President Biden News: Live Updates

Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the top House Republican, on Monday defended his move to oust Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming as the party’s No. 3 leader, portraying the purge of the most powerful Republican critic of Donald J. Trump as the forward-looking move of a “big tent party.”

In a letter to colleagues announcing a Wednesday vote to “recall” Ms. Cheney, Mr. McCarthy said her ouster was necessary to overcome “internal divisions” that could derail the party’s efforts to reclaim the House majority in 2022. Even as he argued for getting rid of Ms. Cheney, who has angered others in the G.O.P. with her refusal to stay silent in the face of Mr. Trump’s election lies, Mr. McCarthy insisted that Republicans “embrace free thought and debate.”

“Each day spent relitigating the past is one day less we have to seize the future,” Mr. McCarthy wrote. “If we are to succeed in stopping the radical Democrat agenda from destroying our country, these internal conflicts need to be resolved so as to not detract from the efforts on our collective team.”

The statement was an attempt to pre-emptively deflect criticism of a messy intraparty conflict that Mr. McCarthy is well aware could alienate some voters who are eager to move past Mr. Trump and his false election claims. It also threatens to undermine the party’s efforts to avoid talking about the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol by a mob inspired by the myth of a stolen election.

The letter came a day after Mr. McCarthy officially endorsed Representative Elise Stefanik of New York to replace Ms. Cheney. Ms. Stefanik has revived Mr. Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election.

The choice to stick with Ms. Cheney or remove her is widely seen as an indicator of the path the party will take. Will it return to the conservative tradition represented by Ms. Cheney, the daughter of a former Republican vice president? Or will it continue marching in lock step with Mr. Trump — who remains popular with the Republican base even though the party lost the House, the Senate and the White House during his tenure — no matter how outlandish his claims?

Critics of Ms. Cheney say the vote is also about a lack of message discipline as the party heads into the 2022 elections. While many Republicans quietly agree that President Biden was legitimately elected and that Mr. Trump bore some blame for the Jan. 6 attack, they say they would rather focus on countering Mr. Biden’s agenda than on purging their party of lies and extremism.

“We represent Americans of all backgrounds and continue to grow our movement by the day. And unlike the left, we embrace free thought and debate,” Mr. McCarthy wrote on Monday. “All members are elected to represent their constituents as they see fit, but our leadership team cannot afford to be distracted from the important work we were elected to do and the shared goals we hope to achieve.”

Ms. Cheney does not plan to contest the recall vote, but she has promised to sharpen her argument that fealty to Mr. Trump will ultimately drag down the Republican Party. A small but outspoken coterie of Republicans is providing backup.

“Expelling Liz Cheney from leadership won’t gain the GOP one additional voter, but it will cost us quite a few,” Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah and the party’s 2012 nominee for president, warned on Twitter.

Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois, pointed out that Mr. McCarthy had said Mr. Trump bore responsibility for the Capitol riot — only to later insist that others stop talking about it.

“She is being run out for one thing: her consistency,” Mr. Kinzinger said during a National Press Club event on Monday. “She said the exact same thing that Kevin McCarthy said on Jan. 6, which is Donald Trump is responsible.”

He added, “You cannot unite with lies.”

Portions of Lafayette Square, the park in the shadow of the White House, reopened on Monday, more than 11 months after violent clashes there between protesters and law enforcement.

The park, which sits on the north side of the White House, had been fenced off to the public in June, days after William P. Barr, then the attorney general, ordered officials to clear the park of people protesting the police killings of George Floyd and other Black men. Shortly after the authorities used riot-control methods to disperse the protesters, President Donald J. Trump strode across Lafayette Square to pose in front of a church that had been damaged by fire the evening before.

In the months after the conflict, black metal fencing that had been quickly erected around the park became an impromptu memorial and art space.

On Monday, the Secret Service did not say why the park had been opened to pedestrians and bicyclists.

“In protecting the White House and its residents, the U.S. Secret Service acknowledges that the surrounding area can be a powerful symbol of our nation and our democracy, and the agency is committed to balancing necessary security measures with the importance of public access and view,” the agency said in a statement. “Due to the need to maintain operational security, we do not discuss the specifics of security fencing or other operational means and methods.”

The National Park Service referred questions to White House officials, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Pennsylvania Avenue, the thoroughfare that separates the White House from the park and is usually populated by tourists, protesters and government employees, remains closed.

Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, had said that President Biden wanted the wide security perimeter around the complex to be reduced.

“Our goal, the president and the vice president’s goal, is for the Secret Service to adjust the perimeter as soon as it makes sense from an overall security standpoint,” Ms. Psaki said in early February. “So we’re working closely with them on that, and they are — of course, would be in the lead on that front.”

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‘Moving in the Right Direction,’ Biden Says of Economic Growth

On Monday, President Biden gave an update on the economic outlook for the country after a disappointing monthly jobs report on Friday. The president maintained in his speech that economic growth was continuing, despite pandemic losses.

As we learned Friday, the economy created 266,000 jobs in April. In fact, altogether, since the time we took office, we’ve created more than 1.5 million jobs in the country. It’s the most jobs created in the first 100 days of any president on record. We’re moving in the right direction. So let’s be clear: Our economic plan is working. I never said, and no serious analyst ever suggested, that climbing out of the deep, deep hole our economy was in would be simple, easy, immediate or perfectly steady. Remember, 22 million Americans lost their jobs in this pandemic. So some months will exceed expectations, others will fall short. The question is: What is the trend line? Are we headed in the right direction? Are we taking the right steps to keep it going? And the answer clearly is yes.

President Biden ordered the Labor Department on Monday to ensure that unemployed Americans cannot draw enhanced federal jobless benefits if they turn down a suitable job offer, even as he rejected claims by Republicans that his weekly unemployment bonus is undermining efforts to get millions of Americans back to work.

Stung from a weekend of criticism over a disappointing April jobs report, Mr. Biden struck a defiant tone, seeking to make clear that he expects workers to return to jobs if they are available, while defending his signature economic policy effort thus far and blaming corporate America, in part, for not doing more to entice people to go back to work.

The president told reporters at the White House that child care constraints, school closures and fears of contracting the coronavirus had hindered job creation last month, and he challenged companies to help workers gain access to vaccines and to raise their pay.

“The last Congress, before I became president, gave businesses over $1.4 trillion in Covid relief,” Mr. Biden said. “Congress may have approved that money, but let’s be clear: The money came from the American people, and it went from the American people to American businesses, many of them big businesses, to help them get through this pandemic and keep their doors open.”

He added, “My expectation is that, as our economy comes back, these companies will provide fair wages and safe work environments.” He said that if they did, “they’ll find plenty of workers, and we’re all going to come out of this together better than before.”

Mr. Biden also promised more relief was working its way into the economy through measures created by the $1.9 trillion “American Rescue Plan” that the president signed into law in March. That includes help for child care providers and aid for state and local governments that Treasury Department officials began to make available on Monday.

Mr. Biden is trying to win support for even more federal spending, including a $2.3 trillion jobs proposal centered on physical infrastructure.

Republicans have criticized Mr. Biden for the disappointing jobs numbers. In particular, they blamed a provision in his rescue plan that extended a $300-per-week federal supplement for unemployed Americans for discouraging Americans from returning to work.

Senator Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska, said on Monday that Mr. Biden was “all over the place” on the issue.

“He wants to go after folks who are gaming the system, but he’s denying the reality that his policies are making the situation worse, so he’s trying to make struggling businesses the boogeymen,” Mr. Sasse said in a news release. “Here’s the deal: Bad federal policy is making unemployment pay more than work, and millions of jobs aren’t getting filled.”

The Biden administration announced on Monday that health care providers could not discriminate against transgender individuals, the latest step in President Biden’s efforts to restore civil rights protections for L.G.B.T.Q. people that were eliminated by his predecessor.

Under the new policy, the Department of Health and Human Services will once again prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity by health care organizations that receive federal funding.

The move will reverse a policy adopted by H.H.S. under President Donald J. Trump that said anti-discrimination provisions of the Affordable Care Act of 2010 did not apply to transgender people. That move had been hailed by social conservatives and harshly criticized by gay rights supporters.

“Fear of discrimination can lead individuals to forgo care, which can have serious negative health consequences,” Xavier Becerra, Mr. Biden’s health secretary, said in a statement. “It is the position of the Department of Health and Human Services that everyone — including L.G.B.T.Q. people — should be able to access health care, free from discrimination or interference, period.”

The move is part of a broader effort by the president to include lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning people — and particularly transgender individuals — in protections against discrimination. In his first address to a joint session of Congress last month, Mr. Biden pledged his support for the Equality Act, which would broaden civil rights laws to include sexual orientation and gender identity.

“To all transgender Americans watching at home, especially the young people: You’re so brave,” Mr. Biden said in his speech. “I want you to know your president has your back.”

Administration officials said the new policy was based on a ruling by the Supreme Court last summer in which the justices said that civil rights laws protected L.G.B.T.Q. workers from employment discrimination.

The health agency’s new approach does not cover employment, but officials cited the Supreme Court’s decision as support for the change. They said the department’s Office of Civil Rights would interpret the Affordable Care Act’s anti-discrimination provisions to include “(1) discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation; and (2) discrimination on the basis of gender identity.”

The new interpretation will apply to “covered health programs or activities,” which includes doctors, hospitals and other health care organizations that receive public funding.

“The mission of our department is to enhance the health and well-being of all Americans, no matter their gender identity or sexual orientation,” said Dr. Rachel Levine, the department’s assistant secretary for health and the Biden administration’s most senior transgender official.

“All people need access to health care services to fix a broken bone, protect their heart health and screen for cancer risk,” she said. “No one should be discriminated against when seeking medical services because of who they are.”

The Food and Drug Administration on Monday authorized use of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine for 12- to 15-year-olds in the United States, a crucial step in the nation’s steady recovery from the pandemic and a boon to tens of millions of American families eager for a return to normalcy.

The authorization caps weeks of anticipation among parents, who have been grappling with how to conduct their lives when only the adults in a household are immunized. It removes an obstacle to school reopenings by reducing the threat of transmission in classrooms, and affords millions of adolescents the opportunity to attend summer camps, sleepovers and get-togethers with friends.

“This is great news,” said Dr. Kristin Oliver, a pediatrician and vaccine expert at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. “It feels like we’ve been waiting a long time to start protecting children in this age group.” The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is already available to anyone over 16.

The F.D.A.’s go-ahead is not the final hurdle. An advisory committee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expected to meet shortly to review the data and make recommendations for the vaccine’s use in 12- to 15-year-olds.

If the committee endorses the vaccine for that age group, as expected, immunizations in theory could begin immediately. Clinical trials have shown that these children may safely receive the dose already available for adults.

In a clinical trial, Pfizer and BioNTech enrolled 2,260 participants ages 12 and 15 and gave them either two doses of the vaccine or a placebo three weeks apart. The researchers recorded 18 cases of symptomatic coronavirus infection in the placebo group, and none among the children who received the vaccine, indicating that it was highly effective at preventing symptomatic illness.

The vaccine also appeared to be safe for these children, with side effects comparable to those seen in trial participants who are 16 to 25 years old. Fevers were slightly more common among inoculated 12- to 15-year-olds; about 20 percent of them had fevers, compared with 17 percent in the older age group.

The trend toward more fevers at younger ages was consistent with observations in an earlier trial, said Dr. Bill Gruber, a senior vice president at Pfizer and a pediatrician.

The trial results were a “trifecta” of good news, Dr. Gruber added: “We have safety, we got the immune response we wanted — it was actually better than what we saw in the 16- to 25-year-old population — and we had outright demonstration of efficacy.”

The company is still gathering information on potential asymptomatic infections by continuing to test the trial participants for the coronavirus every two weeks and checking them for antibodies produced in response to a natural infection, according to Dr. Gruber.

The push to immunize children may run into the same problems with hesitancy that have plagued attempts to inoculate adults. In one recent poll, just over half of parents said they were likely to have their children get a vaccine as soon as one was authorized.

Dr. Megan Ranney, an emergency room physician at Rhode Island Hospital in Providence, said she had “zero safety concerns” about the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, noting that hundreds of millions of people worldwide have received it.

Her 12-year-old daughter is eager to be vaccinated, and her 9-year-old son will be immunized as soon as he is eligible, she said.

“The risk of your child catching Covid and getting really sick is low, but it’s not zero,” she said. “And the risk of them getting sick or hospitalized or worse with Covid or with the post-Covid multi-inflammatory syndrome is higher than the risk of something bad from this vaccine.”

Vaccinating children shields others in the community from the virus, she noted, including people who are not protected by the vaccine, such as organ transplant recipients, cancer patients and those with impaired immune responses.

“It also protects all of us from the virus continuing to spread and mutating further,” Dr. Ranney said. “That’s the thing that I’m most scared of right now.”

Pfizer and BioNTech began testing the vaccine in children ages 5 to 11 in March and extended the trial to even younger children, ages 2 to 5, last month. The companies next plan to test children who are 6 months to 2 years old.

Assuming trial results are encouraging, the companies expect to apply to the F.D.A. in September for emergency authorization to administer the vaccine to children ages 2 to 11.

Results from trials of Moderna’s vaccine in 12- to 17-year-olds are expected in the next few weeks. Findings from another trial of the company’s vaccine in children 6 months to 12 years old should be available in the second half of this year.

AstraZeneca is testing its vaccine in children 6 months and older. Johnson & Johnson plans to wait for results from trials in participants older than 12 before testing its vaccine in younger children.

Jan Hoffman contributed reporting.

The F.B.I. confirmed on Monday that the hacking group DarkSide was responsible for the ransomware attack that closed a U.S. pipeline providing the East Coast with nearly half of its gasoline and jet fuel.

The Biden administration is expected to announce an executive order in the coming days to strengthen America’s cyberdefense infrastructure.

President Biden said on Monday that the government had mitigated any impact the hack on the petroleum pipeline might have had on the U.S. fuel supply. He added that his administration had efforts underway to “disrupt and prosecute ransomware criminals.”

Colonial Pipeline, the operator of the system, issued a statement saying that restoring service “takes time.” It added that while the situation was “fluid and continues to evolve,” the company would restore service incrementally, with the goal of “substantially” resuming service by the end of the week.

Anne Neuberger, the deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technologies, said Monday afternoon that the government believed DarkSide was “a criminal actor” but was looking for any ties the group might have to nation-states.

She added that Colonial had not sought cyber support from the government, and said that she could not confirm if the company, a private corporation, had paid any ransom.

Mr. Biden also said on Monday that, so far, there was no evidence from U.S. intelligence officials that Russia was involved, but he added: “There is evidence that the actors’ ransomware is in Russia. They have some responsibility to deal with this.”

Colonial’s pipeline transports 2.5 million barrels each day, taking refined gasoline, diesel fuel and jet fuel from the Gulf Coast up to New York Harbor and New York’s major airports. Most of that goes into large storage tanks, and with energy use depressed by the coronavirus pandemic, the attack was unlikely to cause any immediate disruptions.

Late Friday, Colonial said in a vaguely worded statement that it had shut down its 5,500 miles of pipeline, which it said carried 45 percent of the East Coast’s fuel supplies, in an effort to contain the breach. Earlier in the day, there had been disruptions along the pipeline, but it was not clear at the time whether that was a direct result of the attack or of the company’s moves to proactively halt it.

Energy analysts warned that a prolonged suspension of the pipeline could raise prices at the pump along the East Coast and leave some smaller airports scrambling for jet fuel.

The Biden administration will begin sending $350 billion in aid to state and local governments this month, a significant step in its effort to shore up segments of the economy that have been hardest hit by the pandemic, White House and Treasury officials said on Monday.

The infusion of funds, which were included in the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill signed into law in March, marks President Biden’s first big opportunity to start reviving infrastructure across the nation and to fulfill his goal of ensuring a more equitable recovery.

“With this funding, communities hit hard by Covid-19 will able to return to a semblance of normalcy,” Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said in a statement. “They’ll be able to rehire teachers, firefighters and other essential workers — and to help small businesses reopen safely.”

In remarks at the White House on Monday, Mr. Biden underscored the strain that many states and cities have faced in the last year and said the funds would help alleviate that pressure.

“Because states and local governments have to balance their budgets, a lot them had to lay off state employees and local employees when the economy slowed and tax revenues fell,” Mr. Biden said. “We’re talking about 1.3 million state and local employees out of work.”

The details of the disbursement have been eagerly awaited by the states, cities, territories and tribal governments that are expected to receive money. But several Republican-led states and the Biden administration are in a legal confrontation over whether states can cut taxes after taking relief money and using it to solidify their budgets.

The Treasury made clear on Monday that it would insist the relief money not be used to subsidize tax cuts, directly or indirectly.

“The American Rescue Plan ensures that funds needed to provide vital services and support public employees, small businesses and families struggling to make it through the pandemic are not used to fund reductions in net tax revenue,” the Treasury Department said. “If the funds provided have been used to offset tax cuts, the amount used for this purpose must be paid back to the Treasury.”

The Treasury Department also issued detailed guidance to states explaining how it will determine if the money is being used properly and in which cases the relief funds could be recouped. If a state does cut taxes, it will have to demonstrate to the Treasury Department that it offset that lost revenue with spending cuts or another source of revenue that does not include the fiscal recovery funds. If the state cannot do that, Treasury can claw back that amount of money.

“This process ensures Fiscal Recovery Funds are used in a manner consistent with the statute’s defined eligible uses and the offset provision’s limitation on these eligible uses, while avoiding undue interference with state and territory decisions regarding tax and spending policies,” the guidance said.

Treasury and White House officials made clear that they would scrutinize how the funds were being used to ensure that budgets were not being gamed to violate the intent of the law. A new recovery office at the Treasury Department will coordinate with states to help determine if their policies are in line with conditions set forth in the law.

The relief money also cannot be paid into state pension funds to reduce unfunded liabilities.

A White House official would not comment on whether initiatives such as Montana’s return-to-work bonuses could be funded using relief money. States and cities are being given broad discretion on how they can use the money, which is intended to replace public sector revenue that was lost during the pandemic; provide extra pay for essential workers; and invest in sewer, water and broadband infrastructure.

The allocation of the funds is also likely to be a contentious matter as the money starts to flow. Some states have complained that states that managed the pandemic well are essentially being penalized because the formula for awarding aid is based on state unemployment rates.

The Treasury Department said on Monday that the states that were hardest hit economically by the pandemic would also get their money faster.

Local governments will generally receive half the money this May and the rest next year. But states that currently have a net increase in unemployment of more than 2 percentage points since February 2020 will get the funds in a lump sum right away.