The U.S. Senate is scheduled to vote Tuesday on the nomination of Antony Blinken to be the country’s next secretary of state. 

At a confirmation hearing last week, Blinken said he is ready to confront the challenges posed by China, Iran, Russia and North Korea. 

He said China “poses the most significant challenge” to U.S. national interests, while noting there is room for cooperation. 

“There are rising adversarial aspects of the relationship; certainly, competitive ones, and still some cooperative ones, when it is in our mutual interests,” he added.

Nominated Secretary of State Antony Blinken participates as US President Joe Biden speaks during a cabinet announcement event in Wilmington, Delaware, on Nov. 24, 2020.

He also pledged to rebuild State Department morale and the diplomatic corps. Blinken said he sees U.S. standing abroad as leadership based on “humility and confidence.” 

Blinken was deputy secretary of state during the Obama administration and has close ties with President Joe Biden. He was staff director for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when Biden was chair of the panel, and later was then-Vice President Biden’s national security adviser.  

The Foreign Relations Committee approved Blinken’s nomination by a vote of 15-3, sending the matter to the full Senate for final approval. 

U.S. President Joe Biden expressed a sense of urgency for lawmakers to find agreement on a new coronavirus aid package, saying Monday, “Time is of the essence.” 

Biden has proposed a $1.9 trillion plan that includes money to increase the pace of COVID-19 vaccinations, help for schools to reopen, financial relief for state and local governments, and $1,400 direct payments for individuals. 

Republicans have pushed back both on the size of the package and on the speed of the negotiations. 

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Monday that “any further action should be smart and targeted, not just an imprecise deluge of borrowed money that would direct huge sums toward those who don’t need it.” 

Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, said consideration of a package of such size and scope “seems premature.” 

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said that while passage in the Senate will not be easy, he is aiming to get approval for an aid package in the next four to six weeks.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of N.Y., heads to an interview on Capitol Hill in Washington, Monday, Jan. 25, 2021.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that action is needed before the United States reaches an “unemployment cliff” in March, when long-term unemployment benefits expire for millions of Americans. 

Biden told reporters he is reluctant to “cherry-pick and take out one or two items,” seeing the whole plan as critical in responding to the many challenges posed by the pandemic that has killed more than 420,000 people in the United States. 

The president, who served in the Senate for 36 years, said he understands the legislative process, and that while he wants aid legislation to have bipartisan support, there will be arguments. 

He cited the $1,400 payments, which decrease above certain income thresholds, and said he is open to negotiating such details. 

“Well, there’s legitimate reason for people to say, ‘Do you have the lines drawn the exact right way?  Should it go to anybody making over X-number of dollars or why?’” Biden said. 

Republicans arguing for a more targeting round of aid have said the payments should be focused on the neediest households. 

A group of senators from both the Democratic and Republican caucuses said there was broad consensus among the group of the need for additional funding for vaccines. 

Biden has set a goal of 100 million vaccinations during his first 100 days in office.  The pace of U.S. vaccinations is not fast enough to reach that target, but Biden expressed confidence Monday that in the coming weeks there will start to be one million vaccinations per day. 

A group of U.S. senators held talks Sunday with Biden administration officials about the president’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus pandemic relief proposal and said they hoped to pass legislation before the start of an impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump. 

The lawmakers, from both the Democratic and Republican caucuses, said they agreed the priority right now is to speed COVID-19 vaccination and testing efforts. 

Some Republicans questioned the need for such a large spending package a month after Congress approved a $900 billion relief measure.

The U.S. House of Representatives passes an additional economic stimulus package passed earlier in the week by the U.S. Senate, on Capitol Hill in Washington, May 1, 2020.

The earlier aid came after disagreements over the size of direct payments to send to American households. The ultimate resolution was payments of up to $600 per person, with amounts diminishing based on income. 

The latest proposal involves $1,400 payments, and in the talks Sunday opponents argued the aid should be targeted to those most in need of help. 

Biden has made addressing the pandemic a top priority for the opening months of his presidency. 

More than 419,000 people in the United States have died from COVID-19, with more than 25 million total infections. 

The Senate is due to begin Trump’s impeachment trial the week of February 8. 

The U.S. House of Representatives is set to officially send its articles of impeachment to the Senate on Monday, charging former President Donald Trump with inciting insurrection in connection with the storming of the Capitol by a mob of his supporters earlier this month.

