After moving them several times, Aerosmith has now permanently canceled their planned European tour dates because of uncertainty surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a Facebook message the band writes that the tour, which was to have taken place in June and July of this year, has been scrapped due to “related uncertainty around travel logistics and the continued presence of COVID restrictions and other issues.”
“The health, safety and well being of our fans is our number one priority,” the band continues, adding, “We will be back to rock out with everyone and we hope to have some exciting news to announce soon…Until then, take care and we deeply apologize for any inconvenience.”
The tour was originally supposed to take place in 2020, but it was then moved to 2021, and then to this year. The last time Aerosmith played live was February 15, 2020 as part of their Deuces Are Wild Las Vegas residency.
The band’s only live date this year is now its September 8 show in Fenway Park in Boston with Extreme. It was originally supposed to have taken place in 2020 to celebrate Aerosmith’s 50th anniversary.
Rachel Maddow plans to step away from her nightly show for a few weeks to develop other projects for NBCUniversal, the MSNBC host announced on Monday’s show. One of them is a movie adaptation of her book Bag Man, which will be produced by Saturday Night Live executive producer Lorne Michaels and directed by Ben Stiller. An MSNBC source said that that a rotating group of hosts are expected to fill in for her while she’s gone. However, she’s expected to continue appearing on special event coverage, such as the State of the Union address, set for March 1. Maddow’s hiatus begins on Friday…
Brett Goldstein, the Emmy-winning star and writer on Ted Lasso, has signed an exclusive overall deal with Warner Bros., the studio behind the Apple+ comedy series to develop, create and produce new TV projects for the studio, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Goldstein started out as a writer on Ted Lasso before being tapped to portray the team’s gruff but lovable team captain Roy Kent. Goldstein is also reteaming with Ted Lasso co-creator Bill Lawrence to write and executive produce Shrinking, a comedy series for Warners starring Jason Segel that earned a straight-to-series order at Apple…
Jennifer Garner, Brockmire‘s Tyrel Jackson Williams, and The Afterparty‘s Zoë Chao have been tapped as series regulars, and Dead to Me‘s James Marsden has signed on for a key recurring role in Party Down, a revival of the cult comedy, according to Deadline. They join original stars Adam Scott, Jane Lynch, Ken Marino, Martin Starr, Ryan Hansen, and Megan Mullally, who are all returning for the six-episode new season. Lizzy Caplan was unable to reprise her roll due to a scheduling conflict. Once again, Party Down will follow Scott, Lynch, Marino, Starr, Hansen, Mullally as a Los Angeles catering team — a sextet of Hollywood wannabes — stuck working for tips while hoping for their “big break”…
On February 1, 1982, Late Night with David Letterman premiered. The influential show brought the former stand-up comic and host of NBC’s Emmy-winning but little-seen The David Letterman Show to a new time slot, and late night TV was forever changed.
Letterman’s sarcastic style and love for the absurd were evident from the first episode, which showed footage of “metal being joined,” in response to “man on the street”-style requests. Letterman also gave a tour of NBC, to reveal a jungle-like green room, and a control hub in which Oktoberfest was being celebrated.
However, what most comes to mind from the first episode is Bill Murray‘s rambling, extended appearance as the show’s first guest.
Murray padded the show with a marathon interview segment, during which the Saturday Night Live and Stripes vet alternatively picked fights with, and showered love on, Letterman. Murray also showed footage of what he insisted was his new baby panda, and later performed Olivia Newton John‘s “Physical” as only Bill Murray could.
The first episode also featured a science segment with Don “Mr. Wizard” Herbert.
The show, which many comics have since cited as a major influence — including Letterman’s Late Night successors Conan O’Brien, and Seth Meyers — featured segments like “Stupid Pet Tricks,” and “Monkey Cam,” and absurdist stunts, like Dave’s Velcro suit and trampoline gag.
Late Night with David Letterman ran until June 25, 1993; Letterman left NBC to host the Late Show with David Letterman on CBS.
Late Night with David Lettermanwon two Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series, and one Emmy for Directing in the Variety Series category.
(NEW YORK) — Over the past decade, the Black Lives Matter movement has brought attention to racism and injustice in America through the stories of hundreds of Black men, women and children, but it all started with a hashtag that went viral in the wake of the killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin on Feb. 26, 2012.
Martin’s mother, Sybrina Fulton, has been unyielding in her fight for social justice, becoming one of the most prominent activists nationwide and a leader in the “Mothers of the Movement” — a group of women whose Black children have been killed by police officers or gun violence.
Ten years after her son’s death, Fulton reflected on the fight for social justice and how she is keeping her son’s legacy alive in an exclusive interview with Good Morning America.
“My chest still hurts. I still have a hole in my heart,” Fulton said.
Martin was shot and killed by a neighborhood watch volunteer named George Zimmerman, who deemed him “suspicious” as he walked back from a convenience store to his father’s fiancée’s home in Sanford, Florida, wearing a hoodie and carrying a bag of Skittles candy, according to police.
The hoodie and the Skittles became symbols of the fight for social justice as the Black Lives Matter movement grew to an international movement.
“I never lose sight that that was my baby,” Fulton said when asked how she reconciles her memory of her son with the symbol for justice that his name has become.
“By the same token, I know that Trayvon Martin is a symbol for other Trayvon Martins that you don’t know, that you have not said their name … He was just a vessel that represents so many others.”
In “Trayvon: Ten Years Later: A Mother’s Essay,” which was published by Amazon Original Stories on Feb. 1, Fulton reflects on love, loss and shares lessons with a new generation from her fight for social justice over the past 10 years.
“I absolutely think that change is happening; it’s just going a little slow,” Fulton said when asked if she feels that we are at a turning point in the fight for social justice.
Martin was shot and killed by Zimmerman, who called 911 from his vehicle and was told by a police dispatcher not to follow the teenager.
Soon after, a physical altercation between Martin and Zimmerman ensued, and Martin was shot and killed, according to investigators.
Zimmerman claimed the shooting took place in self-defense. He was eventually arrested and charged with second-degree murder. He was found not guilty by a jury in July 2013.
Martin would have turned 27 this year on Feb. 5.
“You can’t help but to wonder what he would have become [and] what he would have achieved in the last 10 years,” Fulton said.
She said that when she sees his younger brother, Jahvaris Fulton, attend college, she always thinks about the path Trayvon would have taken. She often reflects on this when she visits an airport because of Trayvon’s interest in aviation.
“The airport also reminds me of Trayvon,” she said. “I always think about if he was going to fix the plane, [or] fly the planes because he wasn’t really sure.”
Fulton said that she wants her son’s story to be a reminder of the lack of accountability in America’s criminal justice system.
“I want the world to know that my son was unarmed and he was 17 years old,” Fulton said. “He wasn’t committing any crime. Trayvon’s only crime was the color of his skin … which is not a crime.”
Fulton said that while guilty verdicts in the cases of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery are a sign of progress, the killings of those unarmed Black men are also an indication that “we take two steps forward and two steps back.”
“When I look at the case of George Floyd and I look at the case of Ahmaud Arbery and the people that killed them all were convicted and that they are going to be going to jail for the rest of their lives,” she said. “But by the same token, we had to lose lives in order to get to that point … why did we have to lose those lives in order for us to move the country forward?”
Floyd, an unarmed Black man, died in May 2020 after police officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee against his neck for more than 9 minutes. Chauvin was convicted in Floyd’s death and was sentenced in June 2021 to 22 and a half years in prison.
Arbery, an unarmed Black, was chased and gunned down while jogging in February 2020. Three men who were convicted in Arbery’s shooting were found guilty in November 2021 and were each sentenced last month to life in prison.
Both cases gained national attention and became rallying cries in the Black Lives Matter movement.
Fulton said that she is hopeful that the next generation of activists will bring about lasting change and while she “can’t change the world,” by herself, she wants to do her part to “make a difference in this world.”
“My purpose is to continue to bring awareness to senseless gun violence. My purpose is the circle of mothers — helping other mothers to cope with the loss of a child,” she said. “My purpose is to try to change laws.”
In her essay, “Trayvon: Ten Years Later,” Fulton reflects on how the past 10 years have changed her and how racism has shaped the fight for justice in her son’s name:
“How am I different today? If I am not picking myself up and becoming more than I was last year, then I am no good to anyone. There is a part of me that died along with my son, so I became who I had to become in that moment. I didn’t pray to become the mother of a movement. I was happy being the mother of Trayvon Martin and Jahvaris Fulton. I became the mother of a movement out of necessity. Sometimes you have to step into roles you did not ask for and that you do not want. You can find the strength from within if you are willing to live in your purpose. Believe in your strength from within. That’s a Word,” she writes in the essay.
“While nothing compares emotionally to the loss of a child due to senseless, racially tinged violence, the on- and offline smear campaign was its own sort of shock. It wasn’t enough that it took law enforcement far too long to take Trayvon’s killer into custody, right-wing conservatives and members of law enforcement started to attack my son’s character, as if any mistakes he made as a child could justify his untimely death. I had never seen such a negative frenzy with the media weaponized against the actual victim. We, my family and I, strove to channel our energy in a positive and productive way, but there were times back then when I felt like it was all in vain. It was shameful and undue to see a victim slandered in such a public way. The words’ Trayvon Martin’ had become clickbait and a hot topic, with celebrities, influencers, and politicians all taking part. While many seized the moment to speak truth to power and take a stand for Black lives, others were far less altruistic and merely saw it as an opportunity to garner attention and increase the reach of their brand in the most toxic of ways. According to an article in the Miami Herald, my son’s name was tweeted over two million times in the short period of thirty days.”
ABC News’ Amanda McMaster and Taylor Rhodes contributed to this report.
As celebrities begin to hop on the NFT bandwagon, Kanye West made it clear he won’t be joining — at least not anytime soon.
On Monday, the Donda rapper took to social media to issue a PSA to those asking him to make NFTs, which stands for non-fungible tokens and is a digital asset that belongs to the buyer alone.
“STOP ASKING ME TO DO NFT’s I’M NOT FINNA CO-SIGN … FOR NOW I’M NOT ON THAT WAVE I MAKE MUSIC AND PRODUCTS IN THE REAL WORLD,” he captioned an Instagram post.
The post itself contained a letter which read, “My focus is on building real products in the real world real food real clothes real shelter do not ask me to do a f****** NFT.”
He signed the note “Ye” and added, “Ask me later.” So maybe the Yeezy founder will eventually hop on the NFT train, just not right now.
(NEW YORK) — Former President Donald Trump announced Monday night that his political committees raised more than $51 million over the second half of last year, to buttress what is now a massive $122 million war chest.
Trump’s latest fundraising haul is a drop from the first half of last year, when his various committees together raised a total of $82 million from January through June of 2021.
It is possible that the $82 million sum Trump’s team announced for the first half of last year included transferred money raised in the final weeks of 2020, though the exact amount transferred from the previous year is unclear.
Trump’s war chest puts him in a uniquely strong position heading into the 2022 midterms and ahead of a potential 2024 presidential run.
The Republican National Committee also reported having $56.3 million cash in hand at the end of December 2021.
In a press release Monday, Trump’s Save America political action committee said that the $51 million was raised by the former president’s multiple committees from July 1 through Dec. 31, 2021.
The average donation Trump received between his committees was $31, with a total of 1,631,648 donations, the release said.
Notably, Trump doesn’t appear to be sharing many of his donations yet. With over $122 million in cash on hand, Trump says his PACs have only donated $1.35 million to “to like-minded causes and endorsed candidates.”
Save America’s filing shows that $1 million of that contribution went to the nonprofit Conservative Partnership Institute, which is led by a slew of Trump’s close allies, including Mark Meadows, Jim DeMint and Ed Corrigan.
Much of Save America’s money in the latter half of 2021 was spent on Facebook ads, payroll, and consulting fees for various firms, including $1.5 million paid to Tim Unes’ firm Event Strategies and $60,000 paid to former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale’s firm Parscale Strategy, according to the filing. More than $240,000 also went to legal spending, the filing shows.
Over the past year, Trump has been fundraising with numerous allies through various vehicles, including his Save America PAC and his presidential campaign committee-turned PAC, Make America Great Again PAC.
Save America, in particular, was set up as a leadership PAC, which is designed to allow former and current lawmakers or prominent political figures to raise money and boost their allies, often with the purpose of advancing their political influence.
Last year, Save America raised $700,000 in a joint fundraising operation with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. More recently, the PAC raised roughly $202,000 with Trump-endorsed Florida House hopeful Anna Paulina Luna, new disclosure filings show.
Save America had also raised massive sums with the Republican National Committee in the weeks following the 2020 election, but the two have since stopped officially fundraising together. The RNC and other GOP party committees, however, continue to frequently appeal to donors by using Trump’s name in fundraising emails and messages.
The RNC has also continued to help cover Trump’s legal bills over the past few months. As previously reported by ABC News, the national party committee has paid at least $720,000 to law firms representing the former president in various legal challenges, including criminal investigations into his businesses in New York, according to campaign finance records.
In the past few months the RNC’s fundraising has dipped in comparison to the substantially larger amounts it used to report every month while it was fundraising with Trump during the 2020 election cycle. However, the RNC’s fundraising still topped the DNC’s in the second half of 2021.
Between July and December 2021, the GOP national committee reported raising a total of $74 million, while the Democratic National Committee reported raising $65 million during the same period, disclosure filings show.
In all of 2021, the RNC raised $159 million while the DNC raised $151 million.
Jonathan Karl, Benjamin Siegel and Will Steakin, ABC News
(WASHINGTON) — Former White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany turned over text messages to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, according to a source familiar with the investigation — the latest indication of the extensive level of cooperation the committee has received from many witnesses.
McEnany, who was at work in the White House and around then-President Donald Trump before and during the Capitol attack, was subpoenaed by the panel for records and testimony in November, and turned over text messages to committee investigators.
A source familiar with her interactions with the committee has told ABC News that text messages from McEnany’s phone were quoted in a recent letter the committee sent to Ivanka Trump. The texts came directly from documents turned over by McEnany, said the source.
“1 – no more stolen election talk,” Fox News host Sean Hannity texted McEnany, according to the records. “2- Yes, impeachment and the 25th amendment are real and many people will quit.”
“Love that. Thank you. That is the playbook. I will help reinforce….,” McEnany replied, per the documents.
McEnany did not respond to calls and messages from ABC News seeking comment or to an email sent to a spokesperson for Fox News, where McEnany currently co-hosts the show “Outnumbered.”
A committee spokesman declined to comment and would not provide details on other text messages and documents turned over by McEnany.
McEnany appeared virtually before investigators for several hours on Jan. 13, according to a source familiar with her testimony, and did not appear that day on her midday Fox News program.
The committee was interested in her repeated false claims of widespread voter fraud from the White House Briefing Room podium, and in her interactions with Trump on Jan. 6, according to a letter the committee sent to McEnany along with the subpoena.
In addition to text messages and any other materials McEnany turned over to the committee, investigators are expected to receive her White House files from the National Archives, some of the many White House records Trump unsuccessfully tried to prevent the Archives from sharing with Congress.
The House select committee has interviewed more than 400 people as part of its investigation, and committee leaders say that most witnesses have cooperated with the panel’s requests and subpoenas.
“In general, people have been extremely cooperative. The closer we get to Trump, the more difficult it becomes,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., recently told ABC News about the panel’s progress.
Former New York City Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik, who worked closely with Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani to seek out evidence of voter fraud, recently complied with the panel’s subpoena for records and testimony, as did former Trump campaign spokesperson Jason Miller.
However Trump ally Steve Bannon and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows have openly challenged the committee’s subpoenas, leading Congress to hold both men in contempt and issue criminal referrals to the Justice Department.
The department has not acted on the Meadows referral, but Bannon was indicted by a federal grand jury on two counts of contempt of Congress in November. He has pleaded not guilty, and his trial is set to begin in July.
Meadows challenged the committee’s requests only after voluntarily turning over thousands of documents to the panel, a tranche that included emails and text messages that committee members say have helped them piece together conversations around Trump and the White House as the Jan. 6 attack unfolded.
(NEW YORK) — For many parents of unvaccinated toddlers in the U.S., a return to normalcy amid the COVID-19 pandemic seems out of reach.
Many have been forced to take time off work or change their schedules to provide care for their children due to school shutdowns. Rebecca Sanghvi, a public school teacher in Washington, D.C., has a 5-year-old daughter, who is vaccinated, in kindergarten and a 2-year-old son in daycare.
Working from home is not possible for her, so she juggles the house responsibilities with her husband, who’s able to shift remotely when needed. She said it’s been exhausting to cope with the pandemic while balancing her job and parenting responsibilities.
“I do think that there’s not enough attention on the difficulties that the families who can’t do that are facing with kids being quarantined, taking time off work, often unpaid,” Sanghvi said.
Mask mandates have been lifted in many parts of the country and in-person events have resumed, but many parents feel that until their kids are vaccinated, they can’t move on from the first stages of the pandemic.
Vaccines for kids under 5 are still unavailable — though Pfizer said approvals could come in the next few weeks — and currently, there are nearly 20 million kids under 5 years old in America, according to the Children’s Defense Fund.
“People don’t realize that if you have a young child, you’re still stuck in March 2020, and that we haven’t really evolved for these young children,” Deborah Schoenfeld, a mom of three in Maryland, said.
The recent surge in COVID-19 cases due to the omicron variant has taken an even bigger toll on parents of young children. Sanghavi said the reality others have been living in, where vaccinations are widely available and daily life is looking close to “normal” again, is drastically different to hers.
“We are living in this reality that I think a lot of people aren’t, and it makes these choices that we have to make with regards to risk, but also the sacrifices we have to make with regards to our work and our child care, that much more difficult, because it is really a situation that that not everybody is in anymore,” she said.
Some schools and daycares across the country have reopened despite the rise in cases, leaving young unvaccinated students with higher risks of getting contaminated, and consequently, bringing the virus home.
These surges in schools have left parents — like Anagha Phadkule — struggling to find ways to care for their children while working full-time jobs.
Phadkule is from Portland, Oregon, and works in a hospital, while her husband works from home. Their 3-year-old son, Aroosh, had to spend most of his time home after his daycare shut down twice in January due to COVID-19 outbreaks among the staff.
Her son’s unvaccinated status leaves Phadkule worried about his safety.
“It feels like a very reckless time to push your toddler into daycare and be like, ‘OK, whatever happens, happens,'” Phadkule said.
The frequent school shutdowns have led some parents to change their routines permanently. Schoenfeld, for example, made the decision to keep her son at home after his daycare was shut down several times over the past few weeks.
“My childcare situation has gotten increasingly hard. I almost feel like in 2021 it was easier. They were still figuring out what to do with COVID, but there weren’t so many cancellations and quarantines,” Schoenfeld said.
Other parents, who don’t have many options left, find themselves taking their kids to work in hopes to juggle both responsibilities. But the move has proven to be more stressful than expected.
“Sometimes, [my husband] was busy and I had to take even my kids to work for showings, for times that I had appointments with different clients … I had an issue with a client where she told me that it was unprofessional for me to show up with my kids,” Eddie Suarez, who has a 3-year-old, said.
Brigid Schulte, director of The Better Life Lab and Good Life Initiative at New America, said many parents are feeling “unheard” and “invisible,” as they don’t think their struggles are being considered.
“We’re talking about real existential threats to family survival right now — at a time when so many families thought that we had rounded the corner,” Schulte said. “This is hitting everybody. This is sort of an equal opportunity exhaustion, disruption, uncertainty and a disastrous situation for so many families.”
So what is the solution? Many parents believe the authorization of vaccines for children 5 and younger will change things for the better.
“I’d rather them take their time and … make it right, make it safe. I don’t want to feel like this push in this rush to get it done if it’s not ready yet,” Schoenfeld said. “But I don’t want to be like a hostage or prisoner waiting for the vaccine, like I need child care. That’s going to work for us right now … or something needs to, because this cannot continue. It’s too hard.”
(BEIJING) — When the Olympic athletes take the field during the 2022 Games opening ceremony in Beijing, there will be one group that won’t show off their national pride.
Russian athletes are only able to compete under the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) flag due to an ongoing ban over the country’s previous doping violations.
Doping regulators contend this punishment is justified, given the country’s cover-up.
There are 204 Russian athletes competing in the 2022 Winter Games as “neutrals” under the moniker ROC as part of ongoing sanctions imposed by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). Russia cannot officially send any athlete to an international sports competition until December 2022.
While WADA’s ban on the country was severe, the agency and International Olympic Committee have made special arrangements for athletes who have proven to be clean.
Under the IOC’s rules, Russian athletes are prohibited in any form from showing any representation of the country, including its flag or national anthem.
“All public displays of the organization’s participant name should use the acronym ‘ROC,’ not the full name ‘Russian Olympic Committee,'” the IOC rules state.
In any event where a ROC athlete is awarded a medal, a Tchaikovsky song piece is played instead of the Russian national anthem, and the ROC flag, which features the Olympic rings and red, blue and white stripes, will be flown.
This is the third Olympics in a row where the country’s athletes couldn’t officially represent Russia.
The Russians were banned from competing in the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea, however, athletes that passed doping screenings were allowed to compete under the Olympic Athletes from Russia (OAR) delegation.
