Homeland security chief Alejandro Mayorkas says ‘any passport that we provide for vaccinations … [must be] accessible to all’
The Biden administration is taking “a very close look” at the possibility of vaccine passports for travel into and out of the United States, the homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, said on Friday.
The Transportation Security Administration, which safeguards the nation’s transportation systems, is housed under Mayorkas’s department.
Continue reading...US president and South Korean counterpart Moon Jae-in remain ‘deeply concerrned’ over relations with Pyongyang
US president Joe Biden said he and his South Korean counterpart Moon Jae-in remain “deeply concerned” about the situation with North Korea, and announced he will deploy a new special envoy to the region.
After talks in Washington on Friday, Biden told a joint news conference with Moon that he was dispatching former US ambassador to Seoul, Sung Kim, to help refocus efforts on pressing Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear weapons program.
Continue reading...Joe Biden takes tougher line in phone call with Benjamin Netanyahu, but Israel and Hamas deny truce is imminent
Joe Biden has told Benjamin Netanyahu that he expects “a significant de-escalation today on the path to a ceasefire” between Israel and militants in Gaza, in a notable toughening of the US president’s language on the conflict.
The White House said that in a phone call on Wednesday, “the two leaders had a detailed discussion on the state of events in Gaza, Israel’s progress in degrading the capabilities of Hamas and other terrorist elements, and ongoing diplomatic efforts by regional governments and the United States.”
Continue reading...Analysis: Merrick Garland has made a clean break with Bill Barr, making domestic terrorism his ‘top priority’ winning won praise for his moves on civil and voting rights
The new attorney general, Merrick Garland, has signaled an ambitious agenda to fight domestic terrorism in America including white supremacists and hate crimes, while bolstering civil rights and voting rights, critical areas that got short shrift from the Trump administration, say ex-federal prosecutors and members of Congress.
The shift at the Department of Justice represents one of the most stark turnarounds under Joe Biden from the Trump era. Under the previous attorney general, Bill Barr, the justice department was often seen as at Trump’s beck and call, the former president accused of treating it as virtually his own legal service.
Continue reading...White House reported the US president urged Israel ‘to make every effort to ensure the protection of innocent civilians’
Tennessee governor Bill Lee has signed an anti-transgender bathroom ball into law, in the latest attack on trans rights in a Republican-controlled state this year, the AP reports.
The bill would allow students, parents and employees to sue schools “for all psychological, emotional, and physical harm suffered” if the school allows a trans person to use a bathroom or locker room while someone else is suing it.
The Guardian’s voting rights reporter Sam Levine on the latest developments in Arizona’s election audit:
Arizona Republicans are overseeing a “grift disguised as an audit,” the chairman of the Maricopa county board of supervisors said on Monday, just before officials released a blistering letter refuting accusations the county was hiding information from auditors.
Maricopa county says Cyber Ninjas is just straight miscounting ballots https://t.co/riK3xBi6l3 pic.twitter.com/vM5Wa9XjnX
Continue reading...Analysis: US president may find himself increasingly isolated in his resolute defence of Israel
In his staunch defence of Israel, Joe Biden is sticking to a course set decades ago as a young senator, and has not so far given ground on the issue to the progressive wing of his party or many Jewish Democrats urging a tougher line towards Benjamin Netanyahu.
Biden has even been prepared to face isolation at the UN security council, at the potential cost of his own credibility on multilateralism and human rights. But analysts say that as the death toll rises with no sign of a ceasefire, the domestic and international pressures on the president could become impossible to ignore.
Continue reading...Rochelle Walensky announces relaxation of guidelines: ‘We have longed for this moment … [to] get back some sense of normalcy’
As coronavirus cases and deaths decline across the US amid vaccination efforts, the director of the CDC said Thursday that fully vaccinated Americans could participate in most indoor activities without wearing a mask.
An unmasked president Joe Biden heralded the announcement during an outdoor press conference several hours later, saying: “Today is a great day for America in our long battle with coronavirus.”
Continue reading...Lack of US sanctions on crown prince led to harsher sentences for critics of regime, Grant Liberty reports
The Biden administration’s failure to impose sanctions on Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, has led to a increase in severe sentences for political prisoners in the kingdom, the Guardian can reveal.
The UK-based human rights organisation Grant Liberty found that twice as many harsh sentences had been meted out to Saudi prisoners of conscience in April than in the first three months of this year combined. It followed the Biden administration’s decision on 26 February to publish an intelligence report that showed the crown prince, “approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey, to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi”.
Continue reading...Analysis: The White House is playing for time and needs to decide quickly how to deal with Trump’s legacy of unwavering support for Netanyahu
Joe Biden came into office thinking he could put the Israel-Palestine issue on the back burner to focus on other, bigger, issues. That is not working out well.
The upsurge in violence has caught the new administration on the back foot, under-staffed and without a clearly defined approach.
Continue reading...Confidential data obtained by AP shows the number of children in government custody more than doubled in the past two months
The Biden administration is holding tens of thousands of asylum-seeking children in an opaque network of some 200 facilities that the Associated Press has learned spans two dozen states and includes five shelters with more than 1,000 children packed inside.
Confidential data obtained by the AP shows the number of migrant children in government custody more than doubled in the past two months, and this week the federal government was housing around 21,000 kids, from toddlers to teens.
Continue reading...With one psychiatrist for 750,000 people and huge stigma about mental health, patients get little help
Radhwan Ali Hassan lives with his mother in a small house perched at the top of a sleepy Yemeni village called Aqeeqah, on the outskirts of Taiz city. From inside his bare-walled room, the 35-year-old hears the distant sound of an ice-cream van. He sees children running past his window and can smell goats, but he cannot remember the last time he walked outside.
Thick metal shackles around his ankles are attached to a heavy chain fastened to the far wall. They clatter as Hassan paces his room, rocks from side to side and smiles vacantly. His pupils are wide, his movements slow.
Continue reading...Restrictions on public behavior to be gradually lifted, key figures in the fight against the disease say
The US is approaching a turning point where Covid vaccinations are sharply reducing infection and hospitalization rates and in turn allowing restrictions on public behavior to be gradually lifted, key figures in the fight against the disease said on Sunday.
“We are turning the corner,” said Jeffrey Zients, the White House Covid response coordinator. With about 58% of adult Americans having received at least one shot of vaccine, and with some 113 million people now fully vaccinated, the country was on track to meet Joe Biden’s goal of 70% of the population at least partially vaccinated by 4 July, he said.
Continue reading...Joe Biden did not appear downhearted by a disappointing jobs report: he said it would not be a sprint, but 'a marathon' after April's report severely missed economists' expectations.
The president noted his $1.9tn coronavirus relief package, which he signed into law in March, was meant to aid the US economy over the course of a year and insisted the country is 'moving in the right direction' as businesses begin to reopen
Continue reading...Kurt Campbell says Beijing has been increasing military activities without taking measures to reduce the chance of miscalculation
The Biden administration’s top Asia official has warned about the absence of a crisis-communications channel between the US and China at a time of rising military tensions over Taiwan and the South China Sea.
Military and leadership hotlines have been established at various points in the fraught history of the relationship, but Kurt Campbell, the White House Asia “tsar” responsible for coordinating policy across the administration, said Beijing had shown no interest in using them, out of a preference for uncertainty. The hotline simply rings out in “empty rooms”, he said.
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Jack Herrera reports:
Just months after ICU capacities were at zero in Los Angeles, the county has made a turnaround. But officials advise caution, and warn that vaccine hesitancy is catching up.
Related: LA reports no Covid deaths for two days in a row in major pandemic milestone
That’s it from me today. My west coast colleague, Maanvi Singh, will take over the blog for the next few hours.
Here’s where the day stands so far:
Continue reading...President said last month he would leave Trump-era figure of 15,000 in place this year
Joe Biden has formally raised the US cap on refugee admissions to 62,500 this year, weeks after facing bipartisan blowback for his delay in replacing the record-low ceiling set by Donald Trump.
Refugee resettlement agencies have waited for Biden to quadruple the number of refugees allowed into the United States this year since 12 February, when a presidential proposal was submitted to Congress saying he planned to do so.
Continue reading...Defense department will cancel all construction paid for with military funds originally intended for other purposes
The US Department of Defense said on Friday it was cancelling the construction of parts of former president Donald Trump’s border wall with Mexico that were being built using military funds.
All unobligated money was being returned to military, the Pentagon said.
Continue reading...A petition, signed by more than 54,000 people, calls on Biden to return the garden to its ‘former glory’ as Jacqueline Kennedy designed
Efforts to erase the Trump family legacy have reached the White House potting sheds and nurseries with Jill Biden being urged to restore the mansion’s garden to a state that predates ex-First Lady Melania Trump’s 2019 makeover.
An online petition calling on the first lady to return the Rose Garden to its “former glory” has been signed by more than 54,000 people. The petition says Biden’s predecessor “had the cherry trees, a gift from Japan, removed as well as the rest of the foliage and replaced with a boring tribute to herself”.
Continue reading...More than 140 rights groups call for repeal of 1973 Helms amendment widely misinterpreted as total ban on funding abortion services overseas
Joe Biden is being urged to clarify a longstanding US law restricting overseas aid that has been misinterpreted by successive administrations as an outright ban on funding abortion for any reason.
As the US president marked his first 100 days in office on Friday, more than 140 human rights and global health organisations, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International US and the Global Justice Center, signed a letter asking him to confirm that US aid can be used for abortion care in cases of rape, incest and when the woman’s life is in danger.
Continue reading...The new administration has signalled a sharp break in foreign policy from the Trump era – but how is that playing globally?
At the opening of Joe Biden’s online climate summit last week, Europe’s relief was was palpable: “It is so good,” gushed the European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, “to have the US back on our side.”
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