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President Biden has pledged assistance to the global coronavirus fight, and to India in particular, in a big win for humanity and a sticky conundrum for America First anti-vaxxers. Let the contradictory objections begin!
- The White House announced on Monday that the U.S. will share up to 60 million AstraZeneca doses with other countries, once the vaccine clears federal safety reviews. That’s great news both for poorer countries battling horrific outbreaks and for everyone around the globe who would be affected by the emergence of more dangerous variants, but spare a thought for the Fox News producers currently trying to fit “Why Is Sleepy Joe Sending All Of America’s Life-Saving But Also Deadly And Freedom-Violating Vaccines To Foreign Terrorists?” on a chyron.
- On Sunday, the Biden administration announced that it will send India raw materials for vaccines, along with therapeutics, rapid-test kits, ventilators, PPE, and financing aid for vaccine production. That marked an abrupt shift from the administration’s position last week, as India continued to report record-breaking coronavirus numbers over the weekend and Biden came under increasing pressure to help address the surge. The U.K., France, and Germany have pledged aid to India as well.
- A group of lawmakers led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and a number of nonprofits have also ramped up pressure on the Biden administration to back a temporary patent waiver for coronavirus vaccines, on the grounds that speeding up the global vaccine rollout should perhaps take priority over Big Pharma’s profit margins. The vaccine producers have insisted that manufacturing bottlenecks are the only limiting factor, and also warned that breaking the patents would be a slippery slope from saving a bunch of lives to, uh, saving a bunch more lives.
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Meanwhile, the E.U. is doing its part to speed things along by taking vaccine companies to court.
- The E.U. has sued AstraZeneca over its delivery shortfalls earlier this year, the result of technical issues at a plant in Belgium. AstraZeneca noted that it’s on track to deliver nearly 50 million vaccine doses to European countries by the end of April, and that its vaccine has made up 97 percent of the doses provided to the world’s poorest countries through the WHO-led Covax initiative. If after freaking everyone out about their own vaccine, E.U. regulators now want to claim first dibs on it, suing the manufacturer is a strange way to reassure the public.
- We may soon be able to tell Europe it’s acting weird right to its face: The European Commission said it’s finalizing plans to allow vaccinated American tourists to terrorize its citizens with Emily in Paris jokes as soon as this summer. It’s not yet clear if proof of full vaccination will be required for entry, or when exactly the new guidelines would go into effect, but American and E.U. officials have been in continuing technical discussions on how to make sure people from both places can use vaccine passports to travel freely.
It’s been clear from the start that coronavirus doesn’t have much respect for international borders, and the Biden administration’s decision to expand its vaccine-diplomacy efforts was both a moral necessity and in the country’s best interest. The only risk would be to not go even bigger.
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This Wednesday night, join Crooked for a live Group Thread of Biden’s joint address to Congress, where Biden is expected to discuss the economic recovery, combatting the coronavirus pandemic and addressing global challenges.
We’ll laugh, we’ll cry, we’ll point out which senator is falling asleep. Don’t miss out on our useful and less-useful live commentary—subscribe to the Crooked YouTube channel today→ youtube.com/crookedmedia
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The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a major Second Amendment case, its first in more than a decade. The NRA-backed case, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Corlett, concerns a 1913 New York law that requires a resident to demonstrate a special need for self-defense in order to obtain a license to carry a concealed handgun in public. A number of the conservative justices have signaled that they’re antsy to revisit the gun rights established in the 2008 District of Columbia v. Heller decision, where the Court held for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to bear arms—but didn’t go into much detail about what those rights look like outside the home. The far-right Court has now given itself the opportunity to override a decade of Second Amendment precedents and allow lower courts to dismantle other statewide gun laws, just as a wave of mass shootings prompts calls for stronger gun control. What could go wrong?
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- President Biden has become the first U.S. president to formally recognize the Ottoman-era Armenian genocide. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has asked him to take it back.
- The Census Bureau has unveiled its 2020 reapportionment data and Republicans came out with an advantage, with southern and western states picking up seats at the expense of California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. (Incredibly, New York would have held onto its one lost congressional seat if Census officials had counted just 89 more people.)
- The DOJ will launch a pattern-or-practice investigation into the Louisville Metro Police Department, whose officers fatally shot Breonna Taylor in her own apartment last March.
- The Florida Senate has advanced a voter-suppression bill that would limit mail-in voting and drop boxes, and criminalize giving food and water to voters waiting in line.
- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has offered to let Defense Minister Benny Gantz have the first turn as prime minister in a rotation agreement, in a frantic attempt to hold onto power.
- Republicans and right-wing media figures have latched onto the whole-cloth lie that Biden’s climate plan would ban red meat, generating some of the grossest meat tweets in Meat Twitter history.
- Here’s CNN commentator Rick Santorum demonstrating why cable news can't get along without his insights: “We birthed a nation from nothing. I mean, there was nothing here. I mean, yes we have Native Americans but candidly there isn't much Native American culture in American culture.”
- Today in Hoo Boy, 2022 Is Soon: Former Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA) announced he will not run for anything in the next election cycle, former Rep. Joe Cunningham (D-SC) has entered the race for governor of South Carolina, and Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) announced that he’ll run for Ohio’s open Senate seat in a video written by a bot that was forced to watch 1000 hours of political ads.
- Peter Thiel will spend $10 million to boost his close associate Blake Masters in the Arizona Senate race, after spending another $10 million to boost his other close associate J.D. Vance in the Ohio Senate race.
- Chloé Zhao became the first woman of color and first Chinese woman to win the Oscar for best director (and just the second woman to win in the Oscars’ 93-year history). China quickly censored the news of her victory on search engines and social media, likely because of her previous critical comments about the CCP.
- SNL announced that Elon Musk will host the show in May and everyone is uniformly thrilled about it. Live from New York, it's union-buster reading stolen memes off his phone!
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Arizona Senate Republicans' election audit has begun and it is already a total clusterfuck. The state Senate has handed all 2.1 million ballots in Maricopa County over to Cyber Ninjas, a Florida-based consultancy with no election experience run by Doug Logan, who has tweeted conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. Logan has refused to disclose who’s paying him (but we know OAN’s helping out), and wouldn’t commit to using bipartisan teams for the count. The GOP-controlled Senate has refused to let media members observe the process, and as of a week ago, over 70 percent of the volunteer observers were Republicans. Arizona Democrats filed a lawsuit last week seeking to halt the audit, but the judge (who has since recused himself) required a $1 million bond to issue a temporary pause, which was a nonstarter. We can pretty safely expect that the auditors will announce they’ve discovered, after three previous recounts, Donald Trump’s Secret Victory, and that the GOP will use this to further undermine faith in elections. A good time to hurry up and pass some democracy reforms, don't you think, Kyrsten Sinema?
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This Mother’s Day, Framebridge the politics Mom loves.
The selfie she got with Pete Buttigieg at O’Hare. The call sheets she saved from her Tuesday night phonebanks. The photo of the two of you canvassing in Iowa.
Framing a digital photo with Framebridge is easier than passing a bill through the Senate. Just upload a photo, pick a frame style, then we'll print, frame, and ship it the next day—right to Mom’s door (pretty gift box and bow included). Even Joe Manchin will vote for that!
And with the prices starting at just a micro-fraction of Biden’s infrastructure plan, these prices are border-line bipartisan.
For the most thoughtful Mother's Day gift, it's kind of a no-brainer. The same way it makes sense to commit to reduced greenhouse gas emissions during a climate summit, it makes sense to get one-of-a-kind-gifts for one-of-a-kind moms.
Because just like the future of our planet, Mom is worth it. Shop gifts here (they ship the next day, no filibuster!).
P.S.
Use promo code WHATADAY for 15% off your first order.
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The USDA has announced a new effort that will feed more than 30 million kids over the summer, with funding from the American Rescue Plan.
The EPA has announced a proposal that will allow California to set stricter emissions regulations, reversing a Trump-era police.
The number of Americans who say they won’t get vaccinated has dropped by 25 percent since January, according to a new Washington Post poll.
Some 92 percent of Americans who received a first dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines have come back for the second shot—a very solid rate of follow-through for a two-dose vaccine, by historical standards.
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