(OAKLAND, CALIF.) — The city of Oakland, California, recorded its 100th homicide of the year on Monday, marking the second consecutive year of triple-digit homicides.
It’s a somber milestone for the city, which recorded 10 homicides in just the past week, police said. In 2020, there were 109 homicides, police data shows.
At a press conference on Monday, a 100-second moment of silence was held to honor the victims, and Police Chief LeRonne Armstrong pleaded with the public to “put down guns.”
“So much violence. So many guns. So many senseless lives lost. If this is not a calling to everybody in this community that there is a crisis, I don’t know what is,” Armstrong said. “I say this every time we have a press conference. I’m tired of appearing before you. We’ve got to do the work. I’ll be out in the community meeting with people, but I need people to step up and grab your loved ones and tell them, ‘Put the guns down.'”
(NEW YORK) — A 20-year-old gas station cashier was fatally shot in Germany Saturday after telling a customer to put on a face covering, according to the Trier Police Department.
A 49-year-old man was taken into custody on suspicion of murder after the shooting in the town of Idar-Oberstein, in Rhineland-Palatinate.
The customer entered the gas station around 7:45 p.m. local time and got into an argument with the cashier, who asked him to mask up, police said in a press release. Germany currently has a requirement to wear masks in stores.
(NEW YORK) — From Snoopy and Power Rangers to Hot Wheels and Pokemon, McDonald’s has long provided a jolt of joy with its kid-friendly toys inside the iconic Happy Meal. Now, the Golden Arches is making an earth-friendly move toward using sustainable materials in an effort to reduce plastic.
In the midst of Climate Week 2021, McDonald’s announced its goal that by the end of 2025, every toy in every Happy Meal sold around the world will be more sustainable and reduce conventional plastic by 90%, thus lowering demand on fossil fuel plastic production.
“Our next generation of customers care deeply about protecting the planet and what we can do to help make our business more sustainable,” Jenny McColloch, McDonald’s chief sustainability officer said in a statement. “With this transition for our toys, we’re working closely with suppliers, families and play experts and engineers to introduce more sustainable, innovative designs and help drive demand for recycled materials, to keep McDonald’s communities and beyond smiling for generations to come.”
McDonald’s said some of its toys such as “fan-favorite movie characters that used to be plastic figurines may reappear as 3D figures that can be built and decorated.” Other products such as mini board games with virgin fossil fuel-based plastic game pieces “may be swapped out in favor of accessories made from certified plant-derived or recycled materials.”
The transition to making toys with more renewable, recycled or certified materials will result in an approximately 90% reduction in virgin fossil fuel-based plastic use, which is nearly equal to the population of Washington, D.C., eliminating plastics from their lives for a year.
The fast food chain’s Happy Meal toy innovation efforts have been in motion since 2018 in other global markets including the U.K., Ireland and France, which McDonald’s said has reduced virgin fossil fuel-based plastic by 30%.
“Sustainable material sourcing is a necessary strategy for mitigating the impact of supply chains on our ecosystems and climate, including the plastic waste crisis,” said Sheila Bonini, the senior vice president of private sector engagement at World Wildlife Fund.
The lower demand for fossil fuel plastic will “instead create new markets for responsibly sourced renewable and recycled content,” Bonini said. “McDonald’s can engage its millions of daily customers around the world in the transition to a more sustainable, circular future.”
The company will continue to work with other industry partners to innovate renewable materials that meet both play and safety standards and can help remove the remaining conventional plastics within the toy portfolio.
McDonald’s was the first global restaurant company to set a science-based target to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Today, McDonald’s said it is on track to meet its 2030 targets, achieving an 8.5% reduction in the absolute emissions of restaurants and offices and a nearly 6% reduction in supply chain emissions intensity, compared to 2015.
The California-founded fast food restaurant also noted in Tuesday’s press release that “by the end of 2020, McDonald’s was approximately 80% of the way to its goal to source all guest packaging from renewable, recyclable or certified sources by 2025.”
McDonald’s credited the achievements this year to cross-industry collaboration from suppliers, producers and franchisees as well as investments in renewable energy and its 2020 Responsible Sourcing Goals across beef, soy, coffee, fish, palm oil, packaging fiber and forests.
(NEW YORK) — President Joe Biden found videos of tactics used by Border Patrol agents on horseback against Haitian migrants at the Texas border “horrific and horrible,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday.
“I don’t know anyone who could watch that video and not have that emotion,” Psaki said on “CBS Mornings.”
The videos from outlets including Reuters and Al Jazeera appear to show a mounted Border Patrol agent snap his horse’s reins in the direction of a migrant who then stumbles back into the Rio Grande near Del Rio, Texas.
(NEW YORK) — Sickle cell disease is an inherited red blood cell disorder that can cause debilitating pain and lead to lifelong complications. For years there have been limited improvements in awareness and treatment options, but that seems to be changing.
“My journey was kind of up and down like a roller coaster,” said Kim Jones, a 52-year-old woman in New York who shared her experience with ABC News about living with sickle cell disease since she was 3 years old. “When I was younger, I would get a lot of painful crises, usually in the joints, wrists, ankles.”
Jones became a second-grade teacher, but ultimately had to quit because her symptoms worsened due to the stressful demands of the job and what she felt was the lack of understanding and support from her school administration.
“There were days when I still went to work in so much pain. The doctor begged me to take days off and I couldn’t, I was scared I would lose my job. I ended up leaving that school,” she recalled.
Her experience with the disease has led her to advocate for sickle cell disease awareness and its scientific advancements.
September is Sickle Cell Awareness Month and Jones is sharing her experience so people become aware of the need to be screened, to raise the need for blood and bone marrow donors and to encourage the medical community to keep working on new medications and other treatments.
“In the past there has been very little support for people living with sickle disease, and minimal funding to research how to best treat it, at least in part due to racism in the medical system,” Dr. Susanna A. Curtis, assistant director of the Montefiore Adult Sickle Cell Center and assistant professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, told ABC News.
But just last week, Curtis at Montefiore Medical Center received a five-year grant from the NIH to investigate the efficacy and safety of a drug called dronabinol, a THC-containing pill normally for nausea and vomiting, to see if it could treat chronic pain in adults living with sickle cell disease. This grant will also allow them to determine if dronabinol can reduce inflammation, which Curtis said “is known to play an important role in sickle disease.”
Her research grant could determine if dronabinol could be added to the toolkit of sickle cell therapies, potentially improving the quality of life in patients with the disease.
Blood cells are normally round, but in people with sickle cell disease, they form into a C-shape, causing the cells to clump up, leading to severe pain.
Sickle cell disease affects millions of people worldwide, but disproportionately those of African descent.
Experts aren’t sure exactly why people of African descent are more likely to inherit the disease, but it may be linked to the fact that the abnormally shaped blood cells from which the illness gets its name have one potentially small but unexpected benefit: protection from malaria, a blood-borne disease.
“Sickle cell trait is protective against the effects of malaria, so people who lived in high malaria areas are more likely to reproduce and pass on that trait,” said Dr. Renee Crichlow, vice-chair of Health Equity at Boston University School of Medicine and chief medical officer of Codman Square Health Center. “So people with African ancestry are more likely to have the sickle trait.”
It affects approximately 100,000 Americans and occurs in one out of every 365 Black or African-American births, according to the CDC.
The only cure for sickle cell disease is a bone marrow or stem cell transplant. This is a hospital based-procedure that takes healthy stem cells from a donor and puts them into someone’s bone marrow, allowing the person to make new healthy cells. According to the NIH, the treatment has been successful in about 85 out of 100 children. However, it is a risky procedure that not a lot of people can tolerate. “It is only for patients with such severe disease,” Crichlow said. “The treatment can be highly toxic, and as a result, there are very few of these transplants that are done.”
Other treatment options vary for each person and depend on the symptoms. Treatments can include: receiving blood transfusions, staying hydrated and taking medications to help with the pain. Painful crises are often triggered by things like cold or dehydration, so part of managing the illness has to do with understanding those triggers.
“A person with sickle cell disease may need to take both chronic medications, like hydroxyurea, to help prevent crises, need occasional blood transfusions, and occasionally very heavy medications, including pain medications to treat the severe acute symptoms as a result of a sickle cell crisis,” Crichlow said.
Kim has been taking hydroxyurea for the past five years. This drug, originally used for chemotherapy, was FDA-approved for sickle cell disease in adults in 1998 and then in 2017 for children. So as she grew up, there were limited amounts of innovations in sickle cell therapies. “I had to start realizing environments that would trigger a sickle cell crisis, like the weather, if it’s too cold. I would get chills and have to not participate in certain activities,” Jones said.
Thankfully, efforts are being made to change this. In 2020, Congress released a proclamation to highlight the need for research and treatment of sickle cell disease.
Experts also said more could be done by the public. One way to bring more attention to the disease — and the need to find a cure for it — is simply to normalize talking about it.
“There is a tremendous cloak of shame covering sickle cell disease,” said Ginger Davis, the development and communication consultant for the Sickle Cell Thalassemia Patients Network.
The disorder can seem invisible to those who don’t have it. And for people who have it, there is often the emotional challenge of trying to explain what is happening while going through a very physically painful and draining experience. This was something that personally affected Jones.
“I went to school and college without telling anybody,” she said. “I was with a friend of mine and I got sick and she had no idea how to help me because I never told her I had sickle cell.”
Since 2006, all newborns in the U.S. are screened for sickle cell at birth. However, everyone can and should be tested for sickle cell.
“If you were born before newborn testing began in 2006, you could ask your doctor for a simple blood test to determine if you carry the sickle-trait,” Crichlow said. Continued research and public efforts towards the awareness treatment of sickle cell disease can benefit the thousands of people living with it.
(WASHINGTON) — As President Joe Biden kicked off a week of global engagements amid tensions with some key allies, the White House previewed his speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday as one that will focus on turning the page from conflict to global cooperation and competition.
According to a White House senior adviser, the president’s remarks — one of his biggest opportunities to date to deliver his message on U.S. foreign policy — will “center on the proposition that we are closing the chapter on 20 years of war and opening a chapter of intensive diplomacy by rallying allies and partners and institutions to deal with the major challenges of our time,” including COVID-19, climate change, emerging technologies, rules of the road on trade and economics, investments in clean infrastructure, and a modern approach to counterterrorism.
Speaking to reporters Monday, the adviser stressed that Biden would also advocate for “vigorous competition with great powers, but not a new Cold War.”
White House press secretary Jen Psaki, during a press briefing on Monday, also said that the president will “reaffirm that the United States is not turning inward,” especially as the assembly follows closely on the heels of the withdrawal of U.S. and allied troops from Afghanistan..
“The president will essentially drive home the message that ending the war in Afghanistan closed a chapter focused on war and opens a chapter focused on personal, purposeful, effective intensive American diplomacy, defined by working with allies and partners to solve problems that can’t be solved by military force. And that require the cooperation of many nations around the world as well as non-state actors from the private sector and non-governmental organizations and international institutions,” the adviser said.
“This will be the central theme of his speech, which will really lift up some of these big hard challenges that will define the scope and shape of prosperity and security for the people of the United States and for people of the world in the years ahead. And he will reinforce the notion that our futures in our fortunes are really interconnected and bound up with one another. And so we all have to work together to cooperate in service of solving problems and seizing opportunities that lie before us,” the adviser added.
Given Biden’s key campaign pledge of restoring the standing of the U.S. on the world stage, the remarks could be a critical test. The speech is one part of a week that will see Biden focusing on global partnerships, amid tensions on the global stage in the wake of the AUKUS deal announced last week with Australia and the United Kingdom, aimed at curbing China’s influence on in the Indo-Pacific region. The deal angered the French by undercutting a sizable deal they had with Australia for nuclear-powered submarine technology.
“But what you’ll hear him talk about tomorrow is the president’s going to lay out the case for why the next decade will determine our future. Not just for the United States, but for the global community. And he will talk, and this will be a central part of his remarks, about the importance of re-establishing our alliances after the last several years,” Psaki said Monday. “I also think it’s important to note that establishing alliances doesn’t mean that you won’t have disagreements or you won’t have disagreements about how to approach any particular issue in the world.”
Administration officials also confirmed that Biden is currently working to find time to speak with France’s President Emmanuel Macron, clearly hoping to try and smooth things over with an important U.S. ally, after a diplomatic dustup over the submarine deal with Australia.
“The president wants to communicate his desire to work closely with France in the Indo-Pacific and globally, and to talk about specific practical measures that we can undertake together. We understand the French position, we don’t share their view in terms of how this all developed, but we understand their position. And we will continue to be engaged in the coming days on this,” the adviser said. “And we look forward to the phone call between President Biden and President Macron once its time is fixed on the books, we think that will be an important moment an opportunity for the two leaders to speak directly with one another.”
The White House also outlined the rest of the president’s week, including several engagements with world leaders both in New York and back in Washington following his remarks at UNGA.
In addition to his remarks, Biden will meet on Tuesday with Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison, before returning to Washington to host a bilateral meeting with U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
On Wednesday, as has been previously announced, Biden will host a summit on COVID-19 to “rally the world urgently to work towards ending this pandemic as rapidly as possible and building our systems better to be able to handle the next pandemic,” the White House said.
“He believes that it is high time for the world to come together and not just national leaders. But he’s placing a heavy emphasis on international institutions, the private sector, non-governmental organizations, all of the actors who collectively have the capacity to beat COVID-19. And he is going to call for an all-hands-on-deck effort that can end this pandemic much more rapidly than if we allow for things to unfold without the kind of focus sustained energy and effort that is required,” the official previewed of the summit.
The United States will also have a series of announcements about our own further contributions beyond what we’ve already contributed to ending the pandemic globally, according to the senior administration official.
On Friday, in addition to the first in-person meeting of the Quad countries (India, Japan, Australia and the U.S.) in Washington, Biden will hold individual meetings with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as well as Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga of Japan.
(NEW YORK) — President Joe Biden on Tuesday delivered his first speech as president to the United Nations General Assembly, telling diplomats that they were meeting at a moment “intermingled with great pain and extraordinary possibility.”
“We’ve lost so much to this devastating pandemic that continues to claim lives around the world, and impacts so much on our existence,” Biden said. “We’re mourning more than 4.5 million people, people of every nation, from every background. Each death is individual heartbreak.”
“But our shared grief is a poignant reminder that our collective future will hinge on our ability to recognize our common humanity, and to act together,” he added.
His speech Tuesday morning kicked off a week of global engagements amid tensions with key allies. The White House said Biden hoped to turn the page from conflict to global cooperation and competition.
The large, international gathering amid a global pandemic has led to special precautions to keep world leaders safe.
The UN has agreed to “enhanced cleaning” of the main podium between leaders’ speeches, “changing out microphone heads, re-routing delegations to different ‘green rooms,’ and the use of air purifiers,” a senior Biden administration official said.
Biden’s speech will follow remarks from Brazilian Prime Minister Jair Bolsonaro, who has refused to get vaccinated, has consistently downplayed the virus’s seriousness and was even fined for not wearing a mask in Brazil.
After his remarks, Biden plans to meet with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison at noon before departing for Washington, where he’ll host British Prime Minister Boris Johnson at the White House late in the afternoon, according to the White House.
The meetings come amid a diplomatic spat with France, which has expressed displeasure with Biden for a just announced defense partnership with Australia and United Kingdom — which led to Australia nixing a major defense deal with France.
A senior adviser to the president said Biden’s remarks — one of his biggest opportunities to date to deliver his message on U.S. foreign policy — will “center on the proposition that we are closing the chapter on 20 years of war and opening a chapter of intensive diplomacy by rallying allies and partners and institutions to deal with the major challenges of our time,” including COVID-19, climate change, emerging technologies, rules of the road on trade and economics, investments in clean infrastructure, and a modern approach to counterterrorism.
Speaking to reporters Monday, the adviser stressed that Biden would also advocate for “vigorous competition with great powers, but not a new Cold War.”
White House press secretary Jen Psaki, during a press briefing on Monday, also said that the president will “reaffirm that the United States is not turning inward,” especially as the assembly follows closely on the heels of the withdrawal of U.S. and allied troops from Afghanistan.
“The president will essentially drive home the message that ending the war in Afghanistan closed a chapter focused on war and opens a chapter focused on personal, purposeful, effective intensive American diplomacy, defined by working with allies and partners to solve problems that can’t be solved by military force. And that require the cooperation of many nations around the world as well as non-state actors from the private sector and non-governmental organizations and international institutions,” the adviser said.
“This will be the central theme of his speech, which will really lift up some of these big hard challenges that will define the scope and shape of prosperity and security for the people of the United States and for people of the world in the years ahead. And he will reinforce the notion that our futures in our fortunes are really interconnected and bound up with one another. And so we all have to work together to cooperate in service of solving problems and seizing opportunities that lie before us,” the adviser added.
Given Biden’s key campaign pledge of restoring the standing of the U.S. on the world stage, the remarks could be a critical test. The speech is one part of a week that will see Biden focusing on global partnerships, amid tensions on the global stage in the wake of the AUKUS deal announced last week with Australia and the United Kingdom, aimed at curbing China’s influence on in the Indo-Pacific region. The deal angered the French by undercutting a sizable deal they had with Australia for nuclear-powered submarine technology.
“But what you’ll hear him talk about tomorrow is the president’s going to lay out the case for why the next decade will determine our future. Not just for the United States, but for the global community. And he will talk, and this will be a central part of his remarks, about the importance of re-establishing our alliances after the last several years,” Psaki said Monday. “I also think it’s important to note that establishing alliances doesn’t mean that you won’t have disagreements or you won’t have disagreements about how to approach any particular issue in the world.”
Administration officials also confirmed that Biden is currently working to find time to speak with France’s President Emmanuel Macron, clearly hoping to try and smooth things over with an important U.S. ally, after a diplomatic dustup over the submarine deal with Australia.
“The president wants to communicate his desire to work closely with France in the Indo-Pacific and globally, and to talk about specific practical measures that we can undertake together. We understand the French position, we don’t share their view in terms of how this all developed, but we understand their position. And we will continue to be engaged in the coming days on this,” the adviser said. “And we look forward to the phone call between President Biden and President Macron once its time is fixed on the books, we think that will be an important moment an opportunity for the two leaders to speak directly with one another.”
The White House also outlined the rest of the president’s week, including several engagements with world leaders both in New York and back in Washington following his remarks at UNGA.
In addition to his remarks, Biden will meet on Tuesday with Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison, before returning to Washington to host a bilateral meeting with U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
On Wednesday, as has been previously announced, Biden will host a summit on COVID-19 to “rally the world urgently to work towards ending this pandemic as rapidly as possible and building our systems better to be able to handle the next pandemic,” the White House said.
“He believes that it is high time for the world to come together and not just national leaders. But he’s placing a heavy emphasis on international institutions, the private sector, non-governmental organizations, all of the actors who collectively have the capacity to beat COVID-19. And he is going to call for an all-hands-on-deck effort that can end this pandemic much more rapidly than if we allow for things to unfold without the kind of focus sustained energy and effort that is required,” the official previewed of the summit.
The United States will also have a series of announcements about our own further contributions beyond what we’ve already contributed to ending the pandemic globally, according to the senior administration official.
On Friday, in addition to the first in-person meeting of the Quad countries (India, Japan, Australia and the U.S.) in Washington, Biden will hold individual meetings with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as well as Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga of Japan.
(NEW YORK) — The United States has been facing a COVID-19 surge as the more contagious delta variant continues to spread.
More than 676,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 while over 4.7 million people have died from the disease worldwide, according to real-time data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. The average number of daily deaths in the U.S. has risen about 20% in the last week, according to data from the CDC and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The U.S. is continuing to sink on the list of global vaccination rates, currently ranking No. 45, according to data compiled by the Financial Times. Just 64% of Americans ages 12 and up are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Sep 21, 9:16 am
Washington state requests federal staff for overwhelmed hospitals
Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee sent a letter to the White House Monday requesting staffing resources to help the state’s overwhelmed hospitals.
“Once the Delta variant hit Washington state, COVID-19 hospitalizations skyrocketed. From mid-July to late August, we saw hospitalizations double about every two weeks,” Inslee wrote. “The hospitals have surged to increase staffed beds and stretch staff and have canceled most non-urgent procedures, but are still over capacity across the state.”
“While there are hopeful signs that the current wave of infection is peaking, and some states are beginning to see declines, we have not yet seen that effect here,” the governor said.
Washington state had already asked for 1,200 federal government staffers and is now “requesting the deployment of Department of Defense medical personnel to assist with the current hospital crisis,” Inslee said.
Sep 21, 8:31 am
2nd dose of J&J vaccine results in stronger protection, company says
A second dose of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine given two months after the first leads to stronger protection, the company said Tuesday.
Compared to the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, Johnson & Johnson’s single-shot vaccine always had slightly lower efficacy. Peak efficacy from the two-shot Pfizer and Moderna vaccines was 95% and 94%, respectively, against symptomatic illness. But two Johnson & Johnson shots, given two months apart, resulted in a similarly high effectiveness level: 94% protection against any symptomatic infection in the U.S. and 100% against severe disease.
J&J chief scientific officer Dr. Paul Stoffels said the single-shot vaccine still provides “strong and long-lasting protection” while also being “easy to use, distribute and administer.”
“At the same time,” Stoffels said, “we now have generated evidence that a booster shot further increases protection against COVID-19 and is expected to extend the duration of protection significantly.”
Sep 20, 5:39 pm
US records 1.1 million pediatric COVID-19 cases over past 5 weeks
The U.S. reported more than 225,000 child COVID-19 cases, marking the fourth consecutive week with over 200,000 new pediatric cases reported, according to a newly released weekly report from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.
In the last five weeks alone, the country has reported more than 1.1 million pediatric cases, according to the organizations.
“The weekly figure is now about 26 times higher than it was in June, when just 8,400 pediatric cases were reported over the span of a week,” the organizations wrote in their report.
The South accounted for about half –110,000– of last week’s pediatric cases, according to the report.
The organizations added that more than 2,200 children are hospitalized with a confirmed or suspected COVID-19 infection.
(WASHINGTON) — Senate Republicans are holding firm against a hike to the federal debt limit, even as Democratic leaders announced Monday that they would link the raise in the borrowing limit to a must-pass government funding measure.
Government funding is set to expire at the end of September and administration officials are projecting that the United States could default on its credit in the coming weeks. The White House has warned an unprecedented default could send shockwaves through the economy and trigger a recession.
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell for weeks has dug in against support of a hike to the debt limit, arguing that Democrats, who control both chambers of Congress, should be held responsible for the move. But Senate Democrats worked with Republicans under the Trump administration to raise the debt limit on multiple occasions, and they said it’s a bipartisan responsibility.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer Monday looked to ratchet up the pressure on Republicans by linking the increase in the federal spending limit to a resolution aimed at keeping the government open past a fast-approaching end of the fiscal year. That resolution includes aid for Afghan refugees and emergency funding for natural disaster relief.
“The American people expect our Republican colleagues to live up to their responsibilities and make good on the debts they proudly helped incur,” the leaders wrote in a statement, pointing to $908 billion COVID relief legislation passed under former President Donald Trump.
Within moments of the Democratic announcement that the two measures would be tied, McConnell threw cold water on the plan. In floor remarks Monday afternoon, he doubled down on his long-held opposition to raising the debt limit.
Republicans would support an extension to government funding, McConnell said, but not if it includes a lift to the debt ceiling.
“Since Democrats decided to go it alone they will not get Senate Republican’s help with raising the debt limit,” McConnell said Monday.
Almost all Senate Republicans are in line behind McConnell, vowing to vote against a raise to the limit because they oppose additional massive spending measures that Democrats are currently working to craft.
Their biggest opposition is to a $3.5 trillion spending measure that encompasses many of President Joe Biden’s agenda items and which is exempt from the normal 60-vote threshold in the Senate. Democrats can pass it without any GOP support, and a raise in the limit should be tied to that bill, Republicans argue.
Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, said Monday his vote on raising the debt limit would be “absolutely no.”
“The Democrats say they don’t need our votes to spend money they want to spend, but they do need our votes to pay for it,” Romney said. “That dog won’t hunt.”
“I will not be consenting to anything that makes it easier for Chuck Schumer and the Democrats to bankrupt our kids,” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said, joining a chorus of other Republicans who also said Monday they won’t support a government funding stop-gap that includes a raise to the debt limit.
Democratic Whip Dick Durbin accused Republicans of being politically motivated in their opposition and said they are failing to take responsibility for their actions.
“I certainly hope Sen. McConnell is not going to do damage to America and its economy out of an act of political spite,” Durbin said. “If he won’t stand up and take responsibility for things which he and his members supported in the Trump administration it shows this is a totally political effort.”
But pressed on what Democrats would do if Republican opposition held, Durbin was frank: “I don’t know.”
The House is expected to vote to raise the debt limit and fund government on Tuesday, after the Rules Committee takes up the matter. Schumer said Democrats in the Senate will hold a vote to raise the limit in the coming weeks, but without at least 10 Republicans to support the measure, there’s little that can be done aside from inclusion in the $3.5 trillion package. If the United States defaults on its debt in the coming weeks, it will be the first time in history this occurs. U.S. creditworthiness would take a hit, and markets could be severely impacted.
At least one Republican, Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana, said he would vote with Democrats on the measure because it would include hurricane relief for his home state. However he predicted that the bill would still fall short of 60 votes.
As they grapple with a looming government funding deadline and potential credit default, Democratic lawmakers are also at odds over how to advance their $3.5 trillion social policy package and the Senate’s bipartisan infrastructure deal.
Progressives have vowed to withhold votes in the House for the Senate infrastructure agreement until their policy demands are met for the larger package. But moderates in the House and Senate have threatened to sink Biden’s major policy package over its scale and individual provisions.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., said of the to-do list before Congress. “I don’t know how’s it going to end.”
(NEW YORK) — A second dose of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine given two months after the first leads to stronger protection, according to the company.
The new data, announced in a press release, adds to a growing body of evidence suggesting that booster shots could enhance vaccine protection against breakthrough infections — though experts agree all three vaccines are still doing their job to protect against more serious illness.
Compared to the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, Johnson & Johnson’s single-shot vaccine always had slightly lower efficacy. Peak efficacy from the two-shot Pfizer and Moderna vaccines was 95% and 94%, respectively, against symptomatic illness.
But two Johnson & Johnson shots, given two months apart, resulted in a similarly high effectiveness level: 94% protection against any symptomatic infection in the U.S., and 100% against severe disease.
With Pfizer’s booster shots now up for formal review from the Food and Drug Administration, and Moderna’s shortly to follow, the new data will likely factor into regulators’ decision about if and when additional shots are appropriate for the nearly 14.9 million people who received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
All three currently authorized vaccines are still working well to dramatically reduce the risk of being hospitalized, but as months pass and with the emergence of new COVID-19 variants, the vaccines are losing their power to prevent more mild breakthrough infections.
The new Johnson & Johnson data also raises questions about when to give an additional shot for the country’s only single shot vaccine. New data describing a booster two-months later found a marked increase in antibody levels. But prior data, already published, found that a booster shot given six months after the first dose results in even higher antibody levels.
“With the two-month boost interval, there was a four-fold increase in antibody titters. But when a booster was given after six months, it led to a 12-fold increase in antibody titers,” Dr. Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, whose lab helped develop the J&J vaccine, told ABC News.
“This suggests that the efficacy might be even greater when the booster is given at this later point in time,” Barouch said.
Regulatory authorities will need to weigh the available evidence and determine the appropriate timing for booster shots for all three vaccines.
In prepared remarks, J&J Chief Scientific Officer Dr. Paul Stoffels said the single-shot vaccine still provides “strong and long-lasting protection” while also being “easy to use, distribute and administer.””At the same time,” Stoffels said, “we now have generated evidence that a booster shot further increases protection against COVID-19 and is expected to extend the duration of protection significantly.”
According to Barouch, “the data supports the single-shot vaccine as the bedrock for providing robust and durable protection. But giving a boost two to six months later increases immune responses and augments protection to very high levels.”
