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GOP vaccine resistance confronting Biden has deep roots
CNN
The worrisome Omicron variant lends fresh urgency to President Joe Biden's months-long grind to vaccinate Americans against the coronavirus. He needs it.
That 78 million Americans still resist protective shots confounds anyone examining the medical evidence of the vaccines' effectiveness. But the evidence of history, turbocharged by the modern Republican Party's extremism, makes vaccine resistance no mystery -- and Biden's effort a slog even after nearly 800,000 deaths from Covid-19.
Just as they've elevated voting restrictions over the protection of democratic elections, Republican officials have elevated exploiting the pandemic over ending it. While GOP attorneys general bogged down vaccine mandates in court, GOP senators last week threatened to shutter the federal government to block them -- even as some Republicans slam Biden for failing to contain the pandemic.
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Amid Democrats’ shock and bickering over how much to respond to President Donald Trump is a deeper question rippling through leaders across the Capitol and across the country: How much should they rely on the same institutional and procedural maneuvers they used during the first Trump term, and how much are they willing to wield their own wrecking balls?
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In less than a month in office the Trump administration has simultaneously dismantled foreign aid programs that support fragile democracies abroad and put on leave federal workers who protect US elections at home in a move that current and former officials say abandons decades of American commitments to democracy.
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Sen. Mitch McConnell was a generational force for the Republican Party — using procedural tactics and political will to stymie much of former President Barack Obama’s agenda, hand President Donald Trump key first-term political victories and deliver a 6-3 conservative Supreme Court majority. Now he’s the odd man out.
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The Trump administration is forcing out senior leadership at the National Archives and Records Administration in a major shakeup, according to a source familiar. President Donald Trump has been highly critical of the archives since the agency asked the Department of Justice to investigate Trump’s mishandling of classified documents after he left office.
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The morning after the mass resignation of prosecutors sparked a crisis inside the Trump Justice Department, acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove led a meeting with the Justice Department’s public integrity section. His message: they had to choose one career lawyer to file a dismissal of the corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, according to three people briefed on the meeting.