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      Clyburn offers Manchin history lesson to clear Senate path for Biden reforms

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      Jim Clyburn, the House majority whip, said on Sunday he intends to give Joe Manchin a lesson in US history as he attempts to clear a path for Joe Biden on voting rights and infrastructure.Manchin, a moderate Democratic senator from West Virginia, has emerged as a significant obstacle to the president’s ambitious proposals by insisting he will not vote to reform or end the Senate filibuster, which demands a super-majority for legislation to pass, to allow key measures passage through the 50-50 chamber on a simple majority basis.His stance has drawn praise from Republicans: Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, hailed Manchin as the politician “almost singlehandedly preserving the Senate”.But Democrats appear to be losing patience – and none more vociferously than Clyburn.“I’m going to remind the senator exactly why the Senate came into being,” Clyburn, from South Carolina, told CNN’s State of the Union, refreshing criticism of Manchin that has included saying he feels “insulted” by his refusal to fully embrace voting rights reform.“The Senate was not always an elective office. The moment we changed and made it an elective office [was because] the people thought a change needed to be made.“The same thing goes for the filibuster. The filibuster was put in place to extend debate and give time to bring people around to a point of view. The filibuster was never put in place to suppress voters … It was there to make sure that minorities in this country have constitutional rights and not be denied.”Clyburn has assailed Manchin for promoting a bipartisan approach to voting rights and refusing to endorse the For the People Act, a measure passed by the US House and intended to counter restrictive voting laws targeting minorities proposed by Republicans in 47 states and passed in Georgia last month.“You’re going to say it’s more important for you to protect 50 Republicans in the Senate than for you to protect your fellow Democrat’s seat in Georgia? That’s a bunch of crap,” Clyburn told Huffpost this month, referring to Senator Raphael Warnock’s 2022 re-election battle that supporters feel has become much harder due to the new voting laws.On Sunday Clyburn also reached into history to repeat his contention that the Georgia law is “the new Jim Crow”, a claim repeated by Biden but which Republicans say is unfair.“When we first started determining who was eligible to vote and who was not,” Clyburn said, “they were property owners. They knew that people of colour, people coming out of slavery did not own property.“…And then they went from that to having disqualifiers. And they picked those offences that were more apt to be committed by people of colour to disqualify voters.“The whole history in the south of putting together those who are eligible to vote is based upon the practices and the experiences of people based upon their race. So, I would say to anybody, ‘Come on, just look at the history … and you will know that what is taking place today is a new Jim Crow. It’s just that simple.”Despite the urging of Clyburn and others, Manchin remains steadfast in his belief bipartisanship is Biden’s best path to implementing his agenda. In a CNN interview last week, the senator said the 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol “changed me”, and said he wanted to use his power as a swing vote in the 50-50 Senate “to make a difference” by working with Republicans and Democrats.“Something told me, ‘Wait a minute. Pause. Hit the pause button.’ Something’s wrong. You can’t have this many people split to where they want to go to war with each other,” he said, of watching a riot mounted by supporters of Donald Trump seeking to overturn his election defeat on the grounds it was caused by voter fraud – a lie without legal standing.Manchin said he had a good relationship with the White House and wanted to meet Warnock and Georgia’s other Democratic senator, Jon Ossoff, to discuss voting rights.On Sunday, Clyburn said the riot also had “a tremendous effect” on him.“When I saw that Capitol policeman complain about how many times he was called the N-word by those people, who were insurrectionists out there, when I see [the civil rights leader] John Lewis’s photo torn to pieces and scattered on the floor, that told me everything I need to know about those insurrectionists, and I will remind anybody who reflects on 6 January to think about these issues as well,” he said.Clyburn was among the first major figures to endorse Biden last year, helping nurse him through bleak times after rejections in early primaries.The congressman has Biden’s ear and in an interview with the Guardian in December promised to keep pressure on his friend to fulfill a promise in his victory speech directed to African Americans: “They always have my back, and I’ll have yours.”“I think he will,” Clyburn said. “I’m certainly going to work hard to make sure that he remembers that he said it.” More

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      How Biden's $2tn infrastructure plan seeks to achieve racial justice

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      Joe Biden has said his $2tn plan to rebuild America’s “crumbling” roads, bridges, railways and other infrastructure would rival the space race in its ambition and deliver economic and social change on a scale as grand as the New Deal. The president has also vowed his “once-in-a-generation” investment will reverse long-standing racial disparities exacerbated by past national mobilizations.Embedded in his sprawling infrastructure agenda, the first part of which Biden unveiled this week, are hundreds of billions of dollars dedicated to projects and investments the administration says will advance racial equity in employment, housing, transportation, healthcare and education, while improving economic outcomes for communities of color.“This plan is important, not only for what and how it builds but it’s also important to where we build,” Biden said at a union carpenters’ training facility outside Pittsburgh last week. “It includes everyone, regardless of your race or your zip code.”His proposal would replace lead pipes and service lines that have disproportionately harmed Black children; reduce air pollution that has long harmed Black and Latino neighborhoods near ports and power plants; “reconnect” neighborhoods cut off by previous transportation projects; expand affordable housing options to allow more families of color to buy homes, build wealth and eliminate exclusionary zoning laws; rebuild the public housing system; and prioritize investments in “frontline” communities whose residents are predominantly people of color often first- and worst-affected by climate change and environmental disaster.The plan also allocates $100m in workforce development programs targeting historically underserved communities and $20m for upgrading historically Black college and universities (HBCUs) and other minority-serving institutions (MSIs), and quadruples funding for the Manufacturing Extensions Partnership to boost investment in “minority owned and rurally located” businesses.Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party (WFP), said it was clear Biden had been listening to activists and understood the interlocking challenges of racial injustice, climate change and economic inequality.“This is not race-neutral – it’s actually pretty aggressive and specific,” he said, noting the coalition of Black voters and women who helped Biden clinch the Democratic nomination and win the White House.Perhaps the boldest pieces of the proposal is a $400bn investment in care for elderly and disabled Americans. In his speech, Biden said his agenda would create jobs and lift wages and benefits for the millions of “unseen, underpaid and undervalued” caregivers, predominantly women of color.Ai-jen Poo, co-founder and executive director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, called it “one of the single most impactful plans to address racial and gender inequity in our economy”.Poo said the coronavirus pandemic, which disproportionately hurt women and people of color, showed just how critical care workers are to the wellbeing of the nation. And yet many of these workers still struggle to care for themselves and their families.Poo believes Biden’s plan can do for caregiving and the economy what past jobs programs did for manufacturing, turning dangerous, low-wage jobs into opportunities for upward mobility and security. Home care workers have been excluded from labor protections – Poo said this effort places them at the forefront.“There’s nothing more fundamental and enabling to our economy than having good care for families,” she said. “Without that, nothing else can function – we can’t even build roads, bridges and tunnels without care.”Biden’s plan also provides for $100bn for high-speed broadband internet alongside provisions to improve access and affordability, which White House officials say will help to close the digital divide between white and Black and Latino families.“The internet is a tool that all of us rely upon,” said Angela Siefer, executive director at National Digital Inclusion Alliance. “And when certain segments of the population, particularly those who have been historically left out, don’t have access to the tools, they fall even further behind.”Biden said his plan would help drive down costs by increasing competition and providing short-term subsidies for low-income households. Siefer said these measures are important, but she was skeptical rates would fall enough to make high-speed internet affordable for low-income families without more permanent subsidies.Improving digital literacy is also critical to confronting racial inequality, Siefer said, adding: “To really achieve equity, we have to get beyond the thinking: let’s just make it available.”The proposal also includes $5bn for community based violence-prevention programs, an investment Black and Latino activists have long argued will help reduce the impact of gun violence.The administration has suggested additional efforts to close the racial wealth gap, like universal pre-kindergarten, affordable higher education and improved family leave, will come in the second piece of what could be a $4tn program.Republicans accuse Biden of delivering a “Trojan Horse” to fund progressive initiatives.“Biden’s plan includes hundreds of billions of spending on leftwing policies and blue-state priorities,” the Republican National Committee said. It singled out parts of the bill that aim to tackle racial and gender inequality, such as “$400bn for an ‘unrelated’ program for home care that ‘was a top demand of some union groups’.”While many senior Democrats welcomed the plan, many progressives have said it doesn’t go far enough. They have called for $10tn over the next decade to confront climate change, including more robust investments in renewable energy and a target of shifting the US to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.Biden has said he is open to negotiation and hopes he can attract Republicans to the plan. The president suggested Republicans would rush to act if they learned the drinking water on Capitol Hill flowed through lead pipes.As Congress begins the process of turning Biden’s blueprint into legislation, progressive groups are mounting a campaign to pressure lawmakers to embrace an even more ambitious agenda. The WFP is part of a coalition of groups staging protests to demand Congress deliver “transformational economic recovery”.“If you’re going to be big and bold, be big and bold and solve the problem fully,” Mitchell said. “We are at a crisis moment and we won’t get another shot.” More

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      Trump and Carlson lead backlash as MLB pulls All-Star Game from Georgia

