First Thing: America ‘on the move again’ as Biden lays out sweeping agenda
Good morning.
Joe Biden has made his first address to Congress, unveiling a sweeping $1.8tn package for families and education and pitching his “blue-collar blueprint” to rebuild America.
The tone was optimistic as the president urged Americans to continue to get vaccinated against Covid-19 and pledged that his administration would enact broad changes that would create jobs (he used the word 43 times), expand the social safety net and modernize the country.
He argued his presidency had already succeeded in turning the US around. “America is on the move again,” he said, just 100 days after he “inherited a nation in crisis”.
The president also laid out plans for climate and foreign policy and major changes to gun reform and policing, and he hit back at attacks on voting rights. Catch up with other key moments in the speech here.
The event was unusually muted: normally there are 1,600 guests, but social distancing measures meant just 200 were allowed, mainly politicians. The speech is “Washington’s version of the Oscars”, writes David Smith in his analysis. “In the choice between going big and going bipartisan, big is winning, remaking America with government at the centre.”
For the first time in history, the president was flanked by two women – the vice-president, Kamala Harris, and the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi – as he spoke. He began by thanking “Madam Speaker” and “Madam Vice-president”, adding: “No president has ever said those words, and it’s about time.”
What was the response from Democrats? Progressive Democrats praised Biden’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic but urged him to go further in his approach to the climate crisis, economic inequality and structural racism.
And Republicans? The only black Republican in the Senate, Tim Scott, gave the GOP’s official response. He argued that it was not the Democrats who had brought the pandemic under control but Donald Trump, and criticised the president for some public schools remaining closed – despite that being a state-level decision rather than a federal one.
The Covid crisis in India is worsening
The US has advised its citizens to leave India as soon as it is safe amid a growing coronavirus crisis in the country, where hospital beds have filled up and oxygen supplies have run dry in some areas. The White House is sending $100m in supplies to India.
On Thursday the Indian health ministry reported a further 379,257 new Covid cases and 3,645 new deaths in the previous 24 hours. However, the true scale of the crisis is not known: authorities have been accused of deliberately skewing the data to downplay the severity of the situation.
‘We are witnessing a crime against humanity,’ the Booker prize-winning novelist and activist Arundhati Roy writes in her haunting and powerful long read about the situation in India. She looks at the deepening crisis, and the response from the country’s leaders.
‘It’s like we are in the middle of the apocalypse’: our readers in India share their experience of the crisis.
Why is oxygen so important to treating Covid, and why is it so hard to come by? Prof Trevor Duke answers key questions about the role of oxygen in the pandemic, and the challenges that have emerged in getting it to patients.
Three men have been charged with federal hate crimes over the killing of Ahmaud Arbery
Three men, including a former police officer, have been indicted on federal hate crime charges over the killing of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia last year. Arbery, who is Black, was shot while jogging, in what his family characterised as a “modern-day lynching”.
A former officer Gregory McMichael, 65, his son Travis McMichael, 35, and 51-year-old William “Roddie” Bryan were charged yesterday with interference with rights and attempted kidnapping, along with using, carrying and brandishing a firearm during a crime of violence.
A man has died after police pinned him to the ground for five minutes in California, in an incident his family said should lead to murder charges. Police approached Mario Gonzalez, a 26-yearold father and carer for his brother, amid reports he was disoriented or drunk.
Rudy Giuliani’s apartment and office raided by federal investigators
Federal investigators searched the office and apartment of Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani yesterday. Authorities have been investigating whether Giuliani illegally lobbied the Trump administration on behalf of Ukrainian officials and oligarchs in 2019. After obtaining a search warrant, the investigators seized some of Giuliani’s electronic devices, according to the New York Times.
Giuliani’s lawyer, Robert Costello, described the raid as “legal thuggery”.
In other news…
The Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins has died aged 90. Collins was part of the original moon landing crew and kept the command module flying while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took mankind’s first steps on the moon.
An Ivy League university has apologised for using the bones of a Black child as a case study in an online forensic anthropology class. The remains were of one of the children killed in the bombing of the Move Black liberation organisation by police in Philadelphia, in May 1985. They had been used for teaching purposes without the permission of the child’s living parents.
Stat of the day: there could be 145m electric vehicles on the roads by the end of the decade
The number of electric vehicles on the world’s roads is expected to soar from 11m to 145m by the end of the decade, according to a report from the International Energy Agency, which says the shift could save millions of barrels of oil each day. And if governments embrace the production of greener vehicles, there could be as many as 230m, the report said.
Don’t miss this: vaccine passports, the idea dividing the US
The idea of vaccine passports is a divisive one. Some states are embracing the idea as a step towards normality, while others have passed laws banning vaccine passports amid concerns over privacy and pressure on individuals to get vaccinated. Lauren Aratani learns more.
Last thing: walk on the wild side? How one woman lived with chimps
A new documentary tells the story of Lucy, a chimp raised as a human being, and Janis Carter, a human who went to live with chimps. After acting as Lucy’s caretaker, Janis moved with her to a remote island, living for six years alone with 10 rehabilitated chimpanzees. Read more about the remarkable story here.
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