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Biden orders more intel investigation of COVID-19 origin
President Joe Biden ordered U.S. intelligence officials to “redouble” their efforts to investigate the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, including any possibility the trail might lead to a Chinese laboratory.
After months of minimizing that possibility as a fringe theory, the Biden administration is joining worldwide pressure for China to be more open about the outbreak, aiming to head off GOP complaints the president has not been tough enough as well as to use the opportunity to press China on alleged obstruction.
Biden asked U.S. intelligence agencies to report back within 90 days, and he told reporters on Thursday that he aimed to release their results publicly. The Democrat directed U.S. national laboratories to assist with the investigation and the intelligence community to prepare a list of specific queries for the Chinese government. He called on China to cooperate with international probes into the origins of the pandemic.
Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, have promoted the theory that the virus emerged from a laboratory accident rather than naturally through human contact with an infected animal in Wuhan, China.
Biden ordered an initial intelligence review in March and upon being presented with its conclusions as part of his regular presidential daily briefing determined more digging was required. He also ordered that excerpts of the assessment be declassified to demonstrate the U.S. government’s commitment to investigating the origins of the pandemic and to increase pressure on China to cooperate, said White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Thursday.
“He felt that it was important given a lot of confusion out there to make public, not only what the (Intelligence Community) had done, but also to expand the investigation for 90 days, add more components of the federal government, including our national labs and our health and medical expertise,” she said. “So that’s exactly what we did.”
Biden in a statement said the majority of the intelligence community had “coalesced” around those two scenarios but “do not believe there is sufficient information to assess one to be more likely than the other.” He revealed that two agencies lean toward the animal link and “one leans more toward” the lab theory, “each with low or moderate confidence.”
“The United States will also keep working with like-minded partners around the world to press China to participate in a full, transparent, evidence-based international investigation and to provide access to all relevant data and evidence,” said Biden.
His statement came after weeks of the administration endeavoring to avoid public discussion of the lab leak theory and privately suggesting it was farfetched.
China on Thursday accused Biden’s administration of now playing politics and shirking its responsibility in calling for a renewed investigation into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, which was first detected in China in late 2019. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said Biden’s order showed the U.S. “does not care about facts and truth, nor is it interested in serious scientific origin tracing.”
In another sign of shifting attitudes on the origins of the virus, the Senate on Wednesday approved two Wuhan lab-related amendments without opposition, attaching them to a largely unrelated bill to increase U.S. investments in innovation.
One of the amendments, from Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., would block U.S. funding of Chinese “gain of function” research on enhancing the severity or transmissibility of a virus. Paul has been critical of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious-disease expert, and aggressively questioned him at a recent Senate hearing over the work in China. The other amendment was from GOP Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa and it would prevent any funding to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
As for the origin of pandemic, Fauci, a White House coronavirus adviser, said Wednesday that he and most others in the scientific community “believe that the most likely scenario is that this was a natural occurrence, but no one knows that 100% for sure.”
“And since there’s a lot of concern, a lot of speculation and since no one absolutely knows that, I believe we do need the kind of investigation where there’s open transparency and all the information that’s available, to be made available, to scrutinize,” Fauci said at a Senate hearing.
Psaki said the White House supports a new World Health Organization investigation in China, but that an effective probe “would require China finally stepping up and allowing access needed to determine the origins.”
Biden still held out the possibility that a firm conclusion may never be reached, given the Chinese government’s refusal to fully cooperate with international investigations.
“The failure to get our inspectors on the ground in those early months will always hamper any investigation into the origin of COVID-19,” he said.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington, without mentioning the Biden order, accused unnamed political forces of being fixated on a blame game while ignoring the urgent need to combat the pandemic.
“Smear campaign and blame shifting are making a comeback, and the conspiracy theory of ‘lab leak’ is resurfacing,” the embassy said in a statement posted Wednesday on its website.
Administration officials continue to harbor strong doubts about the lab leak theory. Rather, they view China’s refusal to cooperate in the investigation — particularly on something of such magnitude — as emblematic of other irresponsible actions on the world stage.
The State Department, which ended one Trump-era probe into the Chinese lab theory this spring, said it was continuing to cooperate with other government agencies and pressed China to cooperate with the world.
“China’s position that their part in this investigation is complete is disappointing and at odds with the rest of the international community that is working collaboratively across the board to bring an end to this pandemic and improve global health security,” said spokesman Ned Price.
The White House also hopes Biden’s commitment to the investigation will stand in contrast to the last administration, which in the earliest days of the pandemic refused to press China to reveal more about the origins and course of the deadly disease because it was fearful of disrupting trade talks in an election year.
Deep-rooted racism, discrimination permeate US military
For Stephanie Davis, who grew up with little, the military was a path to the American dream, a realm where everyone would receive equal treatment. She joined the service in 1988 after finishing high school in Thomasville, Georgia, a small town said to be named for a soldier who fought in the War of 1812.
Over the course of decades, she steadily advanced, becoming a flight surgeon, commander of flight medicine at Fairchild Air Force Base and, eventually, a lieutenant colonel.
But many of her service colleagues, Davis says, saw her only as a Black woman. Or for the white resident colleagues who gave her the call sign of ABW – it was a joke, they insisted – an “angry black woman,” a classic racist trope.
White subordinates often refused to salute her or seemed uncomfortable taking orders from her, she says. Some patients refused to call her by her proper rank or even acknowledge her. She was attacked with racial slurs. And during her residency, she was the sole Black resident in a program with no Black faculty, staff or ancillary personnel.
“For Blacks and minorities, when we initially experience racism or discrimination in the military, we feel blindsided,” Davis said. “We’re taught to believe that it’s the one place where everybody has a level playing field and that we can make it to the top with work that’s based on merit.”
In interviews with The Associated Press, current and former enlistees and officers in nearly every branch of the armed services described a deep-rooted culture of racism and discrimination that stubbornly festers, despite repeated efforts to eradicate it.
The AP found that the military’s judicial system has no explicit category for hate crimes, making it difficult to quantify crimes motivated by prejudice.
The Defense Department also has no way to track the number of troops ousted for extremist views, despite its repeated pledges to root them out. More than 20 people linked to the Jan. 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol were found to have military ties.
The AP also found that the Uniform Code of Military Justice does not adequately address discriminatory incidents and that rank-and-file people of color commonly face courts-martial panels made up of all-white service members, which some experts argue can lead to harsher outcomes.
And racial discrimination doesn’t exist just within the military rank-and-file. Every year, civilians working in the financial, technical and support sectors of the Army, Air Force and Navy file hundreds of complaints alleging race and skin color discrimination, according to an AP analysis of U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission data.
