When you're stuck inside all day, it's easy to forget how breathtaking the world really is. Let these photos remind you of the stunning beauty that happens outside of your door.
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While the casual outerwear and mittens Sen. Bernie Sanders donned at Biden’s inauguration became a viral sensation, not everyone was cheering.
President Biden met with 10 Senate Republicans on Monday night to discuss coronavirus relief legislation, and while no deal was reached, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said they had "a very good exchange of views." "I wouldn't say we came together on a package tonight. No one expected that in a two-hour meeting," Collins told reporters after leaving the Oval Office. "But what we did agree to do is follow up and talk further, at the staff level and amongst ourselves and with the president and vice president, on how we can continue to work together on this very important issue." Biden has proposed a $1.9 trillion relief package, and the group of Republican senators countered with a $618 billion plan. Their package matches Biden's $160 billion price tag to take care of COVID-19 vaccinations and increased testing, but calls for smaller direct aid payments to Americans and no money for state and local governments. Earlier Monday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) began the process of advancing a budget bill that will allow Democrats to pass Biden's relief package with a simple majority vote in the Senate, so no Republican votes will be necessary. "Congress has a responsibility to quickly deliver immediate comprehensive relief to the American people hurting from COVID-19," the Democratic leaders said in a statement. "The cost of inaction is high and growing, and the time for decisive action is now." More stories from theweek.comBiden may revoke Trump's access to classified intelligenceRise of the Barstool conservativesAmerica's overreaction syndrome
Joe Manchin annoyed at vice president plugging Covid relief without his knowledge
A close ally of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny on Monday urged the West to hit President Vladimir Putin's inner circle with personal sanctions, predicting the move could trigger potentially destabilising infighting among Russia's elite. Leonid Volkov, who is wanted by Russian authorities on accusations he illegally encouraged minors to attend anti-Kremlin protests, made the call on the eve of a court hearing that could see Navalny jailed for three-and-a-half years. Navalny, one of Putin's most prominent critics, was arrested last month after returning to Russia from Germany for the first time since being poisoned with a nerve agent.
An anti-Trump Republican group branded one of its co-founders "a predator, a liar, and an abuser" after he was accused of sexually harassing young men who aspired to a career in politics. The Lincoln Project, a high-profile group which formed during the election campaign to prevent Donald Trump's re-election, said it was "disgusted and outraged" by the alleged actions of co-founder John Weaver. Mr Weaver, a veteran Republican strategist who helped run the presidential campaigns of the late senator John McCain and the former Ohio governor John Kasich, has been accused of sending unsolicited and sexually charged messages to 21 young men online. In some instances, the men claimed Mr Weaver, 61, suggested that he could help them get work in politics while asking them to send lewd pictures. None of the men accused Mr Weaver of unlawful behaviour. One of the alleged victims, Cole Trickle Miele, said the Republican strategist began contacting him in 2015 - when he was just 14 years old.
President Biden may be willing to listen to the GOP when it comes to passing a COVID-19 stimulus bill, but the rest of his party is moving on without him. On Monday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) filed a joint budget resolution for the 2021 Fiscal Year. It's the first step toward Congress introducing a Budget Reconciliation bill, which will allow the party to pass Biden's $1.9 trillion COVID relief plan without any support from the GOP. Breaking: Schumer & Pelosi have filed a joint budget resolution, setting up the reconciliation process to streamline passage of Biden's $1.9 trillion COVID package with or without GOP support pic.twitter.com/yEK83L7sya — Alayna Treene (@alaynatreene) February 1, 2021 The announcement came not long before Biden was set to meet with 10 Republican senators who have worked out a $618 billion stimulus plan of their own. It lacks local government funding and would distribute smaller, more targeted stimulus checks than the Democrats' proposal. Find a side-by-side comparison of the two bills at The Week. More stories from theweek.comBiden may revoke Trump's access to classified intelligenceRise of the Barstool conservativesAmerica's overreaction syndrome
West Virginia governor Jim Justice, a Republican, called for a large-scale economic relief bill on Monday in comments to CNN. Justice’s remarks came after Senator Joe Manchin (D., W.V.) called for targeted economic relief to tackle the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. Manchin has dismissed the idea of sending out $2,000 stimulus checks to all Americans making less than $75,000 a year, calling instead for infrastructure projects “to put people back to work.” On Monday, however, Governor Justice indicated that he would not be overly concerned about the price tag of a new relief bill. “We need to understand that trying to be, per se, fiscally responsible at this point in time with what we’ve got going on in the country—if we actually throw away some money right now, so what?” Justice told CNN’s Poppy Harlow. “We have really got to move and get people taken care of, and get people back on balance.” Harlow pointed out that Senator Manchin has called for more targeted relief efforts, however Justice said he had not spoken to the senator regarding negotiations over the bill. “I don’t really know exactly what the thinking could possibly be there,” Justice said. “We got people who are really hurting, and that’s all there is to it.” **Republican** Governor of West Virginia @WVGovernor to me on Stimulus: “Trying to be per se fiscally responsible at this point in time with what we’ve got going on in the country, if we actually throw away some money right now, so what?” Has he talked to @Sen_JoeManchin? I ask. pic.twitter.com/s93QMWze3m — Poppy Harlow (@PoppyHarlowCNN) February 1, 2021 Justice’s remarks come several hours before President Biden is set to meet with ten Senate Republicans to discuss a compromise coronavirus relief bill. Senator Rob Portman (R., Ohio) told CNN that the compromise bill includes more targeted relief, with $1,000 checks to individuals making $50,000 or less, and would be less costly than the current $1.9 trillion bill proposed by Democrats. While Democrats could attempt to pass their proposal via budget reconciliation, allowing for a simple majority vote and eliminating the possibility of a GOP filibuster, the party would need all 50 of its senators to vote in favor of the measure. This means Manchin would need to agree to the proposal, as well as fellow moderate Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.
A Louisiana man facing rape charges tried to have his accuser killed, but two hit men instead ended up killing his sister and her neighbor, authorities said Monday. Neither Hope Nettleton, 37, nor Brittany Cormier, 34, was the person that the hit men had been hired to kill on Jan. 13, the Terrebonne Parish Sheriff’s Office said. On Friday, authorities arrested Andrew Eskine, 25, of Carencro; Dalvin Wilson, 22, of Rayne; and Beaux Cormier, 35, of Kaplan on charges of first-degree murder.
The Biden administration wants to use the Agriculture Department money to tackle climate change, support restaurants and kickstart other programs without waiting for Congress; Fox Business Network's Charles Payne reacts.
Ursula von der Leyen on Monday pinned the blame for the vaccine fiasco that led Brussels to threaten a hard border on the island of Ireland on her trade commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis. The European Commission president threw her deputy, who leads DG Trade, under the bus amid rising anger from EU capitals at her “go it alone” tactics during last week’s battle with AstraZeneca. Jean-Claude Juncker, Mrs von der Leyen's predecessor, said he was "very much opposed" to her export restriction measures. In a speech in Stuttgart on Sunday, Mr Juncker also said of the EU’s vaccine procurement: "It all went too slow, it all should have been done more transparently, even though that would have been difficult." “This regulation falls under the responsibility of Mr Dombrovskis,” said Eric Marmer, the European Commission’s chief spokesman, referring to the former prime minister of Latvia, a Brussels veteran with a reputation for caution. “In my country we have a saying, ‘Only the Pope is infallible’. Mistakes can happen along the way the important thing is that you recognise them early on,” Mr Mamer said. Alexander Stubb, the former prime minister of Finland who campaigned to be appointed European Commission, president was scathing about Mrs Von der Leyen. He said "Number one rule of any leader: if your organisation screws up; never, ever blame your team publicly" Mrs von der Leyen was forced into a humiliating climbdown on Friday after announcing Brussels would trigger Article 16 of the Northern Ireland Protocol, to prevent AstraZeneca vaccines being smuggled into Britain from Northern Ireland. The move, which was announced without notifying Ireland or Britain, would have created a “vaccine border” after years of Brexit talks to avoid a hard border on the island. After the Irish prime minister called Mrs von der Leyen, the regulation, which could have facilitated a vaccine export ban to non-EU countries including Britain, was amended. Mr Mamer said that the regulation to create an “export transparency mechanism”, which including the Article 16 measure, was passed provisionally and at speed by the entire College of Commissioners on Friday. Asked by the Telegraph if this was Ms Van der Leyen’s worst week, he said: “We believe that we are on the right track since the beginning of this pandemic in ensuring there is as cohesive and as effective a European response as possible.
U.S. Representative Jackie Speier sent a letter to President Joe Biden urging him to issue an executive order identifying white supremacy and violent extremism as a threat to national security. Speier, a top Democrat who chairs the House Armed Services Military Personnel subcommittee, also pushed federal agencies to screen military recruits and those seeking government security clearances for ties to violent extremism on social media.
As states were formulating plans to vaccinate their residents against COVID-19 last fall, top Trump administration officials pushed Congress to deny the state governments any extra funding for the vaccine rollout, Stat News reported Sunday. The officials, including Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and White House Office of Management and Budget chief Russ Vought, disregarded "frantic warnings from state officials that they didn't have the money they needed to ramp up a massive vaccination operation," focusing instead on $200 million the states had not yet spent, Stat reports. Vought was "obsessed" with the fact that states hadn't already spent the allocated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a Republican Senate aide told Stat, adding that even staunch fiscal conservatives in Congress knew states needed more than $200 million to inoculate 300 million Americans. But "much of the lobbying push came from Paul Mango, the former deputy chief of staff for policy at the Department of Health and Human Services," Stat reports, citing a Democratic congressional aide and Mango himself. "A lot of them had shut down their economies and they weren't getting tax revenue," Mango told Stat. "I'm sure they could use money — that's not in dispute — what's in dispute is whether they needed money given all they hadn't used to actually administer vaccines." The National Governors Association and the Association for State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO) both warned the Trump administration last fall that more funding was needed to prepare for the soon-to-be-approved vaccines, and former CDC Director Robert Redfield had asked Congress for $6 billion for the states' efforts. Mango told Stat that Redfield was "lobbying Congress for money behind our back" to "help their friends at the state public health offices." State health departments note they were not vaccinating anyone in October and said they were drawing down sources of money that were set to expire before tapping the $200 million, especially because it wasn't certain Congress would allocate anymore. Congress did approve $4.5 billion in December, but the funds didn't start arriving in states until January. Read more about the lobbying effort, what effect it may have had on the slow rollout, and the schism between the Trump political appointees and public health officials at Stat News. More stories from theweek.comBiden may revoke Trump's access to classified intelligenceRise of the Barstool conservativesAmerica's overreaction syndrome
The city of Rochester has suspended police officers seen in body-camera videos spraying a chemical “irritant” in the face of a distraught and handcuffed 9-year-old girl, officials announced Monday. The suspensions will last at least until an internal police investigation is completed.
Recent robberies and attacks have left store owners in Oakland's Chinatown concerned about the futures of their small businesses. A series of crimes: In the past two weeks, more than 20 businesses have suffered from thefts and attacks, ABC7 News reports. Carl Chan, the president of Oakland's Chinatown Chamber of Commerce, claims to have spoken with the store owners affected by the crimes.
Part of Highway 1 in the Big Sur area collapsed after heavy rains and slid into the Pacific.
Dozens of Republicans in former President George W. Bush's administration are leaving the party, dismayed by a failure of many elected Republicans to disown Donald Trump after his false claims of election fraud sparked a deadly storming of the U.S. Capitol last month. These officials, some who served in the highest echelons of the Bush administration, said they had hoped that a Trump defeat would lead party leaders to move on from the former president and denounce his baseless claims that the November presidential election was stolen. But with most Republican lawmakers sticking to Trump, these officials say they no longer recognize the party they served.
Last week, New York provided a worrisome breakdown of what's happening in the Brazilian city of Manaus, whose population had previously been thought to have built up widespread protection against the virus last year, only to find itself experiencing another major outbreak. There are theories as to how this happened — community immunity being overestimated, waning antibody protection, the variant becoming more transmissible, or, perhaps most concerning, the virus adapting to evade antibodies. Whatever the case, an increasing number of variants like the one in Brazil could theoretically push the end game back. Axios put it in slightly different terms — the current pandemic may be nearly over, but the variants could spark new ones. Several vaccines have been shown to work well against the main coronavirus strain, and the more transmissible U.K. variant appears quite susceptible to them, as well, but the South African variant looks more resistant. And, New York notes, even a slight dip in efficacy could prevent "population-scale protection through vaccination alone." The New York Times, however, explains that reports on vaccine efficacy often don't tell the whole story. Scientifically speaking, vaccine research considers any transmission a failure, but that may not be the most important thing. Novavax and Johnson & Johnson provided data that showed their vaccine candidates did not stop infections in South Africa as well as they did elsewhere, but they were still very successful at preventing severe disease, hospitalizations, and death. That suggests a possible scenario in which vaccines reduce the coronavirus to a much milder pathogen. But that still may not be enough globally, per New York. Even if vaccines significantly reduce the worst COVID-19 outcomes, the world's poorer countries are not estimated to reach mass immunization until 2024, so while the tide may turn more quickly in the United States, the global pandemic could still be ongoing for years to come, especially if variants impede natural herd immunity. Read more at New York, Axios, and The New York Times. More stories from theweek.comBiden may revoke Trump's access to classified intelligenceRise of the Barstool conservativesAmerica's overreaction syndrome
The chairperson of the Hawaii Republican Party has resigned after a senior party member used an official Twitter account to send tweets defending adherents of the QAnon conspiracy theory. Shirlene Ostrov stepped down “to allow the party to recover from the controversy and focus on finding excellent candidates and fighting for policies that improve the quality of life for Hawaii’s hardworking families,” the party said in a statement. Ostrov said the party has been “redefining itself” since President Joe Biden was inaugurated.
“I see this all the time ... and never knew what it was!”
Transition adviser to US president warns more cases and deaths by spring unless more single shots administered to Americans
