Health News at Your Fingertips

The vice-president Kamala Harris has tested positive for Covid-19, her office has announced.

A statement from Harris’s press secretary Kirsten Allen said:

Today, vice-president Harris tested positive for Covid-19 on rapid and PCR tests. She has exhibited no symptoms, will isolate and continue to work from the vice-president’s residence.

She has not been a close contact to the president or First Lady due to their respective recent travel schedules. She will follow CDC guidelines and the advice of her physicians. The vice-president will return to the White House when she tests negative.

Two US senators announced Tuesday that they have also tested positive, Democrats Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Ron Wyden of Oregon. Murphy, a member of the Senate foreign relations committee, appeared remotely this morning to ask questions of secretary of state Antony Blinken.

The White House press briefing this afternoon will feature the Biden administration’s new pandemic response coordinator Dr Ashish Jha. You can expect questions about this new wave of Capitol Hill infections.

Joe Biden has confirmed he has followed through on his promise to issue pardons and commutations of sentences today for dozens of people convicted of non-violent drugs offenses.

In tweets from the White House this morning, the president pledged that his administration “will continue to review clemency petitions and deliver reforms that advance equity and justice, provide second chances, and enhance the wellbeing and safety of all Americans.”

Also on Capitol Hill this morning, the US attorney general Merrick Garland has been testifying to a Senate appropriations subcommittee about Ukraine.

According to the Washington Post, he told lawmakers that the justice department would support legislation so that some assets seized from Russian oligarchs go directly to Ukraine.

Garland was asked what happens to the money and property that the US seizes as part of its efforts to punish Russia for the invasion of Ukraine, the newspaper said.

“The department announced last month it was stepping up its crackdown on Russian oligarchs and had formed a task force – Task Force KleptoCapture – to enforce US sanctions, in part by seizing assets belonging to those targeted by such measures,” the Post said.

Garland said that currently any money or property that is seized goes into the department’s assets forfeiture fund, which is used to pay for certain investigative expenses and manage seized assets, such as paying the mortgage on a home.

“We would support legislation that would allow some of that money to go directly to Ukraine,” Garland said, the Post reported. “That’s not the current circumstance with respect to the fund.”

Martin Pengelly

Hours after the deadly Capitol attack on 6 January 2021, the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, told a reporter he was “exhilarated” because he thought Donald Trump had finally lost his grip on the party.

Close to a year and a half later, however, with midterm elections looming, Trump retains control over the GOP and is set to be its presidential candidate in 2024.

What’s more, McConnell has said he will support Trump if so.

McConnell’s short-lived glee over Trump’s apparent downfall is described in This Will Not Pass, an explosive new book by Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns of the New York Times which will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.

The two authors describe a meeting between one of them and McConnell at the Capitol early on 7 January 2021. The day before, a mob Trump told to “fight like hell” in service of his lie about electoral fraud attempted to stop certification of Joe Biden’s election victory by forcing its way into the Capitol.

A bipartisan Senate committee connected seven deaths to the attack. In the aftermath, 147 Republicans in the House and Senate nonetheless lodged objections to electoral results.

According to Martin and Burns, McConnell told staffers Trump was a “despicable human being” he would now fight politically. Then, on his way out of the Capitol, the authors say, McConnell met one of them and “made clear he wanted a word”.

“What do you hear about the 25th amendment?” they say McConnell asked, “eager for intelligence about whether his fellow Republicans were discussing removing Trump from office” via the constitutional process for removing a president incapable of the office.

Burns and Martin say McConnell “seemed almost buoyant”, telling them Trump was now “pretty thoroughly discredited”.

“He put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger,” McConnell is quoted as saying. “Couldn’t have happened at a better time.”

Read more:

Blinken said congressional approval of Joe Biden’s overall budget request to Congress for state department funding, and his upcoming request for more dollars for humanitarian and military aid for Ukraine, was crucial in helping the country rebuff Russia’s aggression:

Fully funding is critical in my judgment to ensuring that Russia’s war in Ukraine is a strategic failure for the Kremlin, and serves as a powerful lesson to those who might consider following its path.

Biden said last week, as he announced another $800m in heavy military equipment, that he was close to exhausting the existing approval, and would be asking this week for more money.

The final amount of the request has yet to be determined, but the US has so far spent more than $4bn in security assistance alone.

Blinken said:

We were able to equip them with what they needed. For every tank that the Russians have had in Ukraine, we’ve managed with 30 allies and partners in one way or another to provide about 10 anti-armor systems.

For every plane that the Russians have flown in the skies there have been about 10 anti-aircraft munitions of one kind or another. But the nature of this battle is changing to eastern and southern Ukraine. They’re adapting to that. we’re adapting to that.

Ukraine “was and will continue to be a free and independent country” Antony Blinken has told US senators, reflecting on his weekend trip to the country with the defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, which he says “left an indelible impression.”

Addressing the Senate’s foreign relations committee, the secretary of state also said the US “must not let up” in its support for Ukraine, having already committed almost $15bn in humanitarian and military aid and with Joe Biden set to ask Congress for more this week.

In his opening address before questions, Blinken said:

For all the carnage that Russia’s brutal invasion continues to inflict, Ukraine was and will continue to be a free and independent country. It’s impossible not to be moved by what the Ukrainians have achieved.

It’s also impossible not to believe that they will keep succeeding because they know why they fight. I have to tell you, I felt some pride in what the United States has done to support the Ukrainian government and its people and an even firmer conviction that we must not let up.

Moscow’s war of aggression against Ukraine has underscored the power and purpose of American diplomacy. Our diplomacy has rallied allies and partners around the world to join us in supporting Ukraine with security, economic humanitarian assistance, imposing massive costs on the Kremlin, strengthening our collective security defense, addressing the war’s mounting global consequences, including refugee and food crises.

We will, we have to continue to drive that diplomacy forward.

Blinken said he and Austin were impressed by what they saw in terms of Ukraine’s resilience:

As we took the train across the border, and rode westward into Ukraine, we saw mile after mile of Ukrainian countryside, territory that just a couple of months ago the Russian government thought that it could seize in a matter of weeks, today firmly Ukraine’s.

In Kyiv we saw the signs of a vibrant city coming back to life, people eating outside sitting on benches, strolling around, it was right in front of us. The Ukrainians have won the battle for Kyiv.

A hearing of the US Senate’s foreign relations committee is under way on Capitol Hill, chair Bob Menendez welcoming the secretary of state Antony Blinken to testify about his recent visit to Ukraine, and slamming Russia’s invasion of the country.

The New Jersey Democrat framed the conflict as one between “violent autocrats [and] those of us fighting for a rules based international order for democracy, human rights and cause of freedom around the world.”

Blinken will give an account of his weekend trip to meet Ukraine’s leaders, including president Volodymyr Zelenskiiy, with defense secretary Lloyd Austin.

“Your recent trip to Ukraine with Secretary Austin to show support for President Zelinskiiy and the Ukrainian people, and to continue shining a light on Russia’s military brazen abuse of civilians that certainly amount to war crimes, was a critical display of that unity,” Menendez told Blinken.

Days before Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration, Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene appeared in a text to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to press for Donald Trump to overturn his 2020 election defeat by invoking martial law, new messages show.

The message – one of more than 2,000 texts turned over by Meadows to the House select committee investigating January 6 and first reported by CNN – shows that some of Trump’s most ardent allies on Capitol Hill were pressing for Trump to return himself to office even after the Capitol attack.

“In our private chat with only Members several are saying the only way to save our Republic is for Trump to call Marshall [sic] law,” Greene texted on 17 January. “I just wanted you to tell him. They stole this election. We all know. They will destroy our country next.”

The message about Trump potentially invoking martial law, earlier reported by CNN on Monday and confirmed by the Guardian, came a month after the idea had been raised in a heated Oval Office meeting a month before, where Trump considered ways to overturn the 2020 election.

Meadows did not appear to respond to Greene’s text. But the messages Trump’s top White House aide was receiving shows the extraordinary ideas swirling around Trump after he and his operatives were unable to stop the certification of Biden’s election win on January 6.

Greene – one of Trump’s fiercest far-right defenders on Capitol Hill – also texted Meadows days before the Capitol attack asking about how to prepare for objections to Biden’s win at the joint session of Congress, the text messages show.

“Good morning Mark, I’m here in DC. We have to get organized for the 6th,” Greene wrote on 31 December. “I would like to meet with Rudy Giuliani again. We didn’t get to speak with him long. Also anyone who can help. We are getting a lot of members on board.”

Read more:

Joe Biden will today issue the first pardons of his administration, and unveil a package of help for former inmates re-entering society, as he seeks to strengthen his social and racial justice resume ahead of November’s midterm elections.

The president is announcing three pardons, for individuals he says have “demonstrated their commitment to rehabilitation and are striving every day to give back and contribute to their communities”.

An additional 75 people convicted of non-violent drugs offenses will also see their sentences commuted.

Recognizing April as “second chance month”, Biden said in a White House statement:

America is a nation of laws and second chances, redemption, and rehabilitation. Elected officials on both sides of the aisle, faith leaders, civil rights advocates, and law enforcement leaders agree that our criminal justice system can and should reflect these core values that enable safer and stronger communities.

Biden is hoping today’s measures will resonate with the minority voters that Democrats will need to retain control of the House and Senate in November, but they fall far short of demands by criminal justice advocates for reduced sentences for non-violent drug crimes, and the release of those incarcerated for those offenses.

Minorities, especially blacks, are incarcerated at a much higher rate than the white population.

The Biden package includes a $145m job training program in federal prisons and a another $140m for a grant program helping inmates after their release. Biden said:

Helping those who served their time return to their families and become contributing members of their communities is one of the most effective ways to reduce recidivism and decrease crime.

The three pardoned, Reuters reports, are Betty Jo Bogans, 51, who served a seven-year sentence stemming from a 1998 conviction for possessing crack cocaine for her boyfriend.

Dexter Jackson, 52, who was convicted in 2002 for letting marijuana distributors use his pool hall.

Abraham Bolden, 86, the first Black member of a president’s Secret Service detail under President John F Kennedy, who served several years in prison for attempting to sell his Secret Service file.

Those seeing their sentences reduced have already served almost 10 years in prison, on average, for nonviolent drug offenses and have shown a commitment to rehabilitation, the White House said.

Read the White House fact sheet here.

Good morning, happy Tuesday, and welcome to the US politics blog. We’ve plenty to talk about.

Joe Biden will issue the first pardons of his administration, seeking to bolster his social and racial justice resume ahead of November’s midterm elections. The president will pardon three people who have “demonstrated their rehabilitation” and commute the sentences of 75 others convicted of non-violent, felony drug offenses.

There are developments in Ukraine, which you can follow on our main live news blog here.

And back in the US today:

• Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, will update the Senate’s foreign affairs committee this morning about his weekend trip to Ukraine with the defense secretary Lloyd Austin.
• The White House is finalizing the amount of its request to Congress for a new package of humanitarian and military aid for Ukraine. Joe Biden authorized another $800m in arms last week and said he had almost exhausted the existing drawdown.
• The US supreme court is weighing the Biden administration’s push to rescind the Trump-era “migration protection protocols” that required asylum seekers to remain in Mexico to await hearings. Separately, a federal judge has blocked the administration’s plans to end the Title 42 rule next month blocking migrants because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
• Covid-19 will be a main topic of the White House daily briefing at 3pm. The government’s new pandemic response coordinator Dr Ashish Jha will join White House press secretary Jen Psaki at the podium.