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      in US Politics

      Joe Biden's border challenge: reversing Trumpism – podcast

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      The 46th US president took office promising a more welcoming immigration policy. But Republicans are calling a new wave of migrants at the southern border a ‘crisis’ and demanding he addresses it

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know

      When Joe Biden assumed the presidency earlier this year, he inherited an immigration policy from Donald Trump that was punitive and often criticised as excessively cruel. The 45th US president had unsuccessfully attempted to build a wall across the entire southern border and vilified migrants as “invaders”. The Guardian’s Nina Lakhani tells Anushka Asthana that what she witnessed on the border in Texas was a steady influx of desperate people fleeing poverty, drought and violence. Many were families escaping together to what they hoped would be a new start. But despite the new rhetoric from the White House and a relaxation of some of the harshest measures, migrants are still being detained and many sent straight back across the border. Washington bureau chief David Smith describes the pressure Biden is under to respond to the issue. Democrats have called the situation a challenge and problem. Republicans have rushed to describe it as the first crisis and disaster of the new president’s term. Officials say the number of people caught attempting to cross the US-Mexico border is on pace to hit its highest level for 20 years. More

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      Derek Chauvin trial begins as jury hears of 'excessive force' that took George Floyd's life – live

      by

      Key events

      Show

      5.45pm EDT
      17:45

      “Faded away like a fish in a bag” – witness in Chauvin trial

      4.30pm EDT
      16:30

      Today so far

      3.40pm EDT
      15:40

      CDC study shows Pfizer and Moderna vaccines highly effective in preventing Covid infections

      2.41pm EDT
      14:41

      Biden calls on states to reinstate mask mandates as coronavirus cases rise

      2.24pm EDT
      14:24

      Biden to announce 90% of US adults will be vaccine eligible by April 19, White House confirms

      2.05pm EDT
      14:05

      Georgia sued again over elections law

      1.48pm EDT
      13:48

      Biden to announce big vaccines boost – reports

      Live feed

      Show

      5.45pm EDT
      17:45

      “Faded away like a fish in a bag” – witness in Chauvin trial

      Joanna Walters

      Blistering eye-witness testimony happening now in the murder trial of Derek Chauvin over the death of George Floyd.
      Prosecution witness Donald Williams, 33, a mixed martial arts fighter, was close to the back of the police vehicle next to which, on May 25, 2020, now-former police officer Derek Chauvin had Floyd pinned to the concrete by his neck.
      Williams told the court that he could hear and see Floyd in distress and his martial arts experience indicated to him that Chauvin was choking out Floyd as he kneeled on his neck.
      The jury, and the public watching in court or around the world by live stream, was shown some devastating clips of Chauvin allegedly “shimmying” in what Williams said was a martial arts move, altering his position very slightly so that it put more pressure on – as a fighter does when they have someone in a hold.
      Williams heard Floyd talking about how much pain he was in, his distress as he said he couldn’t breathe, apologized to the officers and begged for his life.
      “The more that the knee was on his neck, and the shimmying going on, the more you see him [Floyd] slowly fade away. His eyes rolled to the back of his head,” Williams said.’
      He described Floyd dying “like a fish in a bag” and said he saw “blood coming ouot of his nose”, adding “he had no life in him any more.”
      Williams described the knee-position as a dangerous “blood choke” intended to cut Floyd’s airway. Williams has previously been heard but unseen shouting angrily at the police from the sidewalk, calling Chauvin a “bum” and accusing him of enjoying what he was doing, as Floyd suffers and begs.

      whudat
      (@whudat)
      On convenience, God works in his ways. For Donald Williams to go to the store and witness George Floyd being murdered with a move he’s well informed of from his MMA fighting. That’s supposed to happen. Testimony: Derek Chauvin looked at him when he said that’s a Blood Choke move. pic.twitter.com/zFqdD43CDK

      March 29, 2021

      5.08pm EDT
      17:08

      By the end of this work-week, all adults – and some teens – will be eligible to get a Covid vaccine in Colorado, Associated Press reports.
      Governor Jared Polis announced the expansion of the vaccine program onMonday, adding that everyone in the state will be able to get a dose by mid to late May. Over 1 million Coloradans have already been fully vaccinated.

      Governor Jared Polis
      (@GovofCO)
      COVID-19 VACCINE UPDATE!Starting Friday, April 2, all Coloradans 16 and up will be eligible to receive the Pfizer vaccine and those 18 and up will be eligible for the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccine. This is a huge step towards Building Back Stronger here in Colorado. pic.twitter.com/w9uicase56

      March 29, 2021

      “Every day we’re getting closer to ending the pandemic, but it’s not over yet,” Polis said during a news conference.
      Across the US, roughly 95 million people have gotten at least one shot, and close to 53 million have been fully vaccinated, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
      But even as new daily records for numbers of vaccines administered continue to be set, and states continue to ramp up their rates, public health officials have called for continued vigilance. Covid cases are again creeping up in some areas of the country.
      Biden called on states to reinstate mask mandates on Monday, saying that “reckless behavior” was threatening progress made in containing the pandemic.

      Updated
      at 5.38pm EDT

      4.46pm EDT
      16:46

      Hello everyone! I am Gabrielle Canon, signing on to take you through the news for the next few hours.
      First up — Donald Trump jumped on an unusual opportunity to share his feelings about the state of affairs since he’s left office, taking over the microphone during a wedding being held at his Mar-a-Lago resort over the weekend,.
      Celebrity tabloid site TMZ first released the video of the former-president’s rambling toast, where he aired complaints about Biden’s policies and rehashed fabricated accusations of election fraud, before congratulating the happy couple.

      The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly has the story:

      “Y’know,” the tuxedoed former president began, standing in front of a waiting band, “I just got, I turned off the news, I get all these flash reports, and they’re telling me about the border, they’re telling me about China, they’re telling me about Iran – how’re we doing with Iran, how do you like that?”

      Read the rest of the story here:

      4.30pm EDT
      16:30

      Today so far

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

      The trial of Derek Chauvin in connection to the killing of George Floyd started in Minneapolis. Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer, is facing charges of murder in the second and third degree and manslaughter.
      Prosecutors played the video showing the final moments of Floyd’s life. In the video, Chauvin kneels on Floyd’s neck as Floyd repeatedly says, “I can’t breathe.” Bystanders are also heard urging Chauvin to stop kneeling on Floyd’s neck for several minutes.
      Joe Biden announced that 90% of American adults will be eligible to receive a coronavirus vaccine by April 19. By that date, 90% of Americans will live within five miles of a vaccination site, the president said. Biden also announced his administration is expanding its pharmacy vaccine program and spending nearly $100 million to vaccinate vulnerable communities.
      The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expressed a feeling of “impending doom” as coronavirus cases rise in the US. During the White House coronavirus response team’s briefing today, Dr Rochelle Walensky said, “We have so much to look forward to, so much promise and potential of where we are and so much reason for hope, but right now I’m scared.” The CDC director urged Americans to continue wearing masks and socially distancing to limit the spread of coronavirus as vaccinations ramp up. Biden echoed Walensky’s concerns and asked states to reinstate mask mandates if they have rescinded them.
      A CDC study showed the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were highly effective at preventing coronavirus infections in real-world conditions. According to the study, the risk of infection was reduced by 90% two weeks after study participants received the second dose of a vaccine.

