Vice President-elect Kamala Harris was vaccinated on Tuesday in Washington.
Image: dpa
While Republicans and Democrats continue to argue about the amount of Corona aid, the number of vaccinations is lagging behind expectations. Logistical delays are to blame. Joe Biden has also spotted another hurdle.
AEven though Donald Trump has since signed the Corona aid package, Congress continues to argue about the amount that every citizen should receive directly. After well-known Republican senators such as Lindsey Graham, the two Senate candidates in Georgia, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, now also support the president’s initiative. He wants the government to pay the Americans a one-time payment of $ 2,000 instead of $ 600. The Democrats took him at his word and passed a resolution to that effect in the House of Representatives. Perdue and Loeffler made a U-turn because they want to be elected to the Senate on January 3rd. Most Republicans, however, want to stick to $ 600. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has now offered to increase aid to $ 2,000, but only if a commission is set up to investigate “election fraud” – a demand that the Democrats cannot accept, as Trump’s repeated allegations of electoral fraud were from Initially irrelevant. The leader of the Democrats in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, accused McConnell of a “cynical move”. So the argument will drag on into the new year. For many Americans, however, it is important that they continue to receive their unemployment benefits – that was in danger when Trump tried to ruin the whole package.
Meanwhile, Colorado reported the first proven infection with variant B.1.1.7 virus in the United States. The reports and speculations about a higher risk of infection from this variant, which was first discovered in Great Britain in December, meet a situation that Trump’s corona expert Anthony Fauci described on Tuesday as “out of control in many ways”. Nearly 250,000 new infections are now reported daily in the United States. On Tuesday, according to calculations by Johns Hopkins University, there was a new high of 3725 deaths in one day. The previous high was registered on December 16 with 3,682 deaths. In total, more than 338,000 people have died from or with the coronavirus in America so far. 41-year-old Republican Congressman Luke Letlow was among the fatalities. The politician was only elected in Louisiana’s fifth constituency in November and should have been sworn in on Sunday. Letlow leaves behind a wife and two young children.