Biden signs orders on immigration; impeachment managers call Trump ‘singularly responsible’ for riot

One day after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) rebuked Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene in a blistering statement, several members of the Senate Republican ranks are following suit.

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) told reporters at the Capitol Tuesday that the Republican Party “should have nothing to do with” Greene and “should repudiate the things she said and move away from her.”

“I think back to the article I saw from [conservative writer] Kevin Williamson, and he said our party isn’t big enough to have both conservatives and kooks,” Romney said. “I agree with that.”

Asked about the debate over Greene, Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) told CNN Tuesday that House Republicans “are going to have to decide who they want to be.”

“Do they want to be the party of limited government and fiscal responsibility, free markets, peace through strength and pro-life, or do they want to be the party of conspiracy theories and QAnon?” Thune said. He called Greene “a big distraction for them right now, and not in a good way.”

Greene responded with a defiant tweet Tuesday afternoon.

“Too bad a few Republican Senators are obsessing over me, instead of preparing to defend President Trump from the rabid radical left,” she said. “Focus on ending the witch hunt. Do your job!”

In his Monday night statement on Greene, first reported by the Hill, McConnell did not mention the freshman lawmaker by name but listed a series of actions that describe her pattern of inflammatory behavior.

“Loony lies and conspiracy theories are cancer for the Republican Party and our country,” McConnell said. “Somebody who’s suggested that perhaps no airplane hit the Pentagon on 9/11, that horrifying school shootings were pre-staged, and that the Clintons crashed JFK Jr.’s airplane is not living in reality. This has nothing to do with the challenges facing American families or the robust debates on substance that can strengthen our party.”

On Wednesday morning, House Republicans will hold a conference-wide meeting during which they are expected to discuss the actions of both Greene and Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who voted last month to impeach Trump.

Asked whether he was surprised by McConnell’s Monday night statement on Greene, Romney replied that the GOP’s “long history as a party has shown that it’s important for us to separate ourselves from the people that are the wacky weeds.”

Some Senate Republicans were not eager to talk about Greene, however.

Sen. Todd C. Young (R-Ind.) told reporters that there was no discussion of the freshman House member during Tuesday’s Senate Republican conference meeting. “None. None whatsoever. … We didn’t talk about problems in the Democratic Party, either. Just — problems in parties were not subject of conversation,” Young said.

Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) told reporters he wants to hear personally from Greene on whether her reported social media postings are real, and if so, whether she still believes the things she posted. He noted that he had a “very pleasant experience” flying to Georgia with Greene ahead of last month’s Senate runoff elections.

Biden urged Senate Democrats on Tuesday to go big on coronavirus relief, making an aggressive case in favor of his $1.9 trillion rescue package as Democrats prepared to take the first steps to advance the legislation.

Biden’s comments, on a private lunchtime call with the Senate Democratic caucus, were confirmed by several people familiar with his remarks who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were private.

Biden addressed Senate Democrats a day after meeting with a group of Republican senators who are pushing a much-narrower $618 billion bill.

The president made clear to Senate Democrats that he viewed a proposal of that size as inadequate and that the risks of going small outweighed the risks of going big, the people said. Press secretary Jen Psaki emphasized in a news briefing shortly thereafter that the White House stood by the $1.9 trillion top-line figure of its plan.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has suspended the work of dozens of Pentagon advisory boards and asked hundreds of appointees to step down, in what officials described as an effort to optimize the boards’ work and counteract appointments that took place during the Trump administration’s final days.

Senior defense officials said that the work of 42 boards would be halted while Austin conducts a “zero-based review” over the next five months. Members of those boards who were appointed by the Pentagon will be asked to resign this month, while those who were selected by Congress or the president will remain on the boards while the review takes place, added the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment on the record.

The decision follows a move last week to halt the appointment of people loyal to former president Donald Trump on some of those boards, including one charged with evaluating how to rename military installations that now honor Confederate military figures. Those appointees included two men who worked as campaign managers for Trump — Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie.

“This was certainly driven by the secretary’s concern at seeing the frenetic activity in the last couple of months of removing people who had been on some of these boards and then replacing them or just simply adding to them in a quite unprecedented fashion,” one official said.

Officials said the move would affect several hundred appointees, who typically serve in a volunteer capacity. They said Austin hoped to review the mission of each of the boards, some of which overlap in scope. Among the higher profile are the Defense Policy Board and the Defense Business Board. The work of the military academy board of visitors will also be suspended, but their members, who are presidentially appointed, will not be asked to resign, officials said.

Dan Lamothe contributed to this report.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Tuesday touted a new Biden administration initiative to start distributing coronavirus vaccine doses directly to select retail pharmacies to make vaccinations more widely accessible.

“This will provide more sites for people to get vaccinated and their communities and is an important component to delivering vaccines equitably,” Psaki said at a White House briefing. “More than 90 percent of Americans live within five miles of a pharmacy. And I don’t know about you. My mother-in-law, my family calls me all the time figuring out how they can call the CVS and find out when they can get their vaccine.”

Psaki said the initial launch, scheduled for Feb. 11, will be limited but that plans call for ultimately utilizing 40,000 pharmacies nationwide. In a separate briefing earlier Tuesday, White House covid-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients said the program would start with about 1 million doses sent to 6,500 pharmacies.

Psaki also said total vaccine distribution in the country will increase by 5 percent this week and has increased by more than 20 percent since Biden took office.

“These actions speak to the daily work we are doing to mount the coordinated federal pandemic response Americans need … and deserve,” she said.

The Senate voted 86 to 13 on Tuesday to confirm Buttigieg as Biden’s transportation secretary. The 39-year-old became the first openly gay person ever to win confirmation to a Cabinet position.

The nomination sailed through the Senate Commerce Committee last week on a 21-to-3 vote.

Buttigieg, a former mayor of South Bend, Ind., and a former rival to Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination, has pledged to get to work immediately on Biden’s agenda of rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure.

Ahead of the vote by the full Senate on Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said that Buttigieg “is committed to working with members from both sides to improve rail and transit, highways, and more — in rural communities, urban centers, and everywhere in between.”

“I’m excited to call him Secretary Pete by the end of the day,” Schumer said, a reference to Buttigieg’s “Mayor Pete” moniker in his previous office.