Biden falls short of target to send 80m Covid vaccines around the world – live | US news

In the final part of today’s White House press briefing, press secretary Jen Psaki said Joe Biden this week will speak about rising crime rates in the US and what he will do to address issues such as gun violence.

Speaking about tomorrow’s vote on a voting rights bill, Psaki said: “Democrats, we suspect and hope, will be united.”

One reporter asked Psaki about efforts by some leaders in the Catholic church to deny Biden the communion during his weekly church visits because of his support for women’s access to abortion. Psaki said the White House would not comment on the “inner workings of the Catholic church” because Biden sees his faith as personal, not political.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki also weighed in on the Supreme Court ruling against the NCAA on Monday. “NCAA student athletes work very hard, both on the athletic field and in the classroom … their hard work should not be exploited,” Psaki said.

Asked what else the White House could do to improve vaccination rates and meet its goal of having 70% of the population vaccinated by 4 July, Psaki said “we set this bold, ambitious goal because we wanted to continue to make progress”

Psaki said 16 states have met the goal but the White House was concerned about lower vaccination rates among young people and was working to address it.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the US fell short of its global vaccination distribution goal because of logistical issues. “We have plenty of doses to spread with the world but this is a Herculean logistical challenge,” Psaki said at a briefing on Monday.

Psaki said issues include getting vaccines through customs, availability of materials like alcohol wipes and language barriers.

She was also asked about the push this week in the Senate to support a voting rights bill, the For the People Act. Psaki said if the bill fails, she expects it would renew the debate in Congress about ending the filibuster, a rule which allows a minority of 41 senators (out of 100 total) to prevent a vote on most legislation.

Psaki said Joe Biden’s efforts to expand access to voting will go beyond this week. “This will be a fight of his presidency,” she said.

White House officials said Joe Biden would fall short of his commitment to ship 80m Covid-19 vaccine doses abroad by the end of June because of regulatory and other hurdles, according to the AP.

The White House announced how the doses would be allocated on Monday, but officials said fewer than 10m doses have been shipped around the world, including 2.5m delivered to Taiwan over the weekend, and about 1m delivered to Mexico, Canada and South Korea earlier this month.

Officials said the US-produced doses are ready, but deliveries have been delayed because of legal, logistical and regulatory requirements. A White House official said shipments will go out as soon as countries are ready to receive the doses and the administration sorts out logistical complexities.

The White House announced it would distribute 55m vaccine doses to countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia in the coming months.

The Biden administration committed to donating 80m doses abroad by the end of June and previously said 75% would be distributed through the global vaccine sharing initiative, Covax, and the other 25% would be targeted by the US. Today, the White House provided specifics on where 55m of those doses would be allocated.

“Our goals are to increase global Covid-19 vaccination coverage, prepare for surges and prioritize healthcare workers and other vulnerable populations based on public health data and acknowledged best practice, and help our neighbors and other countries in need,” according to an administration fact sheet.

It had previously said the first 25m doses were mostly going to countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America through Covax. The others were being donated to “regional priorities” including Mexico, Iraq and Haiti.

The 55m doses are being distributed as follows:

• 14m for Latin American and the Caribbean, including Argentia, Colombia, Honduras and Dominican Republic.
• 16m for Asia, including India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Cambodia and the Pacific Islands.
• 10m for Africa, to be shared in coordination with the African Union.
• 14m with “regional priorities and other recipients” including Afghanistan, Philippines, Nigeria, Ghana, Kosovo and Bosnia.

“This will take time, but the President has directed the Administration to use all the levers of the US government to protect individuals from this virus as quickly as possible,” the fact sheet said. “The specific vaccines and amounts will be determined and shared as the administration works through the logistical, regulatory and other parameters particular to each region and country.”

Guardian US senior political reporter, Daniel Strauss, has an update on the Michigan’s governor’s election. Strauss reports:

Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer has brought on a seasoned Democratic strategist as she and Republicans gear up for a contentious 2022 gubernatorial election.

Whitmer, a first term Democratic governor, has hired Preston Elliott, a veteran campaign manager, as the Michigan gubernatorial election looms, according to multiple Democrats with knowledge of Elliott’s hiring.

Elliott is a well-respected Democratic strategist with a long resume of running statewide campaigns. In 2020 he was the campaign manager for Texas Democrat M.J. Hagar’s ultimately unsuccessful Senate campaign against incumbent Senator John Cornyn of Texas.

Elliott has also run Senate and gubernatorial campaigns in North Carolina, California, and Montana among other states.

Whitmer has been a favorite punching bag of Republicans but the Republican primary field is still forming.

Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, has pushed back on the prospect that she might run. John James, a businessman and former Republican nominee for US Senate is still a prospect as well, according to NBC News. What’s more, in recent years the state has shifted more toward Democrats even as surrounding Midwestern states -like Ohio or Indiana- have tilted more Republican.

