738,692 PEOPLE HAVE DIED FROM CORONAVIRUS IN THE U.S.
220.9 MILLION PEOPLE IN THE U.S. HAVE RECEIVED A VACCINATION DOSE
The Nation
Elie Mystal: The Department of Justice Is Letting the Coup Plotters Get Away
[…] The Department of Justice should be leading the criminal investigation into the attack on the Capitol. That is the entity that can not merely catalog but actually punish the insurrectionists.
Congress’s role is oversight and lawmaking. It is therefore entirely appropriate for its members, through the Select Committee, to subpoena documents and testimony to try to understand what happened. That helps them serve their function of proposing and passing new laws so that it can’t happen again.
But accountability for any crimes that happened that day is a different matter. So is any investigation into the larger criminal conspiracy that came to fruition that day. Both are supposed to come through Justice and its subordinate investigations division, the FBI.
The problem is, Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray don’t seem to have the stomach for all that. Oh sure, they’ll go after the small people. They’ll prosecute the dude with the horns and charge the guy with the cattle prod. But when it comes time to prosecute the powerful—the congresspeople and the financiers who aided and abetted the insurrection—Garland and Wray have shown no desire to take on that challenge.
The New Yorker
[…] In the days and weeks ahead, Garland must decide whether to criminally prosecute Bannon, a step that could result in one of Trump’s top allies being sent to jail. Last Thursday, the House held Bannon in contempt for refusing to testify before its select committee investigating the January 6th insurrection. Until the nineteen-thirties, Congress itself intermittently jailed people who failed to comply with its subpoenas, having the sergeant at arms arrest and detain those who obstructed investigations. Since then, Congress has asked the Justice Department to enforce its subpoenas, and that means federal prosecutors in Washington overseen by Garland will decide if enough evidence and legal precedent exist to criminally charge Bannon.
Until now, the Justice Department has generally declined to prosecute former Administration officials who defied Congressional subpoenas…
Democrats fear that Garland’s adherence to legal precedent and his desire to have the department appear impartial could inadvertently allow Bannon to cover up evidence of Trump’s role in the insurrection. Last Thursday, in Garland’s first appearance before the House Judiciary Committee since taking office, Representative Jerrold Nadler, of New York, the committee chair, told the Attorney General, “It is not enough just to right the ship. As the chief law-enforcement officer of our nation, it is also your responsibility to help the country understand and reckon with the violence and the lawlessness of the last Administration.” Garland, true to form, when asked during the hearing if the department would prosecute Bannon, embraced impartiality. “The Department of Justice will do what it always does in such circumstances,” he said. “It will apply the facts and the law and make a decision consistent with the principles of prosecution.”
The Guardian
They were at the Capitol on 6 January. Now they’re running for office
One of the candidates filmed himself on the Capitol steps. Another clambered over scaffolding and waved others forward towards the building. Still more were outside, milling around and protesting against the lawful election of Joe Biden.
Of the thousands of diehard Trump supporters who gathered in Washington on 6 January, some are now beginning to emerge as Republican candidates for national and local office.
The electoral chances of each person vary, but they add to the extremist political landscape, ahead of midterm elections in 2022 that could potentially see Democrats lose the House of Representatives.
Joe Manchin pushes for climate cuts even as West Virginia battered by crisis
[…] A drive through West Virginia’s countryside – which is still enthusiastically Donald Trump country – reveals a patchwork of communities battered by the climate crisis and barely held together by deteriorating infrastructure. Yet Manchin – balking at a $3.5tn price tag of Biden’s reconciliation bill – is busy trying to strip out many of the policies that would try to tackle these crises that are so seriously affecting many of his fellow West Virginians. […]
National news outlets have been quick to connect the financial dots on Manchin. Clean energy initiatives could affect his bottom line in multiple ways because that bottom line is joined at the hip to one of the biggest drivers of climate change in the world: the fossil fuel industry.
Put simply, the US senator is blocking legislation that would demand better of the dirty energy companies that make up his investment portfolio and his 2022 election cycle contributors list. And, he’s doing so to the environmental, social and economic detriment of his state.
The Washington Post
Jan. 6 committee expected to subpoena lawyer who advised Trump, Pence on how to overturn election
The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol is expected to subpoena John Eastman, the pro-Trump legal scholar who outlined scenarios for denying Joe Biden the presidency, according to the panel’s chairman.
“It will happen,” Chair Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.) said in an interview Tuesday of a subpoena for Eastman, who played a key role in the legal operation that was run out of a “command center” at the Willard Hotel in Washington in the days and hours leading up to Jan. 6. Thompson did not provide a timeline for when the subpoena will be issued.
The committee has requested documents and communications related to Eastman’s legal advice and analysis on how … Donald Trump could seek to overturn the election results and remain in office.
Biden heads abroad with most of his ambassadorial picks stranded in the Senate, stunting U.S. diplomatic efforts
President Biden — who has made renewed international engagement a hallmark of his foreign policy ethos — is headed to a pair of global summits in Europe this week with just a handful of his ambassadors in place, as most of his picks to represent the United States abroad remain mired in messy domestic politics.
To date, only four of Biden’s choices to be a U.S. ambassador to a foreign government have been approved by the Senate — three of them just on Tuesday. That means Biden is lagging considerably behind his immediate predecessor, Donald Trump, who at this point in his presidency had 22 such U.S. ambassadors confirmed, 17 of them by voice vote, according to data compiled by Senate Democratic leadership aides.
The delays stem from threats by some Republican senators, led by Ted Cruz (Tex.), who has been angling for a fight with the Biden administration over matters of national security
Bloomberg
Democrats Clash on Billionaire Tax as Neal Rejects Senate Plan
The head of the House tax-writing committee said a proposal to put a levy on the assets of billionaires won’t be part of negotiations on President Joe Biden’s social-spending bill, injecting new uncertainty into how Democrats will pay for the president’s agenda.
Ways and Means Chair Richard Neal said Wednesday that there isn’t support for the billionaire tax to get it through Congress. He said the House is discussing with the Senate instead inclusion of a 3% surtax, on top of the top income rate, for those earning more than $10 million. […]
Opposition to the billionaire tax in the House and Senate just a few hours after it was introduced, and after the White House said Biden backed the plan, illustrates how far Democrats are from completing work on the centerpiece of their domestic agenda despite optimistic statements from party leaders.
Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos Are Now Worth Almost Half a Trillion Dollars
The combined net worth of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos approached $500 billion on Wednesday, fueled by the unrelenting rally in Tesla Inc. shares and a broad surge in tech stocks that sent the Nasdaq 100 to an intraday record.
The value of the two fortunes -- a sum bigger than the market value of Johnson & Johnson and about equal to that of America’s biggest bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co. -- is yet another watershed moment in what’s shaping up to be a historic week for billionaires.
Vox
Democrats may let the best weapon against child poverty fade away
The expanded child tax credit, a policy passed in March 2021 that beefed up monthly payments to most families with kids, has already had a massive, positive effect on the lives of America’s children. After just one monthly payment, it cut child poverty by 25 percent — and should the larger payments continue, it could slash child poverty by more than 40 percent in a typical year, according to the Urban Institute.
This is a huge decline in a very short time frame. According to the Brookings Institution, child poverty rates dropped by 26 percent between 2009 and 2019, meaning the tax credit accomplished in one month what other policies took a decade to achieve.
Despite that success, the expanded child tax credit (CTC) is in serious danger. As part of their budget negotiations, Democrats are debating how long to extend the program — most likely for a year, with some calling for a four-year (or even indefinite) extension. In the best-case scenario with a short extension, the program will probably run out of money by the end of 2022. In the worst-case scenario, it could end as soon as April 2022, when families are currently due to receive their final enhanced payment.
Los Angeles Times
Paid family leave benefit likely to be removed from Democrats’ bill
An ambitious proposal to mandate 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave for workers nationwide will likely be struck from the Democrats’ Build Back Better plan, a setback for the party’s hopes of strengthening the nation’s social programs.
Paid family and medical leave has been a central plank of the bill and an increasingly prominent focus of the Democratic Party’s candidates in recent years.
But it was felled by … Sen. Joe Manchin’s opposition to establishing new government programs and by the overall cost, according to two people familiar with the negotiations. They said the provision will not likely be in the final package.
AP News
America 'on fire': Facebook watched as Trump ignited hate
The reports of hateful and violent posts on Facebook started pouring in on the night of May 28 last year, soon after … Donald Trump sent a warning on social media that looters in Minneapolis would be shot. […]
But it wasn’t until after Trump posted about Floyd’s death that the reports of violence and hate speech increased “rapidly” on Facebook across the country, an internal company analysis of the ex-president’s social media post reveals.
Leaked Facebook documents provide a first-hand look at how Trump’s social media posts ignited more anger in an already deeply divided country that was eventually lit “on fire” with reports of hate speech and violence across the platform. Facebook’s own internal, automated controls, meant to catch posts that violate rules, predicted with almost 90% certainty that Trump’s message broke the tech company’s rules against inciting violence.
Yet, the tech giant didn’t take any action on Trump’s message.
Net zero goals aren’t the solution, says India before COP26
The solution to climate change is not setting net zero carbon emissions targets as dozens of nations have done, India’s federal environment minister said.
Instead, rich countries need to acknowledge their “historic responsibility” for emissions and protect the interests of developing nations and those vulnerable to climate change, said the minister, Bhupender Yadav.
India — the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases after China and the United States — is committed to “being part of the solution” at the upcoming United Nations climate summit in Glasgow, Yadav said.
NPR News
How decades of disinformation about fossil fuels halted U.S. climate policy
[…] The United States has contributed more heat-trapping pollution than any country over time and has been the prime driver of global climate change. The national debate about how to address the problem has raged for decades, but progress toward a solution has been slow. Whenever presidents or Congress have introduced measures to slash emissions to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change, they've been repeatedly derailed. […]
The same headwinds have stopped nearly every effort, including Biden's, to make systemic cuts to emissions: a powerful fossil fuel lobby that has spent vast sums of money to influence lawmakers while simultaneously sowing public doubt about the science of climate change.
On Thursday, House Democrats will look into what they describe as the oil industry's decades of disinformation and misrepresentation to delay climate action. They have called executives from Exxon Mobil, BP America, Chevron Corp. and Shell Oil to testify. The meeting, Democrats say, is modeled on a historic hearing more than 25 years ago that held the tobacco industry to account for misleading the public about the harmful effects of smoking.
Two names likely to come up at the hearing are Charles and David Koch, the conservative petrochemical magnates. They have poured millions of dollars into efforts to discredit the science of climate change.
Climate change is a risk to national security, the Pentagon says
The Department of Defense says climate change is already challenging U.S. national security in concrete ways.
In a report last week, the Pentagon found that "increasing temperatures; changing precipitation patterns; and more frequent, intense, and unpredictable extreme weather conditions caused by climate change are exacerbating existing risks" for the U.S.
Mongabay
Indigenous leaders to push for land tenure rights as climate solution at COP26
Indigenous leaders from around the world are heading to the COP26 United Nations climate summit this weekend, where one of the main topics on their agenda will be highlighting community land tenure as an often-overlooked way to mitigate climate change.
Research demonstrating that granting Indigenous peoples and forest communities formal titles to their lands as a cost-effective approach to tacking climate change has been piling up for years. Two new reports released on Oct. 27 by the World Resources Institute and the PRISMA Foundation add to that growing body of work.
“No [climate] initiative can succeed if rights are not recognized,” said Mina Setra, deputy to the secretary-general of the Indigenous Peoples Alliance of the Archipelago (AMAN), an organization with more than 2,400 affiliated communities throughout Indonesia.
The Sacramento Bee
Judge orders Devin Nunes’ family to disclose who’s paying for Iowa defamation lawsuit
A federal judge this week ordered Rep. Devin Nunes’ family members to disclose how they are paying for their defamation lawsuit against a reporter and magazine publisher over a 2018 story about their Iowa farm.
The judge will review the records detailing who is paying for the litigation behind closed doors before deciding whether to share them with lawyers for the reporter and publisher, meaning that there is a possibility that no one else — including those lawyers and their clients — will get to see the information.
Judge Mark Roberts of Iowa’s Northern District Court wants to know whether the congressman is involved in the family’s case, he wrote in his ruling.
The Dallas Morning News
Fate of Texas abortion ban at Supreme Court tied to federal intervention in 1895 railroad strike
The Justice Department’s bid to block SB8 hinges on same claim of public interested used when the Army quashed the Pullman strike.
Two major points of contention came into focus Wednesday as briefs poured in ahead the U.S. Supreme Court’s snap hearing on Texas’ six-week abortion ban.
One is whether invoking the public interest is enough to justify the federal government inserting itself in lawsuits between private parties – in this case, Texas abortion providers and the limitless supply of people anywhere who might want to sue them under Senate Bill 8.
The other is whether Texas, by outsourcing enforcement to legal bounty hunters, has insulated its new law from federal judicial oversight –even though a six week ban clearly violates decades of Supreme Court protection for abortion rights before a fetus can survive outside the womb.
The high court set oral arguments for Monday, with a close of business deadline on Wednesday for briefs.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia redistricting could affect Democrats in 6th and 7th districts
Two rising Georgia Democratic stars could go from allies to rivals in 2022, depending on how Republicans redraw the new congressional map. That’s because no matter how the lines are drawn during a legislative session that starts next week, U.S. Reps. Carolyn Bourdeaux and Lucy McBath will be in the political crosshairs of the Republican majority.
The two Democrats are among the most vulnerable in the nation after each flipped Republican-held House seats in the past two election cycles, and now state lawmakers are certain to reshape at least one of their districts to add more conservative voters — and potentially cripple their reelection chances.
If the new map makes Bourdeaux’s seat safer for Democrats, there’s a solid chance that McBath or another Democrat could challenge her in the primary, a prospect that some Georgia partisans are quietly expecting.
CNN
As trial approaches, judge to allow the men Kyle Rittenhouse shot to be called 'rioters' or 'looters' -- but 'victim' isn't allowed
The men shot by Kyle Rittenhouse in August 2020 can potentially be referred to at his trial as "rioters" or "looters," a Wisconsin judge said Monday while reiterating his long-held view that attorneys should not use the word "victim."
Defense lawyers maintain the young man acted in self-defense when he fatally shot two protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The protesters were shot during a demonstration against the police shooting of a Black man. Rittenhouse was among armed civilians who said they were there to protect businesses after nights of arson and looting.
"Let the evidence show what the evidence shows, that any or one of these people were engaged in arson, rioting or looting, then I'm not going to tell the defense they can't call them that," Kenosha County Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder said during the pretrial hearing.
Attorney General Merrick Garland defends memo responding to threats of violence against school board members
Attorney General Merrick Garland defended his memo responding to threats aimed at school officials, pushing back on pointed criticism from Republicans at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday.
The memo, Garland said, "responds to concerns about violence, threats of violence, other criminal conduct." […]
Garland also pushed back on Republicans' suggestion that the department should rescind the memo, now that the school board association that asked the Biden administration for the federal intervention has apologized for some of the language -- including its reference to domestic terrorism -- in that initial request.
The Atlantic
The Second Amendment Has Become a Threat to the First
Firearms are having a documented chilling effect on free speech.
Many Americans fervently believe that the Second Amendment protects their right to bear arms everywhere, including at public protests. Many Americans also believe that the First Amendment protects their right to speak freely and participate in political protest. What most people do not realize is that the Second Amendment has become, in recent years, a threat to the First Amendment. People cannot freely exercise their speech rights when they fear for their lives.
This is not hyperbole. Since January 2020, millions of Americans have assembled in public places to protest police brutality, systemic racism, and coronavirus protocols, among other things. A significant number of those protesters were confronted by counterprotesters visibly bearing firearms. In some of these cases, violence erupted. According to a new study by Everytown for Gun Safety and the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), one in six armed protests that took place from January 2020 through June 2021 turned violent or destructive, and one in 62 turned deadly.
Reuters
France moves to shield its book industry from Amazon
Sophie Fornairon's independent bookshop has survived the rise of Amazon thanks to a French law that prohibits price discounting on new books, but she says the e-commerce giant's ability to undercut on shipping still skews the market against stores like hers.
Fornairon, who owns the Canal Bookstore in central Paris, now hopes that new legislation that would set a minimum price for book deliveries will even the contest further in the battle of neighbourhood stores against Amazon.
"It's a just return towards a level playing field," Fornairon, who employs four workers, said. "We're not at risk of closing down any time soon, but Amazon is a constant battle". […]
"Imposing a minimum shipping cost for books would weigh on the purchasing power of consumers," Amazon told Reuters in a statement.
Climate change to displace tens of millions of East Africans by 2050 -World Bank
Climate change will force tens of millions of East Africans to abandon their homes within the next three decades, even if schemes to reduce its impact on the region are rolled out, the World Bank said on Wednesday.
People affected will include drought-stricken farmers seeking new arable land or different work in urban areas, and others driven out by the need to find clean water, the Bank said in a report issued four days before the U.N. COP26 climate summit begins in Glasgow.
East Africa's five nations - Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Burundi - have increasingly experienced extreme weather events in recent years.
Deutsche Welle
The route from Iraq to Belarus: How are migrants getting to Europe?
To put it into perspective: Since the beginning of October, there have been 11,300 attempts to illegally enter Polish territory from Belarus. So far this year, around 23,000 such attempts have been registered. From there, many make their way to the German border. Three German states border Poland: Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Saxony. Border police say there have been around 6,000 illegal crossings so far this year.
Most of those smuggled out are originally from Iraq, but nationals from Syria, Congo and Cameroon are also among those making the journey to Minsk. […]
According to reports, the trips can cost between €12,000 to €15,000 ($14,000 to $17,000), including visas, flights and being smuggled overland once in Europe.
Scientific American
There’s Still Time to Fix Climate—About 11 Years
[…] Climate models consistently show that “committed” (baked-in) warming does not happen. As soon as CO2 emissions stop rising, the atmospheric concentration of CO2 levels off and starts to slowly fall because the oceans, soils and vegetation keep absorbing CO2, as they always do. Temperature doesn’t rise further. It also doesn’t drop, because atmospheric and ocean interactions adjust and balance out. The net effect is that “temperature does not go up or down,” says Joeri Rogelj, director of research at the Grantham Institute—Climate Change and Environment at Imperial College London. The good news is that if nations can cut emissions substantially and quickly, warming can be held to less than 1.5 degrees.
To avoid that threshold, the world can emit only a set amount of CO2 from now into the future. This quantity is known as the carbon budget. In 2019, the year before the COVID pandemic depressed the global economy, the world discharged about 42 gigatons of CO2—similar to the 2018 level and to what is happening in 2021. According to the midrange scenario in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s comprehensive report released in August, “Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis,” another 500 gigatons of CO2 emissions will raise global temperature by 1.5 degrees. Nations have about 11 more years at current emissions rates—2032—before exhausting the budget.
Ars Technica
Mystery of deadly US infections solved; aromatherapy spray at Walmart to blame
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday confirmed that an aromatherapy gemstone spray sold at Walmart is linked to four mysterious bacterial infections in four different states. The infections left two dead, including a child.
On Friday, the CDC announced a break in the months-long mystery: A bottle of aromatherapy room spray in the home of a Georgia patient who died was contaminated with the bacterium Burkholderia pseudomallei. The dangerous microbe is typically found in soil and water in tropical and subtropical climates, such as South Asia. When the bacterium is consumed or inhaled or enters a skin wound, it can cause a life-threatening but difficult-to-diagnose infection called melioidosis.
Biden finally makes FCC picks: Rosenworcel as chair, Gigi Sohn as commissioner
President Biden finally made his picks for the Federal Communications Commission today, ending a baffling delay that forced Democrats to operate in a 2-2 deadlock with Republicans instead of the 3-2 majority that the president's party typically enjoys.
The names themselves are familiar. Jessica Rosenworcel, who has been acting FCC chairwoman since January, was today designated the permanent chair. Biden will also fill the empty Democratic slot on the commission by nominating Gigi Sohn, a longtime consumer advocate who was an FCC official during the Obama years. Then-FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler chose Sohn in 2013 to serve as his counselor, a role in which she advocated for strong net neutrality rules and Title II common-carrier regulation of Internet service providers.
Biden was able to promote Rosenworcel from acting to permanent chair immediately because the president can choose any sitting commissioner as chair. But Rosenworcel's current five-year term already expired, and she would have to leave the FCC entirely in January if she doesn't get a new term. That means Biden has to submit nominations to the Senate for both Rosenworcel and Sohn, and the Senate has to confirm them to avoid giving Republicans a 2-1 majority at the beginning of 2022.