Summary That’s all from the Guardian US politics liveblog, here’s what happened today: A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. found that among American adults who have not yet received a vaccine, 35% say they probably will not, and 45% say they definitely will not. The White House faced a raft of questions about how to vaccinate more Americans. Right now, about half the total population is vaccinated. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio called on private employers, and particularly private hospitals, to consider mandating their employees to get vaccinated. Republican lawmakers are also under increasing pressure to encourage their base to get vaccinated, though some experts worry vaccine hesitancy may have already hardened to opposition. An exasperated Republican Governor Kay Ivey said it may be time to start “blaming” unvaccinated people for the rise in the variant. Finally, Mississippi filed a supreme court brief urging the nine-member bench to overturn Roe v Wade. If that happened, advocates believe half of states would move to outlaw the healthcare procedure. Cameras, computer modeling, drones: the higher-tech ways to fight fires As dozens of wildfires continue to burn in across the US, the Associated Press has a new report out on the new technology that firefighters are using to fight increasingly ferocious blazes. The AP writes: As drought- and wind-driven wildfires have become more dangerous across the American West in recent years, firefighters have tried to become smarter in how they prepare. That includes using new fire behavior computer modeling that can help assess risks before fires start, then project their path and growth. When “critical weather” is predicted — hot, dry winds or lightning storms — the technology, on top of hard-earned experience, allows California planners to pre-position fire engines, bulldozers, aircraft and hand crews armed with shovels and chain saws in areas where they can respond more quickly. In another effort to catch fires quickly, what once were fire lookout towers staffed by humans have largely been replaced with cameras in remote areas, many of them in high-definition and armed with artificial intelligence to discern a smoke plume from morning fog. There are 800 such cameras scattered across California, Nevada and Oregon, and even casual viewers can remotely watch wildfires in real time. Fire managers also routinely summon military drones from the National Guard or Air Force to fly over fires at night, using heat imaging to map their boundaries and hot spots. They can use satellite imagery to plot the course of smoke and ash. On the topic of old-school firefighting technology, our wildfires correspondent Gabrielle Canon recently spent some time in one of those aforementioned lookout towers. The one she visited is in Marin county, in northern California, and was built almost 100 years ago. Volunteers still spend long hours there, gazing out, looking for a telltale spark. Earlier today, my colleague Jewel Wicker covered a new report from the Brennan Center for Justice that found at least 18 states in the US have enacted laws that restrict voting access. The study describes the onslaught as “the most aggressive in more than a decade of tracking state voting laws”. The report comes after Republicans in the Senate blocked the For the People Act, a major bill that would have shored up voting rights, and Democratic lawmakers in Texas staged a high profile walkout from the state legislature in an effort to thwart new voting restrictions. Wicker writes: The report found that the 30 laws that have been passed since 1 January “make mail voting and early voting more difficult, impose harsher voter ID requirements, and make faulty voter [roll] purges more likely, among other things”. The laws were among the more than 400 bills introduced in 49 states during this year’s legislative session that would make voting more difficult. Such proliferating and restrictive legislation contrasted sharply, however, with the report’s finding that no states produced evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 elections, despite continued claims by Donald Trump, backed by numerous Republican leaders, that he was not beaten by Joe Biden in the race to the White House. In fact, officials at local, state and national level declared last November’s the most secure election in US history, while Trump fought in vain through the courts to overturn the result. Read the full story here, and check out all of the Guardian’s voting rights coverage here. The White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, delivered an update today on US efforts to share its Covid vaccine doses with other countries around the world. The news comes as domestic vaccination rates stagnate and the White House ramps up its efforts to fight vaccine hesitancy. The AP reports: White House press secretary Jen Psaki says the United States has shipped 22 million doses of the coronavirus vaccine to other countries this week. The total was a weekly record as vaccines went to 23 countries. Psaki says the recipients included Pakistan, Vietnam, Guatemala, Panama, Senegal, Cameroon and Morocco, among other nations. By this weekend, roughly 80 million doses in total will have shipped from the United States to other countries. Psaki stressed at Friday’s White House news briefing that the United States is “donating more to the world than any other country.” Still, there is a global vaccine gap between wealthier nations and poorer ones, a reflection of the economic might of American and European countries as well as the pressure to address the needs of domestic populations. Amid growing concerns about rising Covid-19 cases across the US, reporter Erin McCormick took a closer look at one state experiencing an alarming spike: California. The Golden State has had some of the strictest lockdowns during the pandemic, and now has some of the highest vaccination rates. But just over a month after the governor lifted the last of the state’s Covid restrictions, case numbers are climbing, and some counties are bringing back mask mandates. She writes: In Los Angeles, county figures show that Covid-19 infections have increased twentyfold in a month. In San Francisco, they’ve almost tripled in two weeks and, overall, California’s hospitalization numbers have increased by 58%, according to New York Times data. Despite the fact that California is one of the country’s most vaccinated states, experts blame the highly contagious Delta variant for a new surge that has disrupted businesses’ and politicians’ plans to celebrate the state’s reopening. “Primarily we’re seeing infections in the unvaccinated,” said George Rutherford, an epidemiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, citing earlier statistics from Los Angeles which found 99.6% of new cases there were in the unvaccinated. “We’re seeing the Delta variant’s extra strength.” Even with New York Times figures showing nearly 77% of the state’s adults having gotten at least one shot of vaccine, that leaves plenty of unprotected people to transmit the virus, Rutherford said. After arrest in Los Angeles, Trump inauguration chair ordered freed on $250m bail The chair of the former president Donald Trump’s inaugural committee was ordered freed Friday on $250m bail to face charges he secretly worked as an agent for the the United Arab Emirates to influence Trump’s foreign policy, the Associated Press reports. Tom Barrack, 74, will be subject to electronic monitoring and largely confined to his residence after he is arraigned Monday in a New York courtroom. He was arrested Tuesday in Los Angeles near his home. Barrack is expected to plead not guilty to conspiring to influence US policy on the UAE’s behalf during Trump’s 2016 campaign and while Trump was president. Barrack, the founder of private equity firm Colony Capital, was among three men charged in the case. Prosecutors said Barrack used his long personal friendship with Trump to benefit the UAE without disclosing his ties to the US government. Fact-checking claims about HIPAA and vaccination status As various public figures invoke a federal medical records privacy law to explain why they will not comment if they have received the Coronavirus vaccine, journalists are providing a fact-check about why that claim ...just does not make sense! Aishvarya Kavi’s succinct HIPAA explainer is worth a read. Poll: 45% of Americans without Covid vaccine say they ‘definitely’ wont get it This is Lois Beckett, picking up our live US politics coverage from our Los Angeles office. Most Americans who haven’t been vaccinated against COVID-19 say they are unlikely to get the shots and doubt they would work against the aggressive delta variant despite evidence they do, according to a new poll that underscores the challenges facing public health officials amid soaring infections in some states, the Associated Press reports. Among American adults who have not yet received a vaccine, 35% say they probably will not, and 45% say they definitely will not, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Just 3% say they definitely will get the shots, though another 16% say they probably will. What’s more, 64% of unvaccinated Americans have little to no confidence the shots are effective against variants — including the delta variant that officials say is responsible for 83% of new cases in the U.S. — despite evidence that they offer strong protection. White House faced questions on Covid-19, mayors push for vaccine and mask mandates Today had a front and center focus on Covid-19, as cases attributed to the contagiousness of the Delta variant rise across the south and midwest. The White House faced a raft of questions about how to vaccinate more Americans. Right now, about half the total population is vaccinated. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio called on private employers, and particularly private hospitals, to consider mandating their employees to get vaccinated. Republican lawmakers are also under increasing pressure to encourage their base to get vaccinated, though some experts worry vaccine hesitancy may have already hardened to opposition. An exasperated Republican Governor Kay Ivey said it may be time to start “blaming” unvaccinated people for the rise in the variant. Finally, Mississippi filed a supreme court brief urging the nine-member bench to overturn Roe v Wade. If that happened, advocates believe half of states would move to outlaw the healthcare procedure. Let’s go back to Mississippi’s surprising brief to the supreme court, in which it argued the nine-member bench should overturn Roe v Wade. Roe v Wade, decided in 1973, is a landmark decision that legalized abortion up to the point a fetus can survive outside the womb. That point is widely regarded as roughly 24 weeks. In October, the court will consider a Mississippi law that bans abortion after 15 weeks. Even taking up the case has signaled the court, which leans conservative, could intend to reconsider foundational aspects of the right to abortion in the US. “Under the Constitution, may a State prohibit elective abortions before viability? Yes. Why? Because nothing in constitutional text, structure, history, or tradition supports a right to abortion,” the Mississippi attorney general, Lynn Fitch, and four of her attorneys wrote in the brief. That push to invalidate Roe, and move abortion rights to the states, was one reproductive rights advocates said they had been warning about for years. If the justices overturn Roe, reproductive rights advocates expect almost half the states to immediately outlaw abortion. “Today’s brief reveals the extreme and regressive strategy, not just of this law, but of the avalanche of abortion bans and restrictions that are being passed across the country,” said Nancy Northup, CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is arguing the case before the court. “Their goal is for the supreme court to take away our right to control our own bodies and our own futures – not just in Mississippi, but everywhere.” Most women of reproductive age live in states that are hostile to abortion rights. Abortion is a common health procedure, most often performed very early in pregnancy. Nearly one-in-four women who live in the US will have an abortion by age 45. As we saw in the White House press briefing, one of the most closely watched statistics in the last few days is the number of vaccinations distributed daily. There is some anecdotal evidence to suggest that the increase in cases attributed to the Delta variant may encourage people to get vaccinated. The hope, as this tweet shows, is that we could begin to see a slight increase in daily vaccinations. New York City mayor calls on employers to "mandate" vaccines In other Bill de Blasio news, the mayor is urging private city employers to require their employees to get a Covid-19 vaccination. Last week, the de Blasio administration announced workers at the city’s public hospitals would need to get vaccinated or get a weekly Covid-19 PCR test. This takes the mayor’s urging one step further, after he said he felt the city had done everything possible in “purely voluntary” terms. I’m calling upon all New York City employers, including our private hospitals, to move immediately to some form of mandate,” said de Blasio on WNYC... Whatever the maximum you feel you can do, any form of mandate, including the type we’re doing,” he said. The mayor said he was frustrated in particular that New Yorkers, who are eligible to be vaccinated in their homes as part of the distribution drive, had not had better uptake. It’s time for more mandates,” he said. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio won’t have to testify in a judicial inquiry into the 2014 police chokehold death of Eric Garner, a judge ruled today, dashing a long-running quest by Garner’s relatives to have the mayor questioned under oath. Garner’s death, on 17 July 2014, became a focal point for national conversations on race and policing. Garner’s last words, “I can’t breathe”, were chanted by protesters across the US, and echoed in many protests in the years since. They were also among the last words of George Floyd when he was murdered by then-police officer Derek Chauvin in 2020. The police officer implicated in Garner’s death was never charged with a crime. Supporters and relatives of Garner have fought a prolonged battle for full accountability for Garner’s killing. The officer, Daniel Pantaleo, was fired in 2019. On Friday, the Associated Press reported that in addition to De Blasio being excused: Judge Erika Edwards also excused Police Commissioner Dermot Shea, the city’s chief medical examiner and other high-ranking current and former city officials from testifying, ruling that other witnesses have more direct knowledge of the case. Edwards ordered 13 witnesses to testify in the inquiry, scheduled to start Oct. 25, including the NYPD’s chief spokesperson, the head of its internal affairs unit and the president of the police officers union. Four officers and four sergeants who were involved in Garner’s arrest were also ordered to testify, but not the officer who placed Garner in the chokehold, Daniel Pantaleo. The NYPD fired him in 2019 after a department disciplinary trial. Garner’s mother, Gwen Carr, and sister, Ellisha Flagg Garner, allege that de Blasio and other city officials neglected their duties in their handling of Garner’s death. Carr said in a statement Friday that she was disappointed that de Blasio and Shea won’t have to testify, but heartened that the judge is forcing the city to turn over troves of previously undisclosed documents related to his July 17, 2014, death. “It’s been seven years since Eric was murdered, and in spite of what Mayor de Blasio has said to me personally or to New Yorkers, he and other top city officials are still blocking transparency but now the court has ordered them to finally turn over information,” Carr said. The Garner inquiry is focused on several main issues, including the factors leading to his stop, arrest and the use of force, whether officers lied on official documents, the leak of Garner’s arrest history and medical conditions, and allegations that officers failed to provide Garner with medical care. The city sought to cancel the judicial inquiry, but a state appeals court ruled last week that Garner’s death was the “rare case in which allegations of significant violations of duty” warranted such a review. Joe Biden plans to nominate Caroline Kennedy, daughter of the late president John F. Kennedy, as the American ambassador to Australia, CNN reported this afternoon, citing three unidentified people familiar with the process. The White House did not immediately return a request for comment on the report. Kennedy threw her support behind Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign in February of that year, writing that the former vice president was more prepared for the job than his rivals. Kennedy previously served as US ambassador to Japan under Barack Obama. The first female US ambassador to Japan, Kennedy was an early and prominent supporter of Obama in his initial quest for the presidency in 2008, and also campaigned for him. CNN reports: Kennedy’s appointment to Australia reflects the high priority the Biden administration is placing on the Asia-Pacific as it deals with an increasingly assertive China in the region and on the world stage. The US and Australia share close trade ties and a robust military relationship, fighting side by side in every major conflict since World War I. The two countries are also members of the “Five Eyes alliance,” an intelligence sharing arrangement between the English speaking democracies of the US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK. If confirmed, Kennedy would come to the job with prior experience specific to the region. A graduate of Harvard University and Columbia University Law School, Kennedy served as ambassador to Japan from 2013 to 2017 as an Obama administration appointee. In Tokyo, Kennedy worked on military and trade, among other issues, and became the second US ambassador to attend an annual memorial service marking the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima.