AP:
Canadian police appear to end protesters’ siege of Ottawa
Hundreds of police in riot gear swept through Canada’s capital Saturday, retaking control of the streets around the Parliament buildings and appearing to end the siege of Ottawa after three weeks of protests.
Protesters, angry over the country’s COVID-19 restrictions and with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, retreated from the largest police operation in the country’s history, with police arresting or driving out demonstrators and towing away their trucks.
In Ottawa, Interim Police Chief Steve Bell said that some smaller protests continued but “this unlawful occupation is over. We will continue with our mission until it is complete.”
While some protesters vowed to stay on Ottawa’s streets, one organizer told reporters they had “decided to peacefully withdraw.”
“We will simply regroup as a grassroots movement,” Tom Marazzo said at a press conference.
Depending on funding, of course, much of which comes from the United States.
Ottawa Citizen:
Trucks being towed from Wellington Street; 47 more people arrested
In an online post Saturday night, the RCMP said that, under the authority of the Emergencies Act, police partners were continuing to work with Canadian financial institutions, enhancing the effectiveness of investigations into blockades.
“With regards to the enacting and application of the Economic Emergency Measure Order, police partners are working to collect relevant information on persons, vehicles and companies,” the post said. “We are already seeing results, including: the freezing of 113 financial products; the disclosure of 47 entities; 251 Bitcoin addresses have been shared with virtual currency exchangers; and one financial institution proactively freezing the account of a payment processor to a value of $3.8M.”
Will Bunch/Philadelphia Inquirer:
Right now, a U.S. toddler is starving because of Pat Toomey, Joe Manchin and 49 other Senate cowards
The biggest scandal in America is that 3.7 million Americans were tossed back into poverty last month by the inaction of 51 feckless senators.
The antipoverty activist told Congress that millions of Americans are “working while they’re rationing insulin and skipping meds because they can’t afford food and health care. Shame on you. Shame on you and shame on me. And shame on every one of us for not rattling the windows with cries of outrage at a government that thinks its offices are worthy of $40,000 a year but families and children aren’t!”
NY Times:
Some U.S. governors defend their mask policy changes to ‘get back to normal.’
The governors of Maryland and New Jersey defended their moves to ease Covid restrictions, saying on Sunday that falling coronavirus cases in their states justified a change even as new cases and deaths remain fairly high in some regions of the United States.
“As best we can tell right now this thing is going from pandemic to endemic, and we feel it is the responsible step to take,” Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey said on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” referring to the stage when the virus will become a manageable part of daily life. He is one of several Democratic governors who announced plans to lift statewide mask mandates last week, as the highly transmissible Omicron variant loosens its grip on the United States.
According to many health experts, the pandemic’s next phase may depend on the emergence of new variants, vaccination rates and risk tolerance. Herd immunity to Covid, public health specialists say, is unlikely to be achieved. And scientists have cautioned that protection may wane over time, and future variants may be better able to sidestep our defenses.
NY Times:
Should You Still Wear a Mask?
Experts weigh in on where, and when, you can safely take one off.
As masking mandates lift and new coronavirus infections fall across the United States, there’s lots of confusion about if, and when, to wear a mask.
“This is the hardest thing of all, because it’s not just the risks and benefits to you,” said Dr. Robert Wachter, a professor and the chair of the medicine department at the University of California, San Francisco. “It’s the risks and benefits to the people around you.”
One good way to frame the issue is to ask: Who is the most vulnerable person in your immediate circle?
Anne Kim/Washington Monthly:
Glenn Youngkin Goes Full MAGA
He ran as an amiable moderate. He’s governing like Trump.
His day-one executive orders canceled school mask mandates and banned the teaching of “critical race theory.” He established a snitchy tip line for citizens’ “reports and observations” of “divisive practices” in the classroom. He nominated Donald Trump–aligned figures to populate his administration, such as the former Trump EPA chief (and coal lobbyist) Andrew Wheeler. And he unleashed savage Trump-style Twitter attacks on perceived enemies of his agenda.
These moves have not gone over well in a purple state that has elected pragmatic moderates like U.S. Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine and that gave Joe Biden a 10-point win in the 2020 presidential election.
A majority of the Commonwealth’s public school districts, comprising a majority of the state’s students, have defied his mask order. Seven districts have sued to block it (though a pending bill in the Virginia legislature may soon render the suit moot). TikTokers have spammed his tip line with prank complaints, and the Virginia Senate nixed his bid to install Wheeler as the state’s top environmental officer, making him the first cabinet pick of any governor, Republican or Democrat, to be rejected by the legislature since 2006. One of his Twitter victims also turned out to be a teenager, and Youngkin is now under fire for revealing the 17-year-old’s full name and photo. Doxxing is not a good look for someone who ran as Mr. Nice.