Kamala Harris
Harris negative for COVID-19 after taking antiviral pill
Vice President Kamala Harris tested negative on Monday for COVID-19, six days after she tested positive for the virus, and has been cleared to return to the White House on Tuesday.
Harris press secretary Kirsten Allen said Harris, who was prescribed the antiviral treatment Paxlovid last week, was negative on a rapid antigen test. Allen said Harris would continue to wear a “well-fitting mask while around others” in accordance with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines until through her tenth day after her positive test.
Also Read: Harris positive for Covid-19, Biden not a close contact
CDC guidance allows people to leave isolation on the sixth day after they tested positive, as long as they wear a mask around others. The White House exceeds those guidelines, requiring a negative rapid test before people who have been infected are allowed to return to the complex.
Harris positive for COVID-19, Biden not a ‘close contact’
Vice President Kamala Harris tested positive for COVID-19 on Tuesday, the White House announced, underscoring the persistence of the highly contagious virus even as the U.S. eases restrictions in a bid to return to pre-pandemic normalcy.
Neither President Joe Biden nor first lady Jill Biden was considered a “close contact” of Harris in recent days, said the vice president’s press secretary, Kirsten Allen. Harris had been scheduled to attend Biden’s Tuesday morning Presidential Daily Brief but was not present, the White House said.
She had returned Monday from a weeklong trip to the West Coast. The last time she saw Biden was the previous Monday, April 18.
“I have no symptoms, and I will continue to isolate and follow CDC guidelines,” Harris tweeted. “I’m grateful to be both vaccinated and boosted.”
After consulting with her physicians, Harris, 57, was prescribed and is taking Paxlovid, the Pfizer antiviral pill, her office said late Tuesday. The drug, when administered within five days of symptoms appearing, has been proven to bring about a 90% reduction in hospitalizations and deaths among patients most likely to get severe disease.
Biden phoned Harris Tuesday afternoon to make sure she “has everything she needs” while working from home, the White House said.
Also Read: Does Kamala Harris have children? Many eager to know
Harris, received her first dose of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine weeks before taking office and a second dose just days after Inauguration Day in 2021. She received a booster shot in late October and an additional booster on April 1. Fully vaccinated and boosted people have a high degree of protection against serious illness and death from COVID-19, particularly from the most common and highly transmissible omicron variant.
Harris’ diagnosis comes a month after her husband, Doug Emhoff, recovered from the virus, as a wave of cases of the highly transmissible omicron subvariant has spread through Washington’s political class, infecting Cabinet members, White House staffers and lawmakers including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Chris Murphy, D-Conn., tested positive on Tuesday.
Allen said Harris would follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines “and the advice of her physicians.” It was not immediately clear whether she is being prescribed any antiviral treatments.
The White House has put in place strict COVID-19 protocols around the president, vice president and their spouses, including daily testing for those expected to be in close contact with them. Biden is tested regularly on the advice of his physician, the White House has said, and last tested negative on Monday.
“We have a very contagious variant out there,” said White House COVID-19 coordinator Dr. Aashish Jha on Tuesday. “It is going to be hard to ensure that no one gets COVID in America. That’s not even a policy goal.” He said the administration’s goal is to make sure people don’t get seriously ill.
Jha added that despite the precautions it is possible that Biden himself will come down with the virus at some point.
Also Read: Kamala Harris makes history
“I wouldn’t say it’s just a matter of time, but of course it is possible that the president, like any other American, could get COVID,” he said. “There is no 100% anything.”
Psaki said she “would not expect” any changes to White House protocols.
After more than two years and nearly a million deaths in the U.S., the virus is still killing more than 300 people a day in the U.S., according to the CDC. The unvaccinated are at a far greater risk, more than twice as likely to test positive and nine times as likely to die from the virus as those who have received at least a primary dose of the vaccines, according to the public health agency.
Harris’ diagnosis comes as the Biden administration is taking steps to expand availability of the life-saving Paxlovid, reassuring doctors that there is ample supply for people at high risk of severe illness or death from the virus.