      Gabrielle will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

      Updated
      at 4.35pm EDT

      4.15pm EDT
      16:15

      Amudalat Ajasa

      Protesters outside the Minneapolis court house where former police officer Derek Chauvin is on trial for the murder of George Floyd today were acutely aware of the significance of the case and well as the precariousness of the outcome.
      Jason Brown, 40, a vice president of a tech company and the president of Minnesota’s Arc of Justice advocacy group, who is Black, told the Guardian: “I wish for once America would stand up for us. … If [Chauvin] meant to do this or if he didn’t mean to, it happened.”
      Brown is concerned that the jury, which is majority white, may not convict.
      “The jury? I don’t think a Black man could get fair justice in America anywhere,” he said.
      People are braced for the defense to try to tear down Floyd’s character and conduct on the day.
      “[Floyd is] a Black man who’s not really on trial – but he is on trial. He died, but he’s on trial,” Brown said.
      The city has emphasized that peaceful protest is encouraged, despite the heavily-protected court building and the deployment of National Guard troops.
      But there is no doubt that if Chauvin is acquitted or even if convicted on the least serious charge, manslaughter, resulting protests could escalate and spin out of control.
      “If they don’t get it right, we will get it right. The younger generations don’t have patience for nonsense,” Brown said.
      Another protester, who identified only by her artistic moniker of Aesthetic Ash, said she left her home in California last May and has been participating in protests across the country since.
      “I’m here to make sure the community knows that people genuinely care about George Floyd, they care about Breonna Taylor and they care about all the whose lives have been stolen too early,” she said.
      Minnesota has only one previous recorded murder conviction of a police officer in the course of his duty – an officer of color.

      4.01pm EDT
      16:01

      Joe Biden is scheduled to deliver a speech on his proposed infrastructure package on Wednesday in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
      According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the president will speak in the same union hall where he campaigned for Democratic congressional candidate Conor Lamb in a 2018 special election.
      Lamb won that special election and has since won two re-election races to remain in the House of Representatives.

      Jonathan Tamari
      (@JonathanTamari)
      Joe Biden is planning to launch his infrastructure pitch in the same Western PA union hall where he campaigned for Conor Lamb in the 2018 special election

      March 29, 2021

      Updated
      at 4.20pm EDT

      3.40pm EDT
      15:40

      CDC study shows Pfizer and Moderna vaccines highly effective in preventing Covid infections

      Richard Luscombe

      In case you missed it: a new CDC study provided “strong evidence” that the two mRNA vaccines approved for use in the US, produced by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, are highly effective in preventing infections in what the agency called “real-world conditions” among healthcare personnel, first-responders and essential workers.
      “This study shows that our national vaccination efforts are working,” said Dr Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
      “These findings should offer hope to the millions of Americans receiving Covid-19 vaccines each day and to those who will have the opportunity to roll up their sleeves and get vaccinated in the weeks ahead.”
      Nonetheless, many experts fear a fourth wave of Covid-19 in the US as variants of the deadly virus continue to circulate in numerous states, many of which have almost fully reopened, and Americans prepare for the summer travel season.
      Despite more than 2.5m vaccinations being administered per day and a shrinking death toll, Walensky believes a fourth wave is imminent.
      “I’m going to lose the script, and I’m going to reflect on the recurring feeling I have of impending doom,” she said. “We have so much to look forward to, so much promise and potential of where we are, and so much reason for hope. But right now I’m scared.”
      Walensky’s concern appears to be backed up by statistics. The US recently passed 30m cases of Covid-19, according to Johns Hopkins University, and the seven-day average of hospital admissions has risen to 4,800, up 200.
      The daily average of new cases has also risen, by 10% in a week, to about 70,000, far higher than the 40,000 to 50,000 daily cases of a few weeks ago.

      3.18pm EDT
      15:18

      Martin Pengelly

      In Michigan, the Associated Press reports, a judge has ordered three men to stand trial regarding a foiled plot to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer over her coronavirus restrictions.

      Jackson county district court Judge Michael Klaeren ruled there was enough evidence and bound over Paul Bellar, Joe Morrison and Pete Musico to circuit court to stand trial.
      Arguments were heard by Klaeren about whether the men should face trial following three days of testimony. They are accused of aiding six other men charged in federal court with conspiring to kidnap Whitmer. Five more people are also charged in state courts.
      The FBI in October said it broke up a plot to kidnap Whitmer by anti-government extremists upset over her coronavirus restrictions.
      Klareen said there was enough evidence for trial on charges of providing material support for terrorist acts, gang membership and using a firearm during a felony. The judge dismissed a charge of threat of terrorism against Musico and Morrison. Bellar did not face that charge.

      Here’s some further reading…

      2.55pm EDT
      14:55

      As he walked away from the podium, a reporter asked Joe Biden if he believed some states should pause their reopening efforts because of the rise in coronavirus cases across the US.
      “Yes,” the president replied.

      Aaron Rupar
      (@atrupar)
      REPORTER: Do you believe some states should pause their reopening efforts?BIDEN: Yes pic.twitter.com/64ggT1WuYG

      March 29, 2021

      A number of states have relaxed some of their coronavirus-related restrictions in recent weeks, as vaccinations have increased.
      But the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr Rochelle Walensky, warned of “impending doom” in connection to the recent rise in cases.
      “We have so much to look forward to, so much promise and potential of where we are, and so much reason for hope,” Walensky said during this morning’s briefing from the White House coronavirus response team. “But right now I’m scared.”

      2.47pm EDT
      14:47

      Joe Biden confirmed that 90% of American adults will be eligible to receive a coronavirus vaccine by April 19. By that date, 90% of Americans will also live within five miles of a vaccination site.
      Biden noted that the final 10% of American adults will be eligible to receive the vaccine by May 1, as he previously announced.

      President Biden
      (@POTUS)
      I’m proud to announce that three weeks from today, 90% of adults will be eligible to get vaccinated — and 90% of Americans will live within 5 miles of a place to get a shot.

      March 29, 2021

      The president also announced his administration is expanding its pharmacy vaccination program to 20,000 more local pharmacies, and the federal government is investing nearly $100 million to get vulnerable communities vaccinated.
      “We still are in a war with this deadly virus, and we’re bolstering our defense, but this war is far from won,” Biden said.
      The president concluded his comments by asking Americans to continue to wear masks, socially distance and wash their hands to limit the spread of the virus.

      Updated
      at 3.04pm EDT

      2.41pm EDT
      14:41

      Biden calls on states to reinstate mask mandates as coronavirus cases rise

      Joe Biden is now speaking at the White House to deliver an update on the distribution of coronavirus vaccines in the US.
      The president noted the country has administered a record number of shots in recent days, with 10 million doses being delivered over the three days of this past weekend.
      “That would have been inconceivable in January,” Biden said. “My fellow Americans, look at what we have done over the past 10 weeks.”
      But Biden emphasized that the country’s work to get the virus under control is far from over. Echoing comments from the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Biden asked Americans to continue wearing masks and socially distancing to limit the spread of coronavirus.
      At the White House coronavirus response team’s briefing this morning, the CDC director, Dr Rochelle Walensky, noted coronavirus cases have been on the rise in recent days.
      “We’re giving up hard-fought, hard-won gains,” Biden said.
      The president asked states that have rescinded their mask mandates to reinstate those public health orders.
      “Mask up, mask up. It’s your patriotic duty,” Biden said. “It’s the only way we’ll get back to normal.”

      2.24pm EDT
      14:24

      Biden to announce 90% of US adults will be vaccine eligible by April 19, White House confirms

      The White House has confirmed that Joe Biden will announce today that 90% of American adults will be eligible to receive a coronavirus vaccine by April 19.
      By that date, 90% of Americans will also have a vaccination site within five miles of where they live, the White House said in a new statement.
      According to the statement, Biden will announce his administration is expanding the federal pharmacy vaccination program to 20,000 more local pharmacies across the US.
      The president will also announce nearly $100 million in funding to help vaccinate vulnerable and at-risk communities, as well as Americans with disabilities.
      Finally, Biden will announce his administration is going to establish a dozen more federally-run mass vaccination sites across the country. The White House said earlier today that two such sites will be set up in Gary, Indiana, and St Louis, Missouri.
      Biden is expected to start speaking any moment, so stay tuned.

      2.05pm EDT
      14:05

      Georgia sued again over elections law

      Sam Levine

      Georgia now faces two federal lawsuits over its sweeping new election law, both alleging state Republicans designed the measure to discriminate against Black and other minority voters.
      A suit filed on Sunday by a coalition of civil rights groups, including the state chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda, says the law is intentionally discriminatory and violates the 14th and 15th amendments of the constitution as well as the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
      The measure, signed into law on Thursday by Governor Brian Kemp, a Republican, implements a number of changes to Georgia election law. It requires voters to show identification information both when they request and return a mail-in ballot. It also shortens the period in which voters can vote by mail, prohibits providing food and water to voters in line at the polls, limits the availability of absentee ballot drop boxes, requires county boards of elections to hear voter challenges within 10 days, and creates a pathway for Republicans in the legislature to meddle in local elections,
      The law “is the culmination of a concerted effort to suppress the participation of Black voters and other voters of color by the Republican state senate, state house and governor,” lawyers representing the groups wrote.
      “Unable to stem the tide of these demographic changes or change the voting patterns of voters of color, these officials have resorted to attempting to suppress the vote of Black voters and other voters of color in order to maintain the tenuous hold that the Republican party has in Georgia.”
      The complaint is the second lawsuit filed challenging the provisions. On Thursday, almost immediately after Kemp signed the measure, the New Georgia Project and Black Voters Matter, two civic action groups, filed their own suit challenging the law.
      Joe Biden said on Friday that the US justice department, charged with enforcing the Voting Rights Act, was also “taking a look at the Georgia measure”. The department did not file any major voting rights cases under Donald Trump.
      Several more lawsuits challenging the Georgia law are expected. The suits will likely face an uphill battle among an increasingly conservative federal judiciary, especially at the appellate level that has looked skeptically on claims of voting discrimination in voting recently.

      1.48pm EDT
      13:48

      Biden to announce big vaccines boost – reports

      Martin Pengelly

      Shortly after CDC director Rochelle Walensky spoke about her “sense of doom” about rising Covid case numbers, the White House trailed some altogether more optimistic words to come from Joe Biden this afternoon.
      As Bloomberg News reports it:

      President Joe Biden plans to announce that 90% of US adults will be eligible to get a Covid-19 vaccine in three weeks, and that his administration will more than double the number of pharmacies where shots are available, officials familiar with the matter said.
      Biden will make the announcement on Monday afternoon at the White House, marking 19 April as a new milestone in the vaccination effort. He’ll also say that nearly all US adults will be able to get a shot within five miles of their homes, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

      Of course, the two lines of comment are not remotely mutually exclusive. Great strides are indeed being made in vaccinations across the US, with New York ready to vaccinate everyone over 30 and soon all adults, said Andrew Cuomo also on Monday, but case numbers are also rising, virus variants are dangerous and many states are pursuing reopening policies dangerously fast.
      Here’s our current news lead, leading on Walensky’s remarks but “wrapping”, as they in the news business, other developments too:

      1.30pm EDT
      13:30

      Today so far

      The White House press briefing has now concluded. Here’s where the day stands so far:

      The trial of Derek Chauvin in connection to the killing of George Floyd started in Minneapolis. Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer, is facing charges of murder in the second and third degree and manslaughter.
      Prosecutors played the video showing the final moments of Floyd’s life. In the video, Chauvin kneels on Floyd’s neck as Floyd can be heard repeatedly saying, “I can’t breathe.” Bystanders are also heard urging Chauvin to stop kneeling on Floyd’s neck for several minutes.
      The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expressed a feeling of “impending doom” as coronavirus cases rise in the US. During the White House coronavirus response team’s briefing today, Dr Rochelle Walensky said, “We have so much to look forward to, so much promise and potential of where we are and so much reason for hope, but right now I’m scared.” The CDC director urged Americans to continue wearing masks and socially distancing to limit the spread of coronavirus as vaccinations ramp up.

      The blog will have more coming up, so stay tuned. More

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      in US Politics

      Biden says up to 90% of adults will be eligible for Covid vaccine by 19 April

      by

      Up to 90% of US adults will be eligible for a Covid-19 shot by 19 April, Joe Biden said on Monday as he announced a major expansion of the nation’s vaccination program.Hours after Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned of “impending doom” in the race against the resurgence of infections, the US president delivered the counter measure.Talking from the White House after a briefing from his coronavirus team, Biden promised that 90% of US residents would be living within five miles of a vaccination site within three weeks.“We’re going to send more aid to states to expand the opening of more community vaccination sites, more vaccines, more sites, more vaccinators, all designed to speed our critical work,” he said.But, chiming with Walensky, he also warned: “We still are in a war with this deadly virus, and we’re bolstering our defense, but this war is far from won.”Biden said the vaccination figures – 75% of Americans over 65 inoculated in his first 10 weeks in office, and the new target of 200m shots in his first 100 days – gave him optimism.But he said the country was in danger of giving back “hard fought gains” if it let up on preventative measures such as mask wearing and social distancing.“I’m reiterating my call for every governor, mayor and local leader to maintain and reinstate the mask mandate,” he said, adding that he thought states should also pause reopening efforts because of the recent rise in cases.“Please, this is not politics. A failure to take this virus seriously is what got us into this mess in the first place,” Biden said.His plea, however, is likely to fall on deaf ears in states such as Texas, where the Republican governor, Greg Abbott, controversially lifted the state’s mask mandate this month, and in Florida, where Ron DeSantis, a staunch ally of the former president Donald Trump, refuse to implement one in the first place, and has clashed with the White House over vaccination policy.The president also had harsh words for those openly defying Covid-19 precautions, such as young spring breakers who caused chaos in Miami Beach this month.“We’re in a life and death race with a virus that is spreading quickly, with cases rising again, new variants are spreading, and sadly some of the reckless behavior we’ve seen on television over the past few weeks means that more new cases are to come in the weeks ahead,” he said.“These people are letting up on precautions, which is a very bad thing. Cases have fallen two thirds since I took office … now cases are going back up. In some states deaths are as well. We’re giving back our hard fought, hard won gains.”With 90% of Americans now eligible to receive the vaccine by 19 April, Biden noted the final 10% would be included by 1 May, as he previously announced. More

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      in US Politics

      ‘I knew they were hungry’: the stimulus feature that lifts millions of US kids out of poverty

