US Politics

House Democrats and Republicans have agreed to create a bipartisan commission to investigate the 6 January attack on the US Capitol, lawmakers said on Friday.But the terms of the proposed commission fell short of Republican demands, casting doubt on whether the GOP will vote for its creation.The Democratic chairman of the House homeland security committee, Bennie Thompson, from Mississippi, and the ranking Republican on the panel, John Katko, of New York, said the new body would be modelled on the 9/11 Commission.That panel, formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, was created in late 2002 and published its report in 2004.Authorities are still examining videos and photos from 6 January.Told by Donald Trump to “fight like hell” in service of his lie that his electoral defeat was the result of mass voter fraud, hundreds of supporters of the then president broke into the Capitol. Some looked for lawmakers, including Trump’s vice-president, Mike Pence, to capture and possibly kill. Five people died.More than 440 people have been arrested in connection with the attack and charged with crimes including use of a deadly or dangerous weapon and assaulting a police officer. Prosecutors have said they expect to charge about 100 more.Maj Christopher Warnagiris, a US Marine Corps officer, was arrested on Thursday. He is the first active-duty service member to be charged. At least 52 military personnel, law enforcement or government employees have been arrested.A vote on the National Commission to Investigate the 6 January Attack on the United States Capitol Complex Act, legislation necessary to create the 6 January panel, could happen as early as next week.The Republican House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, did not immediately back the deal as announced.The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, proposed a commission in February but the process stalled amid disagreement.Democrats wanted the commission to focus on the 6 January attack. Republicans wanted to include violence during protests over police brutality last summer, which they attribute to leftwing groups.There was also disagreement about the makeup of the commission and its powers of subpoena.Thompson was asked to negotiate directly with Katko, who was one of 10 House Republicans to vote for Trump’s impeachment over the events of 6 January, on a charge of inciting an insurrection. Trump was not convicted, as only seven Republican senators voted for his guilt, short of the super-majority needed.Should the panel be voted into existence, it will only investigate the events of 6 January.It will include 10 members. Five including the chair will be selected by Pelosi and the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer. Five including a vice-chair will be appointed by the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, and the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell.The commission will have the power to issue subpoenas but that action will require either agreement between the chair and vice-chair or a majority vote.The members will have “significant expertise in the areas of law enforcement, civil rights, civil liberties, privacy, intelligence and cybersecurity”. Current government employees will not be appointed.A final report on the events of 6 January will be required, outlining facts and causes and providing recommendations to prevent future attacks.Thompson said: “There has been a growing consensus that the 6 January attack is of a complexity and national significance that what we need is an independent commission to investigate.“I am pleased that after many months of intensive discussion, Ranking Member Katko and I were able to reach a bipartisan agreement.”Pelosi said: “It is imperative that we seek the truth of what happened on 6 January with an independent, bipartisan 9/11-type commission to examine and report upon the facts, causes and security relating to the terrorist mob attack.” More

A Colorado man suspected in the death of his wife, who disappeared on Mother’s Day last year, is also accused of submitting a fraudulent vote on her behalf for Donald Trump in November’s presidential election, court documents show.Barry Morphew told investigators he mailed the ballot on behalf of his wife, Suzanne Morphew, to help Trump win, saying “all these other guys are cheating” and that he thought his wife would have voted for Trump anyway, according to an arrest warrant affidavit signed by a judge in Chaffee county.Trump and his supporters in the Republican party claim Joe Biden won the White House through mass electoral fraud – a lie repeatedly thrown out of court.In December, the Washington Post reported that “only a handful of cases” of actual voter fraud had “resulted in criminal charges alleging wrongdoing”.Some of the charges, it said, were “against Republican voters aiming to help Trump … including a man charged with trying to cast a ballot in Pennsylvania for the president in the name of his deceased mother”.In Colorado, Morphew, 53, faces possible first-degree murder and other charges in connection with the disappearance of Suzanne Morphew on 10 May last year. He was arrested on 5 May and is being held in connection with that case.Morphew posted a widely viewed video on Facebook pleading for his wife’s safe return shortly after she disappeared.Authorities say the arrest was the result of an investigation that has failed to find Suzanne Morphew’s body. After conducting more than 135 searches across Colorado and interviewing 400 people in multiple states, investigators believe she is dead but have not found her body, the Chaffee county sheriff, John Spezze, has said.An arrest affidavit by an Chaffee county sheriff’s detective sergeant, Claudette Hysjulien, says the county clerk’s office received a suspicious mail ballot in Suzanne Chaffee’s name in October.Sheriff’s investigators saw the ballot, which had been mailed by the state to Suzanne Chaffee, lacked Suzanne’s signature, as required by law. Barry Morphew had signed it as a witness.Morphew was interviewed by two FBI agents about the ballot in April. Asked why he sent it, he told the agents, “Just because I wanted Trump to win,” according to the affidavit. “I just thought, give him another vote.”Asked if he knew it was illegal to send someone else’s ballot, Morphew replied: “I didn’t know you couldn’t do that for your spouse.”The affidavit says Morphew faces two new counts: felony forgery and misdemeanor ballot fraud. On Friday, Morphew was being advised of the new charges in Chaffee county district court. More

