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Senate Democrats and White House fast-track relief bill, frustrating Republicans

InternationalJan 29. 2021House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

By The Washington Post · Erica Werner, Seung Min Kim, Jeff Stein

WASHINGTON – The two newly elected Democratic senators from Georgia pressed White House officials and fellow Senate Democrats Thursday to act quickly to pass a new round of stimulus checks, arguing that this promise won their party the Senate majority and needs to get done.

The comments by Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock during a private lunchtime call with the Senate Democratic caucus and top White House economic advisers were confirmed by several people with knowledge of them, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the discussion was private.

Ossoff and Warnock won special elections in Georgia this month on promises to deliver voters a new round of $2,000 stimulus checks if elected. President Biden made the same pledge to Georgia voters while campaigning for the two candidates, whose victories gave Democrats narrow control of the Senate.

The stimulus checks are a centerpiece of Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan, which Democrats are aiming to move quickly through Congress in coming weeks through special budget rules that would allow them to pass the legislation without GOP votes. The checks in the Biden plan are $1,400 per person, but would come on top of $600 checks included in the last relief package in December, a two-payment total of $2,000.

The arguments from Ossoff and Warnock in favor of fast action on the checks played into a larger sense of urgency among Democrats during the discussion Thursday that Biden’s package must be enacted swiftly, with or without GOP support. Aides to Ossoff and to Warnock declined to comment on the closed-door lunch.

“My strong impression was that there is general unanimity, and it’s strong that we need to be bold and decisive, particularly in putting shots and putting vaccines in people’s arms and putting money in people’s pockets and putting kids back to school,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said. “And one way to put money in people’s pockets is to fulfill our promises on stimulus payments.”

Biden administration officials on Thursday’s call included National Economic Council Director Brian Deese; Jeff Zients, who heads the administration’s covid-19 response team; and Anita Dunn, a senior adviser to the White House. A White House spokesman declined to comment.

Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., added in a statement: “Both Brian and Jeff showed us how serious the White House takes this pandemic and the actions needed to get our arms around this crisis. We know Americans need urgent help and Senate Democrats are prepared to act as soon as possible.”

The discussion came as Democrats formalized plans to move forward on their own with the stimulus legislation, despite warnings from Republicans that they might regret doing so, especially after Biden ran for president as a bipartisan dealmaker.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said earlier Thursday that the House and the Senate would take initial votes next week on a budget bill that would allow subsequent party-line passage of the sweeping relief package. She portrayed the partisan “budget reconciliation” approach as a fallback position that could pressure Republicans to come on board.

“By the end of the week we will be finished with the budget resolution, which will be about reconciliation if we need it,” Pelosi told reporters at her weekly news conference.

“We have to be ready. I do think we have more leverage to get cooperation on the other side if they know we have an alternative,” she said.

The “reconciliation” process allows a budget resolution to pass the Senate with a simple majority vote instead of the 60 votes normally required for major bills. That could allow the Democrats who control the Senate to pass the legislation with no GOP support, though it would be a struggle because the Senate is split 50-50 between the two parties after Ossoff and Warnock flipped two GOP-held Senate seats in Georgia. Democrats have the majority because Vice President Kamala Harris can break ties.

Senate Republicans, including members of a bipartisan group that has been meeting with administration officials about the relief plan, criticized Democrats’ plans to move forward under reconciliation – especially given Biden’s call for unity.

“It starts the whole process off in a very different place than I think President Biden was in his inaugural address just two weeks ago,” said Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., a member of GOP leadership.

“It’s confrontational. It’s certainly not collaborative,” Blunt said.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, a leader of the bipartisan group, told reporters that “it’s certainly not helpful” if reconciliation moves forward. She also said she had spoken personally with Biden and had “a very friendly call,” in one of the first public indications that the president is engaged in the kind of personal bipartisan outreach he promised while campaigning.

Several Republicans suggested that they would be open to a narrower bill focused on money for vaccines and other priorities. But Democrats and White House officials said they were not going that route. In addition to the new round of stimulus checks, Biden’s plan includes an extension of unemployment benefits set to expire in mid-March, an increased child tax credit, and hundreds of billions of dollars for schools, vaccines and the health-care system.

“We are not looking to split the package,” said White House press secretary Jen Psaki.

“And the reason is because we are not going to put ourselves in a place where . . . we’re choosing between helping families to put food on the table and making sure kids get back to school and getting a vaccine in the arms of Americans,” Psaki said.

Democrats said they were determined to move ahead, especially in light of alarming economic reports released Thursday, including news that economic growth shrank in 2020 more than it did during the Great Recession.

It remains uncertain whether Democrats will have the votes to move forward with a partisan reconciliation bill. The most conservative Senate Democrat, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, sidestepped when pressed Thursday on whether he’d support that approach, insisting several times that “we’re going to make Joe Biden successful.”

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The recession may be over – technically

InternationalJan 28. 2021On a rainy day in Portland, Ore., deli manager Talia Light prepares for outdoor seating only on Sept. 23, 2020. MUST CREDIT: photo for The Washington Post by Leah Nash. Photo by: Leah Nash — For The Washington Post Location: Portland, United States

By The Washington Post · Heather Long 

WASHINGTON – The pain in the U.S. economy remains deep with more than 15 million Americans on unemployment, long lines at food banks, and restaurants, shops and entertainment venues fighting for survival, but this recession might be over – at least technically.

