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      ‘It’s time to take action’: faith leaders urge Biden to pass voting rights legislation

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      ‘It’s time to take action’: faith leaders urge Biden to pass voting rights legislationA letter organized by Martin Luther King III and his wife comes after Republicans successfully filibustered bills four times this year More than 800 faith leaders have called on the Biden administration and Senate Democrats to pass voting rights legislation next year.“We cannot be clearer, you must act now to protect every American’s freedom to vote without interference and with confidence that their ballot will be counted and honored. Passing comprehensive voting rights legislation must be the number-one priority of the administration and Congress,” faith leaders said in a letter addressed to the president and Senate members on Wednesday.The letter, organized by Martin Luther King III and his wife, Arndrea Waters King, was signed by various faith organizations, including the African American Christian Clergy Coalition, Bend the Arc: Jewish Action and Faith in Public Life.Signatories include those who come from Muslim, Christian and Jewish communities, including Reverend Canon Leonard L Hamlin Sr of the Washington National Cathedral and Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg of National Council of Jewish Women.“The communities we represent will continue to sound the alarm until these bills are passed. While we come from different faiths, we are united by our commitment to act in solidarity with the most vulnerable among us,” the letter added.The letter comes after Republicans successfully filibustered voting rights bills on four different occasions this year. Most recently, on 3 November, Republicans in the Senate blocked the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Acts – one of two major pieces of voting rights legislation that Democrats have championed in Congress in attempts to prevent Republicans from eroding easy access to the vote.Republicans blocking the key voting rights bill in November was a move seen by many as a breaking point in the push to eliminate the filibuster, the Senate rule that requires 60 votes to advance most legislation.Despite numerous Democrats calling for the elimination of the filibuster, they lack the votes to end the rule due to not only a slim majority but also opposition within their own party. Two Democrats, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, are strongly opposed, arguing that the rule forges bipartisan compromise.Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, described the filibuster on 3 November as a “low, low point in the history of this body”.In Wednesday’s letter, faith leaders said, “Nothing – including the filibuster – should stand in the way of passing the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, both of which have already passed the House and await Senate action and leadership.”According to a tally by the Brennan Center for Justice, nineteen states have enacted nearly three dozen laws between January and the end of September that make it more difficult to vote.Wednesday’s letter is a reflection of the growing pressure on Democrats to pass voting rights legislation that aims to outlaw excessive partisan gerrymandering and would require early voting, no-excuse mail-in voting, in addition to automatic and same-day registration.“It’s time to stop lamenting the state of our democracy and take action to address it,” the letter said.TopicsUS voting rightsBiden administrationMartin Luther KingRepublicansUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      White House rebukes Manchin after ‘no’ to Biden spending plan deals huge blow

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      White House rebukes Manchin after ‘no’ to Biden spending plan deals huge blow $1.75tn domestic spending plan all but dead in the waterSenator accused of ‘breach of commitment’ to presidentThe West Virginia senator Joe Manchin dealt a huge blow to Joe Biden on Sunday, saying “no” to the $1.75tn Build Back Better domestic spending plan. The White House issued a stinging rebuke in return, stoking a bitter war of words in a party sharply divided between moderates and progressives.Fauci: Omicron ‘raging through the world’ and travel increases Covid risksRead moreThe White House accused Manchin of going back on his word.“Senator Manchin’s comments this morning on Fox are at odds with his discussions this week with the president, with White House staff and with his own public utterances,” Jen Psaki, the press secretary, said in a statement.Adding to angry accusations of betrayal from leading progressives including Senator Bernie Sanders, Psaki said: “Weeks ago, Senator Manchin committed to the president, at his home in Wilmington, to support the Build Back Better framework that the president then announced. Senator Manchin pledged repeatedly to negotiate on finalising that framework ‘in good faith’.Citing work by Manchin on the proposed bill this week, Psaki said: “Senator Manchin promised to continue conversations in the days ahead, and to work with us to reach that common ground.“If his comments on Fox and written statement indicate an end to that effort, they represent a sudden and inexplicable reversal in his position, and a breach of his commitments to the president and [his] colleagues in the House and Senate.”Biden and Democrats said this week they would delay the bill until next year but the president vowed it would pass and said he would continue talking to Manchin.But on Sunday Manchin used an interview with Fox News Sunday to announce his withdrawal from such talks – a hugely provocative move in a party in which he and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, another centrist, have held up Biden’s agenda to huge progressive frustration.With the Senate split 50-50 and Republicans unanimously against, Manchin’s opposition means Build Back Better is all but dead in the water.Citing the cost of the plan and economic worries including inflation, the national debt and the Omicron coronavirus variant, Manchin said: “I’ve always said this … if I can’t go home and explain it to the people of West Virginia, I can’t vote for it.”“I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation. I just can’t. I’ve tried everything humanly possible. I can’t get there.”The host, Bret Baier, seemed surprised.“You’re done?” he asked. “This is a no?”Manchin said: “This is a no on this piece of legislation. I have tried everything I know to do.”01:04Manchin also issued a lengthy statement in which he cast the US debt as a spectre haunting all other concerns, domestic and foreign.“For five and a half months,” he said, “I have worked as diligently as possible, meeting with President Biden, [Senate] majority leader [Chuck] Schumer, [House] Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi and my colleagues on every end of the political spectrum to determine the best path forward despite my serious reservations.“I have made my concerns clear through public statements, op-eds and private conversations. My concerns have only increased as the pandemic surges, inflation rises and geopolitical uncertainty increases.“… Despite my best efforts, I cannot explain the sweeping Build Back Better act in West Virginia and I cannot vote to move forward on this mammoth piece of legislation.”Manchin cited a report by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office which said that if the bill’s spending increases and tax cuts became permanent, $3tn would be added to its cost. Democrats criticised the report, which Republicans requested.Psaki rejected each claim in Manchin’s statement, and said: “Just as Senator Manchin reversed his position on Build Back Better this morning, we will continue to press him to see if he will reverse his position yet again, to honor his prior commitments and be true to his word.”On CNN’s State of the Union, Sanders listed Build Back Better provisions including investment to combat the climate crisis and improve health and social care.Republicans are shamelessly working to subvert democracy. Are Democrats paying attention? Read more“I’ve been to West Virginia,” he said. “And it’s a great state, beautiful, but it is a state that is struggling.“[Manchin] is going to have to tell the people of West Virginia why he’s rejecting what the scientists, the world is telling us, that we have to act boldly and transform our energy system to protect future generations from the devastation of climate change.“… I hope that we will bring a strong bill to the floor of the Senate and that Joe Manchin should explain to the people of West Virginia why he doesn’t have the guts to stand up to the powerful special interests.“… If he doesn’t have the courage to do the right thing for the working families of West Virginia in America, let him stand up and tell the whole world.”Analysts would counter that Manchin is the only Democrat in major office in a state which voted solidly for Donald Trump, cuts his cloth accordingly and could easily switch allegiance, putting the Senate back in Republican hands.In his statement, Manchin echoed Republican claims that Build Back Better is “socialist” in intent, saying: “My Democratic colleagues in Washington are determined to dramatically reshape our society.”Sanders, a self-identified democratic socialist, promised to make Manchin’s stance an election issue, saying: “I think … that right up to the 2022 election [we ask]: ‘Which party is prepared to do the right thing for the elderly, for the children?’“By the way, we talk about kids, I want everybody out there to know if Manchin votes no, those $300 tax credits that have gone a long way to reducing childhood poverty in America? They’re gone. That’s all. We cut childhood poverty by 40%, an extraordinary accomplishment. Manchin doesn’t want to do that.“Tell that to the struggling families of West Virginia.”In the 50-50 Senate, Manchin has gained huge power. He voted for coronavirus relief and a bipartisan infrastructure bill, big-ticket spending items. But he has opposed reform to the filibuster, the rule that requires a supermajority for most legislation, even in answer to Republican moves to restrict voting among Democrats.How a reboot of Trump’s Remain in Mexico plan isn’t the solution migrants are hoping forRead moreThe infrastructure bill was “decoupled” from Build Back Better to ensure passage through the Senate. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, one of six House progressives who voted no on infrastructure despite assurances from Biden that he would get all senators on board for Build Back Better, refused to blame the president for Sunday’s disaster.“My lack and deficit of trust was about Senator Manchin,” she told CNN. “He’s continued to move the goalposts. He has never negotiated in good faith, and he is obstructing the president’s agenda, 85% of which is still left on the table. And in obstructing the president’s agenda, he is obstructing the people’s agenda.”Pressley was asked if Build Back Better might be split into smaller bills, to attract moderate Republicans.She said: “I remain focused on keeping the pressure on Senator Manchin, the White House using the full weight of this presidency to lean on this senator to show solidarity with this Democratic party and with the American people and to stop obstructing the president’s agenda, which is the people’s agenda.“This is a mammoth bill to address. Let’s get it done.”TopicsJoe ManchinBiden administrationJoe BidenDemocratsUS politicsUS SenateUS CongressnewsReuse this content More

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      Joe Manchin says he 'cannot get there' on Build Back Better bill – video

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      Joe Manchin, a moderate Democrat who is key to President Joe Biden’s hopes of passing a $1.75tn domestic investment bill, has said he will not support the package.
