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This is Joan Greve in Washington, taking over for Martin Belam.
The House will soon gavel in its session to consider the article of impeachment againstDonald Trump, which charges the president with incitement of insurrection in connection to the violent riot at the Capitol last week.
If the article is approved, as is expected, Trump will become the first president in US history to ever be impeached twice.
The matter will then move on to the Senate, where two-thirds of senators would have to vote to convict Trump to remove him from office.
It currently seems unlikely that the Senate would vote to convict, but reports indicate the Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, has told colleagues he believes Trump has committed impeachable offenses.
It will be quite an interesting day on Capitol Hill, so stay tuned.
As the coronavirus pandemic continues to sweep across the country state and local governments across the US are bracing for severe economic impacts in 2021 that could force layoffs of government employees and swinging cuts to services.
The last few months have offered a more detailed picture of what the pandemic’s economic recession will look like for state and local governments. While some have been spared the doomsday scenarios predicted at the outset of the pandemic, others have been “savaged”. On the line are millions of jobs and drastic cuts to already struggling services in the midst of a national health and economic crisis that is only getting worse.
State and local governments set the budgets for local police and fire departments, public schools, health departments, road constructions and repair, public transportation and many other essential public services. How each state, city or town gets revenue varies widely, though it ultimately is some combination of income, sales and property taxes. No matter what the combination, when the economy is hurting – people are unemployed and are buying less and businesses are closing – state and local governments can take a huge hit.
“There are a lot of state and local governments who are seeing very, very strong impacts, and they’re going to have to make very sizable tax increases or spending cuts, especially at the local level,” said Dan White, director of government consulting and fiscal policy research with Moody’s Analytics, which has estimated that budget deficits will total about $80bn to $100bn even with federal aid from Congress’ stimulus packages.
The outlook for some state governments is not as bad as economists had feared at the beginning of the pandemic. States including California and Virginia have been spared from huge losses, partly because tax revenue in those states have not declined as much as initially expected as people went back to work and wealthier workers continued to work from home.
But other states are looking at huge deficits, some worth billions of dollars, particularly as the industries that they rely on for revenue, like tourism or energy, have declined because of the pandemic.
A month after federal regulators ordered it to disclose how its practices affect children and teenagers, TikTok is tightening its privacy practices for the under-18 crowd.
Starting today, the default privacy setting for accounts with users aged 13 to 15 will be private. That means only someone the user approves as a follower can view their videos, which was not the case previously. But teens can still change this setting to public if they want.
Older teenagers won’t see this default setting change. For users aged 16 or 17, the default setting to let people download the videos they created will now be “off,” rather than “on.”
Reuters report that TikTok is also blocking users’ ability to download videos created by those 15 or younger. This age group will also see direct messaging restricted and won’t be able to host live streams. A tool called “family pairing,” meanwhile, lets parents link their TikTok account to their teen’s to enable content and privacy settings.
Last month, the Federal Trade Commission asked TikTok’s parent company, along with Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and five other social media companies to provide detailed information on how they collect and use consumers’ personal data and how their practices affect children and teens.
TikTok users are asked to put in their birthday when they sign up for the service, but, as with other social media platforms, there is no real verification to ensure it is accurate.
The Trump administration was involved in a protracted attempt last year to ban TikTok in the US altogether. The irony that in the end it was the president himself who was banned from most social media services following last week’s assault on the US Capitol has not been lost on many users.
Some truly unprecedented scenes in the US Capitol in the run-up to the inauguration of Joe Biden as president.
Nathaniel Reed(@ReedReports)
Just walked into the Capitol to find literally hundreds of troops napping and lining up in the Congressional Visitor Center— as streets around here are largely blocked.
Many are cuddling their firearms, fatigues over their heads to block light, and riot gear in neat piles. pic.twitter.com/vCHAOGMdfA
Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei at Axios have this to say on the strategy of the Republican leadership over the attempt to impeach Donald Trump for a second time:
Top Republicans want to bury president Trump, for good. But they are divided whether to do it with one quick kill via impeachment, or let him slowly fade away.
Sources tell Axios Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell would be more likely than not to vote to convict Trump — a green light for other Republican senators to follow.
House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy would love a Trumpless world, but doesn’t want to knife him with fingerprints. This school of thought wants to let Trump do himself in, without a big party fight over his sins and sentence.
The fade-away caucus sees a danger that the impeachment-conviction route is, as a prominent conservative put it, “making him Jesus. … Truly stupid.”
But an effort by McCarthy to push a lighter punishment for Trump censure has crumbled.
Jacob Blake’s uncle, Justin Blake, has written for us today about how there are two justice systems in America:
Last week, I was again reminded that we live under two justice systems. One lets armed white insurrectionists violently attack our nation’s seat of government. Another gasses, beats, and shoots rubber bullets at people defending Black lives. And even though I live nowhere near Washington DC, this is personal for me.
The day before the attempted insurrection at the US Capitol, Rusten Sheskey got off scot-free. He is the Kenosha cop who shot my nephew, Jacob Blake, seven times in the back. The Kenosha district attorney, Michael Gravely, declined to charge Sheskey, and he faces no consequences. Jacob is now permanently paralyzed from the waist down.
Sheskey is just like the thousands of Trump-supporting, white nationalists who laid siege to the US Capitol in broad daylight. They broke windows, stole federal property, and ransacked offices. They endangered lawmakers, their staff, and other employees in the complex. They may have exposed countless people to Covid-19. They had flex cuffs and placed pipe bombs. They were out for blood.
This justice system calls these people “protesters”, and they are protected by the first amendment. Sheskey operates under this justice system, and it is unacceptable. He claimed self-defense after he shot Jacob in the back, in front of his kids, also in broad daylight. No plausible explanation exists for this escalated response.
The fact that the Capitol insurrection and Jacob’s shooting both happened in broad daylight shows how barefaced state-sanctioned violence has become.
Megan Rapinoe has spoken on the recent attack on the US Capitol, saying: “This is America. We showed our true colours”. The 35-year old soccer forward opened a media teleconference yesterday with a six-minute exposition on the fractious state of the country in the wake of last week’s siege. She added: “Unleashing a white supremacist mob is nothing new to America”
‘This is America’: Megan Rapinoe on Capitol attack – video
Sahil Kapur at NBC News says that the decisions Republican lawmakers make in the coming days over the impeachment of Donald Trump “could define the party and shape American democracy for generations to come”. He writes:
The Senate requires a two-thirds majority to convict a president, which will mean at least 17 Republicans would need to join Democrats if the vote is taken after 20 January. That’s a tall order.
The judgment of history looms. And for some who want to make a break from Trump and chart a new path for the Republican Party, time is running short.
“It sure seems like the last best chance to stand up to the guy while it still matters,” said Liam Donovan, a lobbyist and former Republican campaign operative. “Republicans can speak up now or they can follow the path of least resistance, but at some point there will be a reckoning, and it will come at a political cost.”
In Kapur’s analysis, it may come down to the actions of one man:
The outcome may center on Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, a Trump ally who broke with him on 6 January when making an impassioned plea to affirm Joe Biden’s victory. But McConnell’s intentions aren’t clear. His office had no comment Tuesday on impeachment.
Others say his position could determine the outcome. “I think if McConnell supports conviction in the Senate then the votes will be there to convict the president,” said a senior Republican aide, who requested anonymity to speak candidly.
President-elect Joe Biden has announced ambassador Samantha Power as his nominee for Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and has also said he will elevate the position to become a member of the National Security Council. Power served in the Obama administration as the US permanent representative to the United Nations.
Samantha Power is a world-renowned voice of conscience and moral clarity — challenging and rallying the international community to stand up for the dignity and humanity of all people. I know firsthand the unparalleled knowledge and tireless commitment to principled American engagement she brings to the table, and her expertise and perspective will be essential as our country reasserts its role as a leader on the world stage. As USAID Administrator, Power will be a powerful force for lifting up the vulnerable, ushering in a new era of human progress and development, and advancing American interests globally.
If you’ve got a few minutes to spare, then I can recommend investing a bit of time on this. The Hill this morning have undertaken publishing a 4,500 word “oral history” of last week’s assault on the US Capitol. It takes in words from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle and reporters who were there on the day, and some of the quotes bring home the extreme sense of danger that they felt on the day. Here are the words of Colorado’s Rep. Jason Crow:
If there was a plan, that plan had deteriorated, and things were going to get bad quickly. Which they did. I made the decision to call my wife, tell her that I loved her, to pass that along to the kids, and I was preparing to either make a stand or fight our way out, and I would let her know as soon as I could.