In the fiscal year 2020 alone, the three services received 900 civilian complaints of racial discrimination and over 350 complaints of discrimination by skin color.
In February, Lloyd J. Austin III – a former Army general who now is secretary of defense, the first Black man to serve in the post – ordered commanders and supervisors to take an operational pause for one day to discuss extremism in the ranks with their service members.
Austin gave commanders the latitude to address the matter as they saw fit, but emphasized that discussions should include the meaning of their oath, acceptable behaviors both in and out of uniform, and how service members can report actual or suspected extremist behavior through their chains of command.
A recent poll from The Military Times showed the stand-down was received with mixed reviews. Some service members said their units went “above and beyond,” but others reported their trainers made disparaging comments that undercut the discussions and that the sessions were short and non-interactive.
The Southern Poverty Law Center sent Austin a letter shortly after his order, applauding him for his decisive action but underscoring that systemic change on all military levels is urgent.
“Those who are indoctrinated into white supremacist ideology present a significant threat to national security and the safety of our communities,” SPLC President Margaret Huang wrote.
The AP reached out to the Defense Department multiple times to learn what proactive measures it was taking to stamp out racism, discrimination and extremism, but did not receive a response by the publication deadline, even though the first outreach was May 5.
When Davis was medically retired by the Air Force in 2019 after more than two decades of service, she felt ground down by overt racism and retaliated against for accusing a superior of sexually assaulting her.
She noted how insidious racism can be to members of the ranks – service members entrust their lives to their fellow troops, and a lack of cohesion in a unit can be deadly.
“It creates a harmful and dangerous work environment,” Davis said. “And a lot of us suffer in silence because we feel like there’s nothing that can be done.”
In the midst of last year’s summer of unrest sparked by police killings of Black Americans across the nation, Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, who is also the Department of Defense’s Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told congressional leaders the military cannot afford racism or discrimination.
“We who wear the cloth of our nation understand that cohesion is a force multiplier,” Milley said. “Divisiveness leads to defeat. As one of our famous presidents said, ‘A house divided does not stand.’”
Austin pledged to rid the ranks of “racists and extremists” during his confirmation hearing before Congress, which came on the heels of the Capitol insurrection.
“The job of the Department of Defense is to keep America safe from our enemies,” he said. “But we can’t do that if some of those enemies lie within our own ranks.”
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It’s standard custom for enlisted personnel to show their respect to higher-ranking colleagues by offering salutes that are held until the gesture is returned.
When Marine Maj. Tyrone Collier was a newly minted second lieutenant and judge advocate, he had a profound experience with that practice. Collier, a Black man, was at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall in Virginia when he was saluted by a Black enlisted Marine. But even after Collier acknowledged the gesture, the salute continued. Puzzled, Collier asked why the Marine held it for so long.
“He said, ‘Sir, I just have to come clean with something. ... We never see Black officers. We never see people like you and it makes me extraordinarily proud,’” Collier recalled.
“You can imagine what it’s like for a Black enlisted Marine who, for example, might want to consider becoming a warrant officer or a commissioned officer or who served under commander after commander and received so few opportunities to see people that look like them in higher ranks,” Collier said. “Representation really does matter.”
Though that prolonged salute took place in 2010, the racial picture has not improved much since.
At the end of 2020, the Defense Department’s Diversity and Inclusion Board released a report aimed at identifying ways to improve racial and ethnic diversity in the U.S. military.
Among the report’s findings: The enlisted ranks of the active and reserve military were “slightly more racially and ethnically diverse than its U.S. civilian counterparts.” But not the officer corps. Furthermore, it found that the civilian population eligible to become commissioned officers was “less racially and ethnically diverse than the civilian population eligible for enlisted service.”
The breakdown of all active commissioned officers: 73% white; 8% each Black and Hispanic; 6% Asian; 4% multiracial; and less than 1% Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander, American Indian or Alaska Native. And the diversity gap widened the higher individuals moved up in the ranks.
The report emphasized the increasing importance of the representation of minorities reflecting the nation’s morphing demographics, saying the Defense Department “must ensure that all service members have access to opportunities to succeed and advance into leadership positions.”
Several Black officers interviewed by the AP said the culture must give way if they are ever to flourish.
While serving in Afghanistan, one Marine officer recalled being questioned by a white colleague about why he was conversing with fellow Black officers. “My response to him was ‘I don’t ask you why you’re always hanging out with white officers,’” said the Marine, who asked not to be named because he remains on active duty. “Why can’t they just be officers? Why the qualifier?”
Thomas Hobbs, an infantry colonel who retired after 27 years of service in the Marine Corps in 2018, was among the officers interviewed who spoke of the pressures of trying to blend into an overwhelmingly “white male culture,” while also feeling the need to outperform white officers to negate racial stereotypes.
Hobbs said the Marines have done better than other branches of the service in recruiting Black candidates into the officer corps, but noted that “many of them don’t stay in the military past their 10th year.”
“At the moment, we have more captains than we ever had before,” he said, “but our field grade levels are actually going down. Why don’t they stay in? Because they’re exhausted from having to act a certain way all the time and they can never be themselves.”
The Marine who remains on active duty also called it “exhausting,” adding “not only do you have to deal with your own things but whenever a Black enlisted Marine gets in trouble, they will come to you and say, ‘Oh man, what’s wrong with these guys?’ Coming to you like you’re the expert on everything Black.”
Collier said he felt pressure to act differently from the first moments he was recruited, recalling an encounter at a formal dinner with a Marine major trying to bring him into the service.
“I was one of two Black men who were applying … and he and I were chatting, and the selection officer kind of mentioned to us, ’Hey, you guys might not want to isolate yourselves in this way because it might not look good,’” Collier said. “I mean, this is one of my first experiences involving the Marine Corps and I have a Marine major telling me I can’t talk to another Black person without worrying about how people will look at us if we’re purposely isolating ourselves from the group.”
Other service members of color detailed incidents in which they said they were discouraged by superiors from openly embracing their cultures. Some said they were told to avoid speaking languages other than English to not offend their mostly white colleagues.
Former Air Force Master Sgt. Ricardo Lemos, who was medically discharged in 2019, said a superior once discouraged him from speaking to his mother in Spanish on the phone in the office “because people can’t understand you.”
And some Black women detailed the challenges they faced navigating a culture that often labels them as “aggressive or difficult” and their natural hair as unkempt or unprofessional.
DeMarcus Gilliard, a 34-year-old former Marine captain, told the AP that he felt an unspoken pressure to prove himself better than his peers when he entered the Basic School, where new officers learn the ropes, feeling like a symbol of Black Americans.
But he said he never experienced overt racism there and credits the Marine Corps for making strides toward diversifying its top ranks.