Sign up for the Guardian’s Fight to Vote newsletterOne of the first things you see when you step outside Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum, the ageing arena in Phoenix, is the Crazy Times Carnival, a temporary spectacle set up in the parking lot. In the evenings, just as the sun is setting, lights from the ferris wheel, the jingle of the carousel and shrieks of joy fill the massive desert sky.Inside the coliseum – nicknamed the Madhouse on McDowell – there is another carnival of sorts happening. The arena floor is where the Arizona senate, controlled by Republicans, is performing its own audit of the 2020 election in Maricopa county, home of Phoenix and most of the state’s registered voters. The effort, which comes after multiple audits affirming the results of the November election in the county in favor or Joe Biden, includes an examination of voting equipment, an authentication of ballot paper, and a hand recount of the nearly 2.1m ballots cast there. Republicans in the state legislature are simultaneously considering measures that would make it harder to vote in Arizona, which Biden carried by about 10,000 votes in November.The review – unprecedented in American politics – may also be one of the clearest manifestations to date of Donald Trump’s false claims of fraud and the conspiracy theories that spread after the election (the former president and allies have loudly cheered on the Arizona effort). Far-right conspiracy theorists appear to be connected to the effort and the firm hired to lead the charge, a Florida-based company called Cyber Ninjas, has little experience in elections. The firm’s CEO has voiced support for the idea that the election was stolen from Trump.Election experts are watching the unfolding effort with deep alarm, pointing out that officials are not using a reliable methodology – they hesitate to even label it an audit – and will produce a results that will give more fodder for conspiracy theorists. More troublingly, they worry the Arizona audit could be a model for Republicans to try elsewhere.“There’s not gonna be a valid result,” said the Arizona secretary of state, Katie Hobbs, a Democrat who is the state’s top election official. “They’re writing the playbook here to do this around the country.” Indeed, Trump allies are already pushing for a similar effort in a small town in New Hampshire. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right congresswoman in Georgia, has called for a similar audit in her state.Trump and allies have cheered on the effort. Outside the arena, Kelly Johnson, a 61-year-old from California, was among a small group of five people sitting in a tent who supported the effort. Johnson, who said he was at the Capitol on 6 January, when rioters stormed the building, claimed Trump didn’t fully have a chance to make his case in court after the election. Judges across the country, including several appointed by Trump, rejected several lawsuits to try and overturn the election results.A lot of people, he said, “are concerned … about whether or not the results are accurate because there has been no review, thorough review, accounting for results that anybody can have any confidence in”, he said.Last week, Hobbs, who has received death threats over her opposition, sent a letter to audit officials detailing problems with how it was being conducted. Many of the audit’s publicly-released procedures are vague, she wrote, laptops left unattended, and there weren’t guaranteed procedures in place to protect the chain of custody of ballots. The justice department sent its own letter to the Arizona senate expressing similar concerns as well as questioning a plan to knock on voters’ doors and to confirm their 2020 vote, which could lead to voter intimidation.Karen Fann, the Arizona senate president, replied on Friday, saying that auditors would “indefinitely defer” knocking on doors and that there were procedures in place to safeguard the ballots. She noted that the senate had hired Ken Bennett, a former Arizona secretary of state, to be “integrally involved in overseeing every facet of the audit”.But during several interviews with reporters last week, Bennett – a mild mannered and cheery 61-year-old – said he was unable to provide basic information about how the audit was running. He declined to say how many ballots the auditors were counting each day, instead pegging the overall estimate at about 200,000 counted ballots (as of Monday it had gone up to 275,000). After Anthony Kern, a Trump elector and former state lawmaker, appeared at a ballot counting table, Bennett said he was unsure how workers were being chosen (the Arizona Republic reported that far-right groups were involved in recruiting counters for the audit).And while audits usually ensure that representatives from both parties are present to inspect ballots, it’s unclear to what extent that’s happening, if at all, in Phoenix. Bennett said that 70% of observers – who do not count ballots – were Republicans and the remaining 30% were independents, libertarians and Democrats.While there were 46 tables set up to hold ballot counters in the arena last week, less than half of them were in use each day. Bennett told reporters repeatedly that the tables would soon be filled with additional workers who were undergoing background checks, but those workers have yet to materialize.Officials have also been opaque about what exactly they’re looking for in their analysis for ballot authenticity. In late April, auditors were seen scanning ballots with UV lights, arousing suspicion because of a QAnon conspiracy theory that Trump watermarked legitimate ballots after the election. Last week John Brakey, an activist assisting with the audit, said officials were looking for bamboo fibers in a nod to a baseless conspiracy theory that ballots were smuggled in from China. “I do think it’s somewhat of a waste of time, but it will help unhinge people,” Brakey said Wednesday. “They’re not gonna find bamboo … If they do, I think we need to know, don’t you?” Bennett quickly distanced himself from Brakey’s comments, saying: “I think that’s more of a euphemism for saying, ‘We’re looking for everything related to the paper so that we can verify that the ballots are authentic.’”Jeff Ellington, the president and CEO of Runbeck Election Services, which prints ballots for Maricopa county, said he couldn’t figure out what exactly auditors were looking for by examining the paper of the ballots.“What they’re doing is so cryptic,” he said. “It’s hard to know exactly what their game plan is on that.”Bennett and audit leaders have also declined repeatedly to comment on funding for the audit. The Arizona senate allocated just $150,000 to pay for the audit, far below the estimated cost. Trump-aligned figures, including attorney L Lin Wood and former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, have reportedly already donated to the effort. Two anchors with the One America News network, a far-right outlet, have also been fundraising. Last Tuesday, Christina Bobb, a reporter for the network, recorded a segment from the press box that both reported on the audit and promoted the fundraising effort.Last week, the counting itself looked relatively simple, even boring. Workers were divided up into four teams. Tables with lazy susans in the middle were scattered across the arena floor. Three workers sat at each table with a tally sheet and counted votes in the presidential and US senate race as the ballots spun around the table. Once they finished counting a batch, the ballots go to a second table, where workers photographed each side, and then scanned the ballots under microscopic cameras. Observers dressed in bright orange shirts roamed the floor and watched for wrongdoing. A banner for Phoenix’s women’s basketball team hangs high above the floor that says: “The Madhouse is our house.”Despite the benign appearance, expert observers say there are glaring problems with the audit. Jennifer Morrell, a former election official designated a floor observer by the secretary of state’s office, noted that the ballots were spinning quickly around the table, giving counters little time to see the marks on the paper. In instances where there were discrepancies in the count, Morrell said she saw each table handle recounts slightly differently. She was also alarmed to see that once the ballots were tallied, there was no check to ensure that workers were entering aggregate totals into software.There’s nobody verifying that what they entered was correct“There’s nobody verifying that what they entered was correct,” she said. “One person, single point of failure, as a former election official, someone who does audits, it’s a huge red flag for me,” she said.The audit has been livestreamed online since it began in late April, but in-person public access is limited to just a handful of pool reporters who rotate in five-hour shifts and watch the effort from the arena’s press box, a dust-covered section about 20 rows up in the stands. It was close enough to see the counting on the floor, but not enough to see any details (some reporters brought binoculars to try and get a better view). Armed members of Arizona Rangers, a volunteer auxiliary law enforcement group, were stationed in the box and members accompanied reporters to the bathroom.It’s not clear what exactly the endgame of the audit is. Hobbs said she expected the officials to issue a report based on procedures that would be difficult to replicate because the process was so opaque. And Bennett acknowledged last week there was likely to be some discrepancy between the auditors’ total and the official total.“I don’t think anyone’s expecting that you’re going to count 2.1m somethings twice, using different methods, and you’re going to come up with exactly the same number,” he said. “The only unacceptable error rate is when it’s enough to make a difference in a particular race. And I’m not expecting there to be a difference of that magnitude.”Even though the audit won’t change the outcome of the 2020 race, it could still do damage by falsely making it appear that there was something amiss with election machinery.“They are taking advantage of the lack of information that the public has regarding the complexities of our system. And they’re creating a false narrative, and they’re setting themselves up to sell that false narrative,” said Fontes, who lost his re-election bid in November.That dynamic is already on display. Arizona Republicans last week accused Maricopa county of wrongly not turning over internet routers as well as administrative passwords for voting tabulators. County officials have resisted, saying that only Dominion, the election equipment vendor, has the passwords, which aren’t necessary to conduct an audit. Providing the routers, they said, would also jeopardize county security and personal information. The Maricopa county sheriff ,Paul Penzone, a Democrat, called the request for the routers “mind-numbingly reckless”. Conservative outlets have misleadlingly pointed to that denial as evidence of potential unusual activity.This may be the ultimate point of the audit – not to bring any finality to the 2020 election, but simply to provide more rabbit holes to go down to question it.Fontes, the former Maricopa county election official, doubted that the audit would change the mind of anyone who doubted the results of the election.“It can’t convince the conspiracy theorists. The only thing that will convince the conspiracy theorists of anything is a Trump victory,” he said. “That’s the only thing that they will accept. And if that’s the case, then this doesn’t matter. They don’t care about the truth.” More

