| | |  | BY TYLER WEYANT AND RENUKA RAYASAM | Presented by |  |
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| VIDEO DOMINATES DAY 2 — The second day of the impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump brought the Senate to rapt attention, focused on never-before-seen video footage of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, as House managers opened their formal trial arguments. Here’s a rundown of what happened on the Hill today:
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| — The three stages: House Democrats said they would prove that the former president’s incitement occurred in three stages : Provoking his supporters, kick-starting the attack and sitting on his hands while the violence proliferated. “He told them to fight like hell, and they brought us hell that day,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the lead House impeachment manager. Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.), another impeachment manager, initiated the arguments by laying out a post-election chronology of Trump’s comments and actions seeking to undermine confidence in the 2020 election results. He played a series of clips of Trump vowing to “never surrender” in his fight to flip the election outcome. — The footage: Managers unveiled new footage of insurrection, including film of Capitol Police officer Eugene Goodman pointing Sen. Mitt Romney to safety and of former Vice President Mike Pence being evacuated. The new videos, displayed next to a map of the Capitol building, underscore just how close rioters got to lawmakers during the deadly insurrection. Rioters were within 100 feet of Pence and his family and “just feet” from the Senate chamber, Del. Stacey Plaskett said. The first new video shown, presented by Plaskett of the Virgin Islands, showed one officer trying to fend off rioters breaching the Capitol near the Senate chamber. The officer tried to pepper spray a rioter entering, but a surge of rioters quickly overcame him. Some were wearing body armor and some had riot shields, while one had a baseball bat, Plaskett said. Among them were members of the Proud Boys, she said. Another new video showed Goodman sprinting to respond to the security breach and directing Romney to leave before the mob arrived. Romney and his Senate colleagues sat solemnly at their desks, watching the video. “It tears at your heart and brings tears to your eyes. That was overwhelmingly distressing and emotional,” Romney told reporters just minutes after seeing the video for the first time. — “We’ve lost the line”: Police officers defending the Capitol were subjected to bear spray, tasers and blows from metal rods, according to testimony shared by Rep. Eric Swalwell. Swalwell (D-Calif.) played a series of police radio calls and videos showing officers in panicked voices asking for backup as rioters breached the Capitol complex. “We’ve been flanked and we’ve lost the line!” cried one Metropolitan Police officer heard in a radio recording. — Invoking Kelly: The managers used former White House chief of staff John Kelly’s words in the aftermath of the riot as they pressed their case. The day after the insurrection, Kelly said in a CNN interview that he believed Trump willfully riled up the mob that stormed into the Capitol. “The president knows who he’s talking to when he tweets or when he makes statements,” Kelly told CNN. “He knows who he’s talking to. He knows what he wants them to do.” Key point: From senior politics editor Charlie Mahtesian in today’s POLITICO Live Analysis of the proceedings: “One area where I think the Dem impeachment managers have been successful is in dialing back the partisan element of their presentations. They are sticking closely to the legal arguments and have been very disciplined in their approach. If you are a Trump supporter, you probably wouldn’t agree. But keep in mind many of these managers are progressives who absolutely loathe Trump. Outside of a trial context, their words and criticism would not be so measured.” Today in 180 seconds: Watch the key moments of Day 2 of the Trump impeachment trial.
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| Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. We won’t be publishing on Monday, Feb. 15. But we’ll be back and better than ever on Tuesday. Reach out at rrayasam@politico.com, or on Twitter at @renurayasam.
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A message from Energy for Progress: Meeting energy needs and tackling climate change isn’t either/or. We have to do both. Across the board, natural gas and oil companies are implementing advanced technologies to better manage their infrastructure. From preventing methane leaks to inspecting operations deep underwater, these technologies are helping streamline operations while keeping net imports at an all-time low. Let’s make even more progress together. | | | | | TAKE AWAY THE VACCINE STICK — In Georgia, state health authorities raided a rural clinic that was vaccinating teachers against Covid. In Northern California, a clinic and a hospital were each denied additional supply after vaccinating people who didn’t fall into the state’s initial priority group. New York is threatening to heavily fine providers that vaccinate ineligible people. In Michigan, line jumping can be a criminal offense. States and counties across the country are cracking down on health care providers that aren’t following strict Covid vaccine prioritization schedules. It’s an effort to make sure that those who are truly vulnerable — the elderly, health care workers — get first crack at the limited shots and that the well connected aren’t skipping ahead. But the state crackdowns are boneheaded and will backfire, argue many public health experts . “It’s very rare that taking a punitive approach works in public health,” Lawrence Gostin, a global health law professor at Georgetown University, told Nightly’s Renuka Rayasam today. “This is pure arrogance on the part of our political leaders.” States should investigate outright fraud, but they should not punish providers making a good-faith effort to run a mass immunization campaign during a chaotic rollout, Gostin said. The punishments are slowing the vaccine rollout: The Georgia community with the raided clinic lost its biggest vaccine provider. New York providers have tossed precious unused doses for fear of facing penalties. This was inevitable , Bruce Y. Lee, a health policy professor at the City University of New York and executive director of Public Health Informatics, Computational, and Operations Research, argues. The federal government left the vaccine rollout up to states and providers without clear guidance and oversight. “The failure was at a national level in December,” he said. “The system is broken.” Priority levels make sense when there’s a limited supply, Lee said, but the federal government should have laid out a consistent and clear message about who is eligible for the vaccine that applies nationally. The current approach — a patchy, state by state approach to eligibility — has created unnecessary chaos and confusion in an already complex task. In some states 65 year olds are eligible. In others teachers are. No wonder providers are confused. A lack of information complicates an effort to take a less punitive approach to the vaccine rollout, Lee said. It’s unclear where the bottlenecks are along the vaccine supply and distribution chain. There isn’t one source of information tracking vaccine coverage levels, how long people are waiting, whether there’s a gap between supply and demand and the share of priority groups already vaccinated. With that information, the Biden administration could ship doses directly to needy areas and use federal workers to vaccinate people — and bypass big health systems that might be prone to cronyism. “It’s in everyone’s best interest to make sure coverage is equitable,” Lee said. “If Covid is a problem in any pocket of the country it will be a problem everywhere.”
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| | THE INDISPENSABLE GUIDE TO CONGRESS: Looking for the latest on the Schumer/McConnell dynamic or the increasing tensions in the House? What are the latest whispers coming out of the Speaker's Lobby? Just leave it to Beavers... New author Olivia Beavers delivers the scoop in Huddle, the morning Capitol Hill must-read with assists from POLITICO's deeply sourced Congress team. Subscribe to Huddle today. | | | | | | | LOSING THE VIRUS — President Joe Biden took office with a clear plan to attack the coronavirus. Almost a year after the first recorded U.S. Covid death, the country still lacks enough testing, contact tracing and masks needed to fight a highly contagious disease. Now it’s falling far short on genetic surveillance to track highly contagious new variants as it also races to get millions of more Americans vaccinated, health care editor at large Joanne Kenen writes. Scientists and health officials say sequencing is urgently needed to avoid a replay of what happened a year ago. There was an outbreak in China, and a reassuring myth promulgated by the Trump administration that there were only isolated cases in the U.S. In fact, the virus had already taken root from coast to coast — but no one was watching closely enough to prevent the disaster that’s claimed nearly a half-million lives. Now the nation needs to know in real time what versions are circulating, especially because it appears vaccines are less effective against the emerging strains. Experts say the U.S. needs to sequence between 5 and 10 percent of all positive samples from Covid-19 testing to get a clear picture of the spreading variants. Currently, the rate is about one-half of 1 percent.
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| | | | | COVID COURT STILL IN SESSION — Do you have an unresolved disagreement over Covid risk management with a relative or colleague? Or do you have questions about the virus or vaccine that haven’t been answered? Ask Renu to issue a ruling! Email your pandemic disputes to nightly@politico.com.
| | — Biden announces Myanmar sanctions: Biden urged Myanmar’s military to release elected leaders who were detained in a coup earlier this month. The new sanctions on Myanmar , which is also commonly referred to as Burma, will target military leaders, their business interests and close family members. — New China task force launched: Biden announced the establishment of a China task force during his first presidential visit to the Pentagon today, signaling his intent to make countering Beijing’s rise a top priority for the military. — WH reverses Trump support for Obamacare lawsuit: The Biden administration is withdrawing the federal government’s support for a challenge to Obamacare, telling the Supreme Court that the law should remain on the books. — Tanden’s bumpy confirmation ride continues: Neera Tanden’s ruthless tweets continued to haunt her confirmation process today as she faced the scorn of Senate Budget Chair Bernie Sanders, another target of her public criticism. In Tanden’s second confirmation hearing for her nomination to lead OMB, senators in both parties dredged up her longtime beef with Sanders, a political nemesis during her 2016 push to get Hillary Clinton elected president. Now the Vermont independent controls Tanden’s professional fate and made clear her nomination would not skate through the Senate without scrutiny. “You called Sanders everything but an ignorant slut,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) told Tanden, invoking a sexist slur from a memorable “Weekend Update” segment featuring Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtin on 1970s-era Saturday Night Live. — Chinese spacecraft enters Mars’ orbit: A Chinese spacecraft went into orbit around Mars today on an expedition to land a rover on the surface and scout for signs of ancient life, authorities announced in a landmark step in the country’s most ambitious deep-space mission yet. — Facebook to pilot new ways to reduce political content: The social media giant said it will begin testing ways to lessen the amount of political content its U.S. users see “in the coming weeks” — the next stage in CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s plan to “turn down the temperature” of online debates after January’s deadly Capitol siege.
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| | TRACK THE FIRST 100 DAYS OF THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION: President Biden's cabinet is getting confirmed, bringing change to agencies and departments across the Executive Branch. From the West Wing to Foggy Bottom, track the first 100 days of the Biden administration with Transition Playbook, our scoop-filled newsletter that chronicles the policies, people, and emerging power centers of the new administration. Subscribe today. | | | | | | | VARIANT BLUES CONTINUE — The dominant coronavirus variant in the U.K. is becoming more resistant to vaccines, scientific experts have warned. Two leading scientists in the U.K. said today that the variant of the virus first identified in Kent has acquired the same E484K mutation on its spike protein that makes the variant that originated in South Africa so worrying for experts. Public health authorities are keeping two emerging U.K. variants under close watch. The first of these two variants has mostly been found in Bristol and the South West, where experts have confirmed 15 cases, with a further six in other parts of England. The second variant is localized in Liverpool and the North West, with a cluster of 42 cases confirmed so far.
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| | | TRUMP DEPARTING PARK PLACE? The New York state Assembly has advanced a bill to rename New York’s Donald J. Trump State Park. Democratic legislators have been seeking to rename the park, a dilapidated and unused collection of more than 400 acres located about eight miles east of Peekskill, since 2015. A committee vote today was the first concrete step toward that happening, Bill Mahoney writes. “Our parklands should be reflective of New Yorkers that we can be proud of, New Yorkers that have expressed our values,” said Assemblymember Nily Rozic (D-Queens), who sponsored the bill that was approved by the Tourism Committee. “There are a lot of other New Yorkers who are worthy of the honor of having a park named after themselves.” Rozic first proposed legislation on the subject four years ago, when she introduced a bill to rename the park after murdered Charlottesville protester Heather Heyer. The measure that moved today simply requires the state to come up with a new name. The biggest hurdle to renaming the park has been the way the state obtained the land in 2006. When Trump, a Queens native, donated the property he obtained with the intent of building a golf course, he said one of his conditions was that his name “be prominently displayed at least at each entrance to each property.” The Cuomo administration said at a recent budget hearing that it’s “looking at” changing the name of the park, and is examining factors such as “agreements with the donor.” Mea culpa: An edition of Nightly last week mischaracterized when Democrats would be able to use budget reconciliation again. The fiscal 2022 budget resolution will be available in the spring of 2021.
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A message from Energy for Progress: Meeting energy needs and tackling climate change isn’t either/or. We have to do both. The future of technology is here — and it’s enabling natural gas and oil companies to operate faster, more safely, and more accurately than ever before. New technology makes it possible for energy companies to improve worker safety, protect the environment, and explore new solutions to better position the industry to meet the nation’s energy needs. Let’s make even more progress together. | | | Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here. | |
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