A day after a key Senate official ruled that a provision increasing the federal minimum wage would need to be removed as written from President Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus plan, Democrats were scrambling to salvage the critical progressive priority.
While the House is expected on Friday to move forward with a vote on the minimum-wage language as part of the full package, Senate Democrats were exploring how to codify their push to gradually raise the wage to $15 by 2025 without violating Senate rules.
Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, and other top Democrats are examining adding a provision that would penalize corporations that don’t pay workers at least a $15 minimum wage, a senior Democratic aide said on Friday. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said he was also examining legislation that would impose tax penalties on companies if any workers earn less than a certain amount.
In order to have the stimulus package become law before unemployment benefits begin to lapse in mid-March, Democrats are rushing the legislation through Congress on a fast-track process known as budget reconciliation, which shields it from a filibuster in the Senate, allowing it to pass without Republican support.
While some Republicans have begun to unveil their own proposals regarding the minimum wage, it is unclear whether those will secure the necessary bipartisan support.
The race to modify the minimum wage provision comes after Elizabeth MacDonough, the Senate parliamentarian, advised Senate offices that the language as written would violate the strict budgetary rules that restrict what can be included in legislation used in the reconciliation process, and give Republicans grounds to jettison it from the package in the Senate.
Progressives who have pushed for the elimination of the filibuster — which effectively requires 60 votes in the Senate to advance any major legislation — pointed to the ruling as further evidence that Democrats will need to change the rules of the Senate to approve policy changes that have stalled time and again amid Republican opposition. But the White House has said it will not support overruling Ms. MacDonough, leaving Democrats to seek other avenues for fulfilling a critical campaign promise.
It will remain in the legislation set to pass the House late Friday, as House Democrats already advanced a stand-alone bill allowing for the gradual increase in the 116th Congress and are eager to show their support for the provision.
“House Democrats believe that the minimum wage hike is necessary,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said in a statement Thursday evening. “Democrats in the House are determined to pursue every possible path in the fight for 15.”
The $1.9 trillion legislation would provide billions of dollars in funding for unemployment benefits, schools, state and local governments and small businesses, as well as a round of $1,400 stimulus checks, as part of a sweeping plan to help the economy continue to recover from the coronavirus pandemic.
American intelligence agencies concluded that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia approved the plan for operatives to assassinate the journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, according to a previously classified report released on Friday by the Biden administration.
The conclusion was already widely known, and the four-page report contained few previously undisclosed major facts. Much of the evidence the C.I.A. used to draw its conclusion remains classified, including details from recordings of Mr. Khashoggi’s killing and dismemberment at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul that were obtained by Turkish intelligence.
But the report does outline who carried out the killing, describes what Prince Mohammed knew about the operation and lays out how the C.I.A. concluded that he ordered it and bears responsibility for the death of Mr. Khashoggi.
The Report on Jamal Khashoggi’s Killing
The Biden administration released a report on the killing of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a sign the new president will try to isolate Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, who American intelligence agencies concluded approved the planned assassination.
On Oct. 2, 2018, Saudi officials lured Mr. Khashoggi, who was seeking paperwork to marry his Turkish fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, into the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul. A hit team that had flown in from Saudi Arabia killed and dismembered Mr. Khashoggi. His body was never found. Ms. Cengiz has sued Prince Mohammed and other Saudi officials in American courts under the Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991.
The C.I.A. and other American intelligence agencies long ago concluded that Prince Mohammed ordered the killing of Mr. Khashoggi, but that finding was minimized by the Trump administration, whose support of Prince Mohammed, the de facto ruler of the strategically important kingdom, prompted international outrage.
The release of the report indicates that President Biden, unlike his predecessor, will not downplay the killing of Mr. Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist and legal resident of Virginia who was critical of the Saudi government.
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Killing Khashoggi: How a Brutal Saudi Hit Job Unfolded
An autopsy expert. A lookalike. A black van. Our video investigation follows the movements of the 15-man Saudi hit team that killed and dismembered the journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
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There were 15 of them. Most arrived in the dead of night, laid their trap and waited for the target to arrive. That target was Jamal Khashoggi, a prominent Saudi critic of his country’s government and its young crown prince. Since his killing in Istanbul, Turkish media has released a steady drip feed of evidence implicating Saudi officials. Weeks of investigation by The Times builds on that evidence and reconstructs what unfolded, hour-by-hour. Our timeline shows the ruthless efficiency of a hit team of experts that seemed specially chosen from Saudi government ministries. Some had links to the crown prince himself. After a series of shifting explanations, Saudi Arabia now denies that this brazen hit job was premeditated. But this reconstruction of the killing, and the botched cover-up, calls their story into serious question. It’s Friday morning, Sept. 28. Khashoggi and his fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, are at the local marriage office in Istanbul. In order to marry, he’s told that he needs Saudi paperwork and goes straight to the consulate to arrange it. They tell him to return in a week. It all seems routine, but it’s not. Inside there’s a Saudi spy, Ahmed al-Muzaini, who’s working under diplomatic cover. That very day, he flies off to Riyadh and helps concoct a plan to intercept Khashoggi when he returns to the consulate. Fast-forward to Monday night into Tuesday morning. Saudi agents converge in Istanbul aboard separate flights. Muzaini, the spy, flies back from Riyadh. A commercial flight carries a three-man team that we believe flew from Cairo. Two of the men are security officers and they’ve previously traveled with the crown prince. A private jet flying from Riyadh lands around 3:30 a.m. That plane is often used by the Saudi government, and it’s carrying nine Saudi officials, some who played key roles in Khashoggi’s death. We’ll get to Team 3 later on, and for now focus on these men from Team 2. This is Salah al-Tubaigy, a high-ranking forensics and autopsy expert in the Saudi interior ministry. Turkish officials will later say his role was to dismember Khashoggi’s body. Another is Mustafa al-Madani, a 57-year-old engineer. As we’ll see, it’s no accident that he looks like Khashoggi. And this is Maher Mutreb, the leader of the operation. Our investigation into his past reveals a direct link between Mutreb and the Saudi crown prince. When bin Salman toured a Houston neighborhood earlier this year, we discovered that Mutreb was with him, a glowering figure in the background. We found him again in Boston, at a U.N. meeting in New York, in Madrid and Paris, too. This global tour was all part of a charm offensive by the prince to paint himself as a moderate reformer. Back then, Mutreb was in the royal guard. Now, he would orchestrate Khashoggi’s killing. And his close ties to the crown prince beg the question, just how high up the Saudi chain of command did the plot to kill go? Early Tuesday morning, Khashoggi flies back from a weekend trip to London. He and the Saudis nearly cross paths at the airport. The Saudi teams check into two hotels, which give quick access to the consulate. Khashoggi heads home with his fiancée. He’d just bought an apartment for their new life together. By mid-morning, the Saudis are on the move. Mutreb leaves his hotel three hours before Khashoggi is due at the consulate. The rest of the team isn’t far behind. The building is only a few minutes away on foot, and soon, they’re spotted at this entrance. Mutreb arrives first. Next, we see al-Tubaigy, the autopsy expert. And now al-Madani, the lookalike. The stage is almost set. A diplomatic car pulls out of the consulate driveway and switches places with a van, which backs in. Turkish officials say this van would eventually carry away Khashoggi’s remains. From above, we can see the driveway is covered, hiding any activity around the van from public view. Meanwhile, Khashoggi and his fiancée set out for the consulate, walking hand-in-hand. In their final hour together, they chat about dinner plans and new furniture for their home. At 1:13 p.m., they arrive at the consulate. Khashoggi gives her his cellphones before he enters. He walks into the consulate. It’s the last time we see him. Inside, Khashoggi is brought to the consul general’s office on the second floor. The hit team is waiting in a nearby room. Sources briefed on the evidence, told us Khashoggi quickly comes under attack. He’s dragged to another room and is killed within minutes. Then al-Tubaigy, the autopsy expert, dismembers his body while listening to music. Maher Mutreb makes a phone call to a superior. He says, “Tell your boss,” and “The deed was done.” Outside, the van reportedly carrying Khashoggi’s body pulls out of the side entrance and drives away. At the same time, the Saudis begin trying to cover their tracks. While Khashoggi’s fiancée waits here where she left him, two figures leave from the opposite side. One of them is wearing his clothes. Later, the Saudis would claim that this was Khashoggi. But it’s al-Madani, the engineer, now a body double pretending that the missing journalist left the consulate alive. Yet there’s one glaring flaw: The clothes are the same, but he’s wearing his own sneakers, the ones he walked in with. Meanwhile, the van that’s allegedly carrying Khashoggi’s body makes the two-minute drive from the consulate to the Saudi consul’s residence. There’s several minutes of deliberations but the van eventually pulls into the building’s driveway. Again, it’s hidden from public view. It’s now three hours since Khashoggi was last seen. The body double hails this taxi and continues weaving a false trail through the city. He heads to a popular tourist area and then changes back into his own clothes. Later, we see him joking around in surveillance footage. Over at the airport, more Saudi officials arrive on another flight from Riyadh. They spend just five hours in Istanbul, but we’re not sure where they go. Now we pick up Maher Mutreb again, exiting from the consul’s house. It’s time for them to go. Mutreb and others check out of their hotel and move through airport security. Al-Muzaini, the spy, heads to the airport too. But as they’re leaving Istanbul, Khashoggi’s fiancée is still outside the consulate, pacing in circles. She’ll soon raise the alarm that Khashoggi is missing and she’ll wait for him until midnight. The alarm spreads around the world. Nine days later, the Saudis send another team to Istanbul. They say it’s to investigate what happened. But among them are a toxicologist and a chemist, who also has ties to the hit team. He and Tubaigy attended a forensics graduation days before Khashoggi was killed. Turkish officials later say that this team’s mission was not to investigate, but to cover up the killing. Now the Saudi story has changed, and prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for several suspects in Khashoggi’s killing. But that doesn’t include Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who many Western government officials are convinced authorized the killing. Khashoggi’s remains still haven’t been found.
Ahead of the report’s release, Mr. Biden spoke to King Salman for the first time as president on Thursday. The administration has made clear that Mr. Biden will speak only to King Salman, his counterpart as head of state, and will not speak directly to the crown prince. During the Trump administration, Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of former President Donald J. Trump, was frequently in contact with Prince Mohammed.
Mr. Biden campaigned on a pledge to hold Saudi Arabia to account for human rights abuses, and the Biden administration has already taken a more cautious approach to the Saudi government, limiting arms sales and cutting off any support for the kingdom’s war in Yemen.
In November 2018, Mr. Trump released an exclamation-filled statement, which was at once dissembling and candid. Aiming to move past Mr. Khashoggi’s killing and continue his close relationship with the Saudi government, Mr. Trump talked about the importance of arms sales and the threat of Iran and said Prince Mohammed’s involvement was uncertain. “Our intelligence agencies continue to assess all information,” Mr. Trump wrote, “but it could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event — maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!”
The statement was misleading, at best, as the newly released report makes clear. While the C.I.A. was continuing to collect information, as early as mid-October 2018, agency officials had determined Prince Mohammed was culpable.
President Biden will spend the day in Houston, touring areas damaged by recent snowstorms, visiting a local food bank, and speaking at a stadium that has been converted into a coronavirus vaccination site by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Mr. Biden’s trip takes place in a week in which grief has been the unofficial theme. On Monday, he held a solemn observance of a grim pandemic milestone: more than 500,000 Americans dead. With his arrival in Houston, Mr. Biden will be offering words of comfort to people who went without power and drinking water during winter storms this month.
The damage was extensive and the recovery is expected to be slow. Damage from the storms is expected to cost upward of $20 billion, according to the Insurance Council of Texas. On Wednesday, some 1.4 million Texans said they were still without a reliable water source, according to news reports. Coronavirus vaccinations had all but stalled because of the storm, but are beginning to rebound.
Earlier this month, the president approved a major disaster declaration for Texas, ensuring the flow of federal resources to counties across the state that have been hit by the storms. During his trip, he will also tour an emergency operations center.
Mr. Biden is expected to be accompanied for most of the day by Greg Abbott, the state’s Republican governor, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said Thursday. Jill Biden, the first lady, will join the president on the trip.
“The president doesn’t view the crisis and the millions of people who’ve been impacted by it as a Democratic or Republican issue,” Ms. Psaki told reporters. “He views it as an issue where he’s eager to get relief to tap into all the resources in the federal government, to make sure the people of Texas know we’re thinking about them, we’re fighting for them, and we’re going to continue working on this as they’re recovering.”
In Washington, Republicans stand united in opposition to President Biden’s first major legislative proposal, a $1.9 trillion economic rescue plan that they have labeled a bloated, budget-busting “blue state bailout.”
But in rural Maine, Anthony McGill, a self-identified conservative Republican, describes the bill as something else entirely: “Most of it sounds like a good idea,” he said.
While Mr. McGill doesn’t agree with all the provisions, he supports the central thrust of the bill — another round of direct stimulus payments to nearly all Americans.
“There’s a lot of people that could use those checks. I don’t know about needing them, but we could all use them,” said Mr. McGill, 52, who voted for former President Donald J. Trump in November. “The debt is so far out of hand that it’s a fantasy number at this point. We might as well just blow it out till everything collapses.”
As Democrats prepare to vote as soon as Friday to pass the relief package in the House, Republican elected officials are struggling to overcome intraparty divides over whether to embrace the major pieces of the proposal — as well as to reconcile with the fact that many Republican voters support the plan. While Democrats are working swiftly to move their bill, Republicans are consumed by sideshows like false claims of voter fraud and what they call cancel culture, which are two major themes of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, known as CPAC, starting on Friday in Orlando, Fla.
The lack of a unified Republican economic message reflects an unsettled party that is unable to agree on how to chart a path through a Democratic-controlled Washington. While congressional Republicans take a scattershot approach to try to undermine the legislation, mayors and governors in their party are pushing for the plan, saying their states and cities need the federal aid to keep police officers on their beats, reopen schools and help small businesses.
Polling shows a significant number of Republican voters agree: More than four in 10 Republicans back Mr. Biden’s aid package, according to polling from the online research firm SurveyMonkey for The New York Times. Over all, 72 percent of Americans said they supported the bill, a number that includes 97 percent of Democrats.
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‘Not as Nice as Cancún’: Cruz Jokes About Controversial Trip
At the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Fla., on Friday, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas made light of his recent trip to Cancún, Mexico, which drew criticism as he fled the state during a deadly winter storm.
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I got to say, Orlando is awesome. It’s not as nice as Cancún. But it’s nice. And I got to say, what an amazing array of speakers here at CPAC. For a second there, I thought we were in Des Moines.
ORLANDO — Senator Ted Cruz has decided to own it.
Appearing at the Conservative Political Action Conference, known as CPAC, just days after he was caught fleeing to Mexico for a vacation in the midst of a deadly snowstorm in Texas, Mr. Cruz tried to make light of his lapse in judgment.
“I gotta say, Orlando is awesome,” he said while opening his speech. “It’s not as nice as Cancún — but it’s nice!”
Mr. Cruz, a potential candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, had been roundly criticized by prominent Democrats for abandoning his constituents in a time of strife. But here, the moment made for a winning laugh line.
Much of Mr. Cruz’s speech went this way, with the Texas senator, his voice at times sounding like a growl, entreating the left and the media to “lighten up” about many of the issues that have defined America in the past year.
Shortly before Mr. Cruz’s speech, CPAC organizers had been jeered by the audience when they paused the program to plead with them to wear their masks. Still, Mr. Cruz went ahead in making fun of pandemic-era rules like wearing masks in restaurants, and he also joked about the protests against police brutality that spread across major cities last summer, some becoming violent.
There had been no such demonstrations in Houston, he said, “because let’s be very clear: If there had been, they would have discovered what the people of Texas think about the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms.” The audience laughed.
Mr. Cruz, who had been scheduled to speak on the “Bill of Rights, Liberty, and Cancel Culture,” offered little by way of a positive vision for the future of the conservative movement. His speech reflected the general tenor of the event up to that point, with other speakers decrying the media and “cancel culture,” amplifying falsehoods about widespread voter fraud, and promising, above all, to “fight.”
But as Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida appeared to suggest, this was the future of the movement. In his brief remarks to kick off the conference on Friday morning, Mr. DeSantis, another potential 2024 candidate, avowed that conservatives would never return to “the failed Republican establishment of yesteryear.”
“Now, anyone can spout conservative rhetoric,” Mr. DeSantis said. “We can sit around and have academic debates about conservative policy.”
“But the question is,” he added, “When the Klieg lights get hot, when the left comes after you: Will you stay strong, or will you fold?”
Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state, and Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota will anchor the lineup on Saturday, and former President Donald J. Trump is scheduled to speak at 3:40 p.m. on Sunday, his first public speech since he left office under the cloud of a second impeachment.
Though Mr. Trump may well tease that he remains interested in running in 2024, the list of other prominent speakers includes many who hope to become the party’s standard-bearer: In addition to Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Cruz, they include Senators Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Rick Scott of Florida and Josh Hawley of Missouri.
But who isn’t speaking at CPAC this year is as telling as who is.
The most notable absence is former Vice President Mike Pence, who has kept a low profile since Jan. 6, when pro-Trump rioters called for his execution.
Also missing from the list is former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, another possible 2024 candidate, who served under Mr. Trump as ambassador to the United Nations and whose absence may signal an attempt to occupy a more moderate lane in the party in the years ahead.
The federal government has agreed to buy 100,000 doses of a recently authorized Covid-19 treatment from Eli Lilly, increasing the supply of such drugs for patients who are high risk of becoming seriously ill but are not yet hospitalized.
Under the deal, announced on Friday, the government will pay $210 million and Eli Lilly will ship out the doses by the end of March. The government has the option to buy 1.1 million more doses of the treatment through November, but how many of those doses ultimately get ordered will depend in part on the course of the pandemic in the United States.
The treatment is a cocktail of monoclonal antibodies combining the Eli Lilly drug known as bamlanivimab — which was authorized last November and is in use for high-risk Covid-19 patients — with a second drug known as etesevimab. The combination received emergency authorization earlier this month from the Food and Drug Administration. Both drugs consist of artificial copies of the antibodies that are naturally generated when a person’s immune system fights off an infection.
The U.S. government previously agreed to buy nearly 1.5 million doses of bamlanivimab alone. Eli Lilly has delivered more than 1 million doses already, with the remainder to be delivered by the end of March. More than 660,000 doses of bamlanivimab have been shipped out to states and other jurisdictions.
Eli Lilly’s new combination therapy could offer an advantage over bamlanivimab alone if worrisome coronavirus variants — particularly B.1.351, the one first identified in South Africa — take off in the United States. While bamlanivimab alone was found in a lab study to be powerless against the B.1.351 variant, preliminary data suggest that the combination therapy may be better able to fight off variants. That’s because so-called escape mutations in the variants that may enable them to avoid one antibody may not work against the second.
Another monoclonal antibody cocktail, made by Regeneron, is also authorized in the United States. Nearly 100,000 doses of that therapy have been shipped out.
Antibody treatments got a publicity boost last fall when they were given to Donald J. Trump when he was infected in the last months of his presidency, and to other high-profile Republicans, but they were surprisingly underused in many places in their first months of availability. Overwhelmed hospitals did not prioritize the treatments, which are cumbersome and must be given via intravenous infusions. Many patients and doctors did not know to ask for them or how to find them.
In December, the federal government’s early data collected from hospitals suggested that they had given only about 20 percent of their supply to patients. But that picture is changing. Eli Lilly has seen usage of bamlanivimab alone rise to around 40 percent nationwide, with uptake much higher in some places, Janelle Sabo, who leads Eli Lilly’s work on Covid-19 antibodies, said in an interview earlier this week.
Republicans were leery of the prospect of an independent commission to investigate an assault that had shaken the nation and exposed dangerous threats, fearful that Democrats would use it to unfairly cast blame and a political shadow on them.
Congress was already conducting its own inquiry, some of them argued, and another investigation was not needed. The commission could be a distraction at a vulnerable time, prompt the disclosure of national secrets or complicate the prosecution of those responsible.
The year was 2001, but the clash 20 years ago over the creation of an independent commission to investigate the Sept. 11 attacks bears unmistakable parallels to the one that is now raging in Congress over forming a similar panel to look into the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol.
To most Americans, the idea of a blue-ribbon commission to dig into the causes of the Capitol riot and the security and intelligence failures that led to the seat of government being ransacked would probably seem straightforward. But in recent days, it has become clear that, as in the past, devising the legislative and legal framework for such a panel is fraught with political difficulty, particularly in this case, when members of Congress experienced the attack themselves, and some now blame their colleagues for encouraging it.
And this time, given the nature of the breach — an event inspired by President Donald J. Trump’s false claims of a stolen election, which were trumpeted by many Republicans — the findings of a deep investigation could carry heavy political consequences.
The tensions intensified this week, when Speaker Nancy Pelosi floated a proposal for the creation of a special panel. Republican leaders denounced her initial plan, which envisioned a commission made up of seven members appointed by Democrats and four by Republicans.
Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader, called her idea “partisan by design,” and compared it unfavorably with the Sept. 11 commission, which was evenly divided.
Ms. Pelosi said that the crucial aspect of devising the commission was to determine the scope of its work, dismissing the exact makeup of the panel as an “easily negotiated” detail.
“I will do anything to have it be bipartisan,” Ms. Pelosi said.
Some lawmakers privately suggested that their work could be sufficient and that an independent panel would be redundant. And at his confirmation hearing on Monday to be attorney general, Judge Merrick B. Garland warned that he supported the idea of an independent inquiry only as long as it would not derail the prosecution of any of those charged in the assault.
Even those who have backed the idea of a commission say they will not accept a proposal they see as giving Democrats the upper hand in determining the course of the commission’s work.
“It has to be independent,” said Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas. “This can’t be the Nancy Pelosi commission.”
President Biden has compared the fight against the coronavirus to wartime mobilization, but with the exception of pharmaceutical companies, the private sector has done relatively little in the effort. It has not made a major push to persuade Americans to remain socially distant, wear masks or get vaccinated as soon as possible.
Biden administration officials and business leaders will announce a plan on Friday to change that, David Leonhardt of The New York Times reports in The Morning newsletter.
The plan includes some of the country’s largest corporate lobbying groups — like the Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, the National Association of Manufacturers and groups representing Asian, Black and Latino executives — as well as some big-name companies.
Ford and Gap Inc. will donate more than 100 million masks for free distribution. Pro sports leagues will set aside more than 100 stadiums and arenas to be used as mass vaccination sites. Uber, PayPal and Walgreens will provide free rides for people to get to vaccination sites. Best Buy, Dollar General and Target will give their workers paid time off to get a shot. And the White House will urge many more companies to do likewise.
Many of the steps are fairly straightforward. That they have not happened already is a reflection of the Trump administration’s disorganized pandemic response. Trump officials oversaw a highly successful program to develop vaccines, but otherwise often failed to take basic measures that other countries did take.
“We’ve been overwhelmed with outreach from companies saying, ‘We want to help, we want to help, we want to help,’” said Andy Slavitt, a White House pandemic adviser. “What a missed opportunity the first year of this virus was.”
The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a grave warning on Friday that a recent sharp drop in coronavirus cases across the United States “may be stalling” and “leveling off at a very high number” — a worrisome development that comes as more cases of concerning new variants have been found, and could suggest that a return to normalcy is not yet quite as near as many Americans had hoped.
Even as the vaccination campaign continues, the director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, also warned governors not to roll back mask mandates or other efforts to contain the virus: “Things are tenuous. Now is not the time to relax restrictions.”
According to a New York Times database, virus cases across the United States appear to be leveling off from the steep decline that began in January, with figures comparable to those reported in late October. Cases have slightly increased week over week in recent days, though severe weather limited testing and reporting in Texas and other states the previous week, and not all states reported complete data on the Presidents Day holiday. The seven-day average of new cases was 77,800 as of Thursday.
While deaths tend to fluctuate more than cases and hospital admissions, Dr. Walensky told reporters during a White House briefing on the pandemic, the most recent seven-day average is slightly higher than the average earlier in the week. The seven-day average of newly reported deaths was 2,165, as of Thursday.
“We at C.D.C. consider this a very concerning shift in the trajectory,” she said, adding, “I want to be clear: cases, hospital admissions and deaths — all remain very high and the recent shift in the pandemic must be taken extremely seriously.”
Dr. Walensky said some of the rise may be attributable to new variants of the coronavirus that spread more efficiently and quickly. The so-called B.1.1.7 variant, which first emerged in Britain, now accounts for approximately 10 percent of all cases in the United States, up from one to four percent a few weeks ago, she said. The U.S. ability to track variants is much less robust than Britain’s.
“I know people are tired; they want to get back to life, to normal,” she said. “But we’re not there yet.”
As cases had declined, some governors around the United States have begun to relax pandemic restrictions. States with Republican governors appeared to be more eager to make rollbacks, though New York, which has a Democrat as governor, has also been easing restrictions on a variety of activities. On Thursday, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas said he was considering lifting a statewide mask mandate in place since July.
In Mississippi, Gov. Tate Reeves said he was also considering pulling back some restrictions, particularly mask mandates for people who have been fully vaccinated. As of Thursday, just over 12 percent of the state’s population has received at least one shot, and 5.5 percent have received two, according to a Times database.
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, echoed Dr. Walensky’s warnings that more rollbacks at state or local levels would be unwise, noting that case levels remained at a “very precarious position.”
“We don’t want to be people always looking at the dark side of things, but you want to be realistic,” he said. “So we have to carefully look at what happens over the next week or so with those numbers before you start making the understandable need to relax on certain restrictions.”
The doctors’ comments came as the Biden administration announced an aggressive push to enlist the help of some of the country’s biggest corporations and business lobbying groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable and organizations representing Asian, Black and Latino executives.
The aim is two-fold: to expand the private sector’s contributions beyond the manufacture of vaccines, tests and treatment, and to encourage businesses to give employees time off and the necessary support to get vaccinated, said Andy Slavitt, a senior Biden health adviser.
Mr. Slavitt ticked off a list of companies and groups that have responded to what he described as the administration’s “call to action”: Ford and The Gap intend to donate more than 100 million masks for free distribution. Uber and Lyft are teaming up with pharmacies to offer free or discounted rides to vaccination sties. Best Buy, Dollar General and Target will give workers paid time off to get a shot. He said the initiatives would be coordinated by the companies themselves and the administration did not have a formal role.
Pro sports leagues, Mr. Slavitt said, are helping set aside more than 100 stadiums and arenas to become mass vaccination sites. A few weeks ago, Mr. Biden announced in a C.B.S. interview that the N.F.L. commissioner had offered him the use of stadiums.
“We’ll ask companies to make similar unique commitments that bring their unique skills and resources to the problem of key keeping Americans safe and ending the pandemic as quickly as possible,” Mr. Slavitt said.