Democrat-led states -- such as New York and California -- were early entry points for Covid-19, perhaps contributing to higher incidence rates early on, according to the study's authors. But the reversal in trends "may reflect policy difference that could have facilitated the spread of the virus," they said.

"Governors' party affiliation may have contributed to a range of policy decisions that, together, influenced the spread of the virus," Sara Benjamin-Neelon, senior study author and professor at Johns Hopkins University, said in a news release. "These findings underscore the need for state policy actions that are guided by public health considerations rather than by partisan politics."

However, the new study's findings do not imply that political affiliation of a state leader was a cause of Covid-19 case or death incidence, according to the study's authors.

While the analysis was adjusted for rurality, the study notes that "the findings could reflect the virus's spread from urban to rural areas."

At the time, Watson was investigating the secretary of state's office and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation's audit of more than 15,000 signatures in Cobb County, outside Atlanta. Results of the audit found no evidence of fraudulent mail-in ballots and Biden was declared winner of Georgia in the election.close dialogSign up for CNN's CNN's Chris Cillizza cuts through the political spin and tells you what you need to know. Sign Me UpNo ThanksBy subscribing, you agree to ourprivacy policy.Sign up for CNN's CNN's Chris Cillizza cuts through the political spin and tells you what you need to know. Please enter above Sign Me UpNo ThanksBy subscribing, you agree to ourprivacy policy.You're on the list for CNN'sCNN's Chris Cillizza cuts through the political spin and tells you what you need to know. close dialog/* effects for .bx-campai

"I hope you are going back two years as opposed to checking one against the other," Trump can be heard saying on the call. "Because that would just be a signature check that didn't mean anything."

"But if you go back two years, and if you can get to Fulton, you are going to find things that are going to be unbelievable," the then-President said. "The dishonesty that we've heard from. But Fulton is the mother lode."

Investigators in both probes are interested in Trump's call to Watson, according to sources familiar with the probes.

One is the January phone call where Trump pushed Raffensperger to "find" votes to overturn the election results after his loss to Biden. The other involves the call Trump made on December 23 to Watson.

"If Mr. Raffensperger didn't want to receive calls about the election, he shouldn't have run for secretary of state," Miller said in the statement.

Garland will soon face politically charged questions at the Justice Department, including whether the Justice Department should wade into former President Donald Trump's role in the Capitol riot, and how to handle a federal probe into Biden's son, Hunter Biden.

Garland also could oversee the investigation of the FBI's Russia probe. But he said in his nomination hearing that he didn't have "any reason to think" that special counsel John Durham "should not remain in place."

"I come from a family where my grandparents fled anti-Semitism and persecution," said Garland. "The country took us in and protected us. I feel an obligation to the country to pay back."

"When confirmed, Judge Garland must not back other constitutionally-corrosive efforts to effectively repeal laws just by ignoring them," said McConnell.

Garland said at his hearing that the current threat from White supremacists is a "more dangerous period than we faced at that time." He also gave a brief, yet emotional, anecdote in response to a question about his family's history in confronting hate and discrimination. Garland fought back tears as he explained why leading the Justice Department was important to him.

McConnell said he voted to confirm Garland's nomination as attorney general "because of his long reputation as a straight-shooter and legal expert," calling his "left-of-center perspective" within "the legal mainstream."

The Senate voted to confirm attorney general nominee Merrick Garland on Wednesday, sending the appellate judge on his mission to uphold the integrity of the Justice Department after its actions over the past years threatened to undermine it.

The $1.9 trillion stimulus bill, which is expected to pass the House on Wednesday, will provide direct payments of up to 120% of a "socially disadvantaged" farmer or rancher's outstanding debt as of Jan. 1, 2021. A socially disadvantaged farmer or rancher is anyone in a socially disadvantaged group, those who have been "subjected to racial or ethnic prejudice because of their identity as members of a group without regard to their individual qualities," according to a House code.

