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      Congress is about to pass a historic climate bill. So why are oil companies pleased? | Kate Aronoff

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      Congress is about to pass a historic climate bill. So why are oil companies pleased?Kate AronoffThe bill is a devil’s bargain between the Democrats, the fossil fuel industry, and recalcitrant senator Joe Manchin. Yet it’s better than nothing “We’re pleased,” ExxonMobil’s CEO, Darren Woods, said on an earnings call last month, speaking about the Inflation Reduction Act. He called the bill, now making its way through the US Congress, “clear and consistent”. After it passed the Senate Sunday evening, Shell USA said it was “a step toward increased energy security and #netzero”. The world is currently on track to produce double the amount of coal, oil and gas in 2030 than is consistent with capping warming at 1.5C. To state the obvious: climate policy should strike fear into the hearts of fossil fuel executives, not delight them. So what have some of the world’s worst polluters found to like about a historic piece of climate legislation?Guilt by association only goes so far: that the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) passed is undoubtedly good news. It will do a lot of good things. Democrats face the distinct possibility of being locked out of power for at least a decade after midterm elections this November, when they’re expected to lose the House of Representatives. Republicans won’t be keen to recognize that another party’s candidate could win the presidency, let alone reduce emissions. That something being called climate policy passed at all is thanks to the tireless work the climate movement has done to put it on the agenda, and the diligent staffers who spent late nights translating that momentum into legislation.But it also reflects just how much power the fossil fuel industry has amassed. The IRA is the product of a devil’s bargain struck between (among others) Democrats and Joe Manchin, speaking on behalf of his corporate donors. In exchange for his agreeing to vote for some $370bn worth of genuinely exciting climate spending, the West Virginia senator has demanded sweeping permitting reform and an all-of-government greenlight for the Mountain Valley Pipeline. Many of the worst provisions are slated to be passed in future legislation this September. The IRA itself contains a remarkable poison pill, requiring that 60m acres of public waters be offered up for sale each and every year to the oil and gas industry before the federal government could approve any new offshore wind development for a decade.Then again, maybe the oil and gas CEOs have finally come around, and such sweeteners are a distraction from the real story. After decades of lobbying against climate policy perhaps they’ve seen the inexorable march of history towards decarbonization and decided to hitch their wagons to it. Unfortunately, we’ve seen this show before. Over a decade ago the likes of BP and ConocoPhillips joined the US Climate Action Partnership, a coalition of green groups and corporations that set about trying to pass climate legislation at the start of the Obama presidency. The House of Representatives went on to pass the hulking carbon pricing bill it supported, only to see it die in the Senate.For corporate members of USCAP the situation was a win-win. With one hand they helped craft legislation so friendly to their interests that it would leave their core business model – pouring carbon into the atmosphere – mostly untouched. With the other hand they tried to make sure nothing passed at all. As the political scientist Jake Grumbach has shown, several corporate members of the coalition were simultaneously paying generous membership fees to the American Petroleum Institute, the Chamber of Commerce and other trade associations working actively to kill it. The same was true this time around; the critical difference this time is that their bill passed.Understanding what’s just happened demands a longer view. For decades, oil and gas executives have worked to create a political climate wholly allergic to comprehensive climate action. Part of that has been lobbying against climate legislation, of course, working to undermine bodies like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and spread disinformation. But for nearly a century the same corporations have conducted an all-out attack on the ability of the US government to get big, good things done.Climate change is ultimately a planning problem: there is no entity other than the state that can electrify the country, expand the grid, build prodigious amounts of mass transit and wind down coal, oil and gas production in time to keep warming short of catastrophic levels. For all its many shortcomings, the FDR-era New Deal sought to construct a state capable of tackling such complicated problems. The right – supercharged by fossil fuel funding – set out to destroy it, polluting our politics with the idea that efficient markets are the only reasonable answer to what ails society. Predictably, they railed against the Green New Deal, too, which rejected that logic. That’s not the result of some cadre of conniving CEOs waking up every morning and deciding to destroy the planet. They just happen to sell the lifeblood of capitalism and aren’t eager to be booted from that business.That the IRA’s most promising elements are a series of modest incentives to get corporations to do the right thing on climate – that demanding they actually do so feels so far out of reach – is the result of this long-running and largely successful ideological quest. This bill is woefully inadequate, featuring a cruel, casual disregard for those at home and abroad who will live with the consequences of boosting fossil fuel production as a bargaining chip for boosting clean energy. And it’s almost certainly better than nothing.
      Kate Aronoff is a staff writer at the New Republic and the author of Overheated: How Capitalism Broke the Planet – And How We Fight Back
      TopicsEnvironmentOpinionClimate crisisUS politicsBiden administrationUS CongressFossil fuelsOil and gas companiescommentReuse this content More

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      Pelosi defends Taiwan visit amid China tensions: ‘Never give in to autocrats’

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      Pelosi defends Taiwan visit amid China tensions: ‘Never give in to autocrats’‘We cannot stand by as China proceeds to threaten Taiwan,’ says speaker in op-ed, but trip poses diplomatic headache for Biden 01:00Having landed in Taiwan amid soaring tensions with China’s military, the US House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, defended her controversial trip to the self-ruling island, saying she was making clear that American leaders “never give in to autocrats” in an opinion piece published in the Washington Post.“We cannot stand by as [China] proceeds to threaten Taiwan – and democracy itself,” said Pelosi’s piece, published just as the veteran California congresswoman’s plane touched down on Tuesday. “Indeed, we take this trip at a time when the world faces a choice between autocracy and democracy.”Given that Pelosi’s trip presents a serious diplomatic headache for the Joe Biden White House, there had been much speculation about the motivations behind the controversial visit. In her op-ed Pelosi struck a hard line against China’s position that her trip was a provocation and placed it in the context of a broader global struggle over political freedom.In the article Pelosi said: “We take this trip at a time when the world faces a choice between autocracy and democracy. As Russia wages its premeditated, illegal war against Ukraine, killing thousands of innocents – even children – it is essential that America and our allies make clear that we never give in to autocrats.”Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan is unfolding during a tour of Asian nations this week. Her diplomatic mission aims to punctuate a foreign policy career that has seen her defend human rights and democratic values abroad. But it has infuriated China, which claims Taiwan as a province of its own and has threatened retaliation over the visit. The US officially supports a “one-China” policy but in practice treats Taiwan as an economic and democratic partner.She is the highest-ranking US official to visit Taiwan since the Republican Newt Gingrich went there as the House speaker in 1997, going there even after Biden recently said the American military did not think it was a good idea for her to travel there.Chinese state media reported that fighter jets were flying across the Taiwan strait just as Pelosi’s plane landed in the island’s capital, Taipei.Analysts do not expect China to follow through with a hostile military act, at least not while Pelosi is there. But already on Tuesday authorities in China had announced a ban on imports from more than 100 Taiwanese food companies, which many had interpreted as retribution over Pelosi’s trip.If her piece in the Washington Post is any indication, none of it fazed Pelosi, who in 1991 unfurled a banner in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square hailing the pro-democracy student activists killed there two years earlier.Pelosi’s op-ed said it was 43 years ago that the US Congress passed an act recognizing Taiwanese democracy that thenpresident Jimmy Carter signed into law.“It made a solemn vow by the United States to support the defense of Taiwan [and] to consider any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means … [a] grave concern to the United States,” Pelosi’s piece added, noting that her trip sent an important message nearly six months after Russia invaded Ukraine and unbalanced global peace.“Today,” Pelosi continued, “America must remember that vow. We must stand by Taiwan, which is an island of resistance.”TopicsNancy PelosiTaiwanChinaBiden administrationJoe BidenUS foreign policyAsia PacificnewsReuse this content More

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      How Ayman al-Zawahiri’s ‘pattern of life’ allowed the US to kill al-Qaida leader

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      How Ayman al-Zawahiri’s ‘pattern of life’ allowed the US to kill al-Qaida leader After a decades-long hunt the simple habit of sitting out on the balcony gave the CIA an opportunity to launch ‘tailored strike’ In the end it was one of the oldest mistakes in the fugitive’s handbook that apparently did for Ayman al-Zawahiri, the top al-Qaida leader killed, according to US intelligence, by a drone strike on Sunday morning: he developed a habit.The co-planner of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington in 2001 had acquired a taste for sitting out on the balcony of his safe house in Sherpur, a well-to-do diplomatic enclave of Kabul. He grew especially fond of stepping out on to the balcony after morning prayers, so that he could watch the sun rise over the Afghan capital.According to a US official who briefed reporters on Monday, it was such regular behavior that allowed intelligence agents, presumably CIA, to piece together what they called “a pattern of life” of the target. That in turn allowed them to launch what the White House called a “tailored airstrike” involving two Hellfire missiles fired from a Reaper drone that are claimed to have struck the balcony, with Zawahiri on it, at 6.18am on Sunday.It was the culmination of a decades-long hunt for the Egyptian surgeon who by the time he was killed had a $25m bounty on his head. Zawahiri, 71, was held accountable not only for his part as Bin Laden’s second in command for 9/11, with its death toll of almost 3,000 people, but also for several other of al-Qaida’s most deadly attacks, including the suicide bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen in October 2000, which killed 17 US sailors.The mission to go after the al-Qaida leader was triggered, US officials said, in early April when intelligence sources picked up signals that Zawahiri and his family had moved off their mountainside hideaways and relocated to Kabul. Following the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan last August, and with the support of the Haqqani Taliban network, Zawahiri and his wife, together with their daughter and grandchildren, had moved into the Sherpur house.MapIn their telling of events, US officials were at pains to stress that under Joe Biden’s instructions the mission was carried out carefully and with precision to avoid civilian casualties and US officials said no one else was killed or wounded in the attack.Social media images of the strike suggested the use of a modified Hellfire called the R9X with six blades to damage targets, sources familiar with the weapon told Reuters. They caused surprisingly little damage beyond the target, suggesting they may be a version of the missile shrouded in secrecy and used by the US to avoid non-combatant casualties.The US president was first apprised of Zawahiri’s whereabouts in April, and for the next two months a tightly knit group of officials delved into the intelligence and devised a plan. A scale model of the Sherpur house was built, showing the balcony where the al-Qaida leader liked to sit. As discussions about a possible strike grew more intense, the model was brought into the situation room of the White House on 1 July so that Biden could see it for himself.The president “examined closely the model of al-Zawahiri’s house that the intelligence community had built and brought into the White House situation room for briefings on this issue”, a senior administration official told reporters.The White House made further claims to bolster its argument that the attack was lawful, flawless and with a loss of life limited to Zawahiri alone. Officials said that engineers were brought in to analyse the safe house and assess what would happen to it structurally in the wake of a drone strike.Lawyers were similarly consulted on whether the attack was legal. They advised that it was, given the target’s prominent role as leader of a terrorist group.Biden, by now quarantined with Covid, received a final briefing on 25 July and gave the go-ahead. It was a decision in stark contrast to the advice he gave Barack Obama in May 2011 not to proceed with the special forces mission that killed Bin Laden in a raid on his safe house in Abbottabad, Pakistan.On Monday evening, Biden stood on his own balcony – this one in the White House with the Washington Monument and Jefferson Memorial as his backdrop – to address the nation.“I authorized the precision strike that would remove him from the battlefield once and for all,” Biden said. “This measure was carefully planned, rigorously, to minimize the risk of harm to other civilians.”Biden’s insistence that no one other than the al-Qaida leader was killed in the attack was amplified repeatedly by US officials. The narrative given by the White House was that Zawahiri was taken out cleanly through the application of modern technological warfare.Skepticism remains, despite the protestations. Over the years drone strikes have frequently proved to be anything but precise.In August last year one such US drone strike in Kabul was initially hailed by the Pentagon as a successful mission to take out a would-be terrorist bomber planning an attack on the city’s airport. It was only after the New York Times had published an exhaustive investigation showing that the strike had in fact killed 10 civilians, including an aid worker and seven children, that the US military admitted the mission had gone tragically wrong.Perhaps mindful of the doubts that are certain to swirl around the Zawahiri killing for days to come, the White House said that the Sherpur safe house where the drone strike happened had been kept under observation for 36 hours after the attack and before Biden spoke to the nation. Officials said that Zawahiri’s relatives were seen leaving the house under Haqqani Taliban escort, establishing that they had survived the strike.TopicsAyman al-ZawahiriAfghanistanTalibanSouth and central AsiaJoe BidenBiden administrationUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Russian man spent years as puppeteer behind US political groups, officials say

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      Russian man spent years as puppeteer behind US political groups, officials sayAleksandr Viktorovich Ionov charged over accusations he sought to spread division and propaganda and meddle in elections A Russian man orchestrated a yearslong effort to puppeteer political groups in Florida, Georgia and California to sow discord in the US, spread pro-Russia propaganda and meddle in American elections, justice department officials alleged on Friday.Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov of Moscow was charged with conspiring to have US citizens act as illegal agents of the Russian government, according to a justice department statement. If convicted, he faces up to five years in prison.The indictment against Ionov was linked to a raid by federal agents of the Uhuru Movement’s headquarters in St Petersburg, Florida, on Friday, the Tampa Bay Times reported, citing US officials.The Uhuru Movement belongs to the African People’s Socialist party and purports to unite “African people as one … for liberation, social justice, self-reliance and economic development”.At a news conference on Friday, a Uhuru leader declared openly that his group was “in support of Russia” and dismissed the raid as an attack meant to isolate Africans in the US who are fighting for liberation.“We can have relationships with whoever we want to make this revolution possible,” said the leader, Eritha “Akile” Cainion.The movement’s St Petersburg headquarters recently made headlines for unrelated reasons after a man using a flamethrower set fire to a flag flying outside the building, leading to his arrest.According to the justice department, Ionov was acting on behalf of the FSB Russian intelligence agency when he financially supported the groups at the center of the case, none of which are explicitly named in the indictment. He allegedly ordered them to publish pro-Russian lies and coordinated actions by them intended to further Russian interests.The department also claimed Ionov influenced a US political group in Florida under his control to interfere in local elections, supporting the St Petersburg, Florida, political campaigns of two people in 2017 and 2019. It listed the group and individuals as “unindicted co-conspirators” but did not name them.From at least December 2014 to March 2022, the department said, Ionov and at least three other Russian officials engaged in a malign foreign influence campaign targeting the US.Separately, the US treasury department on Friday imposed sanctions on Ionov, his fellow Russian national Natalya Valeryevna Burlinova, and four Russian entities it accused of backing the Kremlin’s mission of interfering in elections abroad, including in the US and Ukraine.According to the justice department, the four entities in question are: the Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia (AGMR), which Ionov founded and presides over; Ionov Transkontinental; Stop-Imperialism; and the Center for Support and Development of Public Initiative Creative Diplomacy (Picreadi).The Russian embassy in Washington did not immediately reply to an email seeking comment on the indictment or the US sanctions, which among other things block the property in American jurisdiction of those named.Reuters contributed this reportTopicsUS politicsRussiaFloridaBiden administrationnewsReuse this content More

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      Republicans rush to label economic slowdown as ‘Joe Biden’s recession’

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      Republicans rush to label economic slowdown as ‘Joe Biden’s recession’Republicans are quick to call a recession as the administration points to brighter employment numbers Prices are rising in the US at the fastest rate in four decades. The Fed raised interest rates again. And new data showed the American economy shrank for a second consecutive quarter, intensifying fears of a recession and handing Republicans a potent line of attack just months before the midterm elections.For embattled Joe Biden, Thursday’s gross domestic product figures were the latest in a string of worrying economic developments clouding his presidency this week. The news came as Democrats celebrated a breakthrough on the president’s long-stalled economic agenda after Senator Joe Manchin announced his support for a version of the plan in a shock reversal for the West Virginia holdout.Joe Biden hails Senate deal as ‘most significant’ US climate legislation everRead moreWith control of Congress in the balance, Republicans seized on the turn of events to accuse Democrats of deepening economic disarray with their spending plans. Widespread pessimism about the state of the economy has shaped up to be Biden’s biggest political vulnerability, weighing down his approval ratings and threatening Democrats’ chances in November.Moments after the Bureau of Economic Analysis published the highly anticipated GDP report on Thursday morning, Republicans declared the economy well into the throes of “Joe Biden’s recession” and blamed Democrats’ policy initiatives for making life costlier for Americans.“Biden and Democrats are responsible for our shrinking economy, and they’re only trying to make it worse,” said Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee.GDP, the broadest measure of economic activity, fell by an annual rate of 0.09%, following a 1.6% annual decline in the first three months of the year, according to the commerce department. The numbers recorded two consecutive quarters of declining economic output, a common – but not official – definition of recession.On Thursday, Biden dismissed fears that the US was in a recession, arguing that the economy was “on the right path”.“There’s going to be a lot of chatter today on Wall Street and among pundits about whether we are in a recession,” Biden said on Thursday afternoon. “But if you look at our job market, consumer spending, business investment, we see signs of economic progress in the second quarter as well.”In anticipation of the report, the White House has sought to convince Americans that two quarters of economic decline does not necessarily mean the US is in recession, particularly because unemployment remains low, job growth robust and household savings elevated.Biden stressed those sources of strength in the economy during an earlier appearance on Thursday, concluding: “That doesn’t sound like a recession to me.”The president also urged Congress to move quickly to pass his economic agenda that the White House argues will help ease the financial burden on American households by lowering the costs of healthcare and prescription drugs.Biden did pause to take a victory lap on Thursday, interrupting his meeting with the CEOs of five US businesses to announce that the House had enough votes to pass a sprawling bipartisan package designed to strengthen American manufacturing and increase the US’s competitiveness against China.The bill, which next goes to his desk for signatures, will “make cars cheaper, appliances cheaper, and computers cheaper”, Biden said in a statement. “It will lower the costs of every day goods.”But Republicans said the Democrats’ climate, healthcare and tax plan, formerly known as “Build Back Better” and recast as the “Inflation Reduction Act”, would only cause further financial hardship, especially after they passed a $1.9tn coronavirus relief package last year.“The definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results,” the Republican congressman Vern Gale Buchanan of Florida wrote on Twitter. “Yet here we are now entering a recession and Democrats are trying to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on Green New Deal priorities and raise taxes on America’s job creators.”Soaring inflation – now running at 40-year highs – led the Federal Reserve on Wednesday to increase interest rates in an effort to bring down prices, the second such increase in just over a month.Labelling the downturn a recession may be more politically charged than economically precise. Recessions are officially declared by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a private research group, and usually only after the decline is over.“Bottom Line,” Diane Swonk, chief economist for KPMG, said on Twitter, “We are not in a recession – yet. But the current environment is [not] healthy. The cure will be painful but is necessary to avoid an even worse outcome. Rock & hard spot. Scars likely. Hard.”The treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, said the US economy is in a state of transition, from a period of fast-paced growth to a period of more sustainable growth.Recession, she explained, is generally viewed as a “broad-based weakening of our economy” that includes “substantial job losses and mass layoffs, businesses shutting down, private sector activities slowing considerably”.“That is not what we are seeing right now,” she said.Yet even without an official determination of whether the US is in a recession, polling has found that most Americans believe it is: something likely to cause Democrats pain at the ballot box in November’s crucial elections.According to a recent CNN poll, 64% of Americans “feel” the economy is in recession, including 56% of Democrats and 63% of independents. The same survey found that four in 10 view the economy as “very poor”, an 11-point rise since the spring.Biden defended his administration’s actions, arguing that the economic stimulus plan was “the reason why we still had teachers in school, kids going to school, the reason why we had cops on the beat, the reason we had essential workers,” during the depths of the pandemic. But he admitted that the “vast majority of Americans have no idea what the recovery plan did”.Now, with their congressional majorities hanging in the balance, Democrats must persuade voters to trust their economic leadership as they rush to pass Biden’s economic agenda, which they vow will help, not hurt American pocketbooks.Manchin, who just weeks ago appeared to walk away from his party’s economic plans over concerns that it would worsen inflation, said his newfound support for the measure was based on assurances that it would not.Explaining his decision, Manchin told reporters: “This is truly going to be around inflation reduction.”TopicsBiden administrationInflationEconomicsUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Justice department gets warrant to search Trump lawyer’s phone

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      Justice department gets warrant to search Trump lawyer’s phoneJohn Eastman spoke at a rally before the Capitol attack and claimed Mike Pence could halt certification of Biden’s election win The US justice department said on Wednesday it had obtained a warrant to search the phone of Donald Trump’s election attorney, John Eastman, who spoke at a rally before the January 6 assault on the US Capitol.Federal agents seized Eastman’s phone in June based on a warrant authorizing them to take the device. They needed a second warrant to search the phone’s contents.In a filing with US district court in New Mexico, the assistant US attorney Thomas Windom said the US district court for the District of Columbia issued a search warrant on 12 July authorizing review of the phone’s contents and manual screen capture.He said federal agents in northern Virginia had the phone and screenshots of some of its contents.Eastman has been under intense scrutiny in the investigations into the attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters after the former president falsely claimed that he had won the 2020 election. Eastman spoke at the rally where Trump gave a fiery speech alleging election fraud and urging supporters to march on the Capitol.Eastman also wrote a memo outlining how, in his view, Mike Pence could thwart formal congressional certification of Trump’s re-election loss. The then vice-president declined to follow Eastman’s advice.Wednesday’s filing was made in New Mexico because Eastman had previously filed a suit there asking a judge to order the justice department to return the phone, destroy records and block investigators from accessing the phone.The judge denied that request but ordered the government to update the court by Wednesday on the location of the phone and status of a second search warrant.A representative for Eastman was not immediately available for comment.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsBiden administrationDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More

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      Do the Democrats have a Biden problem? – podcast

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      The approval ratings of the US president are at a record low. Washington DC bureau chief David Smith considers whether Joe Biden will stand for re-election in 2024

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      After the chaos of Donald Trump, Joe Biden’s appointment as US president was supposed to bring a return to normal: a safe, competent politician who knows how to get things done. But more than two years since he came to office, the US is moving from one crisis to the next. With decades-high inflation, near-weekly mass shootings and failure to make progress on the climate crisis, Biden has reached record levels of unpopularity with voters. And some Democrats are now questioning whether he’s the best candidate to lead their party. The Guardian’s Washington DC bureau chief, David Smith, tells Michael Safi that November’s midterm elections may be pivotal in deciding the president’s future. More

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      Biden ‘doing just fine’ after testing positive for Covid, White House says

