Page 6 - Florida Sentinel 2-26-21

Political
COVID: Biden Calls 500,000 Death Toll A Heartbreaking Milestone
Supreme Court Denies
"As a nation, we can't accept such a cruel fate. We have to resist becoming numb to the sorrow," he said on Monday.
The President and Vice- President, and their spouses, then observed a moment of si- lence outside the White House during a candle-lighting cere- mony.
Confirmed U. S. infections now stand at 28.1 million, also a global record.
What 500,000 U. S. Deaths Look Like
"Today I ask all Americans to remember. Remember those we lost and remember those we left behind," President Biden said, calling for Ameri- cans to fight COVID together.
How Did Biden Mark The Occasion?
The president ordered all flags on federal property to be lowered to half mast for the next five days.
At the White House, he opened his speech by noting that the number of American deaths from COVID was higher than the death toll from World War One, World War Two, and
sons died from brain cancer in 2015.
"I know what it's like to not be there when it happens. I know what it's like when you are there holding their hands; there's a look in their eye and they slip away," he said.
"For me, the way through sorrow and grief is to find pur- pose."
Mr. Biden's approach to the pandemic is different to his predecessor, Donald Trump, who cast doubt on the impact of the deadly virus and was viewed as having politicised the wearing of masks and other measures needed to prevent the spread of the virus.
On 19 January, one day be- fore Mr. Biden took office, he held an event to mark 400,000 Americans dying of the dis- ease.
Monday's event, marking the latest death toll, comes about one month later.
Elsewhere in Washington, the bells at the National Cathe- dral tolled 500 times, once for every 1,000 Americans lost during the pandemic.
Release Of Tax Returns
President Joe Biden's
nominee for attorney general, Merrick Garland, at his con- firmation hearing Monday, told senators his first briefing once he takes office at the Justice De- partment will be on the Jan. 6 assault on the U. S. Capitol.
Garland, currently a federal appeals court judge who worked previously in the Clinton Justice Department overseeing the prosecution of convicted Okla- homa City bomber Timothy McVeigh in the 1990s, said the threat from domestic terrorism is even greater now.
MERRICK GARLAND
"It looks like an extremely ag- gressive and perfectly appropri- ate beginning to an investigation, all across the country in the same way our original Oklahoma City investi- gation was. Many times more," Garland told members of the
Senate Judiciary Committee. "I certainly agree that we are fac- ing a more dangerous period than we faced in Oklahoma City at the end at that time."
He called the attack on the Capitol the most "heinous attack on a democratic process" that he's ever seen and said that he will pursue all leads in the in- vestigation.
"We begin with the people on the ground and we work our way up to those who are in- volved and further involved and we will pursue these leads, wherever they take us," he said.
President Biden, and the First Lady during a moment of si- lence.
the Vietnam War combined. "Today we mark a truly grim, heartbreaking milestone
- 500,071 dead," he said.
"We often hear people de- scribed as ordinary Ameri- cans," he went on to say. "There's no such thing, there's nothing ordinary about them. The people we lost were ex- traordinary. They span gener- ations. Born in America,
emigrated to America."
"So many of them took their
final breath alone in America." He drew on his own experi- ence with grief - his wife and daughter were killed in a car crash in 1972 and one of his
The Supreme Court on Monday cleared another hur- dle in the Manhattan district attorney's long quest to ob- tain former President Don- ald Trump's tax records, rejecting a last-ditch attempt by the former president to shield his financial records from prosecutors.
The court denied Trump's request to issue a stay on lower-court rulings in an un- signed order with no noted dissents, meaning the justices will not hear arguments for the second time in the case. The Supreme Court ruled in July that the subpoena of the Republican president's records was constitutional, but their release was held up by an appeal arguing the sub- poena is a bad faith overreach borne from political animus. The order clears the way for a New York grand jury to ob- tain Trump's tax records.
Manhattan District Attor- ney Cyrus Vance, a Democ- rat, first began investigating Mr. Trump in 2018, and initially targeted hush-money payments made during the Republican's 2016 campaign to adult film star Stormy Daniels by former Trump
DONALD TRUMP
attorney Michael Cohen. Vance's office has since in- dicated in court filings that the investigation has widened to look at possible crimes as wide-ranging as fraud and tax evasion.
Vance issued a one-line statement in response to the Supreme Court's move, say- ing, "The work continues." His office indicated in a Sep- tember court filing that it would move to enforce a pre- viously issued subpoena of Mr. Trump's accounting firm if the Supreme Court de- nied the former president's request.
Garland Tells Senators His First Priority Will Be Prosecuting Capitol Insurrection
Trump’s Final Bid To Block
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