;)
November 1, 2021
Afternoon Update:
Seth Borenstein of the AP: "World leaders turned up the heat and resorted to end-of-the-world rhetoric Monday in an attempt to bring new urgency to sputtering international climate negotiations. The metaphors were dramatic and mixed at the start of the talks, known as COP26. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson described global warming as 'a doomsday device' strapped to humanity. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres told his colleagues that humans are 'digging our own graves.' And Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, speaking for vulnerable island nations, added moral thunder, warning leaders not to 'allow the path of greed and selfishness to sow the seeds of our common destruction.'... Meanwhile, U.S. President Joe Biden and German Chancellor Angela Merkel avoided soaring rhetoric and delved into policy."
The New York Times liveblogged this morning's Supreme Court hearing on the Texas abortion case. Adam Liptak writes, "After almost three hours of lively arguments, a majority of the justices seemed inclined to allow abortion providers -- but perhaps not the Biden administration -- to pursue a challenge to a Texas law that has sharply curtailed abortions in the state. That would represent an important shift from a 5-to-4 ruling in September that allowed the law to go into effect. Justices Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, who were in the majority in that ruling, asked questions suggesting that they thought the novel structure of the Texas law justified allowing the providers to challenge it." The AP's report is here. ~~~
~~~ Ian Millhiser of Vox: "All four of the dissenters from the September order appear likely to rule against Texas.... It also appears likely that Justices Brett Kavanaugh or Amy Coney Barrett will switch sides and provide the fifth (and maybe a sixth) vote against Texas.... Kavanaugh pointed to a brief filed by the Firearms Policy Coalition, which argued that, if SB 8 is allowed to stand, 'it will undoubtedly serve as a model for deterring and suppressing the exercise of numerous constitutional rights' -- including the Second Amendment. Kavanaugh appeared to view such an outcome as untenable, and that's bad news for SB 8. That said, even if the Court does rule against Texas in Whole Woman's Health, there's no guarantee that such a decision will do much to help abortion providers in Texas. The narrow question currently before the Supreme Court in Whole Woman's Health -- and in United States v. Texas, a similar challenge to SB 8 brought by the Justice Department that is also before the justices -- is ... whether anyone is allowed to sue to block the law. The reason there;s any uncertainty about how to answer this question is that SB 8 was drafted for the very purpose of evading judicial review." ~~~
~~~ Also, too, Chief Justice John Roberts "seemed to grow increasingly annoyed with Texas Solicitor General Judd Stone." MB: I guess nobody told Judd it's a bad idea to smart off to the CJ during arguments. If this were a novel, and not real life, a character named Judd Stone would be decidedly dense & rough around the edges.
Robert Barnes of the Washington Post: "The Supreme Court turned down the chance to consider whether a Catholic hospital can be sued over refusing a transgender patient treatment the hospital says would violate its core religious beliefs. A California court said Evan Minton could pursue his lawsuit after a hospital canceled a scheduled hysterectomy after learning days before that he was transgender. The operation was part of his treatment for gender dysphoria, a condition in which an individual's gender identity does not conform to the sex they were assigned at birth. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch said they would have accepted the case.
Contributor Patrick says the letter, linked below, from WashPo Executive Editor Sally Buzbee reminded him of the final scene of "Deadline-USA." Say, Patrick, is that Buzbee giving the high sign to the Bogart character? See Patrick's commentary in today's thread. We are all shocked, shocked (oh, Bogie, you are everywhere!), of course, that Patrick would seem to compare Trump to a gangster/murderer. ~~~
From Monday's New York Times live updates of Covid-19 developments, also linked below: "New York City started to enforce its Covid vaccine mandate for municipal workers on Monday, and about 9,000 workers who refused to get vaccinated were placed on unpaid leave.... The vaccine mandate has been especially contentious within the tight-knit Fire Department. More than 2,000 New York City firefighters -- out of a total uniformed force of about 11,000 -- have taken sick days over the past week in what city officials describe as a large-scale protest against the mandate. 'Irresponsible bogus sick leave by some of our members is creating a danger for New Yorkers and their fellow firefighters,' the fire commissioner, Daniel A. Nigro, said in a statement. He attributed the uptick in sick leave to 'anger at the vaccine mandate.'... 'Hundreds of guys are feeling flulike symptoms, because that's what the shot does to people,' [Andrew] Ansbro[, president of the Uniformed Firefights Association,] said." MB: Uh-huh: It's believable that a few firefighters would feel sick from the vaccine, but 2,000? I don't think so. ~~~
~~~ Gina Bellafante of the New York Times: "The mandates are partly about protecting the municipal workers and largely about protecting the collective good. The problem, of course, is a widespread disinclination to serve that good, whether it is fueled by selfishness and ignorance or the sense that one's contributions to the commonweal have not felt adequately reciprocal. In this case, refusal becomes primarily an assertion of power, a self-interested counterpunch -- the only means available to people who believe that their government has ignored them.... Among [NYC firefighters & police officers] there was still, after two decades, a lingering sense of betrayal around the safety conditions at the World Trade Center in the wake of Sept. 11, something that has played out as a blanket mistrust of public health edicts." ~~~
~~~ The Washington Post's live updates of Covid-19 developments Monday are here.
Florida. Greg Sargent of the Washington Post: "Last spring, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida took the reprehensible step of signing the state's new voter suppression law on Fox News.... Now this story has taken another ugly turn: The University of Florida has barred three professors from serving as expert witnesses in a lawsuit against the voter suppression measure.... The lawsuit argues that the voting law's provisions, such as the ones restricting drop boxes and making it harder to get absentee ballots in various ways, will impose disproportionate burdens on nonwhite voters. The professors -- Daniel A. Smith, Michael McDonald and Sharon Wright Austin -- were hired by the plaintiffs to testify to this and other matters.... DeSantis, it turns out, has top allies at the university.... It's not clear whether those allies -- or DeSantis himself -- are behind this decision.... Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) tells me she is circulating a letter among the Florida congressional delegation condemning the decision and asking for an accounting of how it was arrived at.... With conservatives regularly railing against allegedly rampant liberal censoriousness on college campuses, how Republicans and their media allies approach this should prove instructive."
Mark Thompson of CNN: "The American chief executive of Barclays (BCS), Jes Staley, is stepping down with immediate effect following an investigation by British regulators into his relationship with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, the bank said on Monday. The investigation by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Bank of England's Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) was disclosed by Barclays in early 2020 and focused on how Staley had characterized the relationship to his employer. Barclays and Staley were made aware on Friday evening by the FCA and the PRA of the preliminary conclusions of their investigation.... Staley had been running Barclays since late 2015. Prior to that he worked for more than 30 years at JPMorgan (JPM), where he served as head of its investment banking division. His relationship with Epstein dated back to 2000, when he became head of JPMorgan's private bank.... Staley had told the Barclays board that he had no contact with Epstein since becoming Barclays CEO in December 2015."
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The New York Times is live-updating events in the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland. The Washington Post's live-updates of the COP26 climate summit are here: "The global summit convening in Glasgow, Scotland, has been widely described as the most important international climate negotiations since the landmark 2015 Paris climate accord. The overarching goal: to put the world on a path to aggressively cut greenhouse gas emissions and slow Earth's warming."
Lisa Friedman, et al., of the New York Times: "President Biden will walk into a riverside event space on Monday to try to convince a gathering of world leaders that the United States, which has pumped more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than any other nation, is finally serious about addressing climate change and that others should follow its lead. But Mr. Biden is coming with a weaker hand than he had hoped. He has been forced to abandon the most powerful mechanism in his climate agenda: a program that would have quickly cleaned up the electricity sector by rewarding power companies that migrated away from fossil fuels and penalizing those that did not. His fallback strategy is a bill that would provide $555 billion in clean energy tax credits and incentives. It would be the largest amount ever spent by the United States to tackle global warming but would cut only about half as much pollution.... Mr. Biden has made climate action a central theme of his presidency, winning praise from diplomats and other leaders, who expressed relief after ... Donald J. Trump had scoffed at climate science and had withdrawn the United States from global efforts to address the crisis. But they remain skeptical, having seen other American presidents promise ambitious action to confront climate change, only to fall short." MB: Thanks, Manchinema --- AND every Congressional Republican! This is one of a number of important reminders that every vote for a Republican is a vote against the United States.
David Herszenhorn of Politico: "U.S. President Joe Biden on Sunday blamed Russia and China for any disappointment over the level of commitment by G20 leaders to fight climate change. 'With regard to the disappointment, the disappointment relates to the fact that ... not only Russia but China basically didn't show up in terms of any commitments to deal with climate change,' Biden said at his news conference at the end of the two-day leaders' summit in Rome. 'And there's a reason why people should be disappointed in that,' Biden added. 'I found it disappointing myself.'... Biden ... also name-checked Saudi Arabia among countries that he argued are still not doing enough."
Anton Troianovski & David Sanger of the New York Times: "As world leaders met at the Group of 20 summit this weekend in Rome, [President] Biden did not even get the chance to hash things out with his Russian counterpart face to face because President Vladimir V. Putin, citing coronavirus concerns, attended the event remotely. Yet beneath the surface brinkmanship, the two global rivals are now also doing something else: talking. The summit between Mr. Biden and Mr. Putin in June in Geneva touched off a series of contacts between the two countries, including three trips to Moscow by senior Biden administration officials since July, and more meetings with Russian officials on neutral ground in Finland and Switzerland. There is a serious conversation underway on arms control, the deepest in years.... Several weeks ago ... the United States turned over the names and other details of a few hackers actively launching attacks on America.... Officials in both countries say the flurry of talks has so far yielded little of substance but helps to prevent Russian-American tensions from spiraling out of control."
There's a New Sheriff in Town. Annie Linskey, et al., of the Washington Post: "President Biden sought to reverse key policies and approaches of ... Donald Trump during this weekend's summit of the Group of 20, and attempted to ensure those reversals would stay in place even if there is a change in American leadership. Biden lifted steel and aluminum tariffs enacted by Trump that had caused friction between the U.S. and the European Union. He huddled with allies on how to reinvigorate talks aimed at preventing Iran from securing a nuclear weapon, which the last administration had abandoned. He forged an agreement aimed at ensuring corporations pay more taxes. And he struck a deal with other nations to end government funding of new coal-fired power plants, part of a broader agenda to curtail climate change and reclaim international leadership on a topic Trump eschewed."
Nicole Winfield, et al., of the AP: "Leaders of the world's biggest economies made a vague commitment Sunday to seek carbon neutrality 'by or around mid-century' as they wrapped up a two-day Rome summit that was laying the groundwork for the U.N. climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland. According to the final meeting communique, the Group of 20 leaders also agreed to end public financing for coal-fired power generation abroad but set no target for phasing out coal domestically -- a clear nod to China, India and other coal-dependent countries. The G-20 countries represent more than three-quarters of the world's greenhouse gas emissions and summit host Italy and Britain, which is hosting the Glasgow climate conference, had looked for more ambitious targets to come out of Rome." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Karla Adam of the Washington Post: "Greta Thunberg may not have been officially invited to the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, but on the first day of the conference, she was making her presence felt. The Swedish teenager, who is something of a rock star for climate campaigners worldwide, is among thousands of activists descending on Glasgow for the 12-day U.N. Climate Change Conference, known as COP26, which kicked off Sunday. They are calling on world leaders to take bold action to prevent global temperatures from rising by more than 1.5 Celsius above preindustrial levels."
E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post: "President Biden and Democrats in Congress are on the cusp of ending their long journey through legislative hell by enacting a remarkable list of practical, progressive programs. This will confront them with a choice. They can follow the well-tested rules for champions of social change. Or they can repeat past mistakes by letting their opponents define what they have done and complain about the things left undone.... Celebrate victory. Explain what you've achieved. Defend it from attack. Change the public conversation in your favor. Build on success to make more progress. And for God's sake, don't moan about what might have been."
Congressional Sociopaths in the News. Sarah Rumpf of Mediaite: "While campaigning for a Republican congressional candidate in central Florida on Saturday, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) complained about the metal detectors in the Capitol, lying about why they were installed and going so far as to joke about blowing them up with explosives.... Rep. Lauren Boebert ... [was one of] multiple Republican lawmakers [who] loudly complained about the metal detectors, claiming they were a violation of their constitutional rights, and Boebert was among those who attempted to circumvent the screening by walking around the metal detectors or refusing to allow her bag to be searched. Boebert, said Gaetz during his remarks Saturday, was a '5 foot nothing woman' who 'carries a firearm for her personal protection,' but the metal detectors on the House floor were installed after 'they got triggered by that.' Again, to be clear, the metal detectors were installed in the immediate aftermath of the violent riots that took place at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.... 'I said, man, is it, is it "tannonite" [sic] or C4 we want to put in those metal detectors and we blow 'em up,' said Gaetz.... Boebert cheered Gaetz on, retweeting his tweet with 'I'll bring the Tannerite!'" ~~~
~~~ Marie: IMO, both Gaetz & Boebert should be sanctioned for threatening to use a powerful explosive in the U.S. Capitol. And they should be detained & given a full body-search by fully-geared munitions experts every time they attempt to enter the Capitol building. I'm not kidding. Threats of extreme violence against the Capitol and those who are in the building, especially after January 6, should be taken seriously, even if Matt there characterizes his remarks as a joke.
Robert Barnes of the Washington Post: "The Supreme Court will face a bramble of unsettled legal questions when it reviews Texas's most-restrictive-in-the-nation abortion law Monday, but the inquiry itself is evidence of a changed court whose view of abortion as a constitutional right is in doubt. Monday's hastily scheduled hearing opens the most dramatic month for reproductive rights at the Supreme Court in three decades." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Whatever the Court's ultimate decision, bear in mind that the majority of the Supremes were named by male Republican presidents (and president*) who were entirely unconcerned about women's rights. AND since the Court is highly unlikely to determine that abortion is unconstitutional, there is no reason Congress could not pass a bill that would guarantee the right to abortion, which when signed into law would override state restrictions. Except Republicans. I have nothing against people who are opposed to abortion. I just detest people who make it difficult or impossible for you to get an abortion.
** The Washington Post has published a long, three-part feature on the January 6 insurrection. It begins, sensibly enough, with the "before" section here. Click on "during" and "after" for the other two parts. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~
~~~ digby republishes a portion of the "before" report. Then she writes, "The FBI thought it was just a bunch of malcontents exercising free speech and the Department of Justice thought it was the military's prob's. The locals assumed everything was fine because the permits were in order and they had some bike racks set up. The head of the FBI was afraid the president would go after him and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was afraid the president would try to use the military to stay in power. They were all at cross purposes and obviously didn't take the threat of violence all that seriously (I would guess because the threats were coming from white middle class Americans who like to cosplay as revolutionaries.)" ~~~
~~~ Sally Buzbee, the Washington Post's executive editor, writes in a letter to readers: "Throughout much of this year, a team of 75 Washington Post journalists has been working to produce a definitive account of Jan. 6 -- its causes, its costs and its aftermath. The result of that investigation, a three-part series being published today, makes clear that the violence that day was neither a spontaneous act nor an isolated event." ~~~
~~~ Russ Choma of Mother Jones: "A sprawling new investigation by the Washington Post into the events leading up to the Capitol insurrection has revealed that the Federal Bureau of Investigations received numerous and highly-detailed tips on the potential for serious violence by followers of ... Donald Trump on January 6. And, despite the specificity and volume of reports, the FBI largely dismissed the warnings. The fact that law enforcement of all stripes reportedly underestimated the likelihood of violence on Jan. 6 has already been widely reported. But the Post's massive project -- started last spring and based on interviews of more than 230 people -- describes in excruciating detail just how much was ignored. In one of the more shocking revelations, the Post recounts how information began flooding into the FBI as early as Dec. 6, when the agency received a tip about a message in an online post telling Trump supporters: 'Please be in DC, armed, on the 6th. You might have to kill the palace guards. Are you okay with [that]?'" ~~~
~~~ Washington Post Staff: "The Post provided [Donald] Trump a list of 37 findings reported as part of its investigation. His spokesman Taylor Budowich provided a lengthy written response that included series of unrelated, inflammatory claims that The Post is not publishing in full. In response to the investigation's findings, Budowich said that the former president 'greatly objected' to all of them. He disputed The Post's investigation as 'fake news' and falsely cast people who entered the Capitol on Jan. 6 as 'agitators not associated with President Trump.' The statement repeated Trump's false claim that the 2020 election was rigged." ~~~
~~~ Dear Wall Street Journal Editorial Board: And that is how you handle a letter from Donald Trump or one of his lackeys. One of your millions of non-subscribers, Marie Burns ~~~
~~~ Paul Campos is LG&$: "After the initial shock wore off, the Republican party collectively decided that the 1/6 attempted coup was a good thing, and that it would do everything it could to ensure that the next attempt wouldn't fail.... There isn't going to be anything resembling a normal election in 2024, because the right wing in this country is now completely committed to living their truth, which is that Democrats don't win elections legitimately. This started out as a paranoid delusion, but now it's an Article of Faith, that can't be abandoned, because it's become so intimately connected to their tribal identity."
Judges Prefer Blondes. Ryan Reilly of the Huffington Post: "Federal prosecutors say an infamous Capitol attack defendant who traveled to Washington on a private plane and called Jan. 6 'one of the best days of my life' should spend time in prison, in part because she didn't think she would. Jenna Ryan was arrested in January after she openly bragged about her exploits at the Capitol on social media, livestreaming on Facebook from inside the building and tweeting a photo of herself standing at a broken window, captioning it 'if the news doesn't stop lying about us we're going to come after their studios next...'... The Justice Department's sentencing memo says that Ryan was 'publicly cheerleading' a violent attack.... Moreover, the government said, Ryan's tweet stating she had 'blonde hair white skin a great job a great future and I'm not going to jail' showed she thought she was immune from punishment for her crimes because of her race and physical appearance." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Sixty days? How about making sure she isn't eligible for parole (not that she'd be a model prisoner) for at least a year?
Carol Rosenberg of the New York Times: "In a stark rebuke of the torture carried out by the C.I.A. after the Sept. 11 attacks, seven senior military officers who heard graphic descriptions last week of the brutal treatment of a terrorist while in the agency's custody wrote a letter calling it 'a stain on the moral fiber of America.' The officers, all but one member of an eight-member jury, condemned the U.S. government's conduct in a clemency letter on behalf of Majid Khan, a suburban Baltimore high school graduate turned Qaeda courier. They had been brought to the U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo Bay to sentence Mr. Khan, who had earlier pleaded guilty to terrorism charges. They issued a sentence of 26 years, about the lowest term possible according to the instructions of the court."
Here's a surprise. Donald & Melanie Trump attended a World Series game Saturday night where they did something offensive (link is to a CBS News story). Oh, and here's a funny -- and characteristic -- note: "Mr. Trump told supporters on Saturday that he would be attending with New York Yankees president Randy Levine and thanked the MLB for the invitation. However, the MLB denied making the invitation and said in a statement, 'He requested to attend the game.'"
** Robin Stein, et al., of the New York Times: "A New York Times visual investigation reviewed footage from 120 vehicle stops over the last five years in which police officers killed motorists who were not brandishing a gun or knife or being pursued for violent crimes. We found a striking pattern. In dozens of incidents, footage shows, officers made tactical mistakes that put themselves in positions of danger -- walking into the path of a car, reaching into a window, jumping onto a moving vehicle -- then used lethal force to defend against that danger. Criminologists call this 'officer-created jeopardy.' But it often goes unexamined in deadly-force cases. Many courts instruct prosecutors and juries to consider only the instant in which an officer uses force -- what's known as the 'final frame' of the encounter. The narrow focus on that moment protects police officers and agencies from legal liability. Proponents of the final-frame approach point to a landmark Supreme Court decision, Graham v. Connor, which says courts should not second-guess the 'split-second' judgments officers make in the heat of the moment. But ... 'scrutinizing the entire incident..., some legal scholars and policymakers ... argue, aligns with another part of Graham v. Connor that instructs courts to consider the 'totality of circumstances.'" ~~~
~~~ Michael Levenson of the New York Times summarizes key findings of the Times investigation. "Over the last five years, The Times found, the police killed more than 400 drivers or passengers who were not wielding a gun or a knife or under pursuit for a violent crime. Traffic stops -- which are often motivated by hidden budgetary considerations because of the ticket revenue they generate -- are the most common interactions between police officers and the public. Yet the police consider them among the most dangerous things they do. That presumption of peril has been significantly overstated, but it has become ingrained in police culture and court precedents -- contributing to impunity for most officers who use lethal force at vehicle stops."
