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Should vaccinated people mask up with COVID-19 cases rising?
Should vaccinated people mask up with COVID-19 cases rising?
Yes. In places where the virus is surging, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that vaccinated people return to wearing masks in public indoor places.
Read:Bhutan fully vaccinates 90% of eligible adults within a week
The CDC recently announced the updated guidance, citing new evidence that vaccinated people who get breakthrough infections could carry enough virus in their noses and throats to infect others.
COVID-19 vaccines greatly reduce the chance of severe illness and death and remain effective against variants, including the now predominant delta variant. But it’s still possible to get infected.
Masking could prevent the spread of the virus to children too young for vaccination and people with weak immune systems.
In short, the vaccine protects you. A mask protects others in case you are carrying the virus without knowing it.
Read: Tokyo governor urges youth to get vaccinated to slow surge
You can find out your county’s level of coronavirus transmission at the CDC’s COVID-19 data tracker website. The CDC recommends indoor masking in areas where transmission is substantial or high. Those areas are marked in orange and red on the site.
The CDC also recommends indoor masks for all teachers, staff, students and visitors to schools, regardless of vaccination status.
Biden woos working class with new ‘buy American’ efforts
President Joe Biden checked out the big rigs at a Pennsylvania truck factory on Wednesday and promised workers that his policies would reshape the U.S economy for the working class — a message clearly aimed at a group of voters who have drifted to Republicans.
Biden highlighted new “buy American” rules from his administration that he said would put a new muscle behind an initiative that he argued had become a “hollow promise” in recent years.
“They got a new sheriff in town,” Biden said after touring Mack Truck’s Lehigh Valley operations facility. He said the effort would help create jobs, a central thrust of his administration’s “build back better” program.
Administration officials, who have made manufacturing jobs a priority, believe Democrats’ political prospects next year might hinge on whether Biden succeeds in reinvigorating a sector that has steadily lost jobs for more than four decades.
Read:Russia and China vexing Biden
Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump each said his policies would save manufacturing jobs, yet none of them broke the long-term trend in a lasting way.
The administration is championing a $973 billion infrastructure package, $52 billion for computer chip production, sweeping investments in clean energy and the use of government procurement contracts to create factory jobs.
On the visit, Biden heard about Mack’s electric garbage trucks.
“The ability to build and sell these new trucks would be helped by the president’s proposed investment in buy American production incentives for domestic electric vehicle manufacturing,” said White House deputy press secretary Karine Jeanne-Pierre.
The plant was neatly organized, with the thousands of truck parts organized in aisles and the hulls of half-finished trucks awaiting the president’s inspection. The plant was silent other than the whir of fans. Work was halted as part of a two-week hiatus during which Biden visited.
The president won Lehigh County in the 2020 election, but he is facing the perpetual challenge of past administrations to revive a manufacturing sector at the heart of American identity. Failure to bring back manufacturing jobs could further hurt already ailing factory towns across the country and possibly imperil Democrats’ chances in the 2022 midterm elections.
Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., said Biden should siphon off unspent money from his $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package to cover the investments in infrastructure, instead of relying on tax increases and other revenue-raisers to do so.
Read: Biden says US combat mission in Iraq to conclude by year end
“Hopefully, he will use his visit to learn about the real, physical infrastructure needs of Pennsylvanians — and the huge sums of unused ‘COVID’ funds which should pay for that infrastructure,” Toomey said in a statement.
Layoffs of white factory workers led communities to vote for Republican challengers and turn against Democratic incumbents, according to a 2021 research paper by McGill University’s Leonardo Baccini and Georgetown University’s Stephen Weymouth. They found a connection between deindustrialization and greater racial division as white voters interpreted the layoffs as a loss of social status.
Areas with more factory layoffs also became more pessimistic about the entire economy. The trends documented in the research were most pronounced in 2016, when Donald Trump won the White House while emphasizing blue-collar identity and racial differences.
One challenge for Democrats is that they’re not being forced to deal with the most recent manufacturing job losses, but layoffs that began decades ago.
“Biden would benefit from an improved manufacturing jobs outlook,” Weymouth said. “But a lot of economists think that many of these jobs are gone for good. And so, it’s an uphill battle. There’s alternatives: The president can pursue a more substantial social safety net for people who lose their jobs or investments in these communities that declined for decades.”
The Biden administration is trying to help domestic manufacturers by proposing to increase the amount of American-made goods being purchased by the federal government.
The administration is proposing that any products bought by the government must have 60% of the value of their component parts manufactured in the United States. The proposal would gradually increase that figure to 75% by 2029, significantly higher than the 55% threshold under current law.
Read: Biden stumps for McAuliffe in early test of political clout
Manufacturing has improved since the depths of more than a year ago during the coronavirus pandemic-induced recession. Labor Department data show that factories have regained about two-thirds of the 1.4 million manufacturing jobs lost because of the outbreak. Factory output as tracked by the Federal Reserve is just below its pre-pandemic levels.
But the manufacturing sector — especially autos — is facing serious challenges.
Automakers are limited by a global shortage of computer chips. Without the chips that are needed for a modern vehicle, the production of cars and trucks has dropped from an annual pace of 10.79 million at the end of last year to 8.91 million in June, a decline of nearly 18% as measured by the Fed. Analysts at IHS Market estimate that the supply of semiconductors will only stabilize and recover in the second half of 2022, right as the midterm races become more intense.
For the past several decades, presidents have pledged to bring back factory jobs without much success. Manufacturing employment peaked in 1979 at nearly 19.6 million jobs, only to slide downward with steep declines after the 2001 recession and the 2007-09 Great Recession. The figure now stands at 12.3 million.
Western wildfires calm down in cool weather, but losses grow
Cooler weather on Tuesday helped calm two gigantic wildfires in the U.S. West, but a tally of property losses mounted as authorities got better access to a tiny California community savaged by flames last weekend and to a remote area of southern Oregon where the nation’s largest blaze is burning.
Scientists say evidence shows Oregon’s Bootleg Fire generated its own “fire tornado” this month, with winds higher than 111 mph (179 kph). The rare phenomenon is associated with extreme fire behavior spawned by dry, hot conditions, experts said.
Meanwhile, teams reviewing damage from the massive Dixie Fire in the mountains of Northern California have so far counted 36 structures destroyed and seven damaged in the remote community of Indian Falls, said Nick Truax, an incident commander for the fire. It’s unclear if that figure included homes or smaller buildings.
The assessment was about half done, Truax said in an online briefing Monday night, and the work depends on fire activity.
Read: Wildfires blasting through West draw states to lend support
The Dixie Fire has scorched more than 325 square miles (842 square kilometers), an area bigger than New York City, and it was partially contained Tuesday. More than 10,000 homes were threatened in the region about 175 miles (282 kilometers) northeast of San Francisco.
A historic drought and recent heat waves tied to climate change have made wildfires harder to fight in the American West. Scientists say climate change has made the region much warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive.
An inversion layer, which is a cap of relatively warmer air over cooler air, trapped smoke over much of the fire Monday, and the shade helped lower temperatures and keep humidity up, incident meteorologist Julia Ruthford said.
Similar smoke conditions were expected through Tuesday. Monsoon moisture was streaming in over the region but only light showers were likely near the fire. A return to hotter, drier weather was expected later in the week.
The Dixie Fire, burning mostly on federal land, is among dozens of large blazes in the U.S.
With so many fires, officials have to prioritize federal resources, said Nickie Johnny, incident commander for the Dixie’s east section, crediting help from local governments and California’s firefighting agency.
“I just wanted to thank them for that because we are strapped federally with resources all over the nation,” she said.
Authorities also were hopeful that cool temperatures, increased humidity and isolated showers will help them make more progress against the Bootleg Fire in Oregon. Crews have it more than halfway contained after it scorched 640 square miles (1,657 square kilometers) of remote land.
Read:Western wildfires: Crews make progress on huge Oregon blaze
“The mild weather will have a short-term calming effect on the fire behavior. But due to the extremely dry conditions and fuels, as the week progresses and temperatures rise, aggressive fire behavior is likely to quickly rebound,” a situation report said Tuesday.
The lightning-sparked fire has destroyed 161 homes, 247 outbuildings and 342 vehicles in Klamath and Lake counties, the report said, cautioning that the numbers could increase as firefighters work through the inner area of the fire.
On July 18, a day of especially extreme fire activity, the blaze spawned a fire tornado in the Fremont-Winema National Forest, scientists say. The phenomenon occurred when smoke rose nearly 6 miles (10 kilometers) into the sky and formed giant clouds, Bruno Rodriguez, a meteorologist assigned to the Bootleg Fire, told the Herald and News of Klamath Falls, Oregon.
Those massive clouds, combined with intense heat from the fire, intensified the updraft and pulled rotating hot air from the Earth’s surface to the base of the clouds, creating a tornado, Rodriguez said.
Neil Lareau, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Nevada, told the newspaper that extensive tree damage, scoured road surfaces and damage to the soil indicate winds speeds between 111 mph (178 kph) and 135 mph (217 kph).
“Prior to last year, there had only been two well-documented tornado-strength vortices generated by fires,” said Lareau, who began studying the phenomenon after fire-generated tornadoes occurred last fall. “A decade ago, we could not have even imagined this. But here we are.”
Scientists told the newspaper that fire-generated tornadoes need to urgent study because it’s suspected they can hurl embers far afield and potentially start new blazes.
The National Weather Service confirmed the tornado but said the agency wasn’t sure how to categorize it. That’s because, unlike a normal tornado that could travel for miles, the winds from a fire tornado will stop as soon as it gets too far from the fire’s heat.
Read:Wildfire smoke clouds sky, hurts air quality on East Coast
“If they don’t have the heat from the fire, then they don’t have the updraft. Without the updraft, it would weaken very quickly,” said Ryan Sandler, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Medford, Oregon.
Elsewhere, high heat was expected to return to the northern Rocky Mountains, where thick smoke from many wildfires drove pollution readings to unhealthy levels.
Unhealthy air was recorded around most of Montana’s larger cities — Billings, Butte, Bozeman and Missoula — and in portions of northern Wyoming and eastern Idaho, according data from U.S. government air monitoring stations.
In California, the 106-square-mile (275-square-kilometer) Tamarack Fire south of Lake Tahoe was chewing through timber and chaparral but was more than halfway contained. Evacuation orders for about 2,000 residents on both sides of the California-Nevada line have been lifted. At least 23 buildings have burned.
Biden says US combat mission in Iraq to conclude by year end
President Joe Biden said Monday the U.S. combat mission in Iraq will conclude by the end of the year, an announcement that reflects the reality on the ground more than a major shift in U.S. policy.
Even before Biden took office, the main U.S. focus has been assisting Iraqi forces, not fighting on their behalf. And Biden did not say if he planned to reduce the number of troops in Iraq, now about 2,500.
Read: US airstrikes target Iran-backed militias in Syria, Iraq
The announcement comes on the heels of Biden’s decision to withdraw fully from Afghanistan nearly 20 years after the U.S. launched that war in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Together, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have heavily taxed the U.S. military and kept it from devoting more attention to a rising China, which the Biden administration calls the biggest long-term security challenge.
For years, U.S. troops have played support roles in Iraq and in neighboring Syria, which was the origin of the Islamic State group that swept across the border in 2014 and captured large swaths of Iraqi territory, prompting the U.S. to send troops back to Iraq that year.
Speaking to reporters during an Oval Office session with Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, Biden said his administration remained committed to a partnership with Iraq — a relationship that has been increasingly complicated by Iranian-backed Iraqi militia groups. The militias want all U.S. troops out of Iraq immediately and have periodically attacked bases that house American troops.
Dan Caldwell, a senior adviser to Concerned Veterans for America, said U.S. troops will remain at risk.
“Regardless of whether their deployment is called a combat mission, U.S. troops will remain under regular attack as long as they remain in Iraq,” Caldwell said in a statement. “An American military presence in Iraq is not necessary for our safety and only risks the loss of more American life.”
Biden said the U.S. military will continue to assist Iraq in its fight against the Islamic State group, or ISIS. A joint U.S.-Iraq statement said the security relationship will be focused on training, advising and intelligence-sharing.
“Our shared fight against ISIS is critical for the stability of the region and our counterterrorism operation will continue, even as we shift to this new phase we’re going to be talking about,” Biden said.
The shift from a U.S. combat role to one focused on training and advising the Iraqi security forces was announced in April, when a joint U.S.-Iraqi statement said this transition allowed for the removal from Iraq of any remaining U.S. combat forces on a timetable to be determined later. It did not specify what combat functions the U.S. was engaged in then, nor did Biden get into such specifics on Monday.
“We’re not going to be, by the end of the year, in a combat mission,” he said.
Read: Iraq: American troops leaving Syria cannot stay in Iraq
White House press secretary Jen Psaki declined to say how many troops would remain in Iraq by year’s end.
“The numbers will be driven by what is needed for the mission over time, so it is more about moving to a more advising and training capacity from what we have had over the last several years,” she said.
The U.S. troop presence has stood at about 2,500 since late last year when then-President Donald Trump ordered a reduction from 3,000.
The Iraqi government in 2017 declared victory over the Islamic State group, which is now a shell of its former self. Still, it has shown it can carry out high-casualty attacks. Last week, the group claimed responsibility for a roadside bombing that killed at least 30 people and wounded dozens in a busy suburban Baghdad market.
In his remarks alongside Biden, al-Kadhimi thanked the United States for its support.
Back home, al-Kadhimi faces no shortage of problems. Iranian-backed militias operating inside Iraq have stepped up attacks against U.S. forces in recent months, and a series of devastating hospital fires that left dozens of people dead and soaring coronavirus infections have added fresh layers of frustration for the nation.
For al-Kadhimi, the ability to offer the Iraqi public a date for the end of the U.S. combat presence could be a feather in his cap before elections scheduled for October.