"Let me give an example of something that really bothers me. In this bill, if you are a farmer, your loan will be forgiven up to 120% of your loan, not 100%, but 120%, if you're socially disadvantaged, if you're African-American, some other minority. But if you're White person, if you are a White woman, no forgiveness. That's reparations. What does that got to do with Covid?," Graham said on "Sunday Morning Futures."

"Here you have a group of people who barely can defend themselves and instead of these senators voting to support historic measure like this where I have been trying to get debt relief for Black farmers and other farmers of color over 30 years," he told Keilar. "I never heard Senator Lindsey Graham speak out against discrimination, where I been spat on and called racial epithets and had my USDA applications torn up and thrown in the trash can. He knows about discrimination ... I never hear

Biden's overall approval rating about two months into his presidency is higher than that of his predecessor, Donald Trump, who held a 45% approval rating in a CNN Poll in March 2017.

Even as the bill is poised to become a major legislative accomplishment for the Biden administration, the President receives somewhat mixed reviews for his handling of some issues, including environmental policy (50% approve, 41% disapprove), helping the middle class (50% approve, 43% disapprove), racial injustice (47% approve, 43% disapprove), foreign affairs (44% approve and 46% disapprove) and immigration (43% approve and 49% disapprove).

His approval rating for handling it stands at 49% approve to 44% disapprove, and just 30% say they have a lot of confidence in Biden to deal with the economy.

Biden's 51% lags behind other modern presidents, including the three most recent prior to Trump (Barack Obama, 64% in March 2009, George W. Bush, 58% in March 2001 and Bill Clinton, 53% in March 1993).

Both Biden and Trump appear to lag behind because of far sharper partisan polarization than their predecessors faced at this stage of their presidencies.

The share of Americans who say things in the country today are going well has rebounded after dropping sharply in January. Overall, 39% say things are going well now, up from 22% in January and about the same as in October 2020 just before the presidential election.

The methodology and weighting for the poll incorporates some changes to CNN's polling practices made starting with the January 2021 survey. Interviews conducted on cell phones made up 75% of the total, up from 65% in recent CNN surveys. Dialing extended over six days rather than four days, allowing for more effort to be made to contact those who are not easily reachable.

The White House told governors Tuesday to expect fewer than 400,000 doses of Johnson & Johnson vaccine next week, far below what they initially expected would be available.

The new goal was made possible by a rare partnership between competitors Merck and Johnson & Johnson. The White House says it is utilizing the Defense Production Act to help equip two Merck facilities to manufacture the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

"There is light at the end of this dark tunnel of this past year, but we cannot let our guard down now or assume victory is inevitable. Together we're going to get through this pandemic and usher in a healthier and more hopeful future," Biden said

The US has ramped up the administering of the three Covid-19 vaccines that have received emergency use authorization from the US Food and Drug Administration that were developed by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna in addition to Johnson & Johnson.

More than 93,600,000 doses have been administered in the US as of Wednesday morning, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The vaccines from Pfizer/BioNTech require two doses administered, while Johnson & Johnson's only requires one.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday that the seven-day average for shots administered is now 2.17 million shots per day, up from 890,000 shots per day on January 20, when Biden took office.

Psaki also announced that the Pfizer and Moderna Covid-19 vaccine supply will be increased to 15.8 million doses, up from 15.2 million doses announced last week. Psaki said 2.7 million first doses are also being shipped directly to pharmacies.

The bill will next go before the Senate Rules Committee.

The snowstorm this weekend has a "moderate to high potential to surpass the March 23, 2016, heavy snow event," according to the National Weather Service in Boulder. That day it snowed 13.1 inches in Denver. NWS Boulder also gives a "low to medium potential to approach the March 2003 historical snowstorm." That storm dumped 2 to 4 feet of snow across the area.

One of the unknowns this weekend is a matter of moisture. There will be severe weather southeast of Colorado on Friday and Saturday. Suppose that severe weather converts all of the Gulf of Mexico humidity into flooding rainfall. In that case, the moisture source for the front range snowstorm will be cut off. The air approaching the Rockies will be dried out, and the snow potential will be cut in half, at least.

