Congress granted the HHS permission to move pandemic-related money between accounts, though the agreement stipulated the agency had to give lawmakers a heads up. Former Office of Management and Director Russ Vought defended the decision and said "we would do it again," telling Stat that not only did the administration have the authority, it was also "the right thing to do in order to move as quickly as possible because lives were on the line." Other Trump officials seemed to agree, per Stat, arguing that successful vaccines would reduce hospitalizations, making Warp Speed the more consequential outlet.
Senators Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) and Mike Lee (R., Utah) on Tuesday pressed FBI Director Christopher Wray on the procedures federal law enforcement officials have used to track down those who participated in the January 6 siege on the U.S. Capitol. โI'm anxious to see those who committed unlawful, violent acts on January 6 brought to justice,โ Lee said during a Senate Judiciary Hearing on Tuesday. The Utah Republican explained that he had โheard a number of accountsโ of people who were in Washington, D.C. on January 6 who never went near the Capitol but were โinexplicablyโ contacted by FBI agents who knew of their presence in the district that day โwith no other explanation, perhaps, other than the use of geolocation data.โ
No hate crimes were reported this year so far. According to Yam, the 2,800 hate incidents collected by watchdog Stop AAPI Hate over five months last year โweren't necessarily hate crimesโ as they included โless severe, yet insidious, forms of discrimination. Citing experts, the piece acknowledged the rise in โanti-Asian sentiment during the COVID-19 pandemic but warns against labeling incidents without evaluating individually.
The Biden administration sanctioned seven mid-level and senior Russian officials on Tuesday, along with more than a dozen government entities, over a nearly fatal nerve-agent attack on opposition leader Alexei Navalny and his subsequent jailing. The measures, emphasizing the use of the Russian nerve agent as a banned chemical weapon, marked the Biden administration's first sanctions against associates of President Vladimir Putin. The Russian leader was a favorite of former President Donald Trump even during covert Russian hacking and social media campaigns aimed at destabilizing the U.S. The government officials included at least four whom Navalny's supporters had directly asked the West to ...
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) announced Tuesday that effective next Wednesday, "all businesses of any type" in the Lone Star state will be allowed to fully reopen. On a related note, Houston, Texas' largest city, is the one city in the United States to have reported finding at least one case of every known variant of the coronavirus, which are believed to be more transmissible and have experts on the alert for another uptick in cases as they become the dominant sources of infection. Texas is also lagging behind in vaccinating its population, which is the second largest in the nation.
Leaders of South Dakota's legislature said on Tuesday they would push to suspend impeachment action against Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg over his conduct in a fatal car crash until criminal charges lodged against him are resolved. Calls for Ravnsborg's ouster mounted last month after state authorities took the extraordinary step of releasing video of police interrogations of the attorney general and other evidence from the Sept. 12 incident, in which his car struck and killed a man walking along a highway. As shown in the video, Ravnsborg told police he believed he had run into a deer, rather than a person, until he returned to the scene the following day to find the body of the victim, 55-year-old Joe Boever, lying in a roadside ditch.
A group of Democratic senators is urging President Joe Biden to support recurring direct payments to lower-income Americans, arguing that regular, additional cash assistance is necessary until the economy fully recovers from the pandemic-induced downturn. The proposal โ which likely would face an uphill climb to become law even if gained wide support within the Democratic Party โ would build on the means-tested, one-time $1,400 stimulus check included in Biden's coronavirus relief bill, which passed the House last week and is now under consideration in the Senate. The senators, who also requested Biden support automatic unemployment insurance extensions, said they would like the president to include the ideas in a future economic recovery bill.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday heard oral arguments by Arizona Republicans in defense of two voting restrictions they are looking to keep intact. At one point, Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked Michael Carvin, a lawyer representing the Arizona GOP, what the party's interest in maintaining the policy of discarding ballots cast at the wrong precinct was. Carvin answered, without hesitation, that removing the rule would prevent Republicans from competing in the state.
China's policy of transferring hundreds of thousands of Uighurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang to new jobs often far from home is leading to a thinning out of their populations, according to a high-level Chinese study seen by the BBC. The government denies that it is attempting to alter the demographics of its far-western region and says the job transfers are designed to raise incomes and alleviate chronic rural unemployment and poverty. But our evidence suggests that - alongside the re-education camps built across Xinjiang in recent years - the policy involves a high risk of coercion and is similarly designed to assimilate minorities by changing their lifestyles and thinking.
A hunter from Colorado Springs has been permanently banned from hunting in 48 states, including Colorado, after he pleaded guilty to several poaching charges across the state. Colorado Parks and Wildlife said hearing examiner Steven Cooley decided last week to permanently suspend hunting privileges for Iniki Vike Kapu, 28, after he pleaded guilty, KMGH-TV reported. Colorado is a member of the Interstate Wildlife Violator Compact, meaning the lifetime hunting ban also extends to the other 47 member states, not including Hawaii and Massachusetts.
Canada's National Advisory Committee on Immunization released new guidelines on Monday that advise against vaccinating people who are 65 years and older with AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine, citing lack of information about efficacy in that age group. The vaccine was authorized for people who are 18 and older by drug regulator Health Canada on Friday. Health Canada's decision noted that available clinical trial data was too limited to reliably estimate how well the vaccine worked in people 65 and older.
Utah senator Mitt Romney says he โtook a fallโ while visiting his grandkids in Boston over the weekend, knocking him unconscious and sending him to the hospital. Sen @MittRomney has a black eye and stitches, says he took a fall while visiting his son in Boston, โI took a fall, knocked me unconscious but I'm doing better.โ Joked: โI went to CPAC, that was a problem...โ
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer expressed confidence on Tuesday that President Biden's $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill will pass in the Senate this week, saying the Senate will take up the legislation as early as Wednesday. The Senate is using the budget reconciliation process to pass the bill, which limits time for debate and allows legislation to pass with a simple majority. Schumer spoke to reporters after Mr. Biden addressed Democratic senators virtually during their caucus lunch.
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The Supreme Court confronted the growing partisan divide over voting rights Tuesday in an Arizona case in which Democrats are challenging two Republican-sponsored rules that appeared likely to win approval from the justices. One rule calls for throwing out ballots cast by voters who arrive at the wrong precinct on election day but insist on voting there anyway. Both of Arizona's rules were in effect during last year's election, when President Biden narrowly defeated then-President Trump and when the previously Republican-leaning state elected two Democrats to the Senate.
The Duchess of Sussex faced several bullying complaints from members of her staff during her time as working royal, it was claimed on Tuesday night, as tensions between the couple and Buckingham Palace deepened. Jason Knauf, the couple's communications secretary at the time, submitted a formal complaint about the claims in October 2018 in an apparent bid to protect his staff. Royal aides are said to have approachedย The Timesย ahead of Meghan and Harry's Oprah Winfrey interview, due to be broadcast in the US on Sunday evening, because they felt only "a partial version" had emerged of the Duchess's two years as a working member of the Royal family.
Former GOP senator joins 'The Story' to discuss state elections bill that would limit absentee and early voting
And while Mr Biden has kept Mr Trump's policy in place to send new migrants back to Mexico due to concerns about Covid spread, the new president has already begun rolling back other Trump-era policies that hardened the border against refugees and other migrants seeking opportunities or safe haven in the US. The Biden administration has ended Mr Trump's so-called Remain in Mexico programme that forced more than 70,000 asylum-seekers to stay south of the border while their cases wound their way through immigration courts. Thousands of those enrollees have now crossed into the US under the Biden administration's supervision.
The FBI arrested a notorious white supremacist livestreamer in an early morning raid in Florida on Tuesday. FBI agents, working with Fort Lauderdale police and the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force, arrested Paul N. Miller, 32, on one charge of being a โconvicted felon in possession of a firearm.โ The FBI said in a press release that Miller was arrested without incident.
GOP Sen. Ted Cruz drew national ire after he attempted to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential election, but according to a new poll from Morning Consult, his overall job approval from Texans was hurt far more when he vacationed in Cancรบn during a winter storm that left much of Texas without power or water for days. According to polling conducted between February 18-28, Cruz's net approval rating dropped from +6 to -5 in the weeks following his Cancรบn excursion. A net approval rating is calculated by subtracting the share of disapproving Texan voters from the share of voters that approve of Cruz.
The Archdiocese of New Orleans has advised Catholics against receiving the new Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine, calling the one-dose shot โmorally compromised. In a statement Friday, the religious organization said the new vaccine should be avoided due to its link to an โabortion-derived cell lineโ used in the vaccine's development and production phases. But the available vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna are โmorally acceptable,โ the archdiocese wrote, because only some lab testing utilized stem cells from aborted fetuses, making their connection to abortion โextremely remote.
The military veteran announced his campaign on social media as Georgia Democrats aim to oust the freshman representative. Sgt. Marcus Flowers has announced his official campaign against Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene for her seat in Georgia's 14th Congressional district. In his newly released campaign video shared on social media, the military veteran laid out his case as a Democratic candidate.
Merrick Garland could be confirmed as the next US attorney general as early as this week, after the Senate Judiciary Committee advanced his nomination for consideration before the full chamber by a bipartisan 15-7 vote. Mr Garland has breezed through his nomination process with the Senate Democratic majority controlling committee gavels. The longtime DC Circuit Court judge's ascent to the top spot in Justice Department leadership has been welcomed by Democrats and even some Republicans as a welcome change from the tumult of the Donald Trump years.
The archdiocese of New Orleans, as well as Roman Catholic leaders in St Louis, Missouri, have told local Catholics to avoid the Johnson & Johnson's single-shot Covid-19 vaccine, because its early development used โmorally compromised cell lines created from two abortionsโ. The leadership in New Orleans said two other vaccines in use in the US, made by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna, were acceptable despite having been developed with โsome lab testing that utilised the abortion-derived cell lineโ. The archdiocese made the announcement on Friday.
Progressive Democrats introduced a measure Tuesday to give incarcerated people the right to vote. The amendment, to major voting rights legislation, failed by a 93-278 vote. A majority of Democrats also voted against it.
โHow about we skip โhe wonโt winโ cycle and not do 2016 all over again. Trump can absolutely win another presidential election.โ
โWith independents deserting him, there is simply no path for Trump to get back into the White House โ except as a tourist.โ
โThey might as well cancel the 2024 primaries...because there is no way he can lose.โ
โThe next Republican presidential primary will be heavily shaped by Trump โ whether or not he decides to run again.โ
โDonald Trump will not be running for president again. He will, however, continue to tease the possibility of a 2024 run.โ