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mcar

Biden helps Texas

(The Hill) The Biden administration has sent 60 generators, thousands of blankets and other supplies to Texas to help address mass power outages amid a rare bout of extreme winter weather.

Homeland security adviser and deputy national security adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall told reporters Thursday afternoon that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has supplied 60 generators to support critical sites like hospitals and water facilities, 729,000 liters of water, more than 10,000 wool blankets, 50,000 cotton blankets and 225,000 meals.

shenmue

CNN lists places to which you can donate, to help victims of the winter storm

(CNN) Unprecedented winter storms have blanketed Texas, causing bitter cold temperatures and widespread power outages throughout much of the state. President Joe Biden has declared a state of emergency, which makes people eligible for federal assistance. Still, the need for help is immediate as many struggle to find shelter, food, and warmth in these dangerous freezing conditions.

Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin

"Politically isolating": White House issues obstruction warning to GOP

(Axios) Mike Donilon, senior adviser to President Biden, argues in a memo to White House senior staff that GOP opposition to the COVID rescue package would shrink the party's already declining national support. "There seems to be a growing conventional wisdom that it is either politically smart — or, at worst, cost-free — for the GOP to adopt an obstructionist, partisan, base-politics posture," Donilon writes in the two-page memo, obtained by Axios. "However, there is lots of evidence that the opposite is true: ... this approach has been quite damaging to them."

The memo cites a Morning Consult poll showing a Biden approval rating of 62% with registered voters. Just 23% of registered voters think the Republican Party is going in the right direction, while 63% say the party is on the wrong track. Tens of thousands of Republicans across the country have switched party affiliation since the Capitol riot, the N.Y. Times reports. The Economist/YouGov polling finds a decline in voters calling themselves Republicans since November (from 42% to 37%).

babylonsister

DeSantis Threatens to Pull Vaccine From Neighborhoods That Complain

(Daily Beast) Two of Florida’s newest vaccine clinics have something in common: they’re both in wealthy, white areas, and they both have ties to allies of Gov. Ron DeSantis. As the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported Tuesday, the state recently established two pop-up vaccine clinics: one in the state’s Manatee County, exclusively available to residents of zip codes represented by county commissioner Vanessa Baugh, a top DeSantis ally; and one in Charlotte County, in a gated community developed by former Republican state senator Pat Neal, who wrote in a press release that DeSantis had reached out to him personally. In a statement, a spokesperson for DeSantis told the Herald-Tribune that “the goal is to vaccinate as many seniors as efficiently as possible, and working with senior living communities is a common sense approach, both administratively and logistically.”

According to the Sun-Sentinel, DeSantis responded to the allegations of favoritism on Wednesday by threatening to pull vaccines from the county altogether. “If Manatee County doesn’t like us doing this, we are totally fine with putting this in counties that want it,” he said. “I wouldn’t be complaining.”

DonViejo

U.S. life expectancy plummets amid pandemic

(Associated Press) Life expectancy in the United States dropped a staggering one year during the first half of 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic caused its first wave of deaths, health officials are reporting. Minorities suffered the biggest impact, with Black Americans losing nearly three years and Hispanics, nearly two years, according to preliminary estimates Thursday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “This is a huge decline,” said Robert Anderson, who oversees the numbers for the CDC. “You have to go back to World War II, the 1940s, to find a decline like this.”

BumRushDaShow

Ted Cruz Accused of Flying to Cancun Amid Texas Power Outages As Photo Goes Viral

(Newsweek) Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) has been accused of traveling to Cancun, Mexico, amid the ongoing crisis in Texas, where millions have been left without power or heat in freezing temperatures. Photos circulating on social media overnight appeared to show the senator at an airport and on an airplane. The idea that Cruz and his family had flown to Mexico soon spread on Twitter.

JHB

Thursday TOONs

applegrove

Democrats Have a Backbone Now

(E.J. Dionne) Here’s the thing about President Biden and his party in 2021: They’re no longer scared. They’re not defensive, or constantly looking over their shoulders, or making preemptive concessions to Republicans. They have learned an essential lesson. Voters always say they like bipartisanship, because most Americans prefer people to be nice to each other and work together. But what they care more about is solving problems and getting things done. If the party in charge fails in that essential duty, endless bend-over-backwards negotiations and a big, inclusive ‘process’ won’t save them.

demmiblue

Can't argue with this chyron

DonViejo

The Supreme Court is still sitting on Trump's tax returns, and justices aren't saying why

(CNN) Lawsuits involving Donald Trump tore apart the Supreme Court while he was president, and the justices apparently remain riven by him. For nearly four months, the court has refused to act on emergency filings related to a Manhattan grand jury's subpoena of Trump tax returns, effectively thwarting part of the investigation.

The Supreme Court's inaction marks an extraordinary departure from its usual practice of timely responses when the justices are asked to block a lower court decision on an emergency basis and has spurred questions about what is happening behind the scenes. Chief Justice John Roberts, based on his past pattern, may be trying to appease dueling factions among the nine justices, to avoid an order that reinforces a look of partisan politics. Yet paradoxically, the unexplained delay smacks of politics and appears to ensnarl the justices even more in the controversies of Trump.