The trial in the Senate is set to begin the week of February 8 after Democrats and Republicans agreed to a short delay in order to give both the lawmakers who will serve as prosecutors and Trump’s defense team time to prepare.  The extra time will also allow the Senate a chance to confirm some of President Joe Biden’s Cabinet nominees.

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A two-thirds majority in the Senate would be required to convict Trump. With the Senate politically divided between 50 Republicans and 50 Democrats, 17 Republicans would have to turn against Trump for a conviction, assuming all Democrats vote as a bloc against the former president.

If he is convicted, a separate, simply-majority vote could bar Trump from holding federal office again.

Trump already stands as the only U.S. president in the country’s 245-year history to be impeached twice. The House impeached him in late 2019, accusing him of trying to enlist Ukraine to dig up dirt against Biden ahead of the November election, but the Senate acquitted him last February.

US Senate Acquits Trump of 2 Articles of Impeachment Senators voted along party lines, except for Republican Mitt Romney who aligned with Democrats on the abuse of power charge

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer stressed the need for the trial Sunday, but said the process would move relatively quickly.

“Everyone wants to put this awful chapter in American history behind us. But sweeping it under the rug will not bring healing,” he said.  “The only way to bring healing is to actually have real accountability, which this trial affords.”

A number of Republicans, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, have condemned the violence that unfolded on January 6 and criticized Trump, who urged supporters to march to the Capitol to fight for him in confronting lawmakers as they debated certifying Biden’s election win.

Republican Senator Marco Rubio told the “Fox News Sunday” show that while he believes Trump “bears responsibility for some of what happened,” he opposes the Senate trial.

“We’re just going to jump right back into what we’ve been going through for the last five years and bring it up with a trial and it’s going to be bad for the country,” he said. “It really is.”

“This is not a criminal trial,” Rubio said. “This is a political process and would fuel these divisions that have paralyzed the country.”

Two Key Republicans at Odds Over Trump Impeachment Trial Donald Trump is out of office but faces a Senate trial accused of inciting an insurrection earlier this month at the US Capitol

Senator Mitt Romney, who was the only Republican to vote to convict Trump in his first impeachment trial, expressed support for bringing Trump to trial again.

“I believe incitement to insurrection is an impeachable offense,” he told CNN.  “If not, what is?”

Romney said he believes Trump was “complicit in an unprecedented attack on our democracy.”

The mayhem left five people dead, including a police officer whose death is being investigated as a homicide. Trump supporters — roughly 800, according to officials — rampaged past authorities, ransacked some congressional offices and scuffled with police before order was restored and lawmakers in the early hours of January 7 officially declared Biden the winner.

At the rally before hundreds of his supporters walked 16 blocks to the Capitol, Trump repeated weeks of unfounded complaints that he had been cheated out of reelection by fraudulent votes and vote-counting even though he had lost 60 court challenges to the outcome.

FILE – Pro-Trump protesters storm the U.S. Capitol to contest the certification of the 2020 U.S. presidential election results by the U.S. Congress, at the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, Jan. 6, 2021.

“There is no evidence this election was stolen,” Romney said.

One of the House Democratic impeachment managers who will present the case in the Senate against Trump, Congresswoman Madeleine Dean of Pennsylvania, told CNN that they will “put together a case that is so compelling” to confront “the big lie” that Trump had been cheated out of reelection.

She called Trump’s incitement of insurrection “an extraordinary, heinous crime. The American public saw what happened.”

“This was a terrifying moment … incited by the president,” she said. “This cannot go unanswered.” 

WASHINGTON – Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, in his first directive since taking office, has given his senior leaders two weeks to send him reports on sexual assault prevention programs in the military, and an assessment of what has worked and what hasn’t.

Austin’s memo, which went out Saturday, fulfills a commitment he made to senators last week during confirmation hearings. He had vowed to immediately address the problems of sexual assault and harassment in the ranks.

“This is a leadership issue,” Austin said in his two-page memo. “We will lead.”

Senator after senator demanded to know what Austin planned to do about the problem, which defense and military leaders have grappled with for years. Reports of sexual assaults have steadily gone up since 2006, according to department reports, including a 13% jump in 2018 and a 3% increase in 2019. The 2020 data is not yet available.

