February 1, 2023

Wednesday, February 1,2023. Annette’s News Roundup.

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Joe is always busy.

President Biden to end Covid-19:emergencies on May 11.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden informed Congress on Monday that he will end the twin national emergencies for addressing COVID-19 on May 11, as most of the world has returned closer to normalcy nearly three years after they were first declared.

The move to end the national emergency and public health emergency declarations would formally restructure the federal coronavirus response to treat the virus as an endemic threat to public health that can be managed through agencies’ normal authorities.

It comes as lawmakers have already ended elements of the emergencies that kept millions of Americans insured during the pandemic. Combined with the drawdown of most federal COVID-19 relief money, it would also shift the development of vaccines and treatments away from the direct management of the federal government.

Biden’s announcement comes in a statement opposing resolutions being brought to the floor this week by House Republicans to bring the emergency to an immediate end. House Republicans are also gearing up to launch investigations on the federal government’s response to COVID-19.

Then-President Donald Trump’s Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar first declared a public health emergency on Jan. 31, 2020, and Trump later declared the COVID-19 pandemic a national emergency that March. The emergencies have been repeatedly extended by Biden since he took office in January 2021, and are set to expire in the coming months. The White House said Biden plans to extend them both briefly to end on May 11.

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Kamala is always busy.

Kamala Harris to attend Tyre Nichols Funeral in Memphis Today.

Vice President Kamala Harris will attend the funeral of Tyre Nichols in Memphis on Wednesday, according to a White House official, joining other senior level Biden administration officials at the service.

Harris spoke over the phone on Tuesday morning with Nichols’ mother and step father, RowVaughn Wells and Rodney Wells, the official said.

“The Vice President expressed her deep condolences and offered the family support as they continue to navigate this challenging time,” the official added.

Harris is attending at the invitation of the Wells family. White House Director for the Office of Public Engagement Keisha Lance Bottoms and senior adviser to the president Mitch Landrieu will also be in attendance. (CNN).

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Let the fight in the House Oversight Committee begin. first hearing 2/1. 10 AM.

Top Democrats vs. McCarthy’s GOP firebrands on House Oversight.Committee.

Democrats are gearing up for a fight, with senior members acknowledging that countering Republican firebrands was a factor in deciding who to appoint to the House Oversight Committee.

Why it matters: Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the top Democrat on the panel, told Axios he wanted to assemble a team equipped to “refute and debunk any nonsense that comes down the pipe,” adding, “I would gladly put them up against everyone who’s come from the other side.”

• Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.), a member of the Democrats’ steering committee, told Axios: “We expect [Republicans on Oversight] to be pretty belligerent and we need some pugnacious members who are ready for that.”

The details: Democrats tapped some of the highest profiles in their freshman class in addition to Democratic stars already seated on the committee, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) — anticipating heated hearings.

• The list includes Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.), who has grabbed headlines as the first Gen. Z member of Congress, and Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.), the lead counsel for Democrats during the first impeachment of former President Trump. [See full listin Raskin Tweet below.].

• They join progressive personalities such as Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) and Raskin, a former impeachment manager and Jan. 6 committee member.

• Ocasio-Cortez lauded the new members as “amazing stars” and said together they form a “rock-star team.” Bush said they are “dynamic freshmen … [who] aren't afraid to speak directly to an issue.”

  The other side: The Republican roster is a who’s who of Freedom Caucus members and McCarthy rebels, including...

• Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), who were stripped of committee assignments last year.

• Reps. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), Byron Donalds (R-Fla.), Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) and Scott Perry (R-Pa.) — all of whom initially voted against McCarthy during the speaker elections.

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Despite a shellacking in the Midterms, Republicans plan to go to the mat on abortion. Get ready to fight them!

RNC calls on candidates to ‘go on offense’ on anti-abortion laws in 2024.

The Republican National Committee is doubling down on its anti-abortion stance by urging all GOP candidates and lawmakers to “go on offense” in the 2024 election cycle and pass the strictest anti-abortion legislation possible.

In a resolution passed Friday during its winter meeting, the committee called on Republicans to pass laws “that acknowledge the beating hearts and experiences of pain in the unborn.” Such language has been used to pass “heartbeat” bills that would ban abortions at six weeks, before many people know they are pregnant.

The RNC resolution, passed just after Ronna McDaniel won her fourth term as RNC chairwoman, accused Republican candidates of failing to capitalize on the Supreme Court’s decision, and alluded to a well-funded opposition “concealing their extremism while mischaracterizing and vilifying pro-life Republican candidates.”

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Blue v. Red is happening every day.

Don't want to wait until next year to whoop Republicans? We have three juicy races for you right now.

From left: Janet Protaseiwicz, Jodi Habush Sinykin, and Chuck Grassie.

• In the New Hampshire state House, Democratic Rep. Chuck Grassie is running in a do-over race on Feb. 21 after his November election ended in a tie. Republicans actually tried to cancel this special election and simply seat the GOP candidate as the winner, so we need to make them pay for that brazen power grab. If we do, we’ll whittle their advantage in the chamber down to a super-skinny 201-199 margin—and future special elections could even see the majority changes hands. Read more here.

• In the Wisconsin state Senate, Republicans just won an ill-gotten supermajority last fall thanks to gerrymandered maps they rigged themselves. That means they could impeach and remove any official in the state, including Gov. Tony Evers, without the vote of a single Democratic lawmaker—and they’ve warned they might do just that. But because a Republican senator recently resigned, we can erase that supermajority by supporting Democrat Jodi Habush Sinykin in a special election on April 4. Read more here.

• And finally, the Wisconsin Supreme Court is up for grabs on April 4, and with it the fate of democracy in this critical swing state. Conservatives currently have a 4-3 majority, but a right-wing justice is retiring, so if a progressive replaces her, that would give liberals control of the court. If that happens, the court could roll back the GOP’s extreme gerrymanders, restore the right to an abortion, and block any attempts by Republicans to steal the 2024 election for Donald Trump. The candidate best-positioned to win is Judge Janet Protaseiwicz. (Daily Kos).

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  Half-way out the door. George Santos.

  

  Rep. George Santos voluntarily steps down from House committee assignments.

  Multiple GOP lawmakers tell NPR that embattled New York Republican Rep. George Santos has voluntarily recused himself from serving on committees temporarily.

  Santos made those comments during the GOP's weekly closed-door conference meeting Tuesday morning.

  Santos noted his presence was a distraction, those in the meeting said. He did not answer questions from NPR as he left the meeting. (NPR).

New York Times -

“His decision to step down from his committees came after he met privately with Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Monday night. Mr. McCarthy told reporters on Tuesday that Mr. Santos had brought up the idea and that it was an “appropriate decision” for now, “until he could clear everything up.”

A poll by Newsday and Siena College on Tuesday found that voters in Mr. Santos’s district overwhelmingly thought he should step down. About 78 percent of those surveyed said they believed Mr. Santos should resign, including 71 percent of Republicans.

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Connecting human and non-human species.

You don’t have to be complicit in our Culture of Destruction.

“People feel a kind of longing for a belonging to the natural world,” says the author and scientist Robin Wall Kimmerer. “It’s related to, I think, some of the dead ends that we have created for ourselves that don’t have a lot of meaning.” In part to share a potential source of meaning, Kimmerer, who is a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and a professor at the State University of New York’s College of Environmental Science and Forestry, published her essay collection, “Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants.” That book, which was put out by Milkweed Editions, a small Minnesota nonprofit press, and which this year celebrates its 10th anniversary, has more than done its job. “Braiding Sweetgrass” has now been a yearslong presence on best-seller lists, with more than 1.4 million copies in print across various formats, and its success has allowed Milkweed to double in size. Given the urgency of climate change, it’s very unlikely that the appetite for the book’s message of ecological care and reciprocity will diminish anytime soon. “As we’ve learned,” says Kimmerer, who is 69, “there are lots of us who think this way.”(New York Times).

Can we derive other ways of being that allow our species to flourish and our more-than-human relatives to flourish as well? I think we can. It’s a false dichotomy to say we could have human well-being or ecological flourishing.

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Keep your classified documents close. Keep your radiation even closer.

A member of the Incident Management Team coordinates the search for a radioactive capsule that was lost in transit by a contractor hired by Rio Tinto, at the Emergency Services Complex in Cockburn, Australia, in this undated handout photo.

Australia deploys more experts, equipment to search for lost radioactive capsule.

MELBOURNE, Jan 31 (Reuters) - Australian authorities on Tuesday sent out more personnel and specialised detection equipment to search for a tiny radioactive capsule missing somewhere in the outback, including a team from the country's nuclear safety agency.

The capsule is believed to have fallen from a road train - a truck with multiple trailers - that made a 1,400 km (870 mile) journey in Western Australia and its loss has triggered a radiation alert for large parts of the vast state.

Authorities suspect vibrations from the road train caused the screws and a bolt from the gauge to come loose, and then the capsule fell out. The gauge was picked up from the mine site on Jan. 12 and was unpacked for inspection on Jan. 25 when the loss of the capsule became evident.

The silver capsule, 6 mm in diameter and 8 mm long, contains Caesium-137 which emits radiation equal to 10 X-rays per hour.

People have been told to stay at least five metres (16.5 feet) away if they spot it as exposure could cause radiation burns or radiation sickness, though driving past the capsule is believed to be relatively low risk, akin to taking an X-ray. (Reuters).

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Eve and I are pizza mad. Are you?

If we are not going out for pizza, I have been known to buy the local store’s dough - pull and stretch and top with the best - bake on a preheated pizza stone at 500 F, or on an open grill. 5 minutes at most. No soggy pizza delivered in a box at our home.

Here 👇 is another alternative. 🍕🍕

The Restless Quest for a Better Frozen Pizza.

Since 1962, when the Minneapolis entrepreneur Rose Totino introduced it to American shoppers, frozen pizza has been an after-school snack, the quickest route to dinner, a midnight temptation of last resort.

But in the last five years, frozen pizza has become something else entirely: a piece of culinary craft, an authentic taste of Italy, a connection to buzzy pizzerias like Roberta’s in Bushwick, Brooklyn, and Pizzana in Los Angeles and Dallas.

Sales of frozen food surged during the pandemic, according to IRI and other market research firms, boosting premium mass-produced brands like Talia di Napoli and Table 87, and pushing even the most traditional pizzaiolos toward the freezer aisle.

Premium Pizzas Are Filling the Freezer Aisles. How Do They Taste?

To find out, four hungry Times staff members staged a blind tasting.

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