THE LONG GAME: President Biden’s bold agenda; Senate prepares for trial and conducts confirmation hearings Today a few minutes before noon, President Joseph R. Biden became the 46th President of the United States, only two weeks after an angry mob, provoked by this predecessor, stormed the same grounds where he took the oath of office. Biden's call for unity in our very divided country is best summed up by his own words today: "And together we shall write an American story of hope, not fear, of unity, not division, of light, not darkness.” In the days before taking office, President Biden outlined aggressive steps to mark a clean break with a presidential administration that was likely the most divisive in U.S. history. Shortly after his inauguration today, Biden is expected to issue a flurry of directives, including executive orders to rejoin the Paris Climate Accord, rescind the travel ban on majority Muslim countries, extend limits on evictions, establish a mask mandate on federal property, and to determine how to reunite children and parents separated at the border. “President-elect Biden will take action — not just to reverse the gravest damages of the Trump administration — but also to start moving our country forward,” wrote new White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain in a memo detailing the measures. The new president is also expected to send legislation to Congress today calling for a pathway to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is expected to transmit the articles of impeachment against former President Trump to the Senate later this week. A trial would begin at 1 P.M. the following day. Democrats will be able to set the rules for the trial—including the length of the trial and whether to call witnesses or to request documents—once Georgia’s two new senators, Jon Ossoff and Rafael Warnock, are sworn-in and Democrats assume the majority. Meanwhile, the Senate is also working on a separate track to complete confirmation hearings for President Biden’s cabinet nominees with ongoing hearings for his picks for the departments of Defense, State, Homeland Security, and Treasury and for Director of National Intelligence.
Washington Watch is published weekly when Congress is in session. Published monthly during extended recess or adjournment.
Spotlight on Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico coronavirus statistics for January 18
According to the Puerto Rico Health Department, 150,318 people are believed to have been infected with COVID-19, an increase of 7,978 since January 11, when the total was 142,340. This points to a substantial spike in the rate of new cases, as the increase between January 4 (when the total was 135,742) and January 11 was 6,598. The rate of deaths, however, continues to decrease: the death toll is currently 1,703, with 51 of those having occurred in the last week. Comparatively, 87 people died from the virus between January 4 and January 11.
Beginning on November 7, the Health Department changed the way it recorded cases, splitting them between confirmed cases (as determined by molecular diagnostic testing), probable cases (as determined by antigen testing) and suspicious cases (as determined by serological, non-diagnostic testing). Viewed through that prism, Puerto Rico has had 81,855 confirmed cases, 6,084 probable cases, and 62,379 suspicious cases since the virus arrived on the Island.
Puerto Rico had reached the 100,000-case mark on Sunday, December 6. It has taken little more than a month since that date to reach half that milestone.
There are currently 348 people hospitalized due to COVID, a decrease of 44 since last week.
As vaccination efforts on the Island transition from phase 1-A (healthcare professionals and the occupants and staff of centers for the elderly) to phase 1-B (senior citizens, first responders, and teachers), the biggest current obstacle is a dearth of vaccine dosages. Of the 300,000 to 350,000 dosages of the vaccine expected to have arrived by this point, roughly a third has actually arrived.
Governor Pedro Pierluisi meets with FOMB for the first time
Unlike previous governors, Pedro Pierluisi has not appointed a representative to act as his proxy before the Financial Oversight and Management Board (FOMB), choosing to instead represent Puerto Rico’s elected government himself. On Friday, Pierluisi met with the Board for the first time since becoming governor, in a meeting that was also the first involving new FOMB members appointed by President Donald Trump.
During the meeting, Pierluisi objected to cuts to public employee pensions, the University of Puerto Rico’s budget, and contributions to municipalities.
According to Omar Marrero, director of the Puerto Rico Fiscal Agency and Financial Advisory Authority (AAFAF, in Spanish), the governor “established that he would reject any cut to pensions because public employees have already seen their retirement benefits diminished substantially with previous legislation,” and that “additional reductions place public employees at a level of squalor compared to the mainland United States.”
On a separate note, Governor Pierluisi is in Washigton, D.C. today to attend President Biden's inauguration.
Puerto Rico, Guam ineligible for SSI benefits due to nature of relationship with U.S., argues Federal government
Lawyers for the federal government continued to appeal rulings by federal courts establishing that residents of Guam are entitled to Supplemental Security Income (SSI), which have been traditionally denied to residents of territories like Guam and Puerto Rico. Attorneys for the federal government argued that the benefit, which is available to the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), should not be available to residents of other territories. They maintained that “unlike every other Territory, the CNMI entered the United States voluntarily, on terms negotiated and set forth in the Covenant,” a reference to the fact that the Northern Mariana Islands elected to begin their current relationship with the United States after decades under a United Nations trusteeship. Puerto Rico and Guam, on the other hand, became U.S. property following the 1898 Spanish-American war, a distinction which attorneys for the federal government argues makes them ineligible for SSI benefits.
In recent years, federal courts have ruled in multiple cases that residents of both Puerto Rico and Guam are entitled to SSI benefits, despite the fact that said residents do not pay federal income taxes (neither do CNMI residents). The federal government under Donald Trump attempted to appeal those decisions. During the campaign, President Biden declared that he “will ensure residents of Puerto Rico have access to these benefits.”
Murdered man seventh trans person killed in less than a year
The January 9th death of Samuel Edmund Damián Valentín, a trans man, marks the seventh known murder of a trans person in Puerto Rico in the last twelve months, and is the latest in what LGBTQ activists call “a wave of […] violence” besieging the Island’s queer population.
After Damian Valentín’s body was found, he was initially misgendered by his family, the police, and even the media, some even calling the murder the first of a woman to take place this year in Puerto Rico until the body was properly identified. Activists have called on the police to investigate Valentín’s murder as a hate crime, a designation that is rarely applied to investigations, even though it includes both sexual orientation and gender identity.
View From The White House
President Trump last night granted clemency to 143 people, using a final act of presidential power to extend mercy to former White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon, well-connected celebrities and nonviolent drug offenders — but contrary to what was expected, he did not preemptively pardon himself or his family.
As Trump leaves office, a final Gallup poll showed his job approval rating at an abysmal 34 percent, the lowest level of his presidency. He is the first president to fail to ever register above 50 percent job approval at any point in his term since Gallup began polling.
Just three days before the end of Trump’s term, the Department of Defense directed the National Security Agency to hire Michael Ellis-- a GOP operative and Trump loyalist who had allegedly improperly funneled intelligence information to Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA)-- as its top lawyer.
Drawing intense criticism from professional historians who called it “racist” and a “hack job,” the Trump Administration released on MLK Day the report of its “1776 Commission,” which Trump had set up in response to racial justice protests. In the report, the panel of conservative activists claimed that too much attention had been played to the role of slavery in shaping American history and equated progressivism with fascism.
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