The textbook definition of a recession is the period between the economy’s last peak and trough. Think of it like a hiker descending a mountain after reaching a summit. Once the hiker reaches the bottom again, the hike is over, even if it’sa long walk with blistered feet to the car or a long time before the hiker climbs another mountain again.

It’s abundantly clear that the U.S. economy took a big plunge in March and April of 2020. The coronavirus crisis required many parts of the economy to shutter to minimize human contact to slow the virus’s spread. Economic activity declined so severely that the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Business Cycle Dating Committee, which officially declares recessions, sprung into action:February 2020 was the peak, and the U.S. was in a recession. That declaration process normally takes months. This time, it took 15 weeks, the fastest ever.

The committee hasn’t declared an official end to the recession yet, but one of its eightmembers says the U.S. recession is technically over.

“The recession is when the economy is going down,” said Robert Gordon, an economics professor at Northwestern University and longtime member of the recession-declaring committee. “The trough was clearly last April with unemployment at 14.7% and production way down as half of the country closed down. There is no way we are going to go back and revisit those trough levels of April.”

Gordon says NBER’s committee will probably end up declaring May or June 2020 as the official turning point from recession to recovery. The committee hasn’t come out and said thatyet, because it is notoriously slow-moving. Plus, there is still a chance that a fast-spreading coronavirus variant could force another massive shutdown of the economy. But Gordon expects this will be “one of the shortest recessions on record.” (The current shortest on record is the six-month recession in 1980).

On Thursday, the Commerce Department is expected to report that the U.S. economy grew at a decent pace in the fourth quarter from October through December. That comes after a strong rebound in the third quarter. The data supports Gordon’s view that the turning point was probably in late spring or early summer.

But for many Americans, the idea that the recession is over is laughable. It shows a disconnect between how economists and Wall Street investors think about the conditions versus how the broader public views the nation’s fortunes.

The economy is still clearly operatingbelow its potential. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Wednesday that it’s a “long way” from normal, echoing the sentiment many Americans feel.

The same thing happened during the Great Recession. NBER’s committee said the official recession lasted from December 2007 to June 2009. Yet job losses kept mounting even after that point. Unemployment hit its high point of that downturn – 10% – in October 2009. And the economy spent years in a “jobless recovery.”

Right now there are nearly 10 million people who lost a job in March and April and are still out of work. That’s more unemployed than in October 2009.

“It’s not unusual for the economy to be in terrible shape during the first months or even years of the recovery,” Gordon said.

Thea Lee, president of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute put it this way: “This is not a normal recession. We are definitely in uncharted territory due to the nature of this recession.” She emphasized the especially deep losses that low-income workers, Black and Hispanic workers, and women have faced this time around.

That is why there has been a push in recent years to get policymakers in the White House, the Federal Reserve and beyond to look at a much wider array of data and perspectives as they make their assessments about the health of the economy. Simply looking at whether the economy is expanding or contracting doesn’t tell you everything – like hikers who only see that they are going up or down. They also want to know how steep the trail is and whether it’s likely to be icy or require climbing and special equipment.

In short, there’s a difference between the economy being out of a recession and being healthy.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is among many economists who have pushed for policymakers to watch a dashboard of indicators, including the Black unemployment rate, which is often the last to fall, and how many people are out of work for six months or more.

People who lose a job and can’t get back to work for half a year tend to have a much harder time getting their career and finances back on track. They often end up having to take a lower-paying job or needing to retrain. Long-term unemployment skyrocketed after the Great Recession and helped contribute to alarming numbers of Americans giving up on even looking for a job.

Nearly 4 million Americans were long-term unemployed in December, the highest level in U.S. history, except for during the Great Recession.

Harvard economics professor Gabriel Chodorow-Reich predicts long-term unemployment probably will peak in February at just above 4 million and then decline, but that is contingent on getting the coronavirus under control.

“The most important policy for the overall labor market is vaccination rollout and how well that goes,” Chodorow-Reich said.

Rebekah Love of Louisville, Ky., is among the millions of unemployed who still feel a deep recession. Love owned a pottery studio that had to close last March. The loss of her job – and her business – derailed her family’s life.

“I grew up poor. This has really plunged me back into what life was like at my parents’ house – poor,” said Love, a single mother of a teenager. “I’ve got no money in the bank. I am currently late on January’s rent. I don’t know how I’m going to make February rent. I think more community aid will come back online, but the money has yet to trickle down from the recent bill that was passed.”

Love, 46, has been searching for jobs without any luck. She ran the pottery business for just over two years. Before that, she was a computer programmer for more than a decade who never had any trouble landing good-paying jobs.

She’s barely getting any bites when she sends her resume out, even with her programming background. Companies and recruiters that do reach out have told her they want to make connections, but they also make it clear they aren’t ready to hire yet.

For Love and millions like her, the economy won’t be healthy until there are a lot more job openings and people back at work. That’s far more important than whether the nation is technically in a recession.

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Farmer’s son becomes billionaire after early bet on wind power

InternationalJan 28. 2021Wind turbines at a wind farm during sunset in Nauen Brandenburg, Germany, on Dec. 30, 2020. MUST CREDIT; Bloomberg photo by Liesa Johannssen-Koppitz.

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Yoojung Lee

Gim Seong-gon was running a steel-manufacturing business in the late 1980s when he became fascinated by wind power. The South Korea native saw growth potential in the field and decided to get involved.

It was a good decision. With an early injection of capital from Goldman Sachs, his CS Wind Corp. has become the world’s biggest manufacturer of wind towers. The firm’s shares have rallied for the past four years, surging almost fivefold in 2020 alone, and expectations are running high for even more growth with the change of administrations in Washington.

Gim, 67, the son of a farmer, is now one of the wealthiest people in South Korea. The 51% stake in the company he owns with his family is valued at $1.4 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

“Gim was quick to identify the growth potential globally,” said Han Byung-hwa, an analyst at Seoul-based Eugene Investment & Securities Co. “The industry has seen faster growth than other traditional businesses.”

Gim made the shift to renewable energy in 2003, setting up CS Wind’s first wind-tower factory in Vietnam to take advantage of lower labor costs. Five years later, his company received an investment of 47.2 billion won ($43 million) from Goldman Sachs, which helped it expand into seven countries.

CS Wind now operates plants in countries including Malaysia, China and the U.K., selling its wind towers to firms such as Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy, General Electric and Vestas Wind Systems It also plans to build factories in the U.S., where newly elected President Joe Biden has pledged to prioritize suppliers based in the nation.

“Running a business is all about constantly finding new goals to challenge,” Gim said in an interview with a company magazine in 2014. “When a goal is achieved, you need to go for a new one. That’s how I’ve managed the business.”

CS Wind shares rose as much as 3% on Wednesday, rebounding after four days of losses. A company spokesman declined to comment on Gim’s fortune.

A shift to green energy has helped lift the fortunes of companies that make everything from electric vehicles to batteries to solar panels. Investments in low-carbon energy projects and technologies more than doubled in the past decade to $501.3 billion last year, and almost two-thirds of that came from renewables — mostly solar and wind, according to a BloombergNEF report this month.

With governments around the world pushing to go green, wind and solar are expected to meet 56% of the world’s electricity demand in 2050, a BNEF analysis found. In the U.S., Biden wants to make the nation’s electricity grid carbon-free by 2035, while China plans to go carbon-neutral by 2060 and European Union leaders agreed to cut greenhouse-gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030.

The rush to renewables has boosted the fortunes throughout the world. Claus Sauter, the chairman of German biofuel maker Verbio Vereinigte BioEnergie, and his family, as well as George Sakellaris of U.S. energy-solutions supplier Ameresco Inc. have become billionaires as shares of their firms have jumped more than threefold in the past year.

Through a company representative, Sauter said the gain “spurs us on to consistently continue on the path we have chosen,” while not commenting on his wealth. An Ameresco spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for comment.

CS Wind’s offshore manufacturing operations were what appealed to Goldman Sachs when it invested in 2008, according to a spokesman for the bank. The firm, which has since exited most of the bet, said it’s one of the biggest backers of the renewable-energy sector in the region.

“We were able to couple Chairman Gim’s passion and more than two decades of deep industry expertise with our global experience and network in the alternative- and clean-technology industry,” said Stephanie Hui, co-head of Goldman Sachs’s merchant banking division in Asia.

Revenue at CS Wind more than doubled in the two years to 2019 and climbed 16% to 695 billion won in the first nine months of 2020, with net income jumping 68% to 49.3 billion won. Still, more than 80% of CS Wind’s third-quarter sales were from three clients, making it vulnerable should one of them end the relationship.

For Gim, who paid his way through college by working at the post office and giving private tutoring lessons, the company has marked a big change in fortunes.

After graduating Seoul’s Chung-Ang University with a degree in trade, he worked at a property developer and moved to Saudi Arabia in a bid to make more money. That’s where he set up his first business venture, before returning to South Korea to start a business manufacturing steel structures including chimneys for thermal power plants in 1989.

“Life was tough back then,” Gim said in a 2014 interview with a local newspaper, adding that’s also what drove him to take on new challenges. “In retrospect, that time planted confidence in me.”

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Germany’s recovery stumbles with forecast cut on extended curbs

InternationalJan 28. 2021A social distancing sign stand near the checkout counters in a supermarket in Berlin on Jan. 19, 2021. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Liesa Johannssen-Koppitz

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Birgit Jennen

Germany’s recovery from the coronavirus pandemic will be slower than expected as extended restrictions hit activity.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government now expects gross domestic product to expand by 3% in 2021, according to its updated outlook. That’s down from a 4.4% prediction in October – before the most recent curbs on businesses and people were imposed.

“The recovery will continue in 2021, albeit with less momentum,” Economy Minister Peter Altmaier said Wednesday. “The situation is still serious, and the danger of virus variants hasn’t been overcome. We therefore can’t rashly put at risk what we’ve achieved.”

After a 5% contraction last year, Germany forecasts a return to pre-pandemic levels in mid-2022 – about six months later than the government’s previous projection. The prolonged recovery has sparked a debate about debt spending, a sensitive topic that will likely play a role in national elections in September.

Increased borrowing to prop up Europe’s largest economy probably will increase the government’s deficit to 7% of GDP this year, boosting the debt ratio to about 72.5% of national output, according to the government’s report. Debt levels are expected to shrink to less than 69% of GDP in 2024.

Helge Braun, Merkel’s chief of staff, roiled conservative allies Tuesday by proposing that constitutional debt limits be altered to allow more borrowing to help offset the impact of the pandemic. The plan, rejected by Merkel’s bloc, highlights the tension facing authorities as they plot their way out of the crisis.

Merkel and the leaders of Germany’s 16 states have gradually tightened restrictions since November. The curbs now include closing nonessential stores, limiting private gatherings and restricting movement in hard-hit areas. The current package of measures will run until at least Feb. 14.

Amid concerns about faster-spreading mutations, there are no signs that the lockdown will be eased soon. Merkel has repeatedly said that the contagion rate needs to fall to a manageable level, and while the number of infections per 100,000 people over seven days is coming down, it’s still double the government’s target.

The forecast downgrade reflects deteriorating prospects across the euro zone as the bloc heads for a double-dip recession. Germany has fared better than many of its neighbors, in part thanks to generous government support, but is struggling with business disruptions and concern over vaccine shortages.

The German economy showed divergent signs with manufacturing robust, Altmaier said, while services are being hit hard. He added that the government will continue to support companies affected by the pandemic and invest in future industries such as hydrogen energy and artificial intelligence.

Europe is starting to follow the familiar script of lagging its international peers when recovering from a crisis. That was the upshot of the International Monetary Fund’s forecasts on Tuesday, which downgraded the growth outlook for 2021 across Europe and underscored a generally poorer performance compared with China and the U.S.

Europe’s rebound largely hinges on vaccination programs, which have gotten off to a sluggish start. The tensions have sparked a spat between the European Union and drugmaker AstraZeneca, which has said production problems will hit deliveries to the bloc of a coronavirus vaccine that could be recommended this week.

Merkel waded into the dispute Tuesday, hinting at potential retaliation against the U.S. efforts to restrict vaccine trade after Health Minister Jens Spahn proposed export limits for shots produced in the European Union.

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Jobless for longer: How the pandemic has hit Asian Americans

InternationalJan 28. 2021A worker pulls a cart outside a nail salon in Palo Alto, Calif., on July 28, 2020., MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by David Paul Morris.

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Reade Pickert

Asian Americans who lost their jobs during the pandemic have found it harder than most to get them back.

The 5.9% unemployment rate among the roughly 10 million-strong Asian workforce in December was below the national rate. But in the final three months of 2020, almost half of jobless Asians had been out of work for at least 27 weeks — a bigger share than White, Black or Hispanic Americans.

The reasons are largely economic and geographic. Many work in industries particularly vulnerable to business closures, and almost one-third of Asian Americans live in California, one of the states hit hardest by pandemic restrictions.

Ivy Nguyen, a nail technician in Santa Ana, California, has been unemployed since the salon where she worked closed in mid-March. When it reopened, she wasn’t among those asked to return.

Nguyen, who moved to the U.S. from Vietnam in 1980 and is in her late 50s, has received just $2,184 in unemployment benefits. Speaking by phone through a translator, she said she has relied on financial support from her children and stimulus payments.

Almost one in four Asian-American workers is employed in hospitality and leisure, retail, or other services such as salons and dry cleaners, according to a July study of covid-19’s impact on Asian employment. Those sectors are among the hardest hit by the pandemic.

“Asian Americans were hard-hit initially,” said Don Mar, co-author of the study and a professor emeritus of economics at San Francisco State University. The researchers estimated that there was a disproportionate decline in the number of Asian-owned small businesses over the first two months of the pandemic, compared with those owned by non-Hispanic Whites.

Asian Americans are diverse. More than half are foreign-born, and no single country of origin dominates, according to a Pew Research Center report. On aggregate, the population has higher education and income levels than the U.S. as a whole. But it also includes many groups — such as refugees, or those with limited English-language skills — who are at greater risk of suffering lasting scars as a result of the pandemic slump.

In California, Asian-Americans made up 16% of the state’s labor force in February and filed 19% of initial unemployment claims in the first two-and-a-half months of the shutdown, according to Mar. In New York State they made up 9% of workers and 14% of claims by mid-April.

Many of the applicants needed help for linguistic reasons. Dung Nguyen (who’s not related to Ivy) at the California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative estimates she’s helped as many as 300 people apply for government financial support during the pandemic. It involved hours of filling out forms or battling an overwhelmed and glitchy state computer system. One submission took 105 attempts.

“There’s a lot of confusion,” Nguyen said. “So folks just come to us.”

Asian immigrant workers often aren’t eligible for a lot of the social safety net, according to Howard Shih, director of research and policy at the Asian American Federation. He also says that aid programs generally weren’t designed with the Asian community in mind, citing the Paycheck Protection Program of loans for small companies as an example.Many Asian businesses “were unable to get assistance because the translations of the forms that they had to fill out and the instructions came out way too late,” Shih said.

Some firms won’t survive the pandemic, putting their employees and owners in jeopardy.Ivy Nguyen, who’s been a nail technician since 1986 and says she’s never really thought of doing anything else, is concerned about catching Covid if she goes back to work. But she’s also worried that opportunities will be hard to come by when the pandemic ends — because there’ll be so many unemployed nail-salon workers looking for a job.

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The Constitution is murky on whether a former president can be subject to an impeachment trial

InternationalJan 28. 2021House impeachment mangers walk through National Statuary Hall after leading a procession with the an article of impeachment against former president Donald Trump on Monday, Jan. 25, 2021. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Salwan Georges

By The Washington Post · Ann E. Marimow, Robert Barnes

WASHINGTON – The question of whether former president Donald Trump can be convicted at an impeachment trial now that he has left office is likely to be settled by political muscle rather than the Constitution, which is murky on the matter and provides support for those on both sides of the issue, experts said Wednesday.

Although many legal scholars take the view that a president can be tried by the Senate even when he is no longer president, they acknowledge that there is enough ambiguity in the Constitution for Republicans to embrace as reason not to convict Trump at his trial set to begin Feb. 9.

Most who have studied the question say post-presidential impeachment, conviction and disqualification from holding future office is permitted, said Brian Kalt, a leading scholar on the subject. But it is far from unanimous because of ambiguous language in the Constitution.

“It’s a tough call because there is so much uncertainty,” said Kalt, a Michigan State University law professor.

In a 2001 law review article, Kalt concluded that there is a “solid basis” because of the history, text and past practice in Congress.

“The removal requirement was a way of protecting the office from bad presidents, not a way of protecting bad presidents from impeachment for things they do right at the end of their term,” said Kalt, who helped craft a recent letter signed by 150 constitutional scholars, including a founder of the conservative Federalist Society.

Republicans overwhelmingly signaled their support this week for the opposite argument, advanced by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. – and backed by former federal judge Michael Luttig – that there is no constitutional basis for putting a former president on trial. All but five Republican senators backed Paul’s objections.

They also point to Chief Justice John Roberts’s absence as the presiding officer at the trial as supporting evidence that the impeachment is inappropriate. Roberts oversaw Trump’s first impeachment, but he has declined to comment on why he is not presiding over the coming trial.

Democrats and others say that has nothing to do with the bigger question of whether Trump must be held accountable for fomenting the violent Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol that resulted in the deaths of one police officer and four rioters.

The relevant section of the Constitution states that the “President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” Separately, it says, “Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States.”

Although it makes clear that the Senate’s punishment cannot go beyond removal or disqualification, the Constitution does not say anything about the timing of a trial.

Among those leading the arguments on both sides are legal heavyweights Laurence Tribe, a Harvard University law scholar, and Luttig, the former judge. The two frequently exchange emails on constitutional issues, most recently about this subject, and express great admiration for each other even when they disagree.

The Senate does not lose its power to hold an impeachment trial just because the official is no longer in office, Tribe said, in part because it has the authority to disqualify the person from holding future office. Although a powerful argument could be made that Congress cannot impeach a private citizen, he said, Trump was impeached by the House while still in office.

If an official could only be disqualified while still an office, that person could avoid accountability by resigning just before a final conviction vote in the Senate, he said.

Democrats have pointed to examples of the Senate holding impeachment trials for former officials, but those did not result in convictions. In 1876, Secretary of War William Belknap resigned shortly before the House voted to impeach him. The Senate affirmed its authority to hold a trial for the former executive branch official, but it did not get the two-thirds vote needed to convict him.

In response, Republicans have largely espoused Luttig’s view, first outlined in an opinion piece in The Washington Post before the House impeachment vote. Luttig says the Senate’s power to convict extends only to a sitting president. The purpose of the power, he wrote, is to remove a president before “he could further harm the nation from the office he then occupies.”

“The historical fact that the Congress has impeached former officers after they were no longer incumbent in their offices is evidence only that at times the Congress has assumed that it had the constitutional power to impeach former officers,” Luttig added in an interview Wednesday.

Only the Supreme Court, he said, can decide the legal question of whether Congress does in fact have that authority.

Two former solicitors general from Democratic and Republican administrations said courts probably would not settle the question of whether the impeachment trial is permissible.

The Supreme Court in a 1993 case involving the impeachment of a federal judge named Walter Nixon said the question of whether the Senate proceedings against Nixon were proper was a “political question,” meaning it was to be resolved by the Senate, not the judiciary.

Because of that precedent, “it’s pretty clear that the Supreme Court will not get involved in these issues,” said Paul Clement, solicitor general under President George W. Bush. “My strong sense is that the courts – starting with the first district court that addresses it up to the Supreme Court – will say, ‘No thank you – political question.’ “

The two also agreed that Roberts’s absence from the second trial does not signal the chief justice’s opinion about the legality of the proceedings. Under the Constitution, the chief justice presides over a trial of “the president,” not necessarily a former president.

“I don’t think the chief is foreshadowing a view of that separate question” of the legitimacy of a post-presidency trial, Clement said. “And if he thought he were, he’d have done something different, maybe explain it in writing.”

He added: “I think the chief has just made it clear he reads that clause to mean the current president of the United States.”

At a seminar at Georgetown University’s law center, Clement and Neal Katyal, solicitor general in the Obama administration, agreed. Katyal said that Roberts would have presided if the trial began before Jan. 20, and that the question then would have been whether to continue.

“I 100% think the chief is right in not presiding over this impeachment the way it was structured,” Katyal said.

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Zuckerberg slams Apple in an earnings call, casting Facebook as a victim

InternationalJan 28. 2021Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg

By The Washington Post · Elizabeth Dwoskin

On a fourth quarter earnings call Wednesday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg lashed out at Apple, calling Apple anti-competitive at a moment when the social network itself is facing major federal scrutiny over antitrust issues.

“We increasingly see Apple as one of our biggest competitors,” Zuckerberg said, noting that Apple’s iMessage software is preinstalled on iPhones – enabling it to become the most widely used messaging service in the U.S., unlike Facebook’s WhatsApp – and that Apple’s growing investment in services also enables it compete with Facebook and other apps that use its iOS software platform.

“Apple has every incentive to use their dominant platform position to interfere with how our apps and other apps work, which they regularly do,” he said. “They say they are doing this to help people, but the moves clearly track their competitive interests.”

Zuckerberg’s comments, at a moment when the social network is being accused of major antitrust violations by the U.S. Department of Justice, seemed intended to paint a picture of Facebook as a service that is not a monopoly because it faces significant competitive threats, and to point out that its rival tech giant is even more powerful than Facebook. Apple is the world’s wealthiest company by market capitalization; Facebook is the sixth.

Zuckerberg also accused Apple of providing false assurances on user privacy. He said that while Apple claims its iMessage software is encrypted and privacy-protecting, the company stores a backup of people’s messages. He compared that practice to WhatsApp, which does not.

He also reiterated messaging from Facebook that upcoming changes to Apple’s iPhone software would disproportionately harm both Facebook and small businesses that rely on personalized advertisements to reach customers and find new ones. Apple says that it made its policy change to limit data collection in order to protect user privacy.

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D.C., Virginia change distribution as residents scramble to find doses

InternationalJan 28. 2021Virginia Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam talks with Claire Brasler, 47, a school nurse from Henrico County helping to administer the coronavirus vaccine, at the Richmond Raceway on Jan. 21. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Gregory S. Schneider.

By The Washington Post · Jenna Portnoy, Julie Zauzmer, Erin Cox, Rachel Chason

WASHINGTON – Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam on Wednesday announced a flurry of coronavirus vaccine distribution and data reporting changes in the state, which has ranked among the worst-performing for getting doses out, while the District of Columbia streamlined its registration system for seniors trying to book appointments.

Responding to criticism that Virginia has not moved fast enough in identifying hundreds of thousands of seemingly unused doses, the Democratic governor urged hospitals not to hold on to second doses and advised health districts how to more fairly distribute the vaccine among eligible populations.

The state also launched a new vaccine reporting website, changed the time it reports its data to better line up with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and will strengthen its efforts to have providers ask a person’s race and ethnicity at the time of vaccination.

“Vaccines are the light at the end of this long and dark tunnel, and they are a great reason for hope and optimism,” Northam said at a news conference. “I also want to acknowledge that everyone is out of time and patience.”

Northam and Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, said separately Wednesday they hoped recent announcements by the Biden administration to increase supply by 16% for the next three weeks and, later, by 50% would ease the imbalance between supply and demand.

The Virginia Department of Health soon will create a statewide system for residents to register for vaccine appointments, Northam said. Residents now must navigate a hodgepodge of local health district websites and phone numbers to secure a slot.

“I know this has been a source of great frustration for a lot of Virginians,” he said. “I take this seriously because I know that people just want answers. Even if the answer is they can’t get an appointment for a month or two, it’s important that everyone knows where to go and how to sign up.”

Northam said Virginia and other states expanded eligibility weeks ago based on a pledge by the Trump administration that more doses were on the way. When the doses never materialized, he said providers who worried about supply shortages held on to doses.

“That lead to a situation where there’s too much supply in some places and not enough in other places,” he said.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, left, Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks, a Democrat, and other officials talk with Louse Schmeltzer, who has just received her vaccine at a grocery store in Capitol Heights, Md., on Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2021. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Bill O’Leary

Virginia officials expect the state’s weekly allotment to increase from 105,000 to 120,000.

According to CDC tracking, Virginia has ranked last or almost last recently for its vaccine administration as a proportion of total doses delivered, but Northam said the changes helped the state move up with an average of 26,000 daily shots. He has set a goal of administering 50,000 daily shots.

Northam on Wednesday also extended until Feb. 28 his restrictions on gatherings of more than 10 people and a ban on alcohol service after 10 p.m. Those were set to expire at the end of this month.

In D.C., officials on Wednesday also tweaked plans to vaccinate seniors, people with high-risk conditions, teachers and other essential workers as residents scramble to find scarce doses of the vaccine.

In response to complaints from frustrated seniors and D.C. lawmakers, the city announced technical changes to its online process for scheduling vaccine appointments. Health Director LaQuandra Nesbitt told the D.C. Council that more significant changes to the registration system are on the way.

The greater Washington region has reported 870,977 known cases of the coronavirus since the start of the pandemic, including 7,331 new coronavirus infections Wednesday, while 14,119 people have died of covid-19, the illness that can be caused by the virus.

As the pandemic’s economic harm continues, Maryland senators pitched adding $520 million in aid to Hogan’s proposed $1 billion state stimulus package.

The extra money would go to nearly three dozen groups or organizations, ranging from food banks and restaurants to people with disabilities, volunteer firefighters, the unemployed and people behind on utility bills.

Hogan has proposed sending checks of up to $750 to the state’s poorest families. The Maryland Senate could vote on the expanded proposal as soon as next week. Meanwhile, Maryland’s seven-day average case rate declined 37% over the past 15 days, from a pandemic high of 3,228 cases on Jan. 12 to 2,029 on Wednesday.

Hogan said Maryland has a six-day supply of vaccines because vaccinations are outpacing federal allocations.

“We’re caught up and about to run out of vaccine,” Hogan said outside a Giant pharmacy vaccination clinic in Prince George’s County.

Demand for the doses has overwhelmed appointment systems. The registration site for Giant pharmacies crashed within minutes of going online, said Samir Balile, manager of clinical programs for 153 Giant pharmacies in D.C., Maryland and Virginia.

Giant is distributing about 5,500 doses in the region each week, and appointments for them were gone “within minutes,” Balile said.

In Richmond, Mayor Levar Stoney, a Democrat, said Wednesday that he had tested positive for the coronavirus after the onset of mild symptoms two days earlier. He is working from home, and people he came into contact with are quarantining and taking necessary precautions, according to his office.

