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Politics

Biden will fight violent crime surge by specializing in weapons, communities

Biden will combat violent crime surge by focusing on guns, communities

United States President Joe Biden, accompanied by Attorney General Merrick Garland, holds remarks following a round table discussion with advisors on steps to curb gun violence in the United States on June 23, 2021 at the White House in Washington.

Jonathan Ernst | Reuters

WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden on Wednesday outlined several measures his administration is taking to contain the recent surge in violent crime and gun violence, ahead of a summer that experts fear could be particularly deadly.

“Crime increases historically over the course of the summer. And if we emerge from this pandemic and reopen the country, the traditional summer surge may be even more pronounced than usual, ”Biden said at the White House on Wednesday afternoon.

In response to the surge in gun crime, Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland announced stricter enforcement guidelines for state gun control laws, as well as new guidelines designed to help cities and states make better use of federal Covid tools to combat gun violence. also by hiring police officers.

According to White House data, homicides were up 30% year over year in 2020, an increase that shows no sign of subsiding.

In the first quarter of this year, the nationwide kill rate was 24% higher than in the same period in 2020 and 49% higher than two years ago.

Biden and Garland also held a meeting Wednesday with Baltimore and Miami mayors, Baton Rouge, LA police chief, and several other stakeholders to discuss crime prevention.

Across the country, mayors and police chiefs are struggling to explain what is behind the rise in mass shootings, murders and other violent crimes.

Experts point to a perfect storm of factors that collided during the pandemic. These include a surge in private arms sales, widespread unemployment, and Covid jobs that stay at home, leaving people trapped and with little to do.

At the same time, protests against the police killing of blacks may have diverted police resources from traditional policing and undermined public confidence in the prosecution.

However, many of the factors believed to have contributed to the rise in violent crime are difficult to quantify.

And since policing is typically highly localized in America, Biden’s options at the federal level are limited.

Shift ATF priorities

Biden and Garland announced that the Justice Department will adopt a zero-tolerance policy from Wednesday for state-licensed arms dealers who violate arms sales laws.

Instead of issuing warnings, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives will now try to revoke dealer licenses if the first violations occur.

“If you are deliberately selling a gun to someone who is prohibited from possession, if you deliberately not doing a background check, if you deliberately forge a record, if you deliberately fail to cooperate with the tracking requests or inspections, my message to you is, ‘We will Find them and get your license to sell guns, ‘”Biden said.

“We will make sure that you cannot sell death and chaos on our streets,” he added. “It’s an outrage. It has to end and we will end it.”

Biden also announced the dispatch of five new federal strike forces, led by the ATF, to monitor and intercept arms smuggling along several major corridors for arms trade between major cities.

Changes to the ATF could help restore teeth to the agency’s enforcement arm, which perished under a previous policy that prioritized compliance over punishment.

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American rescue plan funds

In addition to strengthening federal gun laws, Biden also drew a straight line from the pandemic to the rise in gun violence on Wednesday.

By that name, it means efforts to combat the rise in gun violence are a legitimate use of the $ 350 billion state and local pandemic aid approved by Congress this spring.

According to updated Treasury Department guidance on Wednesday, American Rescue Plan funds can be used to hire more police officers, pay overtime, purchase equipment, and fund additional “enforcement efforts” to combat the rise in gun violence.

However, there are some conditions. The first is that the funds must be used to advance “community policing strategies” as defined by the Justice Department. Likewise, the funds cannot be used to recruit police forces above their pre-pandemic level.

While the funding is tightly tailored to community policing, the idea that federal aid money will be used to hire more police officers could be a sensitive issue among Democrats.

Since the 2020 assassination of George Floyd and subsequent protests against racial justice, some members of the Democratic Party’s left flank have supported a movement to reduce the size and scope of the police force and replace law enforcement officers with social services and crisis advisors.

From protesters chanting the phrase, dubbed the “Defund the Police” movement, the urge to radically change policing in America has divided parts of the Democratic Party.

Biden turned against the Defund the Police movement during his 2020 presidential campaign, and Democratic lawmakers standing for election in 2022 have largely avoided the use of the term.

Instead, Biden suggests major public investments in social services, psychological counseling, and community violence interventions alongside law enforcement.

On Wednesday, Biden highlighted some of those investments along with the tougher enforcement pieces of his crime prevention plan.

For example, the Department of Labor recently announced a $ 85.5 million grant to help formerly incarcerated adults and young people find work, shelter and support with reintegration into society.

The president also encouraged cities and states to use ARP funds for summer job programs that serve young people and for educational enrichment programs.

Roadblocks in Congress

However, several key elements of the Biden administration’s strategy are beyond the control of the president as they are required by Congress.

Biden argued on Wednesday that gun safety was a bipartisan issue.

“We now have the opportunity to come together as Democrats and Republicans, as fellow Americans, to fulfill the government’s primary responsibility in our democracy and to protect one another,” said Biden.

“That means Congress will pass sensible initiatives on gun violence. Background checks. Prohibition of offensive weapons. Liability for gun manufacturers. The law against violence against women.”

Of course, Biden knows better than most people that gun safety is rarely a bipartisan issue. On the contrary, decades of lobbying by the National Rifle Association and other groups have made gun control one of the most controversial issues in American civil life.

But while legislation has stalled for now, there is one possible bright spot: the confirmation of Biden’s candidate to lead the ATF, David Chipman.

Chipman is a former ATF agent and arms trade expert. But its track record of supporting expanded firearms restrictions has turned its endorsement into a strong political struggle.

With the Senate divided evenly between Democrats and Republicans, Biden must vote each Democrat to endorse Chipman so Vice President Kamala Harris can cast the casting vote.

But by Wednesday afternoon, two moderate Democrats hadn’t signed up to support Chipman’s endorsement: West Virginia’s Senator Joe Manchin and Arizona Senator Krysten Sinema.

Biden’s success or failure in convincing Manchin and Sinema to validate Chipman is being closely watched by some gun control advocates, who see this as an important test of the president’s commitment to the broader gun safety agenda.

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Health

Biden administration says it will not hit Fourth of July objectives

Biden administration says it won't hit Fourth of July goals

The Biden administration said Tuesday that it is unlikely to meet President Joe Biden’s goal of getting 70% of American adults to receive one or more vaccinations by July 4th.

White House Covid Tsar Jeff Zients said the government has reached its 70 percent target for people 30 and older and is well on its way to achieving it by July 4th for those 27 and older.

“We believe it will take a few more weeks to reach 70% of adults with at least one vaccination, including those aged 18-26,” he said.

Still, Zients insisted that the White House “exceeded our highest expectations” in its vaccination program and achieved a vision for Biden in March of gathering friends and family safely to celebrate the holiday.

Biden set two goals in early May: to have 70% of adults in the United States given at least one vaccination, and to fully vaccinate 160 million American adults by Independence Day.

About 65% of American adults will have had one or more injections by Monday, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A CNBC analysis of the CDC data shows that with the current vaccination schedule, about 67% of adults are at least partially vaccinated by the fourth.

According to CDC data, around 144 million people aged 18 and over are fully vaccinated, on the way to reaching around 151 million if the current pace of daily vaccinations reported remains constant.

United States President Joe Biden speaks during an event in the South Court Auditorium of the White House on June 2, 2021 in Washington, DC.

Alex Wong | Getty Images

When Biden first announced his two goals on May 4th, the US was well on its way to scoring both. However, according to CDC data, the vaccination rate has fallen in the weeks since the seven-day average from 2.2 million vaccinations per day in all age groups to 1.1 million on June 21.

The government has easily met its previous vaccination goals in the first 100 days of the president’s tenure. Biden initially targeted 100 million vaccinations in 100 days, which was criticized as being too easy, and achieved it on day 58. The White House raised the target to 200 million vaccinations, which it surpassed on the 92nd day of the presidency.

Amid the vaccination campaign, nationwide case numbers have dropped to levels not seen since the early days of the pandemic, although the risk of disease remains for the unvaccinated.

Zients said many younger Americans are less eager to get a vaccination and stressed the importance of vaccinations for this age group due to the spread of the Delta variant.

Biden warned on Friday that the highly contagious variant, first identified in India, appears to be “particularly dangerous” for young people.

“The data is clear: if you are not vaccinated, there is a risk that you will become seriously ill, or die, or spread,” Biden said during a White House press conference.

Sixteen states and the District of Columbia have already reached Biden’s goal, led by Vermont, Hawaii and Massachusetts, where more than 80% of adults are at least partially vaccinated.

Other states are lagging behind, 17 of which are below the 60% mark. These include Mississippi, Louisiana, Wyoming, and Alabama, each of which less than 50% of its adult residents hit one or more shots.

“Our work doesn’t stop on July 4th or at 70%,” said Zients, calling Biden’s goals a “goal worth striving for in order to make progress in a short period of time.”

“We want every American in every community to be protected and free from fear of the virus,” Zients said.

– CNBC’s Berkeley Lovelace Jr. contributed to this report.

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Health

With Vaccination Aim in Doubt, Biden Warns of Variant’s Risk

With Vaccination Goal in Doubt, Biden Warns of Variant’s Threat

WASHINGTON – With the United States failing to meet its self-imposed deadline of 70 percent of adults being partially vaccinated against the coronavirus by July 4th, President Biden stepped up efforts to inject Americans on Friday, warning that those who refuse to risk becoming infected with a highly contagious and potentially fatal variant.

In an afternoon appearance at the White House, Biden avoided mentioning the 70 percent target he set in early May and instead trumpeted about another milestone: 300 million shots in his first 150 days in office. But even as he was celebrating the success of the vaccination campaign, he sounded gloomy about the worrying Delta variant, which is spreading in states with low vaccination rates.

“The best way to protect yourself against these variants is to get vaccinated,” said the president.

His remarks came as his government made one final push over the next two weeks to meet the July 4th goal. Vice President Kamala Harris and Xavier Becerra, Minister of Health and Human Resources, were both out on Friday to inspire enthusiasm for the vaccine. Ms. Harris went to Atlanta, where she found that less than half of the people in Fulton County, where the city is located, had at least one chance, and Mr. Becerra went to Colorado.

Mr Biden took office in January warning of a “dark winter” as deaths were near the peak and vaccinations barely underway, and he has generally tried to portray the virus as a withdrawal while he was out for six months approaching in office.

A leaflet distributed by the White House ahead of Friday’s statements found that in 15 states and the District of Columbia, 70 percent or more of adults had received at least one injection. “The results are clear: America is starting to look like America again and is entering a summer of joy and freedom,” the document reads.

But vaccination and infection rates are inconsistent across the country.

And while those who have taken a “wait and see” stance are becoming more open to vaccination, 20 percent of American adults still say they definitely won’t get the vaccine or will only get vaccinated when needed, according to a poll published last month by Kaiser Family Foundation.

State health officials are trying to convince the hesitation. In West Virginia, where just over a third of the population is fully vaccinated, Dr. Clay Marsh, the state’s coronavirus tsar, said that young people are particularly difficult to attract.

“Back in the pandemic there was a narrative that really haunts us, namely that young people are really protected,” he said. “There is a false belief that many young people who are otherwise healthy still have relatively free travel and that if they get infected they are fine.”

In Louisiana, where only 34 percent of the population is fully vaccinated and only 37 percent are receiving at least a single dose, state officials on Thursday announced a new lottery for anyone in the state who received a dose, with a grand prize of $ 1 million.

And in Wyoming, with vaccination rates almost identical to Louisiana, Kim Deti, a health department spokeswoman, said “politicization is a problem” as officials try to increase the number of people vaccinated. But she said there were other reasons for the rate slowdown in her state as well.

“We have had relatively low Covid 19 illnesses nationwide for some time, which has an impact on the perception of threats,” Ms. Deti wrote in an email. “Since schools are open all school year and most companies have almost everything open for the past year, some people may find it more difficult to identify the personal need for a vaccination.”

Speaking to students at a vaccination mobilization event at Clark Atlanta University in Georgia on Friday, Ms. Harris warned of the dangers of misinformation and formulated the decision to get vaccinated to regain power from the virus.

Updated

June 20, 2021, 4:23 p.m. ET

“Let’s arm ourselves with the truth,” she said. “When people say that it looks like this vaccine was made overnight – no, it didn’t. It is the result of many years of research. “

When setting the July 4th goal in early May, Mr Biden said the meeting would show that the United States has taken “a serious step towards a return to normal,” and for many people it already seems to be to be. This week California and New York lifted virtually all of their pandemic restrictions on businesses and social gatherings.

But the time frame is tight. Analysis by the New York Times shows that if the adult vaccination rate continues at the seven-day average, as 67.6 percent of American adults have at least one vaccination, the country will just miss Mr. Biden’s 70 percent target received by July 4th.

According to the CDC, 65 percent of adults had received at least one injection by Friday. But the number of Americans getting their first injection has steadily declined to about 200,000 a day since Mr. Biden announced that June would be a “month of action” to achieve his goal.

“I don’t see any intervention that could really bring back an exponential increase in demand to get the kind of numbers we probably need to get to 70 percent,” said Dr. Marcus Plescia, the Association of State’s chief medical officer and area health officer.

Experts say the difference between 67 percent and 70 percent is insignificant from a disease control perspective. But from a political point of view, it would be the first time that Mr Biden has set a pandemic-related goal that he has not achieved. He has always set and exceeded relatively modest goals, including his pledge to have 100 million shots in the arms of Americans by his 100th day in office.

“The 70 percent target is not a fixed number; not getting it right doesn’t mean the sky is falling, ”said Jen Kates, director of global health and HIV policy for the Kaiser Family Foundation. “On the other hand, it has symbolic meaning. Much effort has been put into reaching this point and not hitting it, a reminder of how difficult the remaining distance will be. “

In the White House, Mr Biden’s aides are now saying they are less concerned with meeting the 70 percent target than they are in making the nation feel the sense of normalcy the president promised. Just a few months ago he was talking about small family barbecues on July 4th, and now large gatherings are possible.

To prove it, the White House is also planning a grand celebration of “independence from the virus” on July 4th with fireworks on the National Mall here in Washington and a gathering of more than 1,000 military personnel and key workers who will join Mr. Biden . Ms. Harris and her spouses watch the festivities from the South Lawn.

When the 70 percent target was announced on May 4th, Mr Biden made a personal appeal to all those who had not been vaccinated: “That is your decision. It’s about life and death.”

A month later, in early June, he attempted to win the nation over by proclaiming a “Month of Action” and suggesting incentives, including offering free childcare for parents and carers while they receive their shots. He also promised a national advertising campaign that resembled an election campaign.

Since then, White House officials say, nonprofit and community groups across the country have held testing and vaccination events, particularly in black churches. Planned Parenthood has invested in paid phone banking, and the Service Employees International Union has partnered with the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials to run vaccination clinics and promotions.

When asked about the July 4th deadline this week, Jeffrey D. Zients, the White House’s Coronavirus Response Coordinator, specifically avoided saying the nation would break the 70 percent threshold by that date would achieve.

“We have made tremendous progress,” he said. “Hundreds of thousands of people continue to get their first shots every day, and we’re going to get 70 percent, and we’re going to go beyond 70 percent in the summer months.”

Annie Karni contributed the coverage from Washington and Amy Schoenfeld Walker from Trumbull, Conn.

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Health

Biden is on observe to fall in need of vaccinating 70% of American adults by the Fourth of July

Biden is on track to fall short of vaccinating 70% of American adults by the Fourth of July

President Joe Biden speaks in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Wednesday, June 2, 2021.

Samuel Corum | Bloomberg | Getty Images

With less than three weeks to go until Independence Day, President Joe Biden’s latest vaccination goals are in jeopardy.

The country is not on pace to hit his two main targets outlined in early May: fully vaccinating 160 million adult Americans and administering at least one shot to 70% of adults across the U.S. by July 4, according to a CNBC analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.

About 65% of adults are at least partially vaccinated as of Wednesday, CDC data shows. Roughly 13.6 million would have to receive their first shot over the next 18 days to get that figure to 70%, an average of about 756,000 new vaccinations each day. The U.S., however, is averaging 336,000 newly vaccinated adults per day over the past week.

If the U.S. maintains that latest seven-day average, 67% of adults will be at least partially vaccinated by that day.

When asked about the consequences of missing the 70% target at a news briefing last week, the White House’s chief medical advisor, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said the Fourth of July would not be the end of the country’s vaccination efforts as the risk of infection and illness remains for those who haven’t gotten a shot.

“If you don’t meet the precise goal and you fall short by a few percent, that doesn’t mean you stop in your effort to get people vaccinated,” Fauci said. “We want to reach 70% of the adult population by the Fourth of July. I believe we can, I hope we will, and if we don’t we’re going to continue to keep pushing.”

Fauci emphasized that people who don’t get vaccinated, are still at risk. “If you get vaccinated, you dramatically, dramatically diminish the risk of getting infected and almost eliminate the risk of serious disease,” he said.

Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, also stressed the importance of vaccination in preventing the delta variant, which was first identified in India and is rapidly emerging as the dominant strain in the U.K, from taking hold in the United States.

White House Covid czar Jeff Zients told reporters Thursday that the U.S. would cross the 70% mark and “continue across the summer months to push beyond 70%,” but did not specify whether he expects the country to reach that mark by the goal deadline.

Biden’s goal of 160 million fully vaccinated adults is also on track to fall short if the pace of shots does not pick up in the next few weeks. Nearly 142 million adults have completed a vaccination program, on pace to land at around 152 million on the Fourth of July assuming the current pace of daily reported vaccinations holds steady.

When Biden first announced the two goals on May 4, the country was on pace to hit both. But the vaccination rate has fallen in the weeks since, from a seven-day average of 2.2 million shots per day across all age groups on the day of the announcement to 1.2 million per day as of June 16, according to the CDC.

The White House has doubled down on recent efforts to boost the vaccination rate. Biden announced June as a “national month of action” in which his administration would mobilize national organizations, community- and faith-based partners, celebrities, athletes, and other influential groups to be part of the vaccination campaign. The White House also asked pharmacies to extend hours for the month of June and partnered with Uber and Lyft to offer free rides to vaccination sites.

States are also offering incentives ranging from free beer to $1 million lotteries to try to convince Americans to get jabbed. 

Though the nationwide rate is still about 5 percentage points away, 14 states and the District of Columbia have already crossed the 70% milestone. New York is the latest to get there, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Tuesday that the state would lift most of its Covid restrictions as a result. 

Other states lag, with 22 of them below the 60% mark. That includes Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and Wyoming, which have each reached less than 50% of adult residents with one or more shots.

The U.S. has undoubtedly made progress in fighting Covid, and nationwide case counts are down to levels not seen since the start of the pandemic, which U.S. officials attribute to the country’s vaccination campaign. American life is closer to its pre-pandemic normal than at any point since last March now that the CDC’s lifted most of its mask recommendations and started to ease travel restrictions.

Even so, pockets of the U.S. with low vaccination rates are a risk for the country’s ability to control the pandemic, said Dr. Wafaa El-Sadr, a professor of epidemiology and medicine at Columbia University. 

“Once you have an unvaccinated population, that’s a vulnerable population likely to see surges in cases,” she said. Ongoing spread means the potential for new variants to emerge, with the possibility that one will be able to evade the protection offered by vaccines.

“It is valuable to have aspirations and very ambitious targets ahead of us and I think we should do our best to reach those targets,” El-Sadr said of Biden’s July 4 goals. “If we don’t reach them, it doesn’t mean that we accept it as a failure and stop doing what we’re doing. It means we redouble our efforts.”

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World News

Biden laid the foundations for an alliance to protect democracy

Biden laid the foundations for an alliance to preserve democracy

To understand the bold ambition behind President Joe Biden’s Europe trip this week, consider him less as the US commander in chief and more as the doctor in charge of the democratic (little “d”) world.

80 years ago, when far fewer democracies were besieged by rising authoritarian forces, Franklin Roosevelt declared himself Dr. Win-the-war. Now that the democratic world is under attack again, it is Biden’s turn to get Dr. To be Save Democracy.

After repeatedly diagnosing the cancers that threaten global democracies, Biden sped up the course of treatment last week. Like any good doctor, he understands that after so many years of invasive and metastatic disease, healing and recovery remain uncertain.

Waiting longer would have ensured the patient’s failure in what Biden diagnosed as a “turning point” in the historical and systemic struggle against authoritarianism. As he said this week at NATO Headquarters in Brussels, setting out a leitmotif for his entire presidency: “We must prove to the world and to our own people that democracy can still meet the challenges of our time and the needs of our people.”

While the 78-year-old president’s message and remarkable perseverance during the trip’s five whistle stops were impressive, any US leader can organize a similar series of meetings. This included his bilateral collaboration with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, followed by the G-7 meeting of the world’s leading industrial democracies, then the meeting of NATO leaders, a US-European Union summit and the conclusion in Geneva with the Russian President Vladimir Putin, the embodiment that Biden fights for.

More remarkable is what Biden did to them. Through careful planning and negotiation, his team and partners created dozens of pages of agreements, communiques, and future commitments. All of this should provide a narrative thread and provoke a common cause among the world’s leading democracies.

Behind all of this, there is an overarching focus of the Biden government on China as the challenge of our time. In contrast to the Trump administration, which has brought itself into conflict with Europe and China at the same time, the Biden administration has made every effort to win the Europeans on its side in the competition with China, even if compromises from individual countries and a whole European Union are calling for China to be its leading trading partner.

Agreements reached last week included a communique from the Carbis Bay G-7 Summit, which included a commitment to provide the world with another billion doses of Covid vaccines this year, a plan to revitalize it of member countries and a commitment to a global minimum VAT.

This included a statement from the US-EU summit, perhaps the least reported and underestimated of the week’s agreements, which established a series of dialogues that encouraged closer cooperation on everything from Covid aid and climate change to technological cooperation and China could enable.

“We intend to continue coordinating our common concerns, including ongoing human rights violations in Xinjiang and Tibet,” the statement said, “the erosion of Hong Kong’s autonomy and democratic processes, economic coercion, disinformation campaigns and regional security issues.”

The end of a 17-year-old trade and customs dispute between Boeing and Airbus has the increasing competition with China as a motivating factor. Even the joint declaration by the US President and Russia on strategic stability contained in three paragraphs had China in its sights, with the aim of initiating a bilateral dialogue on strategic stability, the aim of which was to create a more predictable environment with Moscow Washington’s energies are more direct to Beijing.

However, beneath the surface of all President Biden’s meetings lingered lingering doubts about the durability of this renewed American commitment to alliances, democratic partners, and a common cause – which led to an understandable whiplash among leaders attending meetings of a. had participated in a completely different tone with President Trump.

Europeans have every reason to wonder what the next US election might bring as Trump and his allies still refuse to accept his election defeat and claim fraud. They also have their own electoral uncertainties as the German elections in September are set to end Chancellor Angela Merkel’s nearly 16-year term and French President Macron faces the local elections on Sunday, which preview his next year’s showdown with Marine Le Pen could offer.

Thanks in no small part to these uncertainties, Biden’s great success with his partners over the past week, who were just too eager to embrace the change. What the Trump administration demonstrated, as did the first few months of Biden’s presidency, is the continued dependence of global democracies on US leadership. So why not use the present to implement as many agreements and habits as possible in the hope that they could last.

With that in mind, the week began appropriately with the New Atlantic Charter signed with British Prime Minister Johnson, a useful reminder of the historic difference the internationally active United States can make on the 80th anniversary of the original Atlantic Charter, which was adopted by the US President Franklin Roosevelt was agreed and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

“Our revitalized Atlantic Charter”, says the new document, “builds on the commitments and aspirations formulated 80 years ago and reaffirms our ongoing commitment to preserve our enduring values ​​and to defend them against new and old challenges. We pledge to work closely with all partners who share our democratic values ​​and to counter the efforts of those who seek to undermine our alliances and institutions. “

It is worth remembering that nearly four full months before the US formally entered World War II, Roosevelt and Churchill agreed to the original charter outlining their ambitious common goals for the postwar world and clear US support for the British war effort expressed on 08/14/1941.

It is also worth thinking about what kind of world would have been created if the US had not stepped forward.

Given the threatened liberal order of the post-war era, the New Atlantic Charter could serve as a call for a renewed international commitment to the revival of democracy.

As early as December last year, I wrote at this point: “Joe Biden has the rarest opportunity in history: the chance to be a transformative president.”

Biden’s trip to Europe recognizes and builds on this opportunity. Perhaps just as motivating, however, are the known but unspoken costs of failure at a time when the question of the global forces that will shape the future is at stake.

Frederick Kempe is a best-selling author, award-winning journalist, and President and CEO of the Atlantic Council, one of the United States’ most influential think tanks on global affairs. He worked for the Wall Street Journal for more than 25 years as a foreign correspondent, assistant editor-in-chief and senior editor for the European edition of the newspaper. His latest book – “Berlin 1961: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth” – was a New York Times bestseller and has been published in more than a dozen languages. Follow him on Twitter @FredKempe and subscribe here to Inflection Points, his view every Saturday of the top stories and trends of the past week.

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Politics

Controversial below Trump, federal vacation below Biden

Controversial under Trump, federal holiday under Biden

(L-R) Ninety-four-year-old activist and retired educator Opal Lee, known as the Grandmother of Juneteenth, speaks with U.S. President Joe Biden after he signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law in the East Room of the White House on June 17, 2021 in Washington, DC.

Drew Angerer | Getty Images

The scene at the White House on Thursday might have been hard to fathom just one year ago.

A diverse crowd of lawmakers, activists and community leaders — including pop icon Usher, with whom many photos were taken — gathered in the East Room to witness President Joe Biden sign into law a new federal holiday: Juneteenth, which on June 19 commemorates the end of slavery in the United States.

With coronavirus infections near record lows in the U.S. amid a full-bore vaccination campaign at all levels of government, few members of the indoors, in-person crowd were seen wearing masks.

“We are gathered here, in a house built by enslaved people,” said Vice President Kamala Harris, the first Black woman to hold the title. “We are footsteps away from where President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, and we are here to witness President Joe Biden establish Juneteenth as a national holiday.”

“We have come far and we have far to go, but today is a day of celebration,” Harris said.

As she spoke, the president stepped off the podium and approached the front row, then knelt down to embrace Opal Lee, the 94-year-old Texas activist credited as a driving force behind the push for the new holiday.

“I’ve only been president for several months, but I think this will go down, for me, as one of the greatest honors I will have had as president,” Biden told the crowd before signing the bill into law.

The 11th national annual holiday was established just two days before Juneteenth itself, and less than three weeks after the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa race massacre. It also came on the heels of the first anniversary of the death of George Floyd, the unarmed Black man whose caught-on-tape murder in police custody triggered a nationwide eruption of civil unrest.

At a time when Republicans and Democrats agree on virtually nothing, they came together this week to vote overwhelmingly in favor of making Juneteenth a federal holiday.

Yet just a year ago in mid-June of 2020, all of those factors — Tulsa, Juneteenth, the waves of protest and the Covid pandemic — posed problems for then-President Donald Trump, who had come under fire for announcing plans to hold a rally in Tulsa on the holiday.

“I made Juneteenth very famous,” Trump told The Wall Street Journal after moving the date of the rally. “It’s actually an important event, an important time. But nobody had ever heard of it.”

The contrast between Trump’s final Juneteenth as president and Biden’s first could hardly be more stark. It illustrates not only the seismic changes at play in the nation and how they shaped the present, but also the difference in how the two presidents have approached issues of race.

The path to a federal holiday

Juneteenth celebrates the date in 1865 when enslaved Black people in Texas finally heard that they had been freed under the Emancipation Proclamation, which President Abraham Lincoln had issued more than two years earlier.

The Confederate Army under Gen. Robert E. Lee had surrendered at Appomattox in Virginia on April 9, 1865, a capitulation that led to the end of the Civil War. But it wasn’t until June 19 that Union forces under Gen. Gordon Granger arrived in the coastal city of Galveston, Texas, to deliver General Order No. 3, officially ending slavery in the state.

“The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free,” the order reads.

Lincoln had been shot at Ford’s Theatre by Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth just five days after Lee’s surrender.

The name “Juneteenth” evolved from numerous different names and spellings over the course of decades, historians note.

While the vast majority of states already recognize Juneteenth as a holiday, activists such as Opal Lee have fought for decades for the day to receive federal designation.

In 1939, when Lee was 12 years old, a White mob set fire to her family’s home. No one was arrested. In 2016, Lee, then 89, began to walk from her hometown of Fort Worth, Texas, to Washington, D.C. — some 1,400 miles — to advocate for making Juneteenth a national holiday.

“The fact is none of us are free till we’re all free,” Lee told The New York Times in a June 2020 interview.

One year later, Lee attended the White House ceremony to designate Juneteenth as the the first new holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 1983.

Previous attempts to pass a Juneteenth bill in Congress were unsuccessful. In 2020, one such bill was blocked in the Senate by Ron Johnson, R-Wis., who objected to the cost of giving federal employees another day off.

This time around, he backed off, saying in a statement: “It is clear that there is no appetite in Congress to further discuss the matter.”

The reason why?

“In two words, it’s George Floyd,” said Karlos Hill, chair of the African and African-American Studies Department at the University of Oklahoma, in an interview with CNBC.

In May 2020, video of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes had set off a firestorm of protests around the country. The officer’s conduct drew condemnation from across the political spectrum, and prompted lawmakers to draft a police reform bill in Floyd’s name.

Chauvin in April was found guilty on charges of second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.

“It took something that stark to change the conversation,” Hill said.

“These things are connected deeply,” Hill said, explaining that the shock of Floyd’s death “created a space and opportunity for Juneteenth.”

Few lawmakers — even those with complaints about the bill — stood in the way this week, when the legislation introduced by Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., flew through Congress.

The bill was approved unanimously in the Senate on Tuesday night. A day later, it passed the House in an overwhelming 415-14 vote. The 14 votes against were all Republicans, while 195 GOP lawmakers voted yes.

Among the Republican criticisms were that the decision to name the holiday “Juneteenth National Independence Day” clashed with the existing Independence Day on July 4. They pointed out that the holiday has also been referred to as Jubilee Day, Emancipation Day and other names throughout its history.

Others complained, like Johnson, about the estimated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue lost by giving federal workers another day off. And some lawmakers railed against Democrats for rushing the bill to the House floor, bypassing congressional committees and the opportunity to vote on amendments in the process.

One Republican, Matt Rosendale of Montana, issued a statement before the final vote announcing his opposition to the measure because, he claimed, it was an effort to further “identity politics” and “critical race theory” in America.

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, dismissed Rosendale’s stance as “kooky.”

The 14 House members who voted against the bill are: Rosendale; Mo Brooks, R-Ala.; Andy Biggs, R-Ariz.; Scott DesJarlais, R-Tenn.; Tom Tiffany, R-Wis.; Doug LaMalfa, R-Calif.; Mike Rogers, R-Ala.; Ralph Norman, R-S.C.; Chip Roy, R-Texas; Paul Gosar, R-Ariz.; Tom McClintock, R-Calif.; Ronny Jackson, R-Texas; Thomas Massie, R-Ky.; and Andrew Clyde, R-Ga.

Trump’s Juneteenth

In a statement Friday afternoon celebrating Juneteenth, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said of her party: “We enthusiastically welcome its adoption as our newest national holiday after President Trump called for it last year.”

In September, Trump as part of a series of overtures to Black voters did promise to establish Juneteenth as a national holiday. But there is much more to Trump’s relationship to Juneteenth than McDaniel’s statement suggests.

In June 2020, with the pandemic raging, no vaccines in sight and then-candidate Biden holding a clear edge in the polls, Trump announced he would return to the campaign trail to hold in-person events.

The marquee event of his campaign kickoff: a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on June 19.

The Trump campaign initially defended the scheduling decision as an opportunity for him to tout his “record of success for Black Americans.” But critics called it a slap in the face for Trump to pick Juneteenth to come to Tulsa, the site of one of the worst White-on-Black massacres in U.S. history, to re-launch his re-election campaign in the middle of a national upheaval about racism.

The Wall Street Journal’s Michael Bender, in an adapted excerpt from his forthcoming book about Trump’s election loss to Biden, reported that top campaign official Brad Parscale had selected the time and place for the rally, and that he had “dug in” after others urged him to make changes.

Bender reported that Trump, bewildered by the backlash to the rally date, had asked a Black Secret Service agent if he knew about Juneteenth. The agent said that he did know about it, adding, “It’s very offensive to me that you’re having this rally on Juneteenth,” according to Bender.

Less than a week before the rally, Trump tweeted he would move the event to June 20, after hearing from “many of my African American friends and supporters” who have “reached out to suggest that we consider changing the date out of respect for this Holiday.”

On Juneteenth itself, Trump’s White House issued a proclamation celebrating the holiday as a reminder of “both the unimaginable injustice of slavery and the incomparable joy that must have attended emancipation.”

Less than a month earlier, the Floyd video had prompted millions of people to participate in marches and demonstrations against systemic racism and police brutality. Numerous protests led to outbreaks of violence and looting in major cities.

Before the event at Tulsa’s BOK Center, Trump, who at that point was still active on Twitter, took to the social media app to issue an ominous threat for potential counterdemonstrators.

“Any protesters, anarchists, agitators, looters or lowlifes who are going to Oklahoma, please understand you will not be treated like you have been in New York, Seattle or Minneapolis,” Trump tweeted. “It will be a much different scene.”

The Rev. Al Sharpton, who gave a Juneteenth address in Tulsa that Friday, at the time accused Trump of “provoking an incident” with the tweet.

Trump’s crowd in Tulsa fell short of expectations, failing to fill thousands of seats in the nearly 20,000-capacity arena. But in attendance was Herman Cain, a prominent Black businessman, conservative commentator and former Republican presidential candidate.

The 74-year-old Cain, a stage 4 cancer survivor, was photographed at the event sitting next to other people, none of whom appeared to be wearing masks.

In early July, Cain was hospitalized with the coronavirus, and he was put on a ventilator as his condition worsened. He died July 30, making him among the most high-profile people in the U.S. to succumb to the virus. Cain’s associates have said there is “no way of knowing for sure” how or where he caught Covid.

The Journal’s Bender reported that Trump raged about his lack of support from Black voters on the day after the Tulsa rally.

“I’ve done all this stuff for the Blacks — it’s always Jared [Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law,] telling me to do this,” Trump told one confidant, Bender reported. “And they all f—— hate me, and none of them are going to vote for me.”

Hill said that the U.S. is now “in a different reality” compared with last June, “in a sense that we’ve witnessed the full fallout from George Floyd.”

“We’ve gone on as if things have rectified themselves, and that’s just not the case,” Hill said. As a federal holiday, “Juneteenth might, just might, give pause to that.”

Categories
Health

Biden says delta Covid variant is ‘notably harmful’ for younger folks

Biden says delta Covid variant is 'particularly dangerous' for young people

President Joe Biden speaks in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington on Friday, June 18, 2021, regarding the achievement of 300 million COVID-19 vaccinations.

Evan Vucci | AP

President Joe Biden on Friday doubled his government’s request that Americans get vaccinated against Covid-19 as soon as possible, warning that the highly transmissible Delta variant appears to be “particularly dangerous” for young people.

“The data is clear: if you are not vaccinated, there is a risk that you will become seriously ill or die or spread,” Biden said during a White House press conference.

Delta, the variant of Covid identified for the first time in India, “will make unvaccinated people even more vulnerable than it was a month ago,” he added. “It’s a more easily transmissible, potentially more deadly, and particularly dangerous variant for young people.”

Biden said that young people can best protect themselves by getting fully vaccinated.

“Please, please, when you have a shot, get the second shot as soon as you can,” he said.

The president’s remarks come as his administration’s latest goal of partially vaccinating 70% of US adults by July 4th is on the way to falling as the pace of vaccination slows.

The World Health Organization’s chief scientist said Friday that Delta is becoming the dominant strain of the disease worldwide. This is due to its “significantly increased transferability,” said Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, WHO senior scientist, during a press conference.

Studies suggest that Delta is about 60% more transmissible than Alpha, the variant first identified in the UK that was more contagious than the original strain that emerged from Wuhan, China in late 2019.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, also said Friday that she expects Delta to become the predominant variant in the United States and urged people to get vaccinated. The variant now accounts for 10% of all new cases in the US, up from 6% last week, according to data from CDC.

“As worrying as this Delta strain is about its hypertransmittance, our vaccines are working,” Walensky told ABC’s Good Morning America. If you get vaccinated, “you will be protected against this Delta variant,” she added.

Health experts say the Delta strain is of particular concern for young people, many of whom do not yet need to be vaccinated. While scientists still don’t know if Delta is causing more severe symptoms, there is evidence that it could cause different symptoms than other variants.

Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said the Delta variant essentially replaced Alpha, the variant that swept Europe and later the US earlier this year. He said as the virus continues to mutate, the US will need a higher percentage of the vaccinated population.

“How much more information do we need to see this virus mutate and create viruses that are more contagious?” said Offit, also a member of the FDA’s Advisory Committee on Vaccines and Related Biological Products. “We have to vaccinate now. Let everyone vaccinate now.”

According to the CDC, as of Friday, more than 176 million Americans, or 53.1% of the population, had had at least one injection. More than 148 million Americans are fully vaccinated, according to the agency.

States are offering incentives ranging from free beer to $ 1 million worth of lotteries to try to convince Americans to get a prick.

On Friday, Biden announced some of these incentives, including the fact that most pharmacies offer 24-hour service on select days in June.

Categories
Politics

Biden unable to succeed in settlement with Turkey’s Erdogan over Russian S-400

Biden unable to reach agreement with Turkey's Erdogan over Russian S-400

Russian S-400 missile battalions participate in tactical training to counter attacks of potential sabotage and reconnaissance groups. 

Vitaly Nevar | TASS via Getty Images

WASHINGTON – The Biden administration was unable to work out a resolution with Turkey following Ankara’s defiant purchase of a Russian weapons system, which the NATO alliance views as a security risk.

National security advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters Thursday on a call that President Joe Biden and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan discussed the 2017 multibillion-dollar weapons deal with Russia this week at NATO’s headquarters.

In December, the Trump administration slapped sanctions on Turkey, a NATO member, for buying the S-400 missile system in a confrontation not typically seen within the alliance.

“On the S-400, they discussed it. There was not a resolution of the issue. There was a commitment to continue the dialogue on the S-400,” Sullivan said, adding the Biden administration would have more to say on the matter after Washington and Ankara hold additional talks.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (L) and US President Joe Biden (R) hold a meeting at the NATO summit at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) headquarters in Brussels, on June 14, 2021.

Murat Cetinmuhurdar | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

During a NATO news conference, Erdogan said he had not changed his position on the S-400 despite having a “sincere” meeting with Biden.

Biden also said the meeting with Erdogan was productive, adding he was confident the U.S. will “make real progress with Turkey.”

Erdogan said Thursday that he told Biden to “not expect Turkey to take a different step on the F-35 and S-400 issues,” according to a report from Turkey’s state media.

“We must monitor developments closely. We will be following up on all our rights,” he said. “In the next period, our foreign ministers, defense ministers and defense industry chairs will be moving this process forward by meeting with their counterparts,” Erdogan added.

In multiple efforts to deter Turkey from buying Russia’s S-400 missile system, the State Department offered in 2013 and 2017 to sell the country Raytheon’s Patriot missile system. Ankara passed on the Patriot both times because the U.S. declined to provide a transfer of the system’s sensitive missile technology.

A F-35 fighter jet is seen as Turkey takes delivery of its first F-35 fighter jet with a ceremony at the Lockheed Martin in Forth Worth, Texas, United States on June 21, 2018.

Atilgan Ozdil | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

Under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act any foreign government working with the Russian defense sector will find itself in the crosshairs of U.S. economic sanctions.

Despite warnings from the United States and other NATO allies, Turkey accepted the first of four S-400 missile batteries from the Kremlin in July 2019.

A week later, the U.S. cut Turkey, a financial and manufacturing partner, from the F-35 program.

Due to Turkey’s removal from the F-35 program, U.S. defense giant Lockheed Martin offered the jets originally slated to join Ankara’s arsenal to other customers.

Correction: Erdogan said Thursday that he told Biden to “not expect Turkey to take a different step on the F-35 and S-400 issues,” according to a report from Turkey’s state media. An earlier version misstated the day.

Categories
Politics

Juneteenth turns into federal vacation after Biden indicators invoice

Juneteenth becomes federal holiday after Biden signs bill

President Joe Biden signed law Thursday introducing Juniteenth, the date to commemorate the end of slavery in the United States, as a federal holiday.

Biden signed the bill two days before June 15 himself, which is June 19 each year, in what he called “one of the greatest honors” of his presidency.

“We have come a long way and we still have to go a long way. But today is a day of celebration,” said Vice President Kamala Harris, who addressed the president at the signing ceremony at the White House.

“Big nations don’t ignore their most painful moments,” Biden told the crowd in the East Room, which included dozens of politicians, activists and community leaders. “You hug her.”

United States President Joe Biden applauds Vice President Kamala Harris as they arrive in the East Room of the White House in Washington on June 17, 2021 to sign the National Independence Day Act of June 2021.

Carlos Barria | Reuters

“In short, this day doesn’t just celebrate the past. He calls for action today, ”said Biden.

National Independence Day in June will be the 12th public holiday, including Inauguration Day, and the first new day since then-President Ronald Reagan signed Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 1983.

Juneteenth celebrates the emancipation of the last of the enslaved African Americans. On that day in 1865, Union soldiers, led by General Gordon Granger, arrived in the coastal city of Galveston, Texas to deliver General Order No. 3 that officially ended slavery in the state.

The final act of liberation came months after the Confederate Army’s surrender ended the Civil War and more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.

Lincoln was assassinated on April 15, 1865, two months before his proclamation reached Texas.

Most federal workers will be celebrating June 10th on Friday this year because June 19th falls on a Saturday. The New York Stock Exchange won’t close for June thenth this year, but it will evaluate the closing markets for the holiday in 2022, according to the exchange.

The Securities Exchange Commission will close its offices on Friday for the new holiday, a spokesman said. The SEC’s online data platform, EDGAR, “will also be closed and will not accept filings or assist in assisting applicants,” the spokesman said.

The Holiday Bill was passed with overwhelming support in both houses of Congress this week. The Senate unanimously approved the bill Tuesday night, and the House of Representatives passed it by 415 votes to 14. The only votes against the law came from the Republicans.

Prior to the House vote, some GOP lawmakers complained about the name of the holiday and others expressed concern about the cost of another federal workforce day off. Some also railed against the Democrats for putting the bill to the vote without first allowing the committees to review the law and propose changes.

Still, most of the House Republicans, even those who opposed parts of the bill, voted in favor.

The Juniteenth Bill was sponsored in the Senate by Edward Markey, D-Mass, and the House version, sponsored by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, was endorsed by 166 legislators.

The 14 votes against were:

  • Rep Mo Brooks, R-Ala.
  • Rep Andy Biggs, R-Ariz.
  • Rep. Scott DesJarlais, R-Tenn.
  • Rep Tom Tiffany, R-Wis.
  • Rep. Doug LaMalfa, R-Calif.
  • Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala.
  • Rep. Ralph Norman, RS.C.
  • Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas
  • Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz.
  • Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif.
  • Rep Matt Rosendale, R-Mont.
  • Rep Ronny Jackson, R-Texas
  • Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky.
  • Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga.

– CNBC’s Bob Pisani contributed to this report

Categories
World News

Biden and Putin converse after Geneva summit

Biden and Putin speak after Geneva summit

Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Joe Biden agreed to resume stalled nuclear talks and return their ambassadors to their overseas posts on Wednesday, two concrete measures emerging from their summit in Geneva.

Putin said at a press conference that talks with Biden had been “very productive” and that there had been “no hostilities” between the two.

Biden echoed this feeling at his own press conference, calling the talks “good, positive”. He added that the talks were not “held in a hyperbolic atmosphere – that’s too much of what’s going on”.

Neither Russia’s ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, nor Washington’s ambassador to Moscow, John Sullivan, are currently at his post. Both men were recalled this spring after Biden announced a new round of US sanctions to punish Russia for a massive cyberattack on US government agencies last year.

As a result, consular operations, visas and other diplomatic services came to a virtual standstill in both countries. This collapse had an impact on industries, families and aid agencies that have links in both countries.

In February, the Biden government extended the new strategic arms reduction treaty with Russia for another five years.

On Wednesday, Putin and Biden agreed that consultations on “strategic stability,” an abbreviation for nuclear arsenals, between the two nations should be resumed. The composition, location and frequency of these interviews are determined by working-level officials and not by the two presidents.

Biden said that in practice this means “bringing our military and diplomatic experts together to take control of new and dangerous weapon systems”.

The United States and Russia will “jointly begin an integrated bilateral strategic stability dialogue in the near future. We want to lay the foundations for future arms control and risk reduction measures,” said a joint statement by the Russian Foreign Ministry on Twitter.

New START is currently the only arms control treaty between Washington and Moscow.

Former US President Donald Trump has withdrawn from medium-range nuclear missiles. Similar to the INF treaty, New START limits the nuclear arsenals of Washington and Moscow.

The United States and Russia own the lion’s share of the world’s nuclear weapons.

US President Joe Biden (L) and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin (R) meet for talks at Villa La Grange.

Mikhail Metzel | TASS | Getty Images

Cyber ​​crime

Biden said he and Putin had talked extensively about cybersecurity and told Putin that “certain critical infrastructures should be banned from attack, period”. Biden said he gave Putin a list of 16 specific units, from energy to water systems.

Biden’s warning to Putin followed two targeted ransomware attacks directly targeting American citizens last month, both of which were perpetrated by criminals believed to be based in Russia.

The first was an attack on the operator of the country’s largest gas pipeline, the Colonial Pipeline, in early May. The attack forced the company to shut down an approximately 8,500-mile fuel pipeline, causing nearly half of the east coast’s fuel disruption and fuel shortages in the southeast and airline disruptions.

The second attack, this time by another Russia-based cybercriminal group, targeted JBS, the world’s largest meat supplier. The company eventually paid a $ 11 million ransom, but not before it temporarily ceased all of its U.S. operations.

Putin identified questions about the attacks and specifically mentioned the attack on the Colonial Pipeline as one with which Russia had nothing to do.

But US officials say the notion that Putin is unaware of these attacks is not credible as he has a tight grip on Russia’s intelligence services and its more opaque network of contractors.

Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) shakes hands with US President Joe Biden ahead of the US-Russia summit at Villa La Grange in Geneva on June 16, 2021.

Brendan Smialowski | AFP | Getty Images

From the start, few breakthroughs were expected from either side. Biden and Putin recently said they believe Russian-US relations have hit rock bottom since the Cold War.

Officials in Moscow and Washington have also spent months lowering expectations for the summit, and this week advisers to both leaders said it was unlikely that any deal would be reached in Geneva.

Rather than delivering concrete results, the United States saw the summit as an opportunity to build more stable and predictable relationships between the world’s two largest nuclear powers.

“Both leaders showed moderate respect for one another, and the ambassadors’ return was likely a prearranged performance that looks good,” said Tom Block, Washington policy strategist for Fundstrat

“A trip that puts the US on the same page with our allies should add to Biden’s image as a seasoned politician and leader, which is likely to be reassuring to market participants,” he said.