Politics recap
That’s it for today. Here’s what happened:
- Joe Biden and Olaf Scholz held a press conference following a meeting at the White House to coordinate their response to a potential Russian invasion of Ukraine. Both leaders insisted the nations were united and threatened crippling sanctions, though they offered no specifics on whether Berlin was willing to halt operations of Nord Stream 2 in the event of a possible attack.
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Biden said the controversial pipeline, which runs under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany, was “not going to happen” in such a scenario. But he did not provide an explanation for his guarantee.
- Secretary of state Anthony Blinken delivered a similar message alongside European Commission vice-president Josep Borrell. He said the US and its allies were “fully aligned” over how to address a potential Russian invasion.
- New Jersey governor Phil Murphy announced he was ending a statewide mask mandate for schools, saying the time had come to shift from a “pandemic to endemic phase of this virus”.
- Jen Psaki defended the White House’s decision not to fire Eric Lander, the president’s top science adviser, after an internal investigation concluded that he bullied and demeaned subordinates, even as she called the behavior “inappropriate”. He apologized to staff for his behavior.
- The supreme court voted 5-4 to allow Alabama to proceed with its current congressional map, despite a lower court’s January ruling that it violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting the vote of its Black residents.
- The FBI sent Google a warrant seeking user information on people who were in the vicinity of a Seattle police union headquarters during a BLM protest over the killing of Jacob Blake, newly unsealed documents show.
- Peter Thiel is stepping down from Facebook’s board, which he joined in 2005, to focus on backing Trump allies in the midterm elections.
- Lauren, Johana, Martin
Updated
The number of people who’ve died while homeless has shot up by 77% in the last five years, according to an exclusive report and analysis of 20 US urban areas by my colleague Erin McCormick.
More from Erin’s story here:
The rise from 2016 through 2020 was driven by many factors, including ever-rising numbers of people living on the street and the growing dangers they face, such as violence, untreated disease and increasingly deadly illicit drug supplies.
From 65-year-old Randy Ferris, killed when a car veered into a California sidewalk encampment, Justine Belovoskey, 60, who died alone in a tent during a Texas cold snap, and Anthony Denico Williams, stabbed to death at age 20 in Washington DC, to scores of young people succumbing to overdoses on the streets, their stories reflect the harrowing tragedy of an epidemic of homelessness.
“People who die while experiencing homelessness are some of the most neglected in society,” said Matt Fowle, University of Washington researcher and co-creator of the organization Homeless Deaths Count. “These are folks who most need our help and are least likely to receive it.”
Coronavirus was just one more hazard people struggling on the streets and in shelters faced in the last two years.
While the federal government makes no effort to count deaths nationally of people deemed homeless, the Guardian worked with Fowle to collect local data from large urban areas, where consistent year-to-year counts were available. The stark results stretch from Los Angeles and Seattle to New York, Philadelphia and Miami, via the heartland.
The Guardian’s analysis counted 18,000 people who died homeless over five years in encampments, on sidewalks or in shelters, including 5,000 deaths in 2020 alone. In most cases, the deaths were tracked by county coroners and medical examiners, but in a few locations only local non-profits kept track.”