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      Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson led rightwing backlash after Major League Baseball said it would not play its All-Star game in Georgia because of a new law that restricts voting rights in the state.The former president and the Fox News host some say is his Republican political heir thereby ranged themselves against current president Joe Biden and the Democrat he served as vice-president, Barack Obama.“Baseball is already losing tremendous numbers of fans,” Trump said in a statement, “and now they leave Atlanta with their All-Star Game because they are afraid of the radical left Democrats.“… Boycott baseball and all of the woke companies that are interfering with free and fair elections. Are you listening Coke, Delta and all?”Coke and Delta are among companies which have expressed concern over the Georgia law, which restricts early and mail-in voting, measures seen to target minority voters likely to back Democrats.Laws under consideration in other Republican-run states have attracted criticism from corporate America. The Georgia law was passed by Republicans after Biden won the state against Trump and Democrats won both Senate runoff elections in January.Referring to the segregation of the post-civil war south, Biden called the law: “Jim Crow in the 21st century.”In his own statement on Saturday, Obama congratulated MLB “for taking a stand on behalf of voting rights for all citizens”.He also said: “There’s no better way for America’s pastime to honor the great Hank Aaron, who always led by example.”Aaron, known as the Hammer, was a long-time MLB home-run record holder who played for the Atlanta Braves and endured racist abuse throughout his life in the sport. He died in January, aged 86.MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said he had “decided that the best way to demonstrate our values as a sport is by relocating this year’s All-Star Game and MLB draft” from the home of the Atlanta Braves.“Major League Baseball fundamentally supports voting rights for all Americans and opposes restrictions to the ballot box.”The move was not without precedent. In 2016 North Carolina lost the right to host high-profile NCAA college events over a bill which restricted rights for transgender people.On Friday night Carlson, who some say could be a contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 if Trump does not run again, claimed MLB “believes it has veto power over the democratic process”.Before MLB acted, Biden said he would support moving events from Atlanta. Carlson said that showed the president was “willing to destroy even something as wholesome as the country’s traditional game purely to increase the power of his political party”.The chief of the MLB players union has indicated support for the move. In a statement on Friday, the New York Yankees great and Miami Marlins chief executive Derek Jeter said: “We should promote increasing voter turnout as opposed to any measures that adversely impact the ability to cast a ballot … We support the commissioner’s decision to stand up for the values of our game.”Georgia governor Brian Kemp – a bête noire for Trump over his refusal to overturn Biden’s win – said MLB had “caved to fear, political opportunism and liberal lies”. He also decried “cancel culture”, a key Republican talking point.Stacey Abrams, who Kemp beat in a 2018 election he ran as Georgia secretary of state, said she was “disappointed” the All-Star game would not be played in the state.But Abrams, who campaigns for voting rights and has become an influential figure in the national Democratic party, also said she was “proud of [MLB’s] stance on voting rights” and “urged events and productions to come and speak out or stay and fight”.Also on Friday, nearly 200 companies signed a statement expressing concern at moves to restrict voting rights in Republican-run states.Many observers pointed out that the political ramifications of MLB’s decision to move the All-Star Game will be stronger than the economic fallout, given that coronavirus-related restrictions would have placed limits on capacity at the event this year.A leading professor of sports economics warned that MLB could risk losing the support of conservatives in a fanbase which skews right.“After the country’s top professional basketball and football leagues embraced the Black Lives Matter movement last year,” Andrew Zimbalist of Smith College told the New York Times, “they faced organised boycotts from conservatives, though the effort ultimately had little effect. And baseball’s fanbase is older and whiter than basketball’s or football’s.” More

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      Biden administration plans historic $5bn investment to combat gun violence in hard-hit areas

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      The Biden administration plans to invest $5bn toward gun violence prevention in the nation’s most hard-hit areas as part of a key infrastructure package announced this week.This investment marks an important step in acknowledging the disparate impact of gun violence and is the first time the government has set aside this much money at one time to address community violence holistically over a multi-year period.“Historically, the federal government’s approach, particularly when faced with surges in gun homicides, is to fund strategies that over-police,” said Paul Carillo, community violence initiative director for the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, in a statement. “The Biden administration demonstrated a commitment to addressing the root causes.”The proposal comes as America has witnessed a significant increase in gun violence during the pandemic. Los Angeles has recorded an 11-year high in homicides. Philadelphia is seeing one of the highest annual gun violence rates in half a century.Joe Biden has long been a firm advocate for gun control and has called for bans on assault weapons and universal background checks. He has reiterated his resolve after the first high-profile mass shootings of his tenure in the White House.But advocates have long called on the administration to address the less-acknowledged, but more prevalent, incidents of gun violence that plague city streets which are concentrated among Black and Latino communities.Biden’s $5bn proposal would work to create and scale up community-based violence prevention strategies. The money would be allotted over eight years and go toward employing street outreach workers, making violence prevention work sustainable, and giving organizations a steady stream of funds so they can lessen their reliance on competitive one-time grants.Funds earmarked for localities where shootings are surging are meant to help underserved communities rebound from pandemic-related losses and heal from the sustained spike in homicides. The money would also contribute to programs such as summer jobs and training opportunities for those most at risk of being affected by gun violence as a victim or would-be shooter, a White House administrator said.“It’s been a long time coming and we think this plan is a great signal that this work is finally being taken seriously,” said Dr Antonio Cediel, campaign manager for LIVE FREE, a national violence prevention organization.“This creates a whole new set of opportunities. We have to tackle gun violence where it is most concentrated,” Cediel added. “These strategies have track records and we know they work. It’s just a matter of scaling them up.”Cediel was one of 10 gun violence prevention advocates who met with Susan Rice, Biden’s domestic policy adviser, to call for the administration to take dramatic action and focus on the Black and Brown communities that face the highest levels of gun violence.Other advocacy groups, including March for our Lives and Amnesty International, have celebrated the announcement. A statement from Amnesty International USA read, “After years of inaction from the federal government on gun violence, President Biden’s plan to invest in our communities demonstrates hope that those most affected by this violence will receive help.” Everytown for Gun Safety applauded the plan, “This funding will save lives.”We applaud @POTUS for proposing $5B to support community violence prevention programs as part of the #AmericanJobsPlan.For decades, these Black-led organizations have reduced violence with these critically important programs—this funding will save lives. https://t.co/CcWcDMQc2T— Everytown (@Everytown) March 31, 2021
      Biden on Wednesday described his infrastructure plan as, “a once-in-a-generation investment in America”. Other proposals include expansive updates to the nation’s roads, water systems, and electrical grids, and – if it passes – could create an estimated 100,000 jobs, Biden said during the plan’s unveiling.“Our infrastructure is crumbling. These are among the highest value investments we can make. We can afford to make them. We can’t afford not to.” Biden said. More

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      US Navy: for first time in history four women of color command war ships

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      Four US Navy officers have made history this week – and breaking new ground in a traditionally white and male-dominated field.For the first time in US Navy history, four women of color are now commanding war ships at the same time, NBC News has reported.The four officers, Kimberly Jones, LaDonna Simpson, Kristel O’Cañas, and Kathryn Wijnaldum, recently said that there have been dramatic changes for women serving in the Navy over the years.The Navy “looks different in the fact that as an ensign, I looked around and at that time, there were not many senior female officers that I could necessarily go to for gender-specific questions,” Jones, who joined the Navy more than two decades ago, remarked in an interview clip obtained by People magazine.“I may not have felt comfortable asking my male boss,” Jones also said. “Now, to their credit, they were phenomenal leaders. However, when it came time [for] some of those more intimate conversations on how to plan your career with a family, as a mom, that did not exist.”She added: “And I was overseas, so the population was slightly smaller. And now walking this waterfront, there are leaders, there are role models, at every rank…That is something that I hope ensigns, young sailors, gravitate towards and take advantage of.”These four women are all based at Norfolk Naval Station, in Virginia. They are all “Nuclear Surface Warfare Officers” – a qualification which is “extremely competitive” to obtain, according to the US Navy.All four women “have spent a considerable amount of their time serving aboard nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and in nuclear-related shore duty billets,” the Navy noted.Simpson said that while she was never discouraged from going after her career goals, she did not have many female role models.“The Navy has been very supportive of my journey and my professional training. There weren’t any voices in the Navy that said that I could not achieve this goal,” Simpson said. “The only limitation was the fact that women as a whole hadn’t been on board combatant vessels until, I believe, it was 1994.” More

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      The father, the son and the racist spirit: being raised by a white supremacist

