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Republicans call for unity but won’t acknowledge Biden won fairly

InternationalJan 18. 2021

By The Washington Post · Amy B Wang

The call for unity came from one of President Donald Trump’s most loyal supporters in Congress, nearly a week after a pro-Trump mob rampaged the U.S. Capitol in a riot that left five people dead.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/c/embed/9cedc556-4662-4e5b-aff1-046b5a6e41af?ptvads=block&playthrough=false

“What happened at the Capitol on Jan. 6 was as wrong as wrong can be,” Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, told colleagues during a virtual committee meeting about Democrats’ demands that Trump be removed from office. Now was the time for “healing,” and in Jordan’s opinion, that meant allowing the president to finish out his term.

The committee chairman, Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., pressed him on one point. Hadn’t Jordan and more than 140 other Republicans given oxygen to the false conspiracy theory pushed by Trump that motivated the Capitol rioters – that the election had somehow been stolen – when they had voted to object to certifying the electoral college results?

“We all want healing. But in order to get to healing, we need truth, and we need accountability,” McGovern said, adding: “So my question for you is: Will you admit that Joe Biden won fair and square, and the election was not rigged or stolen?”

McGovern’s question was met with 17 seconds of silence before Jordan said Biden would indeed be inaugurated president – a clear dodge of the question about the nature of Biden’s victory.

As Biden prepares to be sworn into office surrounded by more than 20,000 National Guard troops protecting the inauguration from one of the gravest domestic terrorism threats in U.S. history, Democrats and other Trump critics are pushing Republicans to renounce the party’s embrace of the falsehood that inspired the Capitol attack and is motivating many of the Trump supporters vowing to take up arms again.

So far, the efforts have been largely fruitless. Even as much of corporate America threatens to withhold donations from lawmakers who objected to the election results, and social media companies cancel accounts – including Trump’s – spreading the false conspiracy theories, the bulk of elected Republicans continue to follow Trump’s lead in refusing to acknowledge that Biden’s win was legitimate and fair.

“Donald Trump incited the violent part of his base to harm people because he made them believe the Big Lie, that he won by a landslide,” Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., a House impeachment manager, tweeted Saturday. “All Trump has to do to prevent further political violence is say one sentence: ‘the election was not stolen.’ “

But so far, Trump and his allies have refused to do that. In their comments about the election, congressional Republicans have hedged, equivocated and accused Democratsof being divisive – even as they continue to promote a falsehood linked to ongoing violence.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, one of the most outspoken supporters of Trump’s fraud claims, issued a joint statement with a half-dozen other GOP senators on Jan. 2 alleging “unprecedented allegations of voter fraud, violations and lax enforcement of election law, and other voting irregularities.” On Jan. 6, hours after an insurrection forced lawmakers to flee, Cruz voted against certifying the results – then argued it was time for unity the following day.

“We must stand side-by-side as Americans,” Cruz said, even as he continued to defend his objection as “the right thing to do” and called for an electoral commission, implying there was wrongdoing in the 2020 election.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., another Trump ally, acknowledged Biden’s victory but also couched his statement with a proposal for a commission, lending credence to the false notion that there was election fraud that needs to be investigated.

“I really do believe that you pushing (impeachment) is going to further divide our country, further the unrest and possibly incite more violence,” Rep. Debbie Lesko, R-Ariz., who voted against certifying the election results, said on Tuesday. “Please, let’s just move on and heal the country.”

The allegation of widespread election fraud has been debunked over and over again. Trump’s lawyers have lost or had tossed out dozens of court cases challenging the results of the election. Dozens of state and local election officials from both parties have affirmed the integrity of their voting processes.

Attorney General William Barr said there was no evidence of widespread fraud. (He has since stepped down.) And on Friday, the Justice Department ended its investigation of the Pennsylvania election – more specifically, into nine ballots found thrown away in the state – saying there was “insufficient evidence to prove criminal intent on the part of the person who discarded the ballots.”

Still, some Trump allies have shifted their message on voter fraud after pressure from outside forces. Dominion Voting Systems, whose voting machines have been at the center of some of the wildest election-related conspiracy theories, has filed several lawsuits against Trump’s lawyers and right-wing media outlets.

When threatened with legal action, a number of Trump’s media allies have apologized for perpetuating the president’s false claims of voter fraud. The conservative magazine American Thinker issued an unprecedented statement of contrition on Friday, retracting several pieces that had falsely accused Dominion of conspiring to steal the election from Trump. Thomas Lifson, the magazine’s editor and publisher, acknowledged those pieces had relied on “discredited sources who have peddled debunked theories” that had “no basis in fact.”

“Industry experts and public officials alike have confirmed that Dominion conducted itself appropriately and that there is simply no evidence to support these claims,” Lifson said in the statement. “It was wrong for us to publish these false statements. We apologize to Dominion for all of the harm this caused them and their employees. We also apologize to our readers for abandoning 9 journalistic principles and misrepresenting Dominion’s track record and its limited role in tabulating votes for the November 2020 election. We regret this grave error.”

Right-leaning news channels Fox News and Newsmax have also aired similar segments walking back prior suggestions of wrongdoing by voting machines manufacturers when faced with possible legal action.