Biden administration officials say al-Kadhimi also deserves credit for improving Iraq’s standing in the Mideast. Last month, King Abdullah II of Jordan and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi visited Baghdad for joint meetings — the first time an Egyptian president has made an official visit since the 1990s, when ties were severed after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.
The Iraqi prime minister made clear before his trip to Washington that he believes it’s time for the U.S. to wind that mission down.
“There is no need for any foreign combat forces on Iraqi soil,” al-Kadhimi told The Associated Press last weekend.
The U.S. mission of training and advising Iraqi forces has its most recent origins in President Barack Obama’s decision in 2014 to send troops back to Iraq. The move was made in response to the Islamic State group’s takeover of large portions of western and northern Iraq and a collapse of Iraqi security forces that appeared to threaten Baghdad. Obama had fully withdrawn U.S. forces from Iraq in 2011, eight years after the U.S. invasion.
Pentagon officials for years have tried to balance what they see as a necessary military presence to support the Iraqi government’s fight against IS with domestic political sensitivities in Iraq to a foreign troop presence.
The vulnerability of U.S. troops was demonstrated most dramatically in January 2020 when Iran launched a ballistic missile attack on al-Asad air base in western Iraq. No Americans were killed, but dozens suffered traumatic brain injury from the blasts. That attack came shortly after a U.S. drone strike killed Iranian military commander Qassim Soleimani and senior Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis at Baghdad International Airport.
Senior US diplomat in China for talks on fraught ties
America’s No. 2 diplomat has arrived in China to discuss the fraught relationship between the countries on Monday with two top Foreign Ministry officials.
Wendy Sherman, the deputy secretary of state, will hold separate meetings with Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng, who is in charge of U.S.-China relations, and Foreign Minister Wang Yi at a closed-off resort hotel in the city of Tianjin.
Read: US, China reach agreement to resume economic talks
She is the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit China since President Joe Biden took office six months ago. Relations between the countries deteriorated sharply under his predecessor, Donald Trump, and the two sides remain at odds over a host of issues including technology, cybersecurity, human rights and other issues.
In an interview Saturday, Wang accused the U.S. of adopting a superior attitude and using its strength to pressure other countries.
“China would never accept any country that claims to be superior to others,” he told China’s Phoenix Television. “If the U.S. has not learned to treat other countries equally, China and the international community have the responsibility to help the U.S. learn how to do this.”
Read: US-China tensions threaten global climate change efforts
Biden administration officials have said the goal of the talks is not to negotiate specific issues but to keep high-level communications channels open. The U.S. wants to ensure that guardrails are in place to prevent competition between the countries from becoming conflict, they said.
A possible meeting between Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to be on the agenda, possibly on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Rome at the end of October.
Sherman, who arrived Sunday evening from Mongolia, tweeted “heartfelt condolences (from the United States) to those who have lost loved ones” in severe storms and flooding last week that killed at least 63 people in Henan province.
Her meetings follow an initial and highly contentious meeting in March in Anchorage, Alaska, where Wang and veteran Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi flew to meet Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan.
John Kerry, the Biden administration’s special climate envoy, traveled to Shanghai for meetings with his Chinese counterpart in April.
Wildfires blasting through West draw states to lend support
Out-of-state crews headed to Montana Saturday to battle a blaze that injured five firefighters as the U.S. West struggled with a series of fires that have ravaged rural lands and destroyed homes.
Progress was being made on the nation’s largest blaze, the Bootleg Fire in Oregon, but less than half of it was contained, fire officials said. The growth of the sprawling fire had slowed, but increased fire activity was expected Saturday, and thousands of homes remained threatened on its eastern side, authorities said.
Read:Western wildfires: Crews make progress on huge Oregon blaze
“This fire is resistant to stopping at dozer lines,” Jim Hanson, fire behavior analyst, said Saturday in a news release from the Oregon Department of Forestry. “With the critically dry weather and fuels we are experiencing, firefighters are having to constantly reevaluate their control lines and look for contingency options.”
In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday declared a state of emergency for four northern counties because of wildfires that he said were causing “conditions of extreme peril to the safety of persons and property.” The proclamation opens the way for more state support.
On Saturday, fire crews from California and Utah were headed to Montana, Gov. Greg Gianforte announced. Five firefighters were injured Thursday when swirling winds blew flames back on them as they worked on the Devil’s Creek fire burning in rough, steep terrain near the rural town of Jordan.
They remained hospitalized Friday. Bureau of Land Management spokesperson Mark Jacobsen declined to release the extent of their injuries, and attempts to learn their conditions Saturday were unsuccessful. Three of the firefighters are U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service crew members from North Dakota, and the other two are U.S. Forest Service firefighters from New Mexico.
Read:Wildfire smoke clouds sky, hurts air quality on East Coast
In California, the Tamarack Fire south of Lake Tahoe continued to burn through timber and chaparral and threatened communities on both sides of the California-Nevada state line. The fire, sparked by lightning July 4 in Alpine County, has destroyed at least 10 buildings.
In Butte County, California, the Dixie Fire continued to burn in rugged and remote terrain, hampering firefighters’ efforts to contain the blaze as it grows eastward, becoming the state’s largest wildfire so far this year.
Heavy smoke from both huge fires lowered visibility and may at times ground aircraft providing support for fire crews. The air quality south of Lake Tahoe and across the state line into Nevada deteriorated to very unhealthy levels.
In north-central Washington, firefighters battled two blazes in Okanogan County that threatened hundreds of homes and again caused hazardous air quality conditions Saturday. And in northern Idaho, east of Spokane, Washington, a small fire near the Silverwood Theme Park prompted evacuations Friday evening at the park and in the surrounding area. The theme park was back open on Saturday with the fire half contained.
Read:Size of Oregon wildfire underscores vastness of the US West
Although hot weather with afternoon winds posed a continued threat of spreading blazes, weekend forecasts also called for a chance of scattered thunderstorms in California, Utah, Nevada, Arizona and other states. However, forecasters said some could be dry thunderstorms that produce little rain but a lot of lightning, which can spark new blazes.
More than 85 large wildfires were burning around the country, most of them in Western states, and they had burned over 1.4 million acres (2,135 square miles, or more than 553,000 hectares).
Biden stumps for McAuliffe in early test of political clout
President Joe Biden led the kind of campaign rally on Friday that was impossible last year because of the pandemic, speaking before nearly 3,000 people in support of a fellow moderate Democrat whose race for Virginia governor could serve as a test of Biden’s own strength and coattails.
Biden motorcaded across the Potomac River to back Terry McAuliffe, a former governor looking for a second term whose centrist leanings in many ways mirror those of the president. The race is seen as an early measure of voters’ judgment on Democratic control of all branches of the federal government.
The president stood before an enthusiastic and largely unmasked crowd who gathered around a park pavilion and playground on a warm July night. He emphasized that he shared the same vision as McAuliffe about the need for greater public investments in order to drive economic growth. But Biden was also focused on the political stakes.
“You’re not gonna find anyone, I mean anyone, who knows how to get more done for Virginia than Terry,” Biden said. “Off-year election, the country’s looking. This is a big deal.”
Biden pointed to his management of the pandemic and highlighted the economic recovery during the first six months of his term, providing a window into his party’s messaging as it tries to maintain narrow margins next fall in both houses of Congress. He also highlighted the relative popularity of his $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill and called for action on his infrastructure plan, much as he has done in official visits to congressional districts expected to see close races next year.
It was a clear return to politics as normal after 2020, when Biden had to speak to supporters who stayed in their cars at drive-in rallies or give remarks in front of sparse and socially distanced audiences. The rock songs and tightly packed people standing before center stage suggested that Democrats will not be waging campaigns via Zoom meetings and conference calls this year.
Protesters against an oil pipeline interrupted Biden and the president took a shot at his 2020 opponent as he told the crowd to not shout them down.
“It’s not a Trump rally,” Biden said. “Let them holler. No one’s paying attention.”
McAuliffe’s win in his state’s gubernatorial primary was one of a string of recent victories by self-styled pragmatic candidates in relatively low-turnout elections — which tend to draw the most loyal base voters — and his race is being carefully watched by Democrats looking to shape their messaging for next year.
READ: Biden says getting vaccinated ‘gigantically important’
“It’s an important test for the Biden administration. The margins are so small, and he needs to be able to use his clout to help candidates get across the finish line,” said Adrienne Elrod, a senior adviser to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign who also worked on Biden’s inaugural. “His message is simple: that he is delivering on promises on vaccines, record job growth and infrastructure.”
McAuliffe, who previously served as governor from 2014 to 2018, is facing Glenn Youngkin, a political newcomer who made a fortune in private equity. Despite the state trending blue over the last decade, the race is seen as competitive. As one of only two regularly scheduled governor’s races this year, is drawing outsize national attention as a potential measuring stick of voter sentiment ahead of the 2022 midterms.
Biden and McAuliffe profile similarly, as moderate Democrats who don’t necessarily electrify the party’s base but who won their primaries on a promise of electability. The Virginia race could serve as a checkup on Biden’s status, and the Democratic National Committee has pledged to spend $5 million to help McAuliffe’s campaign this year, a clear signal that the White House has prioritized the race.
Youngkin has distanced himself from former President Donald Trump, even as much of the Republican Party remains in the thrall of the former president.