Last week Whitmer announced that all Covid-19 restrictions would be lifted across the state, the latest development in a bumpy road for Michigan’s fight against the coronavirus pandemic. That same week, Whitmer also signed a proclamation celebrating Juneteenth.

In the early weeks of the pandemic, Donald Trump reportedly suggested Americans abroad infected with Covid-19 should be quarantined at Guantánamo Bay, according to a new book about the pandemic by Washington Post journalists Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta.

The book, Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration’s Response to the Pandemic That Changed History, is based on interviews with more than 180 people.

“The book offers new insights about Trump as the president careened between embracing miracle coronavirus cures in his quest for good news, grappling with his own illness — which was far more serious than officials acknowledged — and fretting about the outbreak’s implications for his reelection bid,” according to the Washington Post’s report on the book.

Trump also reportedly was in a frenzy about testing, an essential responses to an infectious disease, and argued that the federal government shouldn’t be tracking infections, according to the Post.

When former vice president Mike Pence was installed as the head of the coronavirus task force in February 2020, his chief of staff Marc Short “pushed back against an HHS effort to send free masks to every American household in the response’s early days, a step that some public health experts think would have depoliticized mask-wearing but which Short believed would unnecessarily alarm people,” according to the report.

The secretary of veterans affairs, Denis McDonough, announced over the weekend that the government will offer gender confirmation surgery to transgender veterans.

Speaking at a Pride event in Orlando on Saturday, McDonough said it is “the right thing to do” and was part of a broader effort to overcome the “dark history” of discrimination against LGBTQ+ service members.

The National Center for Transgender Equality estimates more than 134,000 veterans are transgender and more than 15,000 trans people are currently serving in the US military.

This change won’t happen immediately and McDonough said they will use the time to expand Veterans Affairs health benefits to “develop capacity to meet the surgical needs” of transgender veterans.

“We’re making these changes not only because they are the right thing to do, but because they can save lives,” he said.

In the landmark Scotus decision against the NCAA today, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote a staunch defense for student athletes.

In a concurring opinion, Kavanaugh highlighted some of the most hallowed events in US sports, including the NCAA baseball world series and said “but those traditions alone cannot justify the NCAA’s decision to build a massive money-raising enterprise on the backs of student athletes who are not fairly compensated.”

The case was brought by former student athletes who argued the education-related compensation – such as: computers, tutoring and study abroad scholarships – they received while participating in sports at school was unfair. The case doesn’t decide whether athletes can be paid salaries – an issue that will continue to be debated.

The Supreme Court has unanimously voted in favor of college athletes, ordering the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) to broaden education benefits for student athletes.

The case challenged the NCAA’s limits on compensation for student athletes, arguing that the governing body violated federal laws barring price fixing in markets. During oral arguments in March, the justices expressed skepticism about the NCAA’s argument that broadening benefits would defeat the purpose of “amateurism” in college sports.

In reviewing the case, the justices determined in the majority opinion that the NCAA “is capable of depressing wages below competitive levels for student-athletes and thereby restricting the quantity of student-athlete labor.”

Some NCAA rules limiting compensation will remain in place, but Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that limits on other forms of compensation should be scrutinized too.

In response to the court’s decision, Connecticut senator, Chris Murphy, said: “The NCAA collusion machine, designed to keep college athletes impoverished so the billions in profits can be kept for a small cabal of insiders, is finally starting to crumble to pieces.”

More and more revelations are emerging about just how far Trump’s justice department went rogue and new inquiries are being set up to examine the wrongdoing, writes Peter Stone for the Guardian:

More political abuses have emerged, with revelations that – starting under attorney general Jeff Sessions in 2018 – subpoenas were issued in a classified leak inquiry to obtain communications records of top Democrats on the House intelligence committee. Targets were Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell, who were investigating Kremlin election meddling, and also several committee staffers and journalists.

Democrats in Congress, as well as Garland, have forcefully denounced these Trumpian tactics. Garland has asked the department’s inspector general to launch his own inquiry, and examine the subpoenas involving members of Congress and the media. Congressional committees are eyeing their own investigations into the department’s extraordinary behavior.

“There was one thing after another where DoJ acted inappropriately and violated the fundamental principle that law enforcement must be even-handed. The DoJ must always make clear that no person is above the law,” said Donald Ayer, deputy attorney general in the George HW Bush administration.

Good morning,

Joe Biden is set to meet with financial regulators on Monday afternoon in the Oval Office, to discuss issues including the financial risk of climate change. Kamala Harris will also prioritize economic issues today, in a roundtable with a local union and on a trip to Pittsburgh to highlight the expanded child tax credit.

Participants in the Oval Office meeting with Biden will include the treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, the chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, and the chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), Jelena McWilliams.

Biden is also working this week to sway senators to back his infrastructure proposal.

There will also be some rustling this week around voting rights, as the Senate prepares for a procedural vote on Tuesday about the For The People Act.

Stay tuned for more.