While Republican lawmakers have not faced the same legal liabilities, those who have doubled down on their support for Trump’s claims of election fraud have faced fallout in other ways. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., led efforts to object to Biden’s win and still voted against certifying the electoral college votes even after the Capitol siege. He has since lost a book deal and was condemned by some of his longtime GOP allies and constituents.

On Saturday, Axios reported that the communications director for Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., had quit after the congresswoman’s unapologetic support for QAnon and Trump’s conspiracy theories. Cruz’s communications director left her job this week for similar reasons. Elected officials from Mississippi, Kansas and Missouri who voted against certification have faced growing pressure to state that the election was not stolen or resign.

“Mississippi and the nation must hold U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith and Reps. Trent Kelly, Steven Palazzo and Michael Guest accountable for their complicity in the lies that Donald Trump has used to foment fear, doubt and, ultimately, insurrection,” stated a Jackson Free-Press editorial this week.

Ten House Republicans ultimately voted with Democrats to impeach Trump on an article of “incitement of insurrection,” and a handful of GOP senators have voiced support for or left open the possibility of voting to convict him.

One of them, Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., has not held back in excoriating Trump for pushing lies and conspiracy theories about the election, and has said the Republican Party is at a crossroads moving forward.

“The violence that Americans witnessed – and that might recur in the coming days – is not a protest gone awry or the work of ‘a few bad apples.’ It is the blossoming of a rotten seed that took root in the Republican Party some time ago and has been nourished by treachery, poor political judgment, and cowardice,” Sasse wrote in a fiery essay published by the Atlantic on Saturday. “… Until last week, many party leaders and consultants thought they could preach the Constitution while winking at QAnon. They can’t. The GOP must reject conspiracy theories or be consumed by them. Now is the time to decide what this party is about.”

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Pence is helping Biden make the transition more normal – but their cooperation has risks for each

InternationalJan 18. 2021Vice President Mike Pence, presiding over Congress’s affirmation of the election results on Jan. 6, passes a document to a staffer. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Bill O’Leary

By The Washington Post · Annie Linskey

When Vice President Mike Pence takes his seat near Joe Biden at the inauguration on Wednesday, he will be symbolically turning his back on President Donald Trump’s baseless assertion of a stolen election and creating the powerful image of a peaceful transfer of power – an image his boss has sought to upend.

That comes after Pence last Thursday called Vice President-elect Kamala Harris to congratulate her, offering her Air Force Two to travel to the inauguration, a courtesy Biden extended to Pence four years ago. Most dramatically, Pence on Jan. 6 rejected efforts to disrupt Congress’s certification of the election results, making him the target of a violent mob as he formalized Biden’s win.

At a time when big factions of each party view the other as contemptible, Biden and Pence are haltingly cooperating to shore up the traditional exchange of power. It’s a dynamic helpful to both, as Biden works to enhance his legitimacy with Republicans and Pence seeks to regain credibility after the Trump years.

William Kristol, who was Vice President Dan Quayle’s chief of staff, said cooperating with Biden lets Pence shape his post-Trump political brand. “Is there a market for ‘civilized Trump acquiescence but not totally crazy’ conservatism? Probably,” Kristol said. “Playing that middle ground – civilized Trumpism with a civil face – isn’t a bad place for him to be, really.”

And for Biden, the Pence link lets him argue that he’s not naive to embrace bipartisanship. “He wants to say that Trump is an aberration both for the country and for the Republican Party,” Kristol said. “From the point of view of his governance, it is good for making that case.”

If the dynamic is helpful to both figures for the moment, it is also fraught. Many Democrats still despise Pence for enabling Trump’s destructiveness for four years and do not want Biden to help rehabilitate him. Pence, meanwhile, hopes to curry favor among the GOP base and potentially challenge Biden in 2024, so working with him now could carry a cost.

The two leaders have never been personally close. But as Trump refuses to acknowledge his election loss, their relationship has quietly become critical – and may be even more so in the coming months if Trump continues to rile up his followers by declaring that he was cheated.

Despite faithfully backing even Trump’s most dubious actions for four years, Pence in recent days has taken on the traditional role, eschewed by Trump, of representing an outgoing administration, for example traveling to California and New York this weekend to bid farewell to military troops.

Four years ago it was Biden who was the outgoing vice president, welcoming Pence as he took office. He offered Pence help settling into the vice-presidential residence at the U.S. Naval Observatory, and he continued calling regularly to check on Pence, aides to both men said, until he ran into trouble with liberals for calling Pence “a decent guy” in early 2019.

They already knew each other by then, having overlapped in Congress for eight years before Biden became vice president. During the Obama administration, Pence joined the GOP House leadership and then became governor of Indiana.

The differences between the two men are evident. They’re separated in age by 17 years – Pence is 61, Biden 78. In Congress, they served in different chambers and different parties, battling on everything from the Iraq War to gay rights, putting them in the same newspaper articles but rarely in the same room.

But they shared courtesies over the years, stemming from a mutual respect for institutions, allies of both men said. During the departure of a president determined to shatter norms, that commonality is suddenly crucial.

“Pence is a gentleman, and he takes the office and the decorum seriously,” said Olivia Troye, a former aide to Pence who left the Trump administration over concerns about its handling of the pandemic and later appeared in an ad endorsing Biden. “At the inauguration, I have no doubt that he will be respectful. That is just the kind of man Pence is. He is not the kind of man who throws tantrums.”

Trump, in contrast, plans to skip the ceremony, making him the first outgoing president to boycott his successor’s inauguration since Andrew Johnson declined to attend President Ulysses Grant’s swearing-in in 1869. Instead, Trump is expected to fly to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Wednesday morning.

Allies of both men now wonder whether Pence will step into the role traditionally occupied by former presidents, especially if Trump is a pariah in his post-presidency or actively works to undermine the Biden administration. That could mean, for example, joining with former presidents to support Biden in moments of national crises.

“I would love to see him fulfill that role, because I think he’s great at it,” said one former Pence aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a former boss. “It’s something that the country needs.”

One person close to Biden, who has not spoken to the president-elect about Pence, said the next few days will further clarify Trump’s standing. Any additional violence from pro-Trump agitators, for example, would make it even more attractive to lean on Pence, the person said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.

Jen Psaki, Biden’s incoming White House press secretary, said Biden and Pence have not spoken in recent days. Devin O’Malley, a spokesman for Pence, declined to comment for this story.

Many Democrats are loath to give Pence credit after what they consider years of sycophancy to Trump.

“He can’t shed four years of intimate Trumpism by 30 seconds of doing some of the right things,” said Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, D-N. J, who contracted covid-19 after sheltering in the Capitol with Republican lawmakers refusing to wear masks. Citing Trump’s policies on race, coronavirus and other issues, she said of Pence, “He earned every bit of our skepticism and reluctance to trust him on any level.”

Transportation Secretary-designate Pete Buttigieg memorably summed up Democrats’ scorn for Pence when he was running for the Democratic nomination, calling him “a cheerleader for the porn star presidency.”

Amy Walter, national editor of the Cook Political Report, said the recent assault on the Capitol changed the landscape for the vice president. “When you have people running through the Capitol saying, ‘Hang Mike Pence,’ you don’t have a lot to lose in saying, ‘I’m going to work with the incoming administration,’ ” Walter said.

In presiding over the Jan. 6 joint session of Congress that certified the 2020 election, Pence reprised a role that Biden himself played four years ago. Biden had also faced a party with raw emotions, though not violent ones. As presiding officer, Biden swatted aside several objections and instructed the sergeant-at-arms to remove protesters from the gallery.

Democrats did not challenge the election results in 2016 as forcefully as many Republicans did this time, but they repeatedly noted that Trump had lost the popular vote and received help from Russia. In that tense atmosphere, Biden met with Pence multiple times, hosting Pence and his wife at a lunch in the Naval Observatory just one week after Hillary Clinton conceded.

Biden’s office issued a statement at the time saying the two had discussed their work in Congress and “their friendship dating back many years,” according to a newspaper account. (A Biden transition aide said the suggestion of a long friendship seemed overstated, though it had come from Biden’s vice-presidential office.)

One Biden aide recalled creating binders and briefing top Pence staffers in a “dutiful” attempt to ease the transition. A former Pence aide agreed, saying, “I do think Biden and his team did what they could to make a smooth transition for us.”

After Pence took office in January 2017, Biden regularly reached out, according to two people familiar with their conversations. “Biden did make a habit of staying in touch with Pence until, of course, primary politics made that untenable,” said a Pence confidant, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share internal talks.

The break came, according to this person, in early 2019 as Biden, then considering a presidential run, faced criticism from Democratic activists for calling Pence “a decent guy.” Biden made the comment during a speech at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, where he recounted how foreign leaders reacted poorly to a Pence speech because of their dislike for Trump.

Biden described Pence as “a guy who’s a decent guy – our vice president – who stood before this group of allies and leaders and said, ‘I’m here on behalf of President Trump,’ and there was dead silence. Dead silence,” Biden said.

Many Democrats were upset that Biden would characterize Pence as “decent,” given his hostility to gay rights and abortion. Biden had to soften the comment, saying, “There is nothing decent about being anti-LGBTQ rights, and that includes the vice president.”

Wednesday’s inauguration won’t be the first time that Pence has attended a ceremony celebrating Biden’s ascent. In 2009, Pence had just been elected to chair the House Republican Conference – making him the third-ranking House Republican – and he dined on seafood, pheasant and duck at a lunch at the Capitol following the swearing-in ceremony for President Barack Obama and Biden.

By the time Pence came to the House in 2001, Biden had already been a senator for nearly three decades. If Biden is gregarious, Pence is courtly; while Biden’s political persona is that of a friendly neighbor, Pence projects a courteous schoolteacher.

In late 2008, Pence described himself as leading a “cheerful opposition” to the Obama administration. That played out in budget battles, including a hard-fought showdown in 2011. Biden, negotiating with Congress on behalf of the Obama administration, made a proposal to cut about $33 billion in spending, but Pence opposed it as too small-bore.

“By picking a fight and winning this one small step toward fiscal discipline, the American people will see … that we can fight and we can win,” Pence told a tea party rally outside the Capitol.

Pence also criticized the Obama-Biden stance toward Iraq, which in 2010 included withdrawing troops. “To make their point, Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden even voted to deny necessary funding for our troops,” Pence charged in an op-ed in The Washington Times.

But especially by the standards of today’s rhetoric, Pence was not nasty or personal. In June 2010, he chastised fellow Republican Rep. Joe Barton of Texas for accusing the Obama administration of a “shakedown” of BP over the Gulf oil spill, saying in a statement with other Republican leaders that Barton’s comments were “wrong.”

And Pence was gracious in November 2010 when Biden traveled to Indiana. “Obviously, every Hoosier should welcome our president and vice president to the Hoosier state,” Pence said. “The more Indiana and our communities and our economy can be in the forefront of the thinking of this administration, we welcome it.”

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Tipsters, tech-savvy kids, pharmacy hopping: How Americans are landing coronavirus vaccines

InternationalJan 17. 2021Ramona Cohen, 75, waits in line at a Giant grocery store in Washington, D.C. in the hope of getting a leftover dose of the coronavirus vaccine on Jan. 15, 2021. MUST CREDIT: photo for The Washington Post by Amanda Andrade-Rhoades.

By The Washington Post · Fenit Nirappil, Karin Brulliard, Sarah Fowler

Four days into her coronavirus vaccine hunt, Ramona Cohen struck out again.

The Safeway in her Washington, D.C., neighborhood had no doses left after its last Thursday appointment. She still had four pharmacies left to try to a tip from her mail carrier that a grocery store a few miles away was giving away leftover vaccine.

It was another frustrating day in a quest that started Monday, when the city opened registration to those 65 and older. Cohen spent 12 hours that day making futile attempts to book appointments by phone and online, only to be foiled by messages saying no appointments were available or interminable waits on hold. When a health department employee who eventually did pick up suggested she call back the next day, Cohen jokingly vented that she doesn’t even buy green bananas.

“You don’t know what tomorrow brings. We don’t have much time left,” Cohen, 75, said. “I consider myself old as it is, and I want to keep going.”

Millions of American seniors are engaged in similarly frantic hunts for the coronavirus vaccine they qualify to receive – but only if they can get their hands on it.

The expanded availability of the two authorized coronavirus vaccines has unleashed a free-for-all among pandemic-weary Americans clamoring for lifesaving protection and a return to some type of normalcy.

Those searching for a shot face a decentralized system of vaccine distribution operated by cash-strapped public health departments and a disparate network of clinics and medical providers, all crushed by unprecedented demand for a shield against the virus decimating American life.

While many Americans have had no problem getting shots, others like Cohen have spent hours trying to get vaccinated, to no avail. The challenges in vaccinating people mirror the botched rollout of coronavirus testing as a mix of government and private providers navigate unfamiliar terrain while communicating with the public in different ways.

Some vaccine appointment websites crashed almost as soon as they launched. Older Americans are enlisting their kids and grandchildren to stay on the phone and keep refreshing websites until they land an appointment. Tiny intelligence networks are forming around the country to scour for morsels of information on how to get a leg up on the vaccine search.

Claire Hannan, executive director of the Association of Immunization Managers, said these struggles are unavoidable as the federal government defers distribution to localities without the resources to create a centralized sign-up for vaccines or to hold mass inoculation drives.

“In any way you slice it, the supply is just so limited right now and the number of seniors is so large that there’s no perfect way to do it,” Hannan said in an interview. “It’s going to take time for everyone to get vaccinated, and it’s impossible to schedule everybody at once.”

Ramona Cohen, 75, speaks to an employee at a Safeway grocery store pharmacy in Washington D.C. on Jan. 15, 2021. MUST CREDIT: photo for The Washington Post by Amanda Andrade-Rhoades.

At least 11 million people have received a dose of a coronavirus vaccine so far, according to Washington Post data. The Trump administration has urged states to start vaccinating everyone 65 and older as the pace of injections lag far behind targets. But some experts and health authorities warn the attempt to speed up distribution could lead to false hope and an even more overburdened public health system.

“Ultimately, what we’re concerned about is there’s just not that strong of a supply of vaccine right now,” said Marcus Plescia, chief medical officer of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. “People have been led to believe there’s vaccine out there, and we’re going to open up the priority scheme. As a result, you now have a lot of people who have been led to believe that the vaccine is available, who are going out and getting in all these lines.”

Some have uncovered creative paths to success in their quests for vaccination.

A 72-year-old Atlanta woman secured coveted vaccinations for herself, her husband and her sister after refreshing her iPhone, iPad and laptop simultaneously until the online appointment page finally loaded.

A 69-year-old retired special education teacher expecting to wait for months lucked out when a central California coast hospital offered extra doses to former volunteers and their loved ones.

A healthy Arkansas man in his mid-30s cut ahead of senior citizens thanks to a family friend who was a pharmacist running a clinic with more doses than patients.

“Personal contacts are unfortunately filling the information void. That has helped me rationalize jumping ahead because I don’t really want to wait for my state to figure out how to be efficient with administering the vaccines,” said the man, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid social repercussions. “I am a wealthy White man, so I do feel guilt that my privilege is definitely giving me another advantage in this world, but at the end of the day, I’m making a decision that I think will keep my family safe.”

The start of vaccinations for senior citizens and some essential workers was an early stress-test of mass inoculation drives for the general public. They were quickly overwhelmed.

Maricopa County, the largest in Arizona, upgraded its servers before launching an online portal that promptly crashed. Some Florida counties turned to Eventbrite, a website usually used to find bar crawls and book clubs, to organize vaccination drives. Macomb County in Michigan reported 100,000 hits in the first five minutes of its online system, which was set up to schedule 4,200 appointments.

“Unfortunately, there is not a system in the world that could accommodate that type of volume,” county executive Mark A. Hackel wrote in an email to residents.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention plans to encourage people to use VaccineFinder as a national resource for finding shots, but a public search function has not launched while supplies are still limited.

In the meantime, some jurisdictions allow people to leave their name on a waiting list, allowing them to avoid the nonstop flurry of calls and emails dominating vaccine searches elsewhere. But others are banking on being able to break through the logjam with persistence.

Bryce Covert, a New York City writer, has been waking up at dawn daily to help her 67-year-old mother on Long Island secure an appointment since Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced senior citizens would be eligible for vaccines.

But the task is not as simple as booking a flight. The state website directed her to several small medical facilities offering the vaccines, but their online appointment system had error messages and their listed phone numbers led to recordings saying they were out of supply. Covert has spent hours waiting on hold on a state hotline but has yet to speak to a person. By Friday, the small sites were no longer listed and the website for a newly added university hospital hasn’t functioned all morning.

“It feels like I’m trying to get a Beyoncé ticket,” Covert said. “It feels like I’m fighting bots on TicketMaster.”

Ramona Cohen hugs pharmacy manager Kathy Hershey after Hershey gave her a vaccine against covid-19 on Jan. 15, 2021 in Washington D.C. MUST CREDIT: photo for The Washington Post by Amanda Andrade-Rhoades.

The stakes are higher for Covert’s mother than watching a concert. She wants to reunite with her 95-year-old mother who lives in Colorado and has a rapidly deteriorating memory. They called off their last visit in March when the first wave of coronavirus shutdowns started.

After six hours of intermittent refreshing Friday afternoon, Covert secured her mother a Feb. 3 vaccination slot. Covert is hoping for an easier time booking the second shot, allowing her mother to celebrate her grandmother’s 96th birthday in late March.

Those who prevailed in their online appointment hunts said an early start was key to success.

Courtney McAlexander, 35, was working from home in Clarksdale, Miss., on Tuesday afternoon when she picked up a call from her mother. Mississippi Republican Gov. Tate Reeves had just announced that senior citizens and those with underlying medical conditions, like McAlexander, who has Type 1 diabetes, now qualify for the vaccine.

That launched a seven-hour blitz for McAlexander and her husband, Kevin Lewellyn, 37, to claim the precious appointments.

“Our millennial skills kicked in and the years of when we were younger trying to get concert tickets from Ticketmaster,” said Alexander. “The website would go down, the website would come back up, and we were just essentially clicking anything we could click to try to get appointments, and we slowly but surely got appointments for myself, my mother and both of his parents.”

They were the lucky ones. The next day, Mississippi announced it had run out of vaccines and could no longer book appointments. The state signed up 52,000 people for shots over the next two weeks.

Reeves told The Post that the high volume was a good sign of widespread interest in the vaccine.

“Even though we certainly had short term challenges, people were willing to do everything they could to either get an appointment online or get through to the call center,” said Reeves, who ordered National Guard staffed drive-through vaccination sites to speed up distribution. “When you flood any system, it’s going to lead to challenges, challenges that we recognize and are now fixing.”

Instead of enduring crashing websites and hold music, other vaccine hunters opted to get offline and take their hunt into the real world.

Glee Noble of Bloomington, Ind., who turns 79 this month, figured she had no chance of getting a shot since the state is prioritizing those older than 80. She would periodically check the state website hoping they would lower the age threshold.

But her 72-year-old asthmatic boyfriend decided to stop waiting and walked two blocks to a county vaccination site at a medical office. He came back vaccinated and urged her to try, too. She lucked out as one of six to receive leftover doses at the end of the day.

“I’m a – knock on wood – fairly healthy almost 79-year-old, and there were people there who were with walkers and wheelchairs and I thought, ‘Oh, I’m a healthy person. I shouldn’t be getting this. People who are frail should be getting this,’ ” Noble recalled.

But she feels less guilty when she remembers hearing nurses fret they wouldn’t vaccinate enough people and would have to keep caring for a crush of covid-19 patients.

Hannan, of the immunization managers group, said the stories of leftover doses suggests broad vaccine networks are hampering, rather than helping, distribution.

“We are seeing the more we spread out the doses to different private sector providers, the less opportunity we have to have large scale vaccination and make sure every dose is used,” Hannan said.

Joel Alpert, a Michigan attorney, tried getting his vaccine appointment by checking daily on a government website. His eyes lit up when he finally saw an available slot at 9:20 a.m. Except the facility was 20 miles away, and his clock read 9:14 a.m.

He turned to a network of friends, relatives and fellow Jewish senior citizens in the Detroit suburbs who would text and email each other tips. Acting on one, Alpert drove 35 minutes to a hospital he heard was processing in-person applications and found an employee holding hundreds of forms. He got a callback offering a Sunday appointment the next day.

“I don’t think that getting a vaccination should be based upon luck or ploys or schemes,” Alpert, 68, said. “I assumed our federal government had some sort of plan, a plan that had been in existence all along. I figured it would be like a military war game that they would be ready for this eventuality.”

In the District, Cohen was determined to find a vaccine – somewhere, anywhere. She has a cousin who has cancer, and she would like to visit her. She has a family function in Arizona in April, but she doesn’t want to get on a plane until she’s been vaccinated.

She misses going to her synagogue. She misses hugs. So Cohen, who works at a law firm, continued to plot new strategies.

On Friday afternoon, she hit a downtown Giant supermarket, where an employee told her they had tossed three unused vials the night before. Cohen took her spot behind one person also hoping for leftovers, and soon the queue grew to about 20.

After the last appointment, the pharmacy had two doses left – and finally, on day five of her quest, Cohen got her shot.

“I’m so relieved. It overcame any of the despair and the frustration,” she said shortly after. “But I feel bad for everybody else who can’t get it.”

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The GOP’s looming choice: whether to make sure former President Trump remains former President Trump

InternationalJan 17. 2021

By The Washington Post · Aaron Blake

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump will not be removed from office before President-elect Joe Biden is inaugurated Wednesday.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/c/embed/0cbea2ec-55e4-46d7-9988-6e652913dd27?ptvads=block&playthrough=false

As the House impeached Trump for a second time last week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., sent word that the Senate wouldn’t begin an impeachment trial immediately. And as The Washington Post’s Seung Min Kim reports, there is a real question about just how quickly it might proceed – especially given the need to confirm members of Biden’s Cabinet and to consider Biden’s new proposal for a $1.9 trillion coronavirus package.

But what’s evident is that we’re headed for an impeachment trial not for a president – but for a former president. And there’s reason to believe that could change the political calculus for Republicans, even Trump’s conviction might remain unlikely. That’s because it could provide them cover to do what many of them really want to do, which is to try to rid themselves of Trump moving forward.

Republican pushback on impeachment has often been focused – as was the pushback on he Russia investigation – on the idea that it was an attempt to overturn the 2016 election. That’s now off the table. Trump will complete his term. Any punishment will have no bearing on the ability of the man who was elected for four years to serve those four years.

But there is a clear and obvious motivation for Republicans who might not have done so previously to consider convicting Trump, even as it will remain politically difficult.

For weeks after the 2020 election, those around Trump sent word that he might run again in 2024. It was an odd thing to be talking about at a time in which they were saying he had actually won and that evidence would soon be presented to that effect (that evidence is still nonexistent). But at its basest political level, it seemed to send a message to Republican officeholders who might go wobbly that he intended to stick around and that they had better stick up for him.

Most of that was before Trump supporters tried to hijack the seat of American government last week, though. Since then, all of it has been cast in a new light. Even many of those who entertained or fomented Trump’s conspiracy theories about the election have gotten a reality check about the true cost of supporting an effort that alleged a stolen election. And even if they don’t think Trump’s conduct was impeachable or worthy of removal, they have a very good idea of just how things can spiral out of control if he’s still around.

A historic number of Trump’s fellow Republicans in the House did vote to impeach, even as that historic number only amounted to 10. But others who opposed impeachment faulted Trump, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.,, and fewer actually spent any time truly defending him. Perhaps most notably, McConnell sent a significant signal that he might vote to convict Trump in the Senate.

To convict Trump in the Senate, there would need to be more GOP votes against him (about 17) than in the House – despite the much smaller chamber. But Senate Republicans have generally expressed more concern about Trump’s actions than have their House colleagues. They also, unlike their House colleagues, won’t be voting on a president who sits in office at that time.

According to The Washington Post’s latest whip count, at least 12 Republicans have suggested they would be open to conviction.

There would be plenty of repercussions involved, but with Trump’s removal now off the table, the big political impact would be on his disqualification. This would require a separate vote, but it’s extremely difficult to see GOP senators convicting him without taking that extra step. How would you let a guy who you would be saying incited an insurrection – as the impeachment article charges – return to the office from which he allegedly did just that? It would seem a formality at that point. In addition, it might require only a simple majority vote rather than 67, though that’s somewhat of an open legal question.

And all the details aside, this could also be the most immediate potential benefit for the GOP. While they’ve frequently given Trump the fealty he demands over his four years in office, it has generally been a matter of his leverage and their desire to use his presidency to accomplish things. They’ve now lost that power. The GOP’s losses in Trump’s reelection bid, combined with the House and the Senate, mark the first time a party has lost all three in four years since 1932. This is reportedly a factor for McConnell, and it could given the party the extra incentive to try to turn the page.

Trump looming over 2024 makes turning that page difficult. Even if he doesn’t actually plan to run, he has plenty of incentive to venture in that direction to keep himself relevant and give himself a platform. And a potential nightmare scenario for the GOP – which too few have considered at this point – is if, in light of the relatively mild rebukes he’s received from his party and if the party were to flirt with nominating another candidate, he were to go the third-party route. Trump repeatedly threatened to do this in 2016, but it would be potentially catastrophic for the party in 2024, given how much of a base he’s built, even if that base were even significantly diminished. (See: Theodore Roosevelt, Bull Moose.)

Thus far, the base is diminished, with a Pew Research Center poll released Friday showing just 60 percent of Republicans approve of him – a marked decline from any previous point in his presidency. But it’s still a majority.

The choice ahead for Republicans is whether they feel he should be held accountable for what happened last week, yes. But just as politics have colored their previous decisions about him, so, too, will they color this one. To the extent it’s a political calculation, it will be about whether preventing Trump from storming the party again in 2024 will be worth the immediate pain of banishing him from doing so.

That political calculation has been rather simple for the GOP for four years, but it changes once he’s out of office. And allowing him to skate on this is extremely fraught for them, as well.

#SootinClaimon.Com : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.

https://www.nationthailand.com/news/30401347?utm_source=category&utm_medium=internal_referral

Man who shot video of fatal Capitol shooting is arrested, remains focus of political storm

InternationalJan 17. 2021John Earle Sullivan, 26, after his arrest Saturday in Utah on charges of participating in the attack on the U.S. Capitol. MUST CREDIT: TCSO/Tooele County Sheriff’s Office.

By The Washington Post · Tom Jackman, Marissa J. Lang, Jon Swaine

WASHINGTON – He’s a speed skater. He organizes protests, alienating activists on both ends of the political spectrum. He drove an Uber. And his 40-minute video following rioters through the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, capturing the fatal shooting of a Trump supporter, has placed John Earle Sullivan – “Activist John” – at the center of a conservative campaign to blame liberal groups for the Capitol siege.

The video also landed him in jail. Federal authorities tracking down Capitol trespassers watched Sullivan’s video, interviewed him and then obtained warrants Thursday charging him with causing a civil disorder, trespassing and disorderly conduct. Sullivan repeatedly exhorted rioters to enter the building and overwhelm police, and seemed to convince Capitol Police officers to walk away from the glass door entry to the House Speaker’s Lobby, his video shows. Moments later, with Sullivan screaming warnings about a gun, rioter Ashli Babbitt is shot and killed on the video by a Capitol Police officer.

Sullivan later claimed he was there to document – not participate – in the event.

His video attracted the attention of right wing leaders, including President Donald Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who said it showed that antifa was the true organizer of the attack; and Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala), who called Sullivan a “BLM & fascist #ANTIFA supporter arrested for role in Capitol assaults.”

But Sullivan is hardly the darling of the left. He began organizing protests in Utah last year, and at one of the first, one of the protesters shot a motorist, said Lex Scott, a racial justice organizer who founded Black Lives Matter Utah more than seven years ago.

“He came in to chase clout and get those media headlines,” Scott said of Sullivan. “Now, it’s not my place to ever tell anyone how to be an activist or what their goals should be . . . but the fact is that Black Lives Matter Utah has never had one arrest in seven years. We’ve never caused any violence, any destruction of property and this man comes in here and taints our reputation in a day.”

Activists in Utah have spent months condemning Sullivan, who has at turns identified himself as a racial justice protester and leftist documentarian, and warned others to be leery of his motives and any events he sponsored.

“John Sullivan has exploited Black people, profited off of our pain and hurt the movement,” said Tyeise Bellamy, the founder of Black Lives for Humanity Movement, a Salt Lake City group that works with the homeless. “We’ve been telling people this for months. So now, to see him up there as this poster child for folks to say, ‘look, look, look, look, it was Black Lives Matter all along – or antifa all along,’ we will not allow you to say he is part of our movement to justify the destruction, insecurity and racism of the right.”

Sullivan is one of four sons of Jack and Lisa Sullivan who grew up in Stafford, Va., about 45 miles from Washington. A friend, who requested anonymity to discuss Sullivan’s personal history, said the boys were adopted and raised in the Mormon faith and had an isolated, conservative upbringing. His brother James is a conservative activist. His parents, who now live in Utah, did not return calls Friday seeking comment.

The boys enjoyed inline skating, and John Sullivan and one of his brothers later switched to the ice and began speed skating. There is a 400-meter speed-skating rink in Kearns, Utah, near Salt Lake City, where Olympic-caliber skaters train, and Sullivan moved there to train, then tried to qualify for the 2018 Winter Olympics. He did not make the U.S. team. He also began driving an Uber, and the company used him in a blog and television commercial.

The first time racial justice activists in Utah had heard of Sullivan, he was leading marches last year through the streets of Provo – the home city of Brigham Young University, which according to the U.S. Census Bureau has a Black population of less than 1 percent.

