Biden news: Tanden drops out over Twitter row, as president says vaccines for all adults by May

Rudy Giuliani has been suspended from YouTube for spreading election misinformation – again.

It is the second time this year that Giuliani, who represented Trump as he unsuccessfully fought the presidential election’s outcome in court, has received a temporary ban from the video sharing platform.

According to Bloomberg News, YouTube enacted the suspension because Giuliani violated their “presidential election integrity policy” and promoted nicotine.

As such, he is banned from livestreaming or posting videos for two weeks. If he breaks YouTube’s rules again within the next 90 days, his account will be permanently shut down.

Biden’s pick to head up the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is coming before a Senate panel for his confirmation hearing.

If confirmed, Gary Gensler would lead the agency – set up to protect investors and the national banking system – amid calls for greater Wall Street regulation in the wake of the GameStop saga.

The SEC is currently investigating whether online trading platform Robinhood acted in favour of its Wall Street clients when it blocked customers from buying GameStop shares in late January amid a sudden trading frenzy.

They are also examining the roles short-selling and potential stock manipulation may have had in the shares’ rocketing.

Kentucky governor Andy Beshear revealed during a press conference on Monday night that emergency crews had been dispatched to rescue a batch of coronavirus vaccines that were stranded amid floodwaters.

Unable to use the flooded roads, the crews travelled by boat to rescue the doses and transport them to a facility in Wolf County, the governor said, and no doses were lost during the rescue mission.

The incident came just two weeks after a facility housing Moderna vaccines in Texas lost power amid Winter Storm Uri, causing a frantic dash to administer 5,000 vaccines before they expired.

The Biden administration is due to announce on Tuesday that officials brokered a deal between US pharmaceutical giants Merck and Johnson & Johnson, to sure-up supplies of the vaccine authorised for use last week.

The deal follows concerns that Johnson & Johnson were behind on production of the single-dose vaccine, of which 20 million were due to be delivered to the US by the end of the month, and 100 million by the summer.

As few as 25 per cent of Americans say they will avoid a fourth wave of the coronavirus, according to a survey by strategic consulting firm Kekst CNC, and Axios.

The results suggest that as many as 75 per cent expect a fourth wave of the pandemic — with falling rates of infection in recent weeks, and the continued roll-out of vaccines, coming amid warnings of new variants of the virus.

The Kekst CNC poll also revealed that American hesitancy towards vaccines was fading, although the country still ranked among the least trusting for vaccines, among six countries surveyed.

When respondents were asked in December if they would take a vaccine, 58 per cent of Americans surveyed said they would. That number increased to 64 per cent, when the same question was asked last month.

In comparison, as many as 89 per cent of respondents in the UK, and 76 per cent in Sweden, said they would take a coronavirus vaccine in the recent poll. Those numbers were up from 70 and 53 per cent in December.

Trump’s former trade adviser Peter Navarro tried to falsely accuse a colleague of being ‘Anonymous’ in a 15-page dossier in December 2019, according to Politico who obtained a copy of the document.

In November that year, A Warning, an unflattering book about Trump was published by ‘Anonymous’, a “senior Trump administration official”. It expanded on an op-ed written in The New York Times in 2018 by someone claiming to be part of the “resistance inside the Trump administration”.

Navarro’s alleged dossier contains a “likely profile” of the book’s author, including points like “student of history” and “female with several children” which could gesture towards a particular individual.

Some of the bullet points in the list are incorrect: Miles Taylor, chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security, identified himself as Anonymous in October last year.

The Trump administration allegedly took $10bn from a fund meant to help hospitals and healthcare providers with Covid-related costs and used it to bankroll Operation Warp Speed contracts, according to a report in STAT.

Operation Warp Speed, created by the Trump administration, is public-private partnership aimed at accelerating the vaccine rollout.

Former White House budget office director Russ Vought told the publication that “we had to draw from the Provider Relief Fund and had the authority to do so”. He added that “we would do it again” because “lives were on the line”.

But the fund was intended for staffing, PPE, care for uninsured patients and vaccine distribution.

“Hospitals in need of the funding would be outraged to know that some of the money was siphoned off, even for important uses, because Congress was clear that this money was for providers and clinicians,” Chip Kahn, CEO of the Federation of American Hospitals, told STAT.

Civil rights activist and former adviser to President Bill Clinton, Vernon Jordan, has died aged 85, his daughter said.

“My father passed away last night around 10pm surrounded by loved ones, his wife and daughter by his side,” Vickee Jordan Adams said in a statement to CBS News.

Jordan grew up in the Jim Crow South before becoming the head of the the National Urban League and the executive director of the United Negro College Fund.

He later became a key campaign adviser to Bill Clinton and unofficial White House aide. Jordan co-chaired the president’s transition team in the early 1990s: he was the first Black person to be assigned such a role.

More than three quarters of prospective international students say that Biden’s presidency has improved their perception of the US.

A survey conducted by IDP Connect found that 76 per cent of their 800 participants said that they had a better outlook on the US after Biden’s election.

67 per cent reportedly indicated that they are now more likely to choose the country for their studies.

The ex-president reacted on Twitter, saying he “benefited from Vernon Jordan's wise counsel and warm friendship—and deeply admired his tireless fight for civil rights”.