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      Biden ‘doing just fine’ after testing positive for Covid, White House saysAshish Jha, coronavirus response coordinator, and physician Kevin O’Connor say president contracted BA.5 variant Joe Biden is “feeling well” and “doing just fine” after testing positive for Covid, the White House coronavirus response coordinator said.Joe Biden’s mild Covid symptoms are improving, doctor saysRead moreAppearing on CBS’s Face the Nation, Ashish Jha said: “So it is the BA.5 variant, which is about 80% of infections. But thank goodness, our vaccines and therapeutics work well against it, which is why I think the president’s doing well.“I checked in with his team late last night. He was feeling well. He had a good day yesterday. He’s got a viral syndrome, an upper respiratory infection … and he’s doing just fine.”The White House later released a letter in which Biden’s physician, Kevin O’Connor, said the president’s “predominant symptom now is a sore throat”.O’Connor also said Biden had completed a third full day of treatment with Paxlovid, which would continue and was “experiencing no shortness of breath at all”.Biden’s positive test was announced on Thursday. At 79, the president is the oldest ever inaugurated. He is also, as he said, double-vaccinated and double-boosted and has access to the best possible care.On Sunday the transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, told CNN’s State of the Union he knew Biden was still working “because on Thursday I got a call from the White House about something on transportation that he had asked me to follow up on”.Buttigieg also wished Biden “a speedy path back to 100%”.Jha was asked if the White House “will continue to make disclosures if [Biden] has long-term symptoms from this infection”.“Absolutely,” he said. “You know, we think it’s really important for the American people to know how well the president’s doing, which is why we have been so transparent, giving updates several times a day, having people hear from me directly, hear directly from his physician.“And obviously if he has persistent symptoms, if any of them interfere with his ability to carry out his duties, we will disclose that early and often.“But I suspect this is going to be a course of Covid that we’ve seen in many Americans who have been fully vaccinated, double-boosted, getting treated with those tools in hand. You know, the president has been doing well, and we’re gonna expect that he’s going to continue to do so.”Jha also suggested cities seeing high case rates, including New York, Phoenix and Miami, might consider re-instituting indoor mask mandates.“Masks work, right? They clearly slow down transmission. So in areas of high transmission, I think it’s very prudent for people to be wearing masks indoors, especially if they’re in crowded, poorly ventilated spaces. That’s what the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] recommends. And I think that’s a very important and effective way of reducing transmission, protecting yourself as well.“You know, in terms of mandates, that’s something that we’ve always felt strongly should be done by local officials, mayors, governors, local health officials, and we’re seeing different officials take different tactics. And I think that’s actually appropriate given that we have a very diverse country with different transmission patterns and and willingness to kind of engage in-in wearing masks.”Jha was also asked about monkeypox, which on Saturday the World Health Organization declared a “public health emergency of international concern”. Would the Biden administration declare a pandemic?“Pandemics are declared by the World Health Organization,” Jha said, “and I actually applaud the World Health Organization for declaring that public health emergency of international concern. We are seeing outbreaks that are out of control in many, many parts of the world. It’s very important that we get our arms around this thing.“In the US right now, we’re looking at public health emergency as something that [the health department] might … invoke but it really depends on what does that allow us to do. Right now we have over 2,000 cases, but we have ramped up vaccinations, ramped up treatments, ramped up testing, and we’re going to continue to look at all sort of policy options. Right now, we think we can get our arms around this thing but obviously if we need further tools we will invoke them as we need them.”Jha said he thought monkeypox could be contained.Monkeypox declared global health emergency by WHO as cases surgeRead more“The way we contain monkeypox is we have a very simple, straightforward strategy on this, which is: make testing widely available. We have done that. And now testing is far more frequent and common.Answering the charge that the US was caught flat-footed by monkeypox, Jha said: “What I would acknowledge is that when we started two months ago, we had a limited supply of vaccines. We have obtained more than any other country, probably more than every other country combined. We have acted swiftly.”Asked if people should be concerned about another infectious disease, polio, which has been detected in New York, Jha said: “There is a lot of surveillance that we do for polio, there’s wastewater surveillance that goes on, we are not seeing outbreaks of polio elsewhere.“This one case has heightened everybody’s surveillance. But … CDC and the Department of Health of New York are doing an investigation to try to understand more, but I do not expect polio to become more widespread in the country, again, because so many Americans are vaccinated against this.”TopicsJoe BidenUS politicsOmicron variantCoronavirusBiden administrationDemocratsnewsReuse this content More