Today so far
Here’s a quick summary of everything that’s happened so far today
- The White House coronavirus response team announced its plan for the next phase of the pandemic, which will include a “test to treat” model where people infected with Covid-19 can easily get treatment for the virus.
- The date for Ketanji Brown Jackson’s supreme court confirmation hearing in front of the Senate has been set to start on 21 March.
- Fed chair Jerome Powell told Congress that the central bank still plans to raise interest rates and will likely do so at the end of the month, despite the uncertainty around Russia and Ukraine. The Dow rose at the end of the day, signaling relief from investors over the Fed’s cautiousness with the crisis in Ukraine.
- Results from Texas’ primary yesterday is a preview of what’s to come in this year’s midterms. A progressive House candidate in Texas will go into a run-off against a Congressman who has had his seat for 17 years. It’s the first test of progressive-versus-conservative Democrats in the 2022 midterm election season. Meanwhile, Texas’ Trump-backed attorney general has been forced into a runoff with the Bush family’s latest scion.
Stay tuned for more live updates.
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Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida and a serious contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, has said France would not put up a fight if Russia invaded, as it did in Ukraine.
“A lot of other places around the world, they just fold the minute there’s any type of adversity,” DeSantis told reporters at a press event at South Florida University in Tampa on Wednesday.
“I mean can you imagine if he [Vladimir Putin] went into France? Would they do anything to put up a fight? Probably not.”
The governor also began the event by angrily attacking students present on the stage with him for wearing masks against Covid-19. “You do not have to wear those masks,” DeSantis said, pointing a finger.
“I mean, please take them off. Honestly, it’s not doing anything and we’ve gotta stop with this Covid theatre. So if you want to wear it, fine, but this is ridiculous.”
Federal authorities have relaxed mask guidance in much of the US but the coronavirus pandemic has killed more than 950,000 – and more than 70,000 in Florida alone.
Anyone French who saw DeSantis’s remark might remember the bad jokes (“cheese-eating surrender monkeys”) and Orwellian doublespeak (french fries renamed “freedom fries”) that followed Jacques Chirac’s refusal to back the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Amid much online mockery of DeSantis’s remarks, Maggie Haberman, a New York Times reporter, tweeted: “He went to Yale.”
DeSantis also went to Harvard, to study law. Before entering politics, he was a Jag or US navy lawyer in Iraq and at Guantánamo Bay. He regularly polls second in surveys of likely contenders for the Republican presidential nomination, behind Donald Trump.
The Dow surged 600 points Wednesday afternoon in response to Fed chair Jerome Powell’s assurances that the Fed is keeping a close on instability due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Powell told the House financial services committee today that while the Fed plans to increase interest rates at the end of the month, the central bank will “proceed carefully” and that they will be “nimble” in responding to the evolving outlook. Powell also spoke about the need to curb inflation as the country is experiencing a strong labor market.
Investors appeared relieved that the Fed is taking a measured approach amid the crisis in Ukraine. Powell said that he is looking to propose a 25 basis point rate increase at the end of the month, at the Fed’s next meeting.
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From the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell, who has been reporting on the House investigation into the January 6 Capitol Hill riot:
The House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack is working towards wrapping up depositions with witnesses by the start of April, the panel’s chairman Bennie Thompson said on Wednesday.
Thompson said in an impromptu interview on Capitol Hill that the select committee’s timetable to finish with depositions was 1 April so that House investigators would have time to prepare for public hearings later that month.
“The timetable for the committee for depositions is to try to have them all completed is April 1,” Thompson said.
The panel’s chairman was noncommittal when asked whether he expected to meet that goal. But Thompson had previously said he thought public hearings might slip into late April since the witness list has grown in recent weeks.
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Texas was the first state to hold its midterm primaries yesterday, and Trump-backed candidates largely held firm over more moderate GOP counterparts. The only exception was in the race for attorney general, where current attorney general Ken Paxton is going into a runoff against George P Bush, the latest scion in the Bush dynasty.
If a candidate does not reach 50% of a vote in a primary election, the candidates immediately go into a runoff in May.
Paxton, a close ally of Trump and a vocal critic of progressive causes like voting rights, abortion access and immigration, has been under indictment since 2015 for fraud.
Joshua Blank, research director at the Texas Politics Project, said that Paxton may be able to best Bush because “the name and legacy in Texas carry a mixed set of baggage”.
Still, that Paxton is going into a runoff in the first place shows he is politically vulnerable, even with a Trump endorsement.
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American entertainment company Live Nation said it is not going to promote shows in Russia and is cutting ties with Russian suppliers following the country’s invasion of Ukraine, according to IQ magazine.
“Live Nation joins the world in strongly condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” the company said in a statement. “We will not promote shows in Russia, and we will not do business with Russia. We’re in the process of reviewing our vendors so we can sease work with any and all Russian-based suppliers.”
The company is just the latest that is cutting ties with Russia. Apple said on Tuesday that it is pausing product sales in Russia due to the country’s invasion of Ukraine.
A bit of a bizarre moment right before Florida governor Ron DeSantis spoke at the University of South Florida to announce a cybersecurity initiative.
“You do not have to wear those masks. Please take them off. Honestly, it’s not going to do anything,” DeSantis told a group of high school students who were standing behind him at the podium. “We’ve got to stop with this Covid theater. So if you wanna wear it, fine, but this is ridiculous.”
NEW: @GovRonDeSantis annoyed with USF students—
— Evan Donovan (@EvanDonovan) March 2, 2022
"You do not have to wear those masks. Please take them off. Honestly, it's not doing anything. We've gotta stop with this Covid theater. So if you wanna wear it, fine, but this is ridiculous."https://t.co/7j1Pb2hV53 @WFLA pic.twitter.com/ZIOyTHLOh3
Throughout the pandemic, Florida has been one of the most lenient states on Covid restrictions. The state has seen more than 70,000 Covid deaths since the start of the pandemic and has one of the highest Covid death rates in the country.
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US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is going to travel to five Nato countries and Moldova. According to Blinken’s office, he will travel to Belgium, Poland, Moldova, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.
“The trip continues extensive consultations and coordination with our Nato allies and European partners,” Blinken’s office said in a statement.
BLINKEN travel pic.twitter.com/Isw5TWtqOs
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) March 2, 2022
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Senior officials in China asked Russia in early February to wait until after the Winter Olympics in Beijing to invade Ukraine, according to a classified Western intelligence report seen by a senior US administration official and a European official who spoke to the New York Times anonymously.
The report suggests that Chinese officials had some knowledge of Russia’s plans to invade Ukraine. Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping met on February 4, before the Olympic games, where the two leaders established a cooperative relationship between the two countries.
“There are no forbidden areas of cooperation,” they said in a joint statement. They also called on Nato to rule out expansion in eastern Europe and denounced security blocks in the Asia Pacific region.
It is unclear whether Xi had direct knowledge of the invasion, but a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington told the Times that the claims “are speculation without any basis and are intended to blame-shift and smear China.”
The closing ceremony of the Olympics was held on February 20. The next day, Putin ordered Russian troops to enter eastern Ukraine.
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DOJ launches task force to carry out Russia sanctions
The Department of Justice is launching a task force dedicated to enforcing US sanctions against Russia. The name of the task force: KleptoCapture.
Attorney general Merrick Garland announced the task force on Wednesday saying in a statement that it will coordinate responses between agencies to ensure that all sanctions will be carried out fully.
“The justice department will use all of its authorities to seize the assets of individuals and entities who violate these sanctions,” Garland said in a statement. “We will leave no stone unturned in our efforts to investigate, arrest and prosecute those whose criminal acts enable the Russian government to continue this unjust war.”
The US has announced a slate of sanctions over the last week, including some against Russia’s central bank and a number of high-ranking Russian officials and business leaders.
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A shift in tone by the Biden administration to emphasize a return to “normal” has received mixed reactions from public health leaders, who have lauded a call for investment in science but criticized recent loosening mask guidance as premature.
Following the State of the Union, White House officials laid out a 96-page plan on Wednesday, which called for medium- and long-term investments into the nation’s capacity to treat, prevent and surveil Covid-19. Public health leaders have reacted with excitement to President Biden’s most imminent Covid-19 policy change – a “test to treat” plan.
The plan would allow people to test for Covid-19 at pharmacies, community health centers, long-term care homes and veterans healthcare facilities and, if they test positive, receive antiviral pills at the same time.
We’re launching the “Test to Treat” initiative, so people can get tested at a pharmacy and if they’re positive, receive antiviral pills on the spot at no cost.
— President Biden (@POTUS) March 2, 2022
The administration said 1 million doses of antiviral medication, a drug called Paxlovid developed by Pfizer, will roll out in March. In April, another 2 million doses will become available.
👏 exactly how to transform COVID into a manageable infectious disease (alongside vaccines). https://t.co/aj4rSORL1l
— Prof. Devi Sridhar 🌈 (@devisridhar) March 2, 2022
Test-to-Treat for COVID at pharmacies is a very smart idea.
— Isaac Bogoch (@BogochIsaac) March 2, 2022
1. Free access to testing & COVID therapeutics
2. Pharmacists are experts in drug-interactions (an issue with some therapeutics)
3. Many pharmacies are well equipped for testing
4. Lower barriers to receive TIMELY care https://t.co/5UEuYgMbh9
Dr Eric Topol, director of the leading biomedical research nonprofit Scripps Translational Institute, called the administration’s proposals, “the comprehensive plan we’ve needed for some time, now needs to get executed”.
However, other aspects of the president’s shift in tone were roundly criticized as putting the onus to prevent Covid-19 transmission on individual rather than collective action, further burdening the most vulnerable members of society and making unworkable recommendations in the US’s fragmented and expensive healthcare system.
The focal point of criticism was the CDC’s new mask guidance, which said about 70% of Americans could go mask-free most of the time and pointed people to speak to healthcare professionals for personal masking recommendations.
Policy inaction contributed to 63% more deaths in the US during the Omicron wave than in peer countries. The CDC’s new guidance will constrain rather than compel more effective policy action moving forward.https://t.co/X8wlX2r04b
— Anne Sosin (@asosin) February 28, 2022
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Senate hearings for Biden's supreme court nominee to begin on 21 March
The Senate judiciary committee said on Wednesday that hearings for Biden’s supreme court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson will begin on Monday, 21 March.
Senator Dick Durbin, the committee chairman, announced the hearing schedule as Jackson was holding her first meetings with senators on Capitol Hill.
As is tradition, the hearings will last four days, with opening statements on 21 March and testimony and questioning the next two days. The fourth day will include testimony from outside witnesses.
Durbin said the committee “will undertake a fair and timely process to consider Judge Jackson’s nomination”.
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Today so far
Here’s a quick summary of what’s happened so far today:
- The White House coronavirus response team announced its plan for the next phase of the pandemic, which will include a “test to treat” model where people infected with Covid-19 can easily get treatment for the virus.
- Fed Chair Jerome Powell told Congress that the central bank still plans to raise interest rates and will likely do so at the end of the month, despite the uncertainty around Russia and Ukraine.
- Jessica Cisneros, a progressive House candidate in Texas will go into a run-off against Henry Cuellar, a Congressman who has had his seat for 17 years. It’s the first test of progressive-versus-conservative Democrats in the 2022 midterm election season.
Stay tuned for more live updates.
The Guardian’s health reporter Jessica Glenza on the White House’s new Covid-19 plan:
The White House announcement and State of the Union address also came with a new look and feel. At the State of the Union, Biden, Vice-President Kamala Harris and the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, were all mask-free. So, too, were White House officials when they announced the new Covid-19 plan, notably in-person rather than through a group video call.
The White House has said repeatedly this is not a plan to “live with Covid”, any more than Americans “accept ‘living with’ cancer, Alzheimer’s, or Aids”.
The new strategic footing from the administration has received a mixed response. Some public health leaders reacted with excitement to the “test to treat” plan, but revised CDC guidance has received a more tepid response.
Critics have argued that the widespread end of masking shifts the burden of preventing Covid-19 to “vulnerable individuals”, and could be premature given past pandemic surges. However, the mood of the country may have already shifted –Americans on both sides of the aisle have reported a high degree of frustration and exhaustion with the pandemic, according to recent surveys.
Progress to global vaccination has also been slow, putting the world at risk of new variants. To date, 64.4% of the world has received at least one Covid-19 vaccine dose, but there is a gulf between high- and low-income countries. Just 13% of people in low-income nations have received a vaccine, compared with 79% in high- and upper-middle-income nations.
Fed chair Jerome Powell told lawmakers today that the Fed is getting ready to increase rates later this month as it looks to cool inflation.
“We expect it will be appropriate to raise the target range for the federal funds rate at our meeting later this month,” Powell told the House financial services committee earlier today.
Powell said that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has created some uncertainty that they are ware of.
“We are going to avoid adding uncertainty to what is already an extraordinary challenging and uncertain moment,” he said. “The near-term effects on the US economy of the invasion of Ukraine, the ongoing war, the sanctions and of events to come, remain highly uncertain.”
“We will need to be nimble in responding to incoming data and the evolving outlook.”
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A member of Ukrainian parliament said that Joe Biden’s State of the Union address was “a total disappointment”.
“Today, the whole world is watching Ukrainians being executed,” said Oleksandra Ustinova, on NBC News. “We had been promised protection by the international community. We gave up our nuclear weapons.”
Ustinova said that without the enforcement of a no-fly zone over Ukraine, which the US said it would not help to enforce, “people will literally die.”
“We have been protecting ourselves on the ground, but if we do not protect our sky, if there is [not] a no-fly zone or if there is no dome to protect it with the air defense, we will all go down,” Ustinova said.
US ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield said the US will not enforce a no-fly zone over Ukraine as that will mean sending troops to Ukraine.
“We’re not going to put American troops in danger,” Thomas-Greenfield told CNN on Sunday. “That means we’re not going to put American troops in the air as well, but we will work with the Ukrainians to give them the ability to defend themselves.”
“To be honest, it was a total disappointment.” - Oleksandra Ustinova, a member of the Ukrainian Parliament, on President Biden’s State of the Union address pic.twitter.com/fLhShKuSWF
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) March 2, 2022
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White House releases details on new phase of Covid-19 response
The White House Covid-19 response team held a press briefing detailing the White House’s new National Covid-19 Preparedness Plan to be rolled out over the next 13 months.
The plan includes a federal rollout of vaccines for children younger than five upon FDA approval of the vaccine for that age group. The White House is also emphasizing use of Pfizer’s Covid-19 treatment pill to prevent hospitalizations, with plans to great “one-step test-to-treat” sites that will see people getting tested and, if positive, receive treatment for the virus.
Jeffrey Zients, the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator, said that Americans will be able to order a second batch of free Covid tests next week through USPS – expanding an initiative that rolled out in January.
And despite the undoing of mask mandates around the country, the federal government is continuing to provide masks at local pharmacies, grocery stores and community health centers across the country.
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A run-off between two Democrats in Texas for a House seat is the first test of the attractiveness of progressive candidates against established, conservative Democrats as the 2022 midterm election season kicks off.
Jessica Cisneros, 28, an immigration lawyer, has entered a run-off against her opponent, Henry Cuellar, who has had his seat for 17 years, after Texas’ primaries on Tuesday.
Cisneros has been telling voters that Cuellar, who is against abortion rights and has criticized Joe Biden’s immigration policies, is out of touch with the Congressional district, which stretches form San Antonio to the Mexican border.
“Today, we proved just how powerful our movement is and are ready to keep fighting for the future we deserve,” Cisneros said in a statement. “Together, we will take control back from Big Oil, private prisons and Wall Street, and put it back where it belongs: with the people.”
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A list of keywords created by the House committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack is providing insight into the panel’s focus of inquiry. The committee asked former Trump lawyer John Eastman to turn over records that contain the specific keywords. Here’s more from Hugo Lowell:
The search terms list – which the select committee transmitted to Eastman – provides a glimpse of what House investigators suspect might be contained among the thousands of emails and documents that Eastman is being forced to review to comply with his subpoena.
But the keywords also reveal the current investigative focus of the panel and the role Eastman played as one of the leading members of the Trump “war room” at the Willard hotel in Washington that coordinated Trump’s plan to return himself to office on 6 January 2021.
The list is intended to act as a dragnet to catch his records from 4 to 7 January about efforts to overturn the 2020 election results between Eastman and individuals in different “centres of gravity”, according to a source with direct knowledge of the investigation.
One focus for the select committee is Eastman’s records concerning Donald Trump, former vice-president Mike Pence and top Trump officials, where keywords include items as simple as “Trump”, or “EOP”, the government acronym for the executive office of the president.
The select committee is examining Eastman’s records about Republican members of Congress including Andy Biggs, Mo Brooks, Ted Cruz, Louie Gohmert, Paul Gosar, Josh Hawley, Cindy Hyde-Smith, Jim Jordan, Cynthia Lummis, Roger Marshall, Doug Mastriano, Scott Perry and Tommy Tuberville.
Another priority for the panel is messages between Eastman and those he communicated with across the federal government. The list includes the domains “usdoj.gov” and “justice.gov” for the justice department, “senate.gov” for the Senate, and “house.gov” for the House.
The select committee’s addition of “congressnc@gmail.com” – a sometime email address used by Meadows, who was a House Republican representing North Carolina before he became Trump’s final chief of staff – indicates it also wants messages not in official email records.
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Twitter is set to take down the accounts of RT and Sputnik, two state-run Russian news outlets, according to Politico.
A Twitter spokesperson said that EU sanctions “will likely legally require us to withhold certain content in EU member states.”
Yesterday, French official Cédric O, the country’s digital secretary of state, specifically criticized Twitter for being being “the last one to react, and always the one not do enough on [content] moderation.”
Other social media companies, including Youtube, TikTok and Facebook, announced this week that they will block RT’s account in Europe. Television providers have also said they are removing RT from their subscribers in Europe.
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White House press secretary Jen Psaki told CNN this morning that sanctions on Russia oil exports are “still on the table”. Psaki noted the impact that such an extreme measure would have on gas prices – Russia is the world’s second largest oil producer – and noted the White House’s sensitivity to domestic impact.
“What [Biden] does not want to do is topple the global oil markets or the global marketplace or impact the American people more with higher energy and gas prices,” Psaki said.
“That’s something we heavily weigh. It’s still on the table. It’s not off the table. But again, that’s how the president looks at this as we’re announcing and pursuing additional steps.”
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Biden announces 'test to treat' Covid strategy
In a bid to help Americans find a “new normal” with the coronavirus, Joe Biden announced a shift in Covid-19 strategy in his State of the Union address on Tuesday.
Chief among the changes the president announced will be a new “test to treat” program, which encourages people to be tested for Covid-19 at a pharmacy and then receive antiviral pills on the spot.
The plan aims to cut out numerous steps in between testing positive and receiving antiviral pills, a treatment called Paxlovid manufactured by Pfizer, which to date have been scarce.
“People can get tested at the pharmacy, if they prove positive, receive the antiviral pills on the spot at no cost,” said Biden. He said the administration ordered 1 million antiviral pills to be delivered by the end of March, and double that by April.
Biden also said his administration would work to prepare for the next variant and end school and business shutdowns in response to viral surges. A broader blueprint for how to move forward in the pandemic is expected Wednesday morning from the president’s four top coronavirus advisors.
Both announcements come on the heels of a major shift in strategy announced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) last week, which focuses future Covid-19 monitoring efforts on preventing severe disease cases from overwhelming hospitals, rather than on new cases.
The move came as the omicron-driven winter surge began to recede, and widespread infection and vaccination left a large swath of the American public less vulnerable to severe disease.
Citing the new focus on severe disease, the CDC said about 70% of Americans lived in places where they could relax mask-wearing in public, indoor places, including in schools.
Good morning, and welcome to the politics live blog. It’s the morning after last night’s State of the Union address, where Joe Biden delivered a sharp rebuke on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and promised Americans that the country will continue to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic. While the speech fell short of completely bridging divides on domestic issues, there was a clear solidarity among Democrats and Republicans on an America that is united against Russia.
Post-address, the White House is planning to travel across the country to promote Biden’s agenda, specifically to spread the word on the benefits of the bipartisan infrastructure bill that was passed last fall. Today, Biden will travel to Superior, Wisconsin to speak at a dilapidated bridge that connects the town to Duluth, Minnesota. Other top White House officials are spanning across the country to North Carolina, Chicago and Connecticut in the coming weeks.
Here’s what else is happening today:
- Ketanji Brown Jackson will be on Capitol Hill today to meet with senators, kickstarting her nomination process. She will meet with Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell followed by the top senators of the Senate Judiciary
- A jury today is set to hear testimony from a slate of witnesses for the trial of an alleged January 6 rioter today. Witnesses will include a former aide to a Democratic congressman and the friend of a Capitol Police officer that is still experiencing trauma
- Members of the White House Covid-19 response team will announce details of the National Covid-19 Preparedness Plan – the administration’s plan for the next stage of the pandemic.
Stay tuned for more live updates.
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