Biden gets the Easter hope Trump wanted

View in Browser     Sunday 04.04.21   Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! Questions? Comments? what.matters@cnn.com   by Paul LeBlanc and Zachary B. Wolf : Washington speed read Democrats divide on infrastructure plan. President Joe Biden's roughly $2 trillion jobs proposal that is focused on infrastructure and the climate crisis is a "serious proposal," Sen. Bernie Sanders said this morning, but more work must be done on the plan to ensure it addresses major issues concerning the nation's "human infrastructure."   US Capitol Police ask for help. The chairman of the union for US Capitol Police officers said the department is "struggling to meet existing mission requirements" and is calling on Congress to hire hundreds of new police officers to ensure the safety of the Capitol following the death of a Capitol Police officer in an attack on Friday.   Administration ramps up ad campaign in Latin America. The Biden administration has placed around 28,000 radio ads in Latin America as part of a stepped-up campaign to discourage people from journeying to the US. But amid a dramatic spike in migrants to the southern border, many of whom have been lured by false information and rumors from smugglers, it's not clear the ads are resonating.   Hunter Biden speaks out. The President's son says he is fully cooperating with the Justice Department's investigation into his business dealings in China and predicted that he will be cleared of any wrong doing in the probe.   "I can say this, is I'm cooperating, completely. And I'm absolutely certain, 100% certain, that at the end of the investigation, that I will be cleared of any wrongdoing," he told CBS News in an interview that aired today.   AstraZeneca removed from vaccine plant. The federal government has moved to stop any further risk of contamination at a Baltimore contract vaccine manufacturer where 15 million potential doses of Johnson & Johnson vaccine were spoiled last month, telling rival drugmaker AstraZeneca it must move its production from the plant and find somewhere else to make its vaccine.   Obama congratulates MLB for 'taking a stand.' The former President congratulated the league "for taking a stand on behalf of voting rights for all citizens," following MLB's decision to move its All-Star Game out of Atlanta in response to Georgia's new sweeping election law.   : 'Just hang in there a bit longer' Last Easter, as the pandemic spiraled out of control and government officials made dangerous statements obfuscating our new reality, this is what we wrote:   Easter was the day President Donald Trump repeatedly envisioned the nation would be "opened up and just raring to go." Instead, more than 97% of the US population is under stay-at-home or shelter-in-place orders as the coronavirus death toll surges past 20,000 -- the most in the world.    But with signs that social-distancing restrictions have begun mitigating the crisis, a new debate is developing over whether to set a new target date of May 1 for a grand re-opening. If the curve is flattening, sources say Trump has asked in meetings, shouldn't some people be allowed back to work?   In the year since, more than 30.6 million people have been infected with the virus and more than 554,000 people have died of it. Business have closed, mass layoffs have afflicted millions, and the US has had to adjust to a new way of life.    But that's about to change. The medical cavalry is here, and the vaccine is being administered at a record clip. The sense of optimism this time around is not a confidence game. It's for real.    The US has perhaps the clearest roadmap out of the pandemic to date: If people continue to wear masks, avoid crowds and let the vaccination program do its work, life will eventually get back to normal in the US.   Take it from Fauci. "We are going to get to where (people) want to be, where I want to be, where you want to be -- where we have enough people protected with the vaccines that we can go out and watch the cherry blossoms, and we can go out and enjoy as we get warmer weather," Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNN's Jim Acosta on Saturday. "It's going to happen. It will."   Vaccination rates are soaring. More than 4 million doses of the vaccine were reported administered on Saturday, setting a new record and bringing the seven-day average to more than 3 million a day.    About 32% of the population – 106 million people – have received at least one dose of the vaccine, and 18.5% of the population – about 61 million people – have been fully vaccinated.   And the more vaccinations, the more people can do. Once transmission rates fall far enough, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will issue revised guidelines about what fully vaccinated people can safely do, Fauci said.   "This is not going to last forever because every day you get 4 million, 3 million people vaccinated, you get closer and closer to control," he said. "So what we are saying is double down. Just hang in there a bit longer, and the vaccine and the vaccinations in this country are going to override the surge in the virus. There's no doubt the vaccine is going to win out."   Variants and increased travel still pose a threat. Experts say that the US appears to be entering into another fresh surge, which is partially due to more travel. The US averaged 63,974 daily cases over the last week, up 11% since the previous week.   But the virus has less options this time around. Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, says the amount of immunity in the US population may help prevent another surge.   "I think that there's enough immunity in the population that you're not going to see a true fourth wave of infection," he told CBS' "Face the Nation" today.   Gottlieb, who also sits on the board of Pfizer, said that he thinks with the rate of vaccination, along with the number of Americans who have already been infected, there are "somewhere around 200 million Americans that have some level of immunity in them already." : The attack on voting rights, mapped Lawmakers in all but three states have introduced bills aimed at restricting ballot access, according to a new tally by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.   All but three.   The total, released Thursday morning, marks a 43% rise in the number of bills introduced since Brennan last released a count a little over a month ago.   Bills aiming to curb voting rights introduced in almost every state See more from CNN's Janie Boschma, Fredreka Schouten and Priya Krishnakumar.  : Which party can claim White working class voters? Democrat Rita Hart's loss in Iowa's 2nd Congressional District marks one of the strongest signs of a larger story: educational polarization in our politics dominating even in places it didn't previously exist, while income has become considerably less important in determining voting patterns.   As CNN's Harry Enten writes:    Back in 2006, Democrats could rightly argue they had a lot of support by at least one definition of the White working class.   Today, Republicans can rightly claim to have the support of the White working class based on either an economic- or education-based definition.   Read more here. : What are we doing here? We're trying to connect the dots at a time of political, cultural and economic upheaval. All CNN Newsletters  |  Manage Profile     ® © 2021 Cable News Network, Inc. A WarnerMedia Company. All Rights Reserved.   One CNN Center Atlanta, GA 30303    Unsubscribe

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