      by

      A few months into the pandemic the tooth fairy didn’t show up. Mary Beth Cochran was caring for her six-year-old grandson, Howie, in the small town of Canton, North Carolina, and having lost her Kmart job and with it more than half her income, she couldn’t afford food let alone a dollar under the pillow.Howie woke that morning and shouted out to his grandmother: “Memaw, my tooth’s still here, what happened?” He frantically scoured the bedding for a note or coins, then slumped to the floor and cried.Cochran was tempted to say to the boy: “Tooth fairy couldn’t come because she’s run out of money.” But she didn’t. “You know, sometimes tooth fairy can’t get to all the children,” she said.Cochran, 52, is no stranger to the hardships that living in poverty in the United States can bring. She has had to put her marriage on hold because she can’t afford it – living together with her husband would cost them hundreds of dollars in lost benefits.But the Covid-19 crisis has pushed her to new extremes that have tested her ability to provide for Howie and his sister Annie, 11. Cochran has cared for the children over the past five years after her eldest daughter, their mother, fell into drug addiction and homelessness. Howie and Annie’s two other siblings are looked after by another of Cochran’s daughters who lives nearby.With $814 a month in disability pay and $236 in child support, from which she must subtract $600 in rent, Cochran has $450 a month and food stamps to feed and clothe the two children in her care.As weeks of the pandemic passed by and resources tightened, necessities started to peel away. Clothes and shoes that Cochran used to buy for the kids from thrift stores and bargain basements now became strictly second-hand.When even cast-off shoes for the rapidly growing Howie became beyond her reach, Cochran skipped buying the medicines she takes for her own chronic back problem and bipolar disorder.The toughest part has been the knowledge that there have been nights when the children have gone to bed hungry. “It breaks my heart,” she said. “I know it’s not my fault, but I wish things could be different. I wish I could give them everything they need.”Now Cochran has a chance to give her young charges everything they need. Joe Biden’s $1.9tn pandemic relief package, the American Rescue Plan, signed into law by the president earlier this month, contains a relatively unheeded feature that could radically improve the lives of Annie and Howie and millions of other American children like them trapped in poverty.The provision, known as the child tax credit, is so much more than the cold, bureaucratic transaction suggested by its title. It will transform the way that welfare is addressed in the US, bringing it into line with European and other wealthier countries by discarding the old shibboleth of deserving and undeserving poor that has dogged America’s approach for a quarter of a century.Most significantly, it will have the potential to cut child poverty in the country in half by lifting more than 5 million American kids out of its iron grip.“Millions of children will benefit,” said Kathryn Edin, professor of sociology at Princeton. “It’s amazing. It’s dignifying, it doesn’t stigmatize, it no longer segregates poor children but tells them they are important and allows them to live as part of society.”It no longer segregates poor children but tells them they are important and allows them to live as part of societyUnder the new provision, families will receive $3,600 a year for each child under six, and $3,000 a year for each older child. The money will be paid monthly, rather than the current annual lump sum, easing the burden throughout the year, and it will no longer be tied to any work requirements.Its impact will spread far and wide. A family like Cochran’s will benefit with $500 a month, no strings attached, doubling her available cash for her grandkids.Almost 70 million children will be included in the scheme – that’s more than 90% of all American kids. And the impact, social scientists believe, will be transformative.The Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University has calculated that about 5.5 million children will be lifted out of poverty – more than half those currently plagued by it. The injection of cash support will have a stunning effect especially in communities of color.One in five Black children are currently locked into poverty in America; they are projected to see a 55% drop in poverty rates. Hispanic children too are expected to see a boost, with 53% lifted out of poverty.“This would be the biggest poverty reduction legislation since the introduction of social security in the 1960s,” said Zachary Parolin, one of the Columbia authors. “We could look back on this moment, and this legislation, as an historic turning point in the development of the US welfare state.”So what does all this mean to the actual kids – to the Howies and Annies of America?Edin has a strong take on that question, having helped focus public attention on the crisis of child poverty in America with her 2015 book, $2 a Day. It delivered the gut-wrenching news that there were 1.5 million families in the US – including 3 million children – eking out a virtually cashless existence on no more than $2 a person a day.Edin began studying poverty in the early 1990s, and had a front-row seat on the 1996 welfare reforms that dramatically changed the way the US interacted with its poor. The move scrapped cash aid for low-income families with children and replaced it with a work requirement that meant that those without a job were disconnected from state help.The sociologist watched aghast as more and more families – especially those which were African American, Hispanic or headed by a single mother – were forced into direst need by a diabolical catch-22. Many of them were too poor to work, and because they weren’t in work they were deemed undeserving of benefits.“In $2 a Day we told the story of the woman who couldn’t work because she couldn’t put gas in her car. Once you end up in that kind of spiral it’s very hard to get out of, and it puts your kids at risk.”As a result of what Edin calls the “toxic alchemy” of the 1996 welfare reforms, by the mid-2000s one in five single mothers were neither working nor receiving any welfare benefits. They were dependent on food stamps and living essentially cashless in the richest nation on Earth.The terrible hardship that Edin watched unfolding is prevalent today. A separate 2019 Columbia University study found that more than one in three children in the US are penalized because their families earn too little to be fully eligible for benefits.That includes 23 million children who are too poor to receive state aid.This hard-edged approach has separated the US from many other high-income nations such as Canada, the UK and Australia, which offer large swaths of their populations a guaranteed income to rear their children. The work-related path taken by the US essentially abandoned its most vulnerable children to the vagaries of food insecurity, eviction and all the mental and physical health problems that flow from being poor.You can see what those harsh winds can do through the experiences of the Cochrans during the pandemic. Every month when Mary Beth received her disability money, Annie, a nervous child racked by anxiety instilled by her unstable early childhood, would approach her.“Memaw, are you OK?” she would say. “Do we have enough food to last this month?”The honest answer was, no. By the third week in the month the cash was gone, the food stamps dried up. Cochran stopped buying fresh salad – Annie’s favorite – because it was too expensive, turning to less healthy packaged foods such as hotdogs and burgers.Even then, there was not enough to feed the children. By the end of the month there was no way out of it. Cochran, who doesn’t own a car, would have to beg a lift to the soup kitchen.“It hurts so much,” she said. “I feel like I’m letting them down. I knew they were hungry, and there was nothing I could do to change it.”The devastating shift in 1996 away from cash aid to work-related tax credits was founded upon the view that poverty is a moral deficiency, a form of victim blaming that stems back generations in America. It was signed into law by a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, and received strong backing from Biden, then a US senator from Delaware.Biden tried to justify the reform’s tough work requirements by arguing at the time that “too many welfare recipients spend far too long on welfare and do far too little in exchange for their benefits”.Today, Biden finds himself at the forefront of a movement that is beginning to undo some of the damage wrought by that legislation he supported 25 years ago. But his about-turn hasn’t come without a shove.Until relatively recently, Biden remained agnostic about the idea of addressing child poverty amid the destruction of the pandemic. It took the energetic intervention of a Democratic congresswoman to force the child allowance on to his coronavirus relief package.That congresswoman was Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, who has been striving to get subsidies for children on to the statute books for almost two decades. In 2003 she introduced her first “advancement of the child” bill, re-entering it every two years only to see it die repeatedly for lack of political support.These were the lonely years in the wilderness when child poverty was considered insignificant. “It wasn’t a question of opposition, it was a question of indifference,” she told the Guardian. “So for a while, yes, I was a lone voice.”But she kept her eyes doggedly on the prize, driven by her deep understanding of children in need based on her own personal experiences. When she was nine, her family in New Haven fell on hard times and were evicted from their home.She went to live, like Annie and Howie, with her grandmother. “My family struggled financially for most of my parents’ lives. My own background inspires me to keep pushing,” she said.Now all those years of effort have paid dividends. “For the US this is historic,” she said of the new child allowance. “It’s akin to what Franklin Roosevelt did with the New Deal through social security which lifted 90% of seniors out of poverty – President Biden is lifting millions of children out of poverty.”So what changed? What led the US to pull back from 25 years of a policy that, at best, could be described as tough love, at worst looks like cruelty towards its most defenseless children?DeLauro ascribes the shifting mood to the pandemic, which she says has “shone a bright light on the health and economic inequities and the racial disparities in our system”.Edin agrees that if it hadn’t been for the pandemic we might not be here. Such glaring hardship for so many Americans has made it impossible to continue to victim-blame the “undeserving” poor.“The undeserving-deserving divide breaks down when people who do deserving things don’t get what society has promised them. The labor market is so fragile, and so many people feel on the edge, you really don’t have two groups any more.”The other great driving force behind the new provisions has been race. The eruption of racial justice protests last summer following the death in police custody of George Floyd has led to a renewed focus on police brutality and the treatment of Black communities within the criminal justice system.But it has also put new vigor in movements to challenge the growing inequality between racial groups in the US and push back against the white supremacist narrative unleashed by Donald Trump. One of the beneficiaries of this new energy has been the cause of child poverty.The Rev Dr Starsky Wilson is himself an example of the links between the struggle for racial justice and the battle to lift children out of poverty. He was co-chair of the Ferguson Commission, an independent review of the impediments to racial equality convened in the wake of the 2014 police killing in Ferguson, Missouri, of the unarmed Black teenager Michael Brown.Today Wilson is president of the Children’s Defense Fund, a leading US advocacy group whose mission is to make sure every child in America has what they need to thrive. He views the new child allowances as a corrective to generations of public policy skewed against communities of color, which resulted in the vast 90% wealth gap between African American families and their white counterparts.“The movement for racial justice, starting in Ferguson and culminating in the largest racial justice mobilization in history in 2020, has absolutely changed our ability to talk about public responsibility to respond to racial inequality,” he said.It’s going to mean food on the table in July when they are out of school and there is no summer feeding programsWilson evoked a young child living in Lower St Louis where he used to pastor, and pondered what the new $300-a-month allowance for their family would mean for them. “It’s going to mean food on the table in July when they are out of school and there is no summer feeding programs. It is going to mean the child feeling settled and safe, each and every day.”The challenge now for Wilson and all the others who have campaigned for so long for a better deal for America’s children is to make this victory last. Under the pandemic relief package, the new allowances will be in place for one year only, but the hope is that they will prove so popular that Congress will be obliged to make them permanent.Mary Beth Cochran would certainly welcome that. Once she starts receiving the $500-a-month checks this summer she plans to pay off her bills and then maybe buy a used car. She won’t have to skip her meds any more or go to the soup kitchen, and when the pandemic lifts she plans to drive to the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee so Annie and Howie can play in the rivers.And the tooth fairy will be back. More