The 2018 increase fueled congressional anger over the issue, and lawmakers have repeatedly called for action, including changes in the Code of Military Justice.

“You do agree that we can’t keep doing the same thing that we’ve been doing for the past decade?” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., said during Austin’s confirmation hearing. “Do I have your commitment to be relentless on this issue until we can end the scourge of sexual violence in the military?”

Austin agreed, telling senators, “This starts with me and you can count on me getting after this on Day One.”

Technically, the directive came on Day Two. Austin arrived at the Pentagon on Friday shortly after noon, but he spent his first hours as defense chief in meetings with key leaders as he began the transition to his new job. He was in the Pentagon again Saturday, making calls to defense counterparts around the world, and he signed the memo.

In his hearing and in the memo, Austin acknowledged that the military has long struggled with the problem but must do better.

The directive calls for each leader to submit a summary of the sexual assault and harassment measures they have taken in the last year that show promise, and an assessment of those that didn’t. And he asked for relevant data for the past decade, including efforts to support victims.

“Include in your report the consideration of novel approaches to any of these areas,” he said, adding that “we must not be afraid to get creative.”

And Austin said he plans to host a meeting on the matter with senior leaders in the coming days.

Nate Galbreath, the acting director of the Pentagon’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office, said last April that he was cautiously optimistic that the lower increase in 2019 suggested a trend in declining assaults. But he said it’s too difficult to tell because sexual assaults are vastly under-reported.

Galbreath and military service leaders have repeatedly rolled out new programs over the years, including increased education and training and efforts to encourage service members to intervene when they see a bad situation. Last year officials announced a new move to root out serial offenders.

Many victims don’t file criminal reports, which means investigators can’t pursue those alleged attackers. Under the new system, victims who don’t want to file a public criminal report are encouraged to confidentially provide details about their alleged attacker so that investigators can see if they have been involved in other crimes.

Galbreath and others also have contended that, at least early on, the increase in reports was a good sign in that it showed that victims were more willing to come forward, suggesting they were getting more confident in the justice system.

WASHINGTON – The U.S. government’s effort to vaccinate millions of Americans against the coronavirus pandemic is lagging, new health officials in President Joe Biden’s administration conceded Sunday. But they held out hope that the campaign to curb the virus will markedly improve within three months.

“The plane is in a nosedive and we’ve got to pull it up,” Xavier Becerra, Biden’s choice as health and human services chief, told CNN about the vaccination progress.

“What we inherited didn’t work, and now we’ve got to make it work,” Becerra said.

He said problems won’t be fixed quickly, but that “we can do better…we can get us back to real normality.”

Before leaving office last week, President Donald Trump praised his administration’s efforts to combat the pandemic.  

Biden has set a goal of administering 100 million vaccination shots in his first 100 days in office. Last week, he signed orders to ramp up the production of more doses of two vaccines now approved for use and other medical equipment needed to treat those who have contracted COVID-19, the infectious disease caused by the virus.  

That pace of vaccinations is now roughly on track to be met, which would inoculate about 67 million people, some with their initial shot and some with both of their required shots. Some critics say the pace should be quicker.

Becerra said, “Getting 100 million shots out there in 100 days is incredibly important. It’s ambitious, it’s bold, it’s doable. We have to do it.” Biden’s chief medical adviser, Dr. Anthony Fauci, told CBS News’s “Face the Nation” show, the number was “a floor, not a ceiling.”

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the new director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told the “Fox News Sunday” program, “We have to go faster,” but that the lack of a sufficient supply of the vaccine may prevent that.  

“The supply is probably going to be the most limiting constraint,” she said. “We’re really hoping that after that first 100 days we’re going to have much more production.”

“I’m hopeful we’ll get an increase in supply, not a stagnating one. We don’t have as many doses now that we would like,” she said. Walensky said she hopes that changes by the end of March.

“One of the biggest problems we have right now is that I can’t tell you how much vaccine we have,” she said. Walensky said that if she cannot tell state governors and health officials how much vaccine they will be receiving, “then they can’t plan…they can’t figure out how many appointments to make.”

People wait in line at a COVID-19 vaccination site in Paterson, New Jersey, Jan. 21, 2021.

