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Media top headlines January 6

In media news today, an MSNBC reporter warns that Republicans in state legislature are passing voting laws that make 'January 6 every day, a CNN medical guest says that companies should not treat the unvaccinated and vaccinated as equal, and a White House reporter asks Jen Psaki why Biden hasnt focused more on scolding the unvaccinated.

MSNBC anchor Chuck Todd grew heated with a Republican guest Thursday for speaking out against President Trump's 2020 election rhetoric but saying he would support him again as the 2024 nominee.

Amid his network's wall-to-wall coverage of the one-year anniversary of the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, Todd noted Rep. Tom Reed, R-N.Y., was one of only 60 House Republicans who weren't on the Jan. 6 commission who had accepted his invitation to speak on "MTP Daily."

Reed, who is retiring at the end of the year, said it was incumbent on both sides of the aisle to lead and "rightfully condemn" the sort of extremism on display when pro-Trump rioters stormed the Capitol building and disrupted the official certification of Joe Biden's 2020 victory. Biden blasted Trump in a speech Thursday commemorating the anniversary of the riot for spreading a "web of lies," while Trump reiterated his rigged election claims and said Biden was further dividing the country.

Chuck Todd interviews Rep. Tom Reed, R-N.Y., on Jan. 6, 2022.

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As Todd pointed to efforts by Trump to overturn the election results, Reed responded that the "74 million people" who voted for Trump were not the ones who stormed the building.

"What happened was a vocal minority of extremists took it into their own thought process and power to do what they did, and to me that is what has to be objected to," he said. "And what has to happen is we have to stand up to it on the right, and you have to have leaders that will stand up to it on the left."

Todd, who has been criticized by progressives at times for being insufficiently partisan on the left-leaning network, asked Reed if he regretted co-chairing Trump's presidential campaign. When Reed said he didn't, Todd quickly said, "Why?"

"I dont, because he brought the disruption to Washington, D.C., that needs to be brought. Washington, D.C., the establishment, and the status quo needs to be disrupted," Reed said, adding he disagreed with some of Trump's rhetoric and actions.

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"Are you willing to hand the keys to the democracy to this man again?" Todd asked.

Todd said if Trump was the Republican nominee again in 2024, he would support him, leading an incredulous Todd to quote Trump's statement Thursday following Biden's blistering address.

President Biden speaks from Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol to mark one year since the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol by supporters loyal to then-President Donald Trump, Thursday, Jan. 6, 2022, in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

"Hes calling the 2020 election a crime. Do you believe it was a crime?" Todd asked.

"Chuck, that will be part of the process. If hes elected hes going to have to go through the primary process, and the Republican Party will put its standard-bearer onto the line. I believe at the end of the day were going to have enough voices in that conversation, that that type of rhetoric will be held to account, and I think that will discount the ability for an individual to be the standard-bearer for the Republican Party," Reed said.

An increasingly exasperated Todd said Reed sounded like Republicans who are "afraid" of telling their supporters Trump was lying about the 2020 election.

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"I will be very clear with you, Chuck," he said. "I believe the election in 2020 was a duly held election, the results were duly certified and the challenges of fraud were given an opportunity to be vetted, and I will tell you that this big lie type of representation I disagree with, and Im saying that right now, but that doesnt mean you go forward and not look at the next election in a way that says we need to learn from 2020. And so in 2024, Republicans are just as good at getting their vote to the ballot box as the Democrats are, so we have a fair shake in 2024 on an even playing field."

Pressed by Todd on what he meant by "fair," Reed reiterated 2020 was a fair election, but claimed the rule changes implementedamid the coronavirus pandemic played into Democrats' hands, and they were more effective in getting out their voters.

"It sounds like youre trying to put an asterisk on the 2020 election which only feeds this conspiracy nonsense that is wrecking this country," Todd said heatedly. "Why did we have what we had here a year ago was this conspiratorial nonsense that leads people to the idea that there was something to this. There was nothing to this."

President Donald Trump waves as he boards Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House, on Jan. 20. 2021. (AP)

"Its not conspiracy. They control the state legislatures, they changed the rules legally," Reed said. "So it was a legal, fair election. However, that doesnt mean the rules weren't maximized by one party over the other party. Thats what Im saying going into 2024. We need to make sure that we understand the rules as a Republican Party, and we use them fully to our advantage going forward in 2024, so that we're deploying the same assets in an election equally on each side of the aisle."

"Does it bother you at all that the Republican Party is no longer a conservative party but a cult of personality right now?" Todd asked.

"I mean, I disagree with that assessment I still believe in the Republican Party. The ideology of the Republican Party is still strong," Reed said. "Its a Republican Party that I believe in, and that philosophy is whats going to see America through, through the future, and I still believe America is a center-right country."

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Coverage of the Jan. 6 anniversary has been marked by Democrats pushing to pass federal election overhaul bills, as they and some media outlets continue to characterize state voting bills passed in Republican-led states as voter suppression efforts.

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MSNBC's Chuck Todd grows heated with Republican guest on 1/6 anniversary for still supporting Trump - Fox News

In remarks reminiscent of the darkest days of the eugenics movement, Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said Friday that the fact that COVID-19 predominantly kills people who are unwell to begin with is encouraging news.

As the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 reached a record high, the CDC director was asked in an interview on ABCs Good Morning America about those encouraging headlines that were talking about this morning.

Walensky replied:

The overwhelming number of deaths, over 75 percent, occurred in people who had at least four comorbidities, so really these are people who are unwell to begin with, and yes, really encouraging news in the context of Omicron.

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As a factual matter, the claim that COVID-19 in general, and the Omicron variant in particular, is only affecting the elderly and ill is false. The spread of the new variant has driven a record surge in hospitalizations of young people, and in particular children and infants. The long-term consequences for those who survive and suffer the consequences of Long COVID are still little understood.

However, the suggestion that the overwhelming number of deaths occur among the elderly and those with preexisting conditions (comorbidities) is encouraging news is shocking in its implications.

Walenskys comments were broadly condemned by doctors, scientists and advocates for the disabled as an embrace of eugenics by the Biden administration.

This is eugenicist, lawyer and disability activist Matthew Cortland, who is chronically ill, wrote on Twitter. The problem is that the people running @CDCgov, including @CDCDirector, **fundamentally believe** its encouraging if disabled and chronically ill people die. And all of their decisions are informed by, and enact, that belief.

None of this is hyperbole. Walenskys comments express the turn on the part of the White House and dominant sections of the US political establishment toward an open embrace of the view that the lives of the chronically ill, the disabled, and the elderly are fundamentally valueless.

The leading advocate of this policy is Ezekiel Emanuel, the former Obama administration official and current Biden COVID task force adviser, who is now being promoted in a full court press in the US print and broadcast media.

On Wednesday, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a set of articles by Emanuel and other former Biden health advisors arguing for making COVID-19 the new normal and calling on states to retire the reporting of COVID-19 deaths. These articles were treated as gospel in the US media, with fawning front-page write-ups in the New York Times and Washington Post.

But this campaign went into overdrive on Sunday, with Emanuel serving as the unstated surrogate for the White House on NBCs Meet the Press. Emanuels call for a new normal was simultaneously hailed by the lead editorial in the Washington Post, which called it a sensible strategy for living with covid, presented by experts.

In reality, the call by Emanuel and his co-authors is nothing more than a recapitulation of the pseudo-scientific Great Barrington Declaration, stripped of the myth that herd immunity would lead to the end of the pandemic. It is a plan for COVID-19 in perpetuity, with wave after wave, variant after variant, taking countless lives each year.

Neither Meet the Press nor the Washington Post editorial mentioned that Emanuel is a leading advocate of reducing life expectancy and slashing the provision of medical care for the elderly and chronically ill.

Emanuel, in the words of University of South Carolina philosophy professor Jennifer A. Frey, thinks of disabled and elderly people as useless and ineffectual; when we run the cost/benefit analysis they cost more than they are worth. Emanuel believes that life after 75 [is] not worth living and old people a drain on our resources, she concluded.

Emanuel has expressed his eugenicist ideas time and time again, noted journalist and disability researcher Laura Dorwart.

Emanuels basic precept is that the fundamental determinant of medical care must not be the individuals rights to decency and dignity, but rather a cost-benefit analysis driven by the costs to society of extending the lives of the ill and the elderly.

Emanuel claimsrightlythat the medical profession is averse to such cost-benefit analysis. But this is because the application of such an analysis to medicine and public health is informed by the legacy of eugenics and the German Nazi Partys murder of tens of thousands of people with chronic illnesses whom the Nazis branded unfit to live.

In the bioethics textbook From Chance to Choice: Genetics and Justice, professors Allen Buchanan, Dan Brock, Norman Daniels and Daniel Wikler note the legacy of cost-benefit analysis in the American eugenics movement.

They cite the Eugenics Catechism of the American Eugenics Society of 1926, which argues, It has been estimated that the State of New York, up to 1916, spent over $2,000,000 on the descendants of one familythe Jukesclaimed to be genetically deficient. How much would it have cost to sterilize the original Jukes pair? asked the society: Less than $150.

The book continues, Similar examples abounded in the arithmetic books of German schoolchildren in the 1930s, extending to the cost of keeping institutionalized, handicapped people alive; not long afterward, tens of thousands lost their lives.

In the autumn of 1939, Adolf Hitler secretly authorized a medically administered program of mercy death code-named Operation T4, writes the US Holocaust Museum. The killings secretly continued until the wars end, resulting in the murder of an estimated 275,000 people with disabilities.

Today, hundreds of thousands of elderly and chronically ill people are dying, not in gas chambers, but gasping for air in Americas hospitals. Seventy-five percent of those who have died from COVID-19 have been above the retirement age of 65, and 93 percent have been over the age of 50. In 2020, a year in which 373,000 Americans died from COVID-19, US life expectancy at birth fell by 1.8 years, from 78.8 years to 77.0, according to federal mortality data released last month.

But this reality is not, as Walensky says, encouraging, but a horrifying source of guilt and shame, a condemnation of an utterly inhuman society driven by the needs of enriching the few at the expense of the many.

Scientists and doctors have responded to Walenskys remarks with the demand that she resign. Their anger is justified. But the fact is that Walensky was speaking not only for herself, not only for the Biden administration, but for the entire capitalist class.

For years, American think tanks and military strategists have systematically advocated reducing the life expectancy of American workers. The pandemic has created the means by which this policy could be implemented through seeming inaction and incompetence.

It is, in fact, a deliberate policy, driven by the diseased reliance of all aspects of American capitalism on the perpetual rise in the markets, fueled by the ever-greater immiseration and impoverishment of the working class. Having bled much of the working class dry, the capitalist oligarchy looks to the elderly and the disabled as a source of untapped value.

If they have their way, the cutting of outlays on Social Security and Medicare is to be accomplished not by politicians touching the third rail of American politics, but by allowing the pandemic to continue in perpetuity.

This filthy policy is accompanied by an equally filthy lie: That COVID-19 cannot be stopped. China has successfully executed a Zero COVID policy, with just 5,000 deaths in a country of 1.4 billion. If a similar policy had been carried out in the United States at the start of the pandemic, over 850,000 people would still be alive.

This homicidal new normal demanded by the capitalist oligarchy is being challenged by a growing movement of the working class to resist mass infection and mass death. Teachers in Chicago voted last week to oppose the resumption of in-person instruction, and teachers in Chicago, New York and San Francisco have launched sickouts. They will be joined this week with a wave of walkouts by students in opposition to the Biden administrations homicidal drive to keep schools open no matter the costs in human lives.

The open turn to eugenics by the ruling class expresses a fundamental reality that is dawning on millions of people: Capitalism is incompatible with the social rights of the great mass of humanity. Securing those rights requires the struggle to end this social order and replace it with socialism.

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The stench of eugenics at the White House - WSWS

-> This article is part of Documenteds Glossary. We want to make it easier to understand the U.S. immigration system. If you want to know more about different visa types and immigration terms,please check our updated library here.-> To find useful information for immigrants, such as where to find free food or legal representation, check out ourMaster Resource Guide.

Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, IIRIRA, was enacted during the Clinton administration with the objective to strengthen immigration laws by increasing enforcement resources, expanding the definition of who was considered deportable, and instituting harsher penalties for illegal immigration.

The nearly 300-page IIRIRA detailed significant changes to Title 8 of the United States Code, which governs immigration and nationality. Scholars and immigration attorneys consider it along with the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which was passed the same year to be the catalyst behind the modern system of immigration enforcement.

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Both acts made deportation much more common and laid the groundwork for harsh interior enforcement that would characterize Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an agency created seven years later after the attacks of 9/11.

IIRIRA also made it much more difficult for people living in the country illegally to obtain legal status by requiring them to prove their deportation would cause substantial hardship. In addition, it put in place 3 and 10 year bans on re-entry for individuals who had remained in the United States illegally for more than six months or more than one year, respectively.

The effects of increasing border security led to a surge of apprehensions. The measures also affected legal immigrants in the country. Longtime legal permanent residents became, suddenly, vulnerable to deportation if they had committed crimes, some of which were non-violent.

Also read: What Happens if You Overstay Your Tourist Visa

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IIRIRA: Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, explained - Documented - Documented NY

On Wednesday, former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will lie in state at the Capitol Rotunda, joining a long and growing list once limited to former presidents and military leaders.

Shortly after Reids death, legislators from both sides of the aisle sung the Nevada Democrats praises. South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said that Reid would be in his prayers, that he was a good man who fought hard for his causes, and that he will be missed. Chuck Schumer, who holds Reids old job in the Senate, said that his friend always looked out for people.

Schumers praise for his old friend and mentor is more insightful than he might have imagined. Reid once championed meaningful immigration reform that would have benefited Americans, especially blue-collar workers. Eventually, Reid drifted over to the extreme left, and supported illegal immigrant amnesties as well as more employment-based visas.

In 1993, about six years after Nevada voters promoted him from the House of Representative to the Senate, Reid introduced a far-reaching comprehensive immigration reform bill that Democrats, especially former President Barack Obama and Schumer, would prefer to forget about. As per a press release issued from his office, Reid outlined what he called the first and only comprehensive immigration reform bill in Congress, the Immigration Stabilization Act of 1993.

The first item of business the press release addressed was to overhaul the nations immigration laws and begin a massive scale-down of immigrants allowed into the country from approximately 800,000 to 300,000. Legal immigration reduction groups have been lobbying for similar reductions for years. The current 1 million-plus annual lawful permanent residents is an unsustainable level since chain migration eventually converts the initial 1 million immigrants into about 3 million. A Princeton University study found that, on average, each immigrant petitions slightly more than three family members to join him in the U.S.

Another long-sought change reductionists have favored for decades is ending birthright citizenship. Reid wanted it clarified that a U.S.-born child to an alien mother who is not a lawful resident should not be considered a U.S. citizen. If ISA were approved, Reid said the incentive for pregnant alien women to enter illegally, often at risk to mother and child, for the purpose of acquiring citizenship for the child and to then receive federal benefits would be eliminated.

Other Reid recommendations have a familiar ring: a crack down Reids wording on illegal immigration, then an estimated 3.3 million, ending asylum fraud along with the phony claims that allow unqualified aliens to enter, excluding aliens who cannot financially support themselves without assistance, and beefing up border security.

For a period, too short as things turned out, Reid was committed to rational immigration.

In his 1994 Los Angeles Times op-ed, Reid scorned his colleagues for their failure to reduce legal immigration, and he urged lawmakers to reject unfounded racism charges to act quickly to pass ISA. He concluded that the real injustice to future Americans would be to do nothing [to reduce immigration].

Reid was a spot-on prognosticator. Congress did nothing, and in the three decades that have passed, the illegal immigrant population has quadrupled from 3 million to nearly 12 million. The border that Reid wanted to reinforce is a horror show as officials predict that 2 million aliens will cross illegally this year.

In his official statement about Reids death, President Joe Biden praised him for his power to do right for the people. Reid was, Biden concluded, a giant.

Had Reid stuck to his 1993 immigration wish list, he would have done right for the people, and could truly be remembered as a giant.

Instead, Reid dropped the ball and platitudes being heaped on him aside was just another politician whose views shifted with the Capitol Hill winds.

Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.

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Joe Guzzardi: The late Harry Reid once championed pro-American immigration reform - Today's News-Herald

No other member of Congress oversees more territory along the southwest border than Republican Congressman Tony Gonzales. Spanning roughly 800 miles along the U.S.-Mexico border, Texas' 23rd District has oftentimes been ground zero for the continued migration surge.

Over the past two months alone, border authorities have encountered nearly 65,000 migrants at the Big Bend and Del Rio border sectors which run across Gonzales' district. This figure stands as just a fraction of the over 1.85 million migrants who have been encountered at the southwest border since Gonzales took office.

Gonzales, a former Navy officer of Mexican American descent, was elected to serve the politically moderate, majority Hispanic district in 2020 following the retirement of former Congressman Will Hurd. During his campaign, he centered border security and stability among his top issues. He told Newsweek that realizing this goal requires immigration reform.

"(Immigration reform) is a topic that is in my face nonstop, and it's just it's the right thing to do," Gonzales told Newsweek."This country has been just going back and forth for too long, and the problem is that it's a political winner for both parties, to be able to throw it around, but the loser is the American public."

Over the past year, Gonzales' district has paid the price for America's often criticized border enforcement and immigration strategy. He said that people living in his largely rural district, a number of whom live directly on the border, have seen their property damaged and face fear over the uncertainty surrounding who may be crossing through their land.

While Gonzales knocks the Biden administration's early efforts to undo measures taken by the Trump administration and believes it could do more to ensure security, he said addressing the heart of the issues starts in Congress.

Gonzales sees much of current actions being taken to address the migration surge as "Band-Aids" that do little to prevent migration surges from arising again in the future. With polices around entry often changing with the presidential administration, Gonzales said that criminal smuggling organizations often review the latest changes and take advantage of news surrounding the policy shifts to convince desperate migrants to pay them for passage to the United States.

"They're the ones that really kind of spin up the migrants and feed them information," Gonzales added.

News outlets including Reuters, The New York Times, and The Texas Tribune all report that inconsistent enforcement and confusion around immigration policies have played a role in pushing desperate people who already face gang violence, economic hardships and food insecurity to make the decision to come to the border.

The lack of clarity offers illicit smuggling businesses fuel to make their potential clients compelling promises which ultimately results in these individuals ending up in situations where they are violating the country's laws. Gonzales said that Congress must introduce a policy that does not encourage illegal immigration and instead offers feasible, clear pathways for qualifying people to pursue their "American Dream."

"It's been difficult to find people that even want to have the conversation. It seems like everyone is in their corners, but I'll keep pushing," Gonzales said. "Ultimately, this is about national security."

Gonzales fears that with the continued shifts in immigration enforcement comes the risk of a potential terrorist threat that could be triggered by a bad actor gaining entry into the country.

As more people continue to make the trip north, border resources will continue to be stretched and some individuals may slip through the cracks. Over the past year already, Border authorities encountered at least three individualstwo from Yemen and one from Saudi Arabiawho have been labeled as potential terrorists.

While addressing this problem and staving off the migrant flow by providing international clarity on who can enter the country stands as something to be tackled in the long term, Gonzales offered a number of recommendations on what the administration can do to address the issue in the short term.

The congressman asked that the Biden administration not fire any border agents who face potential terminations this month as a result of the federal vaccine mandate. He introduced the Border Agents Staying Employed (BASE) Act in mid-December aimed to provide vaccination alternatives. Gonzales also suggested to Newsweek that the administration move to expand the agency's technological repertoire by adding more drones that can support agents as they monitor remote areas of the border.

"These simple things I think would go a long way in helping kind of just shore up or insulate a Border Patrol that is beyond a breaking point," Gonzales said. "When a terrorist a threat occurs, they don't target Republicans or Democrats, they're just trying to kill Americans. Everyone should be rooting for a secure border."

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Rep. Tony Gonzales Urges Congress to Pass Immigration Reform: 'It's the Right Thing to Do' - Newsweek