Fauci spars with Republican congressman over when to lift Covid restrictions – live

As the House coronavirus subcommittee hearing got underway this morning, Nancy Pelosi held her weekly press conference with reporters.

The Democratic speaker threw cold water on the progressive proposal to expand the supreme court, which now has a 6-3 conservative tilt after Donald Trump was able to get three justices confirmed during his single term as president.

A group of progressives, led by judiciary committee chairman Jerry Nadler in the House, are introducing a bill to expand the court from nine justices to 13.

Asked whether she supported Nadler’s bill, Pelosi said she did not.

“I support the president’s commission to study such a proposal,” the speaker told reporters. “I have no plans to bring it to the floor.”

But Pelosi did not entirely rule out the possibility of expanding the court, citing the growing US population as potentially justifying such a move at some point. For now, though, the speaker is leaving those questions to Joe Biden’s court commission.

So far, Republicans on the House coronavirus crisis subcommittee have focused their questioning on crowded conditions in facilities along the US-Mexican border.

House minority whip Steve Scalise shared photos of his trip to the southern border, which showed some of those crowded facilities.

Scalise quoted the guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warning against travel to Mexico due to concerns about coronavirus spread.

Scalise asked Dr Rochelle Walensky, the CDC director, whether her agency’s guidance applied to all people flying from Mexico, not just Americans, and she confirmed that it applied to all air travelers.

Congressman Jim Jordan pressed Dr Anthony Fauci, the president’s chief medical adviser, on when Americans’ “liberties” can be restored now that coronavirus vaccinations are ramping up.

The Ohio Republican argued that Americans’ rights had been trampled on over the past year, as state and local officials have imposed restrictions on public gatherings.

“I don’t look at this as a liberty thing,” Fauci told Jordan. “I look at this as a public health thing.”

The infectious disease expert said the level of coronavirus infections is too high in the US right now to relax all restrictions.

“This will end for sure when we get the level of infection very low,” Fauci said, adding that the current strategy is to “get as many people vaccinated as quickly as we possibly can”.

After Jordan’s time had already expired, the congressman continued to shout at Fauci, asking when the country can abandon all coronavirus restrictions.

As subcommittee chairman Jim Clyburn tried to get the hearing back on track, congresswoman Maxine Waters jumped into the fray, telling Jordan, “You need to respect the chair and shut your mouth.”

Dr David Kessler, the chief scientific officer for the coronavirus pandemic response, encouraged all Americans to get vaccinated as soon as they are able to.

Kessler acknowledged some Americans are hesitant to receive a vaccine, particularly after the announcement of a pause in administering the Johnson & Johnson vaccine due to rare blood clots. But the health expert emphasized that vaccinations are the path out of this crisis.

“Let’s get Americans vaccinated. Let’s get this done, and then we can see the light at the end of the tunnel,” Kessler told the House subcommittee.

Dr Anthony Fauci, the president’s chief medical adviser, and Dr Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have just been sworn in to testify at this morning’s hearing before the House coronavirus crisis subcommittee.

The two health experts will testify alongside Dr David Kessler, the chief scientific officer for the coronavirus pandemic response.

The subcommittee has said the hearing “will examine the federal government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, including the Biden Administration’s progress in accelerating vaccine distribution, enhancing equal access to vaccines, and combating vaccine hesitancy”.

The hearing comes two days after the Food and Drug Administration called for a pause in administering the Johnson & Johnson vaccine due to six reports of blood clots among the more than 6 million people who have received the J&J treatment.

The blog will have more updates from the hearing coming up, so stay tuned.

Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer facing murder charges over the killing of George Floyd, has just told the court that he will not testify in his defense.

Chauvin has invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

The judge overseeing the case, Peter Cahill, asked Chauvin to confirm that he made this choice himself, rather than relying on his defense attorney to reach a decision. Chauvin confirmed that he made the decision on his own.

With the possibility of Chauvin testifying eliminated, the defense has rested its case.

Follow Victoria Bekiempis on the Guardian’s trial live blog for the latest updates from Minneapolis:

A new poll shows a significant drop in confidence in the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, after the Food and Drug Administration called for a “pause” in administering the vaccine because of six reports of blood clots among the more than 6 million people who have received the J&J treatment.

The latest Economist/YouGov poll found 52% of Americans considered the J&J vaccine to be very or somewhat safe before the pause was announced. After the FDA announcement, that figure dropped to 37%.

Americans are also skeptical about the AstraZeneca vaccine, which has raised similar blood clot concerns. According to the poll, 38% of Americans consider the AstraZeneca vaccine to be safe, while 27% say they believe it is unsafe.

