Thursday, September 30 top stories
It is Thursday, September 30. Here are today's top stories.
The International Olympics Committee (IOC) announced that the 2022 Beijing (China) Winter Olympics will have a ban on foreign spectators. Only spectators from mainland China who meet certain Covid-19 regulations can attend. All athletes must be vaccinated or serve a 21-day quarantine upon arrival in Beijing. The plan now is to have a "closed-loop management system" to keep all athletes, coaches, staff, and participants in a closed-off world -- which seems similar to the NBA bubble playoffs in 2020.
There are a lot of things going on in Congress. There are multiple bills that are separate but have an impact on each other.
The first is a funding bill to prevent a government shutdown. Today both the Senate and the House passed a resolution to simply maintain current spending up to December 3. President Joe Biden will need to sign the bill by midnight to avoid a shutdown.
The second bill is President Biden's $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill. It has already passed out of the Senate. House Democrats previously set a deadline to vote on it by today. Not all House Democrats support the bill. Speaker Pelosi said she wants to go forward on a vote today even if some Democrats don't support it. News reports say Pelosi is working furiously behind the scenes to drum up support. Pelosi said she wants to go forward with a vote by tonight even if not all Democrats are unified. The White House said they hope for a vote tonight and said the president has been making phone calls.
The third is a vote to raise the debt ceiling, which is the amount of money the U.S. government can pay towards its bills and loans. There is a lot of fighting between Democrats and Republicans about this. The deadline is October 18. If the U.S. is unable to pay its bills, that means Social Security checks and military pay for millions of Americans could be frozen. House Democrats have voted to suspend the debt limit until December 2022, but Senate Republicans are opposed to it, which means the bill will fail in the Senate. We’ll hear more about the debt ceiling in the next two weeks. It’s something to look out for.
There is a fourth bill that President Biden wants to pass – a $3.5 trillion package to address Americans’ health and education needs and climate concerns. The bill currently faces infighting between moderate and progressive Democrats on the price tag. Republicans are opposed to the bill. It’s not being voted on today or in the near future, but the bill has an impact on the other three bills mentioned above. Clearly there's a lot of things going on in the Capitol.
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Barack and Michelle Obama visited their family hometown of Chicago on Tuesday to break ground on construction for the Obama Presidential Center. All U.S. presidents have a presidential center and library built several years after their term ends to serve as a place for archives and to preserve their legacy.
The Obama center will be built on 19 acres of a lakefront park in Chicago’s South Side. There is controversy over the site as some activists say the center will contribute to gentrification and drive out long-time residents. Activists also say the center will destroy foliage and wildlife. PBS said the cost of the center is roughly $830 million and that the money will come from private donations. Construction could take about five years to complete.
Barack said Chicago’s South Side shaped him as a family man and as an elected official and that he hopes the center will inspire the next generation of leaders. Michelle said the center is a positive investment in the South Side.
In positive news about the coronavirus pandemic, Axios reported that new cases in the U.S. fell by about 25% over the past two weeks, which is a hopeful sign that the worst of the Delta wave may be behind us.
The U.S. is still averaging over 100,000 new cases per day. New deaths are still at very high levels at about 2,000 fatalities per day. The death toll usually lags behind new cases because it takes time for the virus to multiply through victims' bodies. That means if we keep new cases down, then the death toll should eventually go down.
A study from the Indiana State Department of Health found that for the week ending in September 23 (last week), 246 people in the state died from Covid-19. 243 of them were unvaccinated. Three were fully vaccinated. That means 98.8% of the deaths were unvaccinated.
The study said during the same week, 1,721 people were hospitalized with Covid-19. 1,699 of them were unvaccinated, while 22 were fully vaccinated.
The months-long audit of the 2020 election in Arizona by a group called Cyber Ninjas that was requested by the Arizona Republican Party to check whether votes were accurate has found that Joe Biden did in fact defeat Donald Trump.
Maricopa County tweeted that Cyber Ninjas has confirmed that the county accurately counted votes and that the candidates certified as winners did in fact win. Cyber Ninjas found 99 additional votes for Biden and 261 fewer votes for Trump.
However, there is still confusion because there was a false document of Cyber Ninjas' audit that had a statement saying the election should be decertified. There were allegations that the “decertification” part was removed from the final draft. It caused anger among some in conservative circles and spread on social media. But the “removed statement” did not exist. The Arizona Senate said the “decertification” document was false. Cyber Ninjas said in a statement on Wednesday that the draft was fake and said they didn't write it and don't know where it came from.
So, to be clear, Cyber Ninjas' audit found that the election was accurate. Once again, Biden won Arizona, flipping it to blue in 2020.
That is all the top stories for today. See you tomorrow and stay with the light.
https://www.axios.com/covid-cases-infections-down-a8fef1a4-5215-4a91-9bdc-1874724e5698.html
https://news.yahoo.com/no-foreign-spectators-2022-winter-185311306.html
https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/government-shutdown-congress-infrastructure-vote-09-30-21/
https://www.axios.com/pelosi-infrastructure-vote-7b7199c7-7c1b-43c0-8f28-7237bee2cf69.html
https://abc7chicago.com/obama-visits-chicago-library-location-presidential/11055685/