Still, Democrats on Friday repeatedly tried to link Youngkin with Trump, who lost Virginia last year.
“I tell you what, the guy Terry is running against is an acolyte of Donald Trump, for real,” Biden said. “I don’t know where these guys come from.”
Biden has long been an eager campaigner on the road — and on the rope line — during his time as senator and vice president, and emerged as a successful surrogate in 2018 when Democrats won back control of the House.
But the COVID-19 pandemic eliminated campaigning for the bulk of the 2020 race, and the events that were held for the general election stretch run were socially distant and infrequent. As the pandemic receded this spring, Biden, always the most tactile of politicians, has reveled in interacting with people, spending an hour chatting with supporters at a recent Philadelphia event.
Aides said he was eager to do the same in Arlington on Friday. But privately, there was increased worry about the danger posed by the virus’s highly contagious delta variant.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden would follow federal health guidelines, which offer no restrictions for vaccinated individuals.
Biden has pledged to work with Republicans and has spent enormous political energy on the bipartisan infrastructure deal. But he still went after the GOP on Friday, saying it “offers nothing more than fear, lies and broken promises.”
White House aides have pointed to polling that suggests Biden’s agenda is broadly popular with voters of both parties, even though it has received little support from GOP lawmakers in Washington. But Republican strategists cast doubt on whether Biden’s poll numbers would translate into votes.
While both Biden and McAuliffe have been active in Democratic politics for decades, they have relatively few direct political connections, though McAuliffe ran the state campaign for Biden in 2020. But their political and ideological similarities are extensive.
READ: Biden backs Trump rejection of China’s South China Sea claim
Virginia’s off-year elections have always been looked at as a sort of national bellwether, and “with the Democratic nominee being so philosophically close and similar to Biden, many may see Virginia as a stronger bellwether than usual,” said Mark Rozell, a political science professor at George Mason University.
Current Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam, like all Virginia governors, is prohibited from seeking a second consecutive term. The other notable off-year election in 2021, for New Jersey governor, is not expected to be competitive, with Democrats likely maintaining control.
Virus’s impact: More relaxing and thinking, less socializing
The eruption of COVID-19 last year caused the proportion of people working from home in the U.S. to nearly double, with the shift most pronounced among college graduates and workers in such fields as finance and professional services.
The share of employed people working from home shot up from just 22% in 2019 to 42% in 2020, the Labor Department said Thursday.
That was among the striking findings of an annual government survey that documents the far-reaching impact the viral pandemic has had on Americans’ everyday lives since it struck in March of last year. The American Time Use Survey details how people spent their time in 2020, from working to relaxing to sleeping. The survey participants, all of whom are ages 15 or over, are interviewed by phone about everything they did in a 24-hour period leading up to the interview. (For 2020, the report covered only May through December, after the virus caused the suspension of data collection earlier in the year.)
Because of the pandemic and the widespread social distancing it required, people on average spent more time last year sleeping, watching TV, playing games, using a computer and relaxing and thinking — and less time socializing and communicating in person — than in 2019. Adults also spent more hours, on average, caring for children in their household.
Read: What is a COVID-19 vaccine “breakthrough” case?
The survey also lends support to concerns that the pandemic worsened isolation for millions of Americans. With people working from home or attending school online, the time they spent alone increased. Among Americans ages 15 and over, time spent alone each day increased by an average of an hour. For those ages 15 to 19, it rose 1.7 hours per day.
Among workers with at least a bachelor’s degree ages 25 and over, 65% who were employed reported working from home in the 24-hour survey period in 2020 — a 28 percentage point increase from 2019. By contrast, only 19% of employed workers in the same age bracket whose maximum education level is a high school diploma worked at home in 2020, up from 13% in 2019.
The transition to remote work was less common in sectors of the economy that involve face-to-face contact or specialized commercial equipment — from leisure and hospitality to transportation and utilities — than in sectors that do not.
While the share of people working remotely rose for both men and women, the increase was slightly higher among employed women. The share of women working from home jumped by 23 percentage points in 2020 compared with a 16 percentage point increase among men.
More time spent at home, working or otherwise, meant that Americans spent less time on the road. Average time spent on travel, such as commuting to work, declined by 26 minutes per day from 2019 to 2020.
Liana C. Sayer, director of the Maryland Time Use Laboratory at the University of Maryland, suggested that the shift to telework has likely accelerated Americans’ preference for flexibility in setting their work schedules — and perhaps raised expectations that employers will accommodate them.
Read: China rebuffs WHO’s terms for further COVID-19 origins study
“Workers have indicated in surveys done by companies and other research groups that they prefer having the ability to work at home and set their starting time and their ending time as they find most appropriate for their other needs,” Sayer said. “Some are signaling that they don’t really want to go back to life as it was in the office before the pandemic.”