In addition to her husband’s diagnosis, Harris was identified as a “close contact” after her communications director tested positive on April 6.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines “close contact” with an infected person as spending 15 minutes or more with them over a 24-hour period. The CDC says people with “close contact” do not need to quarantine if they are up to date on their vaccines but should wear well-fitting masks around other people for 10 days after the contact.
Biden faces growing pressure from the left over voting bill
When New York Democratic Rep. Mondaire Jones was at the White House for the signing of the proclamation making Juneteenth a national holiday last week, he told President Joe Biden their party needed him more involved in passing voting legislation on the Hill.
In response? Biden “just sort of stared at me,” Jones said, describing an “awkward silence” that passed between the two.
For Jones, the moment was emblematic of what he and a growing number of Democratic activists describe as a lackluster engagement from Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on an issue they consider urgent and necessary for the health of the democracy.
Although the White House has characterized the issue as “the fight of his presidency,” Biden has prioritized his economic initiatives, measures more likely to win Republican support in the Senate. And he’s shown little interest thus far in diving into a messy debate over changing Senate rules to pass the legislation on Democratic votes alone.
Read:Adams takes fragile lead in NYC Democratic mayoral primary
But as Democrats’ massive election legislation was blocked by Republicans on Tuesday, progressives argued Biden could not avoid that fight much longer and must use all his leverage to find a path forward. The criticism suggested the voting debate may prove to be among Biden’s first major, public rifts with the left of his presidency.
“President Obama, for his part, has been doing more to salvage our ailing democracy than the current president of the United States of America,” Mondaire said, referring to a recent interview in which the former president pushed for the legislation.
The White House argues that both Biden and Harris have been in frequent touch with Democratic leadership and key advocacy groups as the legislation — dubbed the For the People Act — moved through Congress. Biden spoke out forcefully at times, declaring a new Georgia law backed by Republicans is an “atrocity” and using a speech in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to say he was going to “fight like heck” for Democrats’ federal answer, but he left negotiations on the proposal to Hill leaders.
On Monday, in advance of the vote, Biden met with Sen. Joe Manchin, D.W.Va., at the White House to discuss both voting rights and infrastructure.
But Biden didn’t use his clout to work Republicans, who have expressed staunch and unified opposition to any voting legislation, arguing Democrats are pushing an unnecessary federal takeover of elections now run by state and county officials.
Biden spent much of the month focused on foreign policy during a trip to Europe, encouraging Americans to get vaccinated and selling his infrastructure plan to the American public. He tasked Harris with taking the lead on the issue, and she spent last week largely engaged in private meetings with voting rights advocates as she traveled for a vaccination tour around the nation.
Those efforts haven’t appeased some activists, who argue that state laws tightening election laws are designed to make it harder for Black, young and infrequent voters to cast ballots. The best way to counter the state laws is with federal legislation, they say, and Biden ought to come out for a change in the Senate filibuster rules that require 60 votes to advance most legislation.
“Progressives are losing patience, and I think particularly African American Democrats are losing patience,” said Democratic strategist Joel Payne, a longtime aide to former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. “They feel like they have done the kind of good Democrat thing over the last year-plus, going back to when Biden got the nomination, unifying support around Biden, turning out, showing up on Election Day.”
“Progressives feel like, ’Hey, we did our part.′ And now when it’s time for the bill to be paid, so to speak, I think some progressives feel like, ’OK, well, how long do we have to wait?”
Read:Voting ends, wait for results begins in NYC mayoral primary
Still, there could be a silver lining for Democrats in the ongoing battle over voting rights: The issue is a major motivator for progressives and may serve to drive enthusiasm among Black voters as well, potentially driving engagement in a midterm year where Democrats are certain to face a tough political climate.
Harris is expected to continue to meet with voting rights activists, business leaders and groups working on the issue in the states, and will speak out publicly on the issue aiming to raise awareness of new voting laws and to pressure Republicans to get on board with federal legislation.
She watched the legislation fail to advance to debate on Tuesday, in her role as president of the Senate, and coming off the floor told reporters that she and Biden still support voting legislation and “the fight is not over.”
Ezra Levin, co-executive director of Indivisible, a progressive grassroots group, said it’s been nowhere near the level of advocacy the public has seen on the infrastructure bill.
