Companies reach $26b opioid settlement Four companies – AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health, McKesson and Johnson & Johnson – have agreed to pay a total of $26b to settle a lawsuit brought by state attorney generals, releasing themselves from legal liability in the opioid epidemic. The settlement amounts to about to 4% of the companies’ annual revenue. The companies have admitted to no wrongdoing for the opioid crisis that has killed more than half a million Americans since 1999. “The urgency of the problem continues,” said Tennessee attorney general Herbert H Slatery III. “It’s just relentless.” New Orleans has issued an advisory “strongly recommending” indoor masking, as coronavirus cases in the state and across the country tick up. The number of new cases reported in Louisiana today was the third-highest figure the state had seen since the beginning of the pandemic, health officials said. “The alarming transmission data we’ve seen in the last two weeks, coupled with an inadequate vaccination rate, leaves us no choice,” said Jennifer Avegno, the director of the New Orleans Health Department. “People who continue to refuse to take the lifesaving Covid vaccine are now also putting the entire community in jeopardy. We must take action now to slow the rapid spread of the Delta variant.” The majority of new Covid-19 cases – and 97% of hospitalizations – are among unvaccinated people, the health department said. “I’m asking every single vaccinated New Orleanian to tell their story to a family member, neighbor, or colleague: that vaccines are safe, effective, and lifesaving,” Avegno said in a statement. Coronavirus cases have cases nearly tripled in the US over the past two weeks, the AP reports, based on data from Johns Hopkins University. The average for daily new cases rose from 13,700 on 6 July to more than 37,000 on Tuesday. From the AP: In Louisiana, health officials reported 5,388 new COVID-19 cases Wednesday — the third-highest daily count since the beginning of the pandemic in early 2020. Hospitalizations for the disease rose to 844 statewide, up more than 600 since mid-June. Utah reported having 295 people hospitalized due to the virus, the highest number since February. The state has averaged about 622 confirmed cases per day over the last week, about triple the infection rate at its lowest point in early June. Health data shows the surge is almost entirely connected to unvaccinated people. “It is like seeing the car wreck before it happens,” said Dr. James Williams, a clinical associate professor of emergency medicine at Texas Tech, who has recently started treating more COVID-19 patients. “None of us want to go through this again.” He said the patients are younger — many in their 20s, 30s and 40s — and overwhelmingly unvaccinated. As lead pastor of one of Missouri’s largest churches, Jeremy Johnson has heard the reasons congregants don’t want the COVID-19 vaccine. He wants them to know it’s not only OK to get vaccinated, it’s what the Bible urges. California couple whose gender-reveal party sparked a wildfire charged with 30 crimes Gabrielle Canon A California couple has been criminally charged for their role in igniting last year’s destructive El Dorado wildfire after they used a pyrotechnic device during a gender-reveal party. The blaze torched close to 23,000 acres (9,300 hectares), destroyed five homes and 15 other buildings, and claimed the life of a firefighter, Charlie Morton. Refugio Manuel Jimenez Jr and Angela Renee Jimenez were indicted for 30 crimes including involuntary manslaughter, said Jason Anderson, the San Bernardino county district attorney, during a press conference. The couple pleaded not guilty and were released to await their court date. “You’re obviously dealing with lost lives, you’re dealing with injured lives, and you’re dealing with people’s residences that were burned and their land that was burned,” Anderson said. “That encompasses a lot of, not only emotion, but damage, both financially and psychologically.” The charges, which were based on 34 witness testimonies given to a grand jury, along with 434 exhibits presented, include one felony count of involuntary manslaughter, three felony counts of recklessly causing a fire with great bodily injury, four felony counts of recklessly causing a fire to inhabited structures and 22 misdemeanor counts of recklessly causing fire to property of another. Along with the destroyed homes and structures, four additional residences were damaged and there were 13 injuries. Morton, who was 39 years old when he was killed, was a 14-year veteran firefighter with the San Bernardino national forest service, and served as part of an elite team that deploys across the US to fight wildland fires. “He’s fighting a fire that was started because of a smoke bomb,” Anderson said of Morton’s death. “That’s the only reason he’s there.” Biden is nominating Victoria Reggie Kennedy, the widow of senator Edward Kennedy, as ambassador to Austria. David Cohen, a former lobbyist for Comcast, is nominated as the ambassador to Canada. Kennedy, a gun control advocate, is the president of the board and co-founder of the Edward M Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate, a non-partisan nonprofit. The president, who has seen ambassadorships as a way to reward loyalists, is also weighing nominating Caroline Kennedy, daughter of John F Kennedy, for an ambassadorship. The White House also said Biden is nominating Jamie Harpootlian, a South Carolina attorney and spouse of a powerful South Carolina Democratic ally, state senator Dick Harpootlian, for ambassador to Slovenia. Bernie Sanders: "We must fight" for budget proposal In an op-ed for the Guardian, Bernie Sanders said that while the Democrats’ budget proposal is smaller than the one he’d originally sought, it “will be the most consequential piece of legislation for working people, the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor since FDR and the New Deal of the 1930s”. He writes: Now is the time. At a time when the gap between the very rich and everyone else is growing wider, when two people now own more wealth than the bottom 40% and when some of the wealthiest people and biggest businesses in the world pay nothing in federal income taxes, the billionaire class and large profitable corporations must finally start paying their fair share of taxes Now is the time. At a time when real wages for workers have not gone up in almost 50 years, when over half our people live paycheck to paycheck, when over 90 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured, when working families cannot afford childcare or higher education for their kids, when many Americans no longer believe their government represents their interests, the US Congress must finally have the courage to represent the needs of working families and not just the 1% and their lobbyists. Now is the time. At a time of unprecedented heatwaves, drought, flooding, extreme weather disturbances and the acidification of the oceans, now is the time for the US government to make certain that the planet we leave our children and future generations is healthy and habitable. We must stand up to the greed of the fossil fuel industry, transform our energy system and lead the world in combating climate change. As chairman of the US Senate budget committee I fought hard for a $6tn budget which would address these and other long-neglected needs. Not everyone in the Democratic caucus agreed with me and, after a lot of discussion and compromise within the budget committee, an agreement was reached on a smaller number. (Needless to say, no Republicans will support legislation which taxes the rich and protects working families.) While this budget is less than I had wanted, let us be clear. This proposal, if passed, will be the most consequential piece of legislation for working people, the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor since FDR and the New Deal of the 1930s. It will also put the US in a global leadership position as we combat climate change. Further, and importantly, this legislation will create millions of good-paying jobs as we address the long-neglected needs of working families and the planet. Today so far House minority leader Kevin McCarthy pulled all his Republican appointees from the House select committee investigating the 6 January attack on the US Capitol after House speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected two of his choices, Jim Jordan and Jim Banks. Congresswoman Liz Cheney, who was appointed to the committee by Pelosi, had strong words for McCarthy and said she supported Pelosi’s decision as one of the two that Pelosi rejected “may well be a material witness to events that led to” the attack. The procedural cloture vote that would have moved debate on the bipartisan infrastructure deal to the floor did not pass in the Senate, as expected. Procedural vote on infrastructure bill fails in Senate As expected, the cloture vote to move along the bipartisan infrastructure deal does not pass in the Senate. Does this mean the end to the framework that a bipartisan group has been negotiating for months now on improving the country’s roads, bridges, public transit and broadband? No. It’s not a great look for the Democrats, who wanted to move the bipartisan infrastructure deal along so they could turn their attention toward the reconciliation bill that focuses on the “human infrastructure” of social services and environmental measures – a bill that Republicans dislike so much because of its size that minority leader Mitch McConnell is suggesting attaching the debt ceiling to it. It was the first test of the infrastructure deal, and it did not pass – Republicans were clear from the start that they did not want to move on a procedural vote when there wasn’t any text to the bill (there is precedent for this). By changing his vote tonight, however, Schumer has allowed for another vote in the future. Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney did not hold back on her colleagues today, as she blasted House minority leader Kevin McCarthy and his decision to remove all the Republicans that he appointed to the House select committee tasked with investigating the 6 January attack on the US Capitol. She pointed out that one of the two Republican appointees that House speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected – Jim Banks and Jim Jordan – “may well be a material witness to events that led to” the attack. Cheney blasts GOP House minority leader over Jan 6 actions Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney just appeared on the steps of the US Capitol to blast fellow GOPer Kevin McCarthy over his actions to remove all five of the Republicans that he’d appointed to the committee created to investigate the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol by extremist supporters of Donald Trump. Cheney, who was ousted from her leadership post as the No. 3 Republican in the House in May over criticism of Trump’s claims that he won the 2020 election, accused McCarthy of trying to “prevent” Americans from knowing the truth of how the Capitol attack occurred. “The American people deserve to know what happened. The people who did this must be held accountable, it must be an investigation that is sober and gets to the facts,” she said, adding that, however “at every turn the minority leader has tried to get the people not to know what happened.” House Speaker and California Democrat Nancy Pelosi had already appointed Cheney to the committee alongside seven Democrats. Cheney, this afternoon, then said: “This investigation must go forward. The idea that anybody would be playing politics with an attack on the United States Capitol is despicable and disgraceful.” Cheney, Wyoming’s GOP rep in the House and daughter of former US vice president Dick Cheney, was one of the few Republicans to vote to impeach Donald Trump for inciting the insurrection. Representatives Jim Banks and Jim Jordan both addressed the press at the same press conference where House minority leader Kevin McCarthy discussed his decision to pull all Republicans from the House select committee investigating the 6 January attack of the US Capitol after House speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected his appointment of representatives Banks and Jim Jordan. “This just goes to show how partisan of an exercise we said this was all along,” Banks said. “That Nancy Pelosi would take me and Jim Jordan first off of this committee and then the rest of us as well by rejecting the first two of us, she knows that we were prepared to fight to get to the truth, to find the facts about what happened on that day to make sure that January 6 would never happen again.” Banks claimed that Pelosi knew they were already asking “questions that Democrats have never asked about why the Capitol was vulnerable that day”. Jim Jordan used his time at the press conference to talk about crime, border crossings and inflation before circling back and saying that the committee isn’t going to address the question of why there wasn’t a proper security presence at the Capitol that day because Democrats “normalized anarchy” all last year and talked about defunding police. Representative Troy Nehls also spoke, saying he was ready to take his 30 years of law enforcement experience onto the committee. “I was certainly prepared to help this committee get to the truth. I wanted to get to the truth. But unfortunately Speaker Pelosi has shown that she’s more interested in playing politics,” he said. Again: Pelosi rejected ONLY the appointments of Banks and Jordan. She was fine with Nehls, Rodney Davis and Kelly Armstrong. House minority leader Kevin McCarthy held a press conference in which he griped about how the House select committee would no longer be able to tap into the law enforcement expertise of Republican Texas representative Troy Nehls now that House speaker Nancy Pelosi is “playing politics”. Again: Pelosi rejected McCarthy’s appointment of representatives Jim Jordan and Jim Banks. Not Nehls - even though all three voted against the certification of the 2020 presidential election on 6 January. “I think this is clear to the American public: this is a sham, but we are going to make sure we get to the real answers,” McCarthy said. Jordan, who was a particularly fervent advocate of the anti-democratic propaganda campaign to undermine faith in the election results, tweeted: “Speaker Pelosi just admitted the obvious, that the January 6th Select Committee is nothing more than a partisan political charade.” McCarthy pulls all Republicans from 6 January committee House speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected earlier today two Republican representatives that House minority leader Kevin McCarthy appointed to the House select committee tasked with investigating the 6 January attack on the US Capitol. Representatives Jim Jordan and Jim Banks had voted on 6 January in support of the baseless objections to the certification of the presidential election, raising questions of a conflict of interest - many who stormed the Capitol that day said they did so because they falsely believed the election was stolen. McCarthy has just put a statement saying Pelosi’s denial of his picks represent “an egregious abuse of power and will irreparably damage this institution”. “Unless Speaker Pelosi reverses course and seats all five Republican nominees, Republicans will not be party to their sham process and will instead pursue our own investigation of the facts.” Pelosi, for her part, did not comment on why she did not object to the third representative that McCarthy appointed who also objected to the presidential certification on 6 January - Troy Nehls. “We have a bipartisan quorum,” she said, when asked if she was concerned about House Republicans pulling out of the committee. “We can proceed.” With infection rates of the highly transmissible Delta variant of the coronavirus highest where vaccination rates are the lowest, Republicans are now pushing to get the message out to their constituents that vaccines are safe and could save their lives and they should get vaccinated as soon as possible. A Washington Post-ABC News poll found last month that while 86% of Democrats surveyed have received at least one shot of a vaccine, only 45% of Republicans have. Of those surveyed, 47% of Republicans said they weren’t likely to get vaccinated, compared to 6% of Democrats. “It’s really not a partisan issue,” Republican Florida senator Marco Rubio said on CBS This Morning. After delaying for months, Republican House minority whip Steve Scalise received his first jab on Sunday, telling nola.com that the vaccine was “safe and effective.” “Especially with the Delta variant becoming a lot more aggressive and seeing another spike, it was a good time to do it,” he said. “When you talk to people who run hospitals, in New Orleans or other states, 90% of people in hospital with Delta variant have not been vaccinated. That’s another signal the vaccine works.” He then went on to say he has yet to hear Vice President Kamala Harris or Joe Biden apologize for criticizing the vaccine when Donald Trump was president (which neither of them did, exactly - they both said something along the lines of they will take the vaccine when public health professionals advise them to, but not when Trump says so. They have both since been vaccinated).