Democratic governors lift indoor mask mandates despite CDC guidance – live | US news

In its subpoena letter to Peter Navarro, the House select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection accuses the Trump adviser of working with Steve Bannon to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.

In his book, Navarro refers to the plan to overturn the results of the election as “Green Bay Sweep,” and the former trade adviser has claimed that more than 100 members of Congress supported the idea.

“Because you have already discussed these and other relevant issues in your recently published book, in interviews with reporters, and, among other places, on a podcast, we look forward to discussing them with you, too,” the letter says.

The House select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection has issued a subpoena to Peter Navarro, who served as Donald Trump’s top trade adviser.

In a statement, the committee said it was seeking records and testimony from Navarro in connection to reports that he was involved in efforts to disrupt the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.

The committee also noted that Navarro has talked about those efforts in his own book about the final year of Trump’s presidency, entitled “In Trump Time: My Journal of America’s Plague Year”.

“Mr. Navarro appears to have information directly relevant to the Select Committee’s investigation into the causes of the January 6th attack on the Capitol,” said committee chair Bennie Thompson.

“He hasn’t been shy about his role in efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and has even discussed the former President’s support for those plans. More than 500 witnesses have provided information in our investigation, and we expect Mr. Navarro to do so as well.”

The White House also confirmed earlier today that Joe Biden will meet with Democratic members of the Senate judiciary committee tomorrow to discuss the search for a supreme court nominee.

“The President has also continued his conversations with Republicans this week, and he’s grateful to all of the members who are working with him in good faith during this process,” a White House official told the press pool.

The official added, “He is considering a wealth of candidates, all of whom possess the best qualifications that any person could – first-rate legal minds, strong credentials, records, and character. They have also all lived the American dream, have compelling life stories and unique strengths. And any of them would be deserving of bipartisan support because of their deep qualifications.”

Biden has pledged to nominate a Black woman to replace Stephen Breyer, who announced his retirement two weeks ago. If Biden’s nominee is confirmed, she will become the first Black woman to sit on the US supreme court.

“There’s a long list of extraordinarily qualified Black women to serve on the Supreme Court,” Biden said on Twitter today. “After 232 years and 115 justices, we’re finally going to put one on the bench.”

Joe Biden spoke to French President Emmanuel Macron this morning, as the US and its allies continue their diplomatic efforts to deescalate tensions along Ukraine’s borders, where Vladimir Putin has deployed more than 100,000 Russian troops.

Macron traveled to Moscow and Kyiv earlier this week to hold meetings with Putin and Ukrainian officials and continue peace talks with the two countries.

“President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. spoke today with President Emmanuel Macron of France. They discussed President Macron’s recent meetings in Russia and Ukraine,” the White House said in its readout.

“They also talked about ongoing diplomatic and deterrence efforts, undertaken in close coordination with our Allies and partners, in response to Russia’s continued military build-up on Ukraine’s borders.”

Despite those diplomatic efforts, Russia has continued to build up its troop presence along Ukraine’s borders, intensifying fears that the window of opportunity for a peaceful resolution to the crisis may be closing.

The Post also has additional details on the Trump White House records that were included in those 15 boxes of documents recovered by the National Archives from Mar-a-Lago:

Among the materials they recovered included correspondence with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, which Trump once described as ‘love letters,’ as well as a letter left for Trump by President Barack Obama, people familiar with the matter said. The Archives also retrieved a doctored map of Hurricane Dorian that had been altered with a black Sharpie by Trump in a failed attempt to show he hadn’t been wrong about the storm’s path, according to a person familiar with the contents of the boxes. The Archives in a statement earlier this week said that Trump representatives are ‘continuing to search’ for additional records.

Trump attracted widespread criticism in 2019, when he used a Sharpie to alter a map of Hurricane Dorian’s projected path in an effort to substantiate his incorrect claims that the storm could hit Alabama.

The National Archives is reportedly asking the Department of Justice to investigate Donald Trump’s handling of his White House records, following revelations that the former president withheld important documents from the agency.

The Washington Post reports:

The National Archives and Records Administration has asked the Justice Department to examine Donald Trump’s handling of White House records, sparking discussions among federal law enforcement officials about whether they should investigate the former president for a possible crime, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The referral from the National Archives came amid recent revelations that officials recovered 15 boxes of materials from the former president’s Mar-a-Lago residence that weren’t handed back in to the government as they should have been, and that Trump had turned over other White House records that had been torn up. Archives officials suspected Trump had possibly violated laws concerning the handling of government documents — including those that might be considered classified — and reached out to the Justice Department, the people familiar with the matter said.

The House select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection has subpoenaed a wide swath of documents from the Trump White House, which has reinvigorated questions over the administration’s potential violations of the Presidential Records Act.

As of now, it is unclear whether the Department of Justice will actually launch an investigation into Trump’s handling of White House documents.

Joe Biden asked the CEOs of electric utilities about the community response as their companies come to rely more on clean-energy options, such as wind energy.

“Are you getting less resistance when you start talking about wind and windmills? I know they cause cancer,” Biden said. As some of the CEOs laughed at that comment, Biden added, “Bad joke.”

The president’s comment appeared to be a reference to Donald Trump’s bizarre and baseless claim that the noise emitted by wind turbines causes cancer, which was widely mocked.

Biden’s roundtable with the CEOs is still happening, but reporters were escorted out of the meeting after the president’s opening remarks. He did not take any questions as the reporters departed.

Joe Biden is now meeting with CEOs of electric utilities at the White House to discuss his economic agenda, as congressional Democrats try to pass their Build Back Better Act.

“You know, you have some of the most important jobs in America right now – keeping electricity systems running and running reliably,” the president told the CEOs.

Bide noted he has spent time in the past year touring parts of the country, particularly on the west coast, that have been devastated by wildfires, underscoring the urgent need to embrace clean energy options.

“It’s about building a clean energy future,” Biden said. “And we’re seeing incredible enthusiasm, support for the effort – not just from you all but around the country.”

Here’s where the day stands so far:

• The governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, announced she would allow the state’s indoor mask requirement to lapse tomorrow. Customers at most businesses in New York had previously been required to wear masks or show proof of coronavirus vaccination. “Given the declining cases, given declining hospitalizations, that is why we feel comfortable to lift this, in effect tomorrow,” Hochul said this afternoon.
• The chair of House Democrats’ campaign arm applauded Hochul’s decision, which comes days after several other Democratic governors announced plans to relax mask requirements. “It’s time to give people their lives back,” Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney said. “With science as our guide, we’re ready to start getting back to normal.”
• However, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the agency continues to “recommend masking in areas of high and substantial transmission”. According to the CDC’s own data, 99.5% of all US counties currently qualify as areas of high and substantial transmission, even as the number of new coronavirus cases across the country has decreased in the past few weeks.

The blog will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

Over at the White House pandemic response briefing, Dr Anthony Fauci was asked about the potential need for another round of coronavirus vaccine booster shots.

Fauci, the president’s chief medical adviser, said that health experts would continue to track data on infections and hospitalizations of vaccinated individuals to get a better sense of if and when another booster shot is necessary.

Fauci also emphasized that recommendations for more booster shots will likely be tailored to specific populations who may be at higher risk of becoming severely ill from coronavirus, such as the elderly.

“There may be the need for yet again another boost, in this case a fourth-dose boost, for an individual receiving the mRNA that could be based on age, as well as underlying conditions,” Fauci said.

“So I don’t think you’re going to be hearing, if you do, any kind of recommendations that will be across the board for everyone.”

Speaking in New York City, Governor Kathy Hochul said she was not yet relaxing the mask mandates for schools, even as she let the mask-or-vax requirement for most businesses lapse.

The Democratic governor said she would revisit the issue of mask requirements for schools next month, after students return from the winter break scheduled for late February.

“After the break, after we have kids tested, we’re going to make an assessment in the first week of March,” Hochul said.

The governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, has officially announced that she will allow the state’s indoor mask requirement to lapse tomorrow.

Customers at indoor businesses had been required to wear masks or show proof of coronavirus vaccination, but Hochul said the time had come to lift that “emergency temporary measure”.

“At this time, we say that it is the right decision to lift this mandate for indoor businesses and let counties, cities and businesses to make their own decisions on what they want to do with respect to mask or the vaccination requirement,” Hochul said.

“Given the declining cases, given declining hospitalizations, that is why we feel comfortable to lift this, in effect tomorrow.”

Several other Democratic governors have announced plans this week to relax mask requirements, and the governor of Illinois is expected to outline a similar policy today.

However, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said moments ago that the agency continues to “recommend masking in areas of high and substantial transmission”.

According to the CDC’s own data, 99.5% of all US counties currently qualify as areas of high and substantial transmission, even as the number of new coronavirus cases across the US has decreased in the past few weeks.

A reporter asked Dr Rochelle Walensky whether the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will soon offer guidance to governors about relaxing coronavirus-related restrictions.

“We are working on that guidance. We are working on following the trends for the moment,” Walensky said at the White House pandemic response briefing.

But Walensky added, “Our hospitalizations are still high, our death rates are still high, so as we work towards that and as we are encouraged by the current trends, we are not there yet.”

Several Democratic governors announced earlier this week that they would move to relax mask mandates for schools, and the governors of New York and Illinois are expected to announce similar plans today.