In twenty years of doing this, one thing that strikes me again and again is the critical importance of naming things in politics. If the question is advocacy and persuasion few steps are more important than effectively and consistently naming the key developments, agenda items, threats and prizes and raising them in the public consciousness. There are few things – things that can be controlled by people involved in politics and campaigns, as opposed to the tides of historical change we are awash in – more important for Democrats to do a good job at in the next two yeas.
You know some examples of this. The ‘death tax’, for instance. Conservative operatives took the unglamorous and unsympathetic cause of trust fund kids and gave it a title with punch, ready understandability and even an edge of justice. In politics like everything else you simply must put your best foot forward. Just showing up or just doing a good job is never enough. You have to tell your story. You have to make sure people with a lot else on their plate know what you’re doing, why you’re doing it and why it might be important to them that you succeed. That starts with naming things. That makes the thing visible and tells a story about it embedded in the name.
Operation Warp Speed is set to miss the first distribution goal it laid out, Trump administration officials said last week, saying that getting the vaccines to people has been “slower than we thought it would be.”
TPM has a long tradition of covering the far right. From the Tea Party and its rise to prominence during Obama’s first term to fringier movements such as the Malheur wildlife refuge occupation and Jade Helm — we’ve chronicled 20 years of radicalism.
WASHINGTON – A huge study of another COVID-19 vaccine candidate is getting underway Monday as states in the U.S. continue to roll out scarce supplies of the nation’s first shot options.
The U.S. has authorized emergency use of two vaccines, one made by Pfizer and BioNTech and the other by Moderna, but doses will be rationed for months.
The candidate made by Novavax Inc. is the fifth to reach final-stage testing in the U.S. Some 30,000 volunteers are needed to prove if this vaccine – a different kind than its Pfizer and Moderna competitors – really works and is safe.
“If you want to have enough vaccine to vaccinate all the people in the U.S. who you’d like to vaccinate – up to 85% or more of the population – you’re going to need more than two companies,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease expert, told The Associated Press.
The study, which is funded by the U.S. government, is open to all adults but will focus on high-risk older adults and volunteers from Black and Hispanic communities who have been hard-hit by the virus. Two-thirds of volunteers will receive the vaccine and the rest will get dummy shots.
The Novavax candidate uses lab-grown harmless copies of the spike protein that coats the coronavirus to train the body to recognize if the real virus comes along. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines instead use a newer technology, injecting the genetic code for that protein.
In the U.S., Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca also have vaccine candidates in late-stage U.S. testing.
At the risk of stating the obvious, President Trump threatened and bullied over refusing to sign the COVID relief bill. In the end, he got nothing and signed it anyway. His statement included a slew of claims about how he made an important point and everyone got the message about how right he was. But in the end he folded. Because he always folds. It’s one of the most enduring patterns of his presidency. If he can’t get his way through threats, he folds.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — With federal officials having identified the man believed to be behind Nashville’s Christmas Day bombing, authorities now turn to the monumental task of piecing together the motive behind the explosion that severely damaged dozens of downtown buildings and injured three people.
While officials on Sunday named Anthony Quinn Warner, 63, as the man behind the mysterious explosion in which he was killed, the motive has remained elusive.
“These answers won’t come quickly and will still require a lot of our team’s efforts,” FBI Special Agent Doug Korneski said at a Sunday news conference. “Though we may be able to answer some these questions as our investigation continues, none of those answers will be enough by those affected by this event.”
In just a few days, hundreds of tips and leads have been submitted to law enforcement agencies. Yet thus far, officials have not provided information on what possibly drove Warner to set off the explosion.
This undated image posted on social media by the FBI shows Anthony Quinn Warner. Federal officials now turn to exploring the monumental task of piecing together the motive behind the Christmas Day explosion that severely damaged dozens of buildings and injured three in downtown Nashville, Tenn. While officials have named 63-year-old Warner as the man behind the mysterious explosion in which he was killed, the motive has remained elusive. (Courtesy of FBI via AP)
David Rausch, the director of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, told reporters on Sunday that Warner had not been on the radar before Christmas.
Furthermore, officials have not provided insight into why Warner selected the particular location for the bombing, which damaged an AT&T building and continued to wreak havoc on cellphone service and police and hospital communications in several Southern states as the company worked to restore service.
Forensic analysts were reviewing evidence collected from the blast site to try to identify the components of the explosives as well as information from the U.S. Bomb Data Center for intelligence and investigative leads, according to a law enforcement official who said investigators were examining Warner’s digital footprint and financial history, as well as a recent deed transfer of a suburban Nashville home they searched.
The official, who was not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity, said federal agents were examining a number of potential leads and pursuing several theories, including the possibility that the AT&T building was targeted.
Korneski said Sunday that officials were looking at any and all motives and were interviewing acquaintances of Warner’s to try to determine what may have motivated him.
A police officer blocks a street as the investigation continues into an explosion Saturday, Dec. 26, 2020, in Nashville, Tenn. An explosion that shook the largely deserted streets of downtown Nashville early Christmas morning shattered windows, damaged buildings, and wounded three people. Authorities said they believed the blast was intentional. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)
The bombing took place on a holiday morning well before downtown streets were bustling with activity and was accompanied by a recorded announcement warning anyone nearby that a bomb would soon detonate. Then, for reasons that may never be known, the audio switched to a recording of Petula Clark’s 1964 hit “Downtown” shortly before the blast.
Warner, who public records show had experience with electronics and alarms and who had also worked as a computer consultant for a Nashville realtor, had been regarded as a person of interest in the bombing since at least Saturday, when federal and local investigators converged on the home linked to him.
Federal agents could be seen looking around the property, searching the home and the backyard. A Google Maps image captured in May 2019 had shown a recreational vehicle similar to the one that exploded parked in the backyard, but it was not at the property on Saturday, according to an Associated Press reporter at the scene.
On Sunday morning, police formally named Warner as being under investigation.
Officials said their identification of Warner relied on several key pieces of evidence, including DNA found at the explosion site. Investigators had previously revealed that human remains had been found in the vicinity.
Investigators work at the scene of an explosion Saturday, Dec. 26, 2020, in Nashville, Tenn. The explosion that shook the largely deserted streets of downtown Nashville early Christmas morning shattered windows, damaged buildings and wounded three people. Authorities said they believed the blast was intentional. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)
In addition, investigators from the Tennessee Highway Patrol recovered parts from the RV among the wreckage from the blast, and were able to link the vehicle identification number to an RV that was registered to Warner, officials said.
“We’re still following leads, but right now there is no indication that any other persons were involved,” Korneski said. “We’ve reviewed hours of security video surrounding the recreation vehicle. We saw no other people involved.”
Police were responding to a report of shots fired Friday when they encountered the RV blaring a recorded warning that a bomb would detonate in 15 minutes. Suddenly the warning stopped, and “Downtown” started playing.
The RV exploded shortly afterward, sending black smoke and flames billowing from the heart of downtown Nashville’s tourist scene, an area packed with honky-tonks, restaurants and shops.
Buildings shook and windows shattered streets away from the explosion near a building owned by AT&T that lies one block from the company’s office tower, a landmark in downtown.
But on Sunday, just blocks from where the bombing took place, tourists had already begun to fill the sidewalks on Lower Broadway, a central entertainment district. Some took selfies while others tried to get as close as possible to the explosion site, blocked by police barricades.
Earlier Sunday, the officers who responded provided harrowing details, at times getting choked up reliving the moments that led up to the blast.
“This is going to tie us together forever, for the rest of my life,” Metro Nashville police Officer James Wells, who suffered some hearing loss due to the explosion, told reporters at a news conference. “Christmas will never be the same.”
Officer Brenna Hosey said she and her colleagues knocked on six or seven doors in nearby apartments to warn people to evacuate. She particularly remembered a startled mother of four children.
“I don’t have kids but I have cousins and nieces, people who I love who are small,” Hosey said, adding she had to plead with the family to leave the building as quickly as possible.
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Balsamo and Tucker reported from Washington. Associated Press journalists Scott Stroud and Mark Humphrey in Nashville contributed to this report.
The New York Post, which had endorsed President Donald Trump, urged him in an op-ed on Sunday to finally accept his decisive defeat against President-elect Joe Biden instead of constantly trying to steal the election with bogus lawsuits and lies about voter fraud.
President Donald Trump signed Congress’ bipartisan $900 billion COVID-19 relief package, which had been combined with a $1.4 trillion government funding bill, on Sunday night after threatening to veto it over his demand to increase stimulus payments for many Americans to $2,000.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The man believed to be responsible for the Christmas Day bombing that tore through downtown Nashville blew himself up in the explosion, and appears to have acted alone, federal officials said Sunday.
Investigators used DNA and other evidence to link the man, identified as Anthony Quinn Warner, to the mysterious explosion but said they have not determined a motive. Officials have received hundreds of tips and leads, but have concluded that no one other than Warner is believed to have been involved in the early morning explosion that damaged dozens of buildings.