The Labor Department’s annual survey seeks to measure how, where and with whom Americans spend their time. The latest results revealed that the increased time spent on child care in 2020 reflected the cancellation of in-person school instruction, sports and other events for children. Adults whose youngest child was between ages 6 and 12 spent 1.6 hours more per day caring for a child while doing something else as their main activity than in 2019.
At the same time, fewer adults living with children provided child care on a given day in 2020. That might have reflected less time devoted to picking up and dropping off children from in-person activities.
The data also showed increased gender differences in child care: Women spent 13 more minutes a day in 2020 on direct care for children in their household in 2020 compared with 2019, while men spent roughly the same amount of time in 2020 as in 2019.
And women spent 46 minutes more than men doing education-related activities for children in their household in 2020. In 2019, men and women had spent roughly the same amount of time on these activities.
An analysis of the survey data by the Brookings Institution found that mothers of children 12 and under at home spent, on average, more than eight hours on child care. The Brookings analysis also found that working mothers provided 7.4 hours of child care on weekdays in 2020, spending more time than employed fathers, unemployed fathers and fathers not in the labor force.
Read:It was premature to rule out Covid lab leak: WHO
“Child care is now a full-time job for mothers,” said Lauren Bauer, a fellow in economic studies at Brookings. “They’re spending more than eight hours a day doing child care, and their work hours have suffered. Even if they’re juggling both child care responsibilities and working, they’re now working less than they would before.”
With many businesses closed because of public health recommendations, the survey found less time spent at bars, restaurants, grocery stores and shopping malls and more time spent at home. People ages 15 and over also spent more time with members of their own household than in 2019 and fewer hours with everyone else.
People spent, on average, 32 minutes per day more on sports and leisure in 2020 — a function, in part, of the decline in employment and travel during the pandemic. They also watched more TV and benefited from a few more minutes of sleep each day.
“If people are well-rested, I don’t think that’s the worst thing in the world,” said Daniel Hamermesh, an economist at Barnard College who studies the economics of time use. “I’m in favor of more leisure. So I don’t think this implies anything negative about the economy that we didn’t already know.”
Violence, protests overshadow Mass for slain Haitian leader
Demonstrations in Cap-Haitien turned violent on Thursday as gunshots rang out while supporters of slain President Jovenel Moïse blocked roads and demanded justice while threatening to disrupt his upcoming funeral.
A heavily armed police convoy carrying unknown officials rushed through a barricade of flaming tires set up at the end of a bridge, with one vehicle nearly flipping over as it passed through.
“This is real messed up since Jovenel died,” said David Daniel, who stood in the doorway of a restaurant he co-owns as he watched the scene unfold. But he said he doesn’t think the unrest will have the effect demonstrators intend. “Violence has been here in Haiti since I was a kid, so I don’t think violence is going to change anything.”
Read:Violence flares in Haiti ahead of slain president’s funeral
Earlier on Thursday, a priest told mourners at a memorial service Thursday that too much blood is being shed in Haiti as authorities warned of more violence ahead of his funeral.
The Rev. Jean-Gilles Sem spoke to dozens of people wearing white T-shirts emblazoned with Moïse’s picture.
“The killings and kidnappings should stop,” he said, noting that poor communities are the most affected. “We’re tired.”
The Mass at the cathedral in the northern coastal city of Cap-Haitien was about half-full and Moïse supporters kept interrupting as they cried out and accused Haiti’s elite of killing the president.
A man who identified himself as John Jovie stood outside the church with a group of men and threatened more violence if wealthy members of the elite from the capital of Port-au-Prince showed up for the ceremonies.
“We ask them not to come to the funeral,” he said. “If they come, we will cut their heads off. We will bring our guns out of hiding. …We want justice for Moïse.”
The mayor of Cap-Haitien arrived at the cathedral with heavy security as men with high-powered weapons stood watch during the entire Mass.
Read:Haiti's interim prime minister to step down
Nearby, some people signed a blue condolences book that the mayor’s office had set up next to the cathedral as well-wishers stood before a portrait of Moïse and rows of candles whose flames flickered in the hot wind.
“My President. Go in peace. God sees everything. Fight for change,” wrote Louis Judlin, a 36-year-old electrician and father of two.
He said he is unemployed and struggles to find food to feed his children. “Life is truly hard for every Haitian. To eat, to go to school, to have health, transportation,” Judlin said.
On Thursday evening, first lady Martine Moïse and her three children attended a small religious ceremony where government officials including newly installed Prime Minister Ariel Henry offered their condolences. It was her first public appearance since arriving in Cap-Haitien. She did not make any public comments.