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      in World Politics

      The US Joins the “Rules-Based World” on Afghanistan

      by

      On March 18, the world was treated to the spectacle of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken sternly lecturing senior Chinese officials about the need for China to respect a “rules-based order.” The alternative, Blinken warned, is a world in which might makes right, and “that would be a far more violent and unstable world for all of us.”

      Blinken was clearly speaking from experience. Since the United States dispensed with the UN Charter and the rule of international law to invade Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, and has used military force and unilateral economic sanctions against many other countries, it has indeed made the world more deadly, violent and chaotic. When the UN Security Council refused to give its blessing to US aggression against Iraq in 2003, President George W. Bush publicly said the UN would become “irrelevant.” He later appointed John Bolton as UN ambassador, a man who famously once said that, if the UN building in New York “lost 10 stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.” 

      What an Afghan Peace Deal Could Look Like

      READ MORE

      But after two decades of unilateral US foreign policy in which Washington has systematically ignored and violated international law, leaving widespread death, violence and chaos in its wake, US foreign policy may finally be coming full circle, at least in the case of Afghanistan. Secretary Blinken has taken the previously unthinkable step of calling on the United Nations to lead negotiations for a ceasefire and political transition in Afghanistan, relinquishing America’s monopoly as the sole mediator between the Kabul government and the Taliban.

      So, after 20 years of war and lawlessness, is Washington finally ready to give the “rules-based order” a chance to prevail over US unilateralism and “might makes right,” instead of just using it as a verbal cudgel to browbeat its enemies? President Joe Biden and Secretary Blinken seem to have chosen America’s endless war in Afghanistan as a test case, even as they resist rejoining Barack Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran, jealously guard America’s openly-partisan role as the sole mediator between Israel and Palestine, maintain Donald Trump’s vicious economic sanctions, and continue the United States’ systematic violations of international law against many other countries. 

      What’s Going on in Afghanistan?

      In February 2020, the Trump administration signed an agreement with the Taliban to fully withdraw US and NATO troops from Afghanistan by May 1, 2021. The Taliban had refused to negotiate with the US-backed government in Kabul until the US and NATO withdrawal agreement was signed. But once that was done, the Afghans began peace talks in March 2020. Instead of agreeing to a full ceasefire during the talks, as the US government wanted, the Taliban only agreed to a one-week “reduction in violence.”

      Eleven days later, as fighting continued between the Taliban and the Afghan forces, the United States wrongly claimed that the Taliban were violating the agreement they signed with the United States and relaunched its bombing campaign. Despite the fighting, the Kabul government and the Taliban managed to exchange prisoners and continue negotiations in Qatar, mediated by US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, who had negotiated the US withdrawal agreement with the Taliban. But the talks made slow progress and now seem to have reached an impasse.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The coming of spring in Afghanistan usually brings an escalation in the war. Without a new ceasefire, a spring offensive would probably lead to more territorial gains for the Taliban, who already control at least half of Afghanistan. This prospect, combined with the May 1 withdrawal deadline for the remaining 3,500 US and 7,000 other NATO troops, prompted Blinken’s invitation to the UN to lead a more inclusive international peace process that will also involve India, Pakistan and the United States’ traditional enemies: China, Russia and, most remarkably, Iran.

      This process began with a conference on Afghanistan in Moscow on March 18-19, which brought together a 16-member delegation from the Afghan government in Kabul and negotiators from the Taliban, along with Khalilzad and representatives from the other countries. The conference has laid the groundwork for a larger UN-led conference to be held in Istanbul in April to map out a framework for a ceasefire, a political transition and a power-sharing agreement between the Afghan government and the Taliban.

      UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has appointed Jean Arnault to lead the negotiations for the United Nations. Arnault previously negotiated the end to the Guatemalan Civil War in the 1990s and the peace agreement between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in 2016. He was also the secretary-general’s representative in Bolivia from the 2019 coup until a new election was held in 2020. Arnault also knows Afghanistan, having served in the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan from 2002 to 2006.

      If the Istanbul conference results in an agreement between the Afghan government and the Taliban, US troops could be home sometime in the coming months. Trump, who belatedly tried to make good on his promise to end that endless war, deserves credit for beginning a full withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. But a withdrawal without a comprehensive peace plan would not have ended the conflict. The UN-led peace process should give the people of Afghanistan a much better chance of a peaceful future than if US forces left with the two sides still at war, and reduce the chances that the gains made by women over these years will be lost.

      “Muddle Along”

      It took 17 years of war to bring the United States to the negotiating table and another two-and-a-half years before it was ready to step back and let the UN take the lead in peace negotiations. For most of this time, the US tried to maintain the illusion that it could eventually defeat the Taliban and “win” the war. But US internal documents published by WikiLeaks and a stream of reports and investigations revealed that US military and political leaders have known for a long time that they could not win. As General Stanley McChrystal, the former commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, put it, the best that US forces could do in Afghanistan was to “muddle along.” 

      What that meant in practice was dropping tens of thousands of bombs, day after day, year after year, and conducting thousands of night raids that, more often than not, killed, maimed or unjustly detained innocent civilians. The death toll in Afghanistan is unknown. Most US airstrikes and night raids take place in remote, mountainous areas where people have no contact with the UN human rights office in Kabul that investigates reports of civilian casualties. Fiona Frazer, the UN’s human rights chief in Afghanistan, admitted to the BBC in 2019 that “more civilians are killed or injured in Afghanistan due to armed conflict than anywhere else on Earth. … the published figures almost certainly do not reflect the true scale of harm.” 

      No serious mortality study has been conducted since the US-led invasion in 2001. Initiating a full accounting for the human cost of this war should be an integral part of UN envoy Arnault’s job, and we should not be surprised if, like the Truth Commission he oversaw in Guatemala, it reveals a death toll that is 10 or 20 times what we have been told.

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      If Blinken’s diplomatic initiative succeeds in breaking this deadly cycle of “muddling along,” and brings even relative peace to Afghanistan, that will establish a precedent and an exemplary alternative to the seemingly endless violence and chaos of America’s post-9/11 wars in other countries. The United States has used military force and economic sanctions to destroy, isolate or punish an ever-growing list of countries around the world, but it no longer has the power to defeat, restabilize and integrate these countries into its neocolonial empire, as it did at the height of its power after the Second World War. America’s defeat in Vietnam was a historical turning point: the end of an age of Western military empires.  

      All the United States can achieve in the countries it is occupying or besieging today is to keep them in various states of poverty, violence and chaos — shattered fragments of empire adrift in the 21st-century world. US military power and economic sanctions can temporarily prevent bombed or impoverished countries from fully recovering their sovereignty or benefiting from Chinese-led development projects like the Belt and Road Initiative, but America’s leaders have no alternative development model to offer them. The people of Iran, Cuba, North Korea and Venezuela have only to look at Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, Libya or Somalia to see where the pied piper of American regime change would lead them.

