The Daily 202: Biden says he’ll own pandemic failures – but promises they won’t come

President Biden promised in his first prime-time address last night to own it if the sweeping rescue package he signed hours earlier falls short of its ambitious goals of smothering the pandemic and breathing new life into the economy.

Speaking from the East Room of the White House 50 days after taking office, Biden promised the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Package would fund initiatives to “beat the virus and create millions of jobs.”

And the president, simultaneously taking both credit and responsibility, declared: “If it fails at any point, I will acknowledge that it failed.”

The White House had previewed the biggest news from the speech.

“President Biden on Thursday directed states to ensure that all adults are eligible for the coronavirus vaccine by May 1, and he declared a goal of allowing small celebrations on July 4, setting up significant landmarks in the effort to return to normalcy after the devastating pandemic.”

“President Biden on Thursday evening directed states to make all adult Americans eligible to receive coronavirus vaccines no later than May 1, using a somber but hopeful prime-time address to the nation to say Americans may be able to ‘mark our independence from this virus’ by the Fourth of July.”

“President Joe Biden on Thursday offered his COVID-weary nation a tantalizing glimpse of an almost normal July 4th, outlining in a speech how the United States can defeat the coronavirus if people stay united on prevention measures and get vaccinated.”

“President Joe Biden announced Thursday that he will direct states to make all adults eligible for coronavirus vaccinations no later than May 1, a move that he said could help the United States return to some sense of normalcy by Independence Day.”

“El mandatario planteó dos fechas específicas para marcar el camino a la normalidad: el 1 de mayo y el 4 de julio, el Día de la Independencia, cuando promete que los estadounidenses (si la ciencia lo permite y los CDC lo aconsejan) podrán reunirse con familias y amigos para los tradicionales asados y festividades de la jornada.”

Whereas former president Donald Trump one year ago pushed for “packed churches” by Easter, Biden instead was more modest but no less concrete in his ambitions. Biden envisioned small groups of families and friends gathered to “not only mark our independence as a nation but we begin to mark our independence from this virus.”

By picking a date by which Americans can judge whether their lives are back to normal, and by claiming personal responsibility for the rescue package’s success, Biden has set precise benchmarks to which voters can hold him.

Biden opened his remarks with transparent swipes at Trump — not by name — for what he described as deadly early missteps in confronting the novel coronavirus that has killed more than 530,000 people in the United States.

“A year ago, we were hit with a virus that was met with silence and spread unchecked, denials for days, weeks, then months,” he said. “That led to more deaths, more infections, more stress, and more loneliness.”

Where Trump regularly blamed “the China virus” — he used the incendiary term, which some blame for violence against Asian Americans, as recently as Wednesday — Biden denounced “vicious hate crimes against Asian Americans, who have been attacked, harassed, blamed and scapegoated.”

“If we don’t stay vigilant, and the conditions change, then we may have to reinstate restrictions to get back on track,” Biden said. “We don’t want to do that again. We’ve made so much progress. This is not the time to let up.”

The political winds are shifting, fast, in the Empire State where a slew of New York House Democrats – including Reps. Jerry Nadler, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jamaal Bowman, Grace Meng, and Mondaire Jones –  called for Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) to resign following accusations of sexual harassment. And Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee head Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) just released a statement calling on Cuomo to resign, saying “women deserve to be heard” and that the governor needs to be focused full-time on the battle to “crush” coronavirus.

All eyes are now on Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Kristen Gillibrand (D-N.Y.).

• A majority of New York’s House delegation has now called for Cuomo to step down and it seems like more statements are probably coming.  “The repeated accusations against the governor, and the manner in which he has responded to them, have made it impossible for him to continue to govern at this point,” Nadler said.
• Jones said Cuomo is “unfit” to continue governing, adding his “mismanagement of covid-19 spread in nursing homes and subsequent attempt to cover it up cost lives and has decimated the public’s faith in our state government.”
• “We believe these women, we believe the reporting, we believe the Attorney General, and we believe the fifty-five members of the New York State legislature, including the State Senate Majority Leader, who have concluded that Governor Cuomo can no longer effectively lead,” Ocasio-Cortez and Bowman said.
• New York Senate Deputy Majority Leader Mike Gianaris told NBC New York that the entire Democratic state Senate delegation agreed Cuomo should resign.
• In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio also called on Cuomo to resign. Cuomo, he said, has shown a “pattern of cover up and a pattern of lies.” “The governor must resign,” he added, per the Times’s Emma Fitzsimmons. “He can no longer do the job.”
• Context: Cuomo faces accusations of sexual harassment from six former employees.
• But: not all state Democratic female officials are behind throwing Cuomo out before an investigation is complete, per a story by our Michael Scherer.
• And: In the days after Cuomo was first accused by a former aide, “the governor’s office called at least six former employees either to find out if they had heard from the accuser or to glean information about her in conversations that some said they saw as attempts to intimidate them,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

Meanwhile, this Times reporter points out Cuomo has no public events for today on his schedule:

Attention Trumpworld: Cyrus Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney leading an investigation into Trump’s businesses, will not run for reelection. Vance’s departure means Trump will likely face a new adversary, The New York Times’s Jonah Bromwich reports, since the investigation will be left in a newcomer’s hands. “The many candidates clamoring to replace him are, with few exceptions, seeking to fundamentally reshape the office,” Bromwich writes about the eight-way race to replace Vance. 

Biden will celebrate the passage of his $1.9 trillion relief package with a Rose Garden event with congressional Democrats today at 2:30 p.m.. Next week, the president embarks on a cross-country tour to sell the sweeping new law to Americans, John Wagner, Felicia Sonmez and Colby Itkowitz report. 

Biden and Harris met virtually this morning with their counterparts in an alliance known as the Quad: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison; and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga. “On this moment, it’s a purpose that I think we all are concerned about. A free and open Indo-Pacific is essential to each of our futures, our countries,” Biden said during the meeting, but neither he nor the other leaders directly discussed threats to maritime movement, economic expansion or diplomatic success posed by authoritarian China, Anne Gearan reports. 

Suga will be the first foreign leader to visit Biden in person. The meeting demonstrates Biden’s focus on rebuilding U.S. influence in Asia and rebuffing China, Anne Gearan reports. No date was announced for the visit, and an administration official said the details will be determined by progress against the pandemic.

ICE is asking officers to deploy to the border “as soon as this weekend” to care for soaring numbers of migrant families, teens and children. In an urgent email sent to senior staff last night, ICE asked for volunteers to quickly move to the border, where holding cells are crammed beyond capacity, Nick Miroff reports.  

• “The billionaire boom,” by Nitasha Tiku and Jay Greene: “The wealth of nine of the country’s top titans has increased by more than $360 billion in the past year. And they are all tech barons, underscoring the power of the industry in the U.S. economy. … The scrutiny of tech billionaires’ wealth is also driven by the role their companies played during the pandemic. Social media including Facebook [run by Mark Zuckerberg] appeared to make the situation worse because it was used to spread disinformation … [Tesla CEO Elon] Musk railed against stay-at-home mandates … In [Jeff] Bezos’s case, profits were possible in part because Amazon hired more than 500,000 workers to stow, sort, pick and pack goods in 2020, even as warehouse workers sounded alarms about safety.” 
• “The Biden administration’s first showdown with China,” by Ishaan Tharoor: “Next week in Alaska, top officials in the Biden administration are slated to have face-to-face meetings with Chinese counterparts. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and President Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, will sit down with China’s most senior foreign policy official, Yang Jiechi, and Chinese State Councilor Wang Yi next Thursday in Anchorage. … There are no high expectations for the Alaska talks.”

• “CDC’s ‘Huge Mistake’: Did misguided mask advice drive up Covid death toll for health workers?” by Kaiser Health News’s Christina Jewett: “Since the start of the pandemic, the most terrifying task in health care was thought to be when a doctor put a breathing tube down the trachea of a critically ill covid patient. Those performing such ‘aerosol-generating’ procedures, often in an intensive care unit, got the best protective gear even if there wasn’t enough to go around, per CDC guidelines. And for anyone else working with covid patients, until a month ago, a surgical mask was considered sufficient. A new wave of research now shows that several of those procedures were not the most hazardous. Recent studies have determined that a basic cough produces about 20 times more particles than intubation.”
• “The one union Biden has not supported,” by the American Prospect’s Marcia Brown: “The National Association of Immigration Judges (NAIJ), a union that represents the nation’s 500 judges, outspokenly opposed the [Trump] administration’s efforts at every turn. In 2019, the Trump administration moved to decertify the immigration judges’ union … The union is hopeful that President Biden will reverse the decision, but they have yet to see action.”
• “How four business owners persevered through the pandemic,” by the Washington City Paper’s Laura Hayes: “When Sunyatta Amen opened Calabash Tea & Tonic in 2015, she envisioned it as a modern-day apothecary. … The pandemic decimated Calabash’s revenue, but the business survived thanks to a Paycheck Protection Program loan, a shift to e-commerce, and teaming up with other local businesses … to sell goods … Closing [a location in] Shaw was an easy call for Amen because the shop is tight and the windows don’t open. ‘I was concerned about my staff and their families,’ she says. ‘… We don’t want to kill grandma trying to catch a dollar.’”

• That is according to White House press secretary Jen Psaki, who said Americans can expect the “first wave” of checks in the next few days and that they will continue flowing over “the next several weeks.”
• Michelle Singletary, our personal finance columnist, writes those who’ve filed their 2019 or 2020 tax returns and received a refund should be the first in line to get a payment, since the IRS has their direct deposit information.
• But, but, but: An overworked IRS — which is currently in the middle of tax season — could lead to a backlog in processing both tax returns and stimulus checks. As Lisa Rein reported in January, the pandemic has “magnified critical weaknesses” in an agency plagued by “old technology and understaffing.”

• “No state’s work force has been battered as badly by the coronavirus pandemic as Nevada’s, and people are especially struggling in Las Vegas,” reports the New York Times’s Jennifer Medina. Because of the state’s heavy reliance on tourism, service industry workers have gone months without stable incomes. MaryAnn Bautista, a hotel worker and a “single mother of five … [who has] received unemployment checks within weeks … said she would spend her stimulus money stocking up on food and helping her children out with their bills. ‘We appreciate the help,’ she said of the government aid. ‘Don’t get me wrong. We do appreciate that, but we cannot rely on it. We want job assurance.’ ”

• A new study by Johns Hopkins University and the Medical University of South Carolina found that, “the per-capita rates of new COVID-19 cases and COVID-19 deaths were higher in states with Democrat governors in the first months of the pandemic last year, but became much higher in states with Republican governors by mid-summer and through 2020.” 
• “For death rates, Republican-led states had lower rates early in the pandemic, but higher rates from July 4 through mid-December,” researchers found. 

• Doses of the vaccine made by AstraZeneca “are sitting idly in American manufacturing facilities, awaiting results from its U.S. clinical trial while countries that have authorized its use beg for access,” the Times’s Noah Weiland and Rebecca Robbins report. At least 30 million doses are waiting approval in Ohio, and a company in Maryland has produced enough vaccine for tens of millions more doses. 
• “AstraZeneca has asked the Biden administration to let it loan American doses to the European Union, where it has fallen short of its original supply commitments and where the vaccination campaign has stumbled badly,” Weiland and Robbins write. “The administration, for now, has denied the request.” 

“Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer and his fellow Senate Democrats now face a pivotal decision: What’s next for the filibuster? On one hand, Democrats are under pressure to deliver on key priorities for their party’s liberal base, and the House has begun to stack partisan bills at the Senate’s door. On the other hand, some Democratic senators are hoping to embrace a more bipartisan mode of lawmaking,” Mike DeBonis and Seung Min Kim report. 

• While the Senate is expected to spend the rest of March filling out Biden’s Cabinet, it will take up new legislative business in April — and Schumer has already said he is committed to passing a “big bold agenda,” and he is not waiting for Republicans.
• Republicans haven’t yet blocked a Democratic bill in the evenly split Senate, but “a large and growing number of Democrats are itching for a fight” — including Schumer. 
• Remember the holdouts: Sens. Joe Manchin III (W.Va.) and Krysten Sinema (Ariz.) are the two Democrats who will oppose eliminating the filibuster — at least for now. “While Manchin has openly pondered changes to the rule, Sinema recently told constituents in a letter that she supported preserving it as a means to ‘protect what the Senate was designed to be.’ ” 

• “The White House so far has not said what Biden will turn to next as part of his legislative agenda,” Kim reports. But Psaki signaled both immigration and infrastructure are top priorities. Whatever Biden’s next plans may be, they are already running into trouble. 
• On infrastructure: “The White House has declined to say whether Biden would be open to the fast-track parliamentary measure used for coronavirus relief — called reconciliation — on infrastructure, with officials noting that the president hasn’t even proposed a bill. But two of the most influential forces in the Senate Democratic caucus are colliding on strategy. [Manchin] is insisting that Democrats avoid using reconciliation on infrastructure … [While] Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) … signaled that doing so would be the only way of getting a meaningful infrastructure package accomplished.”
• On immigration: “The prospects of Biden’s immigration bill surviving through Congress intact appear increasingly bleak. House Democratic leaders have privately started to gauge the level of support for the president’s plan — formally called the U.S. Citizenship Act — and found that, at this point, it would struggle to pass. … Many lawmakers also feel that such a massive overhaul is moving too quickly in the House, while moderates fear supporting controversial legislation that has no real path in the Senate.” 
• Biden’s immigration goals still have a lifeline: “While they sort through internal dynamics on the broader overhaul, House Democratic leaders will move smaller, more targeted legislation that would offer a pathway to citizenship for beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and immigrants who have been shielded from deportation under temporary protected status. House Democrats will also pass legislation that offers green cards to farmworkers who don’t have legal status.” 
• Biden’s immigration plan would eventually allow most undocumented immigrants to become citizens. Daniela Santamariña, Danielle Rindler and Joe Fox explain how:

“Finding light in the darkness is the most American thing to do,” Biden said last night as he marked one year of the coronavirus shutdown. 

Sanders is bringing the Amazon union battle to D.C. Sanders, Budget Committee chair, called on Jennifer Bates, a union-supporting worker from Amazon’s warehouse in Bessemer, Ala., to testify next week on income inequality. 

More than 5,800 employees in that Amazon facility are in the middle of a major union drive. Sanders also called on Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to testify. “What you are seeing right now in Bessemer is an example of the richest person in this country spending a whole lot of money to make it harder for ordinary working people to live with dignity and safety,” Sanders told Jay Greene. Bezos had not replied to the request to testify by yesterday afternoon, Sanders said. (Bezos owns The Post). 

Tucker Carlson is now feuding with the Pentagon. This week, Carlson criticized Biden’s announcement that the military is developing new uniforms to accommodate women’s hairstyles and pregnancies. “So we’ve got new hairstyles and maternity flight suits,” said Carlson, per the New York Post. “Pregnant women are going to fight our wars. It’s a mockery of the US military.” 

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby pushed back against Carlson’s comments, saying the military “is the greatest the world has ever seen because of its diversity. “What we absolutely won’t do is take personnel advice from a talk show host or the Chinese military. Maybe those folks feel like they have something to prove — that’s on them,” he said. 

Biden and first lady Jill Biden are scheduled to travel to Wilmington, Del., where they will spend the weekend. 

Seth Meyers marked the one-year anniversary of all of us being at home: