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The Democratic senators of Arizona sent a letter to the Biden administration requesting an increase in their state’s weekly vaccine doses.
Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Mark Kelly have asked the White House for “an immediate emergency infusion of 300,000 vaccine doses and an additional 300,000 doses a week”.
“Arizona suffers from one of the worst coronavirus outbreaks in the country,” Sinema said in a statement. “Our hospitals and vaccination sites are overwhelmed, and we need additional vaccine doses to save lives and provide immediate help to Arizona seniors, people with pre-existing conditions, frontline workers, and tribal communities.”
“Arizona needs more vaccines to ramp up state vaccination sites while also ensuring that rural and border areas get enough to meet the capacity they have to vaccinate their communities,” Kelly added.
“Getting Arizonans vaccinated is how we’re going to beat this virus and get our economy back on track, and our state needs a larger allotment especially as we work to vaccinate those who are vulnerable and essential workers including farmworkers and Department of Homeland Security employees.”
As of today, Arizona has confirmed 782,887 cases of coronavirus, and 14,055 state residents have died of the virus.
Joe Biden took one question from reporters as he returned to Washington after a weekend in his home state of Delaware.
Asked about Donald Trump not testifying in his impeachment trial, the president said, “He got an offer to come and testify. He decided not to. We’ll let the Senate work that out.”
The House impeachment managers sent a letter to Trump’s legal team last week, asking the former president to testify in this week’s trial.
“You denied many factual allegations set forth in the article of impeachment. You have thus attempted to put critical facts at issue,” Jamie Raskin, the lead impeachment manager, wrote in the letter.
But Trump’s lawyers quickly rejected the request, dismissing the managers’ effort as a “public relations stunt”.
Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer and minority leader Mitch McConnell are closing in on rules for Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, which is set to begin tomorrow.
According to the New York Times, the chamber expects to hold four hours of debate and a vote on the constitutionality of the trial tomorrow. There will then be 16 hours of debate for each side, the impeachment managers and Trump’s defense team, starting Wednesday.
The leaders are also discussing the possibility of holding a session on Sunday, after the chamber agreed not to hold a Saturday session to respect Trump lawyer David Schoen’s request that he be allowed to observe the Sabbath.
If this schedule is agreed to, the trial could wrap up by early next week.
This is Joan Greve in Washington, taking over for Martin Belam.
Here’s what the blog is keeping an eye on today: Joe Biden will virtually tour the vaccination site at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona.
Meanwhile, the Senate is preparing for Donald Trump’s second impeachment trail, which is set to begin tomorrow. The chamber is expected to rule on whether the former president should be convicted for incitement of insurrection.
The blog will have more on both those topics coming up, so stay tuned.
President Joe Biden rushed to send the most ambitious overhaul of the nation’s immigration system in a generation to Congress and signed nine executive actions to wipe out some of his predecessor’s toughest measures over the US-Mexico border. But a federal court in Texas suspended Biden’s 100-day moratorium on deportations, and the immigration bill is likely to be scaled back as lawmakers grapple with major coronavirus pandemic relief legislation as well a second impeachment trial for former President Donald Trump.
Even if Biden gets most of what he wants on immigration, fully implementing the kind of sweeping changes he’s promised will take weeks, months — perhaps even years. Will Weissert and Nomaan Merchant report for Associated Press that means, at least for now, there is likely to be more overlap between the Biden and Trump immigration policies than many of the activists who backed the Democrat’s successful presidential campaign had hoped.
“It’s important that we pass policies that are not only transformative, inclusive and permanent but also that they are policies that do not increase the growth of deportation,” said Genesis Renteria, programs director for membership services and engagement at Living United for Change in Arizona, which helped mobilized Democratic voters in the critical battleground state. “Our organizations will continue to hold the administration accountable.”
Federal law allows immigrants facing credible threats of persecution or violence in their home country to seek US asylum. Biden has ordered a review of Trump policies that sent people from Central America, Cuba and other countries to Mexico while their cases were processed — often forcing them into makeshift tent camps mere steps from American soil. He also has formed a task force to reunite immigrant children separated from their parents and halted federal funding to expand walls along the southern US border.
On Saturday, the Biden administration said it was withdrawing from agreements with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras that restricted the ability of people to seek US asylum.
Politico’s Playbook today has majored on the dilemma facing Democrats in Congress. As they put it:
Do they go all out to convict Trump by calling a parade of witnesses to testify to his misdeeds? Or do they concede it’s a lost cause, finish the trial ASAP — and get on with Biden’s agenda?
It’s been a source of frustration for some Democrats privately. Trump, these people have noticed, is already on the rebound politically, at least among Republicans. The GOP base has rallied to his defense, and many Republican lawmakers who witnessed the terror of the Capitol invasion are back in Trump’s corner.
That’s why there had been talk among the managers about calling individuals who could change minds — if not the minds of 17 GOP senators needed to convict, then perhaps a slice of the GOP electorate that still supports Trump. Some of the ideas floated: having Capitol Police officers tell their stories about fighting the mob, or inviting Republican officials in Georgia who were pressured by Trump to overturn the state’s election tally. There’s also been chatter about bringing in former White House officials who observed Trump on the day of the riots.
Schumer and other Senate Democrats argue, however, that they don’t necessarily need witnesses since Trump’s crimes were in plain sight and documented in videos and tweets. Privately, senior Democrats also note that 45 Senate Republicans have already decided they think the trial is unconstitutional because Trump is no longer president, so why bother dragging this out?
I mentioned earlier that the US state department was planning to reengage with the United Nations Human Rights Council. Secretary of state Antony Blinken has now put out the official statement to that effect. He says:
We recognize that the Human Rights Council is a flawed body, in need of reform to its agenda, membership, and focus, including its disproportionate focus on Israel. However, our withdrawal in June 2018 did nothing to encourage meaningful change, but instead created a vacuum of US leadership, which countries with authoritarian agendas have used to their advantage.
When it works well, the Human Rights Council shines a spotlight on countries with the worst human rights records and can serve as an important forum for those fighting injustice and tyranny. The Council can help to promote fundamental freedoms around the globe, including freedoms of expression, association and assembly, and religion or belief as well as the fundamental rights of women, girls, LGBTQI+ persons, and other marginalized communities. To address the Council’s deficiencies and ensure it lives up to its mandate, the United States must be at the table using the full weight of our diplomatic leadership.
In the immediate term, the United States will engage with the Council as an observer, and in that capacity will have the opportunity to speak in the Council, participate in negotiations, and partner with others to introduce resolutions.
A few things in the diary for today. President Joe Biden will return to the White House at 9.30am EST (that’s 2.30pm if, like me, you are in London). Later he will receive the president’s daily brief with vice president Kamala Harris, and then he will be taking a virtual tour of a Glendale, Arizona vaccination site in the afternoon.
His White House Covid-19 response team and public health officials have a briefing shceduled at 11am, and an hour after that there will be a briefing from White House press secretary Jen Psaki.
In the Senate, they will consider the nomination of Denis McDonough to be Secretary of Veterans Affairs at 3pm.
Experts who have spent the last year forecasting Covid-19 transmission across the US are considering scenarios for the spread of new, more infectious strains of the coronavirus.
At the same time, the US continues to lag in surveillance for coronavirus variants, despite having among the most well developed genomic sequencing infrastructure in the world.
The warnings come as the US appears to have crested a devastating winter wave of infections, which at one time saw more than 300,000 new infections and 4,000 deaths a day. Even though daily infections have more than halved from the peak, with death rates expected to drop soon also, the threat of the more infectious variants now has some considering the possibility of a fresh surge.
“It’s a grim projection, unfortunately,” said Ali Mokdad, professor at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington, one of the leading academic forecasters of Covid-19. “I’m concerned about a spike due to the new variant and the relaxation of social distancing,” he said. “People are tired. People are very tired.”
Forecasters still do not consider this the most likely scenario, though also not the worst-case scenario, but the addition of the model is a recognition of how dangerous new variants can be, even in an environment where hospitalisation and death rates are expected to decline.
IHME’s “rapid variant spread” model predicts total deaths could increase by 26,000 over the most likely scenario by May. Such a forecast would result in a total of more than 620,000 Covid-19 deaths by that time.
Notably, the most accurate are often “ensemble” forecasts, which draw in many individual projections. The ensemble forecast published by the CDC makes a prediction only through 27 February, when it estimates up to 534,000 deaths could occur. IHME also estimates universal masking could save 31,000 lives.
Read more of Jessica Glenza’s report here: Disease experts warn of surge in deaths from Covid variants as US lags in tracking
One of the questions about Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial is whether it is constitutional to hold a hearing into a former president. Forty-five Republican senators have already voted to say they believe it is not. Leading conservative attorney Chuck Cooper has written for the Wall Street Journal looking at the issue, and he disagrees.
The strongest argument against the Senate’s authority to try a former officer relies on Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution, which provides: “The president, vice president and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” The trial’s opponents argue that because this provision requires removal, and because only incumbent officers can be removed, it follows that only incumbent officers can be impeached and tried.
But the provision cuts against their interpretation. It simply establishes what is known in criminal law as a “mandatory minimum” punishment: If an incumbent officeholder is convicted by a two-thirds vote of the Senate, he is removed from office as a matter of law.
If removal were the only punishment that could be imposed, the argument against trying former officers would be compelling. But it isn’t. Article I, Section 3 authorizes the Senate to impose an optional punishment on conviction: “disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.”
Thus a vote by the Senate to disqualify can be taken only after the officer has been removed and is by definition a former officer. Given that the Constitution permits the Senate to impose the penalty of permanent disqualification only on former officeholders, it defies logic to suggest that the Senate is prohibited from trying and convicting former officeholders.
Read more here: Wall Street Journal – The constitution doesn’t bar Trump’s impeachment trial