Michael Levenson of the New York Times: "When Kermit Warren lost his job shining shoes during the Covid-19 pandemic last year, he and his son took his life savings of nearly $30,000 to buy a tow truck.... But after flying from New Orleans to Ohio to buy the truck, Mr. Warren and his son discovered that it was the wrong kind ... so they returned home with $28,180 in cash.... As Mr. Warren walked through security at the airport in Columbus, Ohio, the screeners asked him about the money and then let him continue on. At the gate, just before Mr. Warren and his son boarded their flight, three agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration ... suspected that Mr. Warren was carrying illegal drug money and seized the cash.... The seizure, on Nov. 4, 2020, led to a yearlong ordeal that highlighted what Mr. Warren's lawyers call the injustice of civil forfeiture, which allows law enforcement officials to seize the cash, cars or other personal property of people suspected of crimes but not charged.... [Dan Alban, a lawyer with the Institute for Justice, who represents Mr. Warren, provided evidence that Warren] 'had a legitimate purpose for his trip to Ohio and a legitimate source for the cash he had earned,' Mr. Alban said. On Thursday, federal prosecutors agreed to return all $28,180 to Mr. Warren and to dismiss their civil forfeiture complaint 'with prejudice,' which means that it cannot be refiled, Mr. Alban said." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Yeah, the law is an ass, but one obvious lesson here: for Pete's sake, don't carry around big wads of cash. Not so long ago, I purchased a vehicle from another state, and I paid for it with a certified check, which I think cost something like $25 -- a lot less than the loss of capital for a year & a cheap price to pay for saving the worry of cash getting lost, stolen or seized. Oh, and if officers do suspect you of some crime, don't try to wriggle out of it by impersonatng a police officer, which is something else Warren did.
Niraj Chokshi of the New York Times: "American Airlines canceled more than 1,200 flights this weekend, blaming bad weather and staffing shortages for the widespread disruption. The cancellations represented more than 12 percent of the airline's scheduled flights for Saturday and Sunday, it said, and came just weeks after Southwest Airlines was forced to cancel nearly 2,000 flights. Severe wind late last week hampered operations at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, American's largest hub airport, cutting into runway capacity and forcing a round of cancellations, David Seymour, the airline's chief operating officer, said in a note to staff on Saturday. That disruption, combined with bad weather elsewhere in its network, stranded American flight crews in the wrong places, hindering the airline as it went into a typically busy weekend."
Adela Suliman of the Washington Post: "Southwest Airlines is conducting an internal investigation after one of its pilots reportedly said a phrase used in right-wing circles as a stand-in for swearing at President Biden over the plane's public address system -- apologizing to customers and insisting it does not condone employees sharing personal political opinions while on the job. The airline faced turbulence on social media over the weekend after an Associated Press journalist was on a flight from Houston to Albuquerque on Friday when she heard the pilot use the phrase 'let's go Brandon,' writing that it brought on 'audible gasps from some passengers.' Audio of the pilot's greeting, which The Washington Post could not independently verify, was separately circulating widely on social media." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
The Pandemic, Ctd.
The New York Times' live updates of Covid-19 developments Monday are here.
Laurie McGinley of the Washington Post: "The Food and Drug Administration is delaying a decision on whether to make Moderna's coronavirus vaccine available to adolescents because the agency needs more time to evaluate if the shot increases the risk of a rare cardiac side effect, the company said Sunday. Moderna, a Cambridge, Mass., biotechnology company, said in a news release that the FDA indicated it will take until at least January to complete the review of Moderna's application for use in 12- to 17-year-olds. The agency told the vaccine maker Friday evening it needed more time to analyze emerging international data on the risk of myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle that in rare instances occurs after vaccination."
Kaitlan Collins of CNN: "White House press secretary Jen Psaki, who dropped off President Joe Biden's international trip shortly before he departed, has tested positive for coronavirus after members of her household did, she said in a statement Sunday. Psaki said she last saw Biden Tuesday outside while masked, before the President departed for Rome for the Group of 20 Summit. Psaki said she was disclosing the positive test result 'out of an abundance of transparency,' adding that she has experienced mild symptoms and is working remotely. The White House announced Thursday that Psaki would no longer join Biden on his trip abroad 'for at least the first few days,' citing a family emergency. White House deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre instead traveled with the President." Thanks to P.D. Pepe for the link.
The New York Times' live updates of Covid-19 developments Sunday are here. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Way Beyond the Beltway
France/Australia. Ellen Francis of the Washington Post: "French President Emmanuel Macron accused Australia's prime minister, Scott Morrison, of lying to him about a sunken $66 billion submarine deal that triggered an angry charge of betrayal from Paris. 'I don't think, I know,' Macron responded to a question about whether he thought Morrison had lied by not disclosing negotiations with the United States and Britain that nixed Australia's deal with France. 'We will see what he will deliver,' Macron said about the prospect of rebuilding trust, speaking to Australian reporters Sunday on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Italy."
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