Wednesday, December 30, 2020
Tuesday, December 29, 2020
Johns Hopkins COVID 19 History
COVID-19
Updates on the COVID-19 pandemic from the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
Additional resources are available on our website.
The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security also produces US Travel Industry and Retail Supply Chain Updates that provide a summary of major issues and events impacting the US travel industry and retail supply chain. You can access them here.
We will not publish a COVID-19 update on New Year's Day. Our next briefing will be on Tuesday, January 5.
We hope you, your friends, and your family have a safe and healthy holiday season.
From the first reports of unidentified pneumonia in China, our team at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security has been following and analyzing this situation closely. Thank you for reading our COVID-19 situation reports and learning alongside us. We are grateful to our technical team, who pulls together these updates with diligence and rigor—Divya Hosangadi, Amanda Kobokovich, Elena Martin, Christina Potter, Matthew Shearer, Marc Trotochaud, Rachel Vahey, and Matthew Watson; led by Dr. Caitlin Rivers—as well as our communications team, Margaret Miller and Julia Cizek. Finally, thank you to our funders and donors, who make these reports and the rest of our response work possible.
In late December 2019, the initial reports emerged about 27 cases of an unidentified viral pneumonia in Wuhan, China. At that time, nobody imagined that 12 months later, the WHO would report 80 million cases and 1.8 million deaths worldwide.
In July, we took a look back at the first 6 months of COVID-19 and generated a timeline and overview to highlight some of the major events, benchmarks, and themes. At times over the past year, it has felt like we faced the same issues day after day without moving forward, and in some instances, we seemed to face the same challenges repeatedly. However, we as a global community have made a lot of progress in critical areas over the past 6 months, including numerous advancements in testing and vaccines. We are far from the end of this global disaster, and there is considerable disruption, pain, and work remaining; however, it now feels like there is finally a light at the end of the tunnel.
Below, we have compiled a timeline of select events from the past 6 months of the pandemic:
July 7: Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro tests positive for SARS-CoV-2
July 17: India surpasses 1 million cumulative cases
July 20: The WHO reports 600,000 cumulative deaths globally
July 22: China initiates vaccination of essential workers under an emergency authorization
July 23: The WHO reports 15 million cumulative cases globally
July 24: The US summer surge peaks at 67,187 new cases per day
July 28: The US surpasses Brazil as #1 globally in terms of daily mortality
July 29: The US surpasses 150,000 cumulative deaths
August 6: India surpasses the US as #1 globally in terms of daily incidence
August 7: 700,000 global deaths
August 9: The US surpasses 5 million cumulative cases
August 9: New Zealand reports 100 consecutive days without a documented case of domestic transmission
August 10: Brazil surpasses 100,000 cumulative deaths
August 12: 20 million global cases
August 15: South America’s first surge peaks at 75,932 new cases per day
August 22: Brazil surpasses the US to regain #1 globally in terms of daily mortality
August 23: 800,000 global deaths
August 26: India surpasses Brazil as #1 globally in terms of daily mortality
September 1: Russia surpasses 1 million cumulative cases
September 10: 900,000 global deaths
September 16: India surpasses 5 million cases
September 18: 30 million global cases
September 22: The US surpasses 200,000 deaths
September 29: 1 million global deaths
October 1: US President Donald Trump tests positive for SARS-CoV-2
October 3: India surpasses 100,000 cumulative deaths
October 4: The Great Barrington Declaration is published, calling for policies to achieve “herd immunity” through natural infection
October 9: Brazil surpasses 5 million cases
October 19: 40 million global cases
October 19: Spain surpasses 1 million cumulative cases
October 20: The US surpasses India to regain #1 globally in terms of daily incidence
October 21: Argentina surpasses 1 million cumulative cases
October 21: the US surpasses India to regain #1 globally in terms of daily mortality
October 24: France surpasses 1 million cumulative cases
October 26: Colombia surpasses 1 million cumulative cases
October 29: The WHO reports more than 500,000 new cases in a single day for the first time
October 30: The US becomes the first country to report more than 100,000 new cases in a single day
November 1: The United Kingdom surpasses 1 million cumulative cases
November 8: 1.25 million global deaths
November 8: Europe’s “second wave” peaks at 287,101 new cases per day
November 9: 50 million global cases
November 9: The US surpasses 10 million cases
November 12: Italy surpasses 1 million cumulative cases
November 16: Mexico surpasses 1 million cumulative cases
November 17: The US FDA issues an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for the first fully at-home SARS-CoV-2 test kit
November 18: Pfizer announces the completion of the Phase 3 clinical trials for its SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, developed in collaboration with BioNTech
November 21: Mexico surpasses 100,000 cumulative deaths
November 26: 60 million global cases
November 27: Germany surpasses 1 million cumulative cases
November 30: Moderna announces the completion of the Phase 3 clinical trials for its SARS-CoV-2 vaccine
December 2: The UK issues emergency authorization for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine
December 3: Poland surpasses 1 million cumulative cases
December 3: The US becomes the first country to report more than 200,000 new cases in a single day
December 4: Iran surpasses 1 million cumulative cases
December 4: 1.50 million global deaths
December 5: Russia opens vaccination to the public, using its Sputnik V vaccine
December 8: The US surpasses 15 million cases
December 8: The UK administers its first vaccinations to the public, using the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine
December 10: Turkey surpasses 1 million cumulative cases*
December 11: US FDA issues an EUA for the Pfizer/BioNTech SARS-CoV-2 vaccine
December 13: 70 million global cases
December 14: The US surpasses 300,000 deaths
December 14: The US administers its first vaccinations to the public, using the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine
December 15: The US FDA issues an EUA for the first fully at-home SARS-CoV-2 diagnostic test available without a prescription
December 17: French President Emmanuel Macron tests positive for SARS-CoV-2
December 18: US FDA issues an EUA for the Moderna SARS-CoV-2 vaccine
December 19: India surpasses 10 million cases
December 21: The first COVID-19 cases are reported in Antarctica, the last of the 7 continents to report a case
December 23: The US reports 1 million vaccine doses administered
December 24: Peru surpasses 1 million cumulative cases
December 24: Ukraine surpasses 1 million cumulative cases
December 26: European countries administer the first vaccinations to the public, using the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine
December 27: 1.75 million global deaths
December 29: The UK begins administering the the second doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine
NOTE: The dates corresponding to incidence or mortality milestones, with the exception of the US, refer to the WHO COVID-19 dashboard. Individual country COVID-19 reporting pages are linked, but not all include historical data. US dates refer to US CDC reporting.
*Turkey updated its COVID-19 reporting to include all individuals who tested positive and reported more than 800,000 previously unreported cases on December 10. The incidence reported by the WHO does not align directly with this timeline.
The first 6 months of the pandemic were dominated by news of COVID-19 spreading to new continents and countries and national, state, and local governments implementing highly restrictive measures to prevent the introduction of the virus or bring national epidemics under control. However, the second half of 2020 had a very different storyline. Much of the global attention over the past 6 months was divided between progress in developing and testing various medical countermeasures and adapting COVID-19 control measures to ease the economic and social impacts of the pandemic while still slowing the spread. And while the main focus remains on identifying and tracking new cases and providing clinical care for active patients, attention is shifting toward recovery, whether in terms of patients recovering from the disease or societies and economies recovering from the pandemic.
EPIDEMIOLOGY & CONTROL MEASURES
The pandemic and the associated policies needed to curb transmission had a wide range of severe downstream impacts, wreaking havoc on national, regional, and local economies. The entertainment, service, and travel and tourism sectors bore the large brunt of the financial losses, and an unimaginable number of businesses around the world have closed, temporarily or permanently, and countless individuals were forced out of work. This has resulted in the loss of hundreds of millions of jobs and trillions of dollars in income globally. Additionally, tax revenue from businesses fell sharply, decreasing government revenue at a time when they need to increase spending in order to implement response operations and provide emergency financial support to individuals and businesses. Even healthcare systems have faced significant financial challenges, as many hospitals and health systems pared back non-essential or non-emergent procedures and patients delayed screenings and procedures due to concerns about infection risk.
In an effort to mitigate these economic losses, national, state, and local governments around the world eased COVID-19 restrictions once transmission decreased—or in some instances, regardless of the current transmission risk—which allowed individuals to resume some social and economic activities. The speed and degree to which these policies were relaxed varied by location, but it appeared that many governments erred on the side of supporting economic recovery over maintaining control of transmission. The increased social interaction provided opportunity for individuals, particularly those with mild or no symptoms, to transmit the infection in community settings, which inevitably led to increased incidence, hospitalizations, and mortality. As a result, many countries faced a resurgence in SARS-CoV-2 transmission, in many cases more severe than the first wave or surge. But unlike during the “first wave” of transmission, many governments were reluctant to reinstate highly restrictive COVID-19 policies when incidence increased—in some instances, higher than the initial surge—which permitted community transmission to continue and accelerate, often setting new records for daily incidence and mortality.
While each country’s epidemic is unique, this trend was evident in countries around the world, in virtually every region. Perhaps the most notable were European countries and the US due to the magnitude of their respective epidemics. In Europe, most countries—including France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK, all of which were severely affected early in the pandemic—were able to bring daily incidence to very low levels and maintain them for several weeks or months. Following efforts to relax travel restrictions and social distancing measures in order to revive local and national economies, particularly those reliant on tourism, European countries soon faced increasing incidence. But rather than reimpose highly restrictive control measures like they did earlier in the pandemic, most countries elected to use modified or relaxed social distancing policies in order to maintain some level of economic activity, which resulted in continued transmission that eventually grew into a much larger “second wave” across the continent. In contrast to Europe, the US never really gained control of its “first wave” before state governments began to relax COVID-19 control measures. Many of these efforts occurred in states that were not severely affected during the initial surge, and the increase in social activity coincided with geographic spread of the US epidemic across the country. Daily incidence in the US decreased approximately 40% from its initial peak—down to approximately 19,000 new cases per day—before it rebounded, reaching 66,000 per day during the summer surge and more than 220,000 during the ongoing autumn/winter surge.
Similar trends are evident in a number of countries in other parts of the world as well, many of which were severely affected early in the pandemic. Other notable examples include Japan and South Korea, both of which gained control of transmission following their first wave before easing restrictions and facing larger second and/or third waves. Russia exhibited a trajectory similar to that of the US, decreasing transmission to about half of its first peak before facing a much larger second surge.
While much of the world continues to struggle with the pandemic, a number of countries and territories have demonstrated the ability to contain SARS-CoV-2 transmission. Most notable is New Zealand, which successfully interrupted domestic transmission in June and reported zero new domestic cases for more than 100 consecutive days. Following an outbreak in Auckland in August and September, which was brought under control relatively quickly, New Zealand has maintained daily incidence below 10 new cases per day. As an island nation, New Zealand has the advantage of being able to more tightly control inbound travel compared to most countries, implementing strict limitations on arriving travelers and mandating quarantine for those permitted to enter the country; however, the country’s strict adherence to evidence-based policies has helped it maintain control over its epidemic. After bringing domestic transmission under control through a tiered system of national-level “lockdowns,” New Zealand was able to relax the vast majority of restrictions, which allowed the country to resume most normal social and economic activities without resulting in dramatic increases in transmission. National officials continually evaluated epidemiological data and reintroduced control measures as necessary in response to emerging outbreaks or other incidents, enabling the country to quickly regain control and then slowly ease restrictions again.
Other examples of success include Australia, Brunei, Cambodia, China, Singapore, Taiwan, and Vietnam as well as many countries in Africa. Many experts around the world originally forecast that African nations would face major COVID-19 epidemics, due in part to weak health systems, limited testing and reporting capacity, and few government resources to support response activities, but this has largely not come to fruition. With a few exceptions, including Egypt and South Africa, African nations have generally maintained low levels of reported incidence since the onset of the pandemic. National leaders in many African countries were quick to implement social distancing restrictions, which helped contain community transmission. While African countries have been successful in terms of limiting transmission, many expect to face significant barriers to accessing SARS-CoV-2 vaccines as they become available.
While cases in the areas most severely affected early in the pandemic skewed heavily toward older, more vulnerable individuals, transmission during subsequent waves and surges tended to begin among younger adults. Limited testing capacity early in the pandemic necessitated allocating the available tests to those who sought care for their disease and those at the highest risk for progressing to severe disease, which included a high proportion of older adults. Younger individuals typically experience milder disease than older or high-risk patients; however, these milder symptoms (including asymptomatic infection) allow individuals to unknowingly continue social activities or essential work while infectious, which provides further opportunity to spread the disease.
A number of people, including elected officials, have called for younger, healthier adults to continue social activity while protecting the most vulnerable. They viewed this as a way to spread the infection widely among those at the lowest risk for severe disease and death, with the goal of moving toward “herd immunity” that would, in turn, protect the most vulnerable. One notable example was the Great Barrington Declaration, which encouraged lower-risk individuals to “resume life as normal.” Experts around the world, spanning health care and public health, criticized this strategy as “scientifically and ethically problematic.” In addition to placing younger adults at risk, including for both acute COVID-19 disease and a variety of potential longer-term health effects, increased community transmission would inevitably spill over to high-risk settings, even if they were largely separated from the community. In response to the Barrington Declaration, experts published several high-profile responses, including the John Snow Memorandum, outlining the many shortcomings of approaches that aim to achieve herd immunity through natural infection. As most experts expected, increasing incidence in countries around the world tended to be followed several weeks later by increasing mortality, resulting from both mortality among the younger, healthier population who were driving community transmission and the spread from these individuals to higher-risk individuals, even those who remained relatively isolated.
LONG-TERM HEALTH EFFECTS
The global COVID-19 response has understandably focused heavily on combating community transmission and treating acute disease, but as more COVID-19 patients recover, evidence increasingly illustrates the longer-term health effects stemming from SARS-CoV-2 infection. Now colloquially referred to as “long COVID”—and affected individuals as “long-haulers”—persistent symptoms associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection have been reported in recovered individuals for months after recovery from acute infection or disease. The symptoms vary widely in terms of affected organ systems, duration, and severity, which poses challenges in identifying and classifying the longer-term condition. Difficulty breathing and fatigue are among the most commonly reported symptoms, but some recovered COVID-19 patients also report gastrointestinal distress; joint and muscle pain; cardiovascular effects, such as erratic heartbeat; and neurological symptoms, including light sensitivity, memory loss, and “brain fog.” The longer-term symptoms have been documented in individuals across the spectrum of acute COVID-19 disease severity as well as those who did not report symptoms during the acute stage of their infection, and individuals who were younger and healthier prior to infection (ie, those who would be expected to be at lower risk for severe COVID-19 disease and death) have also reported lasting effects from SARS-CoV-2 infection. The impact on lower-risk individuals is concerning, particularly as the age distribution of reported COVID-19 cases continues to shift toward younger portions of the population, and the diverse clinical presentation can make it difficult for clinicians to identify “long COVID,” particularly in patients that did not previously experience acute COVID-19 disease or test positive for SARS-CoV-2 infection.
Attention on the long-term health effects of COVID-19 is growing, but much uncertainty remains. Numerous research efforts are ongoing to better characterize the various health conditions affecting recovered COVID-19 patients, and it is becoming more clear that the COVID-19 pandemic could have effects that last beyond the completion of vaccination efforts.
VACCINES
While progress has been made on many fronts relative to medical countermeasures, the most important news pertains to vaccine development. Since the onset of the pandemic, vaccine development efforts around the world have yielded dozens of candidate products, currently in various phases of development, trials, and authorization. Russia initiated vaccination of the public in Moscow on December 5, using its Sputnik V vaccine, which is still undergoing Phase 3 clinical trials. China has developed multiple candidate vaccines, which are also at various stages of development and testing. The vaccine developed by Sinopharm is still completing Phase 3 clinical trials, but Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates authorized the vaccine for use. Doses of the Sinopharm vaccine have already been distributed to other countries as well. Several Chinese vaccines were issued emergency authorizations in China early in the clinical trial process, and vaccinations began for essential workers in July, despite not having Phase 3 clinical trial data available.
Perhaps the biggest news is the formal regulatory authorization of multiple vaccines in the UK, US, Canada, Europe, and numerous other countries. Following announcements of Phase 3 clinical trial results for the vaccines developed by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna, regulatory agencies began convening to review safety and efficacy data and determine whether the products warranted emergency authorization for use among the general public. On December 2, the UK was the first to authorize the use of a vaccine that had completed Phase 3 clinical trials, the product developed by Pfizer and BioNTech, and it initiated vaccination efforts on December 8. The US soon followed, with Emergency Use Authorizations (EUAs) for both the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine (December 11) and the Moderna vaccine (December 18), and it began vaccinating individuals on December 14. European countries initiated their vaccination programs starting December 26. In the UK, the US, and Europe, the first vaccinations were administered to high-risk older adults, including long-term care facility residents, and frontline healthcare workers. Eligibility will expand as vaccine availability in each country increases. Phase 3 clinical trial data have not yet been released for the vaccines developed in China or Russia or for the AstraZeneca/Oxford University vaccine, another leading candidate. A number of other candidate vaccines developed in countries around the world are spread across the research and development pipeline, and work will continue on those products as vaccination efforts begin with those that have already received authorization from regulatory agencies.
But just having a vaccine will not end this pandemic. Production, logistics, and vaccination operations will be critical over the coming months and years, and everyone must remain vigilant and dedicated in order to combat the virus until we are able to deploy the vaccine globally. While vaccination has commenced in a number of high-income countries, principally in Europe and North America, many countries do not yet have access to any vaccines. It could be months before they receive their first doses, and it could take years to complete a global mass vaccination effort. Most low- and middle-income countries cannot compete financially against high-income countries, which puts them at a disadvantage in terms of securing vaccine doses as production is scaled up. Many low- and middle-income countries, including in Africa, have banded together under the WHO’s COVID-19 Vaccine Global Access Facility (COVAX), in partnership with Gavi and UNICEF, to pool funding—including donations from other countries and organizations—to support the purchase of early vaccine doses. As of December 18, 92 countries are eligible to receive vaccines under COVAX, and the WHO anticipates being able to distribute 1.3 billion doses of the vaccine in 2021, enough to cover 20% of the population in eligible countries.
In addition to production and allocation concerns, a number of questions remain about the vaccines’ impact. While efficacy has been demonstrated in Phase 3 clinical trials for 2 vaccines, it remains unclear how long the immunity conferred by the vaccines will last. Further, the vaccines have largely been trialed in adults, and additional data are required to assess their safety and efficacy in children. And while the vaccines have been shown to be efficacious in terms of preventing COVID-19 disease, including severe disease, researchers are still evaluating whether they are capable of preventing infection or mitigating the ability of vaccinated individuals to transmit the infection to others. As these questions and others are evaluated over the coming months and years, social distancing, mask use, and other COVID-19 risk mitigation measures will be critical to containing transmission.
Wear your mask, maintain physical distance, wash your hands, and stay home when you are sick. And remember, we are all in this together, even if we are 6 feet apart
Monday, December 28, 2020
Saturday, December 26, 2020
VP Harris could change the Senate.
Who's Afraid of Mitch McConnell?
The Vice President of the United States is the President of the Senate. To disarm Mitch, all MVP Kamala Harris has to do is follow the Constitution.
Lisa Kