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Turned off by Biden’s approach, GOP opposition to stimulus relief intensifies

InternationalJan 24. 2021President Biden speaks about the coronavirus pandemic before signing executive orders at the White House on Jan. 21. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Jabin Botsford.

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

WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden’s pitch for bipartisan unity to defeat the coronavirus and resurrect the economy is crashing into a partisan buzz saw on Capitol Hill, where Republicans and Democrats can’t agree on ground rules for running the Senate – let alone pass a $1.9 trillion stimulus bill.

Biden’s relief package is being declared dead on arrival by senior Senate Republicans, some of whom say there has been little, if any, outreach from the Biden team to get their support. Liberals are demanding the president abandon attempts to make a bipartisan deal altogether and instead ram the massive legislation through without GOP votes. And outside groups are turning up the pressure for Biden and the Democrats who control Congress to enact economic relief quickly, even if it means cutting Republicans out of the deal.

In the face of these competing pressures, Biden may discover he can get a big covid-19 stimulus bill or a bipartisan deal – but not both. The path Biden chooses with his first major piece of legislation could set the tone for the remainder of his first term in office, revealing whether he can make good on his promise to unify Congress and the country.

“It’s important that Democrats deliver for America. If the best path to that is to do it in a way that can bring Republicans along, I’m all in favor of that,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said. “But if Republicans want to cut back to the point that we’re not delivering what needs to be done, then we need to be prepared to fight them. Our job is to deliver for the American people.”

Publicly, top aides insist Biden is serious about wanting a bipartisan deal on the relief bill. They say this should be achievable given the magnitude of the economic and health-care crisis besetting the nation a year after the pandemic began, with more than 412,000 dead and the economy newly shedding jobs. Some Democrats have expressed optimism that GOP frustration with how the Trump administration ended could convince some Republicans to be more open to a fresh start with a Democratic president, especially since longtime lawmakers know Biden from his decades in the Senate and as vice president.

But when Biden’s relief plan rang in at nearly $2 trillion this month, and included liberal priorities like an increase in the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, some Republicans saw it as a sign that Biden wasn’t really serious about getting their support. Even those Republicans who have suggested they’re open to making a deal have made clear that the package would need to undergo significant changes.

“I suspect the whole package is a nonstarter, but it’s got plenty of starters in it. And a lot of them are things that we proposed in terms of more assistance to the states,” said Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., referring to money for vaccine distribution and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “There’s some things in there that aren’t going to happen. There’s some things that can happen. And that’s how this process should work.”

Outreach to GOP lawmakers before and after the plan’s release appears to have occurred only at the staff level so far and has been confined to a limited number of senators, including members of a bipartisan group who helped break a stalemate over coronavirus relief legislation late last year.

On Sunday, Biden economic adviser Brian Deese is scheduled to directly brief the senators in that group on a Zoom call. But as of Friday, Senate GOP leadership had not been formally briefed, and multiple GOP lawmakers who are part of the bipartisan talks said they had heard nothing from the White House, even though Biden pitched himself on the campaign trail as a bipartisan dealmaker.

“I have not personally [heard from the White House], and I’m disappointed in that, not about me but about, you know, it’s one thing to talk about outreach, another thing to do it,” said Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, a senior lawmaker who is a member of the bipartisan group that will confer Sunday with Deese.

“It’s much more successful around here if you try to get the bipartisanship at the start so that it’s a foundation of trust,” Portman added.

Instead, Biden unveiled his $1.9 trillion plan without any bipartisan buy-in, leaving Republicans to question the need for such a big new package coming on the heels of the $900 billion Congress approved in December for economic relief, vaccines and more. Including that legislation, Congress has already devoted about $4 trillion to fighting the pandemic and the economic devastation it wrought.

“I look forward to hearing their views. My own thought is that we should only be spending money where there is need that needs to be met, and so I’d like to see the figures and calculations behind their proposal,” Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, another member of the bipartisan group, said. “I think there’s a recognition on both sides of the aisle that where there’s need, we in Congress have a responsibility to help meet that. But we don’t want to be borrowing money that’s not absolutely necessary.”

Questioned about how a nearly $2 trillion package filled with proposals that are anathema to Republicans could be described as a bipartisan overture, White House press secretary Jen Psaki insisted it was.

“Is unemployment insurance only an issue that Democrats in the country want? Do only Democrats want their kids to go back to schools? Do only Democrats want vaccines to be distributed across the country?” Psaki said at a White House press briefing. “He feels that package is designed for bipartisan support.”

She said Biden would be getting personally engaged in finding support for his plan. “He’s very eager to be closely involved, roll up the sleeves . . . and make the calls himself,” she said.

Psaki said that in trying to sell the package to Republicans, the White House approach would be to ask them which priorities they would cut. The wide-ranging proposal includes a new round of $1,400 stimulus checks to individuals, an extension and increase in emergency unemployment benefits that would otherwise expire in mid-March, and an enhanced child tax credit, as well as hundreds of billions of dollars to help schools reopen and increase testing and vaccine production and delivery.

Some Republicans are open to a number of these provisions but view others – such as the minimum wage increase – as unrelated to the coronavirus and designed to appease an antsy liberal base more than garner bipartisan backing.

“Biden’s opening order was such an overreach that instead of opening negotiations, it just scared Republicans away,” said Brian Riedl, policy expert at the libertarian-leaning Manhattan Institute and a former GOP Senate aide. Riedl said Republicans may be open to a deal somewhere between $500 billion and $1 trillion but that Biden’s opening bid made that less likely. “The opening offer can be so extreme it can poison the well and push the other side away.”

While insisting that Biden’s preference is for a bipartisan deal, Psaki has repeatedly declined to rule out moving forward under special Senate rules that allow legislation to pass with a simple majority vote instead of the 60 votes normally required. That was how President Barack Obama enacted the Affordable Care Act and how Republicans passed their massive tax cut early in President Donald Trump’s first term. The procedure could allow Biden to pass his coronavirus relief package with only Democratic votes.

But the path forward under this so-called “budget reconciliation” process could be tricky. The Senate is split 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans, giving Democrats control only because Vice President Kamala Harris can cast tie-breaking votes. That means any individual Democratic senator could hold the legislation up with an array of demands.

Also, Senate leaders thus far haven’t even been able to agree on a deal on how to operate the Senate with a 50-50 split, and they’re also still arguing over the timing and process for Trump’s impeachment trial. Both issues are emerging as impediments to Biden getting his Cabinet confirmed and also probably need to get resolved before the Senate could take up a relief bill.

Democrats in Congress and within the White House are split on how much time to devote to trying to strike a bipartisan deal before turning to budget reconciliation and leaving Republicans behind. Biden was vice president when Obama devoted many weeks to futile negotiations with Republicans over the Affordable Care Act, before finally passing the legislation without a single GOP vote. Biden was also involved in negotiations over the $787 billion stimulus bill Obama signed in February 2009 in the throes of the financial crisis. Many Democrats wanted a larger package at the time, but Republicans balked; subsequently, many economists have concluded that a larger stimulus bill would have helped the nation climb out of the Great Recession more quickly.

With that history in mind, budget reconciliation has emerged as the clear preference for many liberal Democrats, especially in the House, where Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., suggested in a conversation with donors Thursday evening that she was open to advancing Biden’s proposal via the reconciliation process in coming weeks, according to a person familiar with her remarks. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity to confirm the private comments, which were first reported by Punchbowl News.

House Budget Committee Chairman John Yarmuth, D-Ky., said he wasn’t aware of a final decision on how to proceed but that Democrats were wary of spending too much time negotiating with Republicans at a moment of urgency.

“To haggle over every little provision of Biden’s plan (with Republicans) might not be able to be done on a timely basis,” Yarmuth said.

Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., chair of the New Democrat Coalition, noted that last year Republicans refused for months to pass any additional relief, after a spate of legislation in the spring, before finally agreeing to another bill in December.

“We can’t let that happen again,” DelBene said. “People need certainty and visibility going forward, and that’s why this package is so important.”

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Repeal of Trump’s ‘Muslim ban’ offers new hope to frustrated immigrants and long-suffering families

InternationalJan 24. 2021President Biden picks up a pen in the Oval Office to sign a raft of executive orders, including one that repealed his predecessor’s Muslim travel ban, on Jan. 20. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Jabin Botsford.

By The Washington Post · Kareem Fahim, Durrie Bouscaren, Louisa Loveluck

ISTANBUL – Danah Harbi went to another doctor’s appointment this week without her fiance, as she has for most of her six-month pregnancy, as she has for all manner of appointments and engagements during their long, forced separation. Maybe they will be together when the child is born this spring, but the last few years have been cruel and capricious, and the future has been hard to predict.

Harbi, 38, lives in Falls Church, Va. Her fiance, Mashaal Hamoud, 34, a Syrian national who lives in Lebanon, has been unable to obtain a U.S. visa for several years because of the Trump administration’s 2017 ban on entry to people from a group of Muslim-majority countries, including Syria. The couple had done their best to work around the restrictions. Harbi, an optometrist, traveled to Lebanon several times but was forced to curtail those trips when she learned she was pregnant.

As one of his first acts, President Joe Biden on Wednesday repealed what critics called the “Muslim ban,” offering hope to thousands of families affected by the Trump-era regulations, if not an immediate solution, given the enormous volume of visa and waiver cases that must be resolved.

But the ban’s legacy will remain. For many of those affected, there will be no regaining what was lost: the moments with loved ones, the money spent on visits to stranded partners or far-flung consulates, the opportunities to live in the United States that were dangled, then dashed or delayed.

“It takes a toll on you emotionally, financially to travel back and forth. Physically and mentally,” said Harbi, who took a leave of absence from her job last year to be with Hamoud in Lebanon and was unemployed for six months.

The ban initially applied to seven countries – Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen – but Iraq and Sudan were taken off the list after a court challenge. (Six Asian and African countries, including Sudan again, were added to the list last year.) The Trump administration said the measure was needed to combat terrorism.

Refugees, their advocates and many others around the world saw something else: anti-Muslim bigotry. The ban heaped hardship on people who had already had their fill, including survivors of conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. For a time, many of the ban’s victims – doctoral students, professionals and blue-collar workers – were stranded around the world, their lives upended.

Harbi met Hamoud in 2016, when Harbi went to Lebanon to deliver donations to a nonprofit organization helping Syrian refugees. Hamoud worked for that group, and before long, their relationship developed and Harbi began traveling to Lebanon regularly. In 2017, they decided to get married. As the fiance of an American citizen, Hamoud was entitled to apply for a visa to enter the United States.

“I didn’t think the travel ban was going to impact us,” Harbi said in a telephone interview this week. But from the beginning, Hamoud’s application process was beset by delays. After delivering the required documents, the couple said they heard nothing.

“As time went by, I realized that this isn’t about keeping us safe,” Harbi said. “As an American, I felt like we were being discriminated against.”

Now she is more hopeful. “He’s such an incredible person,” Harbi said of her fiance. “I can’t wait for him to prove that to everyone that prevented him from coming here because they thought he was a threat.”

Mohamed Abdo Ali Mohamed, a 49-year old Yemeni, has ferried his family around the world trying to obtain a U.S. visa. His lawyers reckon he has spent tens of thousands of dollars trying to secure a U.S. visa that would allow him to leave war-ravaged Yemen and join his father and his siblings in Buffalo, where they had lived for decades, according to Ibraham Qatabi, a senior legal worker at the Center for Constitutional Rights, which filed a lawsuit on Mohamed’s behalf.

Much of that money was spent during a fruitless trip from Mohamed’s home in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, to the East African country of Djibouti after U.S. officials granted him an interview and then told him, at long last, that he and his family would be issued visas, said Omar Mohamed, one of Mohamed’s sons.

They had risked everything to get there – traveling 300 miles across the war’s front lines just to get to an airport, then spending more than a year in Djibouti and thousands of dollars every month waiting for an answer. But the visas never came, held up because of the travel ban, said Omar, 31, who now lives in Malaysia and is still waiting for a visa.

“We told them our country is at war. We have to reunite with our family. They didn’t do anything,” he said.

Rand Mubarak, a 25-year old Iraqi refugee, recalled watching her father’s health deteriorate as her family waited in Egypt for the Trump administration to decide whether to admit them to the United States.

Her father, Mubarak Mubarak, had worked as a translator for the U.S. military in Iraq, she said. The family fled their country after receiving death threats during the violent era that followed the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. By 2017, they had reached Egypt’s coastal city of Alexandria and received news from the International Organization for Migration, or IOM, that they could soon travel to the United States.

Then came Trump’s announcement and, with the stroke of his pen, their dreams of a fresh start were in doubt. Mubarak developed a heart condition. The doctor said a simple operation would help him, but he would need to leave Egypt. Rand called the IOM weekly, telling them her father needed to be transferred to an American hospital.

“He worked for the Americans, after all,” she said. “They just told us that they had strict instructions not to process applications.” The freeze was in place even though Iraq had been officially removed from the travel and immigration ban.

Mubarak died in July. Now, Rand said, her mother is sick too.

“It’s the most hideous feeling, a feeling of being let down, a feeling of being left behind,” Rand said.

Days before Biden’s inauguration, Pamela Raghebi, who lives in Seattle, misplaced her driver’s license. It should not have been a big deal, she said, but she panicked. It was one of those ordinary moments when her Iranian-born husband, Afshin Raghebi, would have known exactly what to do.

“I’m not as young as I was,” Raghebi, 75, said. “Afshin would say to me, ‘Sit down, relax, think about it.’ He protects me. He recognizes that when I get flustered, I get frightened.”

But he had been gone since 2018, trapped overseas after traveling to the United Arab Emirates for an interview to finalize his petition for a green card, the couple said in separate interviews.

