Combating COVID-19 | The White House

Combating COVID-19 | The White House

The American people deserve an urgent, robust, and professional response to the growing public health and economic crisis caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. President Biden believes that the federal government must act swiftly and aggressively to help protect and support our families, small businesses, first responders, and caregivers essential to help us face this challenge, those who are most vulnerable to health and economic impacts, and our broader communities – not to blame others or bail out corporations.

The Biden-Harris administration will always:

• Listen to science
• Ensure public health decisions are informed by public health professionals
• Promote trust, transparency, common purpose, and accountability in our government

President Biden and Vice President Harris have a seven-point plan to beat COVID-19.

Ensure all Americans have access to regular, reliable, and free testing.

• Double the number of drive-through testing sites.
• Invest in next-generation testing, including at home tests and instant tests, so we can scale up our testing capacity by orders of magnitude.
• Stand up a Pandemic Testing Board like Roosevelt’s War Production Board. It’s how we produced tanks, planes, uniforms, and supplies in record time, and it’s how we will produce and distribute tens of millions of tests.
• Establish a U.S. Public Health Jobs Corps to mobilize at least 100,000 Americans across the country with support from trusted local organizations in communities most at risk to perform culturally competent approaches to contact tracing and protecting at-risk populations.

Fix personal protective equipment (PPE) problems for good.

President Biden is taking responsibility and giving states, cities, tribes, and territories the critical supplies they need.

• Fully use the Defense Production Act to ramp up production of masks, face shields, and other PPE so that the national supply of personal protective equipment exceeds demand and our stores and stockpiles — especially in hard-hit areas that serve disproportionately vulnerable populations — are fully replenished.
• Build immediately toward a future, flexible American-sourced and manufactured capability to ensure we are not dependent on other countries in a crisis.

Provide clear, consistent, evidence-based guidance for how communities should navigate the pandemic – and the resources for schools, small businesses, and families to make it through.

• Social distancing is not a light switch. It is a dial. President Biden will direct the CDC to provide specific evidence-based guidance for how to turn the dial up or down relative to the level of risk and degree of viral spread in a community, including when to open or close certain businesses, bars, restaurants, and other spaces; when to open or close schools, and what steps they need to take to make classrooms and facilities safe; appropriate restrictions on size of gatherings; when to issue stay-at-home restrictions.
• Establish a renewable fund for state and local governments to help prevent budget shortfalls, which may cause states to face steep cuts to teachers and first responders.
• Call on Congress to pass an emergency package to ensure schools have the additional resources they need to adapt effectively to COVID-19.
• Provide a “restart package” that helps small businesses cover the costs of operating safely, including things like plexiglass and PPE.

OTHERWISE: Lawyers - en masse - call for Giuliani to be disciplined, suspended

OTHERWISE: Lawyers - en masse - call for Giuliani to be disciplined, suspended

Executive Order on Protecting Worker Health and Safety | The White House

Executive Order on Protecting Worker Health and Safety | The White House

President Biden's 17 First Day Executive Orders in Detail - The New York Times

President Biden's 17 Executive Orders in Detail - The New York Times

Rush to judgment...FDA v. American College of OBGYNs

OTHERWISE: Rush to judgment...FDA v. American College of OBGYNs

The Supreme Court, 6-3, continuing its pattern of early intervention in matters before the District and Courts of Appeals, has stayed an order of the District Court which had enjoined the FDA's requirement that a woman may be dispensed mifepristone, an abortifacient drug, must appear in person at a hospital or doctor's office.

The Supreme Court’s Dangerous New Crusade Against Science Is Just Beginning

The Supreme Court’s Dangerous New Crusade Against Science Is Just Beginning 

By David R. Lurie - Daily Beast -December 9, 2020

Five Justices of the United States Supreme Court just declared war on science by overriding the judgment of New York State’s governor and health-care professionals and nullifying emergency limitations on in-person religious worship in New York City areas most heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic—doing so just as the city is on the precipice of another uncontrollable public health disaster. This astoundingly reckless action by the new reactionary court majority established with the appointment of Amy Coney Barret amounts to an opening salvo in what is certain to be an ongoing judicial campaign against scientifically informed government officials the justices believe have been targeting “traditional” religion.

Earlier this year, a five-justice majority, comprised of the Supreme Court’s then four relatively liberal Justices (including the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg) and Chief Justice Roberts, rejected applications to void two similar pandemic-related regulations of indoor worship services as violative of the First Amendment’s free exercise clause. As Roberts explained, the court has long reasoned that the “Constitution principally entrusts ‘[t]he safety and health of the people’ to the politically accountable officials of the states," who should generally not be “subject to second-guessing by an ‘unelected federal judiciary,’ which lacks the background, competence, and expertise to assess public health and is not accountable to the people.”

‘Expedited Spree of Executions’ Faced Little Supreme Court Scrutiny - The New York Times

‘Expedited Spree of Executions’ Faced Little Supreme Court Scrutiny - The New York Time

By Adam Liptak

• Jan. 18, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET

In 2015, a few months before he died, Justice Antonin Scalia said he would not be surprised if the Supreme Court did away with the death penalty.

These days, after President Trump’s appointment of three justices, liberal members of the court have lost all hope of abolishing capital punishment. In the face of an extraordinary run of federal executions over the past six months, they have been left to wonder whether the court is prepared to play any role in capital cases beyond hastening executions.

Until July, there had been no federal executions in 17 years. Since then, the Trump administration has executed 13 inmates, more than three times as many as the federal government had put to death in the previous six decades.

In a dissent issued late Friday, as the court cleared the way for the last execution of the Trump era, Justice Sonia Sotomayor took stock of what the nation had learned about the Supreme Court’s attitude toward the death penalty.

“Over the past six months, this court has repeatedly sidestepped its usual deliberative processes, often at the government’s request, allowing it to push forward with an unprecedented, breakneck timetable of executions,” she wrote.

“Throughout this expedited spree of executions, this court has consistently rejected inmates’ credible claims for relief,” Justice Sotomayor continued. “The court made these weighty decisions in response to emergency applications, with little opportunity for proper briefing and consideration, often in just a few short days or even hours.”

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Podcast: Siege at the Capital – The National Security Law Perspective

Siege at the Capital – The National Security Law Perspective

 National Security and the Siege at the Capitol - Podcast

Professor William Banks is the Chair of the ABA Standing Committee on Law and National Security Advisory Committee and a Distinguished Professor and Emeritus Professor at the Syracuse University College of Law and the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. He is the author of several constitutional, national security, and counterterrorism law textbooks and the founder of the Syracuse Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism (now the Syracuse Institute of Security Policy and Law).

Mary DeRosa is a Professor from Practice and the Co-Director of the Global Law Scholars Program at Georgetown University Law Center. She served as Deputy Assistant and Deputy Counsel to the President, National Security Council Legal Adviser, and as Alternate Representative of the United States to the UN General Assembly. She aso seved as Chief Counsel for National Security for the Senate Judiciary Committee and Special Counsel to the General Counsel at the Department of Defense. She is the Chair of the Advisory Committee to the Standing Committee.

Harvey Rishikof is a Visiting Professor at Temple University Beasley School of Law and the Director of Policy and Cyber Security Research at the University of Maryland Applied Research Laboratory For Intelligence and Security, and the Senior Counselor to the ABA Standing Committee on Law and National Security.

This episode references:

• National Security: Emerging Critical Issues CLE Webinar Series
• The 25th Amendment
  
• Articles of Impeachment introduced in the House
  
• Mayor Bowser’s Letter to U.S. Department of Homeland Security Acting Secretary Chad Wolf Regarding Inauguration Preparations
  
• 18 USC § 2384, Seditious conspiracy
  
• 18 USC § 2381, Treason
  
• 18 USC § 2383, Rebellion or insurrection
  
• 52 USC § 20511
  
• 40 USC § 5104, Unlawful activities [in the United States Capitol Buildings and Grounds]
  
• "If Trump pardons himself now, he’ll be walking into a trap" Asha Rangappa, Washington Post, January 8, 2021
  
• FBI Statement Before the House Oversight and Reform Committee. "Confronting White Supremacy" June 4, 2019
  
• "Hate Crimes in U.S. Rose to Highest Level in More Than a Decade in 2019" New York Times, November 16, 2020
  
• "Pelosi asks Joint Chiefs about preventing Trump from launching nukes" Politico, January 8, 2021
  
• "Amazon Will Suspend Hosting For Pro-Trump Social Network Parler" Buzzfeed News, January 9, 2021
  
• "From ‘beautiful’ to ‘disgraceful’: World reacts to Capitol riots" Atlanta Journal-Constitution, January 7, 2021
  
• "Kim Jong Un Calls U.S. North Korea's 'Biggest Enemy,' Vows To Advance Nuclear Arsenal" NPR, January 9, 2021
• Past NSLT podcasts on:
  
  • Impeachment
  • The Mueller Report
  • Pardons
  • Domestic Terrorism
  • The Insurrection Act

The Supreme Court After Trump - Linda Greenhouse The New York Times

Opinion | The Supreme Court After Trump - The New York Times

By Linda Greenhouse

Now that [Trump's] presidency has disintegrated into mayhem, how are the conservative justices processing his tenure?

Biden Could Roll Back Trump Agenda With Blitz of Executive Actions - The New York Times

Biden Could Roll Back Trump Agenda With Blitz of Executive Actions - The New York Times