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Dr Anthony Fauci warned that it would be several months before most Americans are actually vaccinated.
The infectious disease expert had previously said he believed the vaccine would be widely available to the American public by April, but that was dependent upon Johnson & Johnson having more vaccine doses than are currently ready to be distributed once the company receives approval from the Food and Drug Administration.
“That timeline will probably be prolonged, maybe into mid- to late May and early June,” Fauci told CNN when asked about when most Americans would have access to the vaccine.
Fauci added, “What you’ve got to be careful of is when vaccines become available and when they have actually been successfully administered.”
Fauci noted that it would likely take a few months to actually get the vaccine distributed to every American who needs it.
“It may take until June, July and August to finally get everyone vaccinated,” Fauci said. “I don’t think anybody disagrees that that’s going to be well to the end of the summer and we get in the early fall.”
Fauci said it was reasonable for the average American to expect to be vaccinated by the end of the summer.
Congressman Bennie Thompson’s lawsuit names Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s personal attorney, as a defendant in the case.
Giuliani led the Trump campaign’s legal team as the then-president and his allies spread the lie that the November election was tainted by widespread fraud.
Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, repeated that baseless lie while speaking to attendees of the January 6 rally in Washington, which culminated in the attack on the Capitol.
“I’m willing to stake my reputation, the president is willing to stake his reputation, on the fact that we’re going to find criminality there,” Giuliani said at the rally. He then added, “Let’s have trial by combat.”
The capitol was stormed shortly after that. The attack resulted in five deaths.
Congressman Bennie Thompson’s lawsuit comes three days after Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell raised the possibility that Donald Trump could face criminal prosecution over his role in the Capitol insurrection.
McConnell voted to acquit Trump of incitement of insurrection because he argued it was inappropriate for the Senate to hold an impeachment trial for a former president.
But the Republican leader said Trump was “practically and morally responsible” for the Capitol insurrection and could still face legal consequences for his actions on January 6.
“President Trump is still liable for everything he did while in office,” McConnell said on Saturday. “He didn’t get away with anything yet. We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation.”
Congressman Bennie Thompson’s lawsuit accuses Donald Trump of conspiring to incite the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol.
“On and before January 6, 2021, the Defendants Donald J. Trump, Rudolph W. Giuliani, Proud Boys, and Oath Keepers conspired to incite an assembled crowd to march upon and enter the Capitol of the United States for the common purpose of disrupting, by the use of force, intimidation and threat, the approval by Congress of the count of votes cast by members of the Electoral College as required by Article II, Section 1 of the United States Constitution,” the lawsuit says.
“In doing so, the Defendants each intended to prevent, and ultimately delayed, members of Congress from discharging their duty commanded by the United States Constitution to approve the results of the Electoral College in order to elect the next President and Vice President of the United States.”
The lawsuit goes on to note, “The Defendants conspired to prevent, by force, intimidation and threats, the Plaintiff, as a Member of Congress, from discharging his official duties to approve the count of votes cast by members of the Electoral College following the presidential election held in November 2020.”
Congressman Bennie Thompson, the Democratic chairman of the House homeland security committee, has filed a lawsuit against Donald Trump over his role in the Capitol insurrection.
The NAACP, which filed the lawsuit on Thompson’s behalf, also names Rudy Giuliani, the former president’s personal attorney, and two extremist groups, the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, in the suit.
The lawsuit accuses Trump and his allies of violating the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, which prohibits violence that disrupts Congress’ ability to carry out its constitutional duties.
Thompson’s action comes three days after the Senate acquitted Trump of incitement of insurrection in connection to the Capitol attack.
Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has written a Wall Street Journal op-ed explaining his vote to acquit Donald Trump in the impeachment trial.
McConnell writes in the op-ed, which was published last night:
Jan. 6 was a shameful day. A mob bloodied law enforcement and besieged the first branch of government. American citizens tried to use terrorism to stop a democratic proceeding they disliked.
There is no question former President Trump bears moral responsibility. His supporters stormed the Capitol because of the unhinged falsehoods he shouted into the world’s largest megaphone. His behavior during and after the chaos was also unconscionable, from attacking Vice President Mike Pence during the riot to praising the criminals after it ended.
I was as outraged as any member of Congress. But senators take our own oaths. Our job wasn’t to find some way, any way, to inflict a punishment. The Senate’s first and foundational duty was to protect the Constitution.
Some brilliant scholars believe the Senate can try and convict former officers. Others don’t. The text is unclear, and I don’t begrudge my colleagues their own conclusions. But after intense study, I concluded that Article II, Section 4 limits impeachment and conviction to current officers.
It should be noted that the Senate voted twice on whether the impeachment trial was constitutional. In both instances, the Senate upheld the constitutionality of the trial.
Senator Richard Burr, a Republican who voted in favor of conviction, has said he also did not believe the trial was constitutional, but he said he was obligated to set those concerns aside when the chamber decided the proceedings could move forward.
“When this process started, I believed that it was unconstitutional to impeach a president who was no longer in office. I still believe that to be the case,” Burr said in a Saturday statement.
“However, the Senate is an institution based on precedent, and given that the majority in the Senate voted to proceed with this trial, the question of constitutionality is now established precedent. As an impartial juror, my role is now to determine whether House managers have sufficiently made the case for the article of impeachment against President Trump.”
Burr went on to say, “The evidence is compelling that President Trump is guilty of inciting an insurrection against a coequal branch of government and that the charge rises to the level of high Crimes and Misdemeanors. Therefore, I have voted to convict.”
Republican congressman Kevin Brady, whose Texas district covers some of the northern suburbs of Houston, warned his constituents that power outages and freezing temperatures continue in the state.
This bizarre winter storm is impacting much of the southern US, and the subfreezing temperatures appear to have already resulted in two deaths in the Houston area.
Much of the Texas state capitol of Austin is now without power, forcing some residents to sleep in their cars with the engine running to provide heat.
This is Joan Greve in Washington, taking over for Martin Belam.
Joe Biden is traveling to Milwaukee, Wisconsin today, where the president will participate in a CNN town hall focused on the coronavirus pandemic.
The event comes as Democrats in Congress work to get Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package passed as swiftly as possible.
Now that the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump has concluded, the Senate is free to focus on the relief package and Biden’s remaining cabinet nominations.
Biden will likely make a pitch for the relief package during the town hall tonight. The blog will have more about the president’s Wisconsin trip and the other news of the day coming up, so stay tuned.
We could be up for a Georgia re-match in 2022. Well, sort of. Associated Press report that former Georgia Sen David Perdue filed campaign paperwork yesterday, opening up the potential for the recently defeated Republican to run against newly-installed Democratic Sen Rev Raphael Warnock in 2022.
Perdue, 71, filed a statement of candidacy with the Federal Election Commission, an early step toward a possible bid to return to Washington.
Perdue lost his reelection bid during a closely watched runoff last month against Democrat Jon Ossoff. Ossoff’s win, along with Warnock’s victory over Sen Kelly Loeffler, resulted in Democrats taking control of the Senate for the first time since 2011.
Unlike Ossoff, who will not be up for reelection until 2026, Warnock’s term expires in two years. That’s because Warnock is filling the remainder of retired Republican Sen Johnny Isakson’s term.
Warnock, who served as pastor for the same Atlanta church where civil rights leader the Rev Martin Luther King Jr preached, is Georgia’s first African American senator.
Perdue is a former business executive who was elected in 2014. He was one of former president Trump’s chief defenders in the Senate and fell just short of the 50% threshold he needed to defeat Ossoff outright on 3 November.
Marc Caputo at Politico this morning has written about Gov Ron DeSantis as in some quarters people talk up his chances of a 2024 presidential run – partly off the back of his handling of the Covid pandemic. Caputo writes:
“Ron DeSantis is having a moment with conservatives,” said Josh Holmes, a top adviser to Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell. “Part of this is liberals tried to cast this in the yin-and-yang comparison with New York Gov Andrew Cuomo … It’s policy and it’s partly stylistic, the way he handles the news media and his blue-collar appeal.”
Early on in the pandemic, both California Gov Gavin Newsom and Cuomo won national praise for their handling of the pandemic while DeSantis was panned for his more economy-focused and laissez-faire approach — one closely aligned with Donald Trump’s response to the Covid-19 crisis. Now – with both Cuomo and Newsom faltering – conservatives are relishing the contrast and holding up DeSantis as an example of effective governance.
But it’s the fight in DeSantis that has animated conservatives, said Holmes, pointing to a recent press conference DeSantis held to announce a proposal to crack down on Big Tech where, in accusing the news media of having double standards, he told a reporter at one point that “you can whiz on my leg but don’t tell me it’s raining.”
“A Republican saying that in a press conference is like a shot of adrenaline to the conservative grassroots,” Holmes said. “The reaction was ‘Wow!’ He actually said it!”
Read more here: Politico – Covid wars launch DeSantis into GOP ‘top tier’
There’s an interesting little piece from Scott Rosenberg at Axios this morning, pegged to a stat that suggests the social media attention furore that surrounded one-term president Donald Trump has already subsided.
Rosenberg notes that “Over the first two weeks of February, there were an estimated 13.8 million social media posts about president Biden. That’s roughly an eighth of the 104 million posts about Trump over the first two weeks of January.”
(I feel duty bound to point out that this isn’t quite comparing apples and oranges, because during the two time periods, only one of them fomented an insurrection that ended up with their supporters sacking the US Capitol, which you imagine might skew the figures somewhat.)
Nevertheless, Rosenberg makes a useful point about the divergence over what comes next – and who is doing it:
Actors on the national stage are choosing from two different approaches in this new world. Some are using time-tested, Trump-like tactics to fill the post-Trump void.
Trump-supporting officeholders — among them Sen Josh Hawley and Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene — have commandeered news cycles by promoting unsupported claims of election fraud or amping up rhetoric against “socialist” Democrats. Elon Musk’s social-media antics — pumping up cryptocurrencies, inviting Vladimir Putin for a chat on Clubhouse — show the same game can be played in business and tech. They’re betting that, even with Trump off stage, the information-overload dynamics he exploited will continue to shape US society.
Others are aiming to reset public-square norms, believing that a pandemic-exhausted public yearns for simpler, straighter talk at lower volume. Most prominent in this camp is the incoming Biden administration, whose approach to shaping the public conversation couldn’t be more different from Trump’s impulsive show.
Biden’s announcements emerge in a planned, orderly way. He unveils appointments after serious deliberations, not at the drop of a tweet. His policies arrive with details fleshed out. This communications style may offer reassurance to Americans whose adrenaline glands need a rest. It also, of course, runs the risk of boring people.
Read more here: Axios – After Trump, the attention economy deflates
Yesterday, the North Carolina Republican’s central committee voted unanimously to censure Sen Richard Burr for his vote in Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial.
The Senator, who is in his third term, issued a statement in response saying: “It is truly a sad day for North Carolina Republicans. My party’s leadership has chosen loyalty to one man over the core principles of the Republican Party and the founders of our great nation.”
Barr was one of the most interesting votes in the impeachment trial. He twice voted that it was unconstitutional to try the former president at all, but argued that once the Senate had voted that it was, it had set that as a precedent, and he should therefore try the case on its merits. He found Donald Trump guilty of incitement of insurrection.
Ryan Teague Beckwith reports for Bloomberg this morning on renewed efforts by Republican state legislatures to make it harder to vote, and the belief among some people that it could be self-defeating, given the profile of voters who turned out for Donald Trump. Beckwith writes:
State legislatures across the country are considering more than a hundred bills that would increase voter ID requirements, tighten no-excuse vote-by-mail, and ban ballot drop boxes, among other changes. That’s more than three times the number of bills to restrict voting that had been filed by this time last year.
This flood of legislation comes despite research showing that voter ID laws passed over the last decade not only don’t hamper minority turnout, but may even boost it by motivating angry Democrats and spurring stronger get-out-the-vote efforts.
Kathleen Unger, president of the nonpartisan voter ID assistance group VoteRiders, said that the new proposals sweep up a different set of voters.
She said the photocopied ID requirement would be particularly onerous for people who don’t have a valid photo ID or easy access to a copy machine or a printer. That would include many rural, lower-income and older voters – three groups that are now a big part of the Republican base – as well as those with disabilities and college students who lean Democratic.
David Becker, director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research, said the number of proposed restrictions is a sign Republicans are worried about demographic trends in those states.
“When you see a party trying to change the rules with as much intensity as they are, that tells you they have lost confidence in the power of their ideas to persuade voters,” he said.
Read more here: Bloomberg – Republican efforts to restrict voting risk backfiring on party
Twitter has said it has made a permanent decision to close his account, but Kari Paul reports for us that Facebook is yet to decide whether to continue hosting Donald Trump:
Facebook is expected to announce imminently whether it will allow Donald Trump to return to the platform after banning him more than a month ago.
The decision will be the most consequential yet made by Facebook’s Oversight Board, a group of 20 members who range from humanitarian activists and religious experts to lawyers and a former prime minister. The board, which launched in late 2020, is meant to function as an independent arm of the social platform, making binding decisions on a selection of its thorniest content moderation issues.
Trump was removed on 7 January following his encouragement of an insurrection of the US Capitol the day prior, but he had for years used his Facebook account to share misinformation and violent rhetoric with his millions of followers. Hundreds of civil rights advocates submitted comments in advance of the decision saying that reinstating Trump’s account would again allow those problems to flourish on the site.
“The Board must acknowledge that Trump’s social media presence has made not just Facebook users but the entire world less safe,” wrote Change the Terms, a coalition of more than 60 human rights groups. “It must act in defense of the people we represent and not reverse Facebook’s decision on a process foul.”
Another prominent voice in favor of a permanent Trump ban is Facebook’s former security chief Alex Stamos, who signed a letter along with a number of other prominent voices urging against Trump’s return.
“The eventual deplatforming of Trump’s accounts helped defuse a dangerous and antidemocratic situation,” said the letter sent by a group of researchers and lawyers including Stamos. “Trump’s actions justified the step of indefinitely deplatforming him.”
Read more of Kari Paul’s report here: Debate rages as Facebook prepares to say whether Trump can return
If the 2024 Republican presidential primary was held today, Donald Trump would win by a street. That was the message from a Politico-Morning Consult poll released on Tuesday, three days after Trump’s acquittal in his second impeachment trial, on a charge of inciting the insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January.
Among Republican voters, 59% said they wanted Trump to play a prominent role in their party, up a whopping 18 points from the last such poll, taken in the aftermath of the Capitol riot. A slightly lower number, 54%, said they would back Trump in the primary.
Name recognition is a powerful force so far out from the contest concerned. Donald Trump Jr shared third place, with 6%, with former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley. Haley has tried to distance herself from Trump since the Capitol riot.
“We need to acknowledge he let us down,” Haley told Politico shortly after the attack. “He went down a path he shouldn’t have, and we shouldn’t have followed him, and we shouldn’t have listened to him. And we can’t let that ever happen again.”
She also said Trump was “not going to run for federal office again”. Trump has not committed either way. After his acquittal, he told supporters: “Soon we will emerge with a vision for a bright, radiant and limitless American future.”
As well as deaths in Texas and widespread power outages, at least three people were killed after a tornado tore through a seaside town in North Carolina overnight.
Associated Press report that the deadly tornado, which authorities said left at least 10 people injured, hit just after midnight Tuesday in southeastern Brunswick County near Grissettown in the Ocean Ridge Plantation Community. The tornado destroyed homes, downing powerlines that left thousands without electricity and snapping trees in half, news outlets reported.
“It’s something like I have never seen before. A lot of destruction. It’s going to be a long recovery process,” Brunswick County Sheriff John Ingram said at an early press conference early.
Brunswick County Emergency Management said people were trapped in homes. Ingram said searches for missing people were underway and will increase during the day. He’s asked people to avoid the area while crews work to clear the streets and search for victims.