“The fact that we don’t know today, five days into this administration, and weeks into planning, how much vaccine we have, just gives you a sense of the challenges we’ve been left with” by the former Trump administration.

The United States has now recorded 25 million coronavirus infections and more than 417,000 deaths, both more than in any other country, according to the Johns Hopkins University.

As he signed orders last week to combat the virus, Biden said, “Things are going to continue to get worse before they get better,” with the U.S. death toll likely to top a half million by next month as tens of thousands of new cases are recorded daily.

“We didn’t get into this mess overnight, and it’s going to take months for us to turn things around,” Biden said.

On Saturday, the U.S. reached one milestone – 20 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines administered, a figure the Trump administration had hoped to reach by the end of last month. But the disease control center said that is just shy of half (49.6%) the number of doses delivered to states to be administered.

It is not clear why there is a lag.

Fauci told CNN last week, “What I think we really need to do is we’ve got to go into the trenches” to try to figure out why some states are not administering the doses they have while other states are desperate for more. “You’ve got to get into the local area and find out, ‘What’s going on here? What’s wrong? Let’s try and fix it.'”

Dr. Deborah Birx, Trump’s White House coronavirus response coordinator, praised Biden’s initial actions to combat the virus in an interview on CBS, while attacking the Trump effort.

In the Trump White House, Birx said, “I saw the president presenting graphs that I never made. Someone inside was creating a parallel set of data and graphics that were shown to the president.”    

She said that last April, when Trump suggested that the virus could be treated with a disinfectant, “I wasn’t prepared for that. I didn’t even know what to do in that moment.”

WASHINGTON – Two key U.S. Republican senators — Marco Rubio and Mitt Romney — disagreed sharply Sunday about the merits of the upcoming Senate impeachment trial of former Republican President Donald Trump, who is accused of inciting insurrection in the storming of the U.S. Capitol by hundreds of his supporters on January 6.

At a rally near the White House that day, Trump urged supporters to march to the Capitol to fight for him in confronting lawmakers as they debated whether to certify the Electoral College vote showing he had lost reelection to President Joe Biden. Biden was inaugurated last week as the country’s 46th president.

Rubio, a Florida lawmaker, told the “Fox News Sunday” show that Trump “bears responsibility for some of what happened.” But Rubio said he opposes the Senate trial after the House of Representatives impeached Trump.

FILE – Republican Senator Marco Rubio speaks during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Jan. 19, 2021.

The mayhem left five people dead, including a police officer whose death is being investigated as a homicide. Trump supporters — roughly 800, according to officials — rampaged past authorities, ransacked some congressional offices and scuffled with police before order was restored and lawmakers in the early hours of January 7 officially declared Biden the winner.

“We’re just going to jump right back into what we’ve been going through for the last five years and bring it up with a trial and it’s going to be bad for the country,” he said. “It really is.”

“This is not a criminal trial,” Rubio said. “This is a political process and would fuel these divisions that have paralyzed the country.”    

Romney, a senator from Utah and the losing Republican presidential candidate in 2012, told CNN, “I believe incitement to insurrection is an impeachable offense. If not, what is?”

Romney said he believes Trump was “complicit in an unprecedented attack on our democracy.”

FILE – Supporters of then-U.S. President Donald Trump storm the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Jan. 6, 2021.

At the rally before hundreds of his supporters walked 16 blocks to the Capitol, Trump repeated weeks of unfounded complaints that he had been cheated out of reelection by fraudulent votes and vote-counting even though he had lost 60 court challenges to the outcome, including in rulings by some judges he had appointed.

“There is no evidence this election was stolen,” Romney said.

FILE – Republican Senator Mitt Romney speaks with members of the media on Capitol Hill in Washington, March 16, 2020.

The Senate trial starts the week of February 8. A two-thirds majority in the Senate would be required to convict Trump. With the Senate politically divided between 50 Republicans and 50 Democrats, 17 Republicans would have to turn against Trump for a conviction, assuming all Democrats vote as a bloc against the former president.

If he is convicted, a separate, simply-majority vote could bar Trump from holding federal office again.

Already, Trump stands as the only U.S. president in the country’s 245-year history to be impeached twice. The House impeached him in late 2019, accusing him of trying to enlist Ukraine to dig up dirt against Biden ahead of the November election, but the Senate acquitted him last February.

Romney was the only Republican to vote to convict Trump in his first impeachment trial, but several Republicans have said they are open to convicting him of inciting insurrection after the January 6 melee that forced lawmakers to scramble for their safety as the rioters rushed into the halls of Congress.  

One of the House Democratic impeachment managers who will present the case in the Senate against Trump, Congresswoman Madeleine Dean of Pennsylvania, told CNN that they will “put together a case that is so compelling” to confront “the big lie” that Trump had been cheated out of reelection.

She called Trump’s incitement of insurrection “an extraordinary, heinous crime. The American public saw what happened.”

“This was a terrifying moment … incited by the president,” she said. “This cannot go unanswered.”

DETROIT – Someone in Michigan bought the winning ticket for the $1.05 billion Mega Millions jackpot, the third-largest lottery prize in U.S. history.

The winning numbers for Friday night’s drawing were 4, 26, 42, 50 and 60, with a Mega Ball of 24. The winning ticket was purchased at a Kroger store in the Detroit suburb of Novi, the Michigan Lottery said.

“Someone in Michigan woke up to life-changing news this morning, and Kroger Michigan congratulates the newest Michigan multimillionaire,” said Rachel Hurst, a regional spokeswoman for the grocery chain. She declined to comment further.

The Mega Millions top prize had been growing since September 15, when a winning ticket was sold in Wisconsin. The lottery’s next estimated jackpot is $20 million.

Friday night’s drawing came just two days after a ticket sold in Maryland matched all six numbers drawn and won a $731.1 million Powerball jackpot.

The jackpot figures refer to amounts if a winner opts for an annuity, paid in 30 annual installments. Most winners choose a cash prize, which for the Mega Millions game would be $776.6 million before taxes and $557 million after taxes, Michigan Lottery spokesman Jake Harris said.

“No way!” Ryan Gabrielli told The Detroit News after shopping Saturday at the lucky Kroger. “We meant to play the lottery but forgot to.”

Advice for winner

Harris said the ticket holder should sign the back and keep it in a safe place.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if the winning ticket holder held on to that ticket for a little bit, got their affairs in order, put together a financial plan and then reached out to contact us,” he said.

Only two lottery prizes in the U.S. have been larger than Friday’s jackpot. Three tickets for a $1.586 billion Powerball jackpot were sold in January 2016, and one winning ticket was sold for a $1.537 billion Mega Millions jackpot in October 2018.

In Grosse Ile, a suburb south of Detroit, 126 people bought more than 600 tickets for the Friday drawing but didn’t win the jackpot. They hoped to win enough money to replace a publicly owned bridge on their island in the Detroit River that has been closed indefinitely for major repairs. The only other transportation option for the island’s 10,000 residents is a privately owned toll bridge.

“We used this to lift our spirits and dream a little bit,” said organizer Kyle de Beausset. “Of course, we’re open to any help with the bridge, but I can’t imagine the winner would want to finance it.”

The odds of winning a Mega Millions jackpot were steep, at one in 302.5 million. The game is played in 45 states as well as Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The U.S. Justice Department revealed charges this week against a Texas man who allegedly stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6 and threatened on social media to kill U.S. Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Prosecutors asked a judge on Friday to keep the man, Garret Miller, in jail ahead of a court appearance, according to court records. They revealed five criminal charges in the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia against Miller on Wednesday, including for making death threats and trespassing offenses.

Images of social media posts allegedly authored by Miller, which appear to announce his trip to the Capitol and threaten the life of Ocasio-Cortez as well as a Capitol Police officer, are cited in the court filing.

Prosecutors said Miller made numerous threatening remarks online, including one instance in which he commented “next time we bring the guns” on a Twitter video showing rioters exiting the Capitol.

As rioters broke into the Capitol, Ocasio-Cortez worried her own colleagues in Congress might divulge her location to the mob, putting her at risk for kidnapping or worse, according to an Instagram Live video she recorded January 12.

Ocasio-Cortez also said that she experienced “a very close encounter where I thought I was going to die” January 6, adding that she could not get into specifics for security reasons, according to a Washington Post account of the video. “I did not know if I was going to make it to the end of that day alive.”

A spokeswoman for Ocasio-Cortez was not immediately available for comment. Miller was arrested Wednesday and a detention hearing is planned for Monday.