Biden news: Congress passes $1.9 trillion Covid bill as president says US to share surplus vaccines
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Your support makes all the difference.Congress has passed the $1.9 trillion (£1.37 trillion) coronavirus relief bill. Joe Biden will sign it into law on Friday afternoon. The package will provide a direct payment of $1,400 (£1,009) to most Americans.
GOP representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and Senator Lindsey Graham have decried the bill as racist towards white people. As high a figure as 75 per cent of Americans approve of the bill according to polls, including 59 per cent of Republicans.
“It’s a remarkable, historic, transformative piece of legislation which goes a very long way to crushing the virus and solving our economic crisis,” House SpeakerNancy Pelosi said on Tuesday.
Speaking after the passage of the bill, Mr Biden, announcing a further order of 100 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, said if the US had surplus vaccines they would be shared with other countries that need the extra doses.
Meanwhile, it was announced that the US and China will meet in Anchorage, Alaska on 18 March, the first such meeting between the Biden administration and the People’s Republic. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will attend with NSA Jake Sullivan.
McCarthy to lead GOP delegation to Mexico border
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is set to travel to Texas with a dozen Republican members of Congress to assess the growing crisis at the southern border, his office confirmed to Axios.
The Biden administration is under pressure to address an overwhelming flow of unaccompanied migrant children across the border from Mexico into the US.
It has been reported that an average of 321 children a day are being referred to migrant shelters every day.
Mr McCarthy wrote to Joe Biden requesting a meeting on the matter but has yet to receive a response.
On Saturday, Biden administration officials, including Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and domestic policy adviser Susan Rice, visited a border patrol point and resettlement facility.
Majorie Greene claims Covid-19 relief bill ‘pays reparations’ and Americans are ‘enslaved’
Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene claimed on Wednesday that Americans have been “enslaved” by a Covid-19 relief bill that she claims provides “reparations” to Black farmers.
The controversial Republican congresswomen repeatedly made the claim in a 14-minute Facebook video.
She filmed the post in her office following a fourth attempt to pass a motion to adjourn Congress.
Ms Greene told her followers that only five per cent of the bill is assigned to fiscal year 2021.
She also claims it “does everything to help illegals”.
She added: “It pays reparations! Farmers — white farmers don’t get any help with their loan forgiveness but the other races do. They get help.”
Claiming that Japan and China own America because of the national debt, Ms Greene said: “We are enslaved like people with chains around our wrists and ankles.”
Ms Greene also hit out at Republicans who voted against her motion to adjourn, a number that grows with each of her attempts. On Wednesday, 41 GOP representatives sided with Democrats.
US and China to meet in Alaska
Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan will travel to Anchorage, Alaska on 18 March to meet with officials from the People’s Republic of China.
Director of the Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs Yang Jiechi and State Councillor Wang Yi will attend from Beijing.
The meeting will follow Mr Blinken’s meetings with US allies Japan and South Korea.
Secretary Blinken and Mr Sullican “will discuss a range of issues with the PRC”.
Marcia Fudge confirmed as Housing & Urban Development Secretary
The US Senate has voted to confirm Marcia Fudge as Joe Biden’s Housing and Urban Development secretary.
Ms Fudge is the first Black woman to lead the agency in its more than 40 years as a cabinet post.
The Ohio representative takes over an agency that saw fair housing enforcement and other civil protections removed under Ben Carson, who ran it during the Trump administration.
Ms Fudge has said her priorities will be ending discriminatory housing practices and boosting Black homeownership to narrow the racial wealth gap.
Will Capitol rioters sue Trump?
Multiple lawsuits are pending against Donald Trump for his role in the 6 January Capitol riot, but none have been brought by a key group: the rioters themselves. MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell thinks it’s about time.
Nathan Place reports.
Could Capitol rioters sue Trump for legal costs?
MSNBC host says Trump’s mob could sue for attorneys’ fees, lost income, and punitive damages
Rep Greene: Covid bill ‘enslaves’ Americans
Griffin Connolly reports from Washington, DC on Marjorie Taylor Green’s rant about the Covid-19 relief bill.
Marjorie Taylor Greene rants that Democrats’ Covid bill ‘enslaves’ US and favours black Americans
Just hours before Congress was set to pass an historic $1.9trn Covid relief bill on Wednesday, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene posted a video to social media complaining that the package pays “reparations” to black farmers to the exclusion of “the other races” and keeps the US “enslaved” to China and Japan by creating more national debt.
White House press briefing underway
Press secretary Jen Psaki is joined today by Ambassador Roberta Jacobson.
Ms Jackson is a special assistant to the president and the coordinator for the southern border. She asserts to reporters “the border is not open” warning migrants not to come as they work to reunite migrant children with their parents.
Part of the strategy is to work on foreign aid and assistance in communities most likely to send migrants. She also says that is important to dispel the myths and misinformation that smugglers are using.
We do not hand over blank checks to leaders of those countries and there will be a lot of “end-use monitoring” to thwart corruption.
Asked if what’s happening at the border can be characterised as a “crisis,” Ms Jackson replies: “We have to do what we do regardless of what anybody calls the situation.”
As the Biden administration formally restarts the Central American Minors program to bring up migrant children through legal channels, Ms Jackson says that it is not a signal that it is a good idea to try and enter the US.
“Neither this announcement nor any of the other measures suggests that anyone, especially children and families with young children, should make the dangerous trip to try to enter the U.S. in an irregular fashion ... The border is not open.”
The majority of people will be turned away from the border.
There is hope for the future but there is a danger now of coming through irregular means, she says when asked about the problem of mixed messages.
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