The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines both attract higher marks for safety in the poll. Nearly 6 in 10 Americans consider those two vaccines to be safe, while about 2 in 10 Americans believe they are unsafe.

The Biden administration has said state and local officials are working quickly to get people who expected to get the J&J vaccine rescheduled to receive the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine instead.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan described the new sanctions on Russia as “proportionate measures to defend American interests” in response to the Kremlin’s hacking and election interference efforts.

Speaking to CNN this morning, Sullivan said Joe Biden told Vladimir Putin in their Tuesday phone call that he wanted to “provide a significant and credible response but not to escalate the situation”.

“He believes the United States and Russia can have a stable and predictable relationship, that there are areas where we can work together, like arms control,” Sullivan said.

Asked about Russia’s military buildup in the Crimea region of Ukraine and along Ukraine’s border, Sullivan said the US is prepared to provide defensive support to Kyiv.

Biden also spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy earlier this month, and he “pledged America’s unwavering support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Sullivan said.

“We are very concerned about the Russian military buildup on the border of Ukraine,” Sullivan said. “We’re consulting closely not just with our allies in Europe but directly with the Ukrainians to ensure that we stand behind them as they defend their own country.”

Joe Biden has announced new sanctions on Russia in response to the country’s hacking and election interference efforts in the US.

The AP reports:

The sanctions, foreshadowed for weeks by the administration, represent the first retaliatory action announced against the Kremlin for last year’s hack, familiarly known as the SolarWinds breach.

In that intrusion, Russian hackers are believed to have infected widely used software with malicious code, enabling them to access the networks of at least nine agencies in what US officials believe was an intelligence-gathering operation aimed at mining government secrets.

Besides that hack, US officials last month alleged that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin authorized influence operations to help Donald Trump in his unsuccessful bid for re-election as president, though there is no evidence Russia or anyone else changed votes or manipulated the outcome.

As part of the new sanctions, the Biden administration will expel 10 Russian diplomats and penalize six companies that support the Kremlin’s hacking operations.

The news comes two days after Biden had a phone call with Putin, during which the US president expressed support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and suggested a potential summit meeting in the coming months.

It’s unclear whether Putin accepted the summit invitation or if he intends to.

Peddlers of industrial bleach who urge Americans to drink the fluid as a “miracle cure” for cancer, HIV/Aids and other diseases have begun touting the product illegally as a treatment for the latest variants of Covid-19.

Chlorine dioxide, a powerful bleaching agent used in textile and paper manufacturing, is being compounded and sold out of a makeshift laboratory in Miami, Florida. The company, Oclo Nanotechnology Science, is playing on fears of the new strain of the coronavirus discovered in the UK, which is now spreading rapidly and widely through the US.

The UK variant, B117, is thought to be more transmissible and deadly than the initial form of the virus.

The Miami company is invoking B117 to drive up sales of its bleach products, which the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warns are potentially dangerous and can be life-threatening. The front page of Oclo’s website is dominated by a photograph of vials of its chlorine dioxide product billed as an “antiviral” treatment.

The image is superimposed with the words: “B117 … new variant of coronavirus, the most contagious and dangerous in the United States. Rescuing chlorine dioxide and its great curative potential against pathogens.”

The appearance of a new marketing push out of Miami by peddlers of the bleach “cure”, often referred to as “miracle mineral solution”, or MMS, signals the FDA’s uphill struggle in trying to control the potentially lethal trade. Since the start of the pandemic, the federal agency has been clamping down on fraudulent products which claim to treat or cure Covid-19.

Greetings from Washington, live blog readers.

Dr Anthony Fauci, the president’s chief medical adviser, and Dr Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, will testify before a House subcommittee this morning.

Their testimony comes two days after the Food and Drug Administration called for a “pause” in administering the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine because of six reports of blood clots among the more than 6 million people who have received the J&J vaccine.

Advisers to the CDC said yesterday that the pause will remain in effect as they gather more data on the blood clots and attempt to determine whether there is a causal relationship between them and the J&J vaccine.

One CDC adviser, Dr Grace Lee of Stanford University, said, “I continue to feel like we’re in a race against time and the variants, but we need to [move forward] in the safest possible way.”

The pause has raised concerns that vaccine hesitancy will intensify among certain groups who were already hesitant to get vaccinated. However, Fauci and Walensky have emphasized the pause should reassure Americans that the country’s safety systems are working as they should.

That House subcommittee hearing will get underway in the next couple of hours, so stay tuned.