Being 3 to 4 days away from this storm, the current forecast has an extensive range of potential snowfall to account for all the factors that could impact the final forecast.

Meteorologists then consider the consistency of these model runs -- if they continue to show the same forecast or not -- along with local and historical context to develop a more accurate forecast.

By the time the snowfall ends on Monday, this high-impact storm will have paralyzed some cities, towns and interstate highways.

The worst part of the storm won't arrive until Saturday and many things can change by then. Forecast snow totals for specific areas will change, and maybe drastically, as the storm evolves.

As the snow's start time gets closer, the confidence for the track and amounts will get clearer. A two-day forecast is always more accurate than a four-day forecast just about anywhere in the world. Still, the 40-inch potential here should get your attention for now.

It is absolutely true that Biden ran as a candidate who could bring Americans together following the increasingly divisive presidency of Donald Trump. Even during the darkest days of his struggles in the Democratic primary, Biden made the case that the only way the country could heal was to understand that we had a lot more in common that our politics (and our politicians) wanted us to believe.

"To overcome these challenges -- to restore the soul and to secure the future of America -- requires more than words. It requires that most elusive of things in a democracy: Unity. Unity."

"If Republicans have suddenly begun to deeply value and prioritize bipartisanship in Washington, they can start by supporting $2k checks and retroactive unemployment for people," sarcastically tweeted New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in late January. "Then it will be bipartisan."

"We all want bipartisanship and I think you're gonna see more of it as we move down the pike," Sanders said on ABC in late January. "We all look forward to working with Republicans. But right now, this country faces an unprecedented set of crises."

The mayor of Maui says homes and bridges have been severely damaged in the community's ongoing flooding emergency. "This has been unprecedented flooding, and we will be making damage assessments today," Mayor Michael Victorino said in a written statement Tuesday.

The entire state is under a flash flood watch until 6 a.m. local time Wednesday.

The floodwaters were so furious they knocked his daughter's bedroom off the foundation, Alexander told the outlet, as he with family members and friends began shoveling feet of mud out of their home.

On Monday, Victorino said that residents told him it was the worst flooding they've seen in over 25 years.

"Catastrophic flooding from Opaeula Stream. Evacuate now from Haleiwa town," the Honolulu County government said in an emergency notice Tuesday afternoon. "You are in danger. Leave now."

"My caution to anyone watching is please heed that warning and evacuate. We don't do those kind of orders capriciously, we do those with purpose, they are most serious," Mayor of the City and County of Honolulu Rick Blangiardi said in a video address on Tuesday.

"When you see flood damage in the light of day, it's a reminder of the sheer power of fast-moving water," said Victorino, who visited flooded areas. "We are so fortunate there were no reported deaths or injuries. I want to publicly thank our first responders who did heroic work under very dangerous conditions."

"Yes, it's like a bridge, small one over a stream," she said of the road. "It hasn't stopped raining one second. We are about 15 minutes away from the dam."

"I fully support the Republican Party and important GOP Committees, but I do not support RINOs and fools, and it is not their right to use my likeness or image to raise funds," Trump said in the statement.

"If you control the money, you control the party," Republican donor Dan Eberhart told CNN on Tuesday. "Trump has effectively stunted the RNC, NRCC and NRSC this cycle because they are going to have to spend an awful lot of time worrying about friendly fire from the MAGA crowd."

"The MAGA endorsement is going to loom large this cycle for everyone. When Trump puts his finger on the scales, it may prove decisive in a lot of races," said Eberhart, who said he is considering a Senate run in Arizona. "There is going to be a lot of consternation when Trump backs a different candidate than the NRSC and the NRCC in primary races. Serious people are going to get burned."

The RNC's chief counsel, J. Justin Reimer, told Trump's lawyers the RNC has "every right to refer to public figures" in its political speech and will "continue to do so."

Trump's lawyers also sent the same cease-and-desist request to the NRCC and the NRSC. A spokesman from the NRCC declined to comment and a spokeswoman from the NRSC did not respond to a request for comment.

"The desire is to have it both ways, where you get the former president's voters, not his baggage," said a GOP campaign strategist who requested anonymity to speak candidly about Republican incentives.

As a consequence, Trump's clash with party leaders "will have very little -- if any effect -- on major donors," she told CNN in an interview Tuesday.

"They are less concerned about a former president's agenda, or frankly, making him feel good," she added.

After losing the election last November, Trump amassed millions of dollars for his own political action committee as he promoted falsehoods about election fraud -- instead of plowing funds into twin US Senate races in Georgia. In the end, the Republicans lost the runoffs in early January, along with their majority in the chamber.

"He's all about himself. He's not about building or supporting the party."

Individuals earning less than $75,000 will receive the full $1,400. Married couples earning less than $150,000 a year will receive $2,800 -- and families with children are eligible for an additional $1,400 per dependent. Heads of households earning less than $112,500 a year will also receive the full $1,400 plus another $1,400 per dependent.

The jobless will receive a $300 weekly federal boost to unemployment benefits and get those payments through September 6.

The bill also calls for making the first $10,200 of unemployment payments tax-free for households with annual incomes under $150,000.

Food stamp recipients will see a 15% increase in benefits continue through September, instead of having it expire at the end of June.

The bill will send roughly $20 billion to state and local governments to help low-income households cover back rent, rent assistance and utility bills.

It authorizes about $10 billion to help struggling homeowners pay their mortgages, utilities and property taxes.The bill also provides $5 billion to help states and localities assist those at risk of experiencing homelessness by providing safe, socially distant housing, for example. Another $5 billion goes to emergency housing vouchers for those who are homeless.

Qualifying families can receive a child tax credit of $3,600 for each child under 6 and $3,000 for each one under age 18, up from the current credit of up to $2,000 per child under age 17.The enhanced portion of the credit will be available for single parents with annual incomes up to $75,000 and joint filers making up to $150,000 a year.

Enrollees will pay no more than 8.5% of their income towards coverage, down from nearly 10% now. Also, those earning more than the current cap of 400% of the federal poverty level -- about $51,000 for an individual and $104,800 for a family of four in 2021 -- will become eligible for help.

The bill provides $15 billion to the Emergency Injury Disaster Loan program, which provides long-term, low-interest loans from the Small Business Administration. Severely impacted small businesses with fewer than 10 workers will be given priority for some of the money.

It also provides $25 billion for a new grant program specifically for bars and restaurants. Eligible businesses may receive up to $10 million and can use the money for a variety of expenses, including payroll, mortgage and rent, utilities and food and beverages.

Workers being paid at or just above the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour will not see a boost in pay.

The $1.9 trillion coronavirus package contains a wide range of benefits to help Americans who are still struggling with the economic fallout of the pandemic.

And on Monday, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention brought that moment into clearer focus. The agency came out with its first set of guidance about what fully vaccinated people can now do.

My parents had a significant emotional burden lifted after they were vaccinated, because they are now approximately 95% protected against getting severely ill from Covid-19. But like the rest of the country, they are restless and want to do something with their newly vaccinated status. That is why they called me right after they saw the news report about new recommendations from the CDC to ask me what it all meant. I laid out the good news for them, and the caveats as well.

In a major step, the CDC said people who are fully vaccinated against Covid-19 can safely visit with other fully vaccinated people in private settings without masks, without social distancing and without having to be outdoors.

Additionally, however, the CDC guidance now allows for fully vaccinated people to visit indoors with unvaccinated people from a single household without masks or physical distancing, if the unvaccinated people are at low risk for severe disease. That last part is important.

This was starting to sound like it was going to work, and that my parents should be able to safely visit, even though my kids or wife haven't been vaccinated. They meet the age requirements and would be considered low risk, both in terms of health and their very limited exposures.

As I kept digging into the guidelines and speaking with members of the Biden administration's Covid-19 task force, it became increasingly clear that a visit was looking possible, but with a few strings attached.

And, perhaps most notably, fully vaccinated people are also still being discouraged from traveling, something that throws a monkey wrench into my fantasy of an imminent family reunion.

"I think the guidelines are in a good middle ground," she said. "We're starting to go back to normal now, but it's not going to be flipping a switch... We will make that journey towards normalcy, or at least a new normal, as more people get vaccinated."

At 10% vaccinations we have this guidance. At 20-30%, we will have new guidance," he said, noting that there's going to be a distinct shift in the messaging of what people can and cannot do -- moving away from more binary messaging to one that describes activities as a range of low, medium and high risk.

Even as Walensky delivered the hopeful new guidance, she also noted the country still stands at a seven-day average of about 59,000 new cases of Covid-19 per day -- a rate that has leveled off somewhat, instead of continuing to steadily decline. And there are close to 2,000 deaths per day. So, she and other experts warn, any easing of restrictions is going to have to be gradual.

So where does that leave my family reunion plan? Unless my parents make the long drive to see us, we are going to hold off on a visit for now. With more than 2 million people getting vaccinated a day, however, another 20% of the country could be vaccinated by the end of the month. And, that will probably lead to a further relaxing of CDC guidelines and maybe allow my parents a plane ride instead, which means a possible visit to celebrate their wedding anniversary this spring!

Research has shown that some of the disproportionate impact on women was driven by the need to care for children during the pandemic, a circumstance that is often not captured in the official unemployment rate, which accounts only for people actively seeking work.

Even among women, however, white women have not experienced the same changes in employment levels as women of color.

Comparing the percentage change in employment totals from a year ago is a useful benchmark for how hard the pandemic hit the American work force. But to see how the recovery is worsening inequality in the economy, it’s important to look at where different groups started from.

Workers on the older and younger ends of the spectrum also experienced outsize losses. Younger people, who also tend to be overrepresented in some of the most affected industries like food service, were much more likely to lose work early in the outbreak and are still among the farthest from their prepandemic employment levels. However, they have regained jobs more rapidly than older people, who may be more wary of returning to work and increasing their exposure to the coronavirus.

According to an analysis from the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning research group, workers in the lowest quartile of earners lost almost eight million jobs from 2019 to 2020, while the highest wage earners gained jobs.

“Obviously it’s an improvement, but I think that it is inadequate given the health care crisis that we’re in,” said Representative Ro Khanna, a progressive Democrat from California who favors the single-payer, government-run system called Medicare for All that has been embraced by Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, and the Democratic left.

“We’re in a national health care crisis,” Mr. Khanna said. “Fifteen million people just lost private health insurance. This would be the time for the government to say, at the very least, for those 15 million that we ought to put them on Medicare.”

The stimulus bill would make upper-middle-income Americans newly eligible for financial help to buy plans on the federal marketplaces, and the premiums for those plans would cost no more than 8.5 percent of an individual’s modified adjusted gross income. It would also increase subsidies for lower-income enrollees.

Just when Mr. Biden or Democrats would put forth such a plan remains unclear, and passage in an evenly divided Senate would be an uphill struggle. White House officials have said Mr. Biden wants to get past the coronavirus relief bill before laying out a more comprehensive domestic policy agenda.

The Affordable Care Act is near and dear to Mr. Biden, who memorably used an expletive to describe it as a big deal when he was vice president and President Barack Obama signed it into law in 2010. It has expanded coverage to more than 20 million Americans, cutting the uninsured rate to 10.9 percent in 2019 from 17.8 percent in 2010.

Even so, some 30 million Americans were uninsured between January and June 2020, according to the latest figures available from the National Health Interview Survey. The problem has only grown worse during the coronavirus pandemic, when thousands if not millions of Americans lost insurance because they lost their jobs.