Sign up for the Guardian’s Fight to Vote newsletterA top official at one of America’s most influential conservative groups bragged about playing a key role in crafting voting restrictions across the country, according to leaked video published by Documented, a watchdog group, and Mother Jones on Thursday.Jessica Anderson, the executive director of Heritage Action for America, an advocacy group affiliated with the powerful Heritage Foundation, told donors in April that the group had both written statutes and provided support for lawmakers doing so. “In some cases, we actually draft them for them,” she said, according to Mother Jones. “Or we have a sentinel on our behalf give them the model legislation so it has that grassroots, from-the-bottom-up type of vibe.”The comments shed light on the effort behind the scenes to shape new voting restrictions across the country. At least 361 bills have been introduced in the US since the November election, according to an analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice.Anderson touted Heritage Action’s influence in several closely-watched states – Georgia, Arizona, Florida, and Iowa – all states that have implemented new voting restrictions in the wake of the 2020 election. In Iowa, which passed legislation that curtails the early voting period and makes it easier to remove people from the voter rolls. The group plans to spend $24m over the next two years.“Iowa is the first state that we got to work in, and we did it quickly and we did it quietly,” she said. “We helped draft the bills. We made sure activists were calling the state legislators, getting support, showing up at their public hearings, giving testimony … little fanfare. Honestly, nobody even noticed. My team looked at each other and we’re like, ‘It can’t be that easy.’”Heritage Action does not have to disclose its donors, but is extremely well funded, and has received money from the Koch brothers.Anderson also claimed Heritage Action was involved in supporting efforts to pass a sweeping new voting law in Georgia earlier this year. Barry Fleming, a Republican in the state legislature, praised donors for their support.“I can tell you, back in February, I felt like some days we were alone in Georgia,” he said. “And then the Heritage Foundation stepped in, and that began to bring us a boost to help turn around, get the truth out about what we were really trying to do. And I’m here in part to say thank you and God bless you.”But an official in the Georgia secretary of state’s office familiar with the drafting of the Georgia legislation that eventually became law said Heritage Action was not involved in it.“The only people actively writing and guiding SB 202 into its final draft were Representative Barry Fleming and secretary of state’s counsel Ryan Germany and Brian Tyson. They were individuals who were familiar with Georgia’s election system and knew what was possible to implement in order to make the process more transparent and secure,” the person said.“Bills that aimed to limit access to the polling place were quickly and effectively sidelined,” the official added.Anderson also touted the involvement of Hans von Spakovsky, a former justice department official who has been one of the key figures over the last several decades in spreading the myth of voter fraud across the US.Ultimately, Anderson framed the effort to restrict voting as a political one.“We are going to take the fierce fire that is in every single one of our bellies,” she said. “To right the wrongs of November.”Anderson defended the group’s work in a statement to Mother Jones.“We are proud of our work at the national level and in states across this country to promote commonsense reforms that make it easier to vote and harder to cheat. We’ve been transparent about our plans and public with our policy recommendations, and we won’t be intimidated by the left’s smear campaign and cancel culture.” More

Key events

Show

5.46pm EDT
17:46

Unvaccinated Latinos in the US want the shot – but have trouble with access

5.01pm EDT
17:01

Today so far

4.03pm EDT
16:03

‘Today is a great day for America,’ Biden says as CDC relaxes mask guidance

2.31pm EDT
14:31

Vaccinated people can participate in indoor activities without masks or distancing, CDC says

2.09pm EDT
14:09

Government to ease up guidance on indoor mask-wearing

1.22pm EDT
13:22

Today so far

12.33pm EDT
12:33

Colonial Pipeline now reaching full operational capacity but ‘hiccups’ likely, Biden says

Live feed

Show

5.46pm EDT
17:46

Unvaccinated Latinos in the US want the shot – but have trouble with access

Latinos in the US are reporting the lowest rates of vaccination. According to a new poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation, “one-third of unvaccinated Hispanic adults say they want a vaccine as soon as possible, about twice the share as among unvaccinated Black and White adults.”
Among unvaccinated Hispanic adults, nearly two-thirds were worried about missing work due to side effects, and half were worried they’d have to pay for it, the survey found. About 40% were worried they’d have to provide a social security number in order to get a vaccine and 35% were worried that signing up could affect them or their family’s immigration process – a holdover from the Trump administration’s “public charge” rule that held back green cards from immigrants who used public services.

5.17pm EDT
17:17

Chip Roy, a hardline conservative Republican congressman of Texas will run to replace Liz Cheney as GOP conference chair.
Roy had raised concerns that Elise Stefanik, the New York representative who is poised to ascend to conference chair after Republicans in the House ousted Cheney over her refusal to endorse false Trump’s election fraud conspiracy theory, is too moderate.
Despite Stefanik’s more moderate record on policy issues, the congresswoman has whole-heartedly embraced Trump and Trumpism, earning the favor of the former president. Roy, a member of the Freedom Caucus, wrote a letter to colleagues advising against electing Stefanik, based on her votes against Trump’s border wall and tax cuts, and her votes for climate action.
Roy blamed members such as Stefanik for the party’s losses in 2018. It was members like her “playing footsie with Democrats on issues like HR5 (Equality Act) that led to Democrats steamrolling us in 2018” he said in his letter. The Equality Act would prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity – most Republican lawmakers have staunchly opposed the anti-discrimination law, but Stefanik voted for it once.

Updated
at 5.29pm EDT

5.01pm EDT
17:01

Today so far

That’s it from me today. My west coast colleague, Maanvi Singh, will take over the blog for the next few hours.
Here’s where the day stands so far:

The CDC said fully vaccinated Americans no longer had to wear masks in most settings, marking a crucial moment in the country’s return to normalcy more than a year after the start of the coronavirus pandemic. “If you are fully vaccinated, you can start doing the things that you had stopped doing because of the pandemic,” said CDC director Rochelle Walensky.
Joe Biden celebrated the new CDC mask guidance, saying, “Today is a great day for America.” The president delivered remarks on the CDC news in the White House Rose Garden, notably not wearing a mask as he spoke to the American people. “For now, after a year of hard work and so much sacrifice, the rule is very simple: get vaccinated or wear a mask until you do,” Biden said.
Biden said the Colonial Pipeline is now reaching full operational capacity, after a ransomware attack shut down the pipeline for several days. The president warned that it may take a few days to see the effect of the pipeline coming back online, as there could be “hiccups” as it resumes normal operations. Several east coast states have suffered gasoline shortages in recent days, as Americans went into panic-buying mode because of the shutdown.
House speaker Nancy Pelosi condemned Republicans’ “sick” efforts to downplay the violence of the 6 January insurrection. The Democratic speaker addressed the comments from Andrew Clyde, who said yesterday that the footage of the insurrection looked like “a normal tourist visit”. “I don’t know a normal day around here when people are threatening to hang the vice-president of the United States or shoot the speaker in the forehead,” Pelosi said. “It was beyond denial. It fell into the range of sick.”
Liz Cheney did not rule out the possibility of launching a presidential bid against Donald Trump to prevent him from returning to the White House. Speaking to the Today show shortly after she was removed as House Republican conference chair, Cheney said of Trump, “He must not ever again be anywhere close to the Oval Office.”

Maanvi will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

Updated
at 5.05pm EDT

4.43pm EDT
16:43

House speaker Nancy Pelosi told CNN that she will not be relaxing the rule requiring masks in the chamber because not all members have been vaccinated, even though they have been eligible for months.

Manu Raju
(@mkraju)
Speaker Nancy Pelosi told me “no” she isn’t changing the rule requiring masks on the House floor.“No,” Pelosi said. “Are they all vaccinated?”

May 13, 2021

The Democratic speaker said two weeks ago that about 75% of House members have been vaccinated, a number that was virtually unchanged from a month earlier.

4.31pm EDT
16:31

The mayor of Washington said she and her public health team are reviewing the new CDC recommendations to determine whether to relax the city’s guidance on masks.
“Consistent with past practice, we are immediately reviewing the CDC guidance and will update DC Health guidance accordingly,” Muriel Bowser said on Twitter.
The Democratic mayor added it is “critical that every resident, worker and visitor get vaccinated to help us crush the virus”.

Mayor Muriel Bowser
(@MayorBowser)
1/ Consistent with past practice, we are immediately reviewing the CDC guidance and will update DC Health guidance accordingly.

May 13, 2021

4.20pm EDT
16:20

Joe Biden took a few questions from reporters after concluding his prepared remarks on the new mask guidance from the CDC.
Asked about his meeting with Senate Republicans today to discuss his infrastructure plan, the president said they had a “very, very good” conversation.
“I am very optimistic that we can reach a reasonable agreement,” Biden said, adding that both sides have engaged in a “good-faith effort” to find a compromise on an infrastructure package.
With that, Biden and Kamala Harris walked out of the Rose Garden without wearing masks.

4.15pm EDT
16:15

Joe Biden reiterated the new CDC guidance that fully vaccinated people are no longer required to wear masks in most settings.
“For now, after a year of hard work and so much sacrifice, the rule is very simple: get vaccinated or wear a mask until you do,” Biden said.
The president was also careful to encourage people to be kind to those who still feel more comfortable wearing masks.
“We’ve had too much conflict, too much bitterness, too much anger, too much politicization of this issue about wearing masks,” Biden said. “Let’s put it to rest. Let’s remember we’re all Americans. Let’s remember that we are all in this together.”

Updated
at 4.17pm EDT

4.10pm EDT
16:10

Joe Biden celebrated the new CDC guidance on mask-wearing, but he also emphasized that the country had much more work to do to get the virus completely under control.
“The safest thing for the country is for everyone to get vaccinated,” Biden said.
The president noted it was easier than ever to get vaccinated, as all American adults are now eligible to receive a shot.
“We’re still losing too many Americans because we still have too many unvaccinated people,” Biden said.

4.07pm EDT
16:07

Joe Biden noted that this “great day” has come at a great cost to country, which has lost more than 580,000 people to coronavirus.
The president expressed his condolences to all Americans who had lost loved ones to coronavirus, and he expressed hope that their memories would soon bring more happiness than sadness.

4.03pm EDT
16:03

‘Today is a great day for America,’ Biden says as CDC relaxes mask guidance

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris walked out to the Rose Garden without wearing masks, after the CDC announced that fully vaccinated people did not have to wear masks in most settings.
As Biden walked up to the podium with an uncovered face, Harris could be heard telling him, “Great smile.”
Biden began his remarks by saying, “Today is a great day for America in our long battle against coronavirus.”

Joe Biden
(@JoeBiden)
Today is a great day for America in our long battle with COVID-19. Just a few hours ago, the CDC announced they are no longer recommending that fully vaccinated people need to wear masks.

May 13, 2021

The president said this “great milestone” was made possible by the country’s great success in getting hundreds of millions of vaccine doses to the American people.
As of today, more than 250 million shots have been administered since Biden took office in January.

Updated
at 4.07pm EDT

3.58pm EDT
15:58

The White House Rose Garden is all set up for Joe Biden’s remarks on the coronavirus pandemic and the CDC’s new guidance on mask-wearing.

Steve Holland
(@steveholland1)
Nice day in the Rose Garden pic.twitter.com/FBMi7DjzC5

May 13, 2021

It’s 70 degrees Fahrenheit and sunny in Washington, so it’s a beautiful day to announce that fully vaccinated people no longer have to wear masks in most settings.
Biden was supposed to start speaking about 15 minutes ago, but as per usual, he is running late, so stay tuned for updates.

3.41pm EDT
15:41

Shelley Moore Capito said her group of Senate Republicans had a “very productive” meeting with Joe Biden to discuss the president’s infrastructure plan.
“We did talk specifics,” Capito said. “And the president asked has asked us to come back and rework an offer so that he could then react to that and then re-offer to us, so we’re very encouraged.”
She added that she was “grateful to the president and his staff for the give and take that we shared in the Oval Office”. Capito described Biden as being “very much desirous of striking a deal”.

Updated
at 3.47pm EDT

3.31pm EDT
15:31

Joe Biden and Republican senators took their masks off during their infrastructure meeting after hearing about the new CDC guidance, according to Shelley Moore Capito.
“We heard all about it,” Capito said of the CDC update after leaving the meeting. “The president took his [mask] off too.”

Jennifer Jacobs
(@JenniferJJacobs)
“We did,” @SenCapito tells me when I asked of they all took their masks off in Oval. “We heard all about it” she said of new CDC guidance. pic.twitter.com/LHJM5BlWv9

May 13, 2021

Updated
at 3.37pm EDT

3.13pm EDT
15:13

Ben Wakana, a member of the White House pandemic response team, said the CDC could relax the mask guidance for vaccinated Americans because the vaccines have proven effective and those who have been vaccinated are unlikely to spread coronavirus.

Ben Wakana
(@benwakana46)
Here are the reasons why the masks can come off now:1. Vaccines are effective in the real world2. Vaccines work against the variants3. Vaccinated people are unlikely to spread COVID

May 13, 2021

3.05pm EDT
15:05

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell was seen exiting the chamber without a mask on, after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention relaxed its mask guidance for fully vaccinated Americans.
“Free at last,” the Republican leader told reporters on Capitol Hill.

Nicholas Fandos
(@npfandos)
“Free at last,” says a maskless Mitch McConnell, as he exits the Senate for the week. pic.twitter.com/YfbWekZ9BW

May 13, 2021

2.55pm EDT
14:55

The White House has informed staffers that they no longer need to wear masks at work if they are fully vaccinated, according to the Washington Post.

Tyler Pager
(@tylerpager)
NEWS: The White House just sent an email to staff that masks are no longer required on campus for those who are fully vaccinated.

May 13, 2021

2.50pm EDT
14:50

This is the exact wording from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the new guidance for fully vaccinated Americans:

Risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection is minimal for fully vaccinated people. The risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission from fully vaccinated people to unvaccinated people is also reduced. Therefore, fully vaccinated people can resume activities without wearing a mask or physically distancing, except where required by federal, state, local, tribal, or territorial laws, rules and regulations, including local business and workplace guidance. Fully vaccinated people should also continue to wear a well-fitted mask in correctional facilities and homeless shelters. …
CDC prevention measures continue to apply to all travelers, including those who are vaccinated. All travelers are required to wear a mask on all planes, buses, trains, and other forms of public transportation traveling into, within, or out of the United States and in U.S. transportation hubs such as airports and stations.

2.42pm EDT
14:42

This new graphic from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention demonstrates the importance of the agency’s new guidance for fully vaccinated people.
On the righthand side of the visual, it shows that fully vaccinated people can safely go without masks in almost all settings.

Ed O’Keefe
(@edokeefe)
HELPFUL VISUAL AID via @CDCgov: pic.twitter.com/PYfmEbgwu1

May 13, 2021

2.38pm EDT
14:38

Despite the encouraging new guidance, Dr Rochelle Walensky said fully vaccinated Americans should continue to wear masks when on modes of public transportation, such as airplanes, buses or trains.
But fully vaccinated people are not required to wear masks in almost any other setting, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
Asked how fully vaccinated people should handle situations where they are not sure if everyone around them has been vaccinated, Walensky noted it is the unvaccinated people (not the vaccinated people) who are assuming some risk in that scenario. More

Sign up for the Guardian’s Fight to Vote newsletterBy now, you’ve probably heard about the unprecedented effort to recount 2.1m votes in Arizona and all of the wacky conspiracy theories – including searching for bamboo fibers in ballots – that the effort seems to be amplifying.I watched this effort in person for three days last week. Election administration experts – who usually go out of their way to be non-partisan – have raised alarms about the process. But as I watched it unfold in Phoenix from the press box about 20 rows up from the arena floor, I couldn’t shake the idea of how benign, even normal, the whole thing might look to a casual observer. Three different counters at each table were tallying ballots, which were then photographed and scanned – what exactly was happening that made this so dangerous?I posed this question to Jennifer Morrell, who was on the floor observing the counting as a representative of the Arizona secretary of state’s office. Morrell, a former elections official from Colorado, specializes in the machinery of elections – the technology, the counting procedures and all the other wonky things that make elections run smoothly. She is not a flame-throwing partisan. But as we talked on the phone last week, I could tell from her voice that what she was seeing in the Arizona recount really bothered her.One of the biggest red flags for her, she told me, came not during the counting, but afterwards, when workers entered the aggregated total tallies from counts into computers. Morrell was deeply worried that there was only a single person responsible for entering the data and no one to check that they weren’t inadvertently entering a wrong number or accidentally switching the candidates.“There’s nobody verifying that what they entered was correct. There’s no reading out. These are things that you would typically see in an election office whether they were doing an audit, recount, where you want some sort of quality control mechanism in place,” she said.Morrell also expressed concern with the procedures in place to keep a baseline count of the ballots being handled across the audit. If a box of ballots says it has a certain amount of ballots in it, workers should count when they open the box to make sure that there’s actually that amount of ballots in there. And when ballots leave each station, they should also ensure that all of the ballots are accounted for. Not every station in the audit is doing that.At the counting table, the ballots spin around on a lazy susan to three different counters who are counting the presidential and US Senate races. As long as two of the three counters agree in their tallies and the third counter is within three votes, the tally is accepted. But when there is disagreement, the tables have to go back and redo their count. Morrell said she noticed that different tables had slightly different procedures for doing so. Some tables would go back and recount the whole batch of ballots, while others might just recount a smaller proportion of them.“It’s the consistency that’s an issue for me,” she said. “There’s no audit or even recount process that looks like this.”Aside from ballot counting, auditors are also performing a so-called forensic analysis of the ballot paper. The whole thing looks very hi-tech and official – ballots are photographed and then placed under a sophisticated-looking machine with microscopic cameras that is supposed to give a detailed analysis of the ballots.Jovan Pulitzer, a failed inventor and conspiracy theorist, is reportedly helping auditors with this portion of their review. He purports to have developed technology that can detect fraudulent ballots by looking for folds in the paper, as well as analyzing whether the ballots were marked by a human or a machine, the latter of which is, in his view, suspicious.Adrian Fontes, the former Maricopa county recorder who oversaw the 2020 election, said this process wouldn’t tell the auditors anything. If ballots arrive at an election office damaged, he said, they are duplicated electronically and then printed out with machine-made marks. This isn’t a sign of fraud – it’s a sign the process is working.Tammy Patrick, a former Maricopa county election official who now works with election administrators across the country as a senior adviser at the Democracy Fund, also noted that folds in a ballot don’t tell you anything about a ballot’s authenticity.PT 1For those who need to hear it again:📬Not all VBM/EV ballots that were tallied in Maricopa will be folded.✍Some may have been remade/duplicated onto ballot stock that was never mailed:🌍Military & overseas votes😎 Braille/lg print ballots☕ Damaged/torn ballots— Tammy Patrick (@aztammyp) May 12, 2021
Pt 2And some in person ballots WILL be folded–such as provisionals.Again: 🤦‍♀️FOLDS 🤦‍♀️MEAN 🤦‍♀️ABSOLUTELY 🤦‍♀️NOTHINGIt is disingenuous & deceptive to imply otherwise.— Tammy Patrick (@aztammyp) May 12, 2021
“They are taking advantage of the lack of information that the public has regarding the complexities of our system. And they’re creating a false narrative, and they’re setting themselves up to sell that false narrative.” Fontes told me. “I’m afraid they’re going to come out and say ‘oh we found pre-printed ballots’ and there aren’t going to be enough people who stand up and say ‘well no shit.’”Also worth watching …
Arizona Republicans approved a new law on Tuesday that essentially does away with a longstanding state policy of allowing residents to choose to permanently receive a mail-in ballot. Under the new measure, which will take effect in 2026, a voter can be removed from the list if they don’t vote by mail in two consecutive primary and general elections. State officials estimated in February that 200,000 voters could be affected.
Senate Democrats advanced S1, the sweeping voting rights proposal that would amount to the most significant expansion of voting rights in a generation. But the bill still faces a huge hurdle on the Senate floor because Democrats don’t have enough votes to overcome the filibuster, a procedural rule that requires 60 votes to advance legislation. The West Virginia senator Joe Manchin, a key Democratic holdout on the issue, told ABC News on Wednesday he favors passing separate legislation that would fully restore a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act over the sweeping bill. It’s unclear how Democrats will proceed on both measures. More

Liz Cheney has refused to rule out running for US president if it would prevent Donald Trump from ever taking charge of the White House again, saying she will do “whatever it takes” to stop her fellow Republican.Cheney, who on Wednesday was ousted as House Republican conference chair by her colleagues, in a voice vote behind closed doors, was asked three times on NBC’s Today show in an interview aired on Thursday whether she would run to stymie a comeback by the former president.While not saying directly that she would, she declined to dismiss the suggestion each time.Trump’s hold on the Republican party is the “most important issue that we are facing right now as a country, and we’re facing a huge array of issues, so he must not ever again be anywhere close to the Oval Office”, Cheney said.“Right now I’m very focused on making sure that our party becomes again a party that stands for truth and stands for fundamental principles that are conservative and mostly stands for the constitution, and I won’t let a former president or anyone else unravel the democracy,” she told NBC’s Savannah Guthrie.Cheney, the House representative from Wyoming, was deposed from her leadership role after voting in February to impeach Trump for his role in the 6 January insurrection, where a pro-Trump mob stormed the US Capitol following a speech by him.She has also criticized the former president over his continued lies that the 2020 election, which he lost, was rigged.This stance has put her at odds with Republicans who refuse to distance themselves from the twice-impeached Trump, who remains a popular figure among a base of GOP voters.Any attempt by Cheney to claim the Republican nomination for the 2024 election would appear to be an extreme long shot, given Trump’s enduring appeal to the conservative base. But it would probably achieve a level of disruption that could hinder Trump if the one-term president chooses to run for the GOP nomination again.“For reasons I don’t understand leaders in my party have embraced the president who launched that attack,” Cheney told NBC. “I think you’ve watched over the course of the last several months, the former president get more aggressive, more vocal, pushing the lie.”She added: “This isn’t about looking backwards, this is about the real-time current potential damage that he’s doing, that he continues to do. It’s an ongoing threat, silence is not an option.”Cheney said that Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House minority leader, is “not leading with principle right now”, calling his actions to push her out of her No. 3 position “sad and dangerous”.Cheney said that McCarthy’s trip to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida to see for outgoing president following the Capitol riot was “stunning. I can’t understand why you’d want to go and rehabilitate him.”Cheney said her ousting was not a surprise but said she would not leave the party and speculated that several of her colleagues were worried what a commission into the 6 January riot would uncover.In defending their removal of Cheney, several Republicans have said that her attacks on Trump had become a distraction to opposing Joe Biden. Trump, for his part, has called Cheney is a “bitter, horrible human being”. More

Today, public feeling toward labor is more positive, and public feeling toward big business more negative, than at any time in five decades. What’s more, workers increasingly want to be in unions: over half of Americans say they would vote for a union at work, while only 11 percent of US employees currently belong to one – largely because labor laws remain stacked in favor of big business.Americans’ rising affinity for organized labor and antipathy toward big business opens up new possibilities for a more balanced economy and society – but not without reform to the labor laws that hold workers back. For instance, because penalties are negligible, Amazon management has repeatedly violated workers’ rights when workers acted collectively to improve their working conditions. When workers at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, recently started to unionize, management seems to have acted illegally again and the unionization effort failed. By making an example of one person, bank robbers can control a whole crowd; too many managers have felt free to follow that logic with impunity.Between 1964, when the American National Election Studies (ANES) began collecting data, and 2012, Americans’ sentiment toward labor unions and big business trended together, each suffering public opinion surges and dips in tandem. But by 2016, these sentiments had unlinked: Americans’ feelings toward big business chilled, while feelings toward labor unions warmed. ANES just released data from late 2020, and it reveals that this post-2012 trend continued into the pandemic.Today, all political and all age cohorts hold record or near-record positive views favoring labor over big business. Looking across generations, Americans born after 1975 have particularly strong positive feelings toward labor unions over big business. Democrats and independents have always felt more positively toward labor unions and less positively toward big business than Republicans, and that pro-union bent has risen to record heights since 2012. But even among Republicans, the union versus big business sentiment gap rose quickly between 2012 and 2016, and hit a record high in 2020.So, why the recent public sentiment uptick? Since 2012, workers have organized and engaged in highly publicized minimum wage and union fights, which helped populist wings ascend and anti-labor, pro-business wings weaken within each party. Since 2016, Senator Bernie Sanders, long a vocal advocate of labor and antagonist of big business, has helped solidify a strong pro-labor constituency in the Democratic party and within the broader political landscape. Sanders’s prominent presidential campaigns served as an organizing vehicle for a pro-labor left, and he continues to help garner public support for union efforts. As president, Biden has taken unprecedented pro-labor stances and helped consolidate liberal support for unions.The left isn’t the only reason why union support is up nationwide. Ironically, for all of Trump’s atrocious anti-labor and pro-corporate policies, his phony populism may have realigned labor-business opinion among Republican voters. His red-herring bloviating in support of unions and against corporations could be partly responsible for broadening labor and declining big business sentiment, especially among some Americans on the right.The shift of public opinion in favor of organized labor comes against a backdrop of decades of declining union membership rates but rising union interest among workers. As such, the representation gap – the difference between the share of workers who’d like to be in a union and those who are – is wider than it’s been in decades.Beyond the impact unions have on their members – including higher wages, better health, retirement and other fringe benefits, and reduced racial resentment – unions benefit non-member workers, too. Higher pay in union firms can increase competition for labor such that nonunion firms raise wages. Strong unions reduce inequality, and they increase voter turnout, the election of working- and middle-class Americans to public office, and charitable giving.Unions also help workers establish and leverage a collective voice to raise concerns and demand better protections, making them especially valuable to workers when the Covid-19 pandemic has upended long-held expectations of workplace norms. Indeed, evidence from the pandemic suggests that union members had safer workplace practices and conditions than nonunion members, and risk of Covid led to greater interest in unionization and greater willingness to engage in workplace collective actions, like going on strike or joining a protest.The combination of the public’s heightened sympathy for unions and the widening representation gap underscores how biased our current labor laws are against workers. Because unionization pulls power toward workers and away from managers and owners, employers go to extreme lengths – from outright intimidation to illegally firing leaders – to suppress unionization. Penalties for violating workers’ rights to organize are negligible, letting managers violate workers’ rights with impunity.New legislation – like the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act – can help rebalance bargaining power in the labor market, supporting workers’ ability to bargain on more-equal terms with representatives of concentrated wealth. If passed, the PRO Act would repeal state laws that undermine unions, institute tougher penalties for employers who violate workers’ rights to organize, and recognize gig workers’ right to collectively bargain.Independent of the PRO Act’s legislative future – a future made uncertain by the Senate’s long history of obstructing progressive labor reform – the swelling public support for labor and simultaneous declining support for big business suggests a transformational shift in terrain. While previously, public perception of organized labor and organized capital was balanced, that no longer holds. These days, Americans worry far more about organized capital than organized labor.
Emily DiVito is program manager for the corporate power program at the Roosevelt Institute
Aaron Sojourner is a labor economist at the University of Minnesota, a Roosevelt Institute fellow, and a former senior economist for labor at the US President’s Council of Economic Advisers under Presidents Obama and Trump More