Tag: Divided

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Politics

U.S. intelligence businesses are divided over virus origins

U.S. intelligence agencies are divided over virus origins

Security guards stand outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan while members of the World Health Organization (WHO) team investigating the origins of the COVID-19 coronavirus visit the institute in Wuhan, central China’s Hubei Province, on February 3, 2021.

Hector Retamal | AFP | Getty Images

WASHINGTON – U.S. Intelligence said it was divided over the exact origin of Covid-19 in China, a revelation three months after President Joe Biden requested a more in-depth review.

A secret service said it had reasonable confidence that the virus infected people following a lab-related incident, according to a report released Friday afternoon. Four agencies said they had weak assessments that the virus was of natural origin.

The report did not name the agencies.

“However, after reviewing all available intelligence reports and other information, the IC remains divided on the most likely origin of Covid-19. All authorities believe two hypotheses are plausible: natural exposure to an infected animal and a laboratory-related incident. ”The country’s 18 intelligence agencies wrote in the report.

The report, compiled by the Office of the Director of the National Intelligence Service, found that the virus was not designed as a biological weapon. The intelligence agency also found that Chinese officials had no prior knowledge of the virus prior to the first outbreak that sparked a global pandemic.

The report says that if the intelligence services stop receiving more information, they will not be able to come to a more definitive conclusion.

Biden said in a statement following the report’s release the U.S. and its allies would continue to pressure China to reveal more about what happened when Covid first began to spread.

“There is critical information in the People’s Republic of China about the origins of this pandemic, but from the beginning, government officials in China have worked to prevent international investigators and members of the global public health community from accessing it,” Biden said.

“The world deserves answers and I will not rest until we get them,” added the president.

In May, Biden urged intelligence agencies to “redouble their efforts” within 90 days in hopes of finding a “definitive conclusion” about the origin of the virus.

The country’s secret services assume that Covid was exposed for the first time near the city of Wuhan in the Chinese province of Hubei in November 2019. The first known case group was reported in December.

After the first case was reported in the United States in January 2020, the virus has since infected more than 38 million Americans and killed more than 630,000 people, according to Johns Hopkins University. According to the JHU, more than 215 million people worldwide have been infected with the virus and around 4.5 million have died.

Earlier this week, Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, of CNBC’s “Squawk Box”, said it was still unclear whether the virus leaked from a Wuhan laboratory.

“The extensive evidence from other perspectives says no, this was a naturally occurring virus,” said Collins. “Not to say that it couldn’t have been secretly examined at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and got out of there, we don’t know about it. But the virus itself doesn’t have the characteristics of being deliberately created by human labor.” . “

Collins added that the World Health Organization’s investigation into the origin of the coronavirus was made difficult by China’s refusal to participate.

“I think China basically refused to consider another WHO investigation and just said, ‘No, not interested,'” Collins told Squawk Box.

In July, China rejected a proposal from the WHO for a second phase investigation into the origin of the coronavirus, which would include audits of laboratories and markets in Wuhan city.

“We will not accept such a tracing plan because it disregards common sense and science in some ways,” Zeng Yixin, vice minister of the National Health Commission, told reporters on July 22nd.

“We hope that the WHO will seriously review the deliberations and suggestions of Chinese experts and really treat the tracing of the Covid-19 virus as a scientific matter and remove political interference,” said Zeng.

– CNBC’s Rich Mendez contributed to this report from New York.

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Politics

Home Democrats Return to D.C. Deeply Divided

House Democrats Return to D.C. Deeply Divided

Moderates have also allied with Shield PAC, founded by Democrats ousted in November from Republican-leaning districts, to push back on efforts to tar all Democrats with the slogans of the left. Some have backed a new pro-Israel group, Democratic Majority for Israel, determined to thwart the party’s emerging Palestinian rights movement — and defeat left-wing candidates who they say have crossed an unacceptable political line on the Jewish state.

Understand the Infrastructure Bill

    • One trillion dollar package passed. The Senate passed a sweeping bipartisan infrastructure package on Aug. 10, capping weeks of intense negotiations and debate over the largest federal investment in the nation’s aging public works system in more than a decade.
    • The final vote. The final tally in the Senate was 69 in favor to 30 against. The legislation, which still must pass the House, would touch nearly every facet of the American economy and fortify the nation’s response to the warming of the planet.
    • Main areas of spending. Overall, the bipartisan plan focuses spending on transportation, utilities and pollution cleanup.
    • Transportation. About $110 billion would go to roads, bridges and other transportation projects; $25 billion for airports; and $66 billion for railways, giving Amtrak the most funding it has received since it was founded in 1971.
    • Utilities. Senators have also included $65 billion meant to connect hard-to-reach rural communities to high-speed internet and help sign up low-income city dwellers who cannot afford it, and $8 billion for Western water infrastructure.
    • Pollution cleanup: Roughly $21 billion would go to cleaning up abandoned wells and mines, and Superfund sites.

On Friday, yet another centrist group, No Labels, began airing an advertisement backing Representative Henry Cuellar of Texas, one of the nine holdouts on the budget who is being challenged by a young liberal, Jessica Cisneros, in the upcoming primary season. The ad extols him for “fighting for the Biden agenda,” though arguably he is now trying to hold much of it up.

The idea, moderates say, is to inoculate the party from slogans like Defund the Police that were effectively used against swing-district Democrats in November, and stop progressive gains before divisions in the Democratic Party grow as deep as they have been in the Republican Party. The issue is more about tone and cooperation than ideology, said Mark S. Mellman, a longtime Democratic strategist and pollster, who helped found the Democratic Majority for Israel and its political action committee.

“There’s nothing revolutionary about ‘Medicare for all,’ moving to a clean energy economy, a $15 minimum wage,” he said. “There’s a lot of consistency around the general direction of policy. But the rhetoric is different.”

The efforts have left liberals feeling aggrieved and worried that the Democratic establishment is actually hurting the party — by sapping the vital energy of younger voters. Young liberals like Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman not only defeated Democratic stalwarts to win their seats in New York, but they have captured the imagination of the next generation, said Waleed Shahid, a spokesman and strategist for Justice Democrats, which promotes insurgent progressive candidates.

Updated 

Aug. 17, 2021, 6:05 p.m. ET

“The future of the party looks a lot more like A.O.C. than Joe Biden,” he said.

The establishment’s efforts are showing results. One of the left’s political heroes, Nina Turner, lost a House special election primary in Cleveland this month, after Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, the most senior African American in Congress, and Mr. Mellman’s group swooped in to prop up a little-known but more conciliatory candidate, Shontel Brown. In New Orleans, the favored progressive candidate in the race to replace Representative Cedric Richmond, who joined the Biden White House, also lost.

Liberals say the moderates, not the progressives, are now the ones standing in the way of Mr. Biden’s agenda, by provoking the House’s stalemate and threatening the social policy bill in the Senate.

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Business

How Trump’s Push to Undo Election Has Divided His Media Allies

How Trump's Push to Undo Election Has Divided His Media Allies

President Trump’s final term began Monday with the Republican Party’s disorder – and the president’s media allies also disagreed on how to deal with the crisis sparked by his fantasies of a “rigged” election.

On the Monday episode of Fox News’ normally Trump-friendly morning show “Fox & Friends,” host Brian Kilmeade urged Mr. Trump’s lawyers to produce evidence of fraud. He also warned that the pro-Trump protests scheduled for Washington this week are “the kind of anarchy that by and large works for no one, Republicans or Democrats.” His co-host Steve Doocy noted, “So far we haven’t seen the evidence.”

In the same program, Senator Marsha Blackburn, a Republican from Tennessee who has announced that she will object if Congress approves the vote on Wednesday’s electoral college, discussed the bomb record of a phone call made on Saturday that President Trump tried to get Brad Raffensperger to do. Georgia’s Secretary of State to defeat to change the state’s vote.

“Brian, one of the things I think everyone said is that that call wasn’t a helpful call,” Ms. Blackburn said. (On another Fox News broadcast, Republican strategist Karl Rove called Mr. Trump’s call “inappropriate”.)

Complicated matter for experts on the right: Acceptance of Mr. Trump’s allegations of a stolen election could stifle Republican turnout in Tuesday’s Georgia runoff election that will determine control of the United States Senate.

But Fox News has also expressed very different views of the President than those of Mr. Rove and the hosts of Fox & Friends. On Sunday night, right-wing brand Mark Levin told viewers of his prime time show on Fox News, “Our Declaration of Independence and Constitution are being destroyed by the Democratic Party and the media, and they want to destroy what’s left of it. ”

Throwing a warning to Republican leaders who are not involved in Mr. Trump’s efforts, Mr. Levin mentioned Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell by name and added, “The Republican leadership in the Senate has been extremely pathetic.”

Like the breakaway Republican senators who advocated Mr Trump’s efforts to undermine the election, Mr Levin has stayed in step with Mr Trump’s increasingly far-fetched fraud allegations.

At 9 p.m. on Fox News, Sean Hannity’s program presented viewers with numerous false statements about the 2020 election as it aired unfiltered Mr. Trump’s rally for the Georgia Republican Senate nominee. However, the prime-time venue provided by Mr Hannity was not enough for those in the audience who were aware of the reluctance of some Fox News personalities to support the President’s fraud claims. His mention of the network, almost an hour after his speech, drew the crowd.

Economy & Economy

Updated

Jan. 4, 2021, 3:39 p.m. ET

Monday’s comment on MSNBC and CNN was, unsurprisingly, slightly different.

John Heilemann, an MSNBC analyst, compared Mr. Trump to a mob boss. On CNN, host Jake Tapper described Mr Trump’s call to Georgian officials as “putting pressure on them, threatening them and suggesting that they could be prosecuted if they couldn’t find” enough votes “for Trump to get the election results in Georgia to change. ” . “He added,” Too many members of the ruling Republican Party are clearly trying to undermine the American experiment of undermining democracy. “

And when Fox News showed the Trump rally at 9 p.m., CNN host Chris Cuomo had a discussion on the slow roll-out of coronavirus vaccines.

Newsmax, the conservative network that has tried to outperform Fox News on the right by fueling Mr. Trump’s conspiracy theories, gave up time on Monday to several guests who vigorously supported the president’s unsubstantiated claims, including Representative Jody B. Hice Georgia and a Trump campaign advisor Steve Cortes.

Republican Mo Brooks, Republican of Alabama, told Newsmax viewers that there was “massive electoral fraud” and stated that President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. “would not be a legitimate president.” He also complained that the judicial system – which has been issuing opinion after opinion at the state and federal level against Mr. Trump’s fraud allegations – has been a “pathetic failure”. Bob Sellers, the Newsmax host who interviews Mr. Brooks, has not pushed his claims back.

Newsmax White House correspondent Emerald Robinson claimed Monday afternoon that Mr Trump did not try to get Mr Raffensperger to reverse the Georgia election results during the phone call, but instead used it as some sort of information tour.

“You can hear how passionately the president believes he has won the state,” said Ms. Robinson.

Even so, Newsmax does not protect viewers from the inevitability of Mr Biden’s inauguration, although many voters may object to the drafting. On a segment of the network, anchor John Bachman stated that Mr Biden’s plans for inauguration day would be reduced because of the pandemic; Right-wing commentator Dan O’Donnell, one of Mr. Bachman’s guests, wondered for no reason whether the minor inauguration was due to Mr. Biden’s “decreased mental capacity”.

“That’s a fair question,” said Mr. Bachman.

Categories
Health

Properties Divided: Vaccinated Well being Staff Chart a New Regular

Homes Divided: Vaccinated Health Workers Chart a New Normal

Dr. Kuppalli and others have expressed some discomfort about being first to get the vaccine while so many others in the US and beyond are lining up for their own safety shot. “I don’t think guilt is the right word,” she said. The tier system recommended by government officials to prioritize those at highest risk made scientific sense. But there was still an immense privilege, she said, hidden in the tiny droplets of liquid that were stabbed in her right arm this month.

After almost a year at the forefront in the fight against the coronavirus, health workers are finally receiving long-awaited tools. It felt strange to wear, they said amid the many millions who are still left without their own chain mail.

Manevone Philavong, 46, who has worked in the environmental services department at the University of Pittsburgh’s Passavant Medical Center for 21 years, was one of the first in the country to be vaccinated on the morning of December 14th.

He long ago got used to the risks involved in his job cleaning almost “every aspect of the hospital,” he said. Coming home from work, he goes into the garage and undresses in the basement before going into the house where he lives with his mom and dad, who are in their 80s, and his pregnant 30-year-old niece.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Mr. Philavong has tried to keep physical distance from his parents. They speak to each other from opposite sides of the living room. His father had to work alone while he tinkered with the family cars – a 2008 Jeep Grand Cherokee and a 2009 Ford F-150 – and tended the herbs and vegetables in the garden. That year, the family skipped their regular trip to Moraine State Park to fish for trout and perch.

When Mr. Philavong told his parents about his injection, they were delighted. “They said, ‘Now you can spend more time with us,’ he said. I said, ‘Not quite yet.’

The vaccine offers “a layer of hope,” said Mr Philavong. “But I’ll still take all the precautions I can.”

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Categories
Politics

How Trump’s Assault on Aid Invoice Has Divided GOP

How Trump's Attack on Relief Bill Has Divided GOP

“Republicans are in great danger if they continue to do the very same mire the president ran against,” said Texas representative Chip Roy in an interview, noting that it is more difficult as a socialist to go up against Democrats when “Republicans Massive establishment bypassing “issues and programs that they then complain about. “

Mr Roy said if Mr Trump vetoed the move, lawmakers could draft a bill to expand corporate paycheck protection, work out a compromise on unemployment benefits and direct payments, and pass laws that will keep the government open until the new one Congress will decide on the amount of expenditure next year. But few other lawmakers said they believed Congress would gather to work out a new measure over the vacation.

Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee and a critic of the president, noted that the foreign aid proposals that the president objected to were proposed by his own administration.

“Republicans are getting beaten up again by the guy they choose, who doesn’t care about their interests or some principle they stand for,” Steele said. “He made a four-minute video in the White House ranting about things his own administration did while a mother tries to figure out how to avoid eviction and get Christmas presents for her children under the tree. That’s the heartbreaking part. “

The Republicans in the two houses were already divided over the election results.

Many of the Senate Republicans are poised to step out of the Trump era while House Republicans, including top leadership, signed a brief signing of a lawsuit in Texas in hopes that the Supreme Court would turn the results upside down .

Mr McConnell has tried to end the prospect of blocking the Senate Electoral College results next month, but the House Republican leaders have done nothing in public to discourage hardliners from attempting such a move in the Democratically controlled chamber . After Republican No. 2 Senator John Thune of South Dakota told reporters this week that such a Senate effort “would go down like a slug,” Mr. Trump tweeted Tuesday, “South Dakota doesn’t like weakness. He will be in primary school in 2022, his political career is over !!! “

The coverage was contributed by Jonathan Martin from Washington, Ben Casselman and Nicholas Fandos from New York, and Rick Rojas from Atlanta.