Lawmakers To Gov. Hogan: 'Maryland's COVID-19 Vaccination System Is Failing...'

Lawmakers To Gov. Hogan: 'Maryland's COVID-19 Vaccination System Is Failing...'

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    President Biden on Thursday ordered airstrikes against facilities in eastern Syria used by Iranian-backed militant groups, the Pentagon said. This is the Biden administration's first military action. The strikes were in response to several rocket attacks against U.S. targets in Iraq, including one earlier this month in Irbil, the capital of Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish region. This attack killed one non-American civilian contractor and injured a U.S. service member and several American contractors. In a statement, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the strikes destroyed several facilities at a "border control point" used by the Kata'ib Hezbollah and Kata'ib Sayyid al-Shuhada militant groups. "President Biden will act to protect American and coalition personnel," Kirby stated. "At the same time, we have acted in a deliberate manner that aims to de-escalate the overall situation in both eastern Syria and Iraq." A U.S. official told Reuters by having airstrikes that were limited in scope, Biden sent a message to the Iranian-backed militias without sparking a bigger conflict. Kata'ib Hezbollah is the primary Iranian-backed militia in Iraq, and earlier this week the group said it wasn't behind any of the recent rocket attacks. More stories from theweek.comJournalist Tim O'Brien, who's seen Trump's taxes, thinks Trump's accountant will now flip in D.A. inquiryHusband of Hitler-quoting GOP congresswoman parked his militia-stickered truck outside Capitol Jan. 6Josh Hawley, Senator No

  • Biden weighs path forward for $15 minimum wage after Senate roadblock

    President Joe Biden is still committed to raising the U.S. minimum wage to $15 after a key Senate referee ruled the provision could not be included in the COVID-19 relief bill, a top White House economic adviser said on Friday. White House National Economic Council Director Brian Deese, in an interview on MSNBC, said the administration was disappointed by the Senate parliamentarian's Thursday ruling and would consult with congressional leaders about the path forward.

  • Prince Harry on life in California and what he thinks about The Crown

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  • Ilhan Omar leads calls to fire Senate official who scuppered $15 wage rise

    Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough ruled provision in $1.9tn Covid stimulus bill did not qualify for budget reconciliation Ilhan Omar tweeted: ‘What’s a Democratic majority if we can’t pass our priority bills? This is unacceptable.’ Photograph: Leah Millis/Reuters The progressive Democrat Ilhan Omar has called for the firing of the government official who effectively blocked the party’s plans to raise the minimum wage. Democratic plans to include a gradual raise to $15 in Joe Biden’s $1.9tn coronavirus stimulus bill were effectively ended on Thursday when the Senate parliamentarian ruled it should not be part of the package. The decision by Elizabeth MacDonough, who has held the nonpartisan position since 2012, dashed hopes of including the raise in the bill – the first increase in over a decade. “Abolish the filibuster. Replace the parliamentarian,” Omar said in a tweet. “What’s a Democratic majority if we can’t pass our priority bills? This is unacceptable.” Abolish the filibuster.Replace the parliamentarian.What’s a Democratic majority if we can’t pass our priority bills? This is unacceptable.— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) February 26, 2021 Biden campaigned on a pledge to increase the minimum wage to $15. Low-wage workers and unions have campaigned for a rise since 2012, and its inclusion in the coronavirus stimulus bill had been seen as a major victory. While the proposal faced universal opposition by Republican senators and skepticism from some Democrats, senator Bernie Sanders and others were confident that it could be pushed through with a simple majority in the Senate, where the Democrats hold a slim majority. In order to achieve this, the proposal would have to be passed by “budget reconciliation” – a mechanism that allows legislation to bypass the 60% vote bills need to get through the Senate. Late on Thursday, MacDonough ruled that the wage increase did not meet the standards for budget reconciliation. The parliamentarian acts as an impartial judge and has only been removed from office once. MacDonough is well respected by many members of both parties, and the Biden administration seems unlikely to push for her removal. Other progressive Democrats have proposed a less drastic solution – overruling her. “The Senate parliamentarian issues an advisory opinion,” congresswoman Pramila Jayapal said in a tweet. “The VP can overrule them – as has been done before. We should do EVERYTHING we can to keep our promise, deliver a $15 minimum wage, and give 27 million workers a raise.” Sanders, one of the most ardent supporters of a minimum-wage increase, has proposed an alternative plan – imposing penalties and incentives to push companies toward higher wages. “I will be working with my colleagues in the Senate to move forward with an amendment to take tax deductions away from large, profitable corporations that don’t pay workers at least $15 an hour, and to provide small businesses with the incentives they need to raise wages,” Sanders said in a statement. “That amendment must be included in this reconciliation bill.” Sanders’ comments come after a Senate hearing on Thursday where he lambasted the low wages paid by McDonald’s, Walmart and others. Sanders pointed to a government report that found nearly half of workers who make less than $15 an hour rely on public assistance programs that cost taxpayers $107bn each year. The American people are “sick and tired” of subsidizing “starvation wages” at these companies, Sanders said.

  • Merkel says she won't take AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine because she's too old, as 1.4 million jabs are left unused

    The German chancellor said she wasn't eligible because the vaccine isn't approved for people over 65 in Germany.

  • Asian Man in Critical Condition After Being Stabbed in the Back With a Butcher Knife in NY Chinatown

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  • Prince Harry says he stepped back from royal family because 'toxic' press was 'destroying' his mental health

    Prince Harry said he "will never walk away" from the royal family. He told James Corden he stepped back for his wife, son, and his own mental health.

  • They met on Bumble. She claims he killed her dogs. Now she's speaking out to help others isolated amid COVID-19.

    Nearly a year after the first COVID-19 lockdown orders, survivors continue to be at high risk of domestic violence.

  • Don Jr. slammed Republicans who 'lose gracefully' and said that Trump showed 'you can actually push back'

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  • Ted Cruz's colleagues mocked him by putting memes of his Cancun trip in the Senate gym locker room: 'Bienvenido de Nuevo, Ted!'

    Those who turned up to the Senate gym Wednesday morning were welcomed by color printouts of Cruz's Cancun trip that read "Bienvenido de Nuevo, Ted!"

  • Newly confirmed Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm is 'obsessed' with creating 'clean-energy jobs'

    The Senate on Thursday confirmed former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, 64-35, to lead the Energy Department, with 14 Republicans joining all 50 members of the Democratic caucus to give President Biden his 10th Cabinet-level appointee (plus one deputy secretary). After her confirmation, Granholm tweeted that she's "obsessed with creating good-paying clean energy jobs in all corners of America in service of addressing our climate crisis" and "impatient for results." Granholm repeated her priorities on MSNBC Thursday night. "I am all about bringing clean-energy jobs" to communities, especially those, like Michigan, reliant on fossil fuels, she told host Chris Hayes. "I am totally obsessed about how to create good-paying jobs in America," and the clean-energy sector "is the biggest opportunity for us." The market is shifting toward green energy, regardless of what politicians prefer, and the Energy Department's 17 national labs are creating ways to not only expand renewable energy but also "decarbonize fossil fuels," Granholm said. "And honestly, if we can bring the supply chains for all of these clean-energy products to the United States, instead of letting our economic competitors eat us for lunch, the jobs that could be created for us in the U.S. — good-paying jobs — are boundless." Biden has sent the Senate more nominations, and gotten fewer of them confirmed, than any recent president, Axios reports, citing a count by the Partnership for Public Service and The Washington Post. Biden has submitted more nominees to the Senate — but received fewer confirmations — than recent presidents, data shows. https://t.co/tZQbBPahjI pic.twitter.com/BbuqlSmwOP — Axios (@axios) February 26, 2021 "The new president is facing a pandemic without a surgeon general or head of the Department of Health and Human Services, he confronts an economic crisis without his leaders at Labor or Commerce, and domestic terrorism is on the rise with no attorney general," Axios notes. You can track Biden's nominations at The Washington Post. More stories from theweek.comJournalist Tim O'Brien, who's seen Trump's taxes, thinks Trump's accountant will now flip in D.A. inquiryHusband of Hitler-quoting GOP congresswoman parked his militia-stickered truck outside Capitol Jan. 6Josh Hawley, Senator No

  • DeSantis Defends COVID Record, Needling Critics: ‘The Lockdown States Got It Wrong’

    Florida governor Ron DeSantis defended his state’s response to the coronavirus pandemic in a Friday morning speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference. DeSantis was the first elected official to speak to the conference, which is being held in Orlando, Fla., this year. Since the end of a summer surge in coronavirus cases, the state forbade local officials from shutting down businesses entirely and kept schools open for in-person learning where requested by parents. "Florida got it right and the lockdown states got it wrong." @GovRonDeSantis on Florida's response to COVID 19. #CPAC2021 #AmericaUnCanceled pic.twitter.com/ANWFWUTWGX — CPAC 2021 (@CPAC) February 26, 2021 “We are stronger as a state and much happier as a people. . . . Florida has lower per-capita COVID mortality than the national average, and lower than 27 other states,” DeSantis said. “Our unemployment rate is lower than the national average even though tourism isn’t fully back, and our budget is in great shape.” The governor added, “Florida got it right, and the lockdown states got it wrong.” Earlier in his speech, DeSantis described Florida as “an oasis of freedom in a nation that’s suffering from the yoke of oppressive lockdowns.” Florida’s death rate from coronavirus is roughly 141 per 100,000 people, according to Becker’s Hospital Review. Over 30,000 residents in total have died of the illness since the pandemic began. CPAC will continue into Sunday afternoon, when former President Trump is scheduled to deliver his first public speech since leaving office. Former Vice President Mike Pence reportedly declined to speak at the conference, citing Trump’s failure to prevent a mob of his supporters from storming the Capitol in early January.

  • Husband of Hitler-quoting GOP congresswoman parked his militia-stickered truck outside Capitol Jan. 6

    Illinois state Rep. Chris Miller (R), the husband of freshman U.S. Rep. Mary Miller (R-Ill.), acknowledged Thursday that his pickup truck was parked in a restricted area outside the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 riot, but he said the "Three Percenter" militia sticker on the back window doesn't mean anything. "Army friend gave me decal," Miller told The Daily Beast in an email late Thursday. "Thought it was a cool decal. Took it off because of negative pub." He said he "never was member" of the militia and "didn't know anything about 3% till fake news started this fake story and read about them." Online sleuths had linked him to the truck visible in footage from a CBS News report, earlier Thursday. The #Sedition3PTruck with government plates parked in a restricted zone from 1:02. #SeditionHunters #Sedition3P Source: https://t.co/DubmxJhjSZ pic.twitter.com/INCs6geEYg — Phoenix on Wheels (@phoenixonwheels) February 25, 2021 The Three Percenters, founded in 2008, are a "radical militia group" implicated in leading the Jan. 6 siege along with the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, and other far-right extremist groups, the FBI said in an affidavit filed in the case against alleged rioter Robert Gieswein. Their name comes from the apocryphal claim that only 3 percent of U.S. colonists fought in the Revolutionary War, and they fashion themselves as the same kind of tyranny-stomping "patriots." Miller's wife, Mary Miller, is most famous for favorably quoting Nazi leader Adolf Hitler at a "Moms for America" rally outside the Capitol on Jan. 5. "Hitler was right on one thing: whoever has the youth has the future," she told the rally, apologizing later when video of her comments went viral but insisting that "some are trying to intentionally twist my words to mean something antithetical to my beliefs." More stories from theweek.comJournalist Tim O'Brien, who's seen Trump's taxes, thinks Trump's accountant will now flip in D.A. inquiryJosh Hawley, Senator NoDemocrats should take the Romney-Cotton proposal seriously

  • 'WandaVision' finally gives Wanda her Marvel superhero name and fans are overjoyed

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  • Journalist Tim O'Brien, who's seen Trump's taxes, thinks Trump's accountant will now flip in D.A. inquiry

    Bloomberg's Tim O'Brien, one of the few journalists who has seen former President Donald Trump's tax returns, told MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell on Thursday night he will sleep better now that Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance finally has eight years of Trump's financial documents, from 2011 to 2019. Trump "is very afraid of what's in these documents, I think," because they put him in serious criminal jeopardy, O'Brien said, but he isn't the only one implicated. O'Brien went on to explain why he thinks it's likely Trump's chief accountant, Allen Weisselberg, will flip on Trump. "The thing to really focus in on here is that it's not just the tax records that Cy Vance has now," O'Brien said. "He probably has reams and reams of the accountant's work product. This is a criminal case, they're going to need to prove criminal intent on the part of Trump, his three eldest children, Allen Weisselberg, and anyone else in the Trump Organization who's fallen under the parameters of this investigation. And if there are email and notes and other records of communication about what they intended to do when they inflated the value of buildings so they could get loans against them and then turned around and deflated the value of the buildings so they could pay lower taxes on them, and there's a communication around that that predates any of these tax entries, that is gold for a prosecutor." A few hours earlier, O'Brien told MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace that the particular eight years of documents Vance's team has "is important, because it predates Trump's ascent into the White House, and I think helps build the narrative around the money trail and Trump's motivations for his destructive and obscene dance with people like Vladimir Putin. It's a shame they couldn't go back further — think this is one of the tragic misses of Robert Mueller's investigation, he could have gone back further, I think, than Cy Vance is able to into Trump's finances." O'Brien also underscored that the investigation implicates at least Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump, and "it also targets people inside the Trump Organization who might flip on Trump if they're exposed to criminal liability," but "the brass ring in all of this is that if Trump has a criminal conviction, he cannot run for president again, and that's looming over this entire thing as well." More stories from theweek.comHusband of Hitler-quoting GOP congresswoman parked his militia-stickered truck outside Capitol Jan. 6Josh Hawley, Senator NoDemocrats should take the Romney-Cotton proposal seriously

  • Prince Harry says 99-year-old Prince Philip just slams his laptop shut instead of hanging up at the end of Zoom calls

    The prince told James Corden that he'd had a few Zoom calls with his grandparents where they got to see Archie running around.

  • Gambino family boss Peter Gotti, brother and successor to ‘Dapper Don’ John, dies in prison at age 81

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  • What the Neera Tanden affair reveals about the Washington DC swamp

    In defense of an awful nominee and a corrupt DC culture, Republicans engage in hypocrisy while Democrats trample the causes they purport to care about ‘As evidenced by her record, Tanden is a victim in the same way war is peace, which is to say that she is not a victim, she is a perpetrator.’ Photograph: Reuters When sifting through the wreckage to try to make sense of this epoch, future anthropologists should dust off whatever records will be preserved about Neera Tanden’s star-crossed nomination to an obscure-but-powerful White House office. The whole episode is a museum-ready diorama in miniature illustrating so many things that died in the transition from democracy to oligarchy. And in this affair, all the politicians, pundits, news outlets and Democratic party apparatchiks involved are very blatantly telling on themselves. Tanden is being nominated to run the Office of Management and Budget, which oversees the federal budget. As a political operative and head of a corporate-funded thinktank, she does not have especially relevant experience for the appointment – in fact, whether in gubernatorial administrations, mayoral offices or Capitol Hill budget committees, there are far more qualified experts for this gig. Moreover, her particular record would raise significant red flags as a job applicant for even a mid-level management position in any organization, much less the White House: during her tenure running the Center for American Progress, she reportedly outed a sexual harassment victim and physically assaulted an employee. While she was running the organization, CAP raked in corporate and foreign government cash and a report was revised in a way that helped a billionaire donor avoid scrutiny of his bigoted policing policy. Critics allege that Tanden busted a union of journalists. And she floated social security cuts when Democrats in Congress were trying to stop them. Even if you discount Tanden’s infamous statement about Libya and oil, as well as her vicious crusade against Senator Bernie Sanders and the progressive base of the Democratic party, all of these other items would seem to disqualify Tanden for a job atop a Democratic administration that claims to respect expertise and want to protect women, workers’ rights, social programs and government ethics. From the beginning, every single Democratic senator could have simply cited Biden’s promise to be the “most pro-union president” and stated that they would not vote to confirm anyone accused of undermining a union. Or they could have said that they are not going to allow someone who runs a corporate-funded thinktank – and whose nomination is being boosted by one of the most diabolical corporate lobbying groups in Washington – to be in charge of the White House office that can grant government ethics waivers. At the absolute barest minimum, these issues should have been major topics of discussion in her confirmation hearings and in the news media. But the opposite has happened. This record is almost nowhere to be found in the discourse. Instead, the central topic of discussion is Tanden’s late-night, out-of-control rage-tweeting. On the right, the Republican party of troll-in-chief Donald Trump is pretending that Tanden’s online rhetoric – rather than her record – is disqualifying. On the left, the Democratic noise machine is calling out the Republican party’s hypocrisy, while wrongly pretending that Tanden is a victim. These self-righteous Tanden defenders have gone completely silent about her actual record. Meanwhile, save for a few bits of solid policy-focused reporting, journalists are mostly hounding senators to get their reactions to Tanden’s tweets rather than asking them about her past behavior. Some media folk are even promoting the Neera-As-Victim mythology, somehow disregarding and distracting attention from Tanden’s alleged attack on a union of journalists. As evidenced by her record, Tanden is a victim in the same way war is peace, which is to say that she is not a victim, she is a perpetrator. But the Republican party, the Democratic party and the Washington media machine will not allow the record documenting that basic, verifiable, indisputable reality to be reviewed, litigated or considered. The debate is being deliberately ramrodded into a conversation about her online etiquette, which has absolutely no relevance to the actual appointment (and I say that as an occasional target of Tanden’s Twitter vitriol). All of this is a grotesque form of erasure. Democratic politicians, Beltway Liberals, and media voices are not merely swatting away, rationalizing or justifying Tanden’s record on the merits, they are doing something worse: they are trying to memory-hole Tanden’s record and pretend it doesn’t exist, even though she laid waste to the same liberal causes these defenders purport to care about. Moreover, the Tanden brigade – and their online army now bullying reporters with racist vitriol – are cynically relying on a political and media environment that will allow such memory-holing to take place. They are banking on the brute force of their own denialist propaganda and a miasma of distracting misinformation to make sure that nobody recognizes that they are exposing themselves. They are making clear that their hope for career advancement, their desire for White House access, and their personal connections to a thinktank powerbroker are more important to them than any social cause. Taken together, such behaviors represent more than the death of expertise. They signify the premeditated murder of the most basic facts that are supposed to inform democratic decision-making. The motives here are unstated but obvious: nobody in either party or in the Washington media wants to center Tanden’s nomination on her actual record, because if that record becomes disqualifying for career advancement in Washington, it could set a precedent jeopardizing the personal career prospects of every creature slithering through the Washington swamp. Indeed, if corruption, mismanagement, bullying, union busting and let-them-eat-cake-style austerity ideology are suddenly perceived negatively, then all the real-life Veep characters in Washington – the politicians, operatives and media elites who’ve spent their whole lives angling for fancy White House titles – could be out of luck. Appreciating the power of this tribal motivation is crucial, because it accounts for why Democrats seem to be spending as much or more political capital on trying to rescue Tanden’s nomination than on enacting policies to rescue Americans from an economic disaster. That’s no overstatement: the White House has signaled it is working the phones and pulling out all the stops for the OMB nominee at the very same time the administration is signaling a potential pre-emptive retreat on the minimum wage and a willingness to limit promised survival checks. Such skewed priorities and misguided decisions might seem inexplicable to those future anthropologists looking back at this moment. However, it will all make perfect sense to them if they understand that the Tanden affair exemplifies how in this era of end-stage democracy, the first and foremost priority of the effete political elite wasn’t helping millions of people, it wasn’t defending the progressive agenda, and it wasn’t even ensuring electoral success. It was something deeper, more tribal, and more corrupt: swamp self-preservation. David Sirota is a Guardian US columnist and an award-winning investigative journalist. He is an editor at large at Jacobin, and the founder of the Daily Poster. He served as Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign speechwriter

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