      What’s This All About?

      Humanity faces truly serious challenges in this century, from the mass extinction of the natural world to the destruction of the life-affirming climate that has been the vital backdrop of human history, while nuclear mushroom clouds still threaten us all with civilization-ending destruction. It is a sign of hope that Biden and Blinken are turning to legitimate, multilateral diplomacy in the case of Afghanistan, even if only because, after 20 years of war, they finally see diplomacy as a last resort. 

      But peace, diplomacy and international law should not be a last resort, to be tried only when Democrats and Republicans alike are finally forced to admit that no new form of force or coercion will work. Nor should they be a cynical way for American leaders to wash their hands of a thorny problem and offer it as a poisoned chalice for others to drink.

      If the UN-led peace process Secretary Blinken has initiated succeeds and US troops finally come home, Americans should not forget about Afghanistan in the coming months and years. We should pay attention to what happens there and learn from it. And we should support generous US contributions to the humanitarian and development aid that the people of Afghanistan will need for many years to come. This is how the international “rules-based system,” which US leaders love to talk about but routinely violate, is supposed to work, with the UN fulfilling its responsibility for peacemaking and individual countries overcoming their differences to support it.

      Maybe cooperation over Afghanistan can even be a first step toward broader US cooperation with China, Russia and Iran that will be essential if we are to solve the serious common challenges confronting us all.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      How Joe Biden Looks at the World

      by

      In his first foreign policy speech as president, delivered at the State Department on February 4, 2021, Joe Biden laid out his vision of America’s engagement with the world. In its conventional combination of the stick of military power and the carrot of diplomacy, Biden’s address heralded a return to the foreign policy status quo of the “a la carte multilateralism” that has characterized the US global approach since the end of the Cold War.

      As Biden explained, US engagement is based, first and foremost, on US global power, “our inexhaustible source of strength” and “abiding advantage.” That power has historically consisted of military force, economic pressure and diplomatic engagement. Rhetorically at least, Biden has favored a recalibration away from a reliance on the military, insisting that force will be a “tool of last resort.”

      Biden’s America Is the New “Middle Kingdom”

      READ MORE

      In practice, however, Biden has adopted a more ambiguous position toward military power. Reflecting both budgetary concerns and public skepticism of America’s recent record of military interventions, the new president has promised a global posture review of the US military footprint overseas, which would likely lead to a redeployment rather than a radical reduction of American military power.

      Biden’s early actions have reflected this cautious approach, ending US support for offensive military operations in the Saudi-led war in Yemen but freezing some of the troop withdrawals his predecessor had instituted at the end of his term. Looking to the future, the president has promised to phase out America’s “forever wars” but has also pledged to focus more on pushing back against other great powers, namely Russia and China.

      Because the February 4 speech took place in front of an audience of diplomats, Biden unsurprisingly focused most of his remarks not on the hard power wielded by the Pentagon, but the “smart power” of diplomacy. The president pledged to renew alliance relationships that “atrophied over the past few years of neglect and, I would argue, abuse.” At the same time, he stressed the importance of diplomacy even when “engaging our adversaries and our competitors.”

      MAGA Lite?

      In what marked perhaps the most significant break with the foreign policy of his immediate predecessor, Biden promised to restore the United States as a full participant, if not a leader, in working multilaterally to solve global problems. He identified those problems as global warming, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, cybersecurity, the refugee crisis, attacks on vulnerable minorities, racial inequality and the persistence of authoritarianism. Although the president mentioned a few global institutions and agreements, notably the World Health Organization (WHO) and the 2015 Paris climate agreement, the emphasis was clearly on the US reclaiming global leadership rather than leading “from behind,” as the Obama administration famously said about its involvement in efforts against former Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi in 2011.

      Embed from Getty Images

      In establishing the tone of his administration’s foreign policy, Biden didn’t enunciate a new doctrine. Rather, in what might be called an approach of “multilateral restoration,” he sought to repudiate the inconsistent, unilateral and anti-global positions of former President Donald Trump, while placing his own administration in the comfortable, pre-Trump foreign policy mainstream that European and Asian allies have come to expect and that is embodied, for instance, in the Franco-German-led Alliance for Multilateralism.

      Given Biden’s role as vice-president in the Obama administration and his appointment to high-level positions of many policymakers from that period — Secretary of State Antony Blinken, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, climate czar John Kerry, UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, Indo-Pacific Coordinator Kurt Campbell — many observers believe that his presidency will represent Obama 2.0, a resumption of the globally aware, generally predictable, but periodically unorthodox foreign policy of the earlier administration.

      The world of 2021, however, is very different from the one that Barack Obama and Joe Biden navigated across their two terms in office. New global problems have emerged such as COVID-19, while others have become more urgent, such as the climate crisis. The four years of Trump’s presidency weakened certain traditional elements of statecraft, such as arms control.

      Given the persistence of American exceptionalism under Biden, it’s difficult not to view his foreign policy approach as MAGA Lite: making America great again with the assistance of foreign partners rather than over their objections. As Steven Blockmans of the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels puts it, “In all but name, the rallying cry of America First is here to stay,” reflected in the Biden administration’s prioritization of domestic investments over new trade deals and his expansion of Buy American provisions in federal procurement. Whether represented as America First, MAGA Lite or even liberal internationalism, the conventional US approach to multilateralism has been instrumental, as a means to the end of preserving US global power.

      Executive Orders

      At the same time, the inconsistency of US foreign policy over the years — seesawing back and forth from Bill Clinton’s modified multilateralism to George W. Bush’s aggressive unilateralism to Obama’s cautious multilateralism to Trump’s anti-globalist posturing — has led both allies and adversaries alike to hedge their bets by investing their political capital either in other alliances or in more self-reliant economic and security strategies. The most dramatic examples of this hedging have been China’s establishment of rival multilateral economic institutions and the European Union’s investment into autonomous military structures.

      The Biden administration’s rapid use of executive orders to reverse Trump’s positions — for instance, bringing the United States back into the WHO and the Paris climate agreement — has been welcomed in many of the world’s capitals. But it also confirms what many in the international policymaking community have long viewed as America’s overly volatile foreign policy. The new administration’s reversals of Trump policies extend to immigration, as Biden has canceled the “Muslim travel ban” and ended funding for the largely unbuilt wall on the border with Mexico. He quickly hit rewind on the environmental deregulations of the Trump administration and the previous president’s approval of the Keystone XL pipeline. In addition, the Biden team has taken steps to reenter the 2016 Iran nuclear deal, has revived arms control negotiations with Russia and plans at least to mitigate the impact of the trade sanctions against China.

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      But if Trump could reverse Obama’s positions on all these matters, and Biden with a stroke of the pen could do the same to Trump’s reversals, who’s to say that the next president in 2024 will not perform the same U-turns?

      Indeed, as it looks to engage more deeply on these issues, the Biden administration faces a number of obstacles to realizing even its modest multilateral restoration: congressional opposition, corporate lobbying, public indifference or hostility, the mistrust of allies and bureaucratic inertia. It also must deal with a set of interlocking crises on the home front, from the pandemic and the resulting contraction of the US economy to crumbling infrastructure, endemic racial inequality, political polarization and rising poverty rates.

      Finally, the administration must reckon with challenges within the multilateral project itself, including a democratic deficit and the problem of non-compliance. But on certain key issues, such as global health and environmentalism, progressives will have an opportunity to push US policy in the direction of greater equitable international engagement during the Biden years. On a case-by-case basis rather than through a transformative agenda, then, the Biden administration might alter — or be pushed to alter — the way the United States engages the world.

      *[This article was originally published by FPIF.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in US Politics

      Biden pushed on immigration in press conference but provides no clear answers – live

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      Key events

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      California expands vaccine access to everyone 16 and older starting April 15

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      Biden says he expects US troops to leave Afghanistan by next year

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      Biden press conference summary

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      Biden announces goal of 200 million vaccine doses over his first 100 days

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      The West Virginia house passed legislation today that would ban transgender students from playing on the sports teams that match their gender, part of a wave of Republican bills across the country that target trans children.
      The bill, which heads to the state’s senate, is one of more than 80 proposed bills so far this year that seek to restrict trans rights – most that would limit youth access to sports and block trans kids’ use of gender-affirming care.
      Arkansas is close to passing legislation that would outlaw affirming-care for youth and punish doctors who treat trans kids, despite the fact that major medical associations recommend this care as the best practice. That state bill would also prohibit health insurance from covering certain care for all trans people.
      Mississippi signed a sports ban bill this month, and the legislatures in Tennessee and Arkansas both sent similar proposals to their governors earlier this week.
      More reading here on how trans children became the target in the GOP’s culture wars:

      And more reading on the proposed healthcare bans:

      Updated
      at 5.52pm EDT

      5.12pm EDT
      17:12

      Hello – Sam Levin in Los Angeles, taking over our live coverage for the rest of the day. My California colleagues Abené Clayton and Lois Beckett, who have been reporting on gun violence for years, have written about all the ways our current gun debate in America is wrong:

      Lois Beckett
      (@loisbeckett)
      Between us, @abene_writes and I have been covering gun violence in America for more than a decade. We wrote about why America’s current gun debate makes us so angry–and why this debate will never make us safer. https://t.co/6bePzC2nc4 pic.twitter.com/xyQp1kq2S4

      March 25, 2021

      The “solutions” offered today would do little to stem the daily death toll. The assault rifle bans and universal background checks reflexively supported by progressives will do little to decrease the bulk of shooting incidents: suicides and community violence. Approaches that have stronger evidence of saving lives, like intensive city-level support programs for the men and boys most at risk of being shot or becoming shooters, hospital-based violence intervention programs, or even more effective policing strategies, rarely get discussed on a national level. Even Democrats seem to prefer fighting a high-profile, losing battle with Republicans over gun control laws, rather than devoting time and focus to less partisan prevention efforts.

      More here:

      5.00pm EDT
      17:00

      Today so far

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

      Joe Biden was grilled on his immigration policies during his first presidential press conference. The president attempted to downplay the recent increase in migrants attempting to enter the US, noting that the country usually sees a seasonal fluctuation in border arrival numbers. However, the secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, has said the US is on track to record the highest number of migrant arrivals in two decades. Biden said of his immigration policies, “I can’t guarantee we’re going to solve everything, but I can guarantee we’re going to make it better.”
      Biden pledged to administer 200 million coronavirus vaccine doses over his first 100 days in office, doubling his initial pledge of 100 million doses. The Biden administration hit that initial goal on Friday, weeks ahead of schedule, and the US has administered about 2.5 million vaccine doses a day over the past week. “I know it’s ambitious, twice our original goal, but no other country in the world has even come close, not even close to what we are doing,” Biden said. “I think we can do it.”
      Biden said he expected to run for re-election in 2024. “My plan is to run for re-election,” Biden said. “That’s my expectation.” But when pressed on whether he would commit to running for a second term, the president gave himself some wiggle room, saying he could not predict the future.
      The president said he expected all US troops to be withdrawn from Afghanistan by next year. “If we leave, we’re going to do so in a safe and orderly way,” Biden said. “We will leave. The question is when we leave.” When asked if US troops would be in Afghanistan next year, the president replied, “I can’t picture that being the case.”
      The Boulder shooting suspect made his first appearance in court. The attorney of Ahmad Alissa requested a mental health assessment for her client, who will be held without bail as he faces 10 counts of first-degree murder.
      The CEOs of Facebook, Google and Twitter testified before the House for a hearing on online disinformation. The energy and commerce committee hearing marked the first time that the CEOs – Sundar Pichai of Google, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Jack Dorsey of Twitter – have testified before Congress since the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol.

      Sam will having more coming up, so stay tuned.

      Updated
      at 5.09pm EDT

      4.43pm EDT
      16:43

      California expands vaccine access to everyone 16 and older starting April 15

      All Californians aged 16 and older will be eligible to receive a coronavirus vaccine starting 15 April, the state’s governor just announced.
      “With vaccine supply increasing and by expanding eligibility to more Californians, the light at the end of the tunnel continues to get brighter,” Democrat Gavin Newsom said in a statement.
      “We remain focused on equity as we extend vaccine eligibility to those 50 and over starting April 1, and those 16 and older starting April 15. This is possible thanks to the leadership of the Biden-Harris Administration and the countless public health officials across the state who have stepped up to get shots into arms.”

      Gavin Newsom
      (@GavinNewsom)
      NEW: CA is expanding eligibility for the #COVID19 vaccine.Beginning April 1, Californians 50+ will be able to sign up for an appointment.Beginning April 15, eligibility will be expanded to everyone 16 and older.The light at the end of the tunnel continues to get brighter.

      March 25, 2021

      Newsom said that he expected California to be administering more than 3 million vaccine doses a week in the second half of April.
      Newsom’s announcement comes on the heels of other states, including Georgia and North Carolina, announcing that coronavirus vaccines will soon be made available to all adult residents.
      Joe Biden said earlier this month that he expected all American adults to be eligible to receive a vaccine by 1 May. During his press conference today, the president set a goal of administering 200 million vaccine doses over his first 100 days in office, doubling his initial promise of administering 100 million doses.

      Updated
      at 5.10pm EDT

      4.24pm EDT
      16:24

      David Smith

      Has the fever in American politics finally broken? After a sickness that lasted four long years, it seems the patient is on the road to recovery.
      That was the impression of Joe Biden’s first presidential press conference on Thursday. For a start, there were no lies or insults or speculations about the medicinal benefits of bleach. Sometimes Biden was earnest, sometimes he was dull, sometimes he offered an avuncular chuckle. He was solid.
      But equally telling were the questions from 10 reporters in the White House press corps. No look-in for the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed half a million Americans. Not much about the fragile nature of democracy except for Republicans’ assault on voting rights – a phenomenon that predates Donald Trump.
      Instead the main focus at the hour-long event were hardy perennials about the US-Mexico border, the war in Afghanistan, relations with China, infrastructure, the next election and the filibuster, a Senate parliamentary procedure unlikely to excite the rest of the world.
      In short, it was another victory for Biden in his quest to snap American political life back to normal and create the perception that the Trump years were a nightmare from which America has awoken. He seeks to replace it with a group yawn. That is why cable news ratings and news site traffic have plummeted since January. That is why people in Washington speak of having weekends again instead of jumping at every presidential tweet.
      It is not that Biden has been idle. His $1.9tn coronavirus relief package was passed by Democrats in Congress without Republican support and is truly historic. But he has done without shouting from the rooftops or trying to dominate every news cycle.

      4.05pm EDT
      16:05

      The White House has formally withdrawn the nomination of Neera Tanden to lead the Office of Management and Budget.
      The White House’s statement comes three weeks after Joe Biden announced Tanden’s nomination would be withdrawn, due to bipartisan opposition in the Senate over her past controversial tweets.

      Joan Greve
      (@joanegreve)
      The White House makes it official: the nomination of Neera Tanden to lead the Office of Management and Budget has been withdrawn. pic.twitter.com/CjD8YExpgU

      March 25, 2021

      Biden has not yet announced whom he will nominate to lead the OMB in Tanden’s place, but many Democrats are pushing him to select Shalanda Young.
      Young was confirmed as deputy OMB director earlier this week, and she is now serving as acting director of the agency until a full-time replacement is confirmed.
      If she were nominated and confirmed, Young would be the first African American woman to serve as OMB director.

      Updated
      at 4.26pm EDT

      3.56pm EDT
      15:56

      Biden says he expects US troops to leave Afghanistan by next year

      During his first presidential press conference, Joe Biden acknowledged it would be “hard” to meet the May 1 deadline to withdraw all US troops from Afghanistan, which was set by Donald Trump.
      “If we leave, we’re going to do so in a safe and orderly way,” Biden said. “We will leave. The question is when we leave.”
      When asked if US troops would be in Afghanistan next year, the president replied, “I can’t picture that being the case.”

      CNN
      (@CNN)
      President Biden says it will be “hard” to meet the May 1 deadline that the Trump administration had negotiated with the Taliban to withdraw all US forces from Afghanistan https://t.co/uJ0J3QqO6h pic.twitter.com/Br3al3n89I

      March 25, 2021

      When Biden was vice-president, he said US troops would leave Afghanistan by 2014, as an AP reporter noted.
      Seven years later, that goal appears to finally be coming to fruition.

      James LaPorta
      (@JimLaPorta)
      President Biden as Vice President said in 2012 that we will leave Afghanistan in 2014. 7 years later, we’re still there. Maybe this is an area we should press for more answers? https://t.co/nYLdmFt9Tl pic.twitter.com/beWYO46tUM

      March 25, 2021

      3.31pm EDT
      15:31

      As Joe Biden held his first press conference as president, the House energy and commerce committee continued its hearing with the CEOs of Facebook, Google and Twitter.
      The Guardian’s Kari Paul reports:

      After a number of hate crimes against Asian Americans in recent weeks, Democratic representative Doris Matsui of California has directly asked Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg what they are doing to address anti-Asian hate on platforms. She also asked why they took so long to remove racist hashtags that promoted blame for the coronavirus pandemic on Asian Americans, citing the recent attack on Asian women in Atlanta as a consequence of these policies.
      ‘The issues we are discussing here are not abstract,’ she said. ‘They have real world consequences and implications that are too often measured in human lives.’
      She also cited a study that showed a substantial rise in hate speech the week after Donald Trump first used the term China flu in a tweet. Matsui suggested revisiting Section 230 protections.
      Dorsey said he will not ban the racist hashtags outright because ‘a lot of these hashtags contain counter speech’, or posts refuting the racism the hashtags initiated. Zuckerberg similarly said that hate speech policies at Facebook are ‘nuanced’ and that they have an obligation to protect free speech.

      For more updates and analysis from the hearing, follow Kari’s live blog:

      3.08pm EDT
      15:08

      Joe Biden sharply criticized Republican legislators attempting to pass voting restrictions after suffering losses in the November elections.
      “What I’m worried about is how un-American this whole initiative is,” Biden said during his press conference. “It’s sick. It’s sick.”

      CNN
      (@CNN)
      President Biden compares Republican efforts to restrict voting in many states to Jim Crow laws that enforced racial segregation in the South.”What I’m worried about is how un-American this whole initiative is,” he says. “It’s sick.” https://t.co/pMGX9DNjaT pic.twitter.com/zSjb779qZD

      March 25, 2021

      The president also made this confusing comment, comparing the Republican proposals to racial segregation laws: “This makes Jim Crow look like Jim Eagle.”
      The Guardian’s Sam Levine has more details on Republicans’ efforts to curtail voting rights:

      Seizing on Donald Trump’s lies about fraud in the 2020 election, Republicans have launched a brazen attack on voting, part of an effort to entrench control over a rapidly changing electorate by changing the rules of democracy. As of mid-February, 253 bills were pending to restrict voting in 43 states. Many of those restrictions take direct aim at mail-in and early voting, the very policies that led to November’s record turnout.
      ‘The fragility of democracy has been exposed at levels that I think even white America was blind to,’ said [LaTosha] Brown, a co-founder of Black Voters Matter.

      2.55pm EDT
      14:55

      During his first presidential press conference, Joe Biden was repeatedly pressed on the situation at the border, where officials have reported an increase in the number of migrants attempting to enter the country.

      Good Morning America
      (@GMA)
      .@CeciliaVega asks Pres. Biden if it’s acceptable that Donna, TX Customs and Border facility is at 1556% capacity, filled with mostly minors: “We’re going to be moving 1,000 of those kids out quickly…that is totally unacceptable.” https://t.co/SAQIOCZmGm pic.twitter.com/Pz8T6ePI6L

      March 25, 2021

      An ABC News reporter noted one customs and border patrol facility holding unaccompanied migrant children is at 1556% capacity. She asked Biden if he considered that to be acceptable.
      “That’s a serious question, right? Is it acceptable to me? Come on,” Biden said. “That’s why we’re going to be moving 1,000 of those kids out quickly.”
      The president expressed sympathy with parents who felt their best option was to send children off on the treacherous journey to the US, and he argued that trend demonstrated the need to address the underlying issues fueling this increase in migration.

      2.42pm EDT
      14:42

      Biden press conference summary

      Joe Biden has just wrapped up his first press conference as president. Here’s what happened:

      Biden set a new goal of administering 200 million coronavirus vaccine doses over his first 100 days as president. The announcement came a week after the White House announced it had already met Biden’s initial goal of administering 100 million doses over his first 100 days.
      The president said he planned to run for reelection in 2024. “My plan is to run for reelection,” Biden said. “That’s my expectation.” But when pressed on whether he would commit to running for a second term, the president gave himself some wiggle room, saying he could not predict the future.
      Biden faced a number of questions about the recent increase in migrants attempting to enter the US. The president attempted to downplay the recent increase, noting that the country usually sees a seasonal fluctuation in border numbers. However, the secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, has said the US is on track to record the highest number of migrant arrivals in two decades. At the end of his press conference, Biden said of his immigration policies, “I can’t guarantee we’re going to solve everything, but I can guarantee we’re going to make it better.”
      The president delivered some of his most critical comments yet on the Senate filibuster. Biden reiterated his proposal to reform the filibuster into a “talking filibuster” to discourage its widespread use. But the president then went a step further, telling reporters, “If we have to, if there’s complete lockdown and chaos as a result of the filibuster, then we’ll have to go beyond what I’m talking about.” Biden also said he agreed with Barack Obama’s assessment that the filibuster is a relic of the Jim Crow era.
      Reporters did not ask a single question about the coronavirus pandemic. Commentators quickly criticized reporters’ oversight, given that the pandemic has already claimed more than 500,000 American lives.

      The blog will have more analysis coming up, so stay tuned.

      2.34pm EDT
      14:34

      Joe Biden concluded his press conference after about an hour, having taken questions from 10 reporters.
      The final question the president took had to do with the situation at the southern border. A Univision reporter noted that US customs and border patrol has not been notifying migrant children’s family members about their arrival to the US in a timely manner.
      Biden acknowledged that it will take time for his administration to improve communications and processes within the immigration system.
      “I can’t guarantee we’re going to solve everything, but I can guarantee we’re going to make it better,” Biden said.
      Asked whether he would be able to work with Republicans on immigration reform, Biden said, “They have to posture for a while. They’ve just got to get it out of their system.”

      2.26pm EDT
      14:26

      Joe Biden was asked whether he would take executive action to address gun violence, after the recent mass shootings in Atlanta and Boulder.
      “It’s all about timing,” the president said of potential executive orders.
      Biden then quickly pivoted to discussing infrastructure, saying that would be his next primary focus after signing the coronavirus relief bill.
      The president is scheduled to deliver remarks on his “Build Back Better” agenda in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, next week.

      2.21pm EDT
      14:21

      Joe Biden was asked about the US-Chinese relationship, and he noted he plans to soon invite an “alliance of democracies” to Washington to discuss matters related to China.
      Biden said that Chinese President Xi Jinping “doesn’t have a democratic — with a small ‘d’ — bone in his body, but he’s a smart, smart guy.”
      The president pledged to continue to highlight human rights abuses in China “in an unrelenting way,” as long as they continue. More