A group of reporters who cover parliamentary news dubbed the Senate, which has 250 senators appointed by the junta, as “parasite” in their year-end ritual of mocking politicians.
“Parasite” senators suck the country’s resources and make no contribution to the country, they said.
The reporters blamed the Senate for using delaying tactics to stall the much-needed amendment of the Constitution, despite being pushed hard by pro-democracy protesters and MPs of opposition parties.
The House of Representatives was dubbed “termites trapped in the mud”, meaning that each termite operated for his or her own benefits and survival, without caring for the people’s interest. Members of Parliament were blamed for not giving priority to House meetings and this undermined democracy, according to the reporters.
House Speaker Chuan Leekpai was mocked as a “principal with a broken cane”, alluding to his inability to make Parliament meetings effective, comparing him with a school principal who fails to bring order to the classroom.
But not everyone was mocked. The reporters picked chief of opposition whip and Pheu Thai Party MP Suthin Khlangsaeng as “star of Parliament”. Suthin’s performance outshone that of opposition leader Sompong Amornwiwat, leader of Pheu Thai Party, they said.
The reporters chose the proposed Constitution amendment as the “event of the year”, as it was the first time a draft of the constitution amendment proposed by the people had landed in Parliament, though it was eventually voted down in November. Pro-democracy protesters also demonstrated outside Parliament in November, leading to violent clashes as police used water canon and tear gas against the youth-led protesters. The government also mobilised ultra-royalists to counter the youth-led protesters, leading to a violent clash between the two groups. The clashes left many people injured.
The reporters picked “it was flour”, as the quote of the year. They were referring to the infamous use of the word “flour” by Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Cooperatives Captain Thamanat Prompow, who had been jailed for smuggling heroin into Australia. Defending himself during a no-confidence debate in February, Thamanat had claimed that it was not heroin but flour.
By The Washington Post · Seung Min Kim, Jeff Stein, Mike DeBonis, Toluse Olorunnipa
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump late Sunday signed a stimulus and spending bill into law, three people briefed on his decision said, averting a Tuesday government shutdown. His decision to back down and sign the measure will release $900 billion in stimulus funds into the economy that had been held up for nearly a week.
The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose Trump’s move, which took place while Trump was vacationing in Florida. They said the president had repeatedly changed his mind on the matter.
Trump’s signing came less than a week after he demanded changes to the bill. He had suggested that he would refuse to sign it into law unless those demands were met. On Tuesday, he referred to the bill as a “disgrace.” It was unclear what prompted him to change his mind late Sunday, but he was under tremendous pressure from Republicans to acquiesce.
The government would have shut down on Tuesday if Trump did not act. In addition to containing money to fund government operations, the spending package includes emergency relief money that finances a new round of stimulus checks, unemployment aid, and small business assistance, among other things.
Before the signed the bill, Trump hinted Sunday evening that there had been a development. He tweeted that there was “Good news on Covid Relief Bill. Information to follow!”
Congress overwhelmingly passed the bipartisan bill Monday night, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin praised it, something congressional leaders in both major political parties interpreted as a sign that Trump was supportive. But the president released a video on Tuesday demanding changes. He said, among other things, that the bill should have authorized stimulus checks of $2,000 per person instead of the $600 payments. Trump also wanted spending cuts to be included in the package, a concern he had not raised until after Congress passed the bill.
Before the video was posted, Mnuchin had said the stimulus checks could be sent as soon as this week. The $600 payments had been Mnuchin’s idea to begin with. It’s unclear whether the roughly week-long delay would push back the issuance of the payments, or whether they could still go out this week.
Trump’s declaration that he wanted changes made to the bill stunned congressional leaders and many White House aides. The spending and stimulus bill had been negotiated with Mnuchin and other White House officials, and the treasury secretary had praised the legislation in a Dec. 21 CNBC appearance.
In recent days, Trump issued a number of tweets appearing to continue his insistence on the $2,000 checks. Authorizing the larger checks, however, did not seem politically feasible in time to avert a shutdown Tuesday. Many Democrats supported the idea of larger stimulus checks, but a number of Republicans opposed it. Approving such a change without unanimous consent in one day is not possible.
The consequences of inaction would have been immense.
Hundreds of thousands of federal employees would have been sent home without pay. The many federal employees who would continue to work because they are deemed “essential,” such as members of the military, would not have be paid until a new funding bill were authorized.
Eviction protections for millions of Americans would lapse later this week, more than 14 million people would lose unemployment benefits, and no stimulus checks would be issued. New money for vaccine distribution, small-business aid, the ailing airline industry, and schools also would have been frozen.
Earlier Sunday, lawmakers expressed a mix of frustration and fury that Trump had not signaled publicly what he planned to do.
“I understand he wants to be remembered for advocating for big checks, but the danger is he’ll be remembered for chaos and misery and erratic behavior if he allows this to expire,” Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., said on Fox News on Sunday. “So I think the best thing to do, as I [said], sign this and then make the case for subsequent legislation.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., on ABC News said the president was behaving as an “extraordinary narcissist” and was almost “pathologically narcissistic” in his eleventh-hour campaign against the bill.
“It is insane. It is really insane, and this president has got to finally . . . do the right thing for the American people and stop worrying about his ego,” Sanders said.
Millions of American families who have lost their jobs during the pandemic and are still struggling have no choice but to await the president’s decision.
Deseree and Matthew Cox have had little income since August, when Matthew Cox was let go from his management job in pest control. His application for unemployment benefits from Florida has never made it through the system’s queue. The $300 per week Matthew Cox, 38, scrapes together driving for DoorDash hardly makes a dent covering bills, rent and food for themselves and their two children with special needs.
The Coxes have depleted their savings and moved from South Florida to the Indianapolis area for cheaper cost of living and to be near family who could help with child care. But they say they need the extended unemployment benefits, rental assistance, extended eviction moratoriums and direct payments promised by Congress’s stimulus package.
At one point, Deseree Cox, 37, said she could not afford a medication her son needs “just for him to be able to function.”
“People will die without this money,” Deseree Cox said. “People will get evicted. People will not be able to get their medication. To [lawmakers], $600 or $2,000, it seems so little. But to the American people right now, it’s just everything.”
Since the president posted the video on Dec. 22, White House aides have not offered public briefings on his strategy or plans. Instead, Trump has issued tweets reiterating his demand for changes but not saying much more. Vice President Mike Pence is in Vail, Colo., and has been out of sight in recent days.
The White House has provided virtually no information about what its plans are to head off the potential economic calamity of a shutdown and the failure of the relief effort. A White House spokesman declined to comment when asked about the president’s intentions. Negotiations between congressional leaders and the administration were at a standstill on Sunday, and a backup plan had not materialized.
Before Trump signaled that he would sign the bill, people close to the White House described a chaotic scene in which senior officials anxiously await the president’s next move. Republicans have expressed increasing concern that by refusing to sign the bill, Trump could hurt the party’s prospects in the Georgia Senate races on Jan. 5. If Republicans lose those two seats, Democrats will control the chamber.
On Sunday, Trump said he planned to travel to Georgia on Jan. 4 to help campaign for the two Republican candidates.
“Everybody in the White House is trying to figure out what’s in Trump’s head, if this is a bluff or if he’s going to carry this out. He’s been confronted with all the facts and evidence,” said one person briefed by several White House officials over the weekend, speaking on the condition of anonymity to reveal internal discussions. “Nobody knows what Trump is going to do. It’s a bizarre situation.”
One person who interacted with Trump in Palm Beach, Fla., in recent days said the president had not discussed the economic relief bill or the looming government funding deadline. Instead, Trump has been far more focused on his failed effort to reverse the election result, lashing out at Republicans in Congress and members of his own administration for not joining him in the fight.
Trump tweeted several times over the weekend to criticize the aid package, saying: “Increase payments to the people, get rid of the “pork.” He also tweeted: “$2000 + $2000 plus other family members. Not $600. Remember, it was China’s fault!”
Increasing the stimulus payments from $600 per person to $2,000 per adult would add roughly $370 billion to the cost of the bill. In the Cares Act, which passed in March, lawmakers approved stimulus payments of $1,200, which went to more than 100 million Americans.
The 5,593-page bill that Trump now has signaled he will sign was introduced Monday and approved by the House and Senate later that day. It was a fast turnaround, but it was supported by broad majorities in both chambers. The Senate passed the measure 92 to 6.
With Trump and Pence ensconced in resort towns over the weekend, the incoming Biden administration seized on the void to allege that the Trump administration was exhibiting rudderless leadership by delaying an announcement.
On Saturday, Biden accused Trump of an “abdication of responsibility” that would lead to “devastating consequences.”
Biden’s transition team announced Sunday that he would deliver remarks Monday after a briefing by his national security team.
Vice President-elect Kamala Harris also weighed in Sunday, saying American families needed economic support.
“Educators, cafeteria workers, bus drivers, custodians, and the nurses who keep our schools running are being stretched to their limit by this pandemic,” she wrote on Twitter. She added that she and Biden “are committed to ensuring they get the relief they deserve.”
Millions of Americans are days away from losing unemployment payments, housing assistance and other critical coronavirus aid, as federal relief begins to evaporate amid President Donald Trump’s continued refusal to sign a $900 billion congressional stimulus deal into law.
The programs – adopted at the start of the still-worsening pandemic – have helped people purchase groceries, pay their bills, stay current on their rents and mortgages and take sick leave over the past nine months. All are set to expire this week a result of Trump’s last-minute decision to reject a bipartisan aid package that his own administration had helped negotiate.
The economic unraveling is set to take place over several days.
Democratic and Republican lawmakers also sought to use the stimulus deal to plus up some federal safety-net support, enhance vaccine distribution, extend new lifelines to cash-starved businesses and distribute one-time, $600 checks to most Americans. They coupled their new aid with a must-pass measure that would fund the government’s operations through September 2021.
With that agreement now in tatters, however, Washington has found itself scrambling in anticipation of a government shutdown on Tuesday – a halt that threatens to undermine the government’s ability to respond to the coronavirus pandemic and the economic crisis it has wrought.
“I don’t now how to describe it other than traumatic,” said G. William Hoagland, a senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center.
With millions of Americans bracing for sudden, severe financial hardship, Trump spent much of the weekend mounting false attacks against Democrats and tweeting disproven conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election. He has held off in signing the stimulus in an attempt to secure larger one-time direct payments to Americans, an idea his own party does not support and moved to block this past week.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment on Sunday as the president decamped to one of his golf courses in Florida.
Here’s what will happen if the bill isn’t signed into law:
– Unemployment benefits lapse:
The economic blow is likely to land hardest on 14 million people who lost their jobs early in the pandemic and still have not been rehired. They have exhausted their benefits, and they are unlikely to see any more aid until Trump signs the stimulus into law.
The day after Christmas marked the last week for which these workers could have applied to receive their weekly unemployment checks. Some of the workers now at greatest risk participate in the so-called “gig economy,” driving for Uber or delivering for GrubHub, as they stand to lose access to the tranche of jobless aid Congress authorized back in March.
Democratic and Republican lawmakers extended unemployment benefits as part of the $900 billion package they adopted last week. But Trump’s newfound opposition to their bipartisan stimulus deal prevented it from being implemented before December 26. The missed deadline means workers now face at least a week, if not likely more, during which they will receive no financial help at all.
Even if Trump had signed the $900 billion deal into law, it might have taken some states weeks to implement the payments given the archaic nature of their computer systems. But the president’s approach threatens even greater delays, keeping checks out of the hands of workers who need it most – with no guarantee they’ll ever receive the payments they missed.
“Fourteen million people not getting paid for a week in this economy is not good,” said Michele Evermore, a senior policy analyst for the National Employment Law Project, which advocates for out-of-work Americans. “That’s an immediate hardship.”
– A looming eviction crisis:
As many as 17 million households are behind on their rent and may face the immediate threat of eviction starting January 1. Out of work – and out of cash – these families have benefited from limited federal eviction protections that are set to expire in four days, further adding to the pressure on the president to act.
“We’re facing the very real possibility of tens of millions of people losing their homes this winter,” said Diane Yentel, the president of the National Low-Income Housing Coalition.
The Trump administration issued a moratorium on evictions this fall out of a belief that a homelessness crisis could worsen in the coronavirus pandemic, forcing people into cramped living conditions. Housing experts praised the policy, even though it caused some headaches – allowing landlords, for example, to start legal proceedings against tenants even if they could not yet remove people from their homes.
Once it expires at midnight Dec. 31, there “may be many families who lose their homes immediately,” said Yentel, adding her organization’s repeated efforts to contact the Trump administration have gone unanswered.
Lawmakers sought to implement an eviction moratorium of their own as part of the $900 billion stimulus that Trump has not yet signed. The package also includes $25 billion to help renters pay back their bills and other costs, including their electricity and water payments, amid growing concerns that Americans are falling far behind on their bills.
– Other new programs put on hold:
Unless the sprawling stimulus package is signed into law, hundreds of billions of dollars in aid for small businesses, households, schools, transportation services, vaccine distribution, internet access and more will fall into limbo. Republican and Democratic lawmakers agreed that the $900 billion relief package would not entirely heal the economy. But there was still hope that their targeted aid could help fill the recovery’s lingering gaps during a brutal winter.
It also set aside stimulus checks up to $600, including for adults and children. Initially, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said millions of Americans could start receiving payments as soon as this week. But that pledge was thwarted Dec. 22 when Trump demanded Congress revisit the bill and raise the level of stimulus checks to $2,000 (Trump has also demanded reductions in money for foreign aid). Trump has doubled down over the weekend, though it is wildly unclear what his involvement is in new negotiations, or if his insistence on larger payments will derail the entire bill.