The Mass was held a day after violence erupted in Quartier-Morin, located between Cap-Haitien and Moïse’s hometown. Associated Press journalists saw the body of a man whom witnesses said was killed during the protests organized by armed men who blocked roads with large rocks and burning tires.
“That’s the only way we have to demand justice,” Aurélien Stanley, a Moïse supporter, said of the violence. “If we don’t get justice for Jovenel, we will do whatever it takes to stop the funeral from happening.”
Before the Mass began, several people stood at the entrance and shouted, “Justice for Moïse! Justice for Moïse!”
A private funeral for Moïse was planned for Friday as authorities continue to investigate the July 7 attack at the president’s home, in which he was shot several times and his wife seriously wounded.
Read:Martine Moïse, wife of slain president, returns to Haiti
Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department announced the appointment of Daniel Foote, a career member of the Foreign Service, as its special envoy for Haiti.
Foote will “engage with Haitian and international partners to facilitate long-term peace and stability and support efforts to hold free and fair presidential and legislative elections,” State Department spokesperson Ned Price said.
Haiti’s police chief, Léon Charles, said 26 suspects have been arrested so far, including three police officers and 18 former Colombian soldiers. Another seven high-ranking police officials have been detained but not formally arrested as authorities probe why no one in the president’s security detail was injured that night.
Western wildfires: Crews make progress on huge Oregon blaze
The nation’s largest wildfire raged through southern Oregon on Friday but crews were scaling back some night operations as hard work and weaker winds helped reduce the spread of flames even as wildfires continued to threaten homes in neighboring California.
The Bootleg Fire, which has destroyed an area half the size of Rhode Island, was 40% surrounded after burning some 70 homes, mainly cabins, fire officials said.
At least 2,000 homes were ordered evacuated at some point during the fire and an additional 5,000 were threatened.
The upper eastern edge of the blaze continued to move toward Summer Lake, jumping fire lines on Thursday and prompting a local evacuation order for some portions of Lake County to be raised to “go now!,” fire officials said.
Read:Wildfire smoke clouds sky, hurts air quality on East Coast
Winds up to 10 miles per hour (16 kilometers per hour) could drive the flames through timber but not at the pace seen last week, when the wind-driven blaze grew exponentially, fire information officer Angela Goldman said.
The fire, which was sparked by lightning, had been expanding by up to 4 miles (6 kilometers) a day, pushed by strong winds and critically dry weather.
There was good news on the lower portion of the 624-square-mile (1,616-square-kilometer) blaze. Crews had locked in containment lines and on the lower southeastern side, crews were able to gain a substantial foothold, allowing them to cut back to nighttime patrols from what had been a “24-7 run-and-gun” fight, fire information officer Sarah Gracey said.
“For us, that’s a pretty big step,” she said. “It’s not that easy to work in a pitch-black forest in the middle of the night.”
Crews will be able to rest and contribute to dayside attacks, she said.
“We have had day after day of red flag warnings (of extreme fire danger) and today we don’t have a red flag warning,” Gracey said Thursday. However, low humidity and high temperatures remained a concern.
Read:Size of Oregon wildfire underscores vastness of the US West
That side of the blaze also had burned into an area blackened by a previous fire, creating gaps in the fuel and reducing the spread of flames through grass, shrub and timber, Gracey said.
In California, the Tamarack Fire south of Lake Tahoe had burned more than 78 square miles (202 square kilometers) of timber and head-high chaparral in national forest land. It erupted July 4 and was one of nearly two dozen blazes sparked by lightning strikes.
The fire in Alpine County has destroyed at least 10 buildings. Fire officials expected active or extreme fire behavior on Friday because of afternoon gusts and temperatures approaching 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius).
Blowing embers from flames ignited a new spot fire Thursday afternoon that jumped the highway north of Topaz Lake on the California-Nevada line, prompting a new evacuation order at Topaz Lake Estates and neighboring areas.
The fire was less than a mile from the estates, a community of around 1,200 people in Douglas County, Nevada.
“Firefighters on the ground and aircraft continue to battle the growing spot under exceptionally difficult weather and fuel condition,” the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest said in an update.
It estimated the new blaze already had burned nearly 4 square miles (10 square kilometers).
Read:Huge Oregon blaze grows as wildfires burn across western US
New mandatory evacuation orders were issued Thursday in Plumas County west of the Nevada border as the Dixie Fire continued to grow explosively eastward.
“This fire is outpacing us at moments,” Shannon Prather, the incident commander, said Thursday evening.
The fire had burned nearly 177 square miles (458 square kilometers), destroyed at least eight buildings and threatened at least 1,500 more, fire officials said.
Extremely dry conditions and recent heat waves tied to climate change have made wildfires harder to fight. Climate change has made the West much warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive.