President, who has already cancelled Keystone XL pipeline, will address nation on the environment
- Biden vows to vaccinate 300m by end of summer or early fall
- 45 Republican senators vote to dismiss Trump impeachment
- Executive orders signed in effort to advance US racial equity
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4.07pm GMT
People watching the Covid-19 briefing may notice Joe Biden is not present. That is purposeful. The president has said, and Covid-19 task force coordinator Jeff Zients just emphasized, that the president wants Americans to hear directly from his scientific team.
4.05pm GMT
The Covid-19 briefing has started. Follow along with us here.
3.55pm GMT
While we wait for the Biden administration’s Covid-19 briefing to begin, here is where the US stands in the pandemic today:
Our daily update is published. States reported 1.7M tests, 144k cases, 108,957 people currently hospitalized with COVID-19, and 3,734 deaths. pic.twitter.com/NeIk6qx6fq
3.33pm GMT
Biden is also expected to sign “sweeping” climate change executive orders today, on what climate activists have dubbed “climate day”.
Here’s more from Guardian US climate reporter Oliver Milman:
Joe Biden is to instruct the US government to pause and review all oil and gas drilling on federal land, eliminate fossil fuel subsidies and transform the government’s vast fleet of cars and trucks into electric vehicles, in a sweeping new set of climate executive orders.
The battery of executive actions, to be signed by the US president on Wednesday, will direct the Department of the Interior to pause new oil and gas leases on public lands and offshore waters and launch a “rigorous review of all existing leasing”, according to a White House planning document.
It’s Biden’s ‘climate day’ today –
– review of oil & gas drilling on public land
– halt to fossil fuel subsidies
– govt vehicle fleet to go electric
– 30% of US to be protected by 2030
– new WH climate and enviro justice bodieshttps://t.co/CiHm2Sv9In
Biden raises hopes of addressing climate crisis as Cop26 nearsRead more
The directive opens up a path to the banning of all new drilling on federal land, a campaign promise made by Biden that has been widely praised by climate groups and caused outrage within the fossil fuel industry. Biden has called the climate crisis the “existential threat of our time” and the White House has said the new executive orders will help push the US towards a goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
3.09pm GMT
While we’re waiting for a Covid-19 briefing, it’s worth remembering just how many people have gone through a year of pandemic without health insurance: likely at least 28.9 million.
The number of people who lacked health insurance rose through the Trump presidency, and grew by experts millions were added to the ranks of uninsured as the pandemic drove unprecedented job losses. A plurality of Americans rely on private health insurance through an employer.
WASHINGTON (AP) Fulfilling a campaign promise, President Joe Biden plans to reopen the HealthCare.gov insurance markets for a special sign-up opportunity geared to people needing coverage in the coronavirus pandemic.
Biden is expected to sign an executive order Thursday, said two people familiar with the plan, whose details were still being finalized. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the pending order ahead of a formal announcement.
2.38pm GMT
Hello – this is Jessica Glenza taking over from Martin Belam. Among the most high profile events happening in Washington DC today is the first Covid-19 briefing, which the Biden administration promised will be a regular feature of his administration.
At 11am ET, we’re expecting Biden’s first Covid-19 briefing. Here’s a closer look at what is expected:
(AP) – For nearly a year it was the Trump show. Now President Joe Biden is calling up the nation’s top scientists and public health experts to regularly brief the American public about the pandemic that has claimed more than 425,000 US lives.
Beginning Wednesday, administration experts will host briefings three times a week on the state of the outbreak, efforts to control it and the race to deliver vaccines and therapeutics to end it.
1.50pm GMT
School closures have been disruptive for students across the United States but, for many students of color in Milwaukee’s public school system, the immediate impacts have been downright alarming.
In the long run, educators fear, Covid and a long history of segregation and discrimination have formed a toxic cocktail that could reverberate for decades to come.
Related: Milwaukee was already failing students of color. Covid made it worse
1.40pm GMT
By the way, if you want to get a sense of the pace at which Joe Biden has been attempting to set his agenda for the next four years, NBC News have published a list of all of Biden’s executive orders to date. Elizabeth Janowski has gathered 40 so far – with more expected today.
Read more here: NBC News – Here’s the full list of Biden’s executive actions so far
1.35pm GMT
There’s a markedly different tone in foreign relations coming out of the Biden administration already compared to his predecessor. This morning Joe Biden has published a clip of a call he had with Nato General Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, and he didn’t appear to complain once about how much money the US spent on defense in Europe.
Instead, Biden said “I intend to rebuild and re-establish out alliances, starting with Nato. I strongly, strongly, strongly support our collective defense based on mutual democratic values. I want to re-affirm the United States’ commitment to article 5. It’s a sacred commitment.”
It’s been a busy first week of calls with foreign leaders, and yesterday I spoke with NATO Secretary General @JensStoltenberg. I reiterated my strong commitment to NATO and to working together to tackle the shared challenges we face. pic.twitter.com/rXhP8m5QvO
1.20pm GMT
Investigators have found no evidence that terrorism, politics or any bias motivated the rampage of a 64-year-old Oregon man who witnesses said repeatedly drove into people along streets and sidewalks in Portland, Oregon, killing a 77-year-old woman and injuring nine other people, police said.
Police identified the driver as Paul Rivas of Oregon City. He was booked into the Multnomah county detention center on initial charges of second-degree murder, assault and failure to perform the duties of a driver, Portland police said.
Related: Police say no evidence of terror motive in deadly Portland car attack
1.04pm GMT
More than 10,000 people whom Ohio believed had “abandoned” their voter registration cast ballots in the 2020 election, raising more concern that officials are using an unreliable and inaccurate method to identify ineligible voters on the state’s rolls.
In August, Ohio’s Republican secretary of state, Frank LaRose, released a list of 115,816 people who were set to be purged after the November election because the election officials in each of Ohio’s 88 counties flagged them as inactive. Voters could remove their name from the list by taking a number of election-related actions, including voting, requesting an absentee ballot, or simply confirming their voter registration information.
Related: Ohio nearly purged 10,000 voters who ended up casting 2020 ballots
12.51pm GMT
President Joe Biden is expected to sign an executive order tomorrow to reopen the HealthCare.gov insurance markets for a special sign-up opportunity geared to people needing coverage in the coronavirus pandemic.
Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar reminds us for the Associated Press that although the number of uninsured Americans has grown because of job losses due to the economic hit of the coronavirus, the Trump administration did nothing to authorize a “special enrollment period” for people uninsured in the pandemic.
12.31pm GMT
President Joe Biden’s nominee for energy secretary, Jennifer Granholm, is expected to face questions on the administration’s push to compete with China on electric vehicles at her Senate confirmation hearing later today.
While governor of auto-manufacturing Michigan from 2003 to 2011, Granholm led a charge to secure $1.35 billion in federal funding for companies to produce electric vehicles (EVs) and batteries in the state.
12.20pm GMT
Giovanni Russonello’s On Politics newsletter for the New York Times today has an interesting exchange with their chief Washington correspondent Carl Hulse on the calculation in the Senate around the filibuster.
As it stands at the moment, debate in the Senate on a measure can only be cut off if at least 60 senators support doing so, giving ample opportunity for Republicans to delay Biden’s legislation. Hulse says:
I do believe Democrats were caught off guard by McConnell’s willingness to make a fight over the filibuster essentially the first order of business. It was classic McConnell, using a moment of maximum leverage to try to extract something from Democrats.
But Chuck Schumer, the new majority leader, knew he could not cave to McConnell at the start. Once McConnell saw that Democrats were not going to budge, he began looking for a way out and seized on promises by two Democratic senators, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, to not support any effort to get rid of the filibuster.
12.00pm GMT
Reuters report that Russia’s upper house of parliament, the Federation Council, has voted to ratify an extension of the New Start nuclear arms control treaty, a move towards preserving the last major pact of its kind between Russia and the United States.
The Kremlin said yesterday that the two countries had struck a deal to extend the pact, signed in 2010 and set to expire next week, which limits the numbers of strategic nuclear warheads, missiles and bombers that Russia and the US can deploy.
11.57am GMT
By the way, if you haven’t been following the extraordinary stock market developments over the last few days involving GameStop, then Edward Helmore has a report on it here. It’s well worth a read:
Investors on the WallStreetBets subreddit forum have been promoting GameStop aggressively, with many pitching it as a battle of regular people versus hedge funds and big Wall Street firms.
11.37am GMT
Andrew Gawthorpe, host of the podcast America Explained, writes for us today that the Democrats’ priority in power must be to stop minority rule:
The case for the Democratic Party to commit itself to a radical pro-democracy agenda is simple. The last four years have shown the horrors of minority rule. Political institutions like the Electoral College, the Senate and gerrymandered House districts reward Republicans for appealing to a narrow minority of the population. They take this easily-won power and use it not for the good of the country as a whole but to push through extremist policies and fight culture wars. When they abuse their power, as Donald Trump did, little can be done to stop them.
Related: The Democrats’ priority in power must be to stop minority rule | Andrew Gawthorpe
11.26am GMT
Alexander Bolton at The Hill has rounded up some of the key Republican reaction to yesterday’s impeachment developments in the Senate, in particular that of Alaskan Senator Lisa Murkowski.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski one of only a handful of Republican senators actively considering whether to vote to convict Trump, on Tuesday said it’s now hard to imagine there will be anything close to the 67 votes needed to convict Trump.
“Whether or not we’re going to see members change their mind after they’ve already taken a vote, I think that’s hard for people to do,” she said.
11.24am GMT
The National Nurses United union will be holding a series of socially-distanced events in more than 19 states today to demand that their hospital employers put patients first above profit motives.
The union has repeatedly been critical of the protection measures afforded to its members during the pandemic. So far the union has documented the deaths of more than 3,000 US healthcare workers after frontline Covid exposure, a number which they say is likely undercounted.
11.07am GMT
Amazon is attempting to force workers planning to unionize at an Alabama warehouse to vote in person rather than by mail as it fights off a landmark attempt by its staff to organize.
The company is appealing against a ruling by a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) officer to permit 5,800 employees at Amazon’s warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, to begin casting ballots by mail to be represented by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union.
Related: Amazon seeks to block workers from voting by mail in landmark union drive
11.00am GMT
The Washington Post this morning have a piece to tee-up some of the climate crisis action expected from Joe Biden later today. They say that the president “plans to make tackling America’s persistent racial and economic disparities a central part of his plan”.
As part of an unprecedented push to cut the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions and create new jobs as the United States shifts toward cleaner energy, Biden will direct agencies across the federal government to invest in low-income and minority communities that have traditionally borne the brunt of pollution.
Biden will sign an executive order establishing a White House interagency council on environmental justice, create an office of health and climate equity at the Health and Human Services Department and form a separate environmental justice office at the Justice Department, the individuals said.
10.45am GMT
There were 142,511 new coronavirus cases recorded in the US yesterday, and 3,990 further deaths. That’s the fifth highest daily death toll recorded in the US since the pandemic began.
In a more positive sign, Covid hospitalizations in the US fell again for the 14th consecutive day. They stand at 108,957, the lowest level since 13 December, according to the Covid Tracking project.
10.30am GMT
The Biden administration’s climate policies aren’t just facing opposition at home, as Leyland Cecco in Toronto reports:
US president Joe Biden’s move to cancel a controversial pipeline project has hit Canada like “like a gut punch”, according to one political leader, and left the country to weigh the future prospects of its ailing oil and gas industry.
Related: Alberta leader says Biden’s move to cancel Keystone pipeline a ‘gut punch’
10.19am GMT
Mark Meadows, Trump’s former White House chief of staff, has a new job. Well according to what Axios are labelling a scoop this morning, anyway,. They report:
Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows is joining the Conservative Partnership Institute, a group run by former South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint that operates as a “networking hub” for conservatives.
Meadows, who is still in frequent contact with former President Trump and has been advising him ahead of his impeachment trial, will now operate behind the scenes to help create more members like Jim Jordan, Ted Cruz, and Josh Hawley — conservative firebrands with strong networks and staffs.
10.16am GMT
One concern overnight was that Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy was taken to hospital “out of an abundance of caution” after being taken ill in the Capitol, hours after the 80-year-old Democrat began presiding over the impeachment trial of former president Donald Trump. He’s now at home.
Leahy, who’d been in his Capitol office, was taken to George Washington University Hospital after being examined by Congress’ attending physician, Leahy spokesman David Carle said.
10.12am GMT
Here’s a reminder of what happened in the Senate last night. After Senators were sworn in as the jury for Trump’s second impeachment trial and signed the oath book – each using a different pen due to coronavirus precautions – Republican Rand Paul of Kentucky challenged the legitimacy of the trial.
Chuck Schumer, the Democratic majority leader, dismissed Paul’s theory as ‘flat-out wrong’, but 45 Republican senators went on to vote to dismiss the entire trial. The move failed, but it suggests that a vote to convict the former president is unlikely.
10.00am GMT
Welcome to our coverage of US politics for Wednesday. Here’s a catch-up on where we are and a little of what we might expect from today…
9.18am GMT
Joe Biden will address the nation about the climate crisis later today, and sign further executive orders aimed at environmental impacts. Those directives include spelling out how US intelligence, defense and homeland security agencies should address the security threats posed by worsening droughts, floods and other natural disasters under global warming. Biden’s appearance is due at 1:30pm EST (6:30pm GMT).
Before that, White House press secretary Jen Psaki will also hold an event, joined by climate envoy John Kerry and White House national climate advisor Gina McCarthy.
In the end, Biden will have killed thousands of jobs with just this one action.
If only someone had warned that Biden would be an enemy of the energy industry and kill jobs at the behest of the radical, environmental left. https://t.co/S1C9EbNdwL