The mayor of Virginia’s capital city said more than 12,000 Richmonders have been infected by the virus.

“As my personal experience should tell you, while there is reason to be hopeful due to the distribution of the vaccine, this pandemic is still far from over and must be taken seriously,” Stoney said.

At least 912,000 first doses of the vaccine have been administered in D.C., Maryland and Virginia.

As of Wednesday, Maryland had administered 363,282 first doses while distributing 852,625 total doses. In Virginia as of Tuesday, 497,581 first doses had been administered of the 1.1 million the state has distributed.

As of Saturday, D.C. had administered 51,421 of the 68,750 doses it has received.

CVS and Walgreens, which have federal contracts to vaccinate residents and staffers at nursing homes, are nearly finished giving first doses at clinics in residential facilities in the region.

Advocates are pushing health officials in Maryland to come up with a vaccination plan for seniors in independent-living facilities, who were not included in the federal vaccination program.

“Independent living has fallen through the cracks,” said Joseph DeMattos, president of the Health Facilities Association of Maryland.

Management at Charles E. Smith Life Communities in Rockville, which includes the state’s largest nursing home, in addition to assisted living and independent-living facilities, has been pushing state and county officials for an on-site vaccination clinic for about 500 seniors in independent living.

Few of those seniors have been able to secure appointments, said Brenda Rice, vice president of operations at Charles E. Smith Life Communities. Meanwhile, 91% of those in its nursing home have received their second dose of the vaccine, and vaccinations in assisted living are beginning this week.

Hogan said the state is working with Giant pharmacies to inoculate seniors in independent-living communities, but details on the timing were still underway.

Elsewhere in Maryland, Anne Arundel County is lifting restrictions on restaurants, stores and churches, allowing them to operate at 50% capacity. Movie theaters, which had been closed, will open at 25%. The new policies take effect Friday.

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Federal Reserve Chair Powell says ‘nothing more important’ to economy than vaccinating Americans

InternationalJan 28. 2021Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell

By The Washington Post · Rachel Siegel

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Wednesday that getting Americans vaccinated is the most important thing to help the economy, comments that could boost President JoeBiden’s push to pass a massive new relief package that includes big spending on vaccines.

“There’s nothing more important to the economy right now than people getting vaccinated,” Powell said at a news conference following the Fed’s regular policy meeting.

“That is really the main thing about the economy, is getting the pandemic under control, getting everyone vaccinated, getting people wearing masks and all that,” Powell added. “That’s the single most important economic growth policy that we can have.”

Powell’s comments came on the same day Biden’s covid-19 response team held its first public briefing, with senior adviser Andy Slavitt emphasizing that they cannot reach their goal of vaccinating all Americans unless Congress acts to pass Biden’s $1.9 trillion relief package.

The package includes $160 billion for a national vaccination program, expanded testing, more public health jobs and other steps to curb the pandemic that has claimed more than 425,000 American lives and upended the economy.

Slavitt said that the administration can reach its initial goal of getting 100 million people vaccinated within 100 days without congressional action, “but that’s just the start.”

“In order to get all Americans vaccinated we need Congress to provide funds,” Slavitt said, including for expanding production and establishing more vaccination sites.

Congress has already devoted tens of billions of dollars to vaccine production and distribution, but as the pace of vaccinations lags what the Trump administration had promised and new variants of the coronavirus emerge, demand for vaccinations is far outpacing what Americans are demanding.

Powell and other Fed leaders have long emphasized that the economy will not fully heal until the pandemic is under control. But Wednesday marked the first time central bankers, in a statement released after their policy meeting, specified “progress on vaccinations” as core to the recovery.

“We haven’t won this yet,” Powell said. “We clearly can, but we’re going to have to say focused.”

The need for more money for vaccinations could prove a compelling argument in favor of passing Biden’s relief package, and a pressure point to try to win Republican support. Despite some discussion of breaking off vaccines and stimulus checks as a stand-alone bill, Biden said earlier this week he did not want to do that.

Overall, Biden’s relief package has gotten a frosty reception from many Republicans on Capitol Hill, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who dismissed it as an overly expensive and untargeted wish list of liberal priorities. In addition to vaccine funding, the package includes an extension of unemployment benefits that would otherwise expire in mid-March, a new round of $1,400 stimulus checks, an increased child tax credit, an increase in the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, more than $130 billion for schools, and more.

But the need for spending on vaccines has emerged as an area of bipartisan consensus in meetings Biden administration officials have held with bipartisan groups of lawmakers in the Senate and the House.

Because of the widespread GOP opposition to the overall package, Democratic leaders in both chambers are making plans to try to advance the legislation under special rules that could allow it to pass with a simple majority vote in the Senate, meaning no Republican support would be required. Democrats say, however, that they still hold out hope for GOP support for the bill, and bipartisan discussions are continuing.

Overall, Powell said economic activity and employment had moderated in recent months. That pain has been most concentrated in service sectors – restaurants, bars, hotels – that have borne the brunt of the pandemic. December marked the first month of job losses since the recovery began in May.

For months, Powell has urged lawmakers to keep up the direct relief to struggling households and businesses, warning against the risks of withdrawing support too soon.

That’s especially the case, Powell said, for service-sector workers, including many women and people of color, whose jobs may only return once the health crisis ends. Still, Powell routinely stops short of outlining what should or should not go into another relief bill, leaving those discussions to the White House and Congress.

His overarching message is just to keep the aid flowing.

“Fiscal policy has been absolutely essential, and when we look back, we’ll see a strong and sustained fiscal policy response,” Powell said Wednesday. “As I mentioned, we’re a long way from a full recovery.”

Powell told reporters that he himself had received his first vaccine shot, and was awaiting the second.

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Biden draws line on climate with oil-lease pause, subsidy review

InternationalJan 28. 2021President Biden with President Harris, left, in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington on Jan. 21, 2021. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Al Drago.

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Jennifer A. Dlouhy, Ari Natter

President Joe Biden will take executive action on Wednesday to combat climate change, including temporarily blocking new leases for oil drilling on federal lands, ordering a review of fossil-fuel subsidies and other measures to overhaul the U.S. energy mix.

Biden will sign broad-ranging directives instructing federal agencies to consider climate change in everything from government purchases to national security. He will order U.S. intelligence authorities to estimate how climate change affects national security and tell agencies to do a better job assessing the threat.

“These executive orders follow through on President Biden’s promise to take aggressive action to tackle climate change and build on the executive actions that the president took on his first day in office,” the White House says in a fact sheet on the planned moves released Wednesday.

Much of the action has been telegraphed previously and builds on promises Biden made on the campaign as part of his bid to make the U.S economy carbon neutral by 2050. It’s not clear he’ll be able to do everything unilaterally.

For instance, Biden is directing federal agencies “to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies as consistent with applicable law,” and instead, seek “new opportunities to spur innovation, commercialization and deployment of clean energy technologies and infrastructure,” according to the White House.

However, while the Biden administration has some latitude to shift some funding for innovation at the Energy Department, abolishing tax incentives that support fossil fuel development, such as deductions for intangible drilling costs, would require action by Congress.

Still environmentalists were cheering the move as the boldest action by a president yet to confront the climate crisis and the fossil fuels that drive it.

“The era of putting polluters’ profits first is over,” said Josh Axelrod, senior advocate for the nature program at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “We can’t lock our children and grandchildren into decades more of the dirty fossil fuels of the past, and all the hazards and harms they bring to our public lands, oceans and coastal communities.”

Supporters of the fossil fuel industry said jobs would be lost. Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon, a Republican, said the president’s moves “will divide and alienate the very working-class American communities with whom the Biden administration has pledged to unite.”

“It is clear President Biden has caved in to a loud segment of the Democratic Party that is pushing to require all policies and decisions to meet a litmus test of climate change, regardless of consequence,” Gordon said in an emailed statement. “There are bipartisan solutions available that support the people working in oil and gas on federal lands as well as reduce carbon emissions.”

Biden’s order directs federal agencies to purchase zero-emission power and automobiles, such as electric vehicles, as a way to “leverage the federal government’s footprint and buying power to lead by example,” according to the White House fact sheet. The U.S. maintains fleet of 645,000 vehicles and operates nearly 10,000 buildings, according to the General Services Administration.

Biden is also inviting world leaders to a climate summit on April 22 — Earth Day — in a sign of the new president’s commitment to not just rejoin the Paris climate accord but strengthen it. The president’s efforts Wednesday kick off work to develop a new, stronger U.S. carbon-cutting commitments well as a climate finance plan, according to the White House.

The president’s announcements come as his administration has made climate change one of its top priorities — seeking to marshal the entire federal government to combat the crisis.

The work will be buttressed by new government commissions focused on climate, job creation and environmental justice. Biden will establish a climate-focused civilian conservation corps along the lines of the program created by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the Great Depression.

Biden is committing to conserve 30% of U.S. lands and waters by 2030 and revitalize communities that have borne the brunt of pollution. It is unclear what form those protections might take but conservation could involve designating areas as wilderness, refuges or national monuments — and walling off industrial development or even hiking and other recreational activity. And the goal could even encompass private land, as Biden directs the U.S. Department of Agriculture to consider ways to encourage climate-friendly agricultural practices that help store carbon.

The efforts will help restore forests, sequester carbon and revitalize wetlands, said Collin O’Mara, president of the National Wildlife Federation. Biden is “advancing solutions that will accelerate our economic recovery and revitalize frontline communities, while simultaneously confronting our nation’s biodiversity, climate and racial justice crises,” O’Mara said.

Biden’s temporary halt of the sale of new oil and gas rights on federal lands and coastal waters buys time for “a rigorous review” of the government’s leasing programs, according to the White House. About 22% of total U.S. crude supplies and 12% of U.S. natural gas came from federal lands and waters in 2019, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Under the order, Biden is directing the Interior Department to pause entering into new oil and natural gas leases “to the extent possible,” while looking for ways to double renewable energy production from offshore wind by 2030. The construction of just one new coastal wind farm could be enough to fulfill the pledge, with just two small projects currently operating near Rhode Island and Virginia. New installations are already planned up and down the U.S. coast, pending the agency’s approval.

The oil and gas leasing moratorium won’t affect ongoing operations under existing leases, the government’s sale of coal rights or energy activities on lands the U.S. holds in trust for tribes. Oil companies stockpiled leases and drilling permits in advance of Biden’s election, further blunting the effect.

Still, it could deliver a big economic blow to New Mexico, North Dakota and other states with substantial oil and gas reserves on federal land. The effects on the oil industry also will be uneven, with the impact falling heaviest on producers with significant federal acreage, such as Devon Energy and Cimarex Energy onshore and Murphy Oil offshore.