The White House plans to deploy its messaging blitz to tout the newly passed $1.9 trillion Covid relief plan to "every corner" of the country in the weeks ahead, zeroing in on key components each day as it seeks to maintain -- or build on -- the proposal's current popularity, according to an internal memo obtained by CNN.
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Biden touts passage of $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief bill and plans victory lap - CNNPo... - 0 views
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For 10 days, administration officials will focus on one element of the sweeping bill per day, ranging from the stimulus checks and emergency unemployment insurance extensions, to vaccine distribution and reopening schools, O'Malley Dillon wrote.
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President Joe Biden is slated to give a his first primetime address to the country on Thursday night and is expected to sign the bill into law on Friday. It will mark the cornerstone legislative achievement of his opening weeks in office -- something he and his senior advisers have long viewed as a backbone element of their effort to not only manage but defeat the dual economic and public health crises confronting the country.
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Schools will soon have the funding and resources to reopen safely, a national imperative," Biden said during a White House event alongside the CEOs of Johnson & Johnson and Merck.
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Biden and his top advisers view a robust messaging push around the law a necessity, citing lessons learned from President Barack Obama's 2009 stimulus law, which became mired in opposition as it was deployed. Biden will take his first trip to sell the new law to Pennsylvania on March 16, the White House announced Wednesday.
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"We're going to make sure the American people know tangibly what the Rescue Plan means for them," O'Malley Dillon wrote in the memo.
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"The implementation of the Rescue Plan is going to be an all-hands-on-deck effort across the administration," O'Malley Dillon writes in the memo.
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Analysis: 'Chinese business, Out!' Myanmar anger threatens investment plans | Reuters - 0 views
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“China’s gas pipeline will be burned,” chanted a group of protesters in Myanmar this week on the route of a Chinese pipeline.
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the pipeline has become a target for public anger over perceptions Beijing is backing the junta that seized power in a Feb. 1 coup.The rise in anti-China sentiment has raised questions in Myanmar business circles and in China, not only over the surge of Chinese investment in recent years but for billions of dollars earmarked for a strategic neighbour on Beijing’s “Belt and Road” infrastructure plan.
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Protests over the pipeline flared after a Myanmar government document leaked from a Feb. 24 meeting showed Chinese officials had asked Myanmar’s junta to provide better security - and intelligence on ethnic minority armed groups on the pipeline route.
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“Public opinion has been treated as a priority for China’s policy in Myanmar,” she said.Efforts in recent years included everything from donating school backpacks to sponsoring inspection trips to China for officials - though a 2018 survey in Myanmar still found an “explicit bias” against Chinese investments.China had also tried to keep close to Suu Kyi, while maintaining ties to the army that overthrew her.
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Concerns that anti-Beijing sentiment could turn on Chinese businesses has prompted some to reconsider their positions - especially as anti-coup protests and strikes strangle the economy.“They can only vent on the Chinese people on the ground,”
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Opinion | Tell Me the One About the Presidential Candidate Who Ran for Mayor - The New ... - 0 views
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Gail Collins: Bret, my city (and yours — if you work here you at least have rooting rights) tends to switch back and forth between regular party Democrats and feisty independents. De Blasio, a deep, dull Democrat, was preceded by Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg, who were very, very different versions of the political outsider.
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Gail: And New York has had some. But except for Nelson Rockefeller our gubernatorial Republicans weren’t very exciting. Have we ever discussed the George Pataki years? No? At least with Andrew G. we’d have a Republican who knows how to putt …
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Bret: Hemlock or cyanide? Devoured by a saltwater crocodile versus bitten by a venomous sea snake? A year of solitary confinement in a supermax prison or an all-expenses paid trip to Cancún in the company of Ted Cruz? I’m trying to think of equivalently horrible alternatives.
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If it’s time for a new outsider, it does sort of seem that Andrew Yang ought to fit the bill. Yet he’s run a rather strange campaign — lots of interesting ideas but often the kind you hear from a guy who’s on a six-month internship at City Hall before being posted someplace else.
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But we’ve had more than 45 mass shootings in the United States just since the Atlanta killings last month. Many of which we haven’t even heard of because there were more injuries than deaths.
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Bret: It may be my congenital contrarianism, Gail, but after spending the better part of the pandemic feeling optimistic about the future, I’ve now sunk into deep fatalism. Cases are edging up again, driven by the new virus variants, and the steep decline in Covid deaths since January also seems to have bottomed out at an average rate of around 700 a day, which is just horrific.
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When Covid Hit, China Was Ready to Tell Its Version of the Story - The New York Times - 0 views
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china propaganda campaign influence press Culture Politics policy
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In the fall of 2019, just before global borders closed, an international journalists’ association decided to canvass its members about a subject that kept coming up in informal conversations: What is China doing?
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What it found was astonishing in its scope. Journalists from countries as tiny as Guinea-Bissau had been invited to sign agreements with their Chinese counterparts. The Chinese government was distributing versions of its propaganda newspaper China Daily in English — and also Serbian. A Filipino journalist estimated that more than half of the stories on a Philippines newswire came from the Chinese state agency Xinhua. A Kenyan media group raised money from Chinese investors, then fired a columnist who wrote about China’s suppression of its Uyghur minority. Journalists in Peru faced intense social media criticism from combative Chinese government officials.
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What is China planning to do with this new power?
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The answer comes in a second report, which is set to be released on Wednesday by the International Federation of Journalists, a Brussels-based union of journalism unions whose mission gives it a global bird's-eye view into news media almost everywhere. The group, which shared a copy with me, hired an author of the first report, Louisa Lim, to canvass journalists in 54 countries
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The interviews “reveal an activation of the existing media infrastructure China has put in place globally,” Ms. Lim, a former NPR bureau chief in Beijing who is now a senior lecturer at the University of Melbourne, wrote in the report. “As the pandemic started to spread, Beijing used its media infrastructure globally to seed positive narratives about China in national media, as well as mobilizing more novel tactics such as disinformation.”
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Both the media and vaccine campaigns are intertwined with China’s “Belt and Road” global investment campaign, in which Chinese support comes with strings attached, including debt and expectations of support in key votes at the United Nations.
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“The accusation on China is what the U.S. has been doing all along,”
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The report found that a new media push accompanied the intense round of Chinese diplomacy in the pandemic, providing protective equipment initially and then vaccines to countries around the world, all the while scrambling to ensure that things as varied as the pandemic’s origin and China’s diplomacy was portrayed in the best possible light.
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China is fighting what is in some ways an uphill battle
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Instead, the cultural power represented by companies like Netflix and Disney — vastly more powerful and better funded than any government effort — has been doing the work.
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Its growing authoritarianism, its treatment of the Uyghurs and its crackdown on dissent in Hong Kong damaged global views of China, according to other surveys, even before the pandemic began in Wuhan.
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much of China’s diplomacy is focused on places that, while they may not have the cultural or financial power of European countries, do have a vote at the U.N. And while they appear often to be improvisational and run out of local embassies, China’s efforts are having a global impact.
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I spoke to journalists on five continents who participated in the report. Their attitudes ranged from alarm at overt Chinese government pressure to confidence that they could handle what amounted to one more interest group in a messy and complex media landscape.
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the general secretary of the International Federation of Journalists, Anthony Bellanger, said in an email that his view of the report is that while “China is a growing force in the information war, it is also vital to resist such pressures exerted by the U.S., Russia and other governments around the world.”
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there’s little question of which government is more committed to this campaign right now. A report last year by Sarah Cook for the Freedom House, an American nonprofit group that advocates political freedom, found that Beijing was spending “hundreds of millions of dollars a year to spread their messages to audiences around the world.”
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The United States may have pioneered the tools of covert and overt influence during the Cold War, but the government’s official channels have withered
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Trump sought to turn those outlets into blunter propaganda tools, and Democrats and their own journalists resisted. That lack of an American domestic consensus on how to use its own media outlets has left the American government unable to project much of anything.
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it is less the exposure of a secret plot than it is documentation of a continuing global power shift. China’s media strategy is no secret, and the Chinese government says its campaign is no different from what powerful global players have done for more than a century.
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Erin Baggott Carter, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Southern California, said her research has found that American news organizations whose journalists accepted official trips to China subsequently “made a pivot from covering military competition to covering economic cooperation.”
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In talking to journalists around the world last week about Chinese influence, I was also struck by what they didn’t talk about: the United States. Here, when we write and talk about Chinese influence, it’s often in the context of an imagined titanic global struggle between two great nations and two systems of government
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from Indonesia to Peru to Kenya, journalists described something much more one-sided: a determined Chinese effort to build influence and tell China’s story.
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“Americans are quite insular and always think everything is about the U.S.,” Ms. Lim said. “Americans and the Western world are often not looking at what is happening in other languages outside English, and tend to believe that these Western-centric values apply everywhere.”
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Kamala Harris' team tries to distance her from fraught situation at the border - CNNPol... - 0 views
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In the weeks since the President asked her to take charge of immigration from Central America, Vice President Kamala Harris and her staff have sought to make one thing clear: She does not manage the southern border.
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Two White House officials familiar with the dynamic said Harris and her aides have emphasized internally that they want to focus on conditions in Central America that push migrants to the US southern border, as President Joe Biden tasked her to do. A record number of unaccompanied children crossed into the US this spring, and the throngs of desperate minors present a heart-rending problem as well as a political one.
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After the announcement, Harris' aides appeared to "panic," according to one of the officials, out of concern that her assignment was being mischaracterized and could be politically damaging if she were linked to the border, which at the time was facing a growing number of arrivals.
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One of the officials said Harris appears eager for a portfolio that will allow her to achieve political victories, especially in foreign policy, an area where she is far less experienced than Biden.
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Harris' performance is critical to her future political career, which could well include a run for president. It's also of special concern right now as she prepares to depart for a trip to Guatemala and Mexico next week as part of this project. It will be her first official foray into in-person, in-country talks about the troubles that push Central American migrants toward the US.
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Harris and her staff have made it clear that they want to focus narrowly on diplomatic efforts in Mexico and the Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, where they believe they are more likely to achieve tangible results in addressing the root causes of migration, like economic despair, said the officials.
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"Everything you're doing in Central America is always towards an eye on the border and what's happening in the United States," said Cris Ramon, an immigration consultant. "With the current dynamics in migration, what's happening at the US-Mexico border has implications in the Northern Triangle and vice versa."
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Tens of thousands migrants from Central America arrive at the US-Mexico border monthly. In April, of the 178,622 migrants encountered by US Customs and Border Protection, 79,190, or roughly 44%, were from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, according to the agency's data, the very countries where Harris is supposed to be addressing migration to the US.
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The pandemic has taken a dramatic toll on Latin America, where Covid-19 cases and deaths soared and economies once projected to grow have been decimated. The region was also hit with two devastating hurricanes last year.
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The decline in economic growth in 2020, according to the Congressional Research Service, is expected to worsen income inequality and poverty in the region. That, combined with pent-up demands and the perception of the Biden administration being more lenient, has fueled people trying to cross the US-Mexico border.
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Harris' role -- which mimics that of Biden under President Barack Obama -- is intended to target what's driving people to the US.
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But following Biden's announcement, both the President and vice president's staff clarified repeatedly that Harris would be focused solely on diplomatic efforts to stem the current flow of migrants and develop a larger strategic partnership with Central America.
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Harris has stressed that her role is to address the "root causes" of migration beginning in the Northern Triangle countries and Mexico, rather than the "symptoms" of it manifesting at the border, which are being addressed by the Homeland Security secretary. Without a diplomatic push in those countries, "we are just in a perpetual system of only dealing with the symptoms," she said in April.
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Immigration advocates and regional experts who have participated in roundtables with the vice president describe Harris asking detailed questions on a variety of issues, like agricultural science and water irrigation strategies to tackle food insecurity and infrastructure needs.
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Internally, Harris has been intimately involved in the crafting of a regional strategy, communicating regularly with National Security Council officials. Cabinet members, along with other administration officials, are also putting together proposals on the administration's root-causes strategy, which Harris is expected to discuss while in Mexico and Guatemala in June, a senior administration official previously told CNN.
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Josh Mandel, a Republican Senate candidate, burned a mask -- because, um, freedom? - CN... - 0 views
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Josh Mandel, who is running for the Republican Senate nomination in Ohio, wants you to know that he loves freedom. He loves it SO much that his campaign released a 10-second video on Twitter of him lighting a face mask on fire.
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Masking -- the necessity of it, generally speaking -- was turned into a political issue by former President Donald Trump as the country battled the coronavirus pandemic over the past 16 months.
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On the same day in the spring of 2020 that he announced the CDC guidance on mask-wearing, Trump was asked whether he would be wearing a mask. To which he responded: "I don't think I'm going to be doing it. Wearing a face mask as I greet presidents, prime ministers, dictators, kings, queens -- I just don't see it."
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This was (and is) America, after all. The government can't tell you what to do! Every individual gets to make their own decisions!
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He also repeatedly mocked Joe Biden for wearing a mask during the teeth of the pandemic.
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"Did you ever see a man that likes a mask as much as him?" Trump asked a campaign rally crowd in Pennsylvania in September 2020. "And then he makes a speech, and he always has it -- not always, but a lot of times -- he has it hanging down. Because, you know what, it gives him a feeling of security. If I were a psychiatrist -- right? I'd say, this guy's got some big issues. Hanging down."
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In May 2020 on a trip to a Ford plant in Michigan, Trump said that he wore a mask away from reporters and cameras, but took it off because he "didn't want to give the press the pleasure of seeing it."
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This is (and was) a ridiculous line of thinking when it came to a pandemic. The only way to limit infections -- until the development of the Covid-19 vaccine -- was to stop so many people from getting it.
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Not wearing a mask, then, wasn't just about you and your rights. It literally endangered other people.
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Anyway, the point here is that Mandel sees his path to the GOP nomination as painting himself as the Trumpiest candidate in the crowded field. And because Trumpism isn't about a set of policy prescriptions but rather focused on tone (owning the libs, mostly), the way to demonstrate fealty to the former President is through stunts like, say, burning a mask.
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What's most depressing here -- at least to me -- is that Mandel's transparent ploy will probably work. The video, posted on Tuesday night, already has more than 400,000 views. Trumpists will celebrate it -- and Mandel -- as heroes willing to fight against the nanny state.
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But that doesn't matter. Masks are bad because Trump said they were. Which is more than enough justification for Mandel.
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Biden's willingness to break conventional presidential wisdom on full display as he hea... - 0 views
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US politics history Culture policy Pandemic Biden Biden-Administration Rehoboth
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Political wisdom might ordinarily dictate that a president in need of certain senators' votes not publicly scold those lawmakers in public.
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It might also prevent a leader once labeled "sleepy" by his rival from escaping to the beach in the middle of the workweek for his wife's milestone birthday.
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Yet President Joe Biden did both of those things this week, apparently unbothered with conventional politics or rote partisan backlash. Approaching the five-month mark of his presidency, Biden instead appears confident enough in his standing to discard certain unwritten rules of the job, even as he settles into a more traditional presidency than the norm-bending tenure of his predecessor.
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Now, even as he spends days and weeks deliberating over the major decisions of his presidency, grappling over the political costs alongside everything else, Biden has shown ample willingness to take steps other presidents might avoid. In multiple ways, that has been on vivid display this week.
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"I hear all the folks on TV saying, Why doesn't Biden get this done? Well, because Biden only has a majority of effectively four votes in the House and a tie in the Senate -- with two members of the Senate who vote more with my Republican friends," he said, an unspoken but unmistakable nod to the chamber's two most moderate Democrats.
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"I was surprised by it," said David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama. "And I wondered whether it was worded precisely the way he wanted it."
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"They certainly vote more with Republicans than many Democrats vote with Republicans, but he does need them," Axelrod said. "This is something that's lost in the discussion often, which is people say, well, why do they negotiate with Republicans? Why don't they just go it alone? Well, you can't go it alone, unless you have 50 votes, and Manchin and Sinema are not on board on many of these key things that Biden cares about."
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Biden apparently disagrees, decamping Wednesday for two nights to his Rehoboth, Delaware, home for his wife's 70th birthday celebration.
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In a pandemic era, when American workers have logged on to jobs remotely from all manner of makeshift workplaces -- some decidedly more suitable than others -- it could also reflect a new attitude toward in-the-office work.
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His midweek journey to the Delaware shore is timed to coincide with first lady Jill Biden's 70th birthday, which falls on Thursday. After making millions of dollars in a post-vice-presidential book deal, the Bidens purchased the $2.7 million home as a place to convene their large extended family. The house, Jill Biden has said, fulfilled a dream of hers to own a property on the beach.
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"Anyone who knows the first lady knows how much she enjoys her time at home in Rehoboth," her spokesman Michael LaRosa told CNN.
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Biden, however, seems to view birthdays literally rather than as the suggestion of a date. He arrived in Rehoboth on Wednesday still in his suit, carrying a stack of papers, with his aviator sunglasses firmly in place.
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He couldn't hear reporters shouting questions from a nearby sand dune.
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United Airlines Wants to Bring Back Supersonic Air Travel - The New York Times - 0 views
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The era of supersonic commercial flights came to an end when the Concorde completed its last trip between New York and London in 2003, but the allure of ultrafast air
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travel never quite died out.
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Boom, which has raised $270 million from venture capital firms and other investors, said it planned to introduce aircraft in 2025 and start flight tests in 2026. It expects the plane, which it calls the Overture, to carry passengers before the end of the decade.
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The deal is United’s latest attempt to position itself as a risk taker shaking up an industry that is just getting back on its feet after a devastating pandemic. The airline announced a $20 million investment in an electric air taxi start-up, Archer, in February, and it is working on a “steady drumbeat” of more such bets, said Michael Leskinen, who heads corporate development at United.
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What is not clear is whether Boom has solved the problems that forced British Airways and Air France to stop using the Concorde on trans-Atlantic flights — high costs, safety concerns and flagging demand.
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Boom, which is working with Rolls-Royce, the British jet engine maker, said its plane would be more efficient than the Concorde; United estimates it will be 75 percent more efficient.
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Mr. Scholl said the engines on Boom’s planes would rely entirely on sustainable aviation fuel, which can be made from waste, plants and other organic matter. Experts say such fuel could reduce emissions, but its supply is limited, it is expensive and its use does not eliminate greenhouse gas emissions.
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But corporate and international travel is expected to rebound slowly from the pandemic, and some experts say it might not recover fully for years because companies have realized that they can be effective without as many in-person meetings.
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U.S. Lays Out Plans For How It Will Share Surplus COVID-19 Vaccines Abroad : Coronaviru... - 0 views
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The United States will send its first shipments of surplus COVID-19 vaccine doses abroad on Thursday, spelling out for the first time how it will share its wealth of vaccines with parts of the world struggling to get shots in arms.
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The Biden administration has previously said it would share 80 million doses by the end of June. "We know that won't be sufficient,"
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We expect a regular cadence of shipments around the world across the next several weeks. And in the weeks ahead, working with the world's democracies we will coordinate a multilateral effort, including the G-7 to combat and end the pandemic," Zients said.
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The U.S. has contracts for hundreds of millions more vaccine doses than it could possibly use — and this is a major move by the Biden administration to attempt to exert global leadership after months of pressure from global health organizations.
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The administration also removed contract ratings under the Defense Production Act that prioritized U.S. contracts for suppliers to AstraZeneca, Novavax and Sanofi — three vaccines not currently authorized for use in the United States.
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The remaining doses will go to countries that have made their case to the White House, including nations such as India that have seen surges in cases; places such as Gaza, which is grappling to rebuild from recent fighting; and neighboring countries such as Canada and Mexico, the White House said.
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The first priority for doses shared through COVAX will be Latin America and the Caribbean, South and Southeast Asia, and Africa, the White House said.
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This won't be enough to end or reduce the life span of the pandemic. And that's why we're working with allies and partners to expand the production of vaccines and raw materials, including here at home,"
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"We're not seeking to extract concessions. We're not extorting. We're not imposing conditions the way that other countries who are providing doses are doing."
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In accordance with the administration's framework, the White House announced approximate allocations for the first 25 million doses that will ship:
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Both Biden and Vice President Harris leave next week on their first official foreign trips and are expected to discuss the U.S. plans for vaccine distribution. Harris is set to travel to Guatemala and Mexico City starting on Sunday, and Biden leaves Wednesday for the U.K., Brussels and Geneva.
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"It is time to have a global road map to vaccinate the world. That's what we hope will come out of the G-7 summit next week," Reynolds told NPR. "As long as this pandemic is raging anywhere around the world, Americans aren't safe, none of us are safe."
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Tom Hart, acting CEO of the ONE Campaign, said he was disappointed that the Biden administration has not moved faster to ship 60 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which U.S. regulators have not yet authorized for emergency use."Less than 1 percent of COVID-19 vaccine doses globally have been administered to people in low-income countries," Hart said in a statement. "This is a once in a generation crisis, and as we approach the G7 next week, the world is looking to the US for global leadership and more ambition is needed."
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President Biden And First Lady Jill Biden Will Visit The Queen Soon : NPR - 0 views
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Buckingham Palace has announced the Bidens will visit Queen Elizabeth II at Windsor Castle on June 13 after the president takes part in a G-7 summit in Cornwall, England, and ahead of his NATO meetings in Brussels and high-stakes summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva. The White House says Biden will also meet with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson while in England.
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Biden will be the 12th U.S. president Queen Elizabeth has met face-to-face.
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While plenty of other foreign policy controversies will likely be front and center during Biden's first overseas trip as president, the meeting with the queen will bring one new twist that has not hung over previous ones between the monarch and presidents: It will be the first time since members of her family – Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex – moved to the United States.
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France's Macron Admits Some Guilt For Rwanda's Genocide : NPR - 0 views
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In a key speech on his visit to Rwanda, French President Emmanuel Macron said he recognizes that France bears a heavy responsibility for the 1994 genocide in the central African country.
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Macron solemnly detailed how France had failed the 800,000 victims of the genocide but he stopped short of an apology.France "was not an accomplice" in the genocide but ended up siding with Rwanda's "genocidal regime" and bore an "overwhelming responsibility" in the slide toward the massacres,
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When the genocide started, "the international community took close to three months, three interminable months, before reacting and we, all of us, abandoned hundreds of thousands of victims."
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France's failures contributed to "27 years of bitter distance" between the two countries, he said.
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Although Macron didn't apologize, he won praise from Rwandan President Paul Kagame for his "powerful speech."
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Macron said they were opening "a new page" and rebuilding ties that are "strong and irreversible."
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Macron also said that he'd come with 100,000 coronavirus vaccines for Rwanda.
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Rwandans who had hoped for an apology said they were disappointed by Macron's speech."We don't want to hear him talk about responsibility, about France's role in the genocide," genocide survivor Dan Karenzi told The Associated Press. "We, the survivors, wanted to hear Macron apologizing to us officially. I am really disappointed."
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Macron's trip builds on a series of French efforts since his election in 2017 to repair ties between the two countries.
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NASA Picks Twin Missions To Visit Venus, Earth's 'Evil Twin' : NPR - 0 views
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NASA has decided to send two new missions to Venus, our closest planetary neighbor, making it the first time the agency will go to this scorching hot world in more than three decades.The news has thrilled planetary scientists who have long argued that Venus deserves more attention because it could be a cautionary tale of a pleasant, Earth-like world that somehow went horribly awry.
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Venus has been called Earth's "evil twin" because it is about the same size as Earth and probably was created out of similar stuff; it might have even had at one time oceans of liquid water.
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But Venus appears to have suffered a runaway greenhouse effect. Temperatures at its surface now exceed 800 degrees Fahrenheit, and its atmosphere is toxic to humans.NASA's new administrator, Bill Nelson, announced that after considering four different proposals for its Discovery Program, including proposed trips to moons of Jupiter and Neptune, the agency went all in on Venus.
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These Venus missions could be ready to launch in 2026, but the exact timing is still to be determined. "The best case, if possible, would be if they could launch on a single rocket," Gilmore said.
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The VERITAS mission will have an orbiting probe with instruments that will let scientists create detailed 3D reconstructions of the planet's landscape, and will reveal whether Venus has active plate tectonics and volcanoes.
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The DAVINCI+ descent probe would sniff in atmospheric gases to measure their composition precisely, and it would be equipped with cameras that could take photos of the surface on the way down.
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Much remains mysterious about Venus, even though it was the first planet that NASA explored, in the groundbreaking Mariner 2 mission that flew by Venus in 1962. It was the first time a spacecraft had ever successfully reached another world at a time when the planets were only known by peering at them through telescopes.
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While rovers on Mars have sent back lots of vivid panoramas showing the stark beauty of the red planet, images of the surface of Venus are hard to come by. The heat and intense pressure simply obliterate spacecraft.
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The last NASA spacecraft sent on a Venus mission was Magellan, which launched in 1989 to map its surface. Its work showed that much of the planet was covered with volcanic flows. The spacecraft burned up in the harsh Venusian atmosphere about 10 hours after being commanded to plunge toward the surface.
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Normandy Commemorates D-Day With Small Crowds : NPR - 0 views
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When the sun rises over Omaha Beach, revealing vast stretches of wet sand extending toward distant cliffs, one starts to grasp the immensity of the task faced by Allied soldiers on June 6, 1944, landing on the Nazi-occupied Normandy shore.
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Several ceremonies were being held Sunday to commemorate the 77th anniversary of the decisive assault that led to the liberation of France and western Europe from Nazi control, and honor those who fell.
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On D-Day, more than 150,000 Allied troops landed on the beaches code-named Omaha, Utah, Juno, Sword and Gold, carried by 7,000 boats. This year on June 6, the beaches stood vast and nearly empty as the sun emerged, exactly 77 years since the dawn invasion.
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For the second year in a row, anniversary commemorations are marked by virus travel restrictions that prevented veterans or families of fallen soldiers from the U.S., Britain, Canada and other Allied countries from making the trip to France. Only a few officials were allowed exceptions.
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On June 6, 1944, "In the heart of the mist that enveloped the Normandy Coast ... was a lightning bolt of freedom," French Defense Minister Florence Parly told the ceremony. "France does not forget. France is forever grateful."
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Most public events have been canceled, and the official ceremonies are limited to a small number of selected guests and dignitaries.Denis van den Brink, a WWII expert working for the town of Carentan, site of a strategic battle near Utah Beach, acknowledged the "big loss, the big absence is all the veterans who couldn't travel."
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Over the anniversary weekend, many local residents have come out to visit the monuments marking the key moments of the fight and show their gratitude to the soldiers. French World War II history enthusiasts, and a few travelers from neighboring European countries, could also be seen in jeeps and military vehicles on the small roads of Normandy.
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Some reenactors came to Omaha Beach in the early hours of the day to pay tribute to those who fell that day, bringing flowers and American flags.
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On D-Day, 4,414 Allied troops lost their lives, 2,501 of them Americans. More than 5,000 were wounded. On the German side, several thousand were killed or wounded.
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The cemetery contains 9,380 graves, most of them for servicemen who lost their lives in the D-Day landings and ensuing operations. Another 1,557 names are inscribed on the Walls of the Missing.
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Normandy has more than 20 military cemeteries holding mostly Americans, Germans, French, British, Canadians and Polish troops who took part in the historic battle.
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Opinion | Biden's Taiwan Policy Is Truly, Deeply Reckless - The New York Times - 0 views
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Media coverage of President Biden’s foreign policy tends to focus on his efforts to withdraw from Afghanistan, get tough on Russia and negotiate with Iran. But none of those may prove as consequential as Mr. Biden’s quiet, incremental, moves to establish official relations with Taiwan. Because only his policy toward Taiwan is meaningfully increasing the risk of world war.
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He’s doing so by undoing a diplomatic fiction that for more than 40 years has served the United States, Taiwan and the world exceptionally well.
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By keeping U.S. relations with Taiwan unofficial, the “one China” fiction helped Beijing imagine that peaceful reunification remained possible. Which gave it an excuse not to invade.
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Like the Trump administration before it, the Biden team is now progressively chipping away at this bargain. Last summer, Democrats removed the phrase “one China” from their platform. In January, Mr. Biden became the first American president since 1978 to host Taiwan’s envoy at his inauguration. In April, his administration announced it was easing decades-old limitations on official U.S. contacts with the Taiwanese government.
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These policies are increasing the odds of a catastrophic war. The more the United States and Taiwan formally close the door on reunification, the more likely Beijing is to seek reunification by force.
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As the Harvard political scientist Graham Allison has observed, “No Chinese national security official I have ever met, and no U.S. official who has examined the situation, doubts that China would choose war over losing territory it considers vital to its national interest.”
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whether or not the United States officially pledges to come to Taiwan’s defense, it is deeply reckless to believe that it can both provoke Beijing by undoing the “one China” compact and deter it with the threat of military force.
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It’s reckless because deterrence requires power and will, and when it comes to Taiwan, the United States is deficient in both. According to Fareed Zakaria, “The Pentagon has reportedly enacted 18 war games against China over Taiwan, and China has prevailed in every one.”
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One reason is geography. Taiwan is roughly 100 miles from mainland China but 5,000 miles from Honolulu. Within 500 miles of the island, mainland China boasts 39 air bases. The United States possesses two
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In the opening phase of a war over Taiwan, “the command and control networks that manage the critical flow of information to U.S. forces in combat would be broken apart and shattered by electronic attacks,”
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American bases in Japan and Guam would be “inundated with waves of precise ballistic and cruise missiles” while U.S. aircraft carriers would be highly vulnerable to China’s “carrier-killers.”
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U.S. casualties “could be staggering.”
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There’s another reason deterrence alone won’t work: China cares more. In 2017, mainland Chinese said that Taiwan topped their list of “concerns about the U.S.-China relationship.” Among Americans, by contrast, Taiwan didn’t make the top seven.
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while foreign policy elites in Washington overwhelmingly endorse going to war for Taiwan, ordinary Americans are deeply skeptical
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while 85 percent of Republican leaders support sending U.S. troops to defend Taiwan from Chinese attack, only 43 percent of Republicans among the public agree
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I suspect that figure would be even lower if respondents knew that some of America’s most experienced China experts — including former ambassador to Beijing J. Stapleton Roy and Chas Freeman, who served as Richard Nixon’s interpreter on his 1972 trip to China — believe such a conflict would risk nuclear war.
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Recognizing the limits of America’s ability to deter Beijing does not mean abandoning Taiwan
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smaller countries that sit in the shadow of superpowers often accept limitations on their external behavior. The United States would never allow Mexico to join a military alliance with Beijing.
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What’s crucial is that the Taiwanese people preserve their individual freedom and the planet does not endure a third world war. The best way for the United States to pursue those goals is by maintaining America’s military support for Taiwan while also maintaining the “one China” framework that for more than four decades has helped keep the peace in one of the most dangerous places on earth.
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When Your Covid-19 Test Comes Back Positive While Traveling - The New York Times - 0 views
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The couple used masks, face shields and disinfectant, but not even a week into the trip, Mr. Arellano, 56, who had asthma, and then Mrs. Arellano, 54, began to get headaches and run a fever.
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Only 10 percent of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated, but more people are traveling than any time in the past year
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The growing number inoculated Americans face far less risk when they travel, but it is not entirely gone, especially with the new virus variations.
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What happens to people who fall sick overseas can vary widely, in part based upon their pretrip planning. Some countries have mandatory quarantine facilities for those who test positive and people who are sent there are at the mercy of local standards. Even at the nicest hotels, policies for handling those with the virus can vary widely. Not all travel insurance covers illnesses related to the coronavirus, and most doesn’t include evacuation coverage. Some policies require travelers to be hospitalized before their coverage begins while others only require minor symptoms. And traveler expectations play a role, too
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When a person gets ill far from home, even if they speak the language, knowing what to do in the midst of a developing crisis is daunting.
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As the situation worsened, the couple called the U.S. Consular Agency in Oaxaca, which said no area hospital beds were available. They suggested an oxygen tank. With Mr. Arellano’s condition deteriorating, the couple spent $25,000 for a Mexican air ambulance to take him to the Naval Medical Center in La Jolla, Calif.
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Vaccine Slots Go Unused in Mississippi and Other States - The New York Times - 0 views
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There are more shots available. The challenge is getting people to take them.
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On Thursday, there were more than 73,000 slots to be had on the state’s scheduling website, up from 68,000 on Tuesday.
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But public health experts say the pileup of unclaimed appointments in Mississippi exposes something more worrisome: the large number of people who are reluctant to get inoculated.“It’s time to do the heavy lifting needed to overcome the hesitancy we’re encountering,” said Dr. Obie McNair, an internal medicine practitioner in Jackson, the state capital, whose office has a plentiful supply of vaccines but not enough takers.
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The hesitancy has national implications. Experts say between 70 percent to 90 percent of all Americans must be vaccinated for the country to reach herd immunity, the point at which the virus can no longer spread through the population.
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A closer look at Mississippi’s demographics explains why hesitancy may be especially pronounced.The state reliably votes Republican, a group that remains highly skeptical of the coronavirus vaccine. Nearly half of all Republican men and 40 percent of Republicans over all have said they do not plan to get vaccinated, according to several recent surveys. Those figures have barely budged in the months since vaccines first became available. By contrast, just 4 percent of Democrats have said they will not get the vaccine.
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A number of other heavily Republican states are also finding themselves with surfeits of doses. On Thursday, officials in Oklahoma, which has delivered at least one dose to 34 percent of its residents, announced they would open up eligibility to out-of-state residents, and in recent weeks, Republican governors in Ohio and Georgia voiced concern about the lackluster vaccine demand among their residents.
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“I had about 18 hours of turbulence,” Governor Reeves said, describing the mild, flulike symptoms he had felt after his second injection. “But I was able to continue and move on and work, and I feel much better waking up every day knowing that I have been vaccinated.”
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Demand among African-Americans was still robust, she said, noting long lines that formed this week outside a tent in Indianola, a small city in the Delta, where the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine was being offered. (The tents offering the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, which require two doses, were nearly empty.)
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“By relaxing Covid restrictions, elected leaders in states like Florida, Mississippi, Texas and Georgia are pushing narratives about coronavirus that are working against a narrative that promotes the urgency of vaccinations,” he said. “And unfortunately, our vaccine campaigns are being undone late at night by Facebook and Twitter and Instagram.”
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Pence and Trump finally speak after post-riot estrangement - CNNPolitics - 0 views
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Vice President Mike Pence received a memento from his aides the other day: the engraved chair set aside for him in the White House Cabinet Room, hauled over-the-shoulder from the West Wing and delivered to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building for one of his final staff meetings.
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Instead of applause, many of Trump's aides -- even those who have stuck with him through myriad scandals and embarrassments -- were voicing shame and disappointment. His circle has shrunk. Many have resigned and others are still considering it.
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On Monday, after an extended period of silence, Trump and Pence spoke for the first time after a deadly riot of Trump supporters broke out at the US Capitol with Pence inside, according to two administration officials.
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"They reiterated that those who broke the law and stormed the Capitol last week do not represent the America First movement backed by 75 million Americans, and pledged to continue the work on behalf of the country for the remainder of their term," the senior official said.
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Trump had spent the weekend largely in isolation, as aides either distanced themselves from him or limited their time in his presence. Trump canceled a planned trip to Camp David, where his closest aides were hoping he would get into a good mindset ahead of his final stretch in office.
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The mob event, and Trump's fury at Pence in the lead-up to it, left their relationship in tatters. Before their Oval Office meeting Monday, the pair had not spoken since before Trump's rally on the Ellipse last week. Their last conversation was punctuated by a vulgarity the President uttered after Pence informed him, for a final time, that he could not unilaterally reject the results of the election, something he had already told Trump in previous meetings that often dragged on for hours.
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Pence finally got "a glimpse of POTUS' vindictiveness," one source familiar with the situation said, using the acronym for President of the United States.
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And while Pence now appears unlikely to entertain invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office, he has not weighed in on it publicly, allowing the idea to persist, which people close to him described as intentional.
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Pence, who is often internally mocked for how deferential he is toward Trump, has taken a quiet but defiant stance in their final days in office.
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The attempted insurrection that Trump incited at the US Capitol last week prompted the permanent suspension of his Twitter account, a looming second impeachment and a wave of administration resignations
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It was the first time in their more than four years as political partners that Trump's vengeance had been trained on a man known mostly for his fealty. Even as others once close to Trump -- from his personal attorney Michael Cohen to his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, to any manner of former aides -- met similar fates, Pence was spared.
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The final conversation left Trump irate, and his anger emerged during the rally itself, when he told the crowd he hoped "Mike has the courage to do what he has to do" and ignores "the stupid people that he's listening to."
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Pence also recently learned that pro-Trump attorney Sidney Powell was involved in the lawsuit filed by Trump's Republican allies against him. Trump was not only aware, but had encouraged the effort, people close to the situation said.
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Even when the President returned to the White House while his crowd set off for the Capitol, Trump's anger at Pence did not abate. And as the crowd broke down doors, mobbed the building, and in some cases appeared to be hunting Pence himself, Trump remained focused on the perceived disloyalty.
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After Wednesday's events, Pence allies were aghast the President did not call to ensure the vice president's safety, or the safety of his wife and daughter, who had accompanied him as he performed the ceremonial role of overseeing the Electoral College tally.
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"Was he concerned at all that an angry mob that he commanded to march on the Capitol might injure the vice president or his family?" a person familiar with the matter asked.
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Pence's actions earned him praise within the administration, including from national security adviser Robert O'Brien, who tweeted on Wednesday that Pence "is a genuinely fine and decent man. He exhibited courage today."
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Democrats, however, remain frustrated at Pence's unwillingness to move on the 25th Amendment, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
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Other Democrats are skeptical that after four years of standing by Trump -- including through his attempts to cast doubt on the election results using false claims of voter fraud -- Pence can recover his moral standing now.
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A day later, an attempt by House Democrats to bring up a resolution urging Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from power was blocked by Republicans. If that resolution ends up failing, Democrats plan to to vote Wednesday to impeach Trump for his role in the Capitol riot.
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Advisers have said Pence hopes to provide a bridge to the next administration and do as much as possible to assist Biden's team in preparing for dealing with the coronavirus pandemic. Pence and Biden consulted regularly in the early days of the Trump administration, including on foreign policy matters.
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On Monday, Pence's schedule listed a coronavirus task force meeting -- one of the final times the group meets before the end of the administration. Pence did not bring up the siege at the Capitol during the discussion, a person close to the task force said.
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Three U.S. House Republicans declare support for impeaching Trump | Reuters - 0 views
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President Donald Trump’s iron grip on his party showed further signs of weakening on Tuesday as at least three Republicans, including a member of the House leadership, said they would vote to impeach him after his supporters stormed the Capitol.
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Liz Cheney, the No. 3 Republican in the House of Representatives, said: “There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution,”
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no trial could begin until the chamber returns from its recess on Jan. 19.
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McConnell believes the impeachment effort will make it easier to purge Trump from the party, the Times said.
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“What I said was totally appropriate,” Trump told reporters as he left for a trip to the U.S.-Mexico border wall near Alamo, Texas, his first public foray since the assault on the Capitol. “I want no violence.”
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Tommy Tuberville, meet the Constitution. Constitution, Senator Tuberville. - CNNPolitics - 0 views
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Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville has an idea about how to make next week's inauguration as safe as possible: Just move it to a few weeks later!
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"We probably could have had a swearing-in and inauguration later after we got this virus behind us a little bit," Tuberville suggested in an interview
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Er, so, this is awkward, senator, but the whole Inauguration Day thing isn't, um, movable?
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See, there's this document called the Constitution -- it's kind of a big deal -- which makes very, very clear that the transfer of presidential power has to happen on January 20 at noon. It's all right there in section I of the 20th Amendment; "The terms of the President and the Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January." It was ratified by the states in 1933. Which was 88 years ago.
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This isn't the first time that Tuberville, who beat Democratic Sen. Doug Jones in November, has shown a, um, lack of familiarity with the Constitution.
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"Our government wasn't set up for one group to have all three branches of government — wasn't set up that way," Tuberville said, adding: "You know, the House, the Senate, and the executive."
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First, the three branches of government are the executive, the legislative and the judicial. Second, the judicial branch isn't a partisan body where Republicans and Democrats fight for control.
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Now, there's no requirement that you have to know the ins and outs (or even the basics) of the Constitution in order to hold an office. But one might also reasonably conclude that if you did happen to be elected to the United States Senate, you would want to buff up any weak(er) spots in your knowledge about the country's fundamental governing document.
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Not so apparently with Tuberville, who came to the Senate having never run for any elected office before -- his formative professional experience was as the head coach of the Auburn football team -- and whose first two votes in Congress were to object to the Electoral College counts in Pennsylvania and Arizona.
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Tuberville regularly touted his lack of political experience on the campaign trail as evidence he wasn't beholden to the permanent political class in Washington. "I'm tired of seeing the kickbacks and the swamp," he told an audience in 2019. "This is not an ego trip. I have money in the bank. I want this job."