Russian athletes competed as the ROC during last summer’s Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo.
The punishments date back to 2015, after athletes came forward to WADA and provided evidence of a decade of state-sponsored doping. The Russian government has denied any involvement and has blamed several coaches.
However, in 2016, whistleblower Grigory Rodchenkov, the former head of Russia’s anti-doping laboratory in Moscow, provided evidence that he, other lab officials and Russia’s FSB security service worked to hide hundreds of positive doping tests.
While the Russians appealed WADA’s sanction, the agency found more evidence of doping cover-ups. A WADA compliance report in late November 2019 said it had found that hundreds of likely positive doping tests had been deleted from a database of results held by Russia’s anti-doping lab given to the agency that year.
In December 2019, WADA’s executive committee voted unanimously to ban Russia from fielding any athletes at international sporting events, including the 2020 summer Olympics in Tokyo and the 2022 winter Olympics in Beijing.
“Russia was afforded every opportunity to get its house in order and re-join the global anti-doping community for the good of its athletes and of the integrity of sport, but it chose instead to continue in its stance of deception and denial,” Sir Craig Reedie, WADA’s then-president, said in 2019.
WADA’s ban, which was reduced from four years to two years, also prohibits Russia from officially participating in the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
Other nations have been banned from competing in past Olympics. The IOC banned Afghanistan from the 2000 summer Olympic Games in Sydney because of the Taliban’s discrimination against women.
In 2016, Kuwait was banned from officially sending athletes to the 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Rio due to a national law that conflicted with the Olympic Movement. Athletes from that country took part in the 2016 games under the moniker “athletes from Kuwait.”
Wiktor Szymanowicz/Future Publishing via Getty Images
(LONDON) — U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is apologizing again after initial findings of an investigation found that he and his staff showed “failures of leadership and judgment” for allegedly hosting parties during lockdown.
Johnson and his staff have been under fire in recent weeks for holding a number of parties last year — including a Christmas gathering as the country was sent back into lockdown — in alleged breaches of his own government’s lockdown rules.
The extent to which the report would lay blame at the feet of Johnson had been the subject of intense speculation, with the prime minister facing down a barrage of calls to resign from opposition lawmakers and even disgruntled members of his own party.
In a statement following the publication of the report, authored by Sue Gray, a civil servant appointed to lead the investigation, Johnson said he “accepted the general findings in full.” He apologized “for the things we simply didn’t get right… [and] the way this matter has been handled.”
Responding to criticisms in the report about accountability measures in different government departments, Johnson said, “I get it, and I will fix it,” prompting jeers from opposition lawmakers in the House of Commons.
The scandal has dominated British politics in recent weeks. The intervention of the Metropolitan Police, which is now carrying out a criminal investigation into at least eight of the gatherings, meant the report has not been published in full, which some critics have said granted the prime minister a short-term reprieve.
Sir Keir Starmer, the leader of the opposition Labour Party, who has called for the prime minister to resign since the beginning of the crisis, described the interim report as “damning.”
Gray said she was only able to “make minimal reference” to the gatherings under police investigation. At the time of these alleged get-togethers, breaches of lockdown rules were punishable by fixed penalty fines. Restrictions were also in place at the time on hospital and care home visits and funerals, prompting fury from victims and the bereaved, represented by organizations such as the COVID Bereaved Families for Justice.
Johnson apologized in the House of Commons earlier this month but denied breaching any rules. At a gathering in the Downing Street gardens in May of last year, which Johnson himself attended and over 100 staffers were invited to despite social distancing rules, Johnson said he believed it was a “work event.”
While the interim report is lacking in detail over what exactly took place at the gatherings in question — which reports in the U.K. media said included leaving parties for departing staff — the update was critical of numerous “failures of leadership” at various levels of the government.
“Some of the events should not have been allowed to take place,” Gray wrote. “Other events should not have been allowed to develop as they did.”
Meanwhile, Gray said “steps needed to be taken” to ensure that government departments had clearer policies covering the drinking of alcohol.
“The excessive consumption of alcohol is not appropriate in a professional workplace at any time,” she said in the report.“Against the backdrop of the pandemic, when the government was asking citizens to accept far-reaching restrictions on their lives, some of the behavior surrounding these gatherings is difficult to justify.”
The full report may not be published until after the Metropolitan Police have completed their investigation.
