On Thursday afternoon, as President Trump was heading to a rally in West Virginia, The Wall Street Journal reported that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has impaneled a grand jury in Washington, D.C., to investigate possible criminal charges against Trump's campaign, business, or administration associates, perhaps even Trump himself, in Mueller's expanding Russia investigation. The grand jury, in place for a few weeks, has already issued subpoenas in connection with Donald Trump Jr.'s June 2016 meeting with a Kremlin-backed lawyer, Reuters reports, and CNN says Mueller's investigation has veered into any financial ties Trump, his family, and his associates have to Russia.
The reports set off alarm bells in the White House, because of the increasing legal jeopardy but also out of concern that Trump could make things worse, The Daily Beast reports. In an interview with The New York Times last month, Trump agreed with the idea that Mueller digging into his family's finances would cross a "red line" and be a "violation." If the new reports are accurate, Mueller is well on the other side of that line. "The worry is what the president does now," one senior Trump official told The Daily Beast. "Just keep him off the Twitter and on the teleprompter."
Trump offered a relatively subdued denial at the West Virginia rally, calling the "Russia story" a "total fabrication." But the big concern is that he would order Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to fire Mueller — a decision that would set off what one White House adviser called an "apocalyptic sh--storm." Two different bipartisan pairs of senators introduced legislation Thursday to shield Mueller from firing, and two White House officials told The Daily Beast that White House Chief of Staff John Kelly would strenuously oppose such a move.
But "people react really stupidly to these proceedings all the time," and "Trump and his team seem incapable, as a matter of character, to react ... in a prudent way or follow good advice or do the things you have to do to survive it," former federal prosecutor Ken White tells The Daily Beast. "They convince other people to lie for them, they destroy documents, they come up with lies they're going to tell themselves, they do all sorts of idiotic things — not realizing part of a fed prosecutor's point is often to drive them to do that." You can read more at The Daily Beast. Peter Weber
In the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, some small-scale studies found high rates of myocarditis, or heart inflammation, among college athletes who had previously tested positive for COVID-19. That prompted some universities to do cardiac testing on all athletes who were infected throughout the year, but a new study released Saturday suggests such "blanket testing" is unnecessary, ESPN reports.
Among the 3,018 athletes examined in the study, only 21 exhibited signs of possible, probable, or definite myocarditis, and those who did have heart issues were more likely to have had moderate COVID-19 and/or cardiopulmonary symptoms during the infections.
Dr. Jonathan Drezner, the director of the University of Washington Medicine Center for Sports Cardiology and a co-principal investigator of the study, said the results indicate athletes who had mild or no COVID-19 symptoms probably don't need to be screened for myocarditis. "I would simply be comfortable doing a good review of symptoms," he told ESPN, adding that their health should still be monitored "when they get back to play." Read more at ESPN. Tim O'Donnell
Congress has gone nearly 80 days without a member announcing a positive coronavirus test, having crossed the 75-day threshold on Wednesday, The Washington Post reports.
There were a fair number of cases in the Capitol in the fall and early winter when the U.S. as a whole was experiencing a significant surge, but Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) was the last lawmaker to reveal he had contracted the virus on Jan. 29. That's the longest stretch without a publicly confirmed infection in the House or Senate since the pandemic began, the Post notes.
While it's too early to jump to conclusions and declare that Congress has reached herd immunity, the decline has coincided with COVID-19 vaccines becoming widely available to lawmakers in recent months, which suggests the shots are doing their job, as some targeted studies have found to be the case in other workplace environments, like hospitals. Read more at The Washington Post. Tim O'Donnell
NASA on Friday tapped SpaceX to help bring humans back to the moon later this decade as part of its Artemis Program.
The agency announced Friday that it will award Elon Musk's company a $2.89 billion contract for the development of its Starship vehicle, an uncrewed flight test to the moon, and, finally, a crewed mission that will land on the lunar surface. SpaceX beat out Dynetics and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin for the opportunity, thanks in large part to its affordability. SpaceX's bid cost about half of Dynetics' and a quarter of Blue Origin's, Ars Technica reports. So while Starship has plenty of innovative features that made it an enticing candidate, "budget appears to have been the biggest factor" since NASA has struggled to secure funding from Congress for the lunar landing.
Ars Technica suggests NASA likely isn't done, however, explaining that "a sole-source award to SpaceX for the Human Landing System will certainly not be particularly popular in Congress, where traditional space companies such as Lockheed Martin and newer entrants like Blue Origin have more established lobbying power." In other words, the move "sends a clear message from NASA and the White House" — which has endorsed the Artemis Program and its goals — "to budget writers in the House and Senate." Read more at Ars Technica. Tim O'Donnell
For the first time in 60 years, Cuba will soon be without a Castro in a formal, day-to-day leadership position.
Raúl Castro, the younger brother of the late Fidel Castro, confirmed Friday that he's stepping down from his role as the leader of the country's Communist Party, with President Miguel Diaz-Canel expected to take on double duties, as the Castro brothers did before him. The younger Castro, who is 90, is poised to remain an influential figure on the island, but he likely won't interfere with daily governance, The New York Times notes. That means a new era is on the horizon, as Cuba faces challenges from both the coronavirus and a struggling economy.
The next generation of leadership could allow for more free-market activity, a path that's not completely new for Cuba; Raúl, who is considered more pragmatic than his brother, began the process of implementing some reforms following Fidel's death in 2011, but it's been a slow grind. There's no guarantee a new regime will change that — Richard Feinberg, a professor at the University of California, San Diego, told Al Jazeera that he thinks it's the "worst possible moment" for reforms because the government has "no money."
That said, urgency may rule the day in a post-Castro world. Arturo Lopez-Levy, the author of Raul Castro and the New Cuba: A Close-Up View of Change and an assistant professor at Holy Names University, told Al Jazeera that, unlike the brothers, their successors will have to "rely on performance — not on historical legacy — to exercise power and as a source of legitimacy." Read more at The New York Times and Al Jazeera. Tim O'Donnell
The global death toll from COVID-19 eclipsed 3 million on Saturday, data compiled by Johns Hopkins University reveals.
As The Associated Press notes, the true number is believed to be higher based on suspicions that some governments have downplayed their countries' cases and fatalities, as well as the likelihood that many infections were missed early in the pandemic.
Daily deaths are on the rise again worldwide, AP writes, with the average currently sitting at 12,000. Cases are also on the upswing; World Health Organization Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Friday that weekly infections have "nearly doubled over the past two months."
India and Brazil are two of the more prominent hot spots. The former has reported a record number of cases for three straight days, including more than 234,000 on Saturday. In Brazil, meanwhile, a more contagious variant is spreading throughout the country, and about 3,000 deaths are being recorded each day. That accounts for one-quarter of the world's fatalities in recent weeks, The Associated Press reports.
The increases come amid a global vaccine drive, albeit a patchy one. Some countries, including the United States, have ramped up their efforts (still, cases are stubbornly high in the U.S.), but immunization rates remain low elsewhere. Read more at The Associated Press and BBC. Tim O'Donnell