Georgia Republicans advance sweeping new restrictions on voting – as it happened

We’re wrapping up our live US politics coverage for the day, but you can continue to cover breaking news globally with my colleague Helen on our coronavirus live blog.

A summary of today’s key news, including, one day after the anniversary of Selma’s Bloody Sunday, new efforts to restrict voting being pushed by Republicans across the country.

• Georgia Democrats sharply criticized the state’s Republicans for advancing restrictions on voting rights, which activists have said will disproportionately impact Black voters. The state senate narrowly approved a bill today that would roll back a policy, originally enacted by Republicans, that made absentee voting easier. “This is weaponization of Trump’s lies,” the Democratic state senator Elena Parent said of the bill.
• “Every single metric of voter access that has been a good in Georgia is now under attack,” the voting rights activist Stacey Abrams said in response to the passage of the Georgia senate bill.
• Iowa’s Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, also signed significant new restrictions on voting into law today.
• Joe Biden dodged a question from a White House reporter about whether new federal voting rights protections could be passed with the Senate filibuster in place. The Democratic congressman Jim Clyburn said last week that there’s “no way under the sun” the filibuster was going to be used to block voting rights protections in 2021, and that moderate Democrats “better figure out a way to get around the filibuster when it comes to voting and civil rights”.
• Biden will deliver a primetime address on Thursday to mark one year since the start of coronavirus lockdowns, the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, announced. The speech will be Biden’s first primetime address since becoming president.
• Biden said he would sign the $1.9tn coronavirus relief bill “as soon as I can get it”. The relief bill passed the Senate on Saturday, and the House is now expected to take up the legislation on Wednesday.
• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released its long-awaited guidance for fully vaccinated Americans. According to the CDC guidance, those who have been fully vaccinated can gather indoors with unvaccinated people from a single household without wearing masks, as long as everyone in the household is healthy and low risk.

Biden dodges question about voting rights legislation and the filibuster

As Republicans in Georgia and Iowa advanced measures today to make it harder to vote, a White House reporter asked Joe Biden if Congress can pass voting rights legislation with the Senate filibuster in place.

Biden said he would talk to the reporter Geoff Bennett “later” about that. Bennett tweeted that he was looking forward to continuing that conversation.

Jim Clyburn, an influential Democratic congressman and civil rights movement veteran, warned in an interview with the Guardian last week that Democrats must find a way to pass major voting rights legislation or they will lose control of Congress.

“There’s no way under the sun that in 2021 that we are going to allow the filibuster to be used to deny voting rights. That just ain’t gonna happen. That would be catastrophic,” Clyburn said. “If Manchin and Sinema enjoy being in the majority, they had better figure out a way to get around the filibuster when it comes to voting and civil rights.”

Biden White House moves Clinton, Bush portraits back into prominent positions

An update on symbolic White House decor choices:

Wyoming will end mask mandate on 16 March and allow ‘normal’ operations of bars and gyms

Following Texas’ widely condemned move last week, the state of Wyoming will also end its mask mandate and allow bars, restaurants, theaters and gyms to reopen as normal on 16 March, Bloomberg reports.

8 Mar 202118.45 EST

Iowa Republicans approve new restrictions on voting

Sam Levine

Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, a Republican, approved significant new restrictions on voting on Monday, the latest move in a series of measures across the country to curtail access to the ballot.

The Iowa measure shortens the early voting period in the state from 29 days to 20 and requires polls to close at 8pm instead of 9, according to the Des Moines Register. It also prohibits local election officials from sending out unsolicited absentee ballot request forms and sets new limits on how they can set up early voting sites and drop boxes. Voters also can no longer designate anyone else to return their ballot for them - only an immediate family member, household member, or caregiver may do so, the Register reported.

The bill also makes it a felony offense for local election officials to fail to follow election laws and directives from the secretary of state.

Several provisions of the bill appear to be a reaction to the 2020 race, when the local auditor in Linn county, home of Cedar Rapids, sent out pre-filled absentee ballot requests to voters and was sued by Republicans. Iowa’s secretary of state in August also issued guidance limiting the use of ballot drop boxes.

Iowa set record turnout in 2020, and the vast majority of people voted by mail. Of the nearly 1.7 million people who voted in the state, more than 1 million did so using a mail-in ballot. Donald Trump handily won the state over Joe Biden by more than 138,000 votes.

Biden administration offers relief to Venezuelan immigrants in the US

The Biden administration said Monday it is offering temporary legal residency to several hundred thousand Venezuelans who fled their country’s economic collapse and will review US sanctions intended to isolate the South American nation, the Associated Press reports.

Both measures mark a shift from US policy toward Venezuela under President Donald Trump.

In the last few years, the Venezuelan economy has been in freefall, with widespread shortages of food and medicine and frequent power outages. An estimated 5 million people have fled, mostly to neighboring countries such as Colombia, but many have settled in south Florida.

President Joe Biden’s administration announced it would grant temporary protected status to Venezuelans already in the United States, allowing an estimated 320,000 people to apply to legally live and work in the country for 18 months. The granting of temporary protected status for Venezuelans has bipartisan support.

Man who reportedly served as Roger Stone’s bodyguard arrested in Capitol riot case

Two men wanted in the deadly riot at the US Capitol were arrested over the weekend, including one who reportedly served as a bodyguard to Donald Trump’s longtime political confidant Roger Stone, federal authorities said Monday, according to the Associated Press.

Roberto Minuta breached the Capitol grounds and “aggressively berated and taunted US Capitol police officers” during the 6 January insurrection, the FBI said in court papers.

Minuta, 36, of Hackettstown, New Jersey, had been “equipped with military-style attire and gear, including apparel emblazoned with a crest related to the Oath Keepers,” the FBI said, referring to the far-right antigovernment militia.

The New York Times identified Minuta as one of six people who provided security to Stone in the hours before the assault on the Capitol. Stone, who was pardoned after his sentence for several felony charges was initially commuted by Trump, was in Washington the day of the assault but has denied any involvement.

Minuta owns a tattoo shop in Newburgh, New York. It was not immediately known whether he had a defense attorney.

More details on Minuta’s affiliations from Vice:

Gab, social network popular with extremists and conspiracy theorists, is down

Gab, the far-right social network best known as the platform where alleged mass shooter Robert Bowers announced his intentions before murdering 11 people at a synagogue, is currently down.

On Twitter, the company’s account said that it had taken the site down “to investigate a security breach.”

Wired reported last week that the site had been hacked, and that a large trove of user data, including private user information and direct messages, was being provided to researchers and journalists to analyze.

A disinformation reporter for Mother Jones noted this afternoon that it appeared the platform might have been hacked again:

GOP will pay Trump’s club to bring major donors to Mar-a-Lago for dinner

Donald Trump will address major Republican donors at a retreat in Florida next month, and the Republican party is paying for the privilege of bringing the donors to Mar-a-Lago, the Washington Post reports.

Stacey Abrams: ‘Every single metric of voter access that has been a good in Georgia is now under attack.’

Mother Jones has reaction from voting rights activist Stacey Abrams to the state senate’s passage of a bill that would make it more difficult for Georgia residents to vote:

“In the last two election cycles, we saw a dramatic increase in the number of voters of color who voted by mail, the number of young people who used early voting, the number of African Americans who voted on Saturday and Sunday. We saw unprecedented levels of turnout across the board. And so every single metric of voter access that has been a good in Georgia is now under attack.”

Read more reaction from Abrams here, including calling the measures “Jim Crow in a suit and tie.”