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      From an exposed bluff in Mill Point, West Virginia, Kelvin Pierce surveyed the remote place where his father chose to live and die. In a sense, he knew why. Kelvin is an avid outdoorsman, and even on a stark February day, with snow blanketing the earth and bitter wind whistling through the trees, he was moved by Appalachia’s subtle splendor. He understood why a man might settle there.“I love West Virginia,” Kelvin had said earlier, on the four-and-a-half-hour drive from his home just outside Washington. “It’s absolutely my favorite place on the planet.”It’s also full of sorrow.When Pierce’s father bought 346 acres in Mill Point, and relocated there permanently in 1985, he left his family behind. He started building a compound where a new kind of family – men and women of like mind – could live off the land and be free of outside influences. He moved into a rambling trailer home, where he lived with a series of wives who weren’t Pierce’s mother. He had divorced her, declaring the split “necessary in order for me to have the peace of mind I need to do most effectively what I must do with my life”.Nothing was more important to Kelvin’s father than white supremacy. The abandonment and the hate – the abandonment for hate – is what Kelvin has spent the better part of his life struggling to understand.To family and friends, his dad was Bill. To everyone else, he was William Luther Pierce III, one of America’s most prominent white nationalists.A physics professor turned neo-Nazi, William Pierce led a hate group called the National Alliance and a business empire that, at the time of his death from cancer in 2002, raked in $1m a year. He published books and magazines, hosted a radio program, and owned a music label, all of which promoted white supremacy. His work galvanized violent gangs, such as the Order and the Aryan Republican Army. Most infamously, it inspired the architect of the Oklahoma City bombing – Timothy McVeigh designed the attack based in part on Pierce’s 1978 novel The Turner Diaries.Reportedly called “the bible of the racist right” by the FBI, The Turner Diaries is a fantasy about white militants overthrowing the US government as part of a bloody race war. A 2016 report found that the book had been tied to at least 200 murders, committed in 40 terrorist attacks and hate crimes. This year, during the 6 January coup attempt, there were echoes of the novel’s core ideas in insurrectionists’ calls to kill members of Congress, and in a gallows erected near the Capitol.William Pierce raised Kelvin to hate Jews, Black people, immigrants – anyone who wasn’t white. Now 60, Kelvin has long rejected his father’s ideology, but only recently has he reached the point where he’s ready to talk about his upbringing, and how his story illuminates the toxic currents roiling America. “If I can help one other person that felt the way I used to feel, to feel better and to make different choices, then that’s what I want to do,” Kelvin said. “And I think I can help more than one person.”When he was little, Kelvin would sneak into his dad’s home office in northern Virginia to look at the bust of Adolf Hitler and the glass paperweight in the shape of a swastika that sat on the desk. Kelvin didn’t know what the items meant, and William Pierce wasn’t interested in explaining. He rarely spent time with Kelvin and his twin brother, Erik, preferring to fraternize with George Lincoln Rockwell, the leader of the American Nazi party, or to lock himself away writing articles decrying Jewish power and interracial marriage.Kelvin’s strongest memories of his dad involve abuse. Any disobedience or perception of bad behavior led to beatings with whatever was at hand: a belt, a wire hanger, a two-by-four. The violence left Kelvin with bruises and a deep well of self-loathing.His mom, Patty, didn’t approve of the cruelty, but she didn’t do much to intervene. She took a similar approach to her husband’s extremism, which he’d nurtured since at least the early 1960s. A math professor and the family breadwinner, because her husband had given up his own academic career to become an ideologue of hate, Patty did all of William Pierce’s accounting and typing. Kelvin said his mom was “absolutely terrified” when her husband started a firearms business – not because he advertised his stock as “Negro control equipment” necessary for “the coming race war”, but because it prompted newspapers to publish articles about him. Patty worried that someone might come to the house and hurt her family.When her sons told her that neighborhood kids made fun of them by calling them Nazis, she lamented that “it’s a terrible world” and “people are awful”. She didn’t answer when Kelvin asked her what a Nazi was, and she didn’t tell her boys that their father was to blame for what was happening to them.As a teenager, Kelvin was a bigot because he didn’t know any other way to be. He also hoped it would impress his dad. In high school, he gave a presentation on Hitler’s virtues and used the N-word to talk about Black classmates. By the time he went to college, he was “a mobile advertisement” for his father’s beliefs.“It made me feel superior to be part of the white race,” Kelvin later wrote. “Yet deep, deep down, something didn’t quite feel right about it either.”He began to change when he transferred from a small Christian college to Virginia Tech. He roomed with a young man from South America who was “thoughtful, caring, and very intelligent” – all things that Kelvin’s father insisted people who weren’t white couldn’t be. He took classes with students who saw the world very differently than he did. When Ronald Reagan was elected president and many of his liberal peers were visibly upset – including his roommate, who drew a dagger and drops of blood on a photo of Reagan – he wanted to understand why. He started paying attention to politics and watching the evening news, which his dad had always said was worthless because Jews controlled the media. Kelvin wondered if everything he’d been taught was wrong.He met a fellow student named Susan when they were both engineering interns with the navy one summer. Kelvin thought she was beautiful, but while his racism was rapidly dissipating, his shame – the feeling that his dad had abused him for a reason, that he deserved it – was not. He couldn’t imagine making the first move, but Susan could. “You know, if you were to ask me out, I would say yes,” she announced one day.They were married in 1986. William Pierce came to the wedding. His gift to the bride and groom was a box of 9mm ammunition. “To keep the wolves away from your door!” his note read. Kelvin didn’t even own a gun.By then, William Pierce had divorced Patty, decamped to Mill Point, and curtailed contact with his sons. Kelvin only confronted his dad once, asking why he’d chosen white supremacy over everything else in his life. “It was the only responsible thing I could do,” his father replied.For her part, Susan didn’t think that William Pierce’s worldview mattered. “Thank goodness that’s a dying thought process,” she recalled thinking – an assumption she now sees as optimistic, or perhaps naive. It was also hard for her to fathom the extent of the abuse Kelvin suffered.