Nearly half of US adults have received at least one Covid vaccine dose – live

Here’s where the day stands so far:

• Nearly half of American adults have received at least one coronavirus vaccine dose, according to the White House pandemic response team. More than a quarter of US adults are now fully vaccinated.
• Joe Biden will soon hold a meeting with a bipartisan group of lawmakers to discuss his infrastructure proposal. So far, Republicans have shown little willingness to negotiate with the president over the deal. The White House said today that Biden is “absolutely” willing to compromise on the size and scope of the infrastructure bill.
• Daunte Wright was killed by the “accidental discharge” of an officer’s gun, the Brooklyn Center police chief said moments ago. Chief Tim Gannon played body-camera footage showing a police officer shouting “Taser! Taser!” before fatally shooting Wright, a 20-year-old Black man.

The blog will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

The chief of the Brooklyn Center police department said he believes Daunte Wright was fatally shot because of an officer’s “accidental discharge” of her gun.

At a press conference, police chief Tim Gannon played the body-camera footage showing the moment when Wright was shot. An officer can be heard yelling “Taser! Taser!” before shooting Wright.

“As I watched the video and listened to the officer’s commands, it is my belief that the officer had the intention to employ their taser, but instead shot Mr Wright with a single bullet,” Gannon said.

The officer involved in the killing has been released from her duties, and the mayor of Brooklyn Center, Mike Elliott, said he supported that decision.

“We cannot afford to make mistakes that lead to the loss of life,” Elliott said.

Joe Biden “absolutely is” willing to negotiate over the size and scope of his infrastructure proposal, the White House press secretary said.

Jen Psaki’s comments at her daily press briefing come hours before the president is set to meet with a bipartisan group of lawmakers to discuss his $2tn infrastructure plan.

A number of Republicans have called for a much smaller infrastructure bill solely focused on improving the nation’s roads, bridges and other transportation networks. They will likely reiterate those requests during today’s meeting.

The White House press briefing has now concluded.

It’s worth noting that Republican Senator John Cornyn’s comment about Joe Biden’s tweets was actually a quote from a Politico story on the president’s media strategy.

Cornyn’s tweet caused some confusion because he did not put quotation marks around the excerpt.

Here is a bit of that Politico story:

Three months in, Joe Biden’s White House has settled on a firm press strategy: First, do no self-harm.

The president is not doing cable news interviews. Tweets from his account are limited and, when they come, unimaginably conventional. The public comments are largely scripted. Biden has opted for fewer sit down interviews with mainstream outlets and reporters. He’s had just one major press conference — though another is coming — and prefers remarks straight to camera for the marquee moments. The White House is leaning more heavily on Cabinet officials to reach the audiences that didn’t tune into his latest Rose Garden event.

One reporter asked the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, about a comment from Republican Senator John Cornyn describing Joe Biden’s tweets as “limited” and “unimaginably conventional”.

The comment was an apparent attempt to contrast Biden to Donald Trump, who frequently used his Twitter account to attack his opponents, until his account was shut down after he incited the fatal insurrection at the Capitol in January.

“I can confirm that the president of the United States does not spend his time tweeting conspiracy theories,” Psaki said. “He spends his time working on behalf of the American people.”

Joe Biden is “incredibly saddened” to learn of the killing of Daunte Wright at the hand of law enforcement, the White House press secretary said.

Holding her daily briefing with reporters, Jen Psaki said the president has been briefed on the fatal shooting that occurred yesterday in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota. Psaki said Biden would address the shooting this afternoon.

Biden has been in touch with the Minnesota governor as well as the Brooklyn Center mayor and local law enforcement authorities about the situation, Psaki said.

Mayor Mike Elliott shared a photo of his phone call with Biden on Twitter:

Michigan should once again shut down to combat the state’s recent rise in coronavirus cases, Dr Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said.

The governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, has argued the state should receive more coronavirus vaccine doses to limit the spread of the virus in her state.

But the Democratic governor, who received Republican criticism for her aggressive pandemic response last year, has been hesitant to tighten coronavirus-related restrictions, despite the recent surge in cases.

Walensky noted vaccines have a “delayed response” when it comes to lowering the number of new coronavirus cases because it usually takes two to six weeks to see the effect of increased vaccination rates.

“The answer to that is to really close things down, to go back to our basics, to go back to where we were last spring, last summer, and to shut things down,” Walensky said.

“I think if we try to vaccinate our way out of what is happening in Michigan, we would be disappointed that it took so long for the vaccine to work to actually have the impact.”

Dr Anthony Fauci, the president’s chief medical adviser, addressed the possibility of breakthrough coronavirus infections among people who have been vaccinated.

“In the real world, no vaccine is 100% efficacious or effective, which means that you will always see breakthrough infections, regardless of the efficacy of your vaccine,” Fauci said at the White House coronavirus response team’s briefing.

The infectious disease expert noted a vaccine may fail because the recipient does not generate an adequate immune response or because that immune response fades over time.

“However, even if a vaccine fails to protect against infection, it often protects against serious disease,” Fauci added.

In short, the isolated examples of people receiving a coronavirus vaccine and then testing positive for the virus should not deter anyone from receiving a vaccine, as it can still provide protection to the infected person.

The White House coronavirus response team is now holding a press briefing to provide an update on vaccine distribution and trends in case numbers.

Senior White House adviser Andy Slavitt announced that 28% of American adults are now fully vaccinated. Nearly half of US adults, 46%, have received at least one vaccine dose, and 78% of Americans aged 65 or older have gotten at least their first shot.

But the country is also seeing some worrisome trends in new coronavirus cases. Slavitt said the Biden administration is deploying federal resources to Michigan, which has recorded an alarming increase in coronavirus cases in recent weeks.

The White House has approved a surge in federal personnel to Michigan to help get shots in arms and aid testing and tracing efforts.

Meanwhile, the country’s seven-day average of new cases continues to rise. According to Dr Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the most recent seven-day average is 66,000 new cases daily, representing an increase of 3% from a week earlier.

Coronavirus hospitalizations are also on the rise, up to an average of 5,300 admissions a day. That number is up 6.6% from a week earlier.

On a more positive note, the US is now administering more than 3 million vaccine doses a day, and Saturday saw a new record of 4.6 million shots recorded in a single day. The US has administered a total of 166 million vaccine doses since Joe Biden took office in January.

Walensky emphasized Americans “have to hold ourselves accountable” to limit the spread of coronavirus as vaccinations ramp up.

Senator Amy Klobuchar called for “an immediate and transparent investigation” into the death of Daunte Wright, who was shot and killed by police in a Minneapolis suburb yesterday.

“My heart is breaking for Daunte Wright’s family and loved ones,” the Democratic senator said on Twitter. “There must be an immediate and transparent investigation into what happened and why a Black man’s life was lost at the hands of law enforcement.”

The police department in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, said Wright was pulled over for an alleged traffic violation. According to police, Wright walked back toward his car as officers tried to take him into custody, and one officer opened fire.

The killing of Wright has sparked protests near Minneapolis, which has already been on edge as the murder trial of Derek Chauvin unfolds.

Donald Trump received an award from the National Republican Senatorial Committee over the weekend, even as the former president attacked Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.

Trump received the committee’s inaugural Champion for Freedom Award, which recognizes “conservative leaders who have worked tirelessly to create good jobs, protect the values that make our country great, and stop the Democrats’ socialist agenda,” the NRSC said in a statement.

Republican Senator Rick Scott added, “President Trump is a proven champion for all Americans. … We are grateful for his service to our country and are honored to present him with the NRSC’s first Champion for Freedom award.”

The timing of the news was a bit ironic, considering how Trump spent the rest of his weekend.

In a Saturday night speech at Mar-a-Lago for a Republican National Committee gathering, Trump attacked McConnell and the congressional Republicans who supported his impeachment earlier this year.

Trump specifically criticized McConnell for allowing the Senate to approve the certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election on January 6, hours after a group of the then-president’s supporters staged a deadly insurrection at the Capitol.

“If that were Schumer instead of this dumb son of a bitch Mitch McConnell, they would never allow it to happen,” Trump said. “They would have fought it.”

In non-infrastructure news, Joe Biden is expected to nominate Cindy McCain to a key ambassadorship, according to Politico.

McCain, the widow of the late Republican Senator John McCain, endorsed Biden last year and became one of his most influential supporters in her home state of Arizona. Biden ultimately won Arizona by 0.3 points.

Politico reports:

Biden is preparing to name Republican Cindy McCain to a coveted ambassador post in Western Europe in what would be his administration’s first Republican appointee to a Senate-confirmed position.

McCain is undergoing vetting to be nominated for U.S. ambassador to the U.N. World Food Programme, a mission based in Rome, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter. …

As chair of the McCain Institute board of trustees, McCain has worked on curbing world hunger and human trafficking. During the 2008 campaign, she traveled to Georgia with the U.N.’s World Food Programme to visit wounded soldiers after a Russian invasion and also monitored the program’s work in Southeast Asia and Africa.

The White House has repeatedly deflected questions about when they still start announcing their selections for key ambassadorships.

However, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said last week, “Career nominees will probably be in the first slate of nominees for ambassadors, as you’re planning.”

The Biden administration is specifically targeting Republican congressional leaders as the president makes his infrastructure pitch by emphasizing how much the package would aid their states.

The White House released a fact sheet this morning with state-by-state breakdowns on how Joe Biden’s $2tn proposal would benefit each US state.

For Kentucky, the home state of Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, the White House notes the state has 1,033 bridges and more than 1,322 miles of highway in poor condition. Biden’s plan designates $115 billion for repairing roads and bridges.

And in California, where House minority leader Kevin McCarthy lives, the White House notes the average driver in the state spends $799 a year on costs due to driving on roads in need of repair.

Biden will likely cite some of these statistics when he meets with a bipartisan group of lawmakers to discuss his infrastructure package later today.

Greetings from Washington, live blog readers.

Joe Biden is scheduled to meet with a bipartisan group of members of Congress later today to discuss his $2tn infrastructure proposal.

The president and his top aides have said they are open to negotiating over certain aspects of the plan, such as the corporate tax hike proposal, but Republicans have indicated they have no interest in coming to the table.

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has already pledged to fight Biden’s infrastructure package “every step of the way”.

But the president is adamant that Congress must approve a massive investment to improve the country’s infrastructure. “We will not be open to doing nothing,” Biden said last week. “Inaction simply is not an option.”

Biden will likely reiterate that message in today’s meeting, but it remains unclear whether any Republicans are willing to listen to him.

The blog will have more coming up, so stay tuned.