“The president has been on the sidelines. He has issued statements of support, he’s maybe included a line or two in a speech here or there, but there has been nothing on the scale of his public advocacy for recovery for COVID relief, for roads and bridges,” Levin said.
“We think this is a crisis at the same level as crumbling roads and bridges, and if we agree on that, the question is, why is the president on the sidelines?”
White House aides push back against any suggestion the president and vice president haven’t been engaged on the issue, and say his laissez-faire approach to the negotiations is based partly on his experience as a senator and his belief that his involvement risks undermining a deal before it’s cut.
But in private, White House advisers see infrastructure as the bigger political winner for Biden because it’s widely popular among voters of both parties, a White House official said. Passing a major infrastructure bill is seen within the White House as going further towards helping Democrats win in the 2022 midterms and beyond than taking on massive voting overhaul that had a slim chance of passage without a debate over filibuster rules, said the official, who requested anonymity to discuss internal talks.
Embracing filibuster changes, in particular, risks undermining Biden’s profile as a bipartisan dealmaker and could poison the delicate negotiations around infrastructure, where the White House insists it still sees opportunity for bipartisan compromise.
Read:US hits encouraging milestones on virus deaths and shots
“He does have to preserve some negotiating power, and his brand probably does not compute with being at the tip of the spear on reforming the filibuster,” Payne acknowledged.
Still, other Democrats say it’s time for Biden to get out front on the issue. Rep. Colin Allred, D-Texas, said the proposals Republicans are looking to pass in his home state are “more explicit and more dangerous than anything I’ve ever come across.”
Allred said that the voting fight increases pressure on Biden to take the leadership on the filibuster fight.
“We do need President Biden to make that a priority, because if you’re going to talk about supporting the underlying legislation, it really doesn’t matter if we don’t have way to get past the filibuster,” he said.
Harris, Pelosi make history seated behind Biden at speech
Vice President Kamala Harris and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made history Wednesday as the first women — one of them Black and Indian American — to share the stage in Congress during a presidential address.
President Joe Biden noted the historic development at the very opening of his address. After taking the podium, Biden greeted the two women standing behind him with a “Madam Speaker” and “Madam Vice President.”
Also Read: Kamala Harris makes history
He then declared, “No president has ever said those words — and it’s about time.”
Biden delivered his first prime-time speech to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday night flanked by Pelosi and Harris, two California Democrats.
The two began the night with another historic moment: An elbow-bump hello, a pandemic spin on the traditional handshake. Pelosi and Harris stood side by side behind the dais in the House chamber, chatting with each other and occasionally waving to lawmakers as the group waited for Biden to arrive.
Also Read: Vice President Harris: A new chapter opens in US politics
“It’s pretty exciting. And it’s wonderful to make history. It’s about time,” Pelosi said hours before the speech during an interview on MSNBC.
Pelosi already knows what it feels like to sit on the rostrum in the House chamber and introduce a president for their speeches. She has sat there for several addresses by Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump.
Women’s advocates said seeing Harris and Pelosi seated together behind Biden will be a “beautiful moment.” But they noted that electing a woman to sit in the Oval Office remains to be achieved, along with the addition of an equal rights amendment to the Constitution.
Biden helped usher the moment along by pledging to pick a woman for his running mate and selecting Harris, then a U.S. senator from California.
“This is a great start and we have to continue to move forward to give women their equal due,” said Christian Nunes, president of the National Organization for Women.
Pelosi made history by becoming the first female House speaker during Republican Bush’s presidency. He acknowledged the moment by noting during his address to Congress after Pelosi’s election that he had the privilege of being the first president to open with the words “madam speaker.”
Pelosi, 81, reclaimed the powerful leadership post during Republican Trump’s presidency and sat behind him during his final two speeches to Congress, famously ripping up her copy of Trump’s remarks in 2020 as cameras continued to roll after he was finished addressing lawmakers.
Harris, 56, made history last year when she became the first woman and first Black and Indian American person elected vice president. In her role as president of the Senate, she joins Pelosi to preside over the joint session of Congress.
Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, said Wednesday night will show men, women, boys and girls that women can attain and hold high-level positions and that they are as entitled to them as men are.
Walsh also noted Biden’s promise to put a woman on his ticket, and pointed as well to the diversity of his Cabinet. She said Biden was likely to begin the speech by turning around to face Pelosi and Harris and feeling proud — not just personally, “but I also think proud for the country and proud for his party and I think he will clearly see the historic implications of this and the role that he played in making that happen.”
“For all of us who care about women’s public leadership, we still look forward to the day when the person standing at the podium, in front, is a woman,” Walsh added. “But for now this is a particularly gratifying moment.”
Harris’ office declined comment Wednesday on her historic role in the president’s address, preferring to let the moment speak for itself.
Apart from the speech Wednesday, Harris and Pelosi have notched another first in U.S. and women’s history. They are first and second, respectively, in the line of presidential succession.
At ‘moment of peril,’ Biden opens global summit on climate
President Joe Biden convened leaders of the world’s most powerful countries on Thursday to try to spur global efforts against climate change, drawing commitments from Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin to cooperate on cutting emissions despite their own sharp rivalries with the United States.
“Meeting this moment is about more than preserving our planet,” Biden declared, speaking from a TV-style set for a virtual summit of 40 world leaders. “It’s about providing a better future for all of us,” he said, calling it “a moment of peril but a moment of opportunity.”
“The signs are unmistakable. the science is undeniable. the cost of inaction keeps mounting,” he added.
Biden’s own new commitment, timed to the summit, is to cut U.S. fossil fuel emissions up to 52% by 2030. marking a return by the U.S. to global climate efforts after four years of withdrawal under President Donald Trump. Biden’s administration is sketching out a vision of a prosperous, clean-energy United States where factories churn out cutting-edge batteries for export, line workers re-lay an efficient national electrical grid and crews cap abandoned oil and gas rigs and coal mines.
Japan, a heavy user of coal, announced its own new 46% emissions reduction target Thursday as the U.S. and its allies sought to build momentum through the summit. South Korea used the summit to say it would stop all public financing of new coal-fired power plants, an important step that climate groups hope will help persuade China and Japan to slow their own building and funding of coal power.
The coronavirus pandemic compelled the summit to play out as a climate telethon-style livestream, limiting opportunities for spontaneous interaction and negotiation. The opening was rife with small technological glitches, including echoes, random beeps and off-screen voices.
But the U.S. summit also marshaled an impressive display of the world’s most powerful leaders speaking on the single cause of climate change.
China’s Xi, whose country is the world’s biggest emissions culprit, followed by the United States, spoke first among the other global figures. He made no reference to nonclimate disputes that had made it uncertain until Wednesday that he would even take part in the U.S. summit, and said China would work with America in cutting emissions.
Also read: EU reaches major climate deal ahead of Biden climate summit
“To protect the environment is to protect productivity, and to boost the environment is to boost productivity. It’s as simple as that,” Xi said.
Putin, whose government has been publicly irate over Biden’s characterization of him as a “killer” for Russia’s aggressive moves against its opponents, made no mention of his feuding with Biden in his own climate remarks, a live presentation that also saw moments of dead air among production problems.
“Russia is genuinely interested in galvanizing international cooperation so as to look further for effective solutions to climate change as well as to all other vital challenges,” Putin said. Russia by some measures is the world’s fourth-biggest emitter of climate-damaging fossil fuel fumes.
The pandemic made gathering world leaders for the climate summit too risky. That didn’t keep the White House from sparing no effort on production quality. The president’s staff built a small set in the East Room that looked like it was ripped from a daytime talk show.
Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris addressed the summit from separate lecterns before joining Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and White House climate envoy John Kerry at a horseshoe-shaped table set up around a giant potted plant to watch fellow leaders’ livestreamed speeches.
The format meant a cavalcade of short speeches by world leaders, some scripted, some apparently more impromptu. “This is not bunny-hugging,” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said of the climate efforts. “This is about growth and jobs.”
The Biden administration’s pledge would require by far the most ambitious U.S. climate effort ever, nearly doubling the reductions that the Obama administration had committed to in the landmark 2015 Paris climate accord.
The new urgency comes as scientists say that climate change caused by coal plants, car engines and other fossil fuel use is already worsening droughts, floods, hurricanes, wildfires and other disasters and that humans are running out of time to stave off most catastrophic extremes of global warming.
But administration officials, in previewing the new target, disclosed aspirations and vignettes rather than specific plans, budget lines or legislative proposals for getting there.
Biden excused himself in the midst of the first session for other duties, but planned to join a second session of the livestreamed summit later in the morning on financing poorer countries’ efforts to remake and protect their economies against global warming.
Also read: FM: Bangladesh’s points to be on agenda of Biden's Climate Summit
With the pledge from the United States and other emissions-cutting announcements from Japan, Canada, the European Union and the United Kingdom, countries representing more than half the world’s economy will have now committed to cutting fossil fuel fumes enough to keep the earth’s climate from warming, disastrously, more than 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius), the administration said.
As of 2019, the last year before the pandemic, the U.S. had reduced 13% of its greenhouse gases compared with 2005 levels, which is about half way to the Obama administration goals of 26 to 28%, said climate scientist Niklas Hohne of Climate Action Tracker. That’s owing largely to market forces that have made solar and wind, and natural gas, much cheaper
Biden, a Democrat, campaigned partly on a pledge to confront climate change. He has sketched out some elements of his $2 trillion approach for transforming U.S. transportation systems and electrical grids in his campaign climate plan and in his infrastructure proposals for Congress.
His administration insists the transformation will mean millions of well-paying jobs. Republicans say the effort will throw oil, gas and coal workers off the job. They call his infrastructure proposal too costly.
“The summit is not necessarily about everyone else bringing something new to the table — it’s really about the U.S. bringing their target to the world,” said Joanna Lewis, an expert in China energy and environment at Georgetown University.
Political divisions in America that were exposed by Trump’s presidency have left the nation weaker than it was at the 2015 Paris accord. Unable to guarantee that a different president in 2024 won’t undo Biden’s climate work, the Biden administration has argued that market forces — with a boost to get started — will soon make cleaner fuels and energy efficiency too cheap and consumer-friendly to trash.
Having the United States, with its influence and status, back in the climate game is important, said Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air in Helsinki.
But hoping the world will forget about the last four years seems like wishful thinking, he said.
“There is too much of an impulse in the U.S. to just wish away Trump’s legacy and the fact that every election is now basically a coin toss between complete climate denial and whatever actions the Democrats can bring to the table,” he said.
PM to highlight challenges, efforts on climate front at Leaders' Summit on Climate
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will deliver her speech virtually at the "Leaders Summit on Climate" on Thursday highlighting the climate-related challenges Bangladesh faces and the efforts it is undertaking.
Prime Minister Hasina, also President of the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF), will address the inaugural session of the Summit titled "Raising Our Climate Ambition" with other global leaders, an official told UNB.
US President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will open the inaugural session of the two-day Summit at 6pm (Bangladesh Time).
This session will underscore the urgent need for the world’s major economies to strengthen their climate ambition by the time of COP 26 to keep the goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius within reach.
It will provide an opportunity for leaders to announce new steps to strengthen climate ambition.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, US Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry will also join.
Also read: FM: Bangladesh’s points to be on agenda of Biden's Climate Summit
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, Russian President Vladimir Puti, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Prime Minister, South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan are among participants invited by the US President.
The second session will be on "Investing in Climate Solutions."
Biden, Harris and others to promote relief plan's benefits
Let the sales push begin.
Biden, Dems prevail as Senate OKs $1.9T virus relief bill
An exhausted Senate narrowly approved a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill Saturday as President Joe Biden and his Democratic allies notched a victory they called crucial for hoisting the country out of the pandemic and economic doldrums.
#berniememes: Smitten with a pair of mittens!
The man, the mittens, the pose and the context itemized the most sensational US inauguration day hit content ‘grumpy Bernie Sanders’ memes for the internet world. Searching by #berniememes will provide you with some good laughs if you haven’t already followed the viral trend.
Vice President Harris: A new chapter opens in US politics
Hours after she was sworn in as the first female U.S. vice president — and the first Black woman and person of South Asian descent in the role — she cast the moment as one that embodied “American aspiration.”