“It’s a great idea, ‘I don’t see color,’ but it actually is pretty dismissive. And I think not talking about issues of race actually exacerbates the problem and we need to be able to talk about these things,” said Gilliard. “I think the Marine Corps would be a great place to do it.”
The Basic School told the AP that sessions on diversity and inclusion are a core part of the training it offers, including “discussions about the negative impact bias has on leadership, decision-making and cohesiveness.”
Last year, Gen. David Berger , who became the top general of the Marine Corps in 2019, used the occasion of the Marine Corps Association’s annual Modern Day Marine expo to drive home the message that diversifying the service will save lives.
“I am absolutely convinced: Too much similarity, too much that we look all the same, think the same, got the same background – we’re going to get killed because we’re going to end up with solutions that we’re all familiar with, but they’re easy to counter,” Berger said.
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Racism in the ranks is not merely a modern stain. More than a half-century ago in 1971, Frank W. Render, a Black man who was assistant secretary of defense, resigned over what he viewed as unequal treatment of people of color.
That same year, the Defense Department created what is now known as the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute – the Pentagon’s premier agency for education and training programs covering diversity and inclusion within the U.S. military.
One of its tools is an anonymous, voluntary “organizational climate” survey that offers a snapshot of a unit’s institutional effectiveness and provides commanders with insight into diversity and inclusion issues within their ranks and how they are addressed.
“Racist, sexual and bigoted jokes are a daily occurrence in my ‘work place,’” a Marine at California’s Camp Pendleton wrote in one December 2017 survey. “Very little has really ever been done to prevent it.” Another Marine said slurs were commonly uttered by officers and enlisted colleagues with no repercussions.
But not everyone is comfortable filling out the surveys or with being honest. Women assigned to Navy SEAL units, for example, fear they can be identified since the surveys break down demographics by gender, rank and race and not many women are assigned to special operation units.
Congress and the Defense Department have mandated that the surveys be conducted annually or whenever a unit changes commanders, but response rates vary widely across units, the surveys do not fall under the Federal Records Act and they are destroyed after three years.
Using multiple Freedom of Information Act requests, the AP managed to collect surveys for the past four years, concentrating on the eleven aircraft carriers in the U.S. Navy fleet due to their large population size, which can mimic a small floating city with more than 5,000 personnel.
In surveys collected from 2017, 265 sailors from the USS Abraham Lincoln, the USS George Washington, the USS John C. Stennis, the USS Nimitz and the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower said they personally experienced racial discrimination. But in the fall of that year, the discrimination question softened, moving from pointed inquiries to broadly asking whether discrimination “does not occur.”
Since that change, in 2019, the latest complete year obtained by AP, more than 1,600 sailors – or 1 in 5 – disagreed, saying racial discrimination did take place on their ships, with nearly a third reporting racial jokes, comments or slurs. Nearly 1 in 4 sailors said they could not use their chain of command to report incidents without fear of retaliation or reprisal, and 4 out of every 10 said discipline is unfairly administered.
Out of the 11 aircraft carriers, the George Washington, John C. Stennis and Abraham Lincoln performed worst when sailors were asked about racial discrimination and whether they could safely report harassment. In 2019 on the George Washington, for instance, 30% of sailors said unequal treatment occurred based on race, color or national origin.
The AP’s request to interview a representative of the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute was referred to the Pentagon, which did not provide anyone with knowledge of the workings of the command climate surveys.
In a statement, the Navy called diversity a “key component to maintaining our highest state of readiness,” adding that “certainly our military is better served when it reflects the nation it serves and all of its members are treated with dignity and respect.”
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As a young airman, Nick Shands didn’t initially think much of it when he received a request to report to the medical treatment facility on Mountain Home Air Force Base. But when he arrived, he thought it was strange that he saw only a handful of superiors and a large dumpster. His task: Climb in and sift through the garbage for documents containing personally identifiable information.
Shands, one of the few Black airmen on the Idaho base, was stunned by the order but clambered over the side for what turned out to be a nearly all-day task, as his superiors watched him search fruitlessly.
He said it was just one incident among several on the nearly all-white base where he felt singled out, including being told repeatedly that he wasn’t “built” for the military.
“If it was for the purpose of to embarrass and to mentally break you, I guess that’s what they tried to do,” he said.
Shands said targeted racism and discrimination continued after he left Idaho and served on different bases, leading him to depart the military in 2018. He believes a tough road lies ahead for the Defense Department and Congress, which provides oversight, to address structural racism in the military and prevent other service members from suffering as he did.
But a round of sweeping changes to the National Defense Authorization Act – which primarily funds and lays out policies governing the Defense Department and military services – could present a unique opportunity to begin to turn the tide toward systemic change.
A bill that was passed earlier this year ordered the Secretary of Defense to devise a plan to remove all names, symbols, displays and monuments that honor the Confederacy, including the renaming of military bases such as Fort Benning and Fort Hood that honor Confederate leaders.
“Several years ago, they uncovered a cell of white supremacists down at Fort Bragg,” U.S. House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn recalled in an interview with the AP. “Were they there because of the attitudes they brought with them or were they celebrating the fact that Fort Bragg is named after a segregationist?
“That’s one reason those of us here in Congress feel that we need to get rid of all of the institutionalization and the celebration of these racist attitudes,” Clyburn said.
Buried deep within the more than 1,400-page bill are mechanisms aimed at transforming the way the military addresses racism and extremism from within. It lays out tracking and reporting requirements for supremacist, extremist and criminal gang activity, and creates an inspector general to oversee diversity and inclusion efforts.
And it says the military must add questions to its climate surveys that explicitly ask about racism, antisemitism and supremacism.
In addition, Shands believes the military – like the nation it is sworn to protect – also needs to do some deep soul-searching.
Though he has moved on with his life, he carries humiliation and pain that he cannot erase.
Still, he will always cherish aspects of his military career. As a public health instructor with the USAF School of Aerospace Medicine, he had a direct impact on students eager to make a change in the world. He also met his wife in the military.
After the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis sparked protests that swept the globe, Shands finally confronted one of his former superiors – a white woman involved with the dumpster task more than a decade ago.
After the woman posted in a private military Facebook group that “Black Lives Matter,” Shands reached out to remind her of the incident, telling her he hoped it didn’t take the “murders of Black humans” to awaken her to the discrimination and racism that exists in both America and the Air Force – including the discrimination she exerted upon him.
The woman acknowledged she did not treat Shands well and had been “incredibly ignorant to acknowledging and/or recognizing many things, including systemic racism and the presence of it in the Air Force,” according to the screenshots reviewed by the AP.
