginning Tuesday, most of California’s mask rules imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic — covering customers’ trips to the store, the gym and restaurants — will disappear for those who are vaccinated.

There is growing evidence of the shots’ power to prevent serious disease and blunt transmission of the coronavirus, and health officials are increasingly unified in their belief that those who are fully inoculated can safely resume many activities without wearing face coverings.

Yet after more than a year of playing it safe, some are still planning to wear masks in crowded indoor public places when they cannot be sure that everyone around them has been vaccinated. Some public health experts say they will still probably wear masks for those occasions, while others say they feel perfectly comfortable dropping them even in those settings.

That divergence is symbolic of a new era California faces come Tuesday, when people will make their own choices as to whether to continue wearing masks, even if they’re no longer required. While the unvaccinated are still required to mask up in most settings, there historically hasn’t been much government enforcement tied to such mandates.

And given the heated debates over masking, officials are already warning the public against heaping scorn or dirty looks on those who decide to remain masked. Officials say it would be a mistake to start thinking that a face covering is indicative of someone’s vaccination status.

“This is very nuanced still, and there are some people for whom mask wearing is still life saving,” Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said this week.

The long-promised change will take effect Tuesday, the same date as the state’s full economic reopening, and bring the state into alignment with the CDC’s COVID-19 guidelines.

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As of Tuesday, the state’s planned reopening date, California will align with recommendations from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that fully vaccinated people largely no longer need to mask up — with some exceptions that include transit hubs or aboard public transportation; in healthcare settings and long-term care facilities; indoors at K-12 schools, childcare facilities or other youth settings; in homeless shelters, emergency shelters and cooling centers; and in correctional facilities and detention centers.

By contrast, people not yet fully vaccinated will be required to wear masks in businesses and public indoor settings, including retail stores, restaurants, theaters and family entertainment centers.

Theoretically, this creates an easy-to-understand standard: fully vaccinated equals no mask.

But in practice, the state stepping back essentially passes the buck to individuals to decide how comfortable they are with tossing aside their face coverings, and to many venues and proprietors to determine whether to still require them for the public, or whether they want to get in the tricky business of verifying if someone has actually gotten vaccinated.

According to the state, operators can either allow customers to self-attest that they’re vaccinated and therefore can enter without wearing a mask, implement some kind of vaccine verification system or require all patrons to wear a mask.

A California workplace safety board recommends ending mask rules for workers if everyone in a room is vaccinated against COVID-19.

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Workplaces themselves will still be governed by the standards set by the Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board, which votes on proposals submitted by the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health, or Cal/OSHA. On Wednesday night, Cal/OSHA officials suggested they will submit proposed new standards next week that are expected to incorporate California’s new mask rules.

But for many, the question over whether to remain masked comes down to your level of risk tolerance. For a fully vaccinated person, is it worth it to still wear a face covering even though the chances of infection are exceedingly low?

L.A. County’s health officer, Dr. Muntu Davis, said he’ll still likely stick to the habits to which he’s long been accustomed, such as wearing a mask and keeping distance in indoor or crowded settings.

He’s not the only one: Some experts will continue wearing a mask while in a supermarket or in line at a cafe for now, saying they’d rather take the extra precaution to avoid an exceedingly rare illness. Others might still mask up primarily to make other people feel more at ease.

Increasing evidence about the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines and California’s low case rates convince experts it’s safe to stop wearing masks.

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Davis and other medical experts agree that immunity provided by full vaccination is extraordinarily effective at preventing infection and illness, even when it comes to the identified coronavirus variants. Of the more than 135 million people in the U.S. who had been fully vaccinated as of June 1, only 0.002% subsequently became hospitalized for COVID-19 and just 0.0004% died, CDC data show.

And of the 3.3 million L.A. County residents fully vaccinated as of May 7, only 0.03% later tested positive for the coronavirus, including people who showed no symptoms but were tested anyway because of workplace requirements.

Given all that, not all experts agree the extra caution is needed. Some say they’ll have no hesitation about heading into a store without a mask since they’re fully vaccinated, especially in places like L.A. County and San Francisco, which are reporting extraordinarily low daily coronavirus case rates not seen since the earliest days of the pandemic.

“As a fully vaccinated individual who is in living in a place with the lowest transmission rates in the country … I would feel very comfortable not being masked everywhere that it is allowed,” said Dr. Monica Gandhi, a UC San Francisco infectious diseases expert who was among the earliest proponents of the benefits of masking in the pandemic. “I really mean this, actually: I feel like I’m modeling good behavior to show the effectiveness of the vaccines.”

For some lucky families, the unexpected time together brought on by the pandemic often felt like a gift, a bonus year to bond with parents and siblings.

Some officials fear the choice of whether to mask up could become the latest battle line drawn in a politically charged and emotionally draining pandemic.

L.A. County Supervisor Janice Hahn went so far this week as to urge the public to not shame or bully or give dirty looks to people who continue wearing masks when it’s no longer required.

The state’s guidelines recognize this, too — stating that no one can be prevented from wearing a mask as a condition of participating in an activity or entering a business.

“We want to make sure that those who have been vaccinated are protected and supported in their desire to wear a mask, if that is their choice,” Dr. Mark Ghaly, California’s health and human services secretary, said Wednesday.

There are some who will want to continue to wear masks even if they are fully vaccinated, Ferrer said. Such people could include those who have a suppressed immune system, are at greater risk for illness from COVID-19 or are parents of children too young to be vaccinated.

Others may simply prefer wearing a mask as additional protection not just against COVID-19, but other diseases like the flu and common cold.

Some experts also say that watching the local vaccination rate and daily coronavirus case rate would play a role in whether they’ll mask up in indoor public spaces.

By Tuesday, UC San Francisco epidemiologist Dr. George Rutherford said he probably won’t be wearing a mask when at a supermarket or waiting in line at a cafe in, say, San Francisco. The city is averaging just 1.7 new coronavirus cases a day per 100,000 residents over the past week and 72% of residents are at least partially vaccinated.

But he might make a different decision if he was in Redding, a city in Northern California’s Shasta County where there are 8.4 new coronavirus cases a day per 100,000 residents and only 36% of residents are at least partially vaccinated.

“If you’re up in, say, Redding, or someplace like that, where there’s very low vaccination levels, and there’s not a lot of adherence to mask wearing [among unvaccinated people] … I might be more inclined in a place like that” to wear a mask, Rutherford said. “But I’m fully vaccinated. I really don’t worry about it very much.”

Rutherford also might mask up in other situations, such as at a movie theater or other crowded indoor venue, like a “mega” event with 5,000 or more people.

“There might be people who are infectious in that space,” he said. “And the more infectious people there are, the more likely you are to see a vaccine failure.”

Such failures are uncommon, on the order of a 1 in 5,000 chance.

“But, you know, I’m 69. I don’t want to be that 1 in 5,000,” Rutherford said. “So I’m gonna take a little extra precaution.”

It’s possible that some businesses may opt to continue requiring customers to wear masks to enter even if they are fully vaccinated, both to reduce the risk of unvaccinated people breaking the rules and entering without wearing a mask and, potentially, to make customers feel more comfortable.

The L.A. County Department of Public Health says it’s perfectly reasonable for a business to require all customers to be masked if it’s going to be hard to determine who is vaccinated or not, at least until L.A. County achieves herd immunity, “which we are definitely not at yet,” Ferrer said.

L.A. County could be at herd immunity by summer’s end, says Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer, but ‘we have a lot of people not vaccinated still.’

In Illinois, Michigan, New Mexico, New York and Washington — all of which eased mask mandates shortly after the CDC’s new guidance last month — officials continued to observe decreasing daily coronavirus cases, she noted. Importantly, all of those states now report at least 60% of their adult population having received at least one dose of vaccine.

In California, more than 71% of adult residents have received at least one dose of vaccine. In L.A. County, about 65% of residents age 16 and up have received at least one shot to date.

“This is promising news. And we’re hopeful that with our continued efforts to vaccinate L.A. County residents, we’ll also be able to maintain our low case rates once we move into a full reopening,” Ferrer said.

Source Article from https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-06-10/california-covid-coronavirus-mask

The internal dispute over Omar’s comments on U.S. foreign policy comes more than two years after she faced public pushback from both parties over comments seen as antisemitic. The House GOP raced Thursday to turn the dozen Democrats’ statement into a political weapon against Omar, with leaders likely to plot floor action on the chamber floor next week.

But the group of Jewish Democrats speaking out against Omar’s comments have not specifically called for a floor vote on the matter, as a bigger cross-section of the caucus did in 2019, according to several sources familiar with the conversations.

And Omar made an additional attempt to defuse the tension on Thursday, with some guidance from Democratic leadership. She issued a “clarification” that stated she was “in no way equating terrorist organizations with democratic countries with well-established judicial systems.”

In another key difference from 2019, Omar’s latest remarks have drawn no specific complaints of antisemitism from fellow Democrats.

Rather, her Democratic colleagues took issue with her “false equivalencies” between the U.S. and Israel on one hand, and Hamas and the Taliban on the other. The critical statement from 12 Democrats, led by Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Ill.), rebukes Omar’s comments during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Monday, when she asked Secretary of State Antony Blinken about a International Criminal Court probe of allegations against both the Taliban and the U.S. in Afghanistan and by Hamas and Israel in their own recent Middle East conflict.

Omar clarified in her statement on Thursday that her conversation with Blinken was about “accountability for specific incidents regarding those ICC cases, not a moral comparison between Hamas and the Taliban and the U.S. and Israel.”

The comments spurred a fierce debate among many Jewish Democrats, several of whom have previously taken issue with Omar’s remarks that they described as anti-Semitic. Out of several dozen Democrats who took part in discussions this week, 12 lawmakers signed the statement. Those discussions were first reported by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

“Equating the United States and Israel to Hamas and the Taliban is as offensive as it is misguided,” the 12 Democrats wrote in the statement, adding that “false equivalencies give cover to terrorist groups.”

A spokesperson for Schneider said Omar did not attempt to call him, and doesn’t know about attempts to reach other members. The spokesperson also confirmed that Democrats signing the statement do not call her actions antisemitic.

Several House Republicans publicly condemned Omar’s comments earlier this week, with many in the party eager to tear open the growing Democratic schism over her views on foreign policy. GOP leaders could pursue as a resolution to censure her or remove her from committees when lawmakers return to Washington next week.

“Speaker Pelosi’s continued failure to address the issues in her caucus sends a message to the world that Democrats are tolerant of antisemitism and sympathizing with terrorists,” tweeted House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

The GOP’s campaign arm also said in a statement Thursday that Democrats should strip Omar of her committees — as Democrats did this year to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene after a series of incendiary comments and actions by the controversial Georgia Republican, including endorsing the assassination of Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Many Democrats, however, reject the comparison of Greene to Omar. And one of Omar’s allies in the progressive alliance known as “the Squad” came to her defense Thursday morning.

“I am tired of colleagues (both D+R) demonizing” Omar, tweeted Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), elected alongside Omar in 2018 as Congress’ first Muslim woman lawmakers. “Their obsession with policing her is sick. She has the courage to call out human rights abuses no matter who is responsible. That’s better than colleagues who look away if it serves their politics.”

Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.), another “Squad” member, tweeted that “I’m not surprised when Republicans attack Black women for standing up for human rights. But when it’s Democrats, it’s especially hurtful. We’re your colleagues. Talk to us directly. Enough with the anti-Blackness and Islamophobia.”

On Wednesday night, Omar shared a sample of what she described as frequent threats she’s received when she speaks on human rights issues, tweeting a recording that included multiple racist and Islamophobic slurs directed at her.

This week is not the first time Democrats have faced a furor within their caucus over Omar’s political speech. Shortly arriving in Congress, some of Omar’s comments sparked complaints of antisemitism and a raging debate over how Democrats should punish her through a resolution the floor. In one instance in 2019, Omar suggested that pro-Israel advocates had “allegiance” to Israel, which several Democrats said alluded to painful, decades-old discriminatory tropes of Jews who display “dual loyalties.”

Democratic leaders ultimately crafted a resolution condemning hate speech in all forms, indirectly rebuking Omar — a move that infuriated several Jewish Democrats who wanted to condemn her directly.

Melanie Zanona contributed to this report.

Source Article from https://www.politico.com/news/2021/06/10/omar-back-under-scrutiny-493055

Consumer prices for May accelerated at their fastest pace in nearly 13 years as inflation pressures continued to build in the U.S. economy, the Labor Department reported Thursday.

The consumer price index, which represents a basket including food, energy, groceries, housing costs and sales across a spectrum of goods, rose 5% from a year earlier. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been expecting a gain of 4.7%.

The reading represented the biggest CPI gain since the 5.3% increase in August 2008, just before the financial crisis sent the U.S. spiraling into the worst recession since the Great Depression.

Though the inflation readings are well above anything seen since the 2008-09 financial crisis, the Federal Reserve has been largely dismissive of the numbers. Central bank officials believe the current rise is due to temporary factors that will abate as the year goes on and look higher because of comparisons to the year-ago period, when much of the economic activity remained restricted due to pandemic precautions.

Consequently, market participants generally do not expect to see the Fed react to the latest numbers when the policymaking Federal Open Market Committee meets next week.

Used cars and truck prices continued their climb higher, rising 7.3% on the month and 29.7% for the past 12 months. The new vehicles index increased 1.6%, its biggest-single month gain since October 2009 and was up 3.3% for the 12-month period, the highest move since November 2011.

However, the energy index was about flat for the month despite the huge runup in gasoline prices this year, while the food index repeated its April rise of 0.4%.

The gasoline index is up 56.2% over the past year, part of an overall 28.5% increase in energy during the period. Food prices have remained comparatively tame, up 2.2% for the 12-month period.

A separate gauge that excludes volatile food and energy prices increased 3.8%, vs the Dow Jones estimate of 3.5% for so-called core inflation. That was the fastest pace since May 1992.

Another report released Thursday showed that jobless claims for the week ended June 5 came in at 376,000. The estimate was 370,000. The total still marked the lowest of the pandemic era.

Investors, though, remain heavily focused on inflation, which hasn’t been a major threat to the U.S. economy since the early 1980s.

On a monthly basis, the headline CPI rose 0.8% while the core was up 0.7%. The estimate was 0.5% for both readings.

Markets largely shrugged off Thursday’s inflation report, with stock market futures indicating a gain at the open though government bond yields moved higher. The benchmark 10-year Treasury note last traded near 1.52%.

Prices surged across a variety of sectors as the economy continued to recover from the harsh restrictions government officials put in place during the pandemic.

Household furnishings and operations rose 1.3%, the biggest month-over-month gain since January 1976. Airline tickets continued their climb, rising 7% for the month and 24% from a year earlier as more passengers take to the skies. Car and truck rentals rose along with sales prices, jumping 12.1% to compound a 16.2% increase in April and rise of 110% from a year ago.

Shelter cost, which make up about one-third of the CPI, rose 0.3% for the month and 2.2% year over year. Within that group, an index that includes hotel and motel costs jumped 10% for the 12-month period.

Claims hit new pandemic-era low

While inflation was rising, weekly jobless claims were continuing to nudge lower.

The total of 376,000 represented a decline of 9,000 from the previous week and marks another low since the March 14, 2020, level that preceded an explosion in unemployment unlike anything the U.S. had seen.

Continuing claims fell considerably, dropping by 258,000 to a new pandemic-era low of just below 3.5 million. Around the same time a year ago, the total was 18.9 million.

Source Article from https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/10/cpi-may-2021.html

FALMOUTH, England – At what President Joe Biden calls a “defining” time for democracy, he makes his first international trip for the G-7 summit with a packed agenda.

Among the highlights: getting the global economy back on track in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic that is still firmly entrenched in most parts of the world; climate change; defense and security; and easier – though no less important – talking about the solidarity, multilateralism and shared democratic values that many close European allies felt had all but vanished under former President Donald Trump’s administration. 

“This is a defining question of our time: Can democracies come together to deliver real results for our people in a rapidly changing world? Will the democratic alliances and institutions that shaped so much of the last century prove their capacity against modern-day threats and adversaries? I believe the answer is yes. And this week in Europe, we have the chance to prove it,” Biden wrote in a Washington Post op-ed.

Biden will participate in the in the G-7 summit in Cornwall, England, NATO in Brussels,  followed by a highly anticipated meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, a leader he actively dislikes, in Geneva.

Biden will announce that the U.S. will purchase and donate 500 million doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine to 92 low and lower middle-income countries and the African Union. The shots will be distributed through the global vaccine alliance known as COVAX, with 200 million to be shared this year and the remaining 300 million to be donated through the first half of 2022. 

Source Article from https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2021/06/10/biden-meet-g-7-nato-allies-defining-moment-democracy/5288083001/

A woman receives the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 at a drive-in vaccination event last week in Meerbusch, Germany.

Lukas Schulze/Getty Images


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Lukas Schulze/Getty Images

A woman receives the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 at a drive-in vaccination event last week in Meerbusch, Germany.

Lukas Schulze/Getty Images

The emergence of new and more infectious variants of the coronavirus has raised a troubling question: Will the current crop of COVID-19 vaccine prevent these variants from causing disease?

A study out Wednesday in the journal Nature suggests the answer is yes.

The research was fairly straightforward. Scientists took blood from volunteers who had received the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine and looked at the levels of neutralizing antibodies, the kind that prevent a virus from entering cells.

“What we showed is that the neutralizing antibodies are reduced about fivefold to the B.1.351 variant,” says Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. Under the new nomenclature proposed by the World Health Organization, B.1.351 is now called Beta. It first appeared in South Africa.

“That’s very similar to what other investigators have shown with other vaccines,” he says. “But what we also showed is that there’s many other types of immune responses other than neutralizing antibodies, including binding antibodies, FC functional antibodies and T-cell responses.”

And it’s that last immune response, the T-cell response, that Barouch says is critically important. Because T cells, particularly CD8 T cells, play a crucial role in preventing illness.

“Those are the killer T cells,” Barouch says. “Those are the types of T cells that can basically seek out and destroy cells that are infected and help clear infection directly.”

They don’t prevent infection; they help keep an infection from spreading.

“The T-cell responses actually are not reduced — at all — to the variants,” Barouch says. It’s not just the Beta variant, but also the Alpha and Gamma variants.

That may help explain why the Johnson & Johnson vaccine prevented serious disease when tested in volunteers South Africa, where worrisome variants are circulating.

“The data is very solid,” says Alessandro Sette, an immunologist at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology. “Dan Barouch’s data really show very nicely that there is no appreciable decrease in [CD8 T-cell] reactivity.”

Sette’s lab has had similar results with the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines. So has Marcela Maus at Massachusetts General Hospital. Although it will take studies in people to be certain the vaccines will work against variants, “Anything that generates a T-cell immune response to the SARS-CoV-2, I would say has promise as being potentially protective,” Maus says.

What’s not clear yet is how long the T-cell response will last, but several labs are working to answer that question.

Source Article from https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/06/09/1004738276/new-evidence-suggests-covid-19-vaccines-remain-effective-against-variants



Deaths from Covid-19 have dropped 90 percent in the United States since their peak in January, according to provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.


As the nation reopens and restrictions are lifted, however, the virus continues to kill hundreds of people daily. By late May, there were still nearly 2,500 weekly deaths attributed to Covid-19.









Weekly Covid-19 deaths





















5,00010,00015,00020,00025,000

Week ending
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April 24, 2021

March 13, 2021






Vaccine shots began

All adults eligible for vaccine

100 million doses administered


















More than half of the U.S. population has received at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, and it’s the remaining unvaccinated population that is driving the lingering deaths, experts say.


After the first vaccines were authorized for emergency use in December, with priority given to senior populations before younger groups, the share of those dying who were 75 or older started dropping immediately.


In turn, younger populations began to make up higher shares of Covid-19 deaths compared with their shares at the peak of the pandemic — a trend that continued when vaccine eligibility opened up to all adults. While the number of deaths dropped in all age groups, about half of Covid-19 deaths are now of people aged 50 to 74, compared with only a third in December.









Share of Covid-19 deaths by age groups





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Vaccine shots began

All adults eligible for vaccine

100 million doses administered


















“Previously, at the start of the pandemic, we were seeing people who were over the age of 60, who have numerous comorbidities,” said Dr. Krutika Kuppalli, an infectious disease expert at the Medical University of South Carolina. “I’m not seeing that as much anymore.” Instead, she said, hospitalizations have lately been skewing toward “people who are younger, people who have not been vaccinated.”


More than 80 percent of those 65 and older have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, compared with about half of those aged 25 to 64 who have received one dose. Data collected by the C.D.C. on so-called breakthrough infections — those that happen to vaccinated people — suggest an exceedingly low rate of death among people who had received a Covid-19 vaccine.


“I still think the narrative, unfortunately, is out there with younger people that they can’t suffer the adverse events related to Covid,” said Dr. Kuppalli, who added that young people can indeed still experience severe consequences from the virus.


Still, those 50 and older continue to make up the bulk of Covid-19 deaths. Among that cohort, white Americans are driving the shifts in death patterns. At the height of the pandemic, those who were white and aged 75 and older accounted for more than half of all Covid-19 deaths. Now, they make up less than a third.









Share of Covid-19 deaths by race and age





Groups whose share of total deaths decreased and increased from December to May












Aged 50 to 74









25%50%

Week ending
Dec. 19, 2020

April 24, 2021

March 13, 2021



Hispanic

Asian

Black

White



Vaccine shots began

All adults eligible for vaccine

100 million doses administered



Aged 75+









25%50%

Week ending
Dec. 19, 2020

April 24, 2021

March 13, 2021



Hispanic

Asian

White

Black



Vaccine shots began

All adults eligible for vaccine

100 million doses administered




















Middle-aged populations of all racial groups are making up a higher share of Covid-19 deaths compared with their shares in December.


The extent of the drop in deaths, however, is not uniform across the board, and cumulative vaccination rates among Black and Hispanic populations continue to lag behind those of Asian and white populations, according to demographic data released by the C.D.C.


The steepest declines have been with older white patients, and also Asians under 30, a group whose weekly Covid-19 deaths were in the single digits even during the height of the pandemic.









Percent change in Covid-19 deaths from December to May
















Aged under 30

30 to 49

50 to 74

75+


Asian


–100%

–71%

–66%

–87%

Black


–18%

–61%

–75%

–86%

Hispanic


–56%

–73%

–81%

–88%

White


–24%

–63%

–80%

–92%




















The remaining deaths are mainly driven by those who have yet to be vaccinated, Dr. Kuppalli said, describing two main groups within this population: those who choose to not get vaccinated because of misinformation and politicization around the vaccine, and those who remain unvaccinated because of other factors, including access.


“I think we still have work to do with that population. Particularly in difficult to reach populations, such as rural populations, ethnic and racial minority populations, homeless populations, people who don’t access medical care.”


Covid-19 deaths are still prevalent in certain groups.


While deaths from the virus in nursing homes have dropped more than 90 percent since December, about 200 people per week are still dying of Covid-19 in the facilities, comprising seven percent of all deaths from the virus nationwide.









Share of Covid-19 deaths by place of death





Groups whose share of total deaths decreased and increased from December to May


















25%50%75%100%

Week ending
Dec. 19, 2020

April 24, 2021

March 13, 2021



Nursing home

Healthcare setting

Patient’s home



Vaccine shots began

All adults eligible for vaccine

100 million doses administered


















The share of Covid-19 death records mentioning conditions like diabetes and hypertensive diseases have also stayed similar to their shares during the height of the pandemic.


While there is no longer a large epicenter, death rates are still high in small pockets across the nation.












Covid-19 death rate across the country























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Wash.

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Ore.

S.D.

Mass.

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R.I.

Wyo.

Conn.

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Pa.

Neb.

Nev.

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Iowa

Md.

Ohio

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Del.

D.C.

Utah

Colo.

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Seven-day average of deaths per 100,000

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“It may be something that lingers with us for quite some time,” said Dr. Gavin Harris, who works in the intensive care units at Emory University Hospital. “If we don’t get to 75 percent, 70 percent people who have vaccinations, we’re going to see a sizable number of deaths for quite a substantial period of time.”


Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/06/10/us/covid-death-patterns.html

Washington — The Interior Department’s inspector general said in a report released Wednesday that evidence it obtained “did not support a finding” that federal authorities forcibly cleared protesters from Lafayette Park last year so then-President Trump could walk from the White House and pose for a photo outside the historic St. John’s Church.

The watchdog, which examined the incident that occurred June 1, 2020, during protests against racial injustice and police brutality in Washington, D.C., instead found the U.S. Park Police had the authority to clear the park and surrounding areas, and did so to allow a contractor to install anti-scale fencing after several nights of violent clashes. U.S. Park Police also did not know that Mr. Trump would potentially be leaving the White House and crossing Lafayette Park until “mid-to late afternoon” on June 1, hours after the contractor had arrived to begin installation, according to the report.

“The evidence we obtained did not support a finding that the USPP cleared the park to allow the president to survey the damage and walk to St. John’s Church,” the report from the Interior Department’s inspector general states.

The watchdog further found that U.S. Park Police used a “sound amplifying long-range acoustic device” to issue three warnings telling the crowd to disperse, though acknowledged not all could hear the warning, and some police units began moving to clear protesters before the third and final warning was given. Additionally, the report states there were communication issues between U.S. Park Police and law enforcement agencies brought in to assist during the demonstrations, which were sparked by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

“We found that the USPP and the Secret Service did not use a shared radio channel to communicate, that the USPP primarily conveyed information orally to assisting law enforcement entities, that an assisting law enforcement entity arrived late and may not have received a full briefing on the rules of engagement, and that several law enforcement officers could not clearly hear the incident commander’s dispersal warnings,” the report says. “These weaknesses in communication and coordination may have contributed to confusion during the operation and the use of tactics that appeared inconsistent with the incident commander’s operational plan.”

In a statement, Mr. Trump claimed the inspector general “totally exonerat[ed] me.” 

“As we have said all along, and it was backed up in today’s highly detailed and professionally written report, our fine Park Police made the decision to clear the park to allow a contractor to safely install antiscale fencing to protect from Antifa rioters, radical BLM protestors, and other violent demonstrators who are causing chaos and death to our cities,” he said. 

Mr. Trump was condemned for the incident on June 1, 2020, during which law enforcement officers used pepper balls and chemical irritants to disperse the crowd of protesters gathered in Lafayette Park, located outside the White House, just before the city’s 7 p.m. curfew took effect.

Shortly after the area was cleared, Mr. Trump, flanked by some members of his Cabinet and White House staff, walked across the park to St. John’s Church, a part of which had been set on fire the prior night. 

The then-president delivered brief remarks outside the church and then held up a Bible as photos of the impromptu visit were taken.

President Donald Trump holds a Bible as he visits outside St. John’s Church across Lafayette Park from the White House on Monday, June 1, 2020.

AP


Then-Attorney General Bill Barr said the protesters were removed from the park to expand the security perimeter around the White House, a move that was planned before Mr. Trump decided to walk through the area.

Video footage and news reports from June 1 raised questions about the events leading up to Mr. Trump’s walk from the White House, as Barr was spotted speaking with the U.S. Park Police operations commander on the scene. 

Asked about the exchange, the operations commander told the watchdog’s team he warned Barr the area was unsafe and asked him to move away from the crowd.

“The USPP operations commander said the attorney general asked him, ‘Are these people still going to be here when POTUS [President of the United States] comes out?'” according to the report. “The USPP operations commander told us he had not known until then that the president would be coming out of the White House and into Lafayette Park. He said he replied to the attorney general, ‘Are you freaking kidding me?’ and then hung his head and walked away. The attorney general then left Lafayette Park. The USPP operations commander denied that the attorney general ordered him to clear Lafayette Park and H Street.”

The incident commander with the Park Police told the inspector general’s office that he, too, was never informed of Mr. Trump’s specific plans or when he planned to leave the White house. 

“It was just a, ‘Hey, here he comes.’ And all of a sudden I turn around and there’s the entourage,” the incident commander told investigators, as detailed in the report. 

The Park Police’s acting police chief also said he did not know of Mr. Trump’s plans to visit St. John’s Church, though the incident commander told him the president might assess the damage at an unspecified time, according to the report.

Narrow in scope, the investigation from the Interior Department’s inspector general focused on the U.S. Park Police actions and did not examine individual uses of force by officers, which are at the center of ongoing lawsuits or separate investigations. The watchdog said its authority to obtain documents or statements from entities outside the Interior Department was limited, though the office received radio transmissions and other information from the Metropolitan Police Department and Arlington County Police Department, as well as videos from Secret Service observation cameras in the Lafayette Park area and documents from the agency.

The inspector general said the office did not seek to interview Barr, White House personnel, Federal Bureau of Prisons officers, or personnel from the Secret Service or Metropolitan Police Department.

The report recommended the U.S. Park Police develop a detailed policy laying out procedures for operations involving protests that may require the use of force and improve field communication procedures. 

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland told Inspector General Mark Greenblatt in a letter last month that she is establishing a task force to review and improve its law enforcement programs.

“The challenges our officers face every day are many, and the need to coordinate closely across jurisdictions in a manner that promotes transparency, accountability and public trust is paramount,” she said.

The National Park Service and U.S. Park Police said they have taken steps to address both recommendations from the inspector general.

Source Article from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-photo-op-lafayette-park-protesters-report/

First Lady Jill Biden prodded President Biden to focus on her speech during a lighthearted moment at an event marking the start of the first overseas trip of his presidency on Wednesday.

The first lady told military service members stationed at Royal Air Force Mildenhall in the United Kingdom to be seated during her brief remarks at the event. The president turned to acknowledge soldiers located behind the stage, prompting the first lady to redirect his attention to the podium.

“Joe, pay attention,” the first lady said.

The president turned to the front of the stage and saluted, drawing laughter from the first lady and the crowd.

BIDEN WARNS CLIMATE CHANGE IS ‘GREATEST THREAT’ TO US SECURITY

The Bidens traveled to the United Kingdom ahead of meetings between the president and key European allies. Biden will meet with U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson and participate in the G-7 summit in Cornwall, England later this week. From there, the president will engage in talks with NATO and the European Union, followed by a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The first lady’s remarks at the event centered on her work assisting military service members and their families. Jill Biden holds a leading role in Joining Forces, a support initiative she co-founded during the Obama administration.

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“We’re going to work on military spouse employment and entrepreneurship, make sure that you can get quality child care when you need it, and provide the education that your children deserve,” she said.

Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/politics/first-lady-biden-pay-attention-speech-uk-trip

Vaccinated Californians will be able to go mask-free in indoor stores, bars, restaurants, movie theaters and many other places as part of the state’s grand reopening next Tuesday, officials said.

The new rules align with federal guidance, meaning that face coverings will still be required on public transportation and in taxis, hospitals, prisons and homeless shelters. Masks will also be required indoors at K-12 schools, child care facilities and other places where there may be a large number of children who haven’t been vaccinated, according to the plans announced on Wednesday.

Unvaccinated people will remain subject to rules to wear masks indoors, although the state, as throughout the pandemic, is maintaining a light touch with enforcement and is not requiring business operators to verify whether patrons are vaccinated.

The shift on masks for the vaccinated will coincide with the much-anticipated lifting of remaining business capacity restrictions in California, where life has been at least partially locked down for some 15 months.

Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/09/world/california-mask-mandate-vaccinated-residents.html

“Senator, I take this as seriously as you do. I very well remember what President [Richard] Nixon did in the Watergate period — the creation of enemies lists and the punishment of people through reviewing their tax returns,” Garland said. “This is an extremely serious matter. People are entitled, obviously, to great privacy with respect to their tax returns.”

The ProPublica article, expected to be the first in a series, did not reveal how the journalists obtained the tax records, and the outlet did not respond to a request for comment. The article says the investigation is based on “a vast trove of Internal Revenue Service data on the tax returns of thousands of the nation’s wealthiest people, covering more than 15 years.”

The article adds that the tax strategies used by the ultra-wealthy individuals it cited appeared to be perfectly legal. It said the investigation “demolishes the cornerstone myth of the American tax system: that everyone pays their fair share and the richest Americans pay the most.”

The outlet published a separate article defending its decision to publish the private records.

Tax information is generally confidential and those who disclosed the documents could be subject to criminal liability.

Garland said that he believed IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig was handling the matter.

“He said that their inspectors were working on it, and I’m sure that that means it will be referred to the Justice Department,” Garland said. “This was on my list of things to raise after I finished preparing for this hearing.”

Rettig, during a Senate Finance Committee hearing Tuesday, said he shared “the concerns of every American for the sensitive and private nature and confidential nature of the information the IRS receives.”

Garland’s comments came as the Justice Department, at the direction of President Joe Biden, has sought to move away from the aggressive tactics employed against journalists and media organizations under former President Donald Trump and previous administrations.

On Saturday, the department said that “in a change to its longstanding practice” it will refrain from seizing records from reporters in leak investigations. Last month, Biden called that practice “simply wrong,” though his position hadn’t been formalized yet as policy.

Also Wednesday, Garland defended the Justice Department against criticisms from the left that it was not moving fast enough to distance itself from the Trump administration.

On Monday, the department filed a controversial brief seeking to effectively defeat a case filed against Trump by the columnist E. Jean Carroll, who alleges that Trump defamed her when he denied raping her. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., asked Garland “how this is coming about.”

“Are these criticisms valid?” Leahy asked.

“I know about the criticisms,” Garland responded. “The job of the Justice Department in making decisions of law is not to back any administration, previous or present. Our job is to represent the American people.”

Sometimes, Garland said, “we have to make a decision about the law that we would never have made, and that we strongly disagree with, as a matter of policy.”

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Source Article from https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/09/propublica-tax-leak-investigation-will-be-priority-attorney-general-garland-says.html

President Biden steps into a motorcade vehicle after arriving Wednesday at Royal Air Force Mildenhall in Suffolk, England, on the first leg of his European trip. “We have to end COVID-19, not just at home, which we’re doing, but everywhere,” he said.

Patrick Semansky/AP


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President Biden steps into a motorcade vehicle after arriving Wednesday at Royal Air Force Mildenhall in Suffolk, England, on the first leg of his European trip. “We have to end COVID-19, not just at home, which we’re doing, but everywhere,” he said.

Patrick Semansky/AP

President Biden is set to announce Thursday that the United States has bought 500 million doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine to donate to COVAX, which is distributing vaccines to countries that cannot afford to buy enough shots, a source familiar with the deal confirmed to NPR.

The news comes after Biden’s arrival Wednesday in England on the first foreign trip of his presidency. He has said he wants to use the eight-day European trip to marshal a plan with other G-7 nations to help end the pandemic around the world.

“We have to end COVID-19, not just at home, which we’re doing, but everywhere,” Biden told troops Wednesday during his stop at Royal Air Force Mildenhall.

The vaccine giveaway signals a growing role for the United States in the global vaccination effort and comes on the heels of Biden’s promise to share 80 million additional doses by the end of June with COVAX and other countries.

The World Health Organization and foreign leaders have been urging wealthy countries, which have secured the lion’s share of the global vaccine supply, to up their contributions, especially those with excess doses such as the United States.

The new donation will see 200 million shots delivered this year, and 300 million in the first half of 2022, the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity ahead of the announcement.

“It represents another significant step in the right direction,” says Dr. Krishna Udayakumar, director of the Duke Global Health Innovation Center. “If we see a full U.S. strategy for global vaccination announced at the G-7 Leaders’ Summit, as well as coordinated, substantive action across G-7 members and the EU, this week could represent a turning point in the pandemic.”

The COVAX program — co-led by WHO — has struggled to secure enough shots to meet its goal of ensuring that 20% of the world’s population is vaccinated by the end of the year.

About 2 billion shots have been administered worldwide — the vast majority in high-income and upper middle-income countries.

“It’s another data point that illustrates that Biden is serious about the U.S. playing a leadership role in ending this pandemic,” says Dr. Junaid Nabi, a fellow at the Aspen Institute and senior researcher at Harvard Business School. “This should also encourage European/G-7 countries to play a more active role in this global health crisis, as they have been very slow in responding and contributing toward this global public good.”

NPR’s Tamara Keith contributed to this report.

Source Article from https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/06/09/1004880892/biden-to-announce-plans-to-donate-500-million-pfizer-vaccines-to-countries-in-ne

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer sparred Wednesday on the Senate floor over Democrats’ legislative agenda, which McConnell alleged is “designed to fail” so Schumer can convince other Democrats to end the filibuster. 

Schumer, D-N.Y., meanwhile, accused Republicans of choosing “obstruction and gridlock” because they filibustered an equal pay bill that he said shouldn’t be partisan but McConnell warned would be a boon for trial lawyers more than anyone else. 

“Senate Republicans mounted a partisan filibuster against a very straightforward piece of legislation to help provide equal pay to women,” Schumer said. “It’s shocking that my Republican colleagues believe that the Senate has no role to play in defending the rights of women who are unfairly and illegally discriminated against in the workplace.”

Schumer continued: “The issue of pay equity has become a partisan one, sadly. Democrats in favor, Republicans opposed.” 

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., praises his Democratic Caucus at a news conference just after the Senate narrowly approved a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill, at the Capitol in Washington, Saturday, March 6, 2021. Schumer attacked Republicans on the Senate floor Wednesday over their refusal to support a Democrat-backed bill on equal pay. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

BIDEN NOMINEE UNDER FIRE OVER POSSIBLE FINANCIAL BENEFITS WHILE WORKING IN CONGRESS

But McConnell, R-Ky., retorted that Schumer’s agenda is simply a “series of radical proposals” meant to “illustrate that the Senate is broken” and eventually convince moderate Democrats to eliminate the filibuster. 

The minority leader said Schumer’s agenda amounts to “plans to jam hospitals, schools and small business with new high-stakes tests of wokeness; to dramatically curtail Americans’ right to keep and bear arms; and of course to tip the scale of our electoral system permanently in their favor.”

“Yesterday, the radical parade began with an attempt to use the cause of paycheck fairness as cover for placing unprecedented new legal burdens on American employers,” McConnell continued, noting it’s been illegal to pay women less money for the same work for six decades. 

McConnell said Democrats’ paycheck bill would subject businesses to “unlimited liability in workplace cases, even where malice plays no part.” 

He called it “a gift-wrapped bonanza for the trial bar.”

McConnell also slammed Democrats for the fact they did not subject the paycheck bill to regular order – instead skipping the committee process and a markup. 

“Well, apparently, when your agenda is designed to fail, regular order is just a waste of time,” McConnell said. 

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., speaks at a Senate Rules Committee markup to argue against the “For the People Act,” which would dramatically expand the federal government’s role in elections, at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, May 11, 2021. That bill is among some Democrat proposals McConnell said are “designed to fail” this month as part of an alleged strategy on the part of Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to convince other Democrats to get rid of the legislative filibuster. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

The Senate on Tuesday passed what could be its biggest bipartisan agreement of the current two-year Congress in a sprawling bill aimed at helping the United States cooperate with China. But several divisive issues lay before it. 

Infrastructure talks between Senate Republicans and President Biden dissolved Tuesday, and it’s unclear how talks between the White House and a different bipartisan group will go – or if they can get enough Republicans on board with such a deal if an agreement is reached. 

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Democrats are also set to push forward on S.1, a bill that would massively expand the role of the federal government in elections. They say the bill is needed to push back on Republican-backed state election laws, while McConnell has said the bill is a naked power grab. 

Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., are dug in against any changes to the filibuster that many Senate Democrats want to enable them to pass legislation without consulting Republicans. The pressure on the two moderates is likely to only increase if Republicans continue to block bills most Democrats favor. 

But Manchin in an op-ed Sunday emphasized that Democrats happily used the filibuster when Republicans were in charge. He added that “it has been critical to protecting the rights of Democrats in the past.” 

“I will not vote to weaken or eliminate the filibuster,” Manchin said. 

Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/politics/mcconnell-schumer-spar-democratic-agenda

In power since 1999 as either prime minister or president, Mr. Putin’s tightening of the screws on dissent and opposition has come gradually. In a long twilight of post-Soviet democracy during his rule, elections took place, the internet remained mostly free and limited opposition was tolerated. His system has been called “soft authoritarianism.”

But prosecutors this spring requested that the court outlaw Mr. Navalny’s movement, using a designation that likens its members to terrorists, without bothering to make much of a public case that the nonprofit groups were in fact seditious organizations. The evidence was classified and the case heard behind closed doors in a Moscow courtroom.

A lawyer representing the organizations, Ivan Pavlov, who had access to the evidence but not the authority to disclose it, said after a preliminary hearing that it was unconvincing, and that he would make public as much as the law allowed. Within a few days, police detained Mr. Pavlov on charges of disclosing classified evidence in another case, unrelated to Mr. Navalny, in what looked like a warning to avoid aggressively defending Mr. Navalny’s organization. He faces up to three years in prison.

The anti-extremism law offers wide scope for a sweeping crackdown on the opposition in coming days or months, Russian legal experts say, but it remains unclear how it will be enforced.

Under the law, the group’s organizers could face prison terms of up to 10 years if they continue their activities. Anybody donating money could be imprisoned for up to eight years. Public comment such as social media posts in favor of Mr. Navalny’s groups could also be prosecuted as support for extremists.

The case targeted three nonprofit groups, Navalny’s Headquarters, the Fund for Fighting Corruption and the Fund for Defending Citizens’ Rights. In a preliminary ruling, the court ordered a halt to some of these groups’ activities last month.

Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/09/world/europe/navalny-ban-putin-biden-summit.html

The G7 is made up of the world’s seven largest so-called advanced economies – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US – plus the EU.

Source Article from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57422348

Earlier in the day, Heinrich tweeted insufficiently ambitious climate legislation “should not count on every Democratic vote,” and linked to a POLITICO article in which National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy acknowledged President Joe Biden might not get all of his loftier climate priorities, such as a clean energy standard, in eventual infrastructure legislation.

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) was even blunter in a tweet: “No climate, no deal,” he wrote.

At the same virtual event, Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) said he was “very confident” the Senate would ultimately be able to coalesce around an infrastructure package with a major climate title, including a clean energy standard. He added later he “agree[s] wholeheartedly” with Heinrich’s sentiment that Democratic votes should not be taken for granted.

“In fact, I think that’s the only infrastructure bill we can pass out of the Senate,” he said of one with sufficiently strong climate provisions.

One of the upper chamber’s most vocal climate action advocates, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), said in an interview “it’s probably wise not to get too excited about alleged pieces of an unformed bill” but conceded there was much work to do.

“I’m still very anxious and I’m going to stay very anxious until we have a solid 1.5 degree [Celsius] bill and a path to passage,” he said, referring to strong enough provisions to limit global temperature increases to that level.

Whitehouse said the breakdown of talks between Senate Republicans and the Biden administration didn’t help or hurt prospects for climate action because “that was never going to be the route of a serious climate bill.”

After the flood of progressive tweets and comments, McCarthy linked to the POLITICO article and tweeted: “When @POTUS thinks climate, he thinks jobs. That’s why – and let me quote this article – ‘the White House [is] fighting to keep every piece’ of the American Jobs Plan and deliver ‘what is necessary to reach its climate target.’ We need to get this done.”

Evergreen Action Executive Director Jamal Raad said the administration assuaged some concerns Tuesday evening when his organization spoke with the White House, where Biden officials reiterated support for a clean electricity standard.

Raad said his group and allied progressive outfits had openly warned the administration about dealing with Republicans, worrying that critical provisions like the standard could fall by the wayside — a sentiment he said some Democratic senators reflected in growing openness to publicly criticize the White House for perceived trade-offs on climate.

“Senators are bolstering their case but also sending a message that half-measures and compromises on the defining issue of our time are not acceptable,” he said.

The escalation comes as several senior Democrats have outlined a plan whereby they would pass a bipartisan package through regular order — and come back to do other Biden administration priorities, like climate change, through a reconciliation package.

“The more traditional stuff — roads, highways, bridges, rail, ports, safety, all that stuff, broadband — that would be handled through regular order,” Environment and Public Works Chair Tom Carper (D-Del.) told reporters on Tuesday. “Then if we’re unable to also do the other issues that the president has characterized as infrastructure, [we’d] come back and do those in a different way.”

They must also contend with the fact that some moderate members of the conference, most notably and visibly Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), have expressed reluctance to pass legislation with Democratic votes alone.

Heinrich’s comments were amplified and echoed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who suggested progressives in the narrowly-divided House also wouldn’t vote for a package without strong enough climate change provisions.

“Mitch McConnell and the Koch brothers are not worth setting the planet on fire for,” she tweeted. “I know some Dems may disagree with me, but that’s my unpopular opinion of the day.”

Climate hawk Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) also weighed in on Twitter: “Just a gentle, friendly reminder that the executive branch doesn’t write the bills.”

Zack Colman contributed to this report.

Source Article from https://www.politico.com/news/2021/06/09/progressives-climate-provisions-infrastructure-492667

Environmental activists cheered the move and used the moment to urge Mr. Biden to rescind the Trump-era permits granted to another pipeline, the Enbridge Line 3, which would carry Canadian oil across Minnesota. Hundreds of protesters were arrested earlier this week in protests against that project.

“The termination of this zombie pipeline sets precedent for President Biden and polluters to stop Line 3, Dakota Access, and all fossil fuel projects,” said Kendall Mackey, a campaign manager with 350.org, a climate advocacy group. “This victory puts polluters and their financiers on notice: Terminate your fossil fuel projects now — or a relentless mass movement will stop them for you.”

On Capitol Hill, Republicans slammed Mr. Biden. “President Biden killed the Keystone XL pipeline and with it, thousands of good-paying American jobs,” said Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, the ranking Republican on the Senate Energy committee. “On Inauguration Day, the president signed an executive order that ended pipeline construction and handed one thousand workers pink slips. Now, ten times that number of jobs will never be created. At a time when gasoline prices are spiking, the White House is celebrating the death of a pipeline that would have helped bring Americans relief.”

The 1,179-mile pipeline, which would have carried 800,000 barrels a day of petroleum from Canada to the Gulf Coast, had become a lightning rod in broader political battles over energy, the environment and climate change. After environmental activists spent years making the case to President Barack Obama that approval of the pipeline would be a devastating blow to his efforts to fight climate change, Mr. Obama in 2015 announced that his administration would reject its construction permit.

Two days after his inauguration in 2017, President Donald J. Trump, who during the campaign promised to overturn Mr. Obama’s environmental legacy, signed an executive order rescinding Mr. Obama’s decision and allowing the pipeline to go forward. But in 2018, after some portions of the pipeline had been built, a federal judge blocked further construction of the project on the grounds that the Trump administration did not perform adequate environmental reviews before rescinding the Obama decision. The project had been largely stalled since then.

Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/09/business/keystone-xl-pipeline-canceled.html