The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new guidance urging vaccinated Americans to wear masks indoors if they live in areas with high levels of Covid spread. “In areas with substantial and high transmission, CDC recommends fully vaccinated people wear masks in public, indoor settings to help prevent the spread of the delta variant and protect others,” CDC director Rochelle Walesnky said this afternoon. The new guidance comes amid a surge in coronavirus cases among unvaccinated Americans, due to the spread of the delta variant.
Biden described the new mask mandate as “another step on our journey to defeating this virus”. “I hope all Americans who live in the areas covered by the CDC guidance will follow it,” the president said in a statement. “I certainly will when I travel to these areas.” Biden noted that he will lay out his administration’s new plans to increase the US vaccination rate on Thursday.
Biden said he is considering instituting a vaccine mandate for federal employees, a move that would impact roughly 2 million Americans. Some local and state leaders, including New York mayor Bill de Blasio and California governor Gavin Newsom, have already announced similar mandates for their government employees.
The January 6 select committee held its first hearing on Capitol Hill. The House panel’s members, seven Democrats and two Republicans, heard from four law enforcement officers who defended the Capitol on January 6, as a pro-Trump mob stormed the building.
The four officers gave emotional testimony about the physical and emotional injuries they sustained because of the insurrection. “I was grabbed, beaten, tased, all while being called a traitor to my country. I was at risk of being stripped of and killed with my own firearm, as I heard chants of ‘Kill him with his own gun,’” Metropolitan Police Department officer Michael Fanone said. US Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn, who is Black, told committee members that insurrectionists repeatedly called him the “n” word.
California’s governor Gavin Newsom, who is facing a recall election in September, will have to motivate his base to show up to the poll sand save his seat, according to a new poll released today.
A poll from the Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies found that while 50% of likely voters said they’d vote to keep Newsom in office, 47% would seek to replace him. The 3 point gap falls within the poll’s margin of error.
Among registered voters, 51% said they’d vote to keep the Democratic governor and 36% would seek to replace him.
“The main factor contributing to these very different distributions is that, if current levels of interest and voting intentions persist, turnout is likely to be far higher among Republicans than Democrats and No Party Preference voters,” said poll director Mark DiCamillo. “And, since nearly all Republicans favor Newsom’s ouster, a larger proportion of likely voters are voting yes.”
Here’s some background info on the recall effort, which I wrote up a few months back:
Barack Obama has joined the National Basketball Association (NBA) Africa as a strategic adviser.
The former president will “support greater gender equality and economic inclusion” as part of the league’s efforts to boost access to basketball.
“In addition to his well-documented love for basketball, President Obama has a firm belief in Africa’s potential and the enormous growth opportunities that exist through sports,” said NBA commissioner Adam Silver.
President Obama will help advance the league’s social responsibility efforts across the continent, including programs & partnerships that support greater gender equality and economic inclusion. https://t.co/TtTM0Ze7Z5
Republicans poised to rig the next election by gerrymandering electoral maps
Sam Levine
Ten years ago, Republicans pulled off what would later be described as “the most audacious political heist of modern times”.
It wasn’t particularly complicated. Every 10 years, the US constitution requires states to redraw the maps for both congressional and state legislative seats. The constitution entrusts state lawmakers with the power to draw those districts. Looking at the political map in 2010, Republicans realized that by winning just a few state legislative seats in places like Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, they could draw maps that would be in place for the next decade, distorting them to guarantee Republican control for years to come.
Republicans executed the plan, called Project Redmap, nearly perfectly and took control of 20 legislative bodies, including ones in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Then, Republicans set to work drawing maps that cemented their control on power for the next decade. Working behind closed doors, they were brazen in their efforts.
In Wisconsin, lawmakers signed secrecy agreements and then drew maps that were so rigged that Republicans could nearly hold on to a supermajority of seats with a minority of the vote. In Michigan, a Republican operative bragged about cramming “Dem garbage” into certain districts as they drew a congressional map that advantaged Republicans 9-5. In Ohio, GOP operatives worked secretly from a hotel room called “the bunker”, as they tweaked a congressional map that gave Republicans a 12-4 advantage. In North Carolina, a state lawmaker publicly said he was proposing a map that would elect 10 Republicans to Congress because he did not think it was possible to draw one that would elect 11.
This manipulation, called gerrymandering, “debased and dishonored our democracy”, Justice Elena Kagan would write years later. It allowed Republicans to carefullypick their voters, insulating them from the accountability that lies at the foundation of America’s democratic system. Now, the once-a-decade process is set to begin again in just a few weeks and Republicans are once again poised to dominate it. And this time around things could be even worse than they were a decade ago.
The redistricting cycle arrives at a moment when American democracy is already in peril. Republican lawmakers in states across the country, some of whom hold office because of gerrymandering, have enacted sweeping measures making it harder to vote. Republicans have blocked federal legislation that would outlaw partisan gerrymandering and strip state lawmakers of their authority to draw districts.
The former White House press secretary Sarah Sanders has urged people in Arkansas to “pray about it” before considering whether to get the “Trump vaccine” against Covid-19.
Sarah Sanders. Photograph: Tork Mason/AP
Sanders is running for Arkansas governor. In an opinion piece for the Arkansas Democrat Chronicle headlined “The reasoning behind getting vaccinated”, she mostly used her platform to criticise Democrats and Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to Joe Biden. But Sanders did offer tentative encouragement to get the vaccine.
“To anyone still considering the merits of vaccination,” she wrote, “I leave you with this encouragement: Pray about it, discuss it with your family and your doctor.
“Filter out the noise and fear-mongering and condescension, and make the best, most informed decision you can that helps your family, community, and our great state be its very best.”
Sanders, well positioned to become Arkansas’s first female governor, said that “like many” Americans, she “had a lot of misinformation thrown at me by politicians and the media during the pandemic”.
Trump, Sanders’ former boss, was chief among the misinformants, variously suggesting people could be injected with “disinfectant” or blasted with “ultraviolet or just very powerful light”.
Skipping past that, Sanders said: “Dr Fauci and the ‘because science says so’ crowd of arrogant, condescending politicians and bureaucrats were wrong about more than their mandates and shutdowns that have inflicted incalculable harm on our people and economy.”
Atlanta spa shootings suspect pleads guilty to four counts of murder
Joan E Greve
The man charged with killing eight people, six of whom were Asian women, in a series of shootings at Atlanta-area spas has pleaded guilty to four counts of murder.
The AP reports:
Robert Aaron Long faces still faces the death penalty if convicted in four more shooting deaths in Atlanta, and faces charges of domestic terrorism with a hate crime enhancement in addition to murder. Long is white. Six of the victims were women of Asian descent.
Long walked through the massage business in Woodstock ‘shooting anyone and everyone he saw’, district attorney Shannon Wallace said on Tuesday.
A judge was hearing a prosecutor describe details of his crimes. The prosecutor said the 22-year-old defendant had signed a plea deal admitting to all of the charges in Cherokee county, where he was accused of malice murder, felony murder, attempt to commit murder and aggravated assault.
The eight victims of the shooting were Xiaojie “Emily” Tan, 49; Daoyou Feng, 44; Delaina Yaun, 33; Paul Michels, 54; Suncha Kim, 69; Soon Chung Park, 74; Hyun Jung Grant, 51; and Yong Ae Yue, 63.
National Nurses United (NNU) celebrated the CDC’s guidance today that vaccinated Americans should wear masks indoors in areas with high Delta spread, but urged officials to make the rules broader and easier to follow.
“As registered nurses, we always course correct when a care plan for our patient must be adjusted in order to promote optimal healing. We applaud the CDC for adjusting its care plan for this country by recommending a partial return to indoor masking for vaccinated people,” said NNU executive director Bonnie Castillo, said in a statement.
“But,” Castillo said, “because we all must be responsible for one another, the CDC should take the next logical step and urge indoor masking everywhere in the country.”
“Rather than making people figure out if they are in a substantial or high transmission area, or leaving public health up to the honor system, registered nurses recommend reinstating universal masking in all locations, regardless of vaccination status,” said NNU president Deborah Burger, added.
Biden could announce vaccination requirement for federal employees on Thursday – report
Joe Biden will announce a requirement that federal employees and contractors either get vaccinated against Covid-19 or get regular tests, CNN reports, based on an anonymous source.
The announcement will come in remarks where Biden is also expected to lay out a series of new steps, including incentives, in an attempt to spur new vaccinations as the Delta variant spreads rapidly throughout the country. It will also follow the decision by the Department of Veterans Affairs to require its frontline health care workers to be vaccinated over the course of the next two months.
While the specifics are still being finalized, the source said, federal workers would be required to attest to their vaccination status or submit to regular testing. The source said the proposal will be roughly similar to what is being implemented in New York City. Additional requirements for the unvaccinated could be added as agencies push to vaccinate their employees.
Asked by a journalist earlier today whether he was considering a vaccine mandate, Biden said: “That’s under consideration right now, but if you’re not vaccinated, you’re not really as smart as I thought you were.”
Former Trump administration officials can testify to Congress about Donald Trump’s role in the deadly January attack on the Capitol and his efforts to subvert the results of the 2020 election, the justice department (DoJ) has said in a letter obtained by the Guardian.
The move by the justice department declined to assert executive privilege for Trump’s acting attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen, clearing the path for other top former Trump administration officials to also testify to congressional committees investigating the Capitol attack without fearing repercussions.
The justice department authorised witnesses to appear specifically before the two committees. But a DoJ official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, said they expected that approval to extend to the 6 January select committee that began proceedings on Tuesday.
Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the House select committee, told the Guardian in a recent interview that he would investigate both Trump and anyone who communicated with the former president on 6 January, raising the prospect of depositions with an array of Trump officials.
Rosen and Trump administration witnesses can give “unrestricted testimony” to the Senate judiciary and House oversight committees, which are scrutinising the attempt by the Trump White House to stop Congress certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 election win, the letter said.
The justice department’s decision marks a sharp departure from the Trump era, when the department repeatedly intervened on behalf of top White House officials to assert executive privilege and shield them from congressional investigations into the former president.
That’s it from me today. My west coast colleague, Maanvi Singh, will take over the blog for the next few hours.
Here’s where the day stands so far:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new guidance urging vaccinated Americans to wear masks indoors if they live in areas with high levels of Covid spread. “In areas with substantial and high transmission, CDC recommends fully vaccinated people wear masks in public, indoor settings to help prevent the spread of the delta variant and protect others,” CDC director Rochelle Walesnky said this afternoon. The new guidance comes amid a surge in coronavirus cases among unvaccinated Americans, due to the spread of the delta variant.
Biden described the new mask mandate as “another step on our journey to defeating this virus”. “I hope all Americans who live in the areas covered by the CDC guidance will follow it,” the president said in a statement. “I certainly will when I travel to these areas.” Biden noted that he will lay out his administration’s new plans to increase the US vaccination rate on Thursday.
Biden said he is considering instituting a vaccine mandate for federal employees, a move that would impact roughly 2 million Americans. Some local and state leaders, including New York mayor Bill de Blasio and California governor Gavin Newsom, have already announced similar mandates for their government employees.
The January 6 select committee held its first hearing on Capitol Hill. The House panel’s members, seven Democrats and two Republicans, heard from four law enforcement officers who defended the Capitol on January 6, as a pro-Trump mob stormed the building.
The four officers gave emotional testimony about the physical and emotional injuries they sustained because of the insurrection. “I was grabbed, beaten, tased, all while being called a traitor to my country. I was at risk of being stripped of and killed with my own firearm, as I heard chants of ‘Kill him with his own gun,’” Metropolitan Police Department officer Michael Fanone said. US Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn, who is Black, told committee members that insurrectionists repeatedly called him the “n” word.
