Biden urged to push back against Republicans’ scaled-down Covid relief proposal – live

Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has released a new statement condemning the military coup in Myanmar.

“I call on Burma’s military to immediately release the civilian political leaders of the country and turn back from this abyss,” the Republican leader said. “We need to support the people of Burma in their journey toward democracy and impose costs on those who stand in their way.”

The Guardian’s Patrick Wintour reports on the situation in Myanmar:

The military coup and suspension of democracy in Myanmar has been condemned by the US, and noted by China, as the world divided on largely predictable lines over the importance it attached to the young democracy.

Tony Blinken, the US secretary of state, facing his first major crisis since assuming office last week, expressed the US’s ‘grave concern and alarm’. He called on Myanmar’s military leaders to release all civilian government officials, including the state counsellor, Aung San Suu Kyi, and to respect the will of the people as expressed in democratic elections on 8 November.

He said the US ‘stood with the people of Myanmar in their aspirations for freedom, democracy and development’.

By contrast, the Chinese foreign affairs spokesperson merely noted the coup and refused to discuss if China, which has substantial oil and gas interests in Myanmar, had warned against such a move when the Chinese foreign minister met its military leadership last month after the heavy defeat of its proxy party at the polls.

This is Joan Greve in Washington, taking over for Martin Belam.

Here’s what the blog is keeping an eye on today: The president and the vice-president will meet with a group of Republican senators to discuss a coronavirus relief bill.

Some of the Republican senators have said they are open to another relief package, but they have generally expressed skepticism about Biden’s proposal, which would cost $1.9 trillion.

Democrats control the House and the Senate, but with the Senate filibuster in place, Biden will need 60 “yes” votes to get his bill through the chamber.

Some Democrats have discussed the possibility of using the budgetary mechanism called reconciliation to pass the bill, which would lower the number of needed Senate votes to 51. But that would give them no wiggle room in crafting the bill and could result in some provisions being thrown out.

Today’s meeting could give some clues as to how Democrats plan to move forward. Stay tuned.

Joe Biden’s first tweet of the day – well, the first tweet on the @POTUS account this morning, anyway – addresses his Covid recovery economic plan.

The House and Senate are on track to vote as soon as this week on a budget resolution, which would lay the groundwork for passing an aid package under rules requiring only a simple majority vote in the closely divided Senate, Aamer Madhani reports for Associated Press.

That is what has prompted a group of 10 Republican senators to try and strike a deal with the Biden administration for a smaller package, but one that would allow Joe Biden to say he had kept his promise to work on bipartisan solutions with Congress.

Winning the support of 10 Republicans would be significant for Biden in the 50-50 Senate where vice president Kamala Harris is the tie-breaker. If all Democrats were to back an eventual compromise bill, the legislation would reach the 60-vote threshold necessary to overcome potential blocking efforts and pass under regular Senate procedures.

“In the spirit of bipartisanship and unity, we have developed a Covid-19 relief framework that builds on prior Covid assistance laws, all of which passed with bipartisan support,” the Republican senators wrote. “Our proposal reflects many of your stated priorities, and with your support, we believe that this plan could be approved quickly by Congress with bipartisan support.”

The Republicans have priced their bill at $600 billion. But even as Biden extended the invitation to meet with the Republican lawmakers later today, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that $1,400 relief checks, substantial funding for reopening schools, aid to small businesses and hurting families, and more “is badly needed.”

“With the virus posing a grave threat to the country, and economic conditions grim for so many, the need for action is urgent, and the scale of what must be done is large,” Psaki said.

The senators attending the meeting today include Rpb Portman of Ohio, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Todd Young of Indiana, Jerry Moran of Kansas, Mike Rounds of South Dakota, and Thom Tillis of North Carolina.

New secretary of state Antony Blinken has got plenty in his in-tray, which increased over the weekend with a crackdown on protests in Russia and a coup in Myanmar.

NBC News have an exclusive interview with him, in which he says he was “deeply disturbed by the violent crackdown” in Russia, and suggestions from Russian sources that the US was behind the pro-Nalvany protests.

The Russian government makes a big mistake if it believes that this is about us. It’s about them. It’s about the government. It’s about the frustration that the Russian people have with corruption, with autocracy, and I think they need to look inward, not outward.

Blinken said he was reviewing possible US responses on a range of issues with Russia.

On China he was critical of the way the country is handling a World Health Organization fact-finding mission to Wuhan over the coronavirus. Andrea Mitchell and Abigail Williams report that:

He also criticized Chinese actions in Hong Kong, where he said China had acted “egregiously” to undermine its commitments to the semi-autonomous island.

Blinken said the US must open its doors to those fleeing the crackdown, as Great Britain, which controlled Hong Kong until 1999, has said it will do.

“We see people who were, again, in Hong Kong standing up for their own rights, the rights that they thought were guaranteed to them,” Blinken said. “If they’re the victims of repression from Chinese authorities, we should do something to give them haven.”

He said the US will gain strength in confronting China by re-engaging in global affairs and with international institutions, “because when we pull back, China fills in.”

“The challenge posed by China is as much about some of our own self-inflicted weaknesses as it is about China’s emerging strength,” Blinken said, a clear reference to Trump’s aversion to groups like Nato, the UN and WHO.

Read more here: NBC News – Blinken criticizes Putin for crackdown on Navalny protesters

There’s also a clip of Blinken talking that was broadcast on the Today show this morning:

Shane Goldmacher and Rachel Shorey at the New York Times have a story today looking at just where the money Donald Trump raised off the back of his election fraud claims went. Spoiler: it mostly wasn’t on legal fees actually contesting the election results. They write:

Trump and the Republican Party entered this year having stockpiled more than $175 million from fund-raising in November and December based on his false claims of voter fraud.

The picture that emerges in Federal Election Commission reports is of Trump mounting a furious public relations effort to spread the lie and keep generating money from it, rather than making a sustained legal push to try to support his conspiracy theories.

His campaign’s single biggest expense in December was a nearly $5 million media buy paid to the firm that bought his television advertisements. His second-largest payment, $4.4 million, was for online advertising. And the Republican National Committee pocketed millions of dollars in donations — collecting 25 cents for every dollar Trump raised online — in the final weeks of the year as it spent relatively little on legal costs.

Trump’s campaign spent only $10 million on legal costs — about one-fifth of what it spent on advertising and fund-raising.

Read more here: New York Times – As Trump raked in cash denying his loss, little went to actual legal fight