For Shands, the conversation was cathartic, as others chimed in to offer support. But it also brought home the dualities facing Black Americans and other people of color, inside and out of the military, who are trying to navigate a nation riddled by racism.
“You’re not going to escape racism anywhere in this country,” he said. “The best interpretation I’ve ever heard of being in the military, especially a minority or a person of color in the military, is that the military is a microcosm of regular society.”
Killer of 8 in California had talked of workplace attacks
An employee who gunned down eight people at a California rail yard and then killed himself as law enforcement rushed in had talked about killing people at work more than a decade ago, his ex-wife said.
“I never believed him, and it never happened. Until now,” a tearful Cecilia Nelms told The Associated Press on Wednesday following the 6:30 a.m. attack at a light rail facility for the Valley Transportation Authority.
“When our deputies went through the door, initially he was still firing rounds. When our deputy saw him, he took his life,” Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith told reporters.
The sheriff’s office is next door to the rail yard, which serves the county of more than 1 million people in the heart of the Silicon Valley.
Read:Authorities ID 8 victims of California railyard shooting
The attacker was identified as 57-year-old Samuel Cassidy, according to two law enforcement officials. Investigators offered no immediate word on a possible motive but his ex-wife said he used to come home from work resentful and angry over what he perceived as unfair assignments.
“He could dwell on things,” she said. The two were married for about 10 years until a 2005 divorce filing and she hadn’t been in touch with Cassidy for about 13 years, Nelms said.
It was the 15th mass killing in the nation this year, all of them shootings that have claimed at least four lives each for a total of 86 deaths, according to a database compiled by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University.
At the White House, President Joe Biden ordered flags to be flown at half-staff and urged Congress to act on legislation to curb gun violence.
“Every life that is taken by a bullet pierces the soul of our nation. We can, and we must, do more,” Biden said in a statement.
Gov. Gavin Newsom visited the site and then spoke emotionally about the country’s latest mass killing.
“There’s a numbness some of us are feeling about this. There’s a sameness to this,” he said. “It begs the damn question of what the hell is going on in the United States of America?”
The shooting took place in two buildings and killed employees who had been bus and light rail operators, mechanics, linemen and an assistant superintendent over the course of their careers. One had worked for the agency since 1999.
The Santa Clara County Office of the Medical Examiner-Coroner identified the victims as Paul Delacruz Megia, 42; Taptejdeep Singh, 36; Adrian Balleza, 29; Jose Dejesus Hernandez, 35; Timothy Michael Romo, 49; Michael Joseph Rudometkin, 40; Abdolvahab Alaghmandan, 63, and Lars Kepler Lane, 63.
Another man wounded in the attack was in critical condition at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, spokesperson Joy Alexiou said.
Singh had worked as a light rail train driver for eight or nine years and had a wife, two small children and many family members, said his cousin, Bagga Singh.
Read:2 killed in shooting at Wisconsin casino; gunman slain
“We heard that he chose the people to shoot, but I don’t know why they choose him because he has nothing to do with him,” he said.
San Jose City Councilman Raul Peralez said Rudometkin was a close friend.
“There are no words to describe the heartache we are feeling right now, especially for his family,” he wrote on Facebook. “Eight families are feeling this same sense of loss tonight and our entire community is mourning as well.”
The shooter had more than one gun, county District Attorney Jeff Rosen said.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether he had obtained the guns legally.
In court documents, an ex-girlfriend described Cassidy as volatile and violent, with major mood swings because of bipolar disorder that became worse when he drank heavily.
Several times while he was drunk, Cassidy forced himself on her sexually despite her refusals, pinning her arms with his body weight, the woman alleged in a 2009 sworn statement filed after Cassidy had sought a restraining order against her. The documents were obtained by The San Francisco Chronicle.
The Associated Press generally does not name people who say they have been sexually assaulted.
Cassidy had worked for Valley Transportation Authority since at least 2012, according to the public payroll and pension database Transparent California, first as a mechanic from 2012 to 2014, then as someone who maintained substations.
Officials also were investigating a house fire that broke out shortly before the shooting, Davis said. Public records show Cassidy owned the two-story home where firefighters responded after being notified by a passerby. Law enforcement officers cordoned off the area near the home and went in and out Wednesday.
Read: Police: FedEx shooter legally bought guns used in shooting
Doug Suh, who lives across the street, told The Mercury News in San Jose that Cassidy seemed “strange” and that he never saw anyone visit.
“I’d say hello, and he’d just look at me without saying anything,” Suh said. Once, Cassidy yelled at him to stay away as he was backing up his car. “After that, I never talked to him again.”
Wednesday’s attack was the deadliest shooting in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1993, when a gunman attacked law offices in San Francisco’s Financial District, killing eight people before taking his own life.
It also was Santa Clara County’s second mass shooting in less than two years. A gunman killed three people and then himself at a popular garlic festival in Gilroy in July 2019.
Authorities ID 8 victims of California railyard shooting
An employee opened fire Wednesday at a California rail yard, killing eight people before taking his own life as law enforcement rushed in, authorities said, marking the latest attack in a year that has seen a sharp increase in mass killings as the nation emerges from coronavirus restrictions.
The shooting took place around 6:30 a.m. in two buildings at a light rail facility for the Valley Transportation Authority, which provides bus, light rail and other transit services throughout Santa Clara County, the most populated county in the San Francisco Bay Area.
“When our deputies went through the door, initially he was still firing rounds. When our deputy saw him, he took his life,” Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith told reporters. Deputies “were going through hallways saying, ‘Sheriff’s office!’ He knew at that time that his time for firing shots was over.”
The victims, many of them longtime employees of the transit agency, were identified by the Santa Clara County coroner’s office Wednesday night as Paul Delacruz Megia, 42; Taptejdeep Singh, 36; Adrian Balleza, 29; Jose Dejesus Hernandez, 35; Timothy Michael Romo, 49; Michael Joseph Rudometkin, 40; Abdolvahab Alaghmandan, 63, and Lars Kepler Lane, 63.
Read:2 killed in shooting at Wisconsin casino; gunman slain
Their jobs included bus and light rail operators, mechanics, linemen and assistant superintendent. One had worked for the transit authority since 1999.
Singh had worked as a light rail train driver for eight or nine years and had a wife, two small children and many family members, said his cousin, Bagga Singh.
“We heard that he chose the people to shoot, but I don’t know why they choose him because he has nothing to do with him,” he said.
San Jose City Councilman Raul Peralez said Rudometkin was a close friend. “There are no words to describe the heartache we are feeling right now, especially for his family,” he wrote on Facebook. “Eight families are feeling this same sense of loss tonight and our entire community is mourning as well.”
The attacker was identified as 57-year-old Sam Cassidy, according to two law enforcement officials. Investigators offered no immediate word on a possible motive.
His ex-wife, Cecilia Nelms, told The Associated Press that Cassidy had a bad temper and would tell her that he wanted to kill people at work, “but I never believed him, and it never happened. Until now.”
Nelms, teary-eyed and shaken by the news, said her ex-husband would come home wound up and angry about things that happened at work. As he talked about it, “he would get more mad,” she said. “He could dwell on things.”
When Cassidy lost his temper, Nelms said there were times she was scared. He was someone who could physically hurt others, she said.
Nelms said they were married for 10 years — Cassidy filed for divorce in 2005 — and had not been in contact for 13 years. She said he had been treated for depression.
Sheriff’s spokesman Deputy Russell Davis said he did not know the type of weapon used in the attack. Bomb squads searched the rail complex after receiving information about possible explosive devices, he said.
Members of a union representing Valley Transportation Authority workers were meeting when the shooting began, San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo said, but it’s not clear the meeting was related to the attack.
When she heard shots, transit authority mechanic Rochelle Hawkins said she dropped her phone.
Read: Police: FedEx shooter legally bought guns used in shooting
“I was running so fast. I just ran for my life,” she said. “I would hope everyone would just pray for the VTA family. Just pray for us.”
Other friends and family members awaited news after being unable to reach their loved ones through calls or text messages. Some had tracked the missing person’s cellphone to the rail yard but had no information from authorities.
Officials also were investigating a house fire that broke out shortly before the shooting, Davis said. Public records show Cassidy owned the two-story home where firefighters responded after being notified by a passer-by. Law enforcement officers cordoned off the area near the home and went in and out Wednesday.
Doug Suh, who lives across the street, told The Mercury News in San Jose that Cassidy seemed “strange” and that he never saw anyone visit.
“I’d say hello, and he’d just look at me without saying anything,” Suh said. Once, Cassidy yelled at him to stay away as he was backing up his car. “After that, I never talked to him again.”
Cassidy had worked for Valley Transportation Authority since at least 2012, according to the public payroll and pension database Transparent California, first a mechanic from 2012 to 2014, then as someone who maintained substations.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, speaking emotionally in front of a county office where flags flew at half-staff, said victims’ relatives were “waiting to hear from the coroner, waiting to hear from any of us, just desperate to find out if their brother, their son, their dad, their mom is still alive.”
Another man wounded in the attack was in critical condition at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, spokesperson Joy Alexiou said.
The bloodshed comes amid a rise in mass killings after the pandemic had closed many public places and kept people confined to their homes last year.
A database compiled by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University that tracks every mass killing over the last 15 years shows that the San Jose attack is the 15th mass killing so far in 2021, all of them shootings.
Eighty-six people have died in the shootings, compared with 106 for all of 2020. It is the sixth mass killing in a public place in 2021. The database defines mass killings as four or more people dead, not including the shooter, meaning the overall toll of gun violence is much higher when adding in smaller incidents.
At the White House, President Joe Biden ordered flags to be flown at half-staff and urged Congress to act on legislation to curb gun violence.
“Every life that is taken by a bullet pierces the soul of our nation. We can, and we must, do more,” Biden said in a statement.
San Jose, the 10th-largest city in the U.S. with more than a million people, is about 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of San Francisco in the heart of Silicon Valley.
Trains were already out on morning runs when the shooting occurred. Light rail service was suspended and replaced with bus bridges, agency Chairman Glenn Hendricks told reporters.
Read: Police ID gunman in FedEx shooting as young male in 20s
Wednesday’s attack was Santa Clara County’s second mass shooting in less than two years. A gunman killed three people and then himself at a popular garlic festival in Gilroy in July 2019.
The Gilroy attack was on Mayor Liccardo’s mind Wednesday as text messages flooded in, reporting the shooting and fire.
“Not again,” he thought as he jumped in his car and raced to City Hall. Transit authority workers told him they knew Cassidy.
“You try to understand what would possess someone to do that much harm,” Liccardo said by phone. “It’s unfathomable.”
Biden asks US intel officials to investigate COVID-19 origin
President Joe Biden on Wednesday asked U.S. intelligence officials to “redouble” their efforts to investigate the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, including any possibility the trail might lead to a Chinese lab.
After months of minimizing that possibility as a fringe theory, the Biden administration is responding to both U.S. and world pressure for China to be more open about the outbreak.
Biden asked U.S. intelligence agencies to report back on their findings within 90 days. He directed U.S. national laboratories to assist with the investigation and called on China to cooperate with international probes into the origins of the pandemic.
Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, have promoted the theory that the virus emerged from a laboratory accident rather than naturally through human contact with an infected animal.
Biden in a statement said the majority of the intelligence community had “coalesced” around those two likely scenarios but “do not believe there is sufficient information to assess one to be more likely than the other.” He revealed that two agencies lean toward the animal link and “one leans more toward” the lab theory, adding, “each with low or moderate confidence.”
“The United States will also keep working with like-minded partners around the world to press China to participate in a full, transparent, evidence-based international investigation and to provide access to all relevant data and evidence,” said Biden.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday that the White House supports a new World Health Organization investigation in China, but she added that an effective probe “would require China finally stepping up and allowing access needed to determine the origins.”
Biden still held out the possibility that a firm conclusion may never be reached, given the Chinese government’s refusal to fully cooperate with international investigations.
“The failure to get our inspectors on the ground in those early months will always hamper any investigation into the origin of COVID-19,” he said.
Administration officials still harbor strong doubts about the lab leak theory. They view China’s refusal to cooperate in the investigation — particularly on something of such magnitude — as emblematic of other irresponsible actions on the world stage.
Privately, administration officials say the end result, if ever known, won’t change anything, but note China’s stonewalling is now on display for the world to see.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, a White House coronavirus adviser, said Wednesday that he and most others in the scientific community “believe that the most likely scenario is that this was a natural occurrence, but one knows that 100 percent for sure.”
“And since there’s a lot of concern, a lot of speculation and since no one absolutely knows that, I believe we do need the kind of investigation where there’s open transparency and all the information that’s available, to be made available, to scrutinize,” Fauci said at a Senate hearing.
Andy Slavitt, Biden’s senior adviser for the coronavirus, said Tuesday that the world needs to “get to the bottom ... whatever the answer may be.”
“We need a completely transparent process from China; we need the WHO to assist in that matter,”″ Slavitt said. “We don’t feel like we have that now.”
8 dead in shooting at rail yard serving Silicon Valley
An employee opened fire Wednesday at a California rail yard serving Silicon Valley, killing eight people before ending his own life, authorities said.
The suspect was an employee of the Valley Transportation Authority, which provides bus, light rail and other transit services throughout Santa Clara County, the largest county in the Bay Area, authorities said.
The attacker was identified as 57-year-old Sam Cassidy, according to two law enforcement officials. Investigators offered no immediate word on a possible motive.
The shooting took place around 6:30 a.m. at a light rail facility that includes a transit-control center, parking for trains and a maintenance yard.
Sheriff’s spokesman Deputy Russell Davis said the attack also resulted in “multiple major injuries.” He did not know the type of weapon used. He said the victims included VTA employees. Authorities did not release any of the victims’ names.
“These folks were heroes during COVID-19. The buses never stopped running, VTA didn’t stop running. They just kept at work, and now we’re really calling on them to be heroes a second time to survive such a terrible, terrible tragedy,” Santa Clara County Supervisor Cindy Chavez.
Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen said it was his understanding the shooting happened inside the VTA building.
Victims’ grief-stricken families sat huddled together, holding hands and crying, after learning they had lost a loved one, Rosen told reporters, describing the scene inside a county building.
“They’re just sitting and holding hands and crying,” Rosen said. “It’s terrible. It’s awful. It’s raw. People are learning they lost their husband, their son, their brother.” He said about 100 people were inside the family reunification center.
Police vehicles and orange crime-scene tape blocked off the area, and reporters were kept at a distance The rail yard is in the city’s administrative neighborhood, near the sheriff’s office and city and county offices.
Bomb squads were searching the rail complex after receiving information about possible explosive devices inside the building, Davis said.
Officials were also investigating a house fire that broke out shortly before the shooting, Davis said. Public records show Cassidy owned a two-story home where firefighters responded Wednesday morning.
VTA trains were already out on morning runs when the shooting occurred. Light rail service was to be suspended at noon and replaced with bus bridges, agency Chairman Glenn Hendricks told a news conference.
“It’s just very difficult for everyone to be able try to wrap their heads around and understand what has happened,” Hendricks said.
Outside the scene, Michael Hawkins told The Mercury News that he was waiting for his mother, Rochelle Hawkins, who had called him from a co-worker’s phone to assure him that she was safe.
When the shooting started, “she got down with the rest of her coworkers” and dropped her cellphone, Michael Hawkins told the newspaper. Rochelle Hawkins did not see the shooter, and she was not sure how close she had been to the attacker, her son said.
San Jose, the 10th-largest city in the U.S. with more than a million people, is about 50 miles south of San Francisco in the heart of Silicon Valley.
In the city itself, the most recent mass shooting occurred in 2019 at a private home, according to The Mercury News, in what police said was a quadruple murder and suicide precipitated by family conflict.
Wednesday’s attack was the county’s second shooting in less than two years. A gunman killed three people before killing himself at a popular garlic festival in Gilroy in July 2019.
At a news conference, San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo lamented the “horrific day for our city.” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a tweet that his office was “in close contact with local law enforcement and monitoring this situation closely.”
Agents from the FBI and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were responding to the crime scene, officials said.
Blinken heads to Egypt to shore up Gaza cease-fire efforts
Secretary of State Antony Blinken heads to Egypt and Jordan on Wednesday as he presses ahead with a diplomatic mission aimed at shoring up a cease-fire that ended an 11-day war between Israel and the Hamas militant group.
Blinken was wrapping up talks in Israel early Wednesday before departing to Cairo. He has vowed to “rally international support” to rebuild the destruction in hard-hit Gaza, while also promising to make sure that none of the aid destined for the territory reaches Hamas.
Ahead of his departure, Blinken extended U.S. President Joe Biden’s invitation to Israeli President Reuven Rivlin to visit the United States in the coming weeks. Rivlin accepted, according to a statement from his office.
Blinken described Egypt and Jordan as central players in trying to bring calm to the region. Both countries are key U.S. allies that have peace agreements with Israel and frequently serve as mediators between Israel and the Palestinians.
Read:Blinken in Israel on Mideast tour to shore up Gaza truce
“Egypt played a critical role in helping to broker the cease-fire and Jordan has long been a voice for peace and stability in the region,” he told reporters late Tuesday.
In Egypt, which borders both Israel and Gaza, he was scheduled to meet with President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi and other top officials. Biden spoke with el-Sissi during the war to help broker the cease-fire.
Blinken has set modest goals for the trip, his first official visit to the Middle East as secretary of state. During talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders on Tuesday, he made clear that the U.S. has no immediate plans to pursue peace talks between the sides, perhaps because previous efforts by past administrations have all failed. Instead, he expressed hope for creating a “better environment” that might lead to peace talks.
That could begin with the Gaza reconstruction effort. The 11-day war killed more than 250 people, mostly Palestinians, and caused heavy destruction in the impoverished coastal territory. Preliminary estimates have put the damage in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
One of the U.S. goals is to ensure that any assistance be kept out of the hands of Hamas, which opposes Israel’s right to exist and which Israel and the U.S. consider a terrorist group.
Instead, it is trying to bolster the rival government of President Mahmoud Abbas, whose forces were ousted from Gaza by Hamas in 2007. Abbas’ Palestinian Authority now administers autonomous areas in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Abbas. He has been largely sidelined by recent events, is deeply unpopular at home and has little influence in Gaza.
Abbas hopes to establish an independent state in all of the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem — areas captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war.
In a gesture to the Palestinians, Blinken on Tuesday announced plans to reopen the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem — an office that historically handled diplomatic outreach to the Palestinians.
President Donald Trump downgraded the consulate and placed its operations under his ambassador to Israel when he moved the American Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv in 2018. The Jerusalem move infuriated the Palestinians, who claim Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem as their capital, and prompted them to sever most ties with the U.S.
Blinken also announced nearly $40 million in additional aid to the Palestinians. In all, the Biden administration has pledged some $360 million to the Palestinians, restoring badly needed aid that the Trump administration had cut off.
Read:Israel Palestinian Conflict: UN chief welcomes cease-fire, urges negotiations
At a meeting with Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Blinken made clear on Tuesday that Biden will pursue a more even-handed approach than Trump, who sided overwhelmingly with Israel in its dealings with the Palestinians.
Blinken said the U.S. was committed to “rebuilding the relationship with the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian people, a relationship built on mutual respect and also a shared conviction that Palestinians and Israelis alike deserve equal measures of security, freedom opportunity and dignity.”
The truce that ended the Gaza war on Friday has so far held, but it did not address any of the deeper issues plaguing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, something Blinken acknowledged after meeting Tuesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“We know that to prevent a return to violence, we have to use the space created to address a larger set of underlying issues and challenges,” he said.
Those challenges include a hawkish Israeli leadership that seems unwilling to make major concessions, Palestinian divisions, years of mistrust and deeply rooted tensions surrounding Jerusalem and its holy sites.
The war was triggered by weeks of clashes in Jerusalem between Israeli police and Palestinian protesters in and around the Al-Aqsa Mosque, built on a hilltop compound revered by Jews and Muslims that has seen several outbreaks of Israeli-Palestinian violence over the years. The protests were directed at Israel’s policing of the area during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and the threatened eviction of dozens of Palestinian families by Jewish settlers.
The truce remains tenuous since tensions are still high in Jerusalem and the fate of the Palestinian families is not yet resolved.
In his remarks after his meeting with Blinken, Netanyahu hardly mentioned the Palestinians, warning of a “very powerful” response if Hamas breaks the cease-fire.
Netanyahu spoke of “building economic growth” in the occupied West Bank but said there will be no peace until the Palestinians recognize Israel as a “Jewish state.” The Palestinians have long objected to that demand, saying it undermines the rights of Israel’s own Palestinian minority.
Read:Biden hails Israel-Hamas cease-fire, sees ‘opportunity’
Blinken repeatedly affirmed what he said was Israel’s right to defend itself and said the U.S. would assist Israel in replenishing its Iron Dome rocket-interception system.
But he also called on leaders of all sides to chart a “better course” in hopes of laying the groundwork for peace talks aimed at establishing an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel. The Biden administration, like most of the international community, believes the “two-state solution” is the only way to resolve the conflict.
Blinken expressed hope that a successful international approach in Gaza would be an important first step and could “undermine” Hamas’ grip on power.
“Hamas thrives, unfortunately, on despair, on misery, on desperation, on a lack of opportunity,” he said. If there is successful cooperation in Gaza between Israel, the Palestinian Authority and the international community, he said, “then Hamas’ foothold in Gaza will slip. And we know that. And I think tht Hamas knows that.”
Moderna says its COVID-19 shot works in kids as young as 12
Moderna said Tuesday its COVID-19 vaccine strongly protects kids as young as 12, a step that could put the shot on track to become the second option for that age group in the U.S.
With global vaccine supplies still tight, much of the world is struggling to vaccinate adults in the quest to end the pandemic. But earlier this month, the U.S. and Canada authorized another vaccine — the shot made by Pfizer and BioNTech — to be used starting at age 12.
Read: Local pharma seeks permission to bring Moderna vaccine: DGHS DG
Moderna aims to be next in line, saying it will submit its teen data to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and other global regulators early next month.
The company studied more than 3,700 12- to 17-year-olds. Preliminary findings showed the vaccine triggered the same signs of immune protection in kids as it does in adults, and the same kind of temporary side effects such as sore arms, headache and fatigue.
There were no COVID-19 diagnoses in those given two doses of the Moderna vaccine compared with four cases among kids given dummy shots. In a press release, the company also said the vaccine appeared 93% effective two weeks after the first dose.
While children are far less likely than adults to get seriously ill from COVID-19, they represent about 14% of the nation’s coronavirus cases. At least 316 have died in the U.S. alone, according to a tally by the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Read: EU commission greenlights Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine
With plenty of vaccine supply in the U.S., younger teens flocked to get Pfizer’s shot in the days after FDA opened it to them, part of a push to get as many kids vaccinated as possible before the next school year.
Both Pfizer and Moderna have begun testing in even younger children, from age 11 down to 6-month-old babies. This testing is more complex: Teens receive the same dose as adults, but researchers are testing smaller doses in younger children. Experts hope to see some results in the fall.
White House, Kremlin aim for Biden-Putin summit in Geneva
The White House and the Kremlin are working to arrange a summit next month between President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Switzerland, according to officials.
National security adviser Jake Sullivan is meeting with his Russian counterpart in Geneva, the proposed host city, this week to finalize details, according to one U.S. official familiar with the preliminary planning but not authorized to discuss the deliberations publicly. Geneva is now expected to be the choice for Biden’s first face-to-face meeting with Putin as president, according to a second official.
The Americans and Russians are eyeing June 15-16 for the summit. An official announcement was expected in the coming days.
The summit would come at the end of Biden’s first foreign trip as president, a weeklong swing through Europe that includes a stop in the United Kingdom for a Group of Seven summit of leaders of the world’s richest nations, and then a visit to the Brussels headquarters of NATO, the long-standing military alliance built as a bulwark to Russian aggression.
A spokesperson for the National Security Council declined to comment on the summit logistics.
But, in a statement, the NSC said this week’s meeting between Sullivan and the Secretary of the Russian Security Council, Nikolay Patrushev, “was an important step in the preparation for a planned U.S.-Russia summit” and deemed the discussions “constructive” despite “outstanding differences.”
The Biden administration first called for the summit last month after Russia engaged in a series of confrontational actions: temporarily amassing troops on the Ukrainian border, the SolarWinds hacking, reports of bounties placed on U.S. troops in Afghanistan and the poisoning and imprisonment of opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
Russia is also believed to be sheltering the hackers behind a May cyberattack that shut down the Colonial Pipeline, which delivers 45% of the gasoline supply to the U.S. East Coast.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said the administration wants a “predictable, stable relationship” with Russia.
Blinken met last week in Iceland with Russia’s longtime Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. The two diplomats described their 1-hour-and-45-minute meeting as polite and constructive, even though sharp disagreements persist. Russia proposed a new strategic dialogue, and the United States seemed receptive.
“There is a lot of rubble, it’s not easy to rake it up, but I felt that Antony Blinken and his team were determined to do this. It will not be a matter for us,” Lavrov said, according to the news agency Tass.
Biden has taken a very different approach to Russia than his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, who often aimed to cozy up to Putin. Their sole summit, held in July 2018 in Helsinki, was marked by Trump’s refusal to side with U.S. intelligences agencies over Putin’s denials of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Under Biden, the United States has sought to pressure Russia through economic sanctions. It imposed penalties last week on Russian companies and ships for their work on a natural gas pipeline in Europe, though the Biden administration spared the German company overseeing the project, to the frustration of several Republican and Democratic lawmakers.
In April, the administration expelled 10 Russian diplomats and placed sanctions on several dozen companies and people, an attempt to punish the Kremlin for interfering in last year’s presidential election and the SolarWinds hacking that breached federal agencies and private companies.
The hacking of widely used software from Texas-based SolarWinds Inc. exposed several troubling vulnerabilities for the U.S. government and major companies. At least nine federal agencies and dozens of companies were the target of an extensive cyberespionage effort that was discovered in December.
“I was clear with President Putin that we could have gone further, but I chose not to do so — I chose to be proportionate,” Biden said when announcing the sanctions on April 15 at the White House. “The United States is not looking to kick off a cycle of escalation and conflict with Russia.”
