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Anthony Fauci describes 'liberating feeling' of no longer working under Trump
Sign up for the Guardian Today US newsletterAnthony Fauci, the top infectious diseases expert in the US, spoke on Thursday of a “liberating feeling” of being able to speak scientific truth about the coronavirus without fear of “repercussions” from Donald Trump.Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, endured a tortuous relationship with the former president and was increasingly sidelined from public briefings.But the 80-year-old returned to the White House podium on Thursday after Joe Biden released a national Covid-19 strategy and signed 10 executive orders to combat a pandemic that has now claimed more than 400,000 lives in the US.“One of the things that we’re going to do is to be completely transparent, open and honest,” Fauci told reporters. “If things go wrong, not point fingers, but to correct them. And to make everything we do be based on science and evidence.“That was literally a conversation I had 15 minutes ago with the president and he has said that multiple times.”Asked if he would like to amend or clarify anything he said during the Trump presidency, Fauci insisted he had always been candid, noting wryly. “That’s why I got in trouble sometimes.”Fauci and other public health advisers were forced to walk a delicate line as the president used coronavirus taskforce briefings to downplay the virus, push miracle cures and score political points. On one occasion Trump mused about injecting patients with disinfectant but the response coordinator Deborah Birx remained silent.Fauci’s frankness did not go unnoticed. During the election race in October, Trump reportedly told campaign staff: “Fauci is a disaster. If I listened to him, we’d have 500,000 deaths.” At a rally in early November, as crowds chanted “Fire Fauci! Fire Fauci!”, the president suggested he might do just that.At Thursday’s briefing, Fauci was asked how it feels to no longer have Trump looming over him. “Obviously, I don’t want to be going back over history but it’s very clear that there were things that were said – be it regarding things like hydroxychloroquine [pushed as a treatment by Trump] and things like that – that really was uncomfortable because they were not based on scientific fact.“I can tell you, I take no pleasure at all in being in a situation of contradicting the president, so it was really something that you didn’t feel that you could actually say something and there wouldn’t be any repercussions about it. The idea that you can get up here and talk about what you know, what the evidence, what the science is and know that’s it, let the science speak, it is something of a liberating feeling.”Although Biden had just condemned vaccine distribution under the Trump administration as a “dismal failure so far”, Fauci said the new team is “not starting from scratch” as it tries to get shots in arms more quickly. “I believe the goal that was set by the president, of getting 100 million people vaccinated in 100 days, is quite a reasonable goal.”He added: “If we get 70% to 85% of the country vaccinated, let’s say by the end of the summer, middle of the summer, I believe, by the time we get to the fall, we will be approaching a degree of normality.”Possible US plateauFauci told the briefing that, based on seven-day averages, the coronavirus may be plateauing in this US but warned that there can always be lags in data reporting. “One of the new things about this new administration: if you don’t know the answer, don’t guess,” he said.After Fauci’s return to the west wing, Nicole Wallace, a former White House communications director, told viewers of the MSNBC network: “It seems like this briefing will forever be remembered as the one where Tony Fauci got his groove back.”The executive orders signed by Biden establish a Covid-19 testing board to increase testing, address supply shortfalls, establish protocols for international travelers and direct resources to hard-hit minority communities. They also require mask-wearing in airports and on certain public transport, including many trains, planes and intercity buses.Fauci was followed at the restored daily White House briefing by the press secretary, Jen Psaki. She confirmed that the new administration would seek a five-year extension of the New Start treaty with Russia that limits the arsenals of both countries to 1,550 deployed strategic warheads each.The 2010 treaty, the last remaining arms control treaty in the wake of the Trump administration, is due to expire on 5 February, but an extension would be feasible if Russia agrees, even in the remaining two weeks. Vladimir Putin has signaled he is open to an extension.“The president has long been clear that the New Start treaty is in the national security interests of the United States, and this extension makes even more sense when the relationship with Russia is adversarial as it is at this time,” Psaki said. “New Start is the only remaining treaty constraining Russian nuclear forces, and is an anchor of strategic stability between our two countries.”But she added that the administration would “hold Russia to account for its reckless and adversarial actions” and that US intelligence would assess the Solar Winds cyber-attack last year, the attempted murder of the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and reported Russian bounties for the killing of US soldiers by extremist groups in Afghanistan. More
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'A liberating feeling': Fauci critiques Trump administration – video
Dr Anthony Fauci made not-so-veiled critiques of the Trump administration during a White House press briefing on Thursday. He said the new administration meant he did not need to ‘guess’ when he didn’t know the answer to questions.
The health expert said the new administration felt ‘liberating’ and he did not take pleasure correcting the president and facing consequences for doing so.
But Fauci pushed back against the characterization from some Biden officials that the new administration has to start ‘from scratch’ on coronavirus vaccine distribution
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California has environmental allies once again with Biden in the White House
California has led the resistance to Donald Trump’s efforts to roll back environmental regulations in the past four years, with the state’s attorney general, Xavier Becerra, filing a whopping 122 lawsuits challenging Trump administration rules, most of them focused on climate and public health.Now, following Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s swearing in on Wednesday, the Golden state once again has allies in the White House when it comes to environmental protections.Faced with a host of challenges caused by the climate crisis, including growing water scarcity, intensifying heat waves and an ever more dire wildfire risk, environmental regulations are high on California’s policy priority list. The Biden administration shares many of the state’s concerns, and isn’t wasting any time in addressing the deregulation efforts of the previous administration.On his first day in office, Biden released a long, non-exclusive list of Trump policies that will be up for review as part of his new initiative to prioritize public health and climate change. The list is intended as a roadmap for US officials, especially those at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Interior where Trump made significant headway in gutting regulations, and shows how the president plans to use his ambitious environmental goals to bring the country back in line.Many of his outlined priorities neatly align with California’s goals and will ring familiar in the state. “The really ambitious goals that [Biden] has in his plan, a lot of them are modeled on California,” said Jared Blumenfeld, the state’s top environmental regulator, told Politico. “We really want to work with the administration to show what is possible. Whether it’s his goal of getting 2035 carbon-free energy or how we think about zero-emission vehicles or building standards or all the things we’ve done over the last 30 years, what we want to do is work with him to scale that.”Here’s a look at some of the key environmental issues for California in Biden’s plan.Vehicle standardsCalifornia has long set its own pace for climate policy, but the Trump administration sought to stomp out the state’s attempts, particularly when it comes to fuel-efficiency regulations. The EPA revoked the state’s Clean Air Act waiver, barring California from setting its own greenhouse gas standards on vehicles.Biden is expected to reverse that decision and his presidency will pave the way for California to have more control on car manufacturers, a crucial part of the state’s carbon-cutting plan. The California governor, Gavin Newsom, has proposed a plan to stop the sale of gasoline-powered passenger cars and trucks in the next 15 years, a move that, if approved, will push the industry to move faster toward electric.Oil and gas drillingUnder Trump, the Bureau of Land Management changed its evaluation process for leasing to the oil and gas industry to fast-track and expand development on public lands. At the end of 2019, the agency, which is housed under the US Department of the Interior, moved forward with a plan to open up roughly 1.2m acres across California’s central valley for oil and gas drilling. Environmentalists are hopeful the Biden administration will reset the rules and revoke leases that are already underway.California also challenged Trump’s repeal of regulations governing hydraulic fracturing – the process more commonly known as “fracking” that uses high-pressure injections of water, chemicals, and other substances, to extract natural gas housed in underground rock formations. The process has been tied to increases in seismic activity and can cause dangerous substances to leach into the water supply. Trump overturned regulations that required companies to detail plans to prevent leakage and data on chemicals used, and those repeals are now under review.Water warsTrump waded deep into California’s complex water wars with a plan to divert more of the scarce and valuable water resource from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to farmers in the central valley, who are among his strongest supporters in the state. Trump openly ridiculed California’s conservation policies, including protections for a fish called the delta smelt, which is nearing extinction from long periods of drought. California officials bristled at the intervention, arguing that it would harm delicate ecosystems and the endangered fish, and fishermen also filed a suit to challenge the rules. Biden’s review list includes the changed determination for the smelt, and California officials may have the final word.Protecting animalsThe Trump administration in 2019 revised the Endangered Species Act of 1973, adding new criteria for listing and removing animals that may be at risk. The changes increase the opportunity to remove some animals from protection or weigh commercial and corporate needs when considering how to designate critical habitat. Biden has put the rule change up for review, as well as some specific cases where changes in designation have already been made. The northern spotted owl, an inhabitant of the forests in the Pacific north-west, had 3.5m acres – more than a third of its habitat – slashed to give the timber industry more access. The monarch butterfly, which migrates across the US to Mexico each year, didn’t make the list last year even though less than 2,000 were counted in an annual tally taken along California’s coast this year. That marks a 99.9% drop since the 1980s. Protections for the sage-grouse, an imperiled bird known for their unique mating dances that lives in a geographically isolated area along the California-Nevada border, were eased by the Trump administration to pave the way to open up mining and drilling in the area. More
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Fight to vote: Biden moves to fix US census less than 24 hours after taking office
Happy Thursday,After an inauguration in which Amanda Gorman left America breathless with her poetry, Lady Gaga and Jennifer Lopez sparkled, and Bernie Sanders, well, was Bernie Sanders, today is the first full day of Joe Biden’s presidency.Moving forward from an election in which there was record turnout and Republicans made a deliberate and concerted effort to overturn the results, voting rights are set to be a major agenda item for Democrats as they take control of the federal government. There are already efforts percolating in some states to make it harder to vote. And less than 24 hours after he took office, Biden took action on one major item.Fixing the censusOn Wednesday, the president signed an executive order blocking the Census Bureau from excluding undocumented immigrants from the apportionment data used to determine how many seats in Congress each state gets. The move essentially ends a years-long effort by the Trump administration to get the Census Bureau to collect citizenship data that states could in turn use to diminish the political power of immigrants. The United States has long followed the constitutional mandate to apportion seats based on “the whole numbers of persons in each state”, and civil rights groups aggressively challenged the measure in court.“I thunderously applaud the Biden administration’s action on day one to rescind the Trump’s administration’s directive to compile data on non-citizens for partisan purposes. While legal challenges and logistical challenges never allowed the directive to have its effect, it marred the 2020 census,” said Arturo Vargas, CEO of the Naleo educational fund.As NPR noted, Biden’s order does not address separate instructions from Wilbur Ross, the former commerce secretary, ordering the Census Bureau to produce block level citizenship data states could use for redistricting if they want. Drawing districts based only on the voting eligible population, not all voters, “would be advantageous to Republicans and Non-Hispanic Whites,” a top GOP redistricting strategist wrote in 2015.Meanwhile, on Capitol HillChuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, announced on Tuesday that they would push ahead with legislation with a slew of significant voting reforms that would amount to the most dramatic overhaul of America’s election laws in decades.From a violent insurrection to countless attempts to suppress votes:Attacks on democracy have come in many forms.The first bill the @SenateDems majority will introduce will be the #ForThePeople Act to renew democracy, end big money in politics, and tackle corruption. #S1— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) January 19, 2021
Among other provisions, the legislation, which passed the US House in 2019, would:Require early voting and same-day registration for federal elections.
Require states to automatically register voters who interact with certain state agencies and place limits on how aggressively states can remove voters from the rolls
Require states to set up independent commissions to draw congressional districts, reducing the potential for excessive partisan gerrymandering.
Democrats are also expected to pursue separate legislation to restore a key provision of the Voting Rights Act that required places with a history with voting discrimination to pre-clear voting changes before they go into effect.But as things stand right now, Democrats won’t be able to pass either bill unless they can get 10 Republicans to sign on and overcome a Senate filibuster, a procedural move that can be used to hold up legislation.Also worth watching …More than a dozen civil rights groups in Georgia called for the resignation of a Republican election official in Gwinnett county, a battleground outside Atlanta that has shifted Democratic in recent years. Alice O’Lenick is currently serving as the chair of the elections board in Gwinnett county and recently called for Republicans to change voting laws in the state so “we at least have a shot at winning”, according to the Gwinnett Daily Post.
After the 2020 election, Ohio removed nearly 98,000 voters from its rolls as part of its regular process to keep voter information up to date, according to Cleveland.com. But what struck me about the story is that there were initially more than 115,000 people set to be removed, but more than 10,000 people prevented themselves from being purged by voting in November. That means there were at least 10,000 eligible voters who the state nearly purged erroneously. While the Ohio secretary of state, Frank LaRose, a Republican, has earned praise for publishing the list of people set to be purged before they are removed, such a high error rate suggests that Ohio’s process for flagging ineligible voters is prone to mistakes and could disenfranchise voters. More - in Elections
Coronavirus: Joe Biden to sign executive actions aimed at ending pandemic
Sign up for the Guardian’s First Thing newsletterJoe Biden is planning to sign another set of executive actions on Thursday, his first full day in the White House, aimed at making good on his plans to utilize the might of the federal government to end the coronavirus pandemic.His administration plans a coordinated federal coronavirus response aimed at restoring trust in the government and focused on boosting vaccines, increasing testing, reopening schools and addressing inequalities thrown up by the disease.“We can and will beat Covid-19. America deserves a response to the Covid-19 pandemic that is driven by science, data and public health – not politics,” the White House said in a statement outlining the administration’s national strategy on Covid-19 response and pandemic preparedness.The administration’s new strategy is based around seven major goals: restoring public trust in government efforts, getting more vaccine doses into more arms, mitigating the spread – including mask mandates – emergency economic relief, a strategy to get schools and workers functioning again, establishing an equity taskforce to address disparities in suffering involving issues of race, ethnicity and geography, and preparing for future threats.Biden has pledged to vaccinate 100 million people in 100 days and reverse the impact of a year of mismanaged response under Donald Trump that saw more than 400,000 people die and more than 24 million infected – by far the worst rates in the world.More than 4,200 people died of coronavirus in the US on Wednesday, the second highest daily total of an outbreak that had its first confirmed case exactly a year ago.But his raft of executive orders is set to go far beyond just boosting vaccination efforts.The US president plans to re-engage with the World Health Organization, a reversal from the Trump administration’s move to cut ties during the pandemic and the new president is also starting a White House Covid-19 response team.Anthony Fauci, the key public health official dealing with the pandemic for the Trump administration and now for Biden’s, made a speech to the World Health Organization pre-dawn on Thursday after being chosen to head the US delegation to the global health group in one of the first acts of the Biden presidency.Fauci said letters had been delivered to the group to formally retract the process of US withdrawal from the WHO that Trump had announced last May after declaring it was too “China-centric” and disproportionately funded by the US to no benefit.“I am honored to announce the US will remain a member of the WHO. The US also intends to fulfill its financial obligations to the organization,” Fauci said.In a TV interview on Thursday morning, Fauci said “it was really a very good day” as the US recommitted to the WHO, disengagement from which, he said other countries and health officials in the US alike had found “very disconcerting”.He said he was “fairly confident” that the US could reach its 100-day vaccinations goal.The Biden administration plans to partner with states and local governments to set up community vaccination centers at stadiums, gymnasiums and conference centers.The administration will staff these sites with personnel from federal agencies as well as first responders and medical personnel serving in the military. The government also plans to partner with federally qualified health centers to help reach undeserved communities to distribute vaccines and mobile clinics will also be set up.In order to further distribute vaccine doses, the Biden administration plans to discontinue the Trump administration’s policy of “holding back significant levels of doses”. More states will also be urged by the Biden administration to encourage vaccinations.Biden plans to issue an executive order setting up a Covid-19 pandemic testing board. The idea is for the board to offer a “clear, unified approach to testing”, according to Biden administration officials.Biden will sign another executive order to make testing for the virus free for Americans who don’t have health coverage and offer ways some of the most vulnerable Americans can get help.On traveling, Biden will sign an executive order requiring people to wear a mask on trains, airplanes and maritime vessels. Another executive order Biden plans to sign will require the departments of education and health and human services to give guidance on safely reopening schools.Biden also will release a presidential memorandum utilizing the Fema disaster relief fund for providing reimbursement for personal protective equipment (PPE), cleaning and costs needed to safely reopen schools.The Biden administration is also looking to fix supply shortfalls. Another executive order Biden plans to sign will direct federal agencies to fulfil supply shortfalls using the Defense Production Act.The Trump administration refrained from fully coordinating with the Biden transition team over the last few months so the new Biden administration is taking steps to uncover unexpected shortfalls or low stores of supplies for combating the pandemic. Another memorandum the president will issue will order Fema to reimburse states for the costs of emergency supplies and national guard personnel involved in fighting Covid-19.The batch of executive orders will also include a few meant to help people of color in particular. One will set up the Covid-19 health equity taskforce. Yet another executive order meant to “enhance the collection sharing and analysis of data to support an equitable Covid-19 response recovery”. The administration plans to release data it acquires on progress on vaccinations and other pertinent information on fighting the vaccine. More
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Biden and Harris get to work: Politics Weekly Extra – podcast
It was a day that many had waited a long time for. Jonathan Freedland and Richard Wolffe break down what happened on inauguration day 2021, as Donald Trump fled to Florida, and Joe Biden signed 17 executive orders, overturning much of the work of his predecessor
How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know
Mere hours after Joe Biden took the oath of office, he had signed 17 executive orders undoing some of the work of his predecessor, Donald Trump. Trump fled Washington DC for Mar-a-Lago, setting the stage for an inauguration ceremony filled with words of hope and unity that had been missing for four years. Jonathan and Richard run through the events of Wednesday, marking its importance in history along the way. Send us your questions and feedback to podcasts@theguardian.com Help support the Guardian by going to gu.com/supportpodcasts More