“You know, he hit me every day,” he told her once.“Every day?” she replied, incredulous.Susan had grown up in a home where, as she put it, “We were always hugging each other, and we always said, ‘I love you.’”She and Kelvin had kids only because they agreed to adopt them. “I was just terrified of furthering my genes,” Kelvin said. “I was so messed up and so damaged as a human being that I couldn’t fathom the idea of trying to make another human being.” Their daughters, Mariame and Marieka, are from the country of Georgia. Kelvin vowed to love them like he’d never been loved. He coached their softball teams and took them on camping trips.William Pierce never met his granddaughters. For seven years prior to his death, he didn’t reply to the letters and photos documenting their childhood that Kelvin sent him. Despite everything, Kelvin kept reaching out. His anger at how he’d been raised collided with yearning for paternal approval. When he first heard of the connection between The Turner Diaries and the Oklahoma City bombing, his knee-jerk reaction was a perverse kind of pride that his dad was in the news. He was ashamed his mind went there, but at a loss for how to stop it.Kelvin was battling his demons without armor or weapons. He was also doing it alone. “You’re a mystery to me,” Susan would tell him sometimes. “I don’t understand why you won’t tell me how you’re really feeling.”In July 2002, his uncle called to tell him that his father was dead. Kelvin hadn’t even known he was sick. He surprised himself by crying, then realized what he was really mourning: he had to let go of the futile hope that his father might one day love him. He went to West Virginia for the memorial service, where neo-Nazis offered their condolences and said Kelvin must have admired his father very much.How little they know, he thought.He looked like his dad – tall and lanky, with mournful eyes, a long, square jaw, and prominent ears. He shared William Pierce’s introspection and his dislike of being told what to do. But the similarities ended there.After the service, he began to feel something new: he was sad for his father and the life he’d led. It could have been different. But again and again, William Pierce had made the wrong choices, leaving heartache and hate in his wake.Kelvin wanted to start making better choices of his own.To Mariame Pierce, her dad’s bookshelf told the story. When she was little, it held volumes about Kelvin’s hobbies – mountain climbing, for instance. Over time, new titles appeared, ones about self-discovery and philosophy, written by Eckhart Tolle and Deepak Chopra. While she was growing up, her dad was changing too. “He became more present and thoughtful, more conscious and intentional,” said Mariame, now 25.Kelvin had embarked on a “healing” journey, as he describes it. He read, reflected, and prayed. He worked with a counselor to process his childhood trauma, including his father’s belief system. He and Susan, who already ran a successful construction business together, started a charitable foundation to support orphanages in Georgia. When he posted pictures from visits to his daughters’ native country, friends remarked that he looked uncharacteristically happy. “To make a child feel like at least somebody in the world loves them, it’s the most amazing thing in the world,” Kelvin said.He told his life story publicly for the first time at his local Rotary Club. He described how, in his youth, he’d fantasized about traveling to Washington with a gun and opening fire on Black people. His teenage dreams now repulsed him. Afterward, audience members came up to thank him. Some of them were crying.The more he talked about his experiences, the more people told Kelvin he should write a book. It took a seismic national event for him to decide they were right.On 12 August 2017, the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, turned deadly. Watching the events unfold, “I was immediately transported back to my childhood,” Kelvin said. “The hatefulness of their energy and what they were saying, the way they were saying it, especially ‘You will not replace us’ – it was just like being an eight- or nine-year-old kid, when my dad took me to an American Nazi party picnic.”He started writing what would become Sins of My Father, which he self-published in February 2020. In addition to telling Kelvin’s personal story, the book draws on private letters and other archival documents that reveal how perceived grievances, personal disappointment, and twisted self-regard led William Pierce to dedicate his life to white supremacy.Though it’s impossible to pinpoint the exact moment when his father’s beliefs began to curdle – stories of radicalization are never so precise – Kelvin finds seeds of discontent in the years when William Pierce was a new husband, a new father, and newly endowed with his physics doctorate. “I think Dad was becoming angry and resentful and was suddenly frightened of the future and the heaviness of it all,” Kelvin writes. “He hated the idea of working for someone else. He never wanted to have to answer to anyone else, even his wife.”This period in William Pierce’s life coincided with the rise of progressive identity politics – the acceleration of the civil rights movement, for instance, and the dawn of second-wave feminism. He wanted to be a man who mattered, a man people listened to. White nationalism allowed him to be that. His life became one long ideological devolution, nourished by the power and attention he accrued evangelizing about hate.If the story sounds familiar, it is. America is still plagued by the forces of rightwing radicalization. Sins of My Father draws parallels between William Pierce and Donald Trump, who “emboldened white supremacists and mass-shooters by his words and deeds,” as Kelvin writes. “In many ways, Trump has succeeded where Dad failed. He has taken hate and discrimination mainstream.”Other evidence of his father’s enduring impact hit closer to home. After Marieka Pierce enrolled in a police academy in Virginia, one day in class, her instructors showed the room a picture of her grandfather, describing him as an example of a homegrown extremist. “My hand went up,” Marieka later told her mom.The instructors were stunned to hear about the family connection. William Pierce was a staple in their curriculum about hate crimes; they’d been teaching recruits about him for as long as they could remember. They asked to meet Kelvin to get a fuller picture of the man who, in obituaries, was remembered as “a cold and calculating racist” and “the godfather of hate in this country.”Donny MacMullen has his own take on William Pierce: he thinks Kelvin’s father was a great man.MacMullen, who is in his 30s, with reddish brown hair, a full beard, and striking blue eyes, moved to Mill Point from Massachusetts a few years ago to help preserve Pierce’s legacy. Today, he’s the caretaker of the National Alliance compound, which amounts to a few scattered buildings and the rocky sprawls of land between them.The place is in a state of disrepair, and people rarely visit, but there are reminders of the community Kelvin’s dad was trying to build before he died: an AV facility stocked with equipment that was first-rate in the early aughts; a library that once housed several thousand volumes; stacks of slickly produced magazines promoting racism; a meeting house where William Pierce presided over annual National Alliance conferences. Today, even as Pierce’s ideas continue to find adherents, the organization he started is a shade of its former self.MacMullen was happy to welcome Kelvin to the compound in February. Indeed, members of the National Alliance had long made clear that William Pierce’s son could visit anytime. For more than 15 years after his father’s death, however, Kelvin stayed away. He wasn’t ready to make peace with it, because he wasn’t at peace with himself.It was a steep drive up switchbacks to the heart of the compound, where MacMullen was waiting, wearing a knit cap with a swastika stitched to the front. When Kelvin asked him about the symbol, MacMullen laughed. It just represents love for the white race, he insisted. Kelvin pointed out that it was associated with hate and genocide, and MacMullen shifted gears. If you love something deeply, he said, then you have to hate anything that threatens it.This was another way of expressing the sentiment of a meme MacMullen once posted on his Facebook page: “I’m white but that doesn’t mean I’m racist … I will put my boot in your ass, my knife to your throat, and your body in the dirt if you f**k with me and mine.”Kelvin and MacMullen walked for a while on the property, just the two of them. If it was painful to talk with a man who revered his father – who saw virtue in a racist who beat him every day of his childhood – Kelvin didn’t let it show. They talked about their divergent beliefs, and neither man was interested in budging.“We’ll just have to agree to disagree,” MacMullen said at one point.When Kelvin recounted the conversation to his best friend, Gil Jullien, who’d come on the trip as moral support, Jullien was furious. “Oh, that’s bullshit!” he said. “I don’t agree to disagree!”Jullien was speaking from experience. He was troubled that a close childhood friend had become a vociferous Trump supporter, the sort who regularly posts racist and sexist content on Facebook. Once, when the two men were at a high school reunion talking politics, Jullien’s friend had told him they’d have to agree to disagree. Jullien wasn’t having it. “In my opinion, he’s ruining our country, and I’m not,” he later explained.Kelvin shares Jullien’s moral compass. “Aggression and hate and violence are the epitome of cowardice,” he said. But he doesn’t want to feel antagonism or resentment toward anyone, not even white nationalists.He prefers to listen and question, not to confront; to offer the possibility of connection rather than writing people off. His approach might not be for everyone, but for Kelvin it’s vital. If he could be redeemed, why not someone like MacMullen?“I’m putting myself out there for people that want help and want change,” Kelvin said.Before Kelvin left the compound, MacMullen gave him a copy of a book – a tome, really, at more than 1,000 pages. Written in 1978 by William Gayley Simpson, a white nationalist who ran in the same circles as William Pierce, Which Way Western Man? bemoans the supposed decline of white civilization, the rise of feminism and multiculturalism, and the alleged chokehold liberal orthodoxy has on modern society – it’s a collection of white supremacy’s greatest hits.MacMullen said the text meant a lot to him. Back home in Virginia, in the spirit of listening and questioning, Kelvin cracked the book and read the first 50 or so pages. “It kind of boils down to, do you live your life stuck in the rat race, within society’s norms, or do you break out from that and try to live a more authentic life, doing what you want to do, what you feel is right versus what society says is right?” he said.The language struck a chord. He heard echoes of his own transformation, of setting a new course for himself. Whereas Kelvin chose a path defined by hope and inclusivity, people who admire his father have let bigotry be their guide. Still, in their journeys’ common origin, Kelvin saw promise – the possibility of trying again, and getting it right this time.“It’s not as insurmountable a task to start a recovery process as some people think. It does take discipline, but it actually works,” he said. “I’m living proof of that, right?”The last time Kelvin saw his father, he jumped off a mountain.Kelvin had started hang-gliding in his 20s, and during his first visit to the compound in West Virginia – the only one he took while William Pierce was alive – his dad had suggested he glide off one of the property’s peaks. No way, Kelvin told him. There weren’t open areas below where he could land. At best he’d come away injured; at worst he could die.A few years later, in 1995, Kelvin traveled to Spruce Knob, the highest point in West Virginia, for a series of flights over the Labor Day weekend. He invited his dad to come watch him. He didn’t expect him to show, but as Kelvin was untying his glider from its rack on his truck, he heard a familiar voice.“You need a hand with that?” his father asked.“You actually came,” Kelvin replied.With his father’s help, Kelvin made quick work of maneuvering his 80lb glider to the launch site. Before them was a pleated vista, gentle peaks and valleys thick with late-summer green. Kelvin suited up and pointed to the landing field where his father could meet him. “Clear!” he yelled, before taking a few running steps and leaving the earth.The flight was perfect. A swell of wind – a lift, as hang-gliders say – allowed Kelvin to pilot much higher than he’d planned, rendering his dad a dot on the ground. He stayed in the sky for an hour. The view was majestic: forests and farms and fields stretching beneath him.He touched down with ease in a wide field. As he was packing up his gear, he heard the familiar voice again: “Wow, Kelvin, that was absolutely amazing.”It was the first time in his life that Kelvin knew for certain he’d impressed his father.They stood in the landing field talking for a bit longer. Then father and son said their goodbyes and went their separate ways: William Pierce to what Kelvin called “his life of hate at the compound”; he to new chapters of his existence. Some, such as parenthood, would be joyous. Wrestling with his past would be torment. But just like he navigated the wind high above the mountains, Kelvin would steer himself to a place where he could land, safe and whole, and invite others to join him, if only they too have the courage to leap.Seyward Darby is the editor-in-chief of the Atavist Magazine and the author of Sisters in Hate: American Women on the Front Lines of White Nationalism. Johnathon Kelso is an editorial photographer working on long-form projects related to history and race in the American south More

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      in US Politics

      Antony Blinken says the US will 'stand up for human rights everywhere'

      by

      The United States will speak out about human rights everywhere including in allies and at home, secretary of state Antony Blinken has vowed, turning a page from Donald Trump as he bemoaned deteriorations around the world.Presenting the state department’s first human rights report under President Joe Biden, the new top US diplomat took some of his most pointed, yet still veiled, swipes at the approach of the Trump administration.“Some have argued that it’s not worth it for the US to speak up forcefully for human rights – or that we should highlight abuse only in select countries, and only in a way that directly advances our national interests,” Blinken told reporters in clear reference to Trump’s approach.“But those people miss the point. Standing up for human rights everywhere is in America’s interests,” he said.“And the Biden-Harris administration will stand against human rights abuses wherever they occur, regardless of whether the perpetrators are adversaries or partners.”Blinken ordered the return of assessments in the annual report on countries’ records on access to reproductive health, which were removed under the staunchly anti-abortion Trump administration.Blinken also denounced a commission of his predecessor Mike Pompeo that aimed to redefine the US approach to human rights by giving preference to private property and religious freedom while downplaying reproductive and LGBTQ rights.During Pompeo’s time in office, the state department was aggressive in opposing references to reproductive and gender rights in UN and other multilateral documents.“There is no hierarchy that makes some rights more important than others,” Blinken said.In another shift in tone from Trump, Blinken said the United States acknowledged its own challenges, including “systemic racism.”“That’s what separates our democracy from autocracies: our ability and willingness to confront our own shortcomings out in the open, to pursue that more perfect union.”Blinken voiced alarm over abuses around the world including in China, again speaking of “genocide” being committed against the Uighur community.The report estimated that more than one million Uighurs and other members of mostly Muslim communities had been rounded up in internment camps in the western region of Xinjiang and that another two million are subjected to re-education training each day.“The trend lines on human rights continue to move in the wrong direction. We see evidence of that in every region of the world,” Blinken said.He said the Biden administration was prioritising coordination with allies, pointing to recent joint efforts over Xinjiang, China’s clampdown in Hong Kong and Russia’s alleged poisoning of dissident Alexei Navalny.Blinken also voiced alarm over the Myanmar military’s deadly crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, attacks on civilians in Syria and a campaign in Ethiopia’s Tigray that he has previously called ethnic cleansing.The report, written in dry, factual language, did not spare longstanding US allies.It pointed to allegations of unlawful killings and torture in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, quoting human rights groups that said Egypt is holding between 20,000 and 60,000 people chiefly due to their political beliefs.Biden earlier declassified US intelligence that found that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman authorised the gruesome killing of US-based writer Jamal Khashoggi.While the human rights report remained intact under Trump, the previous administration argued that rights were of lesser importance than other concerns with allies such as Saudi Arabia – a major oil producer and purchaser of US weapons that backed Trump’s hawkish line against Iran, whose record was also heavily scrutinized in the report.The latest report also detailed incidents in India under prime minister Narendra Modi, an increasingly close US ally.It quoted non-governmental groups as pointing to the use in India of “torture, mistreatment and arbitrary detention to obtain forced or false confessions” and quoted journalists as assessing that “press freedom declined” including through physical harassment of journalists, pressure on owners and frivolous lawsuits. More

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      in US Politics

      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