Small businesses were supposed to see a lift through $284 billion for first and second forgivable Paycheck Protection Program loans, and $20 billion for targeted grants through the Economic Injury Disaster Loans program. The package provides $15 billion in additional aid for the arts and entertainment industry, including independent movie theaters, entertainment venues, music clubs and cultural institutions.
Billions were tagged for the airline industry, highways, airports, buses and Amtrak, delivering much-needed help to ailing transit systems that have announced massive cuts in staff and service to make ends meet. More than $800 million in relief was specified for public transit in the Washington region in particular.
– A costly government shutdown:
A government shutdown normally causes great disruption, freezing Washington in place and leaving millions of federal workers without a paycheck. But a lapse in funding this week could prove especially harmful in the midst of a global pandemic that already has taxed federal agencies.
Along with stimulus relief, lawmakers last week had approved a measure that keeps the government running after a spending stopgap expires Monday night. That means a shutdown is set to kick in on Tuesday unless Trump signs the bill – or Congress comes up with another solution.
“Not signing the bill also means that the federal government will be closed after Monday, which will idle a large portion of the federal work force at the time when the pandemic is bearing down hardest on the American economy,” said Ernie Tedeschi, an economist and former Treasury Department official during the Obama administration.
Lawmakers could try to quickly pass stopgap funding measures on Monday, as they have for weeks in an attempt to buy more time. But it’s unclear how long such a temporary solution would last, or whether the Senate could even move fast enough to pass it while much of Capitol Hill is away for the holidays.
There is also the open question of whether Trump would sign such a bill into law, as he has often pointed to his demands for larger stimulus checks despite the crucial funding measures in the stalled legislation.
By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Bailey Lipschultz, Chris Strohm
Current and former U.S. health officials took to the airwaves Sunday to warn Americans of a potential jump in covid-19 cases after the holidays.
“A surge upon a surge” may be on the way after the Christmas and New Year’s period, Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious-disease doctor, warned on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Former U.S. Food and Drug Administration chief Scott Gottlieb said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that “we have a grim month ahead of us” after a recent increase in cases, with hospitalizations rising on a lag of a few weeks.
The comments came as the number of confirmed cases in the U.S. approach 19 million and deaths are more than 332,000. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases warned that the U.S. is at a “very critical point” in combating the pandemic after many Americans ignored guidance to avoid travel.
Flying has picked up recently while remaining well below year-ago levels. Figures from the Transportation Security Administration show more than 1 million people moved through U.S. airport checkpoints on five of the past nine days heading into and through the holidays.
Admiral Brett Giroir, a member of the White House coronavirus task force, said the risks entailed by traveling depend mostly on what people do once they get to their destinations, as actually being in an airplane is typically safe.
“What we really worry about is the mingling of different bubbles once you get to your destination,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.”
Vaccinations in the U.S. began Dec. 14 with health-care workers and residents of nursing homes. So far almost 2 million doses have been administered in the country, according to a state-by-state tally compiled by Bloomberg. Those numbers are accelerating as a second vaccine by Moderna Inc. is distributed.
Health officials are on alert for a more infectious covid strain that’s emerged in the U.K., Germany, Switzerland, Ireland and Japan, although there’s no clear evidence it results in more severe cases of the disease.
Travelers coming to the U.S. from the U.K. face more restrictions because of the new variant, with the U.S. insisting on testing negative for covid-19 within 72 hours of departing the country.
Gottlieb, a board member of Pfizer Inc., said that he believes the U.K. strain is already in the U.S., and in “a reasonable number at this point.”
He saw signs that U.S. new daily covid-19 cases are starting to plateau, but since hospitalizations and the number of deaths tend to lag by two to three weeks, “we have a very difficult month ahead of us.”
President Donald Trump has remained silent about the new variant and the worsening crisis gripping some parts of the U.S. He took to Twitter on Saturday to criticize Democratic governors for taking emergency steps to contain the outbreak.
“The lockdowns in Democrat run states are absolutely ruining the lives of so many people,” Trump tweeted.
By The Washington Post · Jeff Stein, Toluse Olorunnipa
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump is rapidly approaching a Monday deadline to avert a government shutdown, but aides and U.S. lawmakers appear flummoxed about his strategy, left to interpret musings from his Twitter feed while he golfs and otherwise remains out of public view.
A large spending bill that Congress passed last week must be signed into law by midnight Monday to prevent many federal agencies from significantly scaling back their operations. After Congress passed the bill, Trump posted a video on Twitter announcing his objections to it, saying that stimulus benefits were too small and that foreign aid was too excessive.
Since he posted the video Tuesday, White House aides have not offered public briefings on Trump’s strategy or plans. Instead, Trump has issued a series of tweets reiterating his demand for changes but not saying much more. Vice President Mike Pence is in Vail, Colo., and has also been out of sight in recent days.
The consequences of inaction are immense.
Starting Tuesday, hundreds of thousands of federal employees would be sent home without pay. And even the many federal employees who continue to work because they are deemed “essential,” such as members of the military, will not be paid until a new funding bill is authorized.
In addition to a government shutdown on Tuesday, eviction protections for millions of Americans would lapse later this week, more than 14 million people could lose access to unemployment benefits, and no stimulus checks would be issued. Without the bill becoming law, no new money would go toward vaccine distribution, small-business aid, the ailing airline industry, schools and more.
“I understand he wants to be remembered for advocating for big checks, but the danger is he’ll be remembered for chaos and misery and erratic behavior if he allows this to expire,” Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., said on “Fox News Sunday.” “So I think the best thing to do, as I said, sign this and then make the case for subsequent legislation.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., on ABC News said the president was behaving as an “extraordinary narcissist” and almost “pathologically narcissistic” in his eleventh-hour campaign against the bill.
“It is insane. It is really insane, and this president has got to finally get – do the right thing for the American people and stop worrying about his ego,” Sanders said.
Millions of American families who have lost their jobs during the pandemic and are still struggling have no choice but to await the president’s decision.
Deseree and Matthew Cox have had almost zero income since August, when Matthew was terminated from his management job in pest control. His application for unemployment benefits from Florida has never made it through the system’s queue. The $300 per week Matthew, 38, scrapes together driving for DoorDash hardly makes a dent covering bills, rent and food for themselves and their two children who have special needs.
The Coxes have depleted their savings and moved from South Florida to the Indianapolis area for cheaper cost of living and to be near family that could help with child care. But they say they need the extended unemployment benefits, rental assistance, extended eviction moratoriums and direct payments promised by Congress’s $908 billion stimulus package.
At one point, Deseree Cox, 37, said she could not afford a medication her son needs “just for him to be able to function.”
“People will die without this money,” Deseree Cox said. “People will get evicted. People will not be able to get their medication. To [lawmakers], $600 or $2,000, it seems so little. But to the American people right now, it’s just everything.”
When Trump released the video on Tuesday demanding the larger stimulus payments, House Democrats tried to move quickly to approve the measure, but they were blocked by House Republicans on Thursday. They are expected to try again Monday, but their chance of passing the measure with support from Senate Republicans appears small. Their only other option to avoid a government shutdown would be to pass a short-term spending bill, but congressional leaders have not publicly begun discussing that alternative and time is running out.
Trump stunned the nation on Tuesday when he criticized the stimulus legislation previously backed by his own administration as a “disgrace” and called on Congress to significantly amend it. Congress has not met Trump’s demands, and there are no negotiations that could realistically amend the bill for it to be quickly reapproved. Five days after Trump’s video, Congress and the nation are waiting for the president to clarify his intentions about the emergency relief package. So far, he has only tweeted.
“Everybody in the White House is trying to figure out what’s in Trump’s head, if this is a bluff or if he’s going to carry this out. He’s been confronted with all the facts and evidence,” said one person briefed by several White House officials over the weekend, speaking on the condition of anonymity to reveal internal discussions. “Nobody knows what Trump is going to do. It’s a bizarre situation.”
One person who interacted with Trump in Palm Beach, Fla., in recent days said the president had not discussed the economic relief bill or the looming government funding deadline. Instead, Trump has been far more focused on his failed effort to reverse the election result, lashing out at Republicans in Congress and members of his own administration for not joining him in the fight.
If Trump vetoes the bill or does nothing, the federal government will shutdown Tuesday. That raises the prospect of a prolonged government shutdown, until Joe Biden is inaugurated on Jan. 20.
The White House has provided virtually no information about what its plans are to head off the potential economic calamity of a shutdown and the failure of the relief effort. A White House spokesman declined to comment when asked about the president’s intentions. Negotiations between congressional leaders and the White House appear to be at a standstill, and a backup plan had not yet materialized as of Sunday afternoon.
Trump discussed the issue while playing golf in Florida with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and issued several tweets again calling for $2,000 stimulus payments instead of the $600 payments pushed by his own treasury secretary in negotiations.
People close to the White House described a chaotic scene in which senior officials anxiously await the president’s next move. Republicans have expressed increasing concern that the president’s move to blow up a carefully negotiated stimulus deal could hurt the party’s prospects in the Georgia Senate races on Jan. 5. If Republicans lose those two seats, Democrats will control the chamber.
The president in his video called on Congress to approve $2,000 payments instead of $600 payments and strip out numerous provisions for foreign aid. Much of the foreign aid decried by Trump was also requested in the White House’s budget proposal.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is expected to hold a vote Monday on $2,000 stimulus payments to showcase Republican opposition to the larger stimulus measure. Pelosi’s attempt to pass the larger stimulus checks through “unanimous consent” was defeated by House Republicans on Friday.
Trump tweeted several times over the weekend to criticize the aid package, saying: “Increase payments to the people, get rid of the “pork.” He also tweeted: “$2000 + $2000 plus other family members. Not $600. Remember, it was China’s fault!”
The 5,593-page bill that is at the center of Trump’s new demands was introduced and approved Monday by the House and the Senate. It was a fast turnaround, but it was supported by broad majorities in both chambers. The Senate passed the measure 92 to 6.
With Trump and Pence ensconced in resort towns, the incoming Biden administration seized on the void to say the Trump administration was exhibiting rudderless leadership.
On Saturday, Biden accused Trump of an “abdication of responsibility” that would lead to “devastating consequences.”
Biden’s transition team announced Sunday that he would deliver remarks Monday after a briefing by his national security team.
Vice President-elect Kamala Harris weighed in on Sunday, saying American families needed economic support.
“Educators, cafeteria workers, bus drivers, custodians, and the nurses who keep our schools running are being stretched to their limit by this pandemic,” she wrote on Twitter. She added that she and Biden “are committed to ensuring they get the relief they deserve.”
InternationalDec 28. 2020A Black Lives Matter supporter stands near a supporter of President Donald Trump while they protest the presidential vote count outside TFC Center in Detroit on Nov. 6, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Salwan Georges
By The Washington Post · Dan Balz
WASHINGTON – The year 2020 brought extraordinary and unexpected challenges that tested the strength of basic institutions, demanded courage and sacrifice in the face of a raging pandemic, underscored racial and economic inequities, and produced the biggest turnout of voters in the history of U.S. elections.
In the end, America was as divided as ever.
The election itself resulted in significant change – or no change. President Donald Trump is on his way out of office after a single, tumultuous term, to be replaced on Jan. 20 by President-elect Joe Biden. Turnover in the most important of all elected offices – an office that was the major focus of the election – will bring a new tone, new faces and new initiatives to Washington and the country.
But it was Trump, not Biden, who seemed to have the longer coattails. As a result, Biden will start his term with the smallest House majority the Democrats have had in nearly a century and a half. And unless Democrats win both of the Georgia runoff elections on Jan. 5, he also will be the first newly elected Democratic president without a Senate majority since the election of 1884.
Trump has been the most polarizing of all presidents, with a style designed to divide, inflame and impugn. He has accepted no responsibility for things that have gone wrong, preferring to blame others or pretend nothing went wrong. Even now, he seeks to overturn the November results. Biden’s victory would seem to signal a hunger for something different, something calmer, some change in direction.
But elections are about more than the race for the White House. The 2020 campaign was a victory for Biden and a defeat for Trump, but for the two political parties and the ideas they espouse, it was neither. Instead, it marked a continuation of a long struggle for power that has been fought out for more than a decade without clear resolution.
The broad repudiation of the president that many Democrats hoped for and anticipated did not materialize. The results underscored the persistence of divisions that preceded Trump and that now seem destined to endure when he is out of office, unless Biden, ever an optimist about the state of the country and his own political talents, can somehow coax America to a different place.
Biden’s victory in the popular vote was impressive: He won more than 81 million votes overall, 51.3%. He defeated a sitting president by a margin of 7 million votes. Still, the fact that Trump won 74 million votes, 46.8%, was also notable, and in some ways the bigger surprise, as polls consistently underestimated his support.
Biden’s electoral college total of 306 votes to Trump’s 232 was clear and comfortable – identical to the number Trump posted in 2016, which he always described as “a landslide.” But Biden’s majority, like Trump’s four years ago, was built on a string of narrow victories across key battlegrounds that, with small shifts, could have produced a different outcome.
The Cook Political Report’s David Wasserman has noted that, while Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 2.9 million votes and came within 77,744 votes of winning the presidency in 2016, Trump lost the popular vote this year by 7.1 million votes and yet came within 65,009 votes of securing a majority in the electoral college and, with it, a second term.
That number – 65,009 – is the combined total by which Biden defeated Trump in Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin and Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District. Had all four gone the other way, Trump would have won the election with 270 electoral votes to Biden’s 268.
Trump has refused to concede, even in the aftermath of the electoral college tally that took place Dec. 14, which is to be ratified by Congress on Jan. 6. He has done far worse than declining to acknowledge Biden as the winner. No president has ever done what Trump has tried to do to change the results. While it is shocking, it is not surprising, given the way he has operated in office.
The president has spread the fiction that the election was stolen, and he has trafficked in conspiracy theories that Biden’s victory was based on widespread fraud across multiple states. He has been rebuffed repeatedly by judges appointed by Democrats and Republicans, including twice by a Supreme Court whose 6-3 conservative majority he helped to shape.
The president’s post-election campaign has been carried out in a way that undermines confidence in the integrity of the vote and potentially Biden’s presidency. While Trump has not been able to overturn the election, the toxicity of his baseless, repeated charges has leeched into the body politic.
Tens of millions of Trump’s followers now believe that Biden was elected illegitimately, causing potentially significant damage to the electoral process and to Biden’s ability to govern effectively. A recent Economist/YouGov poll found that more than 8 in 10 Trump voters said Biden was not the legitimate winner of the election. Other polls have found similar results.
Many Democrats believed the election would result in a more significant victory for their party and with it a clearer mandate. Instead, the opposite has occurred – a split decision that left the balance of power little changed, though not insignificantly, with a new president. Even as the two major political parties face their own internal strains, they will begin the new year and a new administration still looking across a wide and seemingly unbridgeable gulf.
Carri Dusza demonstrates outside the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia on Nov. 08, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Photo for The Washington Post by Amanda Voisard
Democratic pollster Geoff Garin, who has decades of experience measuring public attitudes, said the election has left “a divided country even more divided,” adding that he cannot recall a time when there were “fewer points of intersection or overlap” between the two sides of the political divide.
“It’s not just that a Trump voter looks very different from a Biden voter, from where they live to what their demographics are,” he said. “But their belief systems are so fundamentally different that they’re essentially living in two separate realities. . . . When politicians say there is more that unites us than divides us, it’s nice to hear, but it is not descriptive of our current reality.”
Surveys before and after the election underscore the dimensions of the gap that now separates those two worlds. A post-election survey by Public Opinion Strategies, a Republican firm, asked whether Republicans and Democrats have less respect for people in the other party than they did four years ago. Eighty-one percent of Republicans and 77% of Democrats agreed.
An October survey by the Public Religion Research Institute revealed that partisans have made harsh judgments about the nature of the opposition. More than 8 in 10 Republicans said the Democratic Party has been taken over by socialists, while nearly 8 in 10 Democrats said the Republican Party has been taken over by racists.
The Pew Research Center found in October that 80% of Biden supporters and 77% of Trump supporters said they “fundamentally disagree with the other side on core American values and goals.” About 9 in 10 supporters of Trump and of Biden said there would be “lasting harm” to the country should the other party’s candidate win.
“What this all reflects is . . . this sense that the opposing party is pushing policies that are fundamentally going to do harm to the country,” said Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory University who has written extensively about polarization.
“It cuts across everything from economic policies to dealing with the pandemic, to immigration, race relations, social issues – you name it,” he added. “This visceral dislike and mistrust and animosity reflects actual disagreement about the way the country should be governed – who should be governing and what policies they should be following.”
Trump’s presidency has expanded the values gap between Republicans and Democrats, Blacks and Whites, those with college degrees and those without, those who attend church regularly and those who do not. Nothing that happened in November appears to have changed that in any significant way.
For Trump supporters, cultural preservation of an America long dominated by a White, Christian majority remains a cornerstone of their beliefs. That helps to explains their attachment to a president who has warned that the Democrats and their allies are determined to rewrite the nation’s history and destroy its heritage.
Although the election has been settled, the country remains unsettled. Differences based on ideology and policy are common to democratic societies. Divisions over the legitimacy of an election could be far more dangerous. “I don’t mean there’s going to be riots or armed militias, but a lack of a unified belief in small-D democratic values is inherently destabilizing,” said Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg.
Although Election Day and the day of the electoral college vote passed peacefully, threats of violence and some clashes continue. Hundreds of Proud Boys – a male chauvinist group partial to Trump and he to them – marched through the streets of the District of Columbia this month, provoking fights. Four people were stabbed, including one who was in critical condition. Earlier, armed protesters gathered outside the home of Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, to register their disapproval of the vote there.
Lilliana Mason, a political scientist at the University of Maryland whose specialty is the study of the partisan divisions in the country, said that while she sees no sign that polarization is abating, “I actually think that polarization is not as big of a problem anymore as democracy itself.”
She sees Trump’s anti-democratic actions and the support he has received for those efforts from a majority of his party as cause for concern. “He’s really encouraging his supporters to believe in something that’s not true, that’s absolutely false,” she said. “And that makes them really, really angry, which is extremely dangerous.”
Supporters of President Donald Trump rally in Washington on, Dec. 12, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Photo for The Washington Post by Evelyn Hockstein
Mark Mellman, a Democratic pollster, describes what has happened to separate the two Americas as a continuum that has turned what once was a ditch into a canyon and then the canyon into a chasm.
Nothing about the cascading events of 2020 – not the pandemic and 330,000 deaths; not the massive economic dislocations; not the killings of George Floyd or Breonna Taylor; not Trump’s stir-the-pot tweeting and attacks on rivals; not an estimated $14 billion spent to sway voters – had much impact on how people voted.
“Very few people moved, and that is, in some sense, shocking to me,” Mellman said. “We used to have presidential elections and elections generally that were much more responsive to events. Now we’re in this situation where it’s a two- to five-point race no matter what.”
Bill McInturff, a Republican pollster, said his firm’s analysis of the election concluded that this was the smallest number of ticket-splitters since his firm began its measurement two decades ago. “We’ve stopped having any intersection [between the two sides],” he said.
In a closely divided country, events can become catalysts for different parts of the electorate, affecting turnout patterns and election results. These shifting patterns produced change elections of one magnitude or another in 2006, 2008, 2010, 2014, 2016, 2018 and now 2020.
In 2006, voters weary of war and souring on the leadership of President George W. Bush toppled the GOP majority in the House. Two years later, those same forces elected Barack Obama president and enlarged his party’s House and Senate majorities.
In 2010, reaction to Obama’s presidency produced a conservative tea party revolt that put Republicans back in control of the House. In 2014, Republicans took control of the Senate.
In 2016, it was the power of White working-class voters registering their disapproval of the political elites who helped make Trump the winner. In 2018, White women with college degrees who were disgusted with Trump provided much of the energy that flipped the House to the Democrats.
In 2020, with the stakes as high as ever and the country reeling from the coronavirus pandemic, racial protests and economic losses, voters came out in force. Nearly 160 million people voted this year, compared with about 138 million four years ago, but they sent mixed signals with their ballots.
The results ran counter to expectations – and to public and private polls, particularly in House races. Down-ballot contests went far more decisively for the Republicans than most analysts anticipated.
In the House, Republicans captured almost all of 27 races listed by the Cook Political Report as toss-ups. They also won seven more seats that were listed as either “likely” or “lean” Democratic. Republicans were expected to lose ground based on pre-election polls. Instead, they gained at least nine seats, with two still to be resolved.
In the Senate, seven Republican seats were listed as toss-ups. Republicans won five, with the two Georgia races going to runoff elections. Democrats picked up two Senate seats held by the Republicans after heading into Election Day with the hope that they would emerge in the majority.
– – –
In the weeks after the election, analysts have studied the results, looking for shifts among particular groups of voters, from suburbanites to young African Americans to Hispanics – particularly those in South Florida and South Texas, where Trump made notable gains – to those under age 45 and those over age 65, to White women with college degrees and White women without degrees, to urban vs. rural.
The analyses offer potential clues to forces that could shape politics in the future, but they cannot obscure the larger reality of a country that remains hardened in its divisions. “Most people have selected a side and predictably stuck with that side,” said Matt Grossmann, a political scientist at Michigan State University. “It matters for election outcomes where these people who split their tickets go. But it’s all appearing against a background where people are clearly on one side or the other.”
Both major political parties have undergone dramatic changes over the past decade. Republicans are caught in the grip of Trump and Trumpism, which represents a sharp departure from the conservatism of former president Ronald Reagan. Despite successes in November, the GOP is heading toward an internal debate about its future, with Trump’s influence remaining as a wild card.
In the election returns, some GOP analysts see the makings of a new coalition, built on White working-class voters and evangelical Christians and with potential support from voters of color, particularly Hispanics. “This election might be the start of that direction,” said Kristen Soltis Anderson, a Republican pollster.
Democrats see some of those same patterns and worry. Victories in Arizona and Georgia give them hope of redrawing parts of the electoral map in their favor, but they recognize that their weaknesses with some groups of voters leave them vulnerable in northern states such as Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Democrats are feeling the effects of gender, racial, generational and ideological tensions, with rising constituencies demanding more representation and power and energy coming from the grass roots of the party. Those differences were temporarily put aside this fall in the effort to defeat Trump, but Cathy Cohen, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, said the results of the election have left Biden with unhappy options.
“Right now he could be facing a Republican majority in the Senate that would push back on most initiatives that would be exciting to the Democratic base,” she said. “On the other hand, he has to offer up something that is substantial in institutional terms of transformation that will engage and excite the left part of the Democratic Party and many young people, particularly young people of color.”
The forces that have shaken both parties appear not to be transitory. “I don’t think we’re ever going back to the old politics in America,” Garin said. “And the new politics is very much a work in progress. But the way in which this transformation proceeds will determine a lot about the future of the country.”
America has remained hardened in its divisions through a series of major shocks – the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the financial crisis and recession of 2008 and 2009 and now a year that included impeachment, a pandemic, a racial reckoning, economic hardship and a campaign unlike any other in memory.
The task of navigating this divided landscape now falls to Biden. He has a robust policy agenda to address some of the most serious problems any new president has faced in decades. But his larger aspiration, as he has said repeatedly, is to heal the country and repair its broken politics. In a nation so divided and hostile toward the opposition, even small progress would count as a significant accomplishment.
Authorities identify Nashville bomber, say his remains were found in wreckage
InternationalDec 28. 2020Investigators with the FBI, ATF and Metro Nashville Police Department investigate a home in Antioch, Tenn., on Saturday. MUST CREDIT: Photo for The Washington Post by William DeShazer
By The Washington Post · Michael Kranish, Paulina Firozi, Brandon Gee, Meryl Kornfield
Anthony Quinn Warner was responsible for the Christmas morning explosion that rocked downtown Nashville, officials said Sunday, and he died in the blast.
Investigators matched human remains found at the scene with Warner’s DNA, confirming suspicions that he blew himself up in a recreational vehicle, Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Director David Rausch told reporters. Law enforcers said they were investigating a motive.
Authorities had assembled Saturday at Warner’s home in Antioch, Tenn., about 10 miles southeast of the explosion site. Several neighbors described seeing an RV similar to the one that blew up Friday morning, in the backyard of the Antioch home in the months before the blast.
Warner, 63, was not married and rarely ventured from his home, according to neighbors; he lived for years with his parents and then by himself. He once owned an alarm company, and he protected his home with an array of security cameras, rarely returning a neighborly wave and not responding to an offer of Christmas dinner, neighbors said in interviews.
“To describe him as a recluse would be an excellent word,” said Rick Laude, who has lived near Warner since 2010. “You could wave at him and he was like, What are you waving at me for?”
For some time after his father died in 2011, Warner lived with his mother, Betty Christine Lane, before moving into a nearby house, neighbors said. Lane could not be reached for comment.
In November, Warner transferred his property to a Los Angeles woman for “$0,” according to property records of a quit claim deed. The woman said in a brief telephone interview that the FBI told her not to discuss the matter and declined comment.
At one time, Warner ran an alarm company, according to his cousin, who runs a haunted-house attraction about a mile from Warner’s home. “He was into phones and electronics” like his father, Robert Warner said of his cousin.
“He has always been a quiet person,” Robert Warner said. “When we had the family reunions, he brought the RV, or he had a boat.” Robert Warner said he had not talked to his cousin in about 10 years, and he said many members of the family had lost touch with him.
Steve Schmoldt, whose property is on the other side of the fence from Warner’s residence, said Warner had “always just been kind of a loner.” Schmoldt said that Warner used to have dogs, and that they talked about pets, but that such conversations were rare. He recalled how his wife brought Warner a Christmas dinner, but Warner never answered the door.
Three weeks ago, Schmoldt said, he saw Warner climbing an extension ladder to work on a large antenna on his house. “He was like an IT guy,” Schmoldt said, referring to information technology. “He has quite a few security cameras around his house.” Neighbors also noticed that Warner washed the RV, which until recent days they had not seen leave the property.
A Nashville real estate firm, Fridrich & Clark Realty, confirmed that Warner worked there as a computer consultant for about 15 years before announcing his retirement this month. “The Tony Warner we knew is a nice person who never exhibited any behavior which was less than professional,” co-owner Steve Fridrich wrote in a statement.
The RV that detonated was parked in front of the AT&T building in downtown Nashville on Friday. The blast devastated the surrounding area and damaged more than 40 businesses and caused widespread disruptions to cellular and Internet service.
By midday Sunday, AT&T said in a statement that more than 75% of the cell sites affected by the explosion had been restored. “Mobility service in the Birmingham and Huntsville, Alabama areas is now operating normally,” the company said.
While the motive remains unknown to the public, the location of the attack is worrisome, especially considering how widespread disruptions were, Frank Figliuzzi, a former assistant director of counterintelligence at the FBI, said on CBS News’s “Face the Nation.”
“I think this is a wake-up call and a warning for all of us about how vulnerable our infrastructure is relatively easy it is for a single individual to do this,” Figliuzzi said.
Experts on critical infrastructure said the Christmas morning episode makes clear that federal and local authorities and the private sector ought to find ways to reduce their vulnerability, either through moving key pieces to more fortified locations or building in redundancies.
“We are very vulnerable to these kinds of attacks,” said Adam Rose, a professor at the University of Southern California and director of the Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events. He added that the United States has limited options to build resiliency in today’s highly interconnected world, underscoring the need for customers to have their own backup communications systems, such as a home fiber-optic Internet connection in addition to a personal hot spot.
Officers who evacuated buildings before the blast described the moments after arriving at the scene and leading up to the RV explosion.
There was a strange recorded warning, which started to play a 15-minute countdown, coming from the RV. Officers started knocking on doors, contacting dispatch to get access codes to buildings, clearing them floor by floor, warning residents that answered to gather family members and leave.
“That’s stuff that I’ll never forget, the sound of the announcement saying . . . ‘Evacuate now,’ ” said Amanda Topping, one of five officers who spoke to reporters at a news conference. “Just odd. And I’m pacing back and forth because I kept on having to turn pedestrians around.”
The RV began to play music – officer Tyler Luellen told reporters that he later learned it was “Downtown” by Petula Clark. The officers prepared themselves, some going back to their cars for heavier gear.
“As I’m getting ready to walk toward [other officers], walking back toward the RV . . . I literally hear God tell me to turn around and check on Topping, who was by herself,” Officer James Wells said. “As I turn around – for me it felt like I only took three steps, the music stops. As I’m walking back toward Topping, I just see orange and I hear a loud boom. I’m just telling myself, stay on your feet, stay alive.”
Tennessee officials have called for federal support in the wake of the bombing. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., said on Twitter that she had spoken with President Donald Trump about the need for federal aid.
“I told him we would appreciate prompt attention to it,” she said in a video message. “And the president has been so good to Tennessee, I have no doubt he will move quickly on this.”
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, asked Trump on Saturday for federal assistance in response to the explosion, noting that the downed communication systems and damage to businesses were too much for the state to handle alone. Sens. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Blackburn along with Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., wrote to Trump in support of Lee’s request.
FEMA spokeswoman Janet Montesi said the request “is currently under review.”
Nashville Mayor John Cooper during a CBS News interview referred to the area affected by the explosion as “part of our historic identity of Nashville, this kind of late Victorian streetscape that ended up being bombed.”
“The businesses there, they’ve just – going through covid, they’ve had the worst nine months that you could have as a business,” said Cooper, a Democrat. “And then now to be affected by a bombing. Of course, we’re going to need help and we may need some help in hardening our infrastructure.”
Benefits lapse for millions as Trump fails to approve stimulus bill
InternationalDec 28. 2020A person shelters inside a restaurant’s closed outdoor dining area as snow falls in the Hells Kitchen neighborhood of New York on Dec. 17. Winter Storm Gail pounded the city as temperatures dropped to 27 degrees with frigid sustained winds up to 35 mph, making dining outdoors unbearable amid the covid-19 pandemic that has already crippled the restaurant industry. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Angus Mordant
By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Chris Strohm
Millions of Americans will see their unemployment benefits lapse, at least temporarily, after President Donald Trump let Saturday night pass without signing a $900 billion bipartisan coronavirus stimulus package.
The federal government could shut down on Tuesday absent Trump’s signature on the attached, $1.4 trillion spending bill to fund operations through Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year.
As Trump headed to the golf course on Sunday morning, Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Pat Toomey said the president risked a legacy of “chaos and misery and erratic behavior if he allows this to expire.”
Trump has dug in over the size of direct checks to be sent to many Americans, yet the stimulus accord contains numerous other measures designed to offset the impact of the covid-19 pandemic, including extended unemployment benefits, funding for food banks, rental assistance, support for small businesses and for covid vaccination programs, and other items.
The stalemate comes as the pandemic continues to worsen in many areas, and more U.S. workers are in jeopardy of losing their jobs.
Trump took no action on the stimulus bill that Congress approved, and his administration helped to negotiate, beyond expressing his displeasure with a series of tweets up to and beyond midnight on Saturday. The massive legislation was flown to him at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, where he’s spending the holidays.
Signing the bill as late as Saturday would have triggered action by states to update their computer systems to reflect the ongoing benefits.
Trump has demanded that Congress increase stimulus checks from $600 to $2,000 for eligible Americans – an abrupt proposal that blindsided lawmakers who spent months negotiating the final package, and is opposed by many Republicans. He’s also complained about some of the items in the stimulus plan or in the omnibus spending bill.
“I simply want to get our great people $2000, rather than the measly $600 that is now in the bill,” Trump tweeted on Saturday.
President-elect Joe Biden criticized Trump on Saturday for refusing to sign the bill. Biden said in a statement that as many as 10 million Americans will lose their unemployment insurance benefits. About 14 million people have been receiving unemployment benefits through the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance and Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation programs.
“It is the day after Christmas, and millions of families don’t know if they’ll be able to make ends meet,” Biden said. “This abdication of responsibility has devastating consequences.”
Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut said Saturday on Twitter that Trump must “pick up the phone and tell Republicans to stop blocking $2,000 payments.” He added that Trump’s last-minute snag was designed to create “chaos.”
Given the potential lapse in funding, it could take as long as a month before people receive their funds and even longer for the effects to filter into the economy, according to Michael Englund, chief economist at Action Economics LLC.
Any delay in immediate direct payments and gap in special unemployment benefits threaten to deepen economic scarring marked especially by a jump in long-term unemployment.
Democrats plan to vote Monday on new legislation to codify the $2,000 payments for most American adults and children. They could also vote on another stopgap measure to fund the government past the current spending deadline of midnight that day.
While that would avert a government shutdown if the Senate also passes it and the president signs it, it is still unclear what Trump plans to do with the larger pandemic relief and annual spending bill Congress passed on Dec. 21.
Brexit deal should answer concerns over economy, Sunak says
InternationalDec 28. 2020Rishi Sunak, U.K. chancellor of the exchequer, in London in September. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Simon Dawson
By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Thomas Penny
U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak said the trade deal reached with the European Union should reassure people worried about the economic damage of Brexit and can be an “enormously unifying moment for our country.”
London will continue discussions with Brussels over access and equivalence for financial services, the chancellor said on Sunday after Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the agreement did not go as far as he wants for the sector.
The deal, which will be voted on by lawmakers in Parliament on Wednesday, “gives us a strong platform to look forward optimistically and put the divisions of the past behind us,” Sunak said in a pooled TV interview. “For those who were anxious about the economic implications of leaving, they should be enormously reassured by the comprehensive nature of this free trade agreement.”
Johnson conceded in an interview with the Sunday Telegraph that the agreement “perhaps does not go as far as we would like” on financial services, though said it offers “access for solicitors, barristers” and a “good deal for digital.”
There is little clarity for financial firms and no decision on so-called equivalence, which would allow firms to sell their services into the single market from the City of London. The agreement only features standard provisions on financial services, meaning it doesn’t include commitments on market access.
Sunak said it gives a “stable regulatory co-operative framework” and “we will remain in close dialogue with our European partners when it comes to things like equivalence decisions.”
Anneliese Dodds, economy spokeswoman for the opposition Labour Party, said ministers should do everything possible to provide certainty for businesses.
“There are big areas, like financial services, where we need to see the Conservative government acting in a much more concerted way to get an agreement so we can ensure we keep jobs in our country,” she told Sky News. “They really need to focus on this far more.”
There was also a warning for Johnson’s government from across the Irish Sea, where Deputy Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said any reduction of standards in the U.K. could lead to reduced access to the EU market.
“They have agreed to a non-regression clause in all but name, so we said you can only have access to the market if you don’t reduce your standards when it comes to workers’ rights, the environment, health and safety, product standards, all of those things,” Varadkar told Newstalk radio.
“If they do reduce their standards, or if they don’t keep up with our standards, then that access to our market could be threatened,” he said. “So they do still have to largely follow European rules where they’re relevant.”
Some senior lawmakers from Johnson’s Conservative Party complained there will not be enough time to properly scrutinize the deal when Parliament debates and votes on it on Wednesday.
While the legislation is expected to pass easily as Labour has indicated it will back the deal rather than risk the economic damage of a no-deal divorce from the EU, dissent among Johnson’s rank-and-file lawmakers may spell trouble for the future.
“Whatever you think of this treaty, it is going to affect the rest of our lives,” former Brexit Secretary David Davis told the Observer. “It does require more than just a rubber stamp.”
By The Washington Post · Loveday Morris · WORLD, HEALTH, EUROPE, HEALTH-NEWS
BERLIN – In nursing homes and hospitals from Spain to Poland, the European Union began its official coronavirus mass vaccination program for its 450 million residents on Sunday amid concerns about supply and frustrations over the pace of the roll out.
Leaders of the 27-country bloc had aimed to ensure that the vaccine would be available to every country fairly, with every country beginning their vaccination with the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine from Sunday.
At 8.30 a.m. in Guadalajara, Spain, Araceli Hidalgo, a 96-year-old nursing home resident, became the first person to be vaccinated in the country. In the Czech Republic, Prime Minister Andrej Babis was vaccinated live on television. In Italy, which emerged as the epicenter of the pandemic last spring, doctors and nurses at the Spallanzani hospital in Rome were the first to receive the vaccine.
“Today is a beautiful, symbolic day,” Domenico Arcuri, Italy’s emergency coronavirus commissioner told reporters outside the hospital according to the Associated Press. “All the citizens of Europe together are starting to get their vaccinations, the first ray of light after a long night.”
But despite the hopeful scenes across Europe, there has been mounting frustration as Europeans have watched Pfizer and BioNtech’s vaccine, developed in Germany with German federal government funding, roll out first in a string of countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, Israel and the United Arab Emirates. And while the bloc has ordered more than 2 billion vaccine doses as it aims to protect all its citizens against coronavirus, it has limited orders of the front running candidates.
“There is simply too little vaccine,” Markus Söder, the state premier of the German state of Bavaria, told the Bild newspaper on Sunday.
The 200 million doses of Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine ordered by the European Union will be equally divided between each of its member states according to population size, meaning that Germany, with 18 percent of the bloc’s population, would receive around 36 million doses – enough to vaccinate 18 million people, just over 20 percent of its population. The country has created a string of mass vaccination centers in sports arenas and exhibition centers.
The companies have said that delivery time frames depend on when orders were placed, and while the United States and the United Kingdom put in orders for the vaccine earlier in the summer, the European Union only finalized their order in November after months of negotiations.
That means that while the United States has a smaller initial order of Pfizer vaccines, it will receive 20 million from an initial bucket of 50 million that are available at the turn of the year, compared to 12.5 million for the European Union.
The delay in ordering was mostly due to haggling over the price, said one person with knowledge of the negotiations, who declined to be named to discuss closed door deliberations.
“Negotiating with 27 countries is not as easy,” the person said. “The advantage is that poorer countries will also receive vaccine. The downside is everything takes longer.”
Stefan De Keersmaecker, a spokesman for the commission, said he could not comment on negotiations but that the aim had been to build a diversified portfolio with different companies and talks had begun before results of trials were available. “There was no certainty that any of the vaccine candidates would be effective and safe,” he said, adding that contracts allow options for orders to be expanded.
However, while the United Kingdom and the United States have already used their options to order more vaccine, the European Union had not signed the contract for 100 million further doses as of Wednesday, according to two people familiar with the negotiations. That’s despite reports that it had come to an internal decision to do so more than a week earlier.
“This is a touching moment of unity,” European Union Commission President Ursula von der Leyen tweeted on Saturday ahead of the vaccination program’s start. “With vaccination, we will put this pandemic behind us.”
But despite a decision to show solidarity with a unified vaccine roll out, Hungary, Slovakia and Germany began vaccinations a day earlier. Karsten Fischer, a local health authority official in the Harz region of Saxony-Anhalt, told German media that he’d seen no reason to wait after vaccines arrived.
Germany is slated to receive 1.3 million Pfizer vaccines by the end of the year, and enough to vaccinate around 13 percent of its population by March. The vaccine was developed by BioNTech, a German firm based in the city of Mainz run by a husband-and-wife team of scientists in collaboration with Pfizer.
Berlin gave the German company $469 million in funding in September to help cover the costs of phase three trials and to expand manufacturing capacity.
The European Union also has a contract to buy 300 million doses of vaccine from AstraZeneca, which could be approved for emergency use in the United Kingdom as early as next week according to British press reports. The vaccine is cheaper and does not have the same complex cold storage requirements as Pfizer and Moderna’s offerings.
Pharmaceutical companies Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline earlier this month said their vaccine would be delayed after showing a weak immune response.
President Trump
Anthony Fauci
A Black Lives Matter supporter stands near a supporter of President Donald Trump while they protest the presidential vote count outside TFC Center in Detroit on Nov. 6, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Salwan Georges
Investigators with the FBI, ATF and Metro Nashville Police Department investigate a home in Antioch, Tenn., on Saturday. MUST CREDIT: Photo for The Washington Post by William DeShazer
A person shelters inside a restaurant’s closed outdoor dining area as snow falls in the Hells Kitchen neighborhood of New York on Dec. 17. Winter Storm Gail pounded the city as temperatures dropped to 27 degrees with frigid sustained winds up to 35 mph, making dining outdoors unbearable amid the covid-19 pandemic that has already crippled the restaurant industry. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Angus Mordant
Rishi Sunak, U.K. chancellor of the exchequer, in London in September. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Simon Dawson
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