But Biden added that it is his duty as U.S. president to respond with further actions if Russia “continues to interfere with our democracy.”
Russia responded quickly to the sanctions by ordering 10 U.S. diplomats to leave, blacklisting eight current and former U.S. officials and tightening requirements for U.S. Embassy operations with bans on the hiring of Russian citizens and third-country nationals.
Adding another wrinkle to the expected talks: the diversion of a Ryanair flight to Lithuania by Belarus that led to the arrest of an opposition journalist who was a passenger on the flight. President Alexander Lukashenko, Belarus’ authoritarian leader, is an ally of Putin’s.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that Sullivan brought up concerns about Belarus’ actions in his talks with Patrushev.
Geneva, a rich, if midsize, city on the banks of Lake Geneva, offers bucolic vistas of the Mont Blanc peak — the highest in Western Europe — and a reputation as both a hub for international institutions and an icon of Switzerland’s much ballyhooed neutrality.
Geneva became a leading crossroads of diplomacy in the postwar years of Cold War intrigue, an intersection where the Soviet-dominated Eastern bloc met the American-styled capitalist West.
The city last hosted American and Russian leaders in 1985, when President Ronald Reagan met Mikhail Gorbachev -- a summit considered short on substance but critical in breaking the ice between East and West and fostering what would become mostly friendly relations between the two men through their tenures.
A Biden-Putin meeting there could revive the reputation of the city as a hub for international diplomacy, a far cry from the Trump administration -- which largely shunned its globalist institutions like the World Trade Organization and the World Health Organization. Biden’s administration has reengaged with both of those organizations.
New vibe at White House: Hugs are in; masks are (mostly) out
A smiling crowd of unmasked people filling the largest room in the White House. A visiting head of state welcomed with pomp, circumstance and handshakes. A 94-year old Medal of Honor recipient receiving a joyous hug from Vice President Kamala Harris.
The White House is springing back to life.
Thanks to growing availability of the coronavirus vaccine and a recent relaxation of federal guidance on masks and distancing, the Biden administration is embracing the look and feel of pre-pandemic days on Pennsylvania Avenue. More West Wing staffers are turning up there for work and more reporters will be doing so as well, as the White House spreads the message that a return to normal is possible with vaccinations.
There are lingering concerns about safety and mixed messaging — the same contradictions and confusions that are popping up across a nation that is gingerly re-opening. But the images of a reopened, relaxed White House stand in striking contrast to the days when it was the site of several COVID-19 outbreaks last year, a sign of just how far the pandemic has begun to recede in the United States.
Read:Biden hails Israel-Hamas cease-fire, sees ‘opportunity’
“We’re back,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki declared at Friday’s daily briefing. “I can confirm we’re a warm and fuzzy crew and we like to hug around here.”
The changes within the White House over the past week were swift and sweeping. Hugs were in, masks were (mostly) out. There was no need to stand six feet apart. And no one seemed to enjoy the shift more than Biden, the most back-slapping and tactile of politicians.
The president had been happy to announce the relaxed mask guidance when he appeared in the Rose Garden on May 13 without a mask, just hours after the CDC said those who are fully vaccinated don’t need to wear masks in most settings. That cheerfulness carried over this past week into a series of larger public events that would have been out of bounds earlier in Biden’s presidency.
For the second straight day, the White House on Friday opened the East Room –- the executive mansion’s largest room –- to scores of outside guests. Smiling broadly, Biden awarded the Medal of Honor for the first time as commander in chief, giving it to 94-year-old retired Col. Ralph Puckett Jr. for acts of bravery during the Korean War some 70 years ago.
The White House timed Friday’s ceremony to coincide with the visit of South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in, who joined Biden at the event before their policy meetings. Both world leaders repeatedly clasped Puckett’s hands and crowded in for a photo with the war hero’s extended family.
A day earlier, an even larger group of lawmakers and other guests were on hand to witness Biden sign legislation to counter an alarming spike in crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, were among the lawmakers trading hugs and kisses.
“The nicest part is being able to shake hands again and to see people’s smiles,” Collins marveled at one point.
Afterward, lawmakers who helped shepherd the legislation through Congress surrounded Biden as he signed the measure into law. The president also engaged in an act that had largely disappeared from official Washington during the pandemic: He shook hands with a few guests before leaving.
Earlier that day, he had welcomed the newest Kennedy Center honorees to the White House for a visit that marked the return of celebrity wattage to the property.
By multiple accounts from Kennedy Center Honors recipients, the White House event was high-spirited, with Biden seemingly thrilled to have visitors.
Read:Biden’s pattern with Israel: public support, private scold
Debbie Allen called the president, “so engaging and open. He spent a lot more time with us than I expected.”
Joan Baez said the official visit “turned into a jolly romp,” included a tour of the Rose Garden and culminated in Baez singing for Biden.
Due to social distancing guidelines, the number of journalists allowed inside the White House shrunk once the pandemic hit, with the briefing room only about a quarter full for Psaki’s daily question-and-answer sessions.
Capacity is slated to go to 50 percent soon, with the goal of a full return by summer. The daily COVID-19 testing requirement for staff and most journalists was also expected to soon be waived for the fully vaccinated. And the parking spaces around the West Wing and Eisenhower Executive Office Building have been fuller as of late.
Psaki said the effort to return to a more normal vibe was part of “continuing to open the White House up, the people’s house up to the American people.”
But questions remain about protocol.
Abiding by the safety guidelines is a matter of the honor system. And Psaki acknowledged Friday that the White House did not have plans to verify vaccination status. Members of the administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have continued, at times, to offer confusing guidance on exactly when, and by whom, a mask should still be worn.
Yet in most ways, the mood has changed dramatically.
Read:‘City in transition’: New York vies to turn page on pandemic
The first image that Americans saw of Biden at the White House as president was on Inauguration Day, as he sat behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office wearing a mask. Aiming to draw a stark contrast with the Trump White House, which took a cavalier attitude toward the virus within the building, the Democratic administration consistently erred on the side of caution, at times exceeding precautions recommended by the CDC.
For months, Biden had privately groused that the pandemic prevented him from having face-to-face meetings with lawmakers and world leaders alike, and he chafed at having to conduct diplomacy by Zoom.
On Friday, the White House unfurled all of its traditional in-person pageantry for Moon’s visit and the two men were able to sit across from each other in the State Dining Room and, later, answer questions before a mask-free audience of diplomats, officials and reporters.
Moon had opened his day with a visit to Harris’ office in the White House complex, where the two stepped out on a balcony for a quick wave. The sun was shining. Smiles were everywhere. There wasn’t a cicada in sight.