He organized rallies under a group he formed and dubbed Insurgence USA, which activists said Sullivan used to fundraise and solicit donations from individuals who felt compelled to support racial justice movements in the aftermath of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. His website sells “Rise Against the Norm” T-shirts, “Insurgence USA” face masks and other merchandise.

As near daily protests exploded in cities around the country, Sullivan’s demonstrations attracted large crowds despite his dubious history as an organizer, Black Lives Matter Utah organizer Scott said.

He held rallies featuring Black organizers. But attendees said one demonstration also featured members of the Proud Boys, an all-male extremist group with ties to white nationalism. The Proud Boys who attended, organizers said, told the crowd they wished to make peace with Black activists.

In a different demonstration on June 29, Sullivan led crowds through the heavily trafficked streets of Provo. Authorities later said the group did not secure a permit, KSL- TV reported. Cars zipped past, some nearly hitting protesters who marched on the asphalt, said Bellamy, who was there.

As night fell, the crowd began to thin. Just after 8:30 p.m., a large, white SUV sped toward the group, knocking several protesters out of the way. Police said a man fired at the driver, who suffered non-life threatening wounds and later drove himself to the hospital. The alleged shooter was arrested on charges of attempted aggravated murder, aggravated assault, rioting and threatening the use of a weapon in a fight and Sullivan was charged with rioting. The case is pending.

Black Lives Matter organizers say the fallout stemming from that protest has been broad and far-reaching, sullying the reputation of Black Lives Matter Utah, an organization that had previously held meetings with officials including Sen. Mitt Romney, Gov. Gary Herbert and Sen. Mike Lee – all Republicans – and conducted peaceful marches and vigils throughout the state. Racial justice protests in Salt Lake City, Provo and other parts of the state have since been dogged by armed counterdemonstrators who often show up in tactical gear.

Then later in the summer, Sullivan helped organize a pro-gun rights rally and marched with self-styled militia members at the Utah Capitol, KSL-TV reported, further infuriating Black activists.

Sullivan’s reputation as an agitator and bad actor has followed him into other protest circles. In encrypted chats among left-leaning activists, organizers routinely flag posts by Sullivan to new members, saying “don’t trust that guy” and, pointing to his past ties with the Proud Boys, “he’s a double agent.”

Sullivan visited Washington in December to observe his brother James speak at the Million MAGA march. At one point Sullivan was surrounded and frisked by Proud Boys who suspected he was antifa, said his friend, who saw the incident. The friend said that episode led him to try to blend in with those around him on Jan 6. “I’m sure that that experience in a large way affected his behavior at the Capitol.”

Sullivan’s 40-minute video begins with him already on a terrace of the Capitol, looking out at the roiling mob. Then, he follows rioters as they confront police at various points and enter the Capitol, and can be heard shouting, “We accomplished this s—. We did this together…We are all a part of this history” and “Let’s burn this s— down.”

Sullivan wanders the halls of the Capitol, always recording, refusing officers’ commands to leave, the video shows. Eventually, he joins a group pressing up against the glass doors to the Speaker’s Lobby, and implores the officers there to leave for their own safety. “I don’t want you to get hurt,” Sullivan can be heard saying. “We will make a path.” The officers then leave, and seconds later Babbitt is killed as she tries to climb into the lobby.

Sullivan has called himself a “video journalist,” but admitted to the FBI that he has no connections to any media outlet. The Washington Post licensed a portion of his video for a story on the shooting.

As conservative media outlets began pointing to him as evidence of liberal involvement in the riot, Sullivan posted a video on YouTube on Jan. 9 explaining his actions. “I was there just to document the events and to be a part of history,” Sullivan said in the video. He said he was not a member of Black Lives Matter, but did support the black community.

“I’m not here to assert myself or my beliefs on other people,” Sullivan said. “I just want to give people the footage, the video.”

In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine on Monday, Sullivan explained his seemingly boisterous support of the rioters. He said he needed to blend in, since he was dressed in black with no red hat or MAGA gear. “I was worried about people recognizing me and thinking that I was antifa or, like, BLM or whatever,” Sullivan said. “I had to relate to these people, and build trust in the short amount of time I had there to get where I need to go: To the front of the crowd to see the dynamic between the police and the protesters.”

Sullivan was accompanied for some of his time in the Capitol by Jade Sacker, a Los Angeles-based filmmaker who has been making a documentary about Sullivan and his brother James since last year.

Sacker, a freelancer who has worked for publications including Foreign Policy and Atlas Obscura, said that she did not witness the Babbitt shooting and that she had urged Sullivan at one point not to cause any damage.

“I was just there to document what was going on,” said Sacker. “I don’t think that John is violent. And I certainly don’t think that it was ever his intention to hurt anyone.”

Sullivan was taken into custody in Tooele County, Utah, on Thursday after the FBI obtained a warrant for his arrest in Washington. He made his first appearance in federal court in Salt Lake City on Friday afternoon, and was ordered released pending a detention hearing next week. Sullivan’s lawyer, Mary Corporon, said Friday evening that she had no comment.