With so many crazy things happening, sometimes things fall through the cracks. Here are some headlines that you may find interesting and worth discussing.
Biden Administration:
- The Senate on Tuesday confirmed Pete Buttigieg as transportation secretary, the first openly gay person to be confirmed to a Cabinet post, tasked with advancing President Joe Biden’s ambitious agenda of rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure and fighting climate change.
- President Biden urged Senate Democrats on Tuesday to go big on coronavirus relief, making an aggressive case in favor of his $1.9 trillion rescue package as Democrats prepared to take the first steps to advance the legislation.
- The U.S. will begin shipping doses of the Covid-19 vaccine directly to retail pharmacies next week, as the Biden administration expands how and where Americans can get inoculated.
- The initial shipment of 1 million doses will go to 6,500 stores starting Feb. 11, said Jeffrey Zients, the Biden administration’s Covid-19 coordinator.
- The Biden administration is freeing up an additional $1.3 billion in relief funding to Puerto Rico as it moves to ease restrictions on the aid put in place during the Trump administration, officials said Tuesday. during the Trump administration, officials said Tuesday.
Congress:
- Senator Mitch McConnell said on Monday that the “loony lies and conspiracy theories” embraced by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene amounted to a “cancer” on the Republican Party, issuing what in effect was a scathing rebuke to the freshman House Republican from Georgia.
- “Loony lies and conspiracy theories are cancer for the Republican Party and our country,” Mr. McConnell said. “Somebody who’s suggested that perhaps no airplane hit the Pentagon on 9/11, that horrifying school shootings were pre-staged, and that the Clintons crashed JFK Jr.’s airplane is not living in reality. This has nothing to do with the challenges facing American families or the robust debates on substance that can strengthen our party.”
- Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) on Tuesday said the party should move away from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) as House GOP leaders discuss how to handle her.
- “I think we should have nothing to do with Marjorie Taylor Greene, and think we should repudiate the things she said and move away from her,” Romney told reporters.
- Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) will join the Senate Finance Committee, giving her a prominent platform to push forward progressive proposals on tax policy and health care.
- Senator Tim Kaine announced he is dropping the bipartisan effort to censure former President Donald Trump due to a lack of support.
Impeachment:
- House impeachment managers filed their memorandum Tuesday for the Senate impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump, laying out in the clearest terms yet why they believe Trump committed impeachable offenses and must be barred from running for office again.
COVID-19 Updates:
- Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious-disease expert, was hesitant Tuesday to say when life in the United States will return to pre-pandemic norms, citing coronavirus mutations and vaccine hesitancy.
- “You cannot give a definite answer when you have so many moving parts,” Fauci said in a live-streamed conversation with The Washington Post’s David Ignatius. “When you give a definitive time, they’ll say: ‘Oh! The scientists were wrong.’ It depends on so many factors.”
- Coronavirus cases are on the decline in California, but officials say residents shouldn’t let their guard down just yet.
- Gatherings in the fall and over the holidays led to “a lot of death” in California Ghaly said, warning that the state could see more fatalities from Super Bowl or Lunar New Year gatherings.
Riots/White ISIS/Wing Nut Watch:
Other headlines:
- Two Atlanta police officers who were fired after bodycam footage showed them pulling two Black college students from a car and using stun guns on them during last summer’s protests have gotten their jobs back.
- Pennsylvania’s Secretary of State, Kathy Boockvar, will resign at the end of the week because of a major bureaucratic bungle that has nothing to do with the election.
- Republican legislators across the country are preparing a slew of new voting restrictions in the wake of former President Donald Trump’s defeat.
- Georgia will be the focal point of the GOP push to change state election laws, after Democrats narrowly took both Senate seats there and President Joe Biden carried the state by an even smaller margin. But state Republicans in deep-red states and battlegrounds alike are citing Trump’s meritless claims of voter fraud in 2020 — and the declining trust in election integrity Trump helped drive — as an excuse to tighten access to the polls.
- Jeff Bezos said Tuesday that he will step down as chief executive of Amazon, leaving the helm of the company he founded 27 years ago.
- Frostproof (FL) city leaders met Monday night to officially declare the first week of February “Donald J. Trump Week” in the city.
- Frostproof City Council Member Austin Gravley said, “Last night I was proud to be a part of a proclamation the first of its kind making February 1-6 Donald J. Trump week in the City of Frostproof.”
- A”small group” of teachers have been placed on leave in Wisconsin after a class of sixth-graders were asked how they would punish a slave during an online assignment.