Mr. Biden made clear when he was running for the White House that he did not favor Medicare for All, but instead wanted to strengthen and expand the Affordable Care Act. The bill that is expected to reach his desk in time for a prime-time Oval Office address on Thursday night would do that. The changes to the health law would cover 1.3 million more Americans and cost about $34 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Republicans have always said that their plan was to repeal and replace the health law, but after 10 years they have yet to come up with a replacement. Mr. Ayres said his firm is working on “coming up with some alternative health care message” that does not involve “simply throwing everybody into a government-run health care problem.”

Yet polls show that the idea of a government-run program is gaining traction with voters. In September, the Pew Research Center reported that over the previous year, there had been an increase, especially among Democrats, in the share of Americans who say health insurance should be provided by a single national program run by the government.

“I would argue there is more momentum for Medicare expansion given the pandemic and the experience people are having,” said Mr. Khanna, the California congressman. “They bought time, but I think at some point there will be a debate on a permanent fix.”

"Our moderators are reviewing an increased number of reports related to public posts with calls to violence, which are expressly forbidden by our Terms of Service," Telegram spokesperson Remi Vaughn told CNN in a statement on Wednesday. Vaughn added: "We welcome peaceful discussion and peaceful protests, but routinely remove publicly available content that contains direct calls to violence."

In public and private chats there are common messages about plotting to "take back America" or rallying together against supposed censorship, according to Angelo Carusone, president and CEO of Media Matters for America. Carusone and his team have been tracking extremist language and posting in a variety of media landscapes.

"The FBI cannot open an investigation without a threat of violence or alleged criminal activity. However, when that language does turn to a call for violence or criminal activity, the FBI is able to undertake investigative activity," the agency said.

"It is more and more important to know where they're going, especially if they're moving even further and further behind the veil," Carusone said. "If you lose track of them entirely, you lose that that information pipeline, you lose the ability to identify those indicators, which means it's harder to prevent harm."

"The plots of tomorrow are literally being hatched right now," Oren Segal, vice president of the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism, told CNN.

Segal said extremists might move cautiously in coming days, from both paranoia and knowing they're being watched.

"It's not before inauguration that we need to be concerned about them trying to spark another civil war -- it's after," Segal told CNN.

Trump was very much a part of that, too. He repeatedly criticized Gov. Gretchen Whitmer about her Covid-19 restrictions before and after the news of the plot against her.

Experts note that at the protests against her moves, there too was a cross-pollination of people who showed up -- self-declared militia members, anarchists, those with anti-government beliefs and anti-vaxxers.

Carusone says this is just the beginning of the country heading "into a buzzsaw" due to divisiveness, extremist actions and political rhetoric. "Trump has gift-wrapped the narrative for the next four years," Segal explains.

"All of those new people being brought into these communities creates new opportunity for expanding the ranks," Carusone said. "There's going to be a lot of new people ... organized and exposed to a set of prescriptions that ultimately bring us back to the same place ... leading up to the attack on the Capitol. "Except in this case, it'll be more of them."

“Whether they liked each other or not, they would ride together for the show of unity,”

“Harry Truman didn't like Eisenhower, but he rode up to the Hill with him. Nixon rode with LBJ. Ford rode with Carter. Reagan beat Carter and rode with him. … Everybody did that. Even Trump rode with Obama.”

But this will not be the case this year, as President Donald Trump has said he will not attend the inauguration of Joe Biden.

“It's a celebration of American democracy, it’s a celebration of how we peacefully transfer power,” he said. “The symbolism and the imagery of it is critical.”

The 2000 election between George W. Bush and Al Gore was one of the most contentious in American history, with the Supreme Court having to ultimately settle a recount dispute before Gore would concede.

“You can see his lips are pursed, and in that little moment it had to be incredibly painful for him on every level,” Kennerly said. “He's giving up the presidency. No one's ever done it that way, and he was a disgraced leader and he was leaving under duress.

The President’s absence isn’t the only reason that this inauguration will be unlike any we have ever seen. The celebrations have been significantly pared down because of the coronavirus pandemic, and Biden’s inaugural committee — trying to keep crowds to a minimum — has urged Americans not to travel to Washington, DC. The National Mall will also be closed to the general public because of security concerns, according to an official familiar with discussions.

The Nixon transition was a moment Kennerly said he will never forget. “For drama, that’s definitely top five in my life — that moment, the only time an American president resigned,” he said.

Kennerly was on a press riser with other photographers and had only a few seconds to immortalize the historic spectacle. It was a quick sequence of photos as Nixon waved farewell before boarding his helicopter.

“It’s not just to pay off the people who supported you,” he said. “It’s to show the people of the United States that we can do this the right way and that’s why we’re different than so many other places.”

“But once again, it was a peaceful transition. A few minutes later, Ford was sworn in as president of the United States. No guns were fired, no coup was attempted, and as President Ford put it in his remarks, ‘Our long national nightmare is over.’ “

“These are photos that can give you more insight behind the scenes,” he said. “And it really boils down to the access of the presidential photographers. Everything's so locked down. This time, (the security) will be insane. There won't be very much behind the scenes, outside the personal photographer to Biden. That is my guess.”

So we likely won’t be seeing many of the great photos we’ve seen from past inaugurations. There will be an emptiness about the day, as the celebration is mostly intended to be a virtual event viewed on television.

The Postal Service removed mailboxes in Washington, DC, during the inauguration of President Trump in 2017 as a safety measure, Partenheimer said.

The expansion of security measures to other locations across the nation is based on the Postal Service's awareness of "planned protests or other situations involving large crowds" in key cities and areas, Partenheimer said.

"Armed protests are being planned at all 50 state capitols from 16 January through at least 20 January, and at the US Capitol from 17 January through 20 January," the bulletin states.

Speaking at a news conference Monday, Bowser, a Democrat, stressed that she was concerned about more violent actors potentially coming to the city in the run-up to the inauguration, saying, "If I'm scared of anything, it's for our democracy, because we have very extreme factions in our country that are armed and dangerous."

The surge in service members comes as law enforcement in the nation's capital and around the country brace for more extremist violence after the deadly insurrection at the US Capitol last week.

Law enforcement is using a huge amount of surveillance, including monitoring phones and other communications, in an all-out effort to track individuals to ensure they do not travel to Washington, according to law enforcement officials.

Some extremists are so suspicious and obsessed with anti-government conspiracies that they're telling associates they don't trust some of the planned protests, fearing they are actually FBI plots to try to frame them, according to one official.

Security officials also have shared information citing specific concerns about vehicles that could be used to breach security, the source said. The information adds to the already heightened alert in the capital as authorities try to protect a central area of the city where the transfer of power will take place on January 20.

"I can assure the residents of the District of Columbia that the Metropolitan Police Department and federal partners are in a posture to respond to the information that's out there thus far that we've heard," Contee said.

"It's definitely aggressive," Claire Hannan, the executive director of the Association of Immunization Managers, told CNN.

The lack of clarity has made it difficult for states to map out their vaccination campaigns -- and they're unsure whether the situation will improve under Biden. Sources familiar with planning in both Republican- and Democratic-led states spoke with CNN.

"What the states have been doing is fly the plane a bit as they build it" is how one source familiar with the Biden team's outreach to states described their Covid-19 relief work under the Trump administration's watch.

Biden has said he will look into tapping the CDC, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the National Guard and the military to launch vaccination sites in school gyms and football stadiums and to set up mobile units to reach disadvantaged communities. His transition team has discussed the potential use of the US military and the National Guard in Covid mitigation efforts with governors and the Department of Defense, a transition official said.

"Just giving us the vaccine doesn't necessarily help, because we still need more people to administer it," the official told CNN.

This official noted that under some state plans, medical providers are supposed to reach out to their patients to give the vaccine. But many smaller practices lack enough staff for this responsibility, and they don't have the resources to hire.

For his part, Biden has publicly stressed the need for Congress to make more funding available for Covid-19 relief.