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President Biden hasn’t yet offered to personally chauffeur Americans to their vaccine appointments in an electric F-150, but the administration’s homestretch vaccination push will come pretty close.
- On Wednesday, Biden declared June “a national month of action” to reach a 70 percent vaccination rate by July 4, and announced a string of new initiatives—none of which involve luring Tucker Carlson into some kind of humane, soundproofed trap, unfortunately. As of Wednesday morning, nearly 63 percent of adults had received at least one dose. Tweens and teens have helped drive up daily vaccination rates, and the average daily death toll has fallen below 360.
- Four of the nation’s largest child-care providers will provide free child-care to support parents and caregivers getting vaccinated, and starting next week, thousands of pharmacies will stay open late every Friday to increase accessibility. Biden will encourage states to use funding from the American Rescue Plan to incentivize smaller child-care providers to stay open extra hours, in recognition of the fact that parents might be reluctant to leave their kids with caregivers they don’t know.
- The Biden administration will also ramp up its community outreach through partnerships with Black-owned barbershops and salons across the country, more resources on college campuses, canvassing and phone banks, and ad buys in local media. Among the many new private-sector incentives, Anheuser-Busch announced that it would shower Americans with free beer if we reach the 70 percent threshold, which ought to pair nicely with West Virginia’s new “who wants a free gun” incentive.
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In his remarks, Biden acknowledged the disparity in vaccine access that makes these bonuses faintly absurd: “All over the world people are desperate to get a shot that every American can get at their neighborhood drugstore.”
- During a Wednesday summit, dozens of countries pledged nearly $2.4 billion for the COVAX vaccine-sharing program in a bid to chip away at that imbalance. (Vice President Kamala Harris referenced the Biden administration’s $4 billion contribution, but didn’t announce any new commitments.) WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus reiterated the fundamental concern: “Of the 1.8 billion vaccines administered globally, just 0.4 percent have been administered in low-income countries. This is ethically, epidemiologically, and economically unacceptable.”
- Secretary of State Tony Blinken said on Tuesday that the administration would announce in the next two weeks how it will distribute the 80 million vaccine doses it’s pledged to share globally. The WHO has authorized the Sinovac vaccine for emergency use, which will also boost the supply of doses for poorer countries. The goal of some 11 billion doses to vaccinate 70 percent of the global population is still a long way off, and Tedros warned this week that it would be “a monumental error for any country to think the danger has passed.”
Every now and again, between firing off rage tweets at Kyrsten Sinema, it’s worth recalling that the rapid progress of the vaccine rollout would not have been possible if the 2020 election had gone a different way. The work everyone poured into electing Democrats who were willing and able to provide funding and govern competently has saved countless lives. Hopefully free beer can take it from here.
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This week on Keep It, Ira and Louis discuss whether cops or the kink community belong at Pride, Naomi Osaka withdrawing from the French Open, Ellie Kemper's past as Veiled Prophet Queen of Love and Beauty, and more. Plus, TS Madison joins to discuss how she turned internet fame into her own reality series, The TS Madison Experience. New episodes every Wednesday. Subscribe to Keep It wherever you get your podcasts →
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Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) has ordered Texas child-care regulators to withdraw licences from facilities that house unaccompanied migrant children, in a purely political move that will primarily hurt, you guessed it, unaccompanied migrant children. There are currently 52 state-licensed entities in Texas that have contracts with the Office of Refugee Resettlement to care for unaccompanied minors, and Abbott’s move would force them to stop serving those kids within three months. That could require relocating up to 25 percent of the unaccompanied children in the country, and mean that more children are held for too long in unsuitable CBP facilities. The Department of Health and Human Services said Wednesday that it was assessing Abbott’s order, and didn’t plan to close any facilities as a result of it. Anyway, it will shock you to learn that Abbott has secured Donald Trump’s endorsement for his re-election campaign.
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- President Biden met with Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) to continue bipartisan infrastructure negotiations on Wednesday, as Senate Democrats prepared to move forward with budget reconciliation when those negotiations inevitably fail. The Senate parliamentarian just made up some new rules for the reconciliation process, so unless Democrats abolish the filibuster, they may only be able to pass one more big legislative package this year.
- A coalition of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyhu’s rivals have struck a deal to form a government, which would spell the end of Netanyahu’s 12 years in power. Israel is bracing for him to potentially pull a Donald Trump.
- Democrat Melanie Stansbury handily won the New Mexico special election, keeping Democrats’ slim House majority intact. (Or, viewed another way, growing the Democrats’ House majority by 33 percent, glass half full and so forth.)
- The U.S. Army said it won’t investigate former Gen. Michael Flynn’s call for a Myanmar-style coup. If only there were some sort of independent commission that might examine his role in a previous violent attempt to overthrow the government. Ah, well.
- In other “ah, well” news, Trump recently met with the tech CEO who helped organize “patriot caravans” to the Capitol ahead of January 6. Ah, well.
- Arizona plans to use Zyklon B to execute people on death row. In addition to being best known as the gas that Nazis used at Auschwitz, hydrogen cyanide has a history of causing excruciating deaths in U.S. executions.
- Arizona's Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs took a quick break from outlining the incompetent buffoonery of the Maricopa County audit to announce that she’s running for governor.
- NASA will send probes to Venus for the first time in over 30 years to study how it became an uninhabitable hell-world.
- RIP, Trump’s month-old, low-traffic blog. You truly were, as Jason Miller insisted upon your launch, a platform that “completely redefine[d] the game.”
- Amazon will stop testing most job applicants for marijuana use, and will back the effort to legalize recreational weed nationwide.
- Medina Spirit’s post-race positive drug test has been confirmed, and he now faces disqualification as the Kentucky Derby winner. We wish him the best in his next career as an Amazon Warehorse.
- Some U.S. soldiers accidentally stormed an olive oil factory in Bulgaria, setting a comfortably low bar for American tourists’ return to Europe.
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The Republican effort to ban “critical race theory” from schools is shaping up to be a big dumb culture war ahead of the midterms, with a side effect of real educational harm. At least five GOP-controlled legislatures have recently passed bans on critical race theory or related topics, and Republican lawmakers in around nine other states are pursuing similar bills. Critical race theory is a real academic framework, but Republicans have appropriated the term into a catchall for any acknowledgment that racism is (still) baked into American institutions. The laws are meant to limit how teachers discuss systemic racism and U.S. history—and rile up right-wing voters in 2022. They’re likely to face First Amendment legal challenges, but in the meantime, some teachers say they’ve already had a chilling effect in the classroom.
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Not-so-fun fact: researchers have found that eating sugar, specifically fructose – the kind that's in lots of processed foods and drinks – may actually make you crave more sugar. On the flip side, you tend to be satisfied with fewer sweet things when you eat less sugar.
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What do you know, stimulus checks substantially helped Americans afford food and pay their bills, and reduced anxiety and depression.
New York City recorded zero new daily coronavirus deaths on Tuesday, and a new record low positivity rate.
Illinois has become the first state to pass legislation banning police from lying to children during interrogations.
A bipartisan pair of senators have introduced a bill that would provide funding to expand mental-health services and help local governments shift those responsibilities away from police.
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