Experts concerned over spread of new Covid variant in US as death toll nears 400,000
Coronavirus deaths are rising in nearly two-thirds of American states as a winter surge pushes the overall death toll toward 400,000 amid warnings that a new, highly contagious variant is taking hold.
David Crary writes for Associated Press that as Americans observed Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo pleaded with federal authorities to curtail travel from countries where new variants are spreading.
Referring to new versions detected in Britain, South Africa and Brazil, Cuomo said: “Stop those people from coming here.... Why are you allowing people to fly into this country and then it’s too late?”
The new variant seen in Britain is already spreading in the US, and the Centers for Disease Control and Protection has warned that it will probably become the dominant version in the country by March. The CDC said the variant is about 50% more contagious than the virus that is causing the bulk of cases in the US. While the variant does not cause more severe illness, it can cause more hospitalizations and deaths simply because it spreads more easily.
As things stand, many US states are already under tremendous strain. The seven-day rolling average of daily deaths is rising in 30 states and the District of Columbia, and this morning the US death toll reached 398,686 according to data collected by Johns Hopkins university. It is by far the highest recorded death toll of any country in the world. The US has now seen over 24 million cases.
Ellie Murray, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Boston University School of Public Health, said cases have proliferated in part because of gatherings for Christmas and New Year and compounded previous surges from Thanksgiving and the return of students to schools and universities in the fall.
One of the states hardest hit during the recent surge is Arizona, where the rolling average has risen over the past two weeks from about 90 deaths per day to about 160 per day on 17 January.
“It’s kind of hard to imagine it getting a lot faster than it is right now, because it is transmitting really fast right now,” Dr. Joshua LaBaer, director of the Biodesign Institute research center at Arizona State University told Associated Press. “But there is some evidence that Thanksgiving didn’t help things.”
In other areas of the country, officials are working to ensure that people take the vaccine once they’re offered it amid concerns that many people are hesitant. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, in a livestreamed event on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, received a shot, and urged other Marylanders to do likewise.
“We’re all looking forward to the day we can take off and throw away our masks,” Hogan said. “The only way we are going to return to a sense of normalcy is by these Covid-19 vaccines.”
Ivanka Trump has wound up her time in the White House in the most fitting way possible: with a scandal about a $3,000-a-month toilet. Members of the Secret Service, it was recently reported, were banned from using any of the bathrooms in Jared Kushner and Ivanka’s Washington DC mansion and, instead, had to rent an apartment to relieve themselves in (although Jared and Ivanka have denied this). Talk about flushing taxpayers’ money down the drain.
One imagines Ivanka did not plan to spend her final days in DC dealing with the fallout from a violent insurrection and battling embarrassing leaks about her loos. When she appointed herself special adviser to the president, Ivanka was a handbag and shoe saleswoman bursting with ambition. She was going to empower women everywhere! Little girls around the world would read about Saint Ivanka for decades to come. She would be a role mogul: her branded bags would fly off the shelves.
But Ivanka is a Trump: narcissism and self-delusion are in her DNA. As DC braces for pre-inauguration chaos Ivanka has been blithely tweeting her “achievements” and retweeting praise in an attempt to convince us she has left an important legacy.
According to her Twitter feed, one thing Americans should all be thanking Ivanka for is paid family leave, which has been one of her marquee issues. And, to be fair, if Ivanka is to be praised for anything, it’s for pushing Donald Trump to pass a bill giving federal employees 12 weeks of paid parental time off. Would that have happened without Ivanka? I don’t know. But she facilitated it. Does it make up for the many odious things Ivanka also facilitated? No.
Another of Ivanka’s big projects was the Women’s Global Development and Prosperity (W-GDP) initiative, which aims to reach 50 million women in the developing world by 2025 and … well, I’m not sure exactly what’s supposed to happen then. The initiative is so buzzword-laden that it’s somewhat hard to understand. You get the impression Ivanka launched it via vague instructions to “empower women in powerful ways via strategic pillars of empowerment”.
The US first lady said farewell to her role yesterday as she thanked Americans for the ‘greatest honour of my life’ in a recorded video she posted on Twitter.
Melania Trump said: “The past four years have been unforgettable, as Donald and I conclude our time in the White House. I think of all of the people I have taken home in my heart and their incredible stories of love, patriotism and determination.”
Melania Trump says 'past four years have been unforgettable' in recorded farewell speech – video
Melania Trump was criticised for a statement she released in the wake of the Capitol riots which complained about treatment of her before condemning violence. It also mentioned the name of the police officer killed by the pro-Trump mob in the same sentence as the protestors who had been killed while trying to storm the seat of the US government.
Most Americans say Donald Trump will go down as either below average or one of the worst presidents in US history, according to an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist survey.
Almost half think Trump will be remembered as one of the worst presidents in history. Only about a quarter think he was an above-average president or one of the best. By comparison, when President Barack Obama left office, more Americans thought he would be remembered as above average or one of the best presidents, as opposed to a subpar one.
Americans also think Trump has changed the country for the worse, by a 46%-to-38% margin. Usual partisan divides appear here, however, as 8 in 10 Democrats said he changed it for the worse, while 8 in 10 Republicans said he changed it for the better.
The poll also found Americans are the most pessimistic they have been in decades about the direction of the country. But they have more positive views of President-elect Joe Biden, how he’s handled the transition and whether he will do more to unite than divide the country.
Biden to 'hit ground running' and rejoin Paris climate accords on first day in office
Oliver Milman
Joe Biden is set for a flurry of action to combat the climate crisis on his first day as US president by immediately rejoining the Paris climate agreement and blocking the Keystone XL pipeline, although experts have warned lengthier, and harder, environmental battles lie ahead in his presidency.
In a series of plans drawn up by Biden’s incoming administration for his first day in office, the new president will take the resonant step of bringing the US back into the Paris climate accords, an international agreement to curb dangerous global heating that Donald Trump exited.
The Democrat, who will be sworn in on Wednesday, is also set to revoke a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, a controversial cross-border project that would bring 830,000 barrels of crude oil each day from Alberta, Canada, to a pipeline that runs to oil refineries on the US’ Gulf of Mexico coast. The president-elect is also expected to reverse Trump’s undoing of rules that limited the emission of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from oil and gas drilling operations.
“Day one, Biden will rejoin Paris, regulate methane emissions and continue taking many other aggressive executive climate actions in the opening days and weeks of his presidency,” said Paul Bledsoe, who was a climate advisor to Bill Clinton’s White House, now with the Progressive Policy Institute.
Bledsoe said Biden’s nominees to tackle the climate crisis, spearheaded by the former secretary of state John Kerry, who will act as a climate “envoy” to the world, is “by far the most experienced, high-level climate team US history. They intend to hit the ground running.”
The aggressive opening salvo to help address the climate crisis, which Biden has called “the existential threat of our time”, is set to include various executive orders to resurrect a host of pollution rules either knocked down or weakened by the Trump administration.
The US will convene an international climate summit in Biden’s first few months in the White House and is set to join a global effort to phase out the use of hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, which are used in refrigeration and air conditioning and contribute to the heating of the planet.
Trump expected to mark final full day in office by issuing around 100 pardons
Donald Trump is widely expected to mark his final full day in office as US president by issuing around 100 pardons. The recipients of the presidential pardon are expected to include high profile names like that of rapper Lil Wayne.
However, sources familiar with the matter who spoke to Reuters have suggested that neither the president himself, nor Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani or ex-aide Steve Bannon will be on the list. Neither will members of Trump’s family get pre-emptive pardons.
While the constitutional legality of a presidential self-pardon remains untested, aides have cautioned Trump that pardoning himself and members of his family may imply guilt that becomes a liability in future state or civil lawsuits against the Trump family and businesses.
It has also been suggested that a self-pardon could antagonise some Republican Senators who will be voting during the second Trump impeachment trial, expected later this month.
Lil Wayne pleaded guilty last month to possessing a loaded, gold-plated handgun when his chartered jet landed in Miami in December 2019. He faces a sentence of up to 10 years in prison at a 28 January hearing in Miami.
The rap star appeared to support Trump during last year’s presidential campaign when he tweeted a photo of himself with the president and said he backed Trump’s criminal justice reform program and economic plan for African Americans.
Lil Wayne performs during the 2015 iHeartRadio Music Festival at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. Photograph: Steve Marcus/Reuters
The New York Times reports that the list of pardons and commutations is expected to include former New York Assembly speaker Sheldon Silver, 76, who was convicted of corruption charges in 2015. After a lengthy legal process, Silver was sentenced in July 2020 to 6-and-a-half years in prison and a $1 million fine. He is currently held in the federal prison at Otisville, New York.
Also said to be under consideration for a pardon is Sholam Weiss. Weiss was sentenced to 835 years in prison in 2000 for crimes including racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering. It is frequently described as the longest ever sentence imposed in the US for a “white collar” crime.
Steve Bannon, 66, who has pleaded not guilty to charges that he defrauded donors to “We Build the Wall,” an online fundraising campaign that raised $25 million, is not expected to be on the list. Neither is Rudy Giuliani.
It is reported that Giuliani has fallen out with the president over unpaid legal fees, and the lawyer has already recused himself from defending Donald Trump in his upcoming Senate impeachment trial, since Giuliani was also involved in the rally on 6 January that preceded a pro-Trump mob ransacking the US Capitol.
Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder, another name frequently mentioned in connection to a possible Trump pardon, was also not expected to be on the list.
The list of pardons has been prepared over the weekend in a series of meetings involving White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner.
Amid the heightened security, though, there will still be plenty of traditional show. Here are some of the pictures to come out of yesterday’s rehearsal for Joe Biden’s inauguration.
US military members participate in a rehearsal for the inauguration of Joe Biden. Photograph: Michael Reynolds/EPA
Preparations are made prior to a dress rehearsal for the 59th inaugural ceremony for president-elect Joe Biden and vice President-elect Kamala Harris. Photograph: Patrick Semansky/AFP/Getty Images
Members of the military stand around prior to a dress rehearsal for the inauguration. Photograph: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images
US military members participate in a rehearsal for the inauguration. Photograph: Michael Reynolds/EPA
Biden inauguration tomorrow will see tightest Washington security measures in recent memory
There’s one very obvious and immediate legacy of Trump’s presidency and the 6 January storming of the US Capitol that it inspired. Joe Biden’s inauguration tomorrow will take place amid the tightest security measures in Washington in recent memory.
25,000 National Guard soldiers from across the east coast are stationed in the city. The streets around the Capitol remain eerily empty as all but the most determined protesters have stayed away.
In a cold, sombre, damp Washington four years ago this Wednesday, Donald Trump took the oath of office as the 45th president of the United States and delivered an inaugural address now remembered for two words: American carnage.
He delivered, but not as he promised. Trump pledged to end the carnage of inner-city poverty, rusting factories, broken schools and the scourge of criminal gangs and drugs. Instead his presidency visited upon the nation the carnage of about 400,000 coronavirus deaths, the worst year for jobs since the second world war and the biggest stress test for American democracy since the civil war.
“It’s not just physical carnage,” said Moe Vela, a former White House official. “There’s also mental carnage and there’s spiritual carnage and there’s emotional carnage. He has left a very wide swath of American carnage and that is the last way I would want to be remembered by history, but that is how he will be remembered.”
Trump campaigned for president as a change agent but millions came to regard him as an agent of chaos. His line-crossing, envelope-pushing, wrecking-ball reign at the White House crashed in a fireball of lies about his election defeat and deadly insurrection at the US Capitol. Future generations of schoolchildren will read about him in textbooks as a twice-impeached one-term president.
It all began in earnest in June 2015 when the property tycoon trundled down an escalator at Trump Tower in New York and announced a presidential run based on “America first” nationalism and building a border wall. Exploiting white grievance, economic dislocation and celebrity culture, he clinched the Republican nomination and promised: “I alone can fix it.” He lost the national popular vote to Hillary Clinton but lucked his way to victory in the electoral college.
The first person elected to the White House with no previous political or military experience, he represented a shock to the system and rebuke to the establishment.
Kamala Harris formally resigned from the US Senate. In an op-ed for the San Francisco Chronicle, she wrote: “This is not goodbye. As I resign from the Senate, I am preparing to take an oath that would have me preside over it.”
Thousands of military personnel guarding Joe Biden’s inauguration tomorrow are being vetted by the FBI amid fears of an insider attack.
Federal authorities have arrested a woman whose ex-partner says she took a laptop from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office during the riot at the US Capitol.
Donald Trump on Monday issued an executive order directing the building of a National Garden of American Heroes, “to reflect the awesome splendour of our country’s timeless exceptionalism”