The two had met at the retirement home where she worked when he came to install windows. They’ve been married for a decade and now jointly own a window installation business. Afshin had entered the United States illegally in 2006 but was granted a legal waiver to apply for U.S. permanent residency after they were married. Following his interview at the U.S. Embassy in Abu Dhabi, the couple learned that Afshin would not be allowed to reenter the United States because of the travel ban.

Afshin, now 52, settled in southern Turkey, which was relatively inexpensive. He had some money in a bank account and to help support him, Pamela sold her car. At the beginning, Afshin went to the beach to pass the time or socialized with other Iranian exiles, but both pastimes had become “boring,” he said.

When Biden took office on Wednesday, Afshin splurged on a bottle of wine to celebrate.

“The U.S., I loved that country. I still love it,” he said. “They’re playing with our lives.”

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CDC says 2nd coronavirus vaccine shot may be scheduled up to 6 weeks later

InternationalJan 23. 2021

By The Washington Post, Lena H. Sun

WASHINGTON – People who have received their first dose of a coronavirus vaccine can schedule their second shot up to six weeks later if they are not able to get one in the recommended time frame, according to updated guidance this week from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The agency also said that in “exceptional situations,” patients may switch from one of the authorized vaccines to the other between the first and second doses.

The recommended interval between doses is three weeks for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and four weeks for Moderna’s.

“The second dose should be administered as close to the recommended interval as possible,” according to guidance updated Thursday. But if it is not feasible to get the second dose in that period, the CDC says a second shot may be scheduled “up to 6 weeks (42 days)” after the first shot.

“We’re just ensuring clinicians that if they can’t do it at exactly 21 days or 28 days, that there’s leeway or flexibility,” CDC spokeswoman Kristen Nordlund said.

The CDC updated its initial guidance after it “received feedback that some flexibility in our language might be helpful to reduce barriers to vaccination, especially if there are challenges around returning on a specific date or if someone’s circumstances had changed,” such as being discharged from or entering a long-term care facility, Nordlund said.

“As always,” she said, “CDC encourages people to follow our guidance around intervals and interchangeability, but we also don’t want our guidance to be so rigid that it creates unintended barriers.”

The updated guidance comes as the United States and other countries seek to accelerate vaccination efforts while health officials warn of broader circulation of more transmissible variants of the coronavirus. In the United States, the often-chaotic vaccine rollout has led to confusion, last-minute cancellations of appointments because of vaccine shortages and delays, sign-up websites crashing and long lines outside clinics.

Spacing the doses out would allow for more people to get vaccine, experts said. Although there is limited data on how well the vaccines will work when doses are given six weeks apart, the additional two-week delay is unlikely to compromise a person’s immunity during that period, said Jeanne Marrazzo, an infectious-diseases expert at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine.

The vaccines were authorized and began rolling out in December. “Now, we’re transitioning from clinical trials to the real world,” where some states awaiting shipments of vaccine have had to cancel appointments, said Helen Boucher, an infectious-diseases expert at Tufts Medical Center in Boston.

The six-week interval for a second dose lets patients know “there’s no scare, no terrible upheaval” if they don’t get their second dose at 21 or 28 days, Boucher said.

This month, the World Health Organization’s vaccine advisory group recommended the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and urged that the vaccine doses be given 21 to 28 days apart. But in certain situations, the WHO said, that can stretch up to six weeks.

In the United Kingdom, vaccine advisers recently recommended 12-week intervals between shots of the two vaccines cleared for use there, Pfizer-BioNTech and Oxford-AstraZeneca, because of shortages.

There is little data about the safety and effectiveness of mixing the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, experts said. But because the two vaccines rely on the same underlying genetic technology, known as mRNA, and because they trigger the body to produce the same immune response to the virus, a person getting one dose of one vaccine and a second dose of another would have protection, Marrazzo said.

She said the newly revised CDC guidance was a practical solution that makes sense scientifically given the similar mechanisms and composition of the two vaccines. “Your cells are being instructed to make the exact same protein [to fight the virus], no matter which one you get,” she said.

The CDC guidance says, “Every effort should be made to determine which vaccine product was received as the first dose, in order to ensure completion of the vaccine series with the same product.” But it also states: “In exceptional situations in which the first-dose vaccine product cannot be determined or is no longer available, any available mRNA COVID-19 vaccine may be administered at a minimum interval of 28 days between doses to complete the mRNA COVID-19 series.”

The CDC’s Nordlund said such situations could include someone who gets a first dose but doesn’t know whether it is the Pfizer or Moderna product and clinicians and health officials also can’t figure it out. People getting their first shots are given a card that records the vaccination they received. That information is supposed to be entered into state immunization registries.

Another exceptional situation could involve a resident of a long-term care facility who is vaccinated and later discharged to the community, where the same vaccine is not available for the second dose, and there would be “significant barriers to getting the right vaccine product,” which could result in the person getting only one dose, Nordlund said.

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Senate ends standoff, agrees to start Trump’s impeachment trial on Feb. 9

InternationalJan 23. 2021Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Jahi Chikwendiu

By The Washington Post, Mike DeBonis

WASHINGTON – The impeachment trial of former president Donald Trump will begin Feb. 9 under a deal reached Friday by top Senate leaders – delaying by two weeks the high-stakes proceedings over whether Trump incited the violent Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The agreement was made by Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., following a standoff over the timing of the trial, which could permanently bar Trump from holding public office.

The House on Jan. 13 passed a sole impeachment article, alleging “incitement of insurrection.” House leaders could have forced the Senate to begin the trial immediately by transmitting the papers across the Capitol. But a delay serves the former and current presidents: Trump has struggled to assemble a legal team and muster a defense, and President Biden needs the Senate to confirm most of his Cabinet appointees.

McConnell pushed Thursday for a three-week delay, but Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., on Friday morning announced their intention to deliver the impeachment papers Monday – setting up a trial as soon as Tuesday. Later in the day, Biden publicly called for a delay, saying, “the more time we have to get up and running to meet these crises, the better.”

Announcing the two-week timetable Friday, Schumer said the wait would allow the Senate to make further progress on Biden’s nominations and his $2 trillion pandemic relief proposal – the centerpiece of his early legislative agenda – before shifting to Trump.

“We all want to put this awful chapter in our nation’s history behind us, but healing and unity will only come if there is truth and accountability, and that is what this trial will provide,” he said.

Doug Andres, a spokesman for McConnell, called the agreement “a win for due process and fairness.”

“Republicans set out to ensure the Senate’s next steps will respect former president Trump’s rights and due process, the institution of the Senate, and the office of the presidency,” he said. “That goal has been achieved.”

Had no accord been reached, the trial would have started Tuesday and run uninterrupted by other Senate business until the Senate rendered its verdict. The agreement does not resolve another brewing conflict between Schumer and McConnell: over how the Senate will handle a 50-50 partisan split, with Vice President Harris breaking ties in Democrats’ favor.

The trial agreement came as some rank-and-file Democrats expressed alarm at the prospect of putting the new president’s priorities on hold to focus the nation’s attention on Trump.

“I want to focus as much attention right now on the Biden agenda as possible and minimize the attention on anything other than the Biden agenda,” said Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va.

Kaine is part of a small group of Democrats pushing the idea of passing a resolution stating that Trump violated the 14th Amendment – which forbids federal officials from ever holding office if they “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the government – and in that manner ban him from running again for president.

The debate over the trial’s timing played out through the day Friday. Announcing the plan to transmit the single article to the Senate on Monday, Pelosi said in a morning statement that Trump “will have had the same amount of time to prepare for trial as our managers.”

Around the same time on the Senate floor, Schumer said he and McConnell continued to discuss the “timing and duration” of the trial.

“But make no mistake, a trial will be held in the United States Senate, and there will be a vote on whether to convict the president,” he said, adding: “It will be a full trial; it will be a fair trial.”

McConnell and other Republican senators, meanwhile, publicly warned that rushing into the trial after the rapid House impeachment vote – which took place one week after the Capitol riot, with no evidentiary hearings or opportunity for Trump to mount a defense – would taint the process.

“Senate Republicans strongly believe we need a full and fair process where the former president can mount a defense and the Senate can properly consider the factual, legal and constitutional questions at stake,” McConnell said Friday.

Democrats could not ignore the warning, since McConnell is among a small group of Senate Republicans who have signaled deep unease with Trump’s conduct surrounding the Jan. 6 riot. Many Democrats doubt McConnell will ultimately vote to convict Trump, despite his remarks this week that the mob was “provoked by the president and other powerful people,” but they understand that they must have his support if the Senate is ultimately going to bar Trump from future office.

Another potential Republican vote for conviction, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, also expressed reservations Friday about a rushed trial. “The process has to be fair,” she said.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a key Trump ally, told reporters it would be “ridiculous” for Democrats not to agree to at least some delay, noting that Trump retained the first member of his defense team – South Carolina lawyer Karl S. “Butch” Bowers Jr. – only on Thursday.

“If the trial starts right away, that would be an affront to everything every American claims to hold near and dear,” Graham said. “You get a chance to defend yourself.”

In the nine days since the House impeached Trump, Democrats – including Biden – had floated the possibility that the Senate could come to an agreement to both conduct Trump’s trial and proceed with regular business simultaneously, but Republicans made clear they were not interested in a split schedule.

“Once we take the trial up, we have to do the trial,” Graham said. “If you want to impeach the president, we’re going to do it like we’ve always done it. We’re not going to split the day. . . . That’s the business of the Senate once we go into it.”

Although senators of both parties have suggested this trial could be shorter than Trump’s first one, which wrapped up in February 2020 after 21 days, there are no guarantees of such brevity. The House managers or Trump’s lawyers, for instance, could seek to call witnesses and present evidence, extending the proceedings indefinitely.

Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., the No. 3 GOP leader, said that once the trial begins, “the opportunity for President Biden to get a Cabinet in place is done until impeachment is done.”

“This basically stops President Biden in his tracks at a time when a number of Republicans believe that President Biden ought to be able to put a Cabinet in place,” Barrasso also said.

The Senate confirmed Avril Haines as director of national intelligence on Wednesday and confirmed retired Gen. Lloyd Austin as defense secretary on Friday.

As Senate leaders sparred over the timing and structure of the trial, more Senate Republicans signaled Friday that they are uncomfortable with holding a trial for an ex-president.

Under the Constitution, Trump could suffer “disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States,” and the House impeachment article seeks to do that.

Graham and others have urged colleagues to reject the notion that a president can be tried after leaving office, leaving moot the implications of his conduct – which includes spreading baseless claims that Biden lost the November election, urging his vice president to reject duly cast electoral college votes, summoning his supporters to rally in Washington as Congress finalized Biden’s win and urging them that day to march to the Capitol.

Schumer sought to rebut that argument Friday on the Senate floor. “It makes no sense whatsoever that a president or any official could commit a heinous crime against our country, and then be permitted to resign, so as to avoid accountability and a vote to disbar them from future office,” he said.

Other GOP senators in recent days have aired misgivings about the process, signaling that they are disinclined to support a conviction – which will require 17 Republicans to join the expected 50 Democrats and independents who caucus with Democrats.

“We kind of have an inkling of what the outcome is going to be,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. “I mean, Democrats this time didn’t even bother to go through the motions of getting sworn testimony and having hearings in the House. This is not a serious effort. It is a serious issue, but it’s not a serious effort to comply with the requirements of due process of the Constitution when it comes to impeachment.”

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Biden wants to squeeze an extra shot of vaccine out of every Pfizer vial. It won’t be easy.

InternationalJan 23. 2021President Joe Biden

By The Washington Post, Christopher Rowland

Soon after the government authorized the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine in December, pharmacists discovered that a small amount of extra vaccine in every five-dose vial shipped by Pfizer amounted to a full additional dose.

For a nation desperate to get back to normal, the development was seemingly good news: Here was a path to expedite additional shots. On Jan. 6, Pfizer won an amendment to its Food and Drug Administration authorization reflecting that each vial in its shipments contained six shots – an instant 20 percent increase.

But as with many aspects of the vaccine rollout, complications arose, dampening enthusiasm.

Squeezing all six doses out of the Pfizer vials requires the use of special syringes that are in short supply. As a result, the sixth dose is often discarded, trapped in the small dead space in regular syringes, where the syringe’s stopper cannot reach it to plunge into a human arm.

President Joe Biden highlighted the urgent need to produce more of the specialty syringes – called low dead space syringes, because they are more efficient – in his pandemic response plan unveiled this week. His administration said it plans to use the Defense Production Act to procure more of the specialty syringes.

The Biden administration and Pfizer finalized a deal Friday that will allow the government to track which shipments are accompanied by low dead space syringes and which are not, according to an individual close to the negotiations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the details.

Vials accompanied by regular syringes will be counted as five doses against Pfizer’s contract for 200 million shots, and those accompanied by special syringes will count as six shots toward contract fulfillment.

The arrangement will allow Pfizer to avoid a controversy in the United States that flared in Europe last week, when press reports said Pfizer would be paid for six vaccine doses per vial even though medical providers lacked the equipment required to use all six.

But the agreement permits Pfizer to accelerate fulfillment of its U.S. contract.

“For Pfizer, the FDA approval of the overfill dose means it can fulfill its contract, which calls for doses, and receive full payment from the U.S. with almost seven million fewer vials. But many of those sixth doses might ultimately be discarded because distribution centers lack the proper tools,” said Sam Buffone a partner with the whistleblower law firm Black & Buffone and former senior trial counsel in the civil frauds division of the Justice Department.

The Department of Health and Human Services said in response to questions from The Washington Post that it advised the FDA that the move authorizing six doses of the Pfizer vaccine per vial posed hurdles.

“The FDA’s decisions on vaccine authorizations and approvals are made independently to preserve the integrity of their process,” HHS said. “HHS did, however, notify the FDA of potential long-term shortages” of low dead space syringes.

FDA said in a statement that it did take into consideration the availability of appropriate injectors, citing what it called their “ready availability.”

But BD, the largest manufacturer of syringes in the world, said the low dead space syringes are not as plentiful as regular syringes and predicted a considerable ramp-up to produce more.

“Low dead space syringes are niche products, and there has been minimal market demand based on health-care provider needs,” BD spokesman Troy Kirkpatrick said.

BD has been working for months to refit a manufacturing facility in Nebraska that will be churning out regular syringes. It has contracts to provide 286 million needles and syringes to the U.S. government by March and said it has already delivered 150 million of those. Of the 286 million, 40 million will be low dead space syringes, the company said.

Those were provided because they were what BD had available, not because it was anticipated that overfill in vials would need to be maximized for additional doses.

“It wasn’t planned that low dead space syringes were going to be needed for the vaccination efforts,” Kirkpatrick said. “When you have to plan months and months in advance, and without sacrificing routine care, it’s hard to sort of stop on a dime and just say, ‘Here’s 100 million of these things.'”

Drug companies typically add a small amount of drug or vaccines in vials of injectable pharmaceuticals to ensure that medical staff will have enough for the full dose. Doses may bubble up when they are shaken, and small amounts are typically trapped in needles and syringes.

Jessica Daley, a pharmacist and vice president of strategic supplier engagement at Premier, a health-care company that brings together 4,100 hospitals and health systems for group purchasing and health-care improvement, said members have reported difficulty in procuring needles and syringes to take advantage of the extra sixth dose in the Pfizer vials.

Operation Warp Speed provides ancillary vaccine supplies, including syringes and needles, in kits shipped by McKesson. But Daley said those kits only have enough for the original number of doses.

“We found early in the process there is Pfizer vaccine overfill in the vial, so we can get more doses out of those vials,” Daley said. “But to do that, you need more needles and syringes than are included in the Operation Warp Speed ancillary kit. We’ve heard from our members they struggle to secure those additional needles and syringes to use the full number available.”

Lindsey Amerine, director of pharmacy at UNC Health, a system of 12 hospitals affiliated with the University of North Carolina Medical Center, said she was working at a vaccine clinic last week and was able to draw six doses from the Pfizer vaccine vials using low dead space syringes. But other staff members at the same clinic were using regular syringes.

“They were not able to get the full six doses out,” she said. “It just depends on what syringes you are using.”

Other ongoing complications involve billing and tracking doses allocated to states.

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South Carolina lawyer hired to defend Trump at Senate impeachment trial

InternationalJan 23. 2021Karl Bowers Jr.

By The Washington Post, Michael Kranish and Josh Dawsey

WASHINGTON – When Republican politicians in South Carolina have faced possible impeachment, ethics charges or other serious accusations, they have often turned to Karl Bowers Jr., a lawyer with a military background, taciturn demeanor and a small office near the State House in Columbia.

Now Bowers is taking on his biggest case yet: defending former president Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial, this time against a charge that he incited a mob to attack the U.S. Capitol.

The longtime GOP attorney is little known outside of South Carolina and has no powerhouse law firm behind him. Colleagues say he is better known for behind-the-scenes negotiations than courtroom oratory.

In Bowers, Trump is getting a seasoned lawyer at a time when prominent Washington litigators have little interest in working for the former president – and a measured figure who offers a sharp contrast to attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, who spent the past several months unspooling wild conspiracy theories that the election was rigged.

“When I was threatened with the specter of impeachment, he was able and professional,” said former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford, recalling how Bowers successfully fought off efforts to remove him from office. “From his vantage point, it is a good business decision. It substantially raises your profile on a national and international basis.”

In addition to his work for Sanford, Bowers defended then-South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley during an ethics investigation, and he played a key role in the campaigns of some of the state’s most prominent Republican politicians. His law office is in a small white building that also houses the firm of current Gov. Henry McMaster.

“He is the first call that every Republican campaign makes for a legal team,” said South Carolina political consultant Tim Pearson, who has worked alongside Bowers on gubernatorial campaigns and shares office space with him. “It doesn’t surprise me he is willing to do the work. He is a lawyer’s lawyer in the sense that I think he believes that everybody deserves representation.”

Bowers did not respond to a request for comment.

Bowers, 55, a graduate of Tulane Law School, was recommended to Trump by Sen. Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican, who said that he expects that Trump might bring on other lawyers.

“He can handle Trump well,” Graham said of Bowers in an interview. “He’ll give the president good advice and won’t sugarcoat it. He can talk to him.”

But Democrats in the state who know Bowers and his politics were surprised that he was willing to take on the case.

“He is not a crazy Trump supporter,” said Dick Harpootlian, a prominent lawyer in Columbia and a major donor to President Biden, who said he had argued about six cases against Bowers, who is also his neighbor.

Harpootlian said Bowers probably was persuaded to come aboard because of his relationship with Graham.

“I was surprised because you would have thought there would be a national superstar, with Trump and all his money,” he added. “I’m not saying Butch is not a good lawyer – he is. But there are folks who have participated in these kinds of proceedings before or have big law firms where they can put their people on it.”

Bowers, by contrast, runs a small firm called Bowers Law Office, and he is the only lawyer listed on the firm’s website. He often answers his own door, and he is regularly seen jogging through the city streets. He has a sober manner, associates said.

“Unlike his client, he won’t be bombastic,” Harpootlian said. “You won’t see him flapping his arms around and yelling at anybody.”

Matt Moore, a former chairman of the state GOP party, said Bowers drove a four-wheel-drive truck and preferred suits from Macy’s over Brioni.

“He’s known for his discretion. He doesn’t partake in the usual Columbia shenanigans, of inside gossip and that kind of thing,” he said, adding that “he knows how to get his clients out of tough spots.”

Amanda Loveday, the former director of the South Carolina Democratic Party, said she and Bowers addressed a River Bluff High School class together outside Columbia a few years ago.

“I can’t remember if he specifically said, ‘I’m not a Trump Republican,’ or if he said, ‘I’m not one of those Republicans,’ but he made some allusion to the class that he wasn’t ‘one of those,’ ” Loveday said. “The second the story came out he was working for Trump, that came rushing to my mind. It’s literally all I’ve been thinking since this whole thing came out.”

Graham, who served as an officer in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps in the Air Force, said that Bowers served with him and then “he took over my job.”

Bowers has been a member of the South Carolina Air National Guard since 1983 and has a rank of colonel, according to the biography on his law firm’s website.

He has spent much of his career working on election law, advising campaigns, and defending politicians accused of ethics violations.

After serving as chairman of the South Carolina State Election Commission from 2004 to 2007 and as special counsel on voting matters for the Justice Department, Bowers was counsel for the 2008 presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

In the Sanford case, Bowers defended the governor against a move to oust him from office after revelations of the governor’s affair with an Argentine woman and questions about use of state travel funds. The impeachment effort was dropped.

In 2012, Bowers defended Haley, who faced a hearing by the State Ethics Commission into allegations that she had failed to disclose addresses and occupations for campaign donors. Bowers said at the time that the missing information was minor and that the matter should be handled administratively.

The State, a Columbia newspaper, reported that Bowers was involved in 14 months of “secret negotiations” to try to get the charges dropped, and the commission eventually fined Haley $3,500, according to the newspaper.

The commission also examined whether Haley illegally lobbied while she was a House member in the state legislature, and Bowers once again represented her. She was cleared in the case.

“Butch is a good friend and a fine lawyer,” Haley said in a statement Friday. “President Trump is fortunate to have him on his team.”

In 2016, Bowers was among the lawyers who defended a Republican-backed effort in North Carolina to require transgender residents to use restrooms in certain public facilities that match their sex as recorded on birth certificates.

The Winston-Salem Journal reported that Bowers said the law was needed to prevent men dressed as women entering a women’s bathroom. The law prompted boycotts and a settlement was later reached that enabled individuals to use bathrooms that matched their gender identity.

Graham said that Bowers is expected to meet with Trump in the coming days. The lawyer has already spoken to the former president on the phone, according to people familiar with their interactions, as well as with Trump allies such as spokesman Jason Miller, who first tweeted the news of his hiring.

“Excited to announce that Columbia, SC-based Butch Bowers has joined President Trump’s legal team,” Miller tweeted. “Butch is well respected by both Republicans and Democrats and will do an excellent job defending President Trump.”

Miller did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump aides have not disclosed how much Bowers will be paid or whether the funds would come from the former president’s new leadership PAC, Save America, which Trump set up after the election. The PAC has more than $70 million on hand, according to one person familiar with the finances.

The Senate trial is set to begin the week of Feb. 8. Seventeen Republicans would have to join all 50 Democrats to convict Trump.

Graham said there were only a handful of Republican senators who were inclined to convict. He said the defense will argue that Congress has “never impeached a president after they left office for a reason.”

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In first full day in office, Biden tackles multiple crises

InternationalJan 22. 2021The concurrent nature of the crises that President Biden is facing – a health crisis that snowballed into an economic one before colliding with a social one – has few parallels in modern history. Above, the Bidens attend an inaugural prayer service at the White House. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Jabin Botsford

By The Washington Post · Ashley Parker, Matt Viser ·

WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden raced Thursday to show he was addressing the array of crises awaiting him on his first day in office, issuing executive orders aimed at combating the coronavirus and preparing measures to take on the struggling economy and other problems.

Biden and his team found themselves immediately on what the president called a “wartime” footing, describing fighting the coronavirus as “a national emergency.” Against an already calamitous backdrop of a pandemic that has left more than 408,000 Americans dead, an additional 900,000 people filed new unemployment claims last week, underlining a devastated job market.

In remarks in the White House State Dining Room, Biden outlined a new national strategy for combating the virus, signing 10 executive orders and other documents to streamline the federal government response, move toward reopening schools and businesses, ensure safer travel and increase vaccinations, among other goals.

He called on Americans to “mask up” for the next 100 days, saying that doing so could save more than 50,000 lives. Biden’s tone was notably sober, contrasting not only with former president Donald Trump’s rhetoric, which was often full of superlatives and grand promises, but also with the tone of other presidents on many occasions.

“Let me be very clear: Things are going to continue to get worse before they get better,” Biden said, adding that the death toll would likely top 500,000 next month. “And let me be equally clear: We will get through this. We will defeat this pandemic.”

Biden criticized Trump’s vaccine rollout as “a dismal failure” and called his own goal of administering 100 million vaccine doses within 100 days “one of the greatest operational challenges our nation has ever undertaken.”

But averaging 1 million doses a day appears to be a goal that is already being surpassed. The average number of vaccines administered over the past week was about 936,000, according to a Washington Post tally using data from state reports and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On Thursday, the number was 1,057,369.

Biden bristled on Thursday when asked whether his goal was ambitious enough. “When I announced it, you all said it’s not possible,” he said. “Come on, give me a break, man.”

At the same time, Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is spearheading Biden’s covid-19 response, said he felt far freer than he had under Trump to provide accurate, science-based information. “The idea that you can get up here and talk about what you know, what the science is, and know that’s it – let the science speak – it is somewhat of a liberating feeling,” Fauci said.

Biden plans to move quickly on other fronts beyond coronavirus as well. On Friday, he will sign executive orders tackling the economy, which continues to struggle, with nearly 16 million people claiming benefits as of Jan. 2, the last week the information was available.

And he plans to continue apace in the coming days, outlining a “Buy American” action Monday, followed by a focus on racial equity Tuesday, climate change Wednesday, health care Thursday, and immigration Friday.

But the pandemic is arguably the country’s starkest problem, given the daily death toll. For nearly a year Biden has criticized Trump for not making full use of his executive powers to ramp up production of coronavirus tests and personal protective equipment.

In his actions and remarks on Thursday, he authorized the use of the Defense Production Act to increase efforts to combat the pandemic and increase vaccine distribution. “This is a wartime undertaking,” Biden said, noting that more Americans have died of covid-19 than in all of World War II.

The president’s early moves are the culmination of months of planning. His team began laying the groundwork last April, hiring staff and drafting proposals with an eye toward the opening days of a Biden presidency.

“We’re going into war – but it wasn’t a surprise attack. This isn’t Pearl Harbor. It’s more like D-Day,” said Ted Kaufman, a close Biden adviser who led the transition. “This is the first days of the battle, and if you have really, really good people you can fight on all the fronts.”

Adam Jentleson, a former aide to then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said the Biden team is still grappling with the enormity of its challenges.

“You’re always having to figure things out on the fly, but the ground is shifting under them faster than any other new administration in recent history,” said Jentleson, the author of “Kill Switch,” a book about the Senate. “So they’re having not just to play three-dimensional chess, but they’re playing three-dimensional chess in an antigravity chamber with the pieces flying off the board.”

Biden’s schedule Thursday was itself designed to suggest focus and normalcy. He held a single public event, followed by a public briefing from Fauci and White House press secretary Jen Psaki.

That contrasted with many of Trump’s days as president, which often included early-morning or late-night tweets on various subjects, as well as comments from Trump that might deliver insults, veer sharply from aides’ expectations or complain of persecution.

Even on Biden’s first full day as president, there were signs that a tighter organization would only go so far in overcoming challenges.

The White House has been reluctant to stake out a firm position on the timing of Trump’s impeachment proceedings, which could bog down the Senate’s ability to move forward on Biden’s $1.9 trillion relief package and his Cabinet nominations.

Psaki on Thursday declined to say whether Biden had an opinion on eliminating the Senate filibuster, which could make his priorities easier to pass but would significantly alter the chamber where Biden served for 36 years.

Despite Biden’s appeals for unity, Republicans are already citing objections to many of his initial plans – including an ambitious overhaul of the nation’s immigration system – and are widely expected to object to portions of his covid relief bill.

While Trump’s administration yielded the expedited production of a coronavirus vaccine, Biden’s clearly has some catching up to do. Trump initially downplayed the virus, diminished his administration’s health experts, mocked actions like mask-wearing and left much of the pandemic response to the states.

Trump in many ways also undermined efforts to combat climate change and racial inequity – Biden’s two other top priorities – leaving the new president to begin reversing actions from the previous four years before beginning to implement his own agenda.

And in baselessly claiming the election was stolen and encouraging his angry supporters to assault the Capitol, Trump left Biden a nation riven by partisan politics, with a portion of the population refusing to accept Biden as the legitimately elected leader.

Former Barack Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel – who famously quipped about the Great Recession’s financial collapse that “you never want a serious crisis to go to waste” – said that while the individual crises facing Biden faces are not unprecedented, the combination is unlike anything in modern history.

“Lincoln had the Civil War, Wilson had the pandemic, Roosevelt had the depression, Kennedy had the height of the Cold War, and Johnson had unprecedented civil and social strife,” Emanuel said. “Biden has D, all of the above.”

“It brings a different set of urgency,” Emanuel added. “The normal boundaries of procedures and expectations, that weight gets lifted and you . . . can do things you once thought were impossible.”

In the opening day of his administration, Biden signaled a split from Trump in both style and substance.

“We talked constantly in the campaign about hitting the ground running, but we hit the ground sprinting on day one,” said deputy White House press secretary T.J. Ducklo.

Emanuel said the Biden team’s actions – both implicit and explicit, both substantive and ceremonial – were designed to convey propulsion. “No stalling. No stopping. No wasting time. With a sense of urgency, it’s forward movement,” he said. “Suit up, get ready, let’s go. It’s all of one piece: Momentum.”

Biden has made a flurry of moves – signing 15 executive actions, as well as two agency directives – inking some while still in the Capitol, moments after being sworn in. Some of those actions, like the ones on Thursday, focused on the coronavirus, while others addressed the economy, climate change and racial equality.

It’s an effort to show he is responding to a cluster of problems – a health crisis that snowballed into an economic one before colliding with a social one – with few parallels in modern history. The closest, perhaps, has been the devastation confronting Franklin D. Roosevelt, the president about whom Biden increasingly spoke during his campaign and whose large portrait he installed in the Oval Office.

Roosevelt, like Biden ended up facing a crisis in his first days in office – in his case, a banking collapse – that was different from what he expected when he began his campaign.

“When Biden started running for the presidency, he articulated all the things he thought he and the Democratic Party and the country should be doing,” said Eric Rauchway, a historian and author of “Winter War: Hoover, Roosevelt, and the First Clash Over the New Deal.” “He’s not going to do any of those. He’s dealing with the bad vaccine rollout. . . . It’s obviously become a priority and been forced upon him in a way he wouldn’t have chosen.”

In some ways, Rauchway added, Biden’s early days and weeks may be guided as much by the landscape that Trump left him than his own affirmative plans.

“A crisis and misconduct by the outgoing president,” Rauchway said, “can set the agenda for the incoming president.”

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Biden to increase federal food benefits among executive actions aimed at stabilizing U.S. economy

InternationalJan 22. 2021President Biden speaks about the coronavirus pandemic before signing executive orders at the White House on Jan. 21. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Jabin Botsford.

By The Washington Post · Jeff Stein, Laura Reiley

WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden is expected on Friday to significantly increase federal food assistance for millions of hungry families among executive actions intended to stabilize the deterioration of the economy weighed down by the raging coronavirus pandemic.

Biden is asking the Department of Agriculture to allow states to increase Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits – commonly known as food stamps – and to increase by 15% benefits awarded through a school meals programs for low-income studentsstarted during the pandemic, according to Biden administration officials. That could give a family of three children more than $100 in extra benefits every two months, officials said.

A separate unilateral move aims to help get previously approved stimulus checks into the hands of Americans who haven’t received them yet. And another would ask the Labor Department to make clear that workers who refuse to return to working conditions that could expose them to the coronavirus should be eligible for unemployment insurance.

Brian Deese, director of the White House National Economic Council, told reporters on a call Thursday night that the measures are meant as only partial solutions, as the administration kicks off negotiations with Congress on its $1.9 trillion relief economic proposal.

The U.S. economy has shown new signs of damage, particularly in the labor market. Last month, the economy lost jobs for the first time since the recovery began, and weekly jobless claims in January have remained at historic highs amid growing fears of long-term damage to the economy. Biden has inherited the worst jobs market of any president in modern history.

“These actions are not a substitute for comprehensive legislative relief,” Deese said, “but they will provide a critical lifeline to millions of American families.”

Biden’s order attempts in several ways to address the surge in hunger in America during the pandemic, with approximately 50 million people, including 17 million children, considered food insecure.

Previous coronavirus relief bills did not expand SNAP for the 40 percent of recipients who were already at the maximum benefit. Biden’s new order would allow states to increase SNAP emergency allotments for those who need it most, allowing an additional 12 million people to receive enhanced benefits.

Under Biden’s order, an electronic debit card benefit for students will increase by approximately 15%. The program is called Pandemic EBT and goes to students who would have qualified for free or reduced-priced school meals were school in session.

Perhaps the most significant change in this executive order is a reassessment of the USDA’s Thrifty Food Plan, the basis for determining SNAP benefits. Lisa Davis, senior vice president of Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry campaign, said the metrics are out of date with the economic realities most struggling households face. The president will ask the USDA to consider beginning the process of revising the Thrifty Food Plan to better reflect the modern cost of a healthy basic diet.

“Any one of these in itself would be terrific, but if you bundle them together, these are indeed quite significant in terms of helping Americans get through one of the most terrible times in our lives,” said Catherine D’Amato, chief executive of Greater Boston Food Bank.

Biden will also restore collective bargaining power to federal workers and direct agencies to develop recommendations “directing his administration to start the work” of an executive order requiring federal contractors to pay a $15 per hour minimum wage and provide emergency paid leave. Biden endorsed similar commitments during the presidential campaign.

In terms of stimulus payments, the White House says it will ask the Treasury Department to consider improving its disbursal, in part by “working to make sure those who have not yet accessed their funds get the relief they deserve.” It is not clear exactly what measures Treasury could take to ensure as many as 8 million people who have not received their stimulus payments from last spring get them.

Biden’s executive actions will also aim to buttress unemployment benefits as about 10 million remain out of work. Democrats in Congress had for months asked the Trump administration to make clear to states that workers who felt unsafe returning to work due to the coronavirus should not be denied jobless benefits. States had wildly different interpretations of the rules, leading thousands to be deprived of unemployment aid, said Andrew Stettner, an unemployment expert and senior fellow at the Century Foundation, a think tank.

“The federal government has a role to tell the states what they should do on this,” Stettner said. “This is significant.”

The executive actions also include a number of measures related to U.S. federal employees. President Donald Trump had issued an executive order in October that would have stripped civil service protections from federal employees whose work involves policymaking, allowing them to be dismissed with little cause or recourse, much like the political appointees who come and go with each administration.

Civil service experts and union leaders estimated that from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of federal employees in a workforce of 2.1 million would have been swept into the new class of employees, called Schedule F. Biden will reverse that decision.

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Obama, Bush and Clinton release video praising peaceful transfers of power, as Trump skips inauguration

InternationalJan 22. 2021

By The Washington Post · Tim Elfrink

Standing in the Memorial Amphitheater at Arlington National Cemetery alongside his two predecessors in the White House, former president Barack Obama noted that inaugurations are central to American democracy.

“Inaugurations signal a tradition of a peaceful transfer of power that is over two centuries old,” Obama said in a joint video released late Wednesday with former presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

Although former president Donald Trump’s name was never uttered in the nearly three-minute clip, it served as an unsubtle rebuke to the latest member of the ex-presidents club, who has spent months torpedoing the norms surrounding the peaceful transfer of power.

Obama recalled that one of his “fondest memories” of his inauguration was Bush and former first lady Laura Bush welcoming him and former first lady Michelle Obama to the White House – a courtesy that Trump and former first lady Melania Trump didn’t afford the Bidens on Wednesday.

“It was a reminder that we can have fierce disagreements and yet recognize each other’s common humanity, and that as Americans we have more in common than what separates us,” Obama said.

Trump became the first commander in chief in more than 150 years to skip his successor’s inauguration, which was heavily guarded by the military after a mob provoked by Trump stormed the Capitol earlier this month in an attempted insurrection.

In his farewell speech on Wednesday morning, Trump never mentioned Biden’s name, although he did wish the “new administration great luck and great success.” Biden said he still hasn’t spoken to Trump, but told reporters that his predecessor did leave him a “very generous” letter, following one tradition after ignoring many others.

In the video, the former presidents presented a starkly different vision of bipartisan cooperation – one that echoed Biden’s calls for unity in his inaugural address. Bush, the sole Republican standing between the two Democrats, noted that their mere presence together sends a vivid message.

“The fact that the three of us are here talking about a peaceful transfer of power speaks to the institutional integrity of our country,” he said.

Clinton suggestedBiden’s win opened opportunities for America to change for the better.

“This is an unusual thing. We are both trying to come back to normalcy, deal with totally abnormal challenges, and do what we do best, which is try to make a more perfect union,” he said. “It’s an exciting time.”

All three ex-presidents urged Americans to find ways to talk in a moment when the nation is politically fractured.

“We’ve got to not just listen to folks we agree with, but listen to folks we don’t,” Obama said.

Bush added that “if Americans would love their neighbors like they would like to be loved themselves, a lot of the division in our society would end.”

These three former presidents, Obama stressed, stood ready to help Biden however they could.

“You’ve got all of us here rooting for your success,” he said. “We will be available in any ways that we can as citizens to help you guide our country forward.”

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Biden signs order Thursday requiring masks on planes, buses, trains and at airports

InternationalJan 22. 2021Joe Biden and Kamala Harris don masks during an August event in Wilmington, Del. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Toni L. Sandys

By The Washington Post · Michael Laris

WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden signed an order Thursday mandating mask usage in airports and on many planes, trains, ships and intercity buses, the White House said.

The moves are part of a new strategy released Thursday to confront the coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 406,000 people in the United States.

Airline workers have described the dangerous results of passengers refusing to follow mask requirements issued by airlines. Safety reports filed with the federal government show flight attendants being repeatedly taunted and verbally abused by passengers, including some who called the virus a “political hoax.”

Biden’s action comes on the heels of earlier order Wednesday – the first he issued as president – requiring masks on federal property. Together, the orders come as close to a national mask mandate as his federal powers allow, because only states and municipalities can require residents to wear masks at a local level.

The Trump administration rejected calls from Congress, unions representing transportation workers and public health experts within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to require masks.

Biden’s move marks a clear break from Trump’s handling of masks, although some specifics, including how it might be enforced, remain unclear pending the release of the order. It will require masks “on certain public modes of transportation and at ports of entry to the United States,” according to a White House strategy document released Thursday.

Biden had said before his inauguration he would require masks for “interstate travel on planes, trains and buses,” and CDC officials previously indicated that interstate travel is where their existing authority lies. The precise role of the Department of Transportation was immediately clear.

Biden’s pick for transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, appeared Thursday before the Senate Commerce Committee for a hearing on his nomination. In prepared remarks, he pointed to the need to face the broad dangers stemming from the coronavirus pandemic.

“Safety is the foundation of the department’s mission, and it takes on new meaning amid this pandemic,” according to his remarks. “We must ensure all of our transportation systems – from aviation to public transit, to our railways, roads, ports, waterways, and pipelines – are managed safely during this critical period, as we work to defeat the virus.”

The White House said Thursday the pending order “directs applicable agencies to take immediate action to require mask-wearing on many airplanes, trains,” maritime vessels and intercity buses.

The strategy also seeks more aggressive action by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, including considering emergency standards on mask-wearing and other matters. “Biden is taking steps to cover workers not typically covered by OSHA . . . by directing agencies like the Department of Transportation to keep workers safe,” according to the strategy document.

Biden’s pending order, “Promoting COVID-19 Safety in Domestic and International Travel,” also will instruct agencies “to develop options for expanding public health measures for domestic travel and cross-border land and sea travel and calls for incentives to support and encourage compliance with CDC guidelines on public transportation.”

The CDC previously outlined the reasoning behind its “strong recommendation” to wear masks during travel.

“Traveling on public conveyances increases a person’s risk of getting and spreading COVID-19 by bringing people in close contact with others, often for prolonged periods,” the CDC said.

“People should wear masks when traveling into, within, or out of the United States on conveyances,” the agency said in the earlier guidance. “Local transmission can grow quickly into interstate and international transmission when infected people travel on public conveyances without wearing a mask and with others who are not wearing masks.”

Experts in psychology and decision-making said resistance to mask usage, including on planes, has been driven by politization at the highest levels of the U.S. government and beyond, and is also fueled by the inconsistent messaging and the insidious nature of a virus that can be spread so easily by those who don’t even know they are infected. Experts said one shortcoming has been a lack of careful testing of public health messages to make sure they are convincing.

Biden White House officials said their strategy will include “world-class public education campaigns” on mask-wearing, testing and vaccinations, which will be coordinated on the federal, state and local levels and include the private sector.

“They will be anchored by science and fact-based public health guidance. The Administration will work to counter misinformation and disinformation by ensuring that Americans are obtaining science-based information,” the according to the strategy.