      Manchin has been a key holdout on the White House’s Build Back Better plan, which aims to bolster the social safety net and fight climate change, and is the cornerstone of Biden’s legislative agenda.
      ‘I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation,’ Manchin told Fox News, citing concerns about inflation. ‘I just can’t. I have tried everything humanly possible.’

      Joe Manchin tells Fox News he’s a ‘no’ on Build Back Better in huge blow for Biden More

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      Fauci: Omicron ‘raging through the world’ and travel increases Covid risks

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      Fauci: Omicron ‘raging through the world’ and travel increases Covid risks
      Chief White House medical adviser: breakthroughs will happen
      22,000 new cases but New York says hospitals can cope
      Harris: White House did not see Omicron coming
      The Omicron variant of Covid-19 has “extraordinary spreading capabilities”, the top US infectious diseases expert said on Sunday, and promises to bring a bleak winter as it continues “raging through the world”.Doug Ericksen, state senator who fought vaccine mandates, dies at 52Read moreDr Anthony Fauci’s warning came ahead of the busy holiday travel period, which he said would elevate the risk of infection even in vaccinated people.In an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press, Fauci, Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser and head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, urged Americans to get booster shots and wear masks.He also appeared to attempt damage control over Vice-President Kamala Harris’s contention that the Biden administration “didn’t see” the Omicron or Delta variants coming.Harris’s comments on Friday were “taken out of context”, Fauci insisted, and referred to the “extraordinary number of mutations” of Covid-19 rather than any lack of readiness.“We were well prepared and expected that we were going to see variants,” he said. “There’s no doubt about that.”Fauci looked ahead to a scheduled national address by Biden on Tuesday, in which he said the president would “upscale” elements of the White House Covid winter plan.“He’s going to stress several things,” Fauci said. “… Getting people boosted who are vaccinated, getting children vaccinated, making testing more available, having surge teams out, because we know we’re going to need them because there will be an increased demand on hospitalisation.”The White House reset comes at the end of a week in which the US surpassed 800,000 deaths from coronavirus and saw a 17% surge in cases and a 9% rise in deaths.Medical experts have warned of an Omicron-fueled “viral blizzard” sweeping the country. Biden has spoken of a “winter of severe illness and death” among the unvaccinated.Fauci repeated such dire predictions on CNN’s State of the Union.“One thing that’s clear is [Omicron’s] extraordinary capability of spreading, its transmissibility capability,” he said. “It is just raging through the world.“This virus is extraordinary. It has a doubling time of anywhere from two to three days in certain regions of the country, which means it’s going to take over. If you look at what it’s done in South Africa, what it’s doing in the UK, and what it’s starting to do right now, the president is correct.“It is going to be tough. We can’t walk away from that because with the Omicron that we’re dealing with it is going to be a tough few weeks to months as we get deeper into the winter. We are going to see significant stress in some regions of the country, on the hospital system, particularly in those areas where you have a low level of vaccination.”Many cases of Omicron are so-called “breakthrough” infections. Florida, one of the hardest-hit states throughout the pandemic, reported on Sunday that about 30% of new infections were in people vaccinated but yet to receive a booster.Fauci and other experts have said immunisations alone will not prevent the spread of Omicron, but are confident that the risk of serious disease or death is vastly reduced in those who are vaccinated.Dr Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, told CBS’s Face the Nation he was concerned about the effects of Omicron on those who are not vaccinated.New York reports 22,000 new Covid cases – but hospitals say they can copeRead more“It’s a brand new version and so different that it has the properties to potentially be evasive of the vaccines and other measures that we’ve taken,” he said.“The big message for today is if you’ve had vaccines and a booster you’re very well protected against Omicron causing you severe disease. Anybody who’s in that 60% of Americans who are eligible for a booster but haven’t yet gotten one, this is the week to do it. Do not wait.”In New York, authorities said 22,000 people tested positive for Covid-19 on Friday, eclipsing the previous record since testing became widely available.Meanwhile, a study in South Africa this week suggested that the Pfizer vaccine has a weaker efficacy against Omicron in patients who have received two doses than it does against the Delta variant.The research by Discovery Health, the country’s largest medical insurance administrator, calculated a 70% protection from hospitalization compared with the unvaccinated, and 33% protection against infection.The group said that represented a drop from 93% hospitalization protection and 80% infection prevention for Delta.TopicsCoronavirusBiden administrationAnthony FauciUS politicsInfectious diseasesVaccines and immunisationnewsReuse this content More

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      How a reboot of Trump’s Remain in Mexico plan isn’t the solution migrants are hoping for

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      How a reboot of Trump’s Remain in Mexico plan isn’t the solution migrants are hoping for Advocates are critical of the immigration policy’s reinstatement, while asylum seekers see the plan as better than nothing from the USEvery day feels like a bad dream to Timoty Correas. He spent five months in a jam-packed tent camp before moving weeks ago to a roach-infested hotel full of migrant families in a neighborhood, blocks from the US border where, he said, during the night local crime cartels would load crowds of smuggled people in and out of houses used as hiding places.Like thousands of other people here, Correas and his eight-year-old son are stranded at the US border, always hoping that hardline pandemic-related restrictions will cease and the processing of asylum seekers by the US will resume.Correas, a vegetable seller, fled Honduras to try to find his parents in Houston, Texas, after gang members took over his house with death threats in May. He planned to seek asylum in the US.‘People with no names’: the drowned migrants buried in pauper’s gravesRead moreCorreas traveled a month with smugglers through Mexico alongside a tide of other northbound migrants and reached Reynosa, across from Hidalgo, Texas, towards the eastern end of the US-Mexico border, in June.But he and his son found the border essentially closed to asylum seekers.Then, when he recently heard on TV news that the US would begin processing asylum cases through a reboot of former president Donald Trump’s controversial Remain in Mexico program, known as Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), he was hopeful.Although the program would promise a further six-month wait, it was the best news he’d gotten since the summer.“As I understand it, MPP will apply to families,” he said. “They’ll give us an opportunity to speak with a judge. It feels like a big help, a big step toward entering the US legally.”Immigration advocates, however, are fiercely critical of the court-ordered reinstatement this month of the immigration policy that Joe Biden campaigned to repeal, after Trump forced migrants to wait in Mexico, typically in squalor and danger, while their cases wound interminably through a dysfunctional US system.It was one of the final chapters of Trump’s harsh approach throughout, leaving migrants in limbo and greater numbers risking – and losing – their lives to cross anyway via border desert or river.But for thousands of asylum seekers stranded for months on the border with no end in sight, MPP feels like a sign of movement and better than nothing from the US government, which has been expelling migrants under a rule known as Title 42 and blocking most asylum claims under public health grounds since March of 2020.The latest iteration of MPP has kicked off slowly, enrolling 80 people in its first six days in El Paso, Texas, according to the publication Border Report.The US plans to eventually offer MPP at seven ports of entry across the south-west border, although authorities haven’t given a firm timeline.At a muddy tent camp in Reynosa, aid workers said it remained unclear exactly who would qualify for MPP, how many people it would eventually process or how strictly the government would adhere to humanitarian guidelines it set for itself.“Everyone is real excited about it,” said Felicia Rangel, co-director of the Sidewalk School, an aid organization founded when migrant populations first began to accumulate in this area in 2019. “But it’s not a good thing.”Until Trump brought in MPP in 2019, having already tried to block many asylum claims, those fleeing violence who hoped for political asylum were granted refuge in the US and allowed to join relatives in the country, who act as their sponsors, while their cases were heard.Biden repealed MPP upon taking office but continued Title 42, summarily expelling migrants without a chance to make their case.Up to 2,000 such people are living in a camp six blocks from Reynosa’s city center. An additional 1,150 are in tents in a shelter space supervised by the Pathway of Life church and hundreds more are in other shelters, crowded nearby houses or rooms rented by local charities.“Ninety percent or more don’t plan to return to their country,” said Isaac Castellanos, pastor of the Shaddai Ministry church, which offered to host 125 people in tents on its property in late October as the local migrant population began to overwhelm the city.“The option they are waiting for is through MPP.”He said the city has been discussing a large, federally funded shelter for months, but without progress, forcing small private charities to assume support for the humanitarian debacle.At the camp in Reynosa’s plaza, 35-year-old Belen Dubon keeps an “information desk” at a bench on the road to the bridge to Texas, where new arrivals come daily, expelled from the US after crossing the Rio Grande.Dubon, a nurse from Guatemala City who has lived in this camp for almost six months, said newcomers are easy to recognize because US authorities remove their shoelaces before expelling them and because they are covered in dust.Every day more than 100 people arrive, she said, escorted across the nearby bridge by US border patrol, then released on Mexican soil.Dubon helps them find food at community kitchens in the camp and space on the crowded ground to sleep for their first night. But this camp and surrounding shelters are full, so many people seek a place elsewhere.“Their guides who brought them come back and pick them up,” she said, referring to human smugglers. “I don’t know where they go.”Most people here see no option to give up on waiting, she said, because they spent thousands of dollars of mostly borrowed money to pay smugglers to get them here.Others, like Correas and his son, can’t return home because their houses were taken over by gang members. Others have sent their children across the border unaccompanied, in hope they would be able to apply there to stay, despite the prospect of being detained.Some of those children’s parents in Reynosa told the Guardian they’ll wait as long as they must to reunite.Parents such as Iris Betancourt, 36, who fled Honduras with her husband and three children in August after a local gang boss tried to make her 13-year-old daughter his wife and wound up at the camp in Reynosa.Dangerous and unsanitary conditions kept the three kids mostly penned up in the tent, she said, while Betancourt’s sister in Houston encouraged her to send them to live safely with her.On 31 October, Betancourt and her husband took the kids out for ice-cream, hugged them close all night then paid smugglers $500 per child the next morning to sneak them into the US, where they expected to be apprehended, and would give authorities the contact information for their aunt in Houston.The kids spent a month and seven days in a secure New York City shelter under the US Office of Refugee Resettlement, then arrived in Houston this month, Betancourt said.“I don’t know when I’ll see them again. I don’t know if I’ll wait here for years,” she said, crying. “I wonder every day, will I get in or not? Will the wait be worth the sacrifice?”Aid workers say thousands of children have been similarly sent over by parents in recent months. Figures from US Health and Human Services show more than 13,000 unaccompanied children in government custody as of 10 December, with roughly 500 discharged each day to sponsors across the country. Yet the parents who stay behind at the border face a slim chance of achieving legal entry into the US.Under Trump, MPP had a less-than-1% acceptance rate for asylum cases.Although Biden’s reboot lists new protections for enrolled migrants, it still isn’t clear exactly how the program will operate, said Alex Norman, a former paralegal who helps process emergency immigration parole cases at the camp in Reynosa.“They aren’t going to have the capacity to process thousands of people who are here now,” said Norman, who sits in on calls between DHS officials and local aid organizations.“Or the thousands who are on their way now that they hear there are asylum possibilities.”Eleanor Acer of advocacy group Human Rights First told NPR that MPP was a “humanitarian fiasco” under Trump and would be so under Biden, too.Yet migrants such as Correas, think any sort of shift in US policy is the best news he’s gotten after six months of limbo.His parents fled Honduras in the 1990s when he was a child and his dream of bringing his own son to be with them in a safe city motivates him now to wait indefinitely.“To be with my mom and dad, it will be the greatest gift of my life,” he said. “If I have to wait six or seven months like MPP says, then I’ll have to learn to adapt.”TopicsUS-Mexico borderUS immigrationBiden administrationTrump administrationUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Kamala Harris concedes White House ‘didn’t see’ Delta and Omicron coming

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      Kamala Harris concedes White House ‘didn’t see’ Delta and Omicron comingVice-president’s candid admission on Covid variants came in wide-ranging interview with the Los Angeles Times Kamala Harris has conceded that the Biden administration was blind to the emergence of the Delta and Omicron variants of Covid-19, and said she fears “misinformation” over vaccines will prolong the pandemic well into a third year.Biden commemorates 49th anniversary of crash that killed his first wifeRead moreThe candid admission came in a wide-ranging interview with the Los Angeles Times, which followed reports that the vice-president was “struggling” to make a mark as Joe Biden’s No 2 and was keen for a more prominent role.Biden’s handling of the pandemic, alongside other woes such as spiking inflation and the supply chain crisis, has contributed to a steady decline in his popularity ratings.On Saturday, a White House official told NBC News the president would make a speech about Covid-19 on Tuesday, at which he would unveil new measures to combat the virus, including steps to “help communities in need of assistance”.Biden would also be “issuing a stark warning of what the winter will look like for Americans that choose to remain unvaccinated”, the official said.Harris, who has suffered the same sinking approval ratings as the 79-year-old president, was seen as shoo-in for the 2024 Democratic nomination until Biden said last month he would seek a second term. The White House said on Thursday Harris would be his running mate again.As well as speaking to the LA Times, Harris had a heated exchange on Friday with the radio host Charlamagne tha God.At the conclusion of a testy interview that Harris aides reportedly tried to cut short, Charlamagne tha God questioned if Biden or Joe Manchin, the centrist Democrat from West Virginia who wields outsized power in the 50-50 Senate, was the “real” president.“C’mon, Charlamagne,” Harris snapped. “It’s Joe Biden.“No, no, no, no. It’s Joe Biden, and don’t start talking like a Republican, about asking whether or not he’s president.”Harris’s comments about Covid, in which she also appeared to place blame on the medical community for a lack of foresight, would seem to confirm the administration’s view that the pandemic is its biggest obstacle to progress.“We didn’t see Delta coming. I think most scientists did not – upon whose advice and direction we have relied – didn’t see Delta coming,” Harris said.“We didn’t see Omicron coming. And that’s the nature of what this awful virus has been, which as it turns out, has mutations and variants.”Harris also said the public needed to be more trusting of Covid-19 vaccines, citing a slow take-up rate despite the White House and federal health officials’ efforts to urge vaccinations and boosters.“I would take that more seriously,” Harris said of disinformation promoted in Republican circles and swirling elsewhere, successfully dissuading people from getting a shot.“The biggest threat still to the American people is the threat to the unvaccinated. And most people who believe in the efficacy of the vaccine and the seriousness of the virus have been vaccinated. That troubles me deeply.”Harris’s claims are backed by data analysis showing that 91% of Democrats have received a first shot compared to only 60% of Republicans. Deaths from Covid-19 are occurring increasingly in areas that voted for Donald Trump in 2020, compared to areas that voted for Biden.The administration was handed a victory on Friday, as an appeals court said its vaccine mandate for large companies could go into effect. That contest is not over, however, as Republicans seek to take the matter all the way to the supreme court.“We have not been victorious over [Covid-19],” Harris told the LA Times, appearing to counter Biden’s claim in July that the virus “no longer controls our lives”.“I don’t think that in any regard anyone can claim victory when, you know, there are 800,000 people who are dead because of this virus.”Biden acknowledges his Build Back Better plan will miss Christmas deadlineRead moreOther subjects covered in the LA Times interview included Biden’s Build Back Better domestic spending plan, immigration and voting rights, all hot-button topics on which the administration has failed to make much headway.Harris said the failure to pass the $1.75tn economic and climate spending package, which Biden conceded on Friday would miss its Christmas deadline, was a frustration – but offered no alternative plan.Although she blamed Republican stonewalling, the measure is being held up in particular by Manchin.“We have to keep appealing to the American people that they should expect Congress and their elected representatives to act on the issue,” Harris said. “We can’t give up on it, that’s for sure.”TopicsKamala HarrisCoronavirusVaccines and immunisationUS politicsBiden administrationnewsReuse this content More

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      Rahm Emanuel leads confirmed Biden nominees in late-night logjam break

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      Rahm Emanuel leads confirmed Biden nominees in late-night logjam breakEx-Obama chief of staff will go to Japan after deal for vote on Russia pipeline sanctions ends Republican Senate resistance The former Obama White House chief of staff and Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel was among more than 30 ambassadors and other Biden nominees confirmed by the Senate early on Saturday. Trump condemned by Anti-Defamation League chief for antisemitic tropesRead moreThe Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, broke a Republican-stoked logjam by agreeing to schedule a vote on sanctions on the company behind the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that will deliver natural gas from Russia to Germany.With many senators anxious to go home for the holidays, Schumer threatened to keep the Senate in for as long as it took to break a logjam on a number of diplomatic and national security nominees.Emanuel was confirmed to serve as ambassador to Japan by a vote of 48-21. Nominees to be ambassadors to Spain, Vietnam and Somalia were among those confirmed by voice vote after an agreement was reached to vote on Nord Stream 2 sanctions before 14 January.The confirmation process has proved to be frustrating for new administrations regardless of party. While gridlock isn’t new, the struggle is getting worse.Democrats have voiced concerns about holds Republican senators placed on nominees in order to raise objections about foreign policy matters that had little to do with the nominees in question. Holds do not block confirmation but they do require the Senate to undertake hours of debate.Positions requiring confirmation can go unfilled for months even when the nominations are approved in committee with the support of both parties.Biden officials acknowledge the president will end his year with significantly more vacancies than recent predecessors and that the slowdown of ambassadorial and other national security picks has had an impact on relations overseas.Ted Cruz, of Texas, held up dozens of nominees at state and treasury, over objections to the waiving of sanctions targeting the Nord Stream AG firm overseeing the pipeline project. The administration said it opposed the project but viewed it is a fait accompli. It also said trying to stop it would harm relations with Germany.Critics on the both sides of the aisle have raised concerns that the pipeline will threaten European energy security by increasing reliance on Russian gas and allowing Russia to exert political pressure on vulnerable nations, particularly Ukraine.Earlier in the week, Schumer demanded that Cruz lift all of his holds on nominees at the two departments as well as the US Agency for International Development, as part of any agreement on a Nord Stream 2 sanctions. Cruz said he was willing to lift holds on 16. The two sides traded offers on Friday.“I think there ought to be a reasonable middle ground solution,” Cruz said.“Let’s face it. There is little to celebrate when it comes to nominations in the Senate,“ said Senator Bob Menendez, chairman of the foreign relations committee.The New Jersey Democrat blamed Republicans for “straining the system to the breaking point” and depriving Biden of a full national security team, “leaving our nation weakened”.“Something’s going to happen in one of these places and we will not be there to ultimately have someone to promote our interests and to protect ourselves,” he said.Roy Blunt, a Missouri Republican, said some of the gridlock stemmed back to four years ago when Democrats, under Schumer, tried to stop many of Donald Trump’s nominees being confirmed in a timely manner.“Senator Schumer doesn’t have anything close to clean hands here,” Blunt said.Emanuel, also a former member of the House, was backed for the post in Tokyo at a time when Washington is looking to Asian allies to help push back against China.Detractors said they would not back him because of the shooting when he was mayor of Chicago of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, who died when a police officer, Jason Van Dyke, fired multiple times.Emanuel’s handling of the case was criticized, especially as video was not released for more than a year. Van Dyke was convicted of second-degree murder and jailed. Four officers were fired.Biden nominated Emanuel in August. At his confirmation hearing in October, Emanuel said he thought about McDonald every day and that, as mayor, he was responsible and accountable.Eight Republicans voted with a majority of Democrats to confirm Emanuel. Three Democrats voted no: Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, and Jeff Merkley of Oregon.TopicsBiden administrationUS foreign policyUS national securityRahm EmanuelUS politicsAsia PacificJapannewsReuse this content More

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      From Peril to Betrayal: the year in books about Trump and other political animals

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      From Peril to Betrayal: the year in books about Trump and other political animals 2021 provided a glut of memoirs, deep dives and tell-alls about American politics in an age of Covid and attacks on democracy itself. Which were the best – and most alarming?If in recent years American politics books have been noted mainly for ephemera, in 2021 the winds of history began to blow open the doors – occasionally to devastating effect. The advent of a new administration loosened tongues and made documents more readily available as some sought redemption, justification or simply fame.March of the Trump memoirs: Mark Meadows and other Republican readsRead moreSuch books illustrate the truth that one cannot keep a thing hidden and generally share certain characteristics that convey the ring of truth. They report bitterly angry outbursts by Donald Trump, staff reeling from dysfunction, chaos and the pressures of a campaign in a pandemic. They frequently recount interviews with Trump himself. They contain sufficient profanity to make sailors blush.And, happily, this paper celebrated its bicentennial in part by scooping many of them, with real consequences in the case of Mark Meadows, who published The Chief’s Chief this month. Some – the former White House chief of staff in particular – may wish they had not written books. But some books are essential to understand the danger in which the country finds itself.The former FBI director James Comey opened the year with Saving Justice, a second book defending the rule of law. Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes followed with Lucky, a quick but full postmortem of the 2020 campaign, noting: “Luck, it has been said, is the residue of design. It was for Joe Biden, and for the republic.”The heart of the year was a series of blockbusters from prominent reporters, each containing significant new information on aspects of the chaos that was 2020. Michael Bender led off with Frankly, We Did Win This Election, in which Trump’s words, on the record, are unsurprising but nonetheless shocking.In Landslide, Michael Wolff completed his Trump trilogy with a focus on the campaign – including Chris Christie, in debate preparation (as a result of which he tested positive for Covid), earning Trump’s ire for asking hard but predictable questions on Covid response and family scandals – and on a post-election dominated by Trump’s anger as the levers of power, including the supreme court of which he chose three members, failed to overturn his defeat.Wolff is keenly analytic: as he writes, Trump “knew nothing of government, [his supporters] knew nothing about government, so the context of government itself became beside the point”. Instead, Trump was “the star – never forget that – and the base was his audience”. This self-referential and adulatory mode of governing failed in a divided country facing a pandemic and rising international challenges. Landslide is a fine book, though as new evidence from the 6 January committee emerges, Wolff’s conclusion limiting Trump’s own knowledge of and responsibility for the events of that day may come to seem premature.Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker followed with I Alone Can Fix It, in which Gen Mark Milley said the US was in a “Reichstag moment” on 2 January, four days before the insurrection, and referred to “the gospel of the Führer” poisoning American democracy. Trump’s anger at his pollster, Tony Fabrizio, for being the bearer of bad news on Covid and the electorate is telling too: “They’re tired? They’re fatigued?” Politics as empathy was not the campaign’s theme.Bob Woodward, writing with Robert Costa, likewise completed his Trump series with Peril, whose title sums up its conclusion. The book, notable for revealing Gen Milley’s attempts to reassure the Chinese military in the waning days of the presidency, quotes Trump’s apparent view that “real power [is] fear” and asks, “Were there any limits to what he and his supporters might do to put him back in power?”Adam Schiff’s Midnight in Washington brings a former prosecutor’s eye and perspective of a House intelligence committee chairman to issues surrounding Trump and Russia. His book is both history and warning.Among Trump loyalists, former trade czar Peter Navarro released In Trump Time, in which he criticized Meadows and anyone else he deemed insufficiently loyal. The book’s most memorable line calls Vice-President Mike Pence “Brutus” to Trump’s “American Caesar” – all without irony or, one hopes, knowledge of Roman history.Not all notable books were tell-alls. Some contained real policy insights. Josh Rogin’s Chaos Under Heaven looks at US-China relations from a strategic as well as pandemic perspective, noting US conflicts of both interest and policy as well as Trump’s inability to develop a workable strategy. Rival books on antitrust policy by two very different senators, Amy Klobuchar and Josh Hawley, illustrate Congress’ increased focus on large technology companies. Evan Osnos’ Wildland chronicles the lives and fortunes of billionaires and the growth of the Washington machine – and the effects, including rightward political shifts, on those at the bottom. On a related theme, in Misfire Tim Mak delivers a shocking history of the National Rifle Association and its former leaders.Several books will serve as first drafts of history. Madam Speaker, Susan Page’s biography of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, describes how she “took on the boys club and won” through mastery of legislation and her caucus. Justice, Justice Thou Shalt Pursue compiles the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s opinions, speeches and other documents, with Amanda Tyler as co-author.Uncontrolled Spread review: Trump’s first FDA chief on the Covid disasterRead moreUnsurprisingly in the second year of a pandemic, healthcare featured prominently. In The Ten-Year War, Jonathan Cohn recounts the 10-year history of Obamacare. Patrick Radden Keefe’s Empire of Pain tells the sad and painful story of the promotion of opioids in America. On the pandemic, Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta in Nightmare Scenario focus on the Trump administration’s response. Leaving responsibility mostly to the states had deleterious consequences, as did chaos, turf wars and giving priority to “the demands of Trump and his base” as he sought reelection rather than an effective response.Scott Gottlieb, a well-regarded former FDA commissioner, takes a broader, more philosophical view in Uncontrolled Spread. Absence of leadership and a “sizeable enterprise devoted to manufacturing skepticism” about the virus and public health solutions meant the US failed the bar of “delay[ing] its onset and reduc[ing] its scope and severity”. But the Operation Warp Speed vaccine effort “proved what government could accomplish when it functions well” and makes one keenly regret the absence of leadership elsewhere as confirmed US deaths, so many among the unvaccinated, surpass 800,000.The pandemic’s broader impact is equally profound. In Gottlieb’s words, “Covid normalized the breakdowns in a global order that it was presumed, perhaps naively, would protect us, just as Covid pierced our own perception of domestic resiliency, cooperation, and fortitude.” Vaccine hesitancy in the face of clear science is only one pandemic effect.‘Pence was disloyal at exactly the right time’: author Jonathan Karl on the Capitol attackRead moreWith honorable mentions for Wolff, Leonnig and Rucker, Woodward and Costa, and Gottlieb, ABC’s Jonathan Karl produced arguably the year’s most significant book in Betrayal, in which Trump cabinet members “paint a portrait of a wrath-filled president, untethered from reality, bent on revenge”. The attorney general, Bill Barr, decries election-related conspiracies; the acting defense secretary, Chris Miller, seeks to dissuade Trump from attacking Iran by taking (and faking) an extreme position in favour:
      Oftentimes, with provocative people, if you get more provocative than them, they then have to dial it down.
      Such was government in the Trump era.Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote in his Nobel Lecture that “one word of truth shall outweigh the whole world”. The amount of newly uncovered truth is already outweighing a fair number of the more than 4,000 exoplanets Nasa has recorded.Yet the vital question remains: what will Americans, in particular Republican officials and independent voters, do with this information? As Karl wrote, “The continued survival of our republic may depend, in part, on the willingness of those who promoted Trump’s lies and those who remained silent to acknowledge they were wrong.”Is it to be Solzhenitsyn’s hope – or his fear that “when we are told again the old truth, we shall not even remember that we once possessed it”?TopicsBooksUS politicsDonald TrumpTrump administrationBiden administrationJoe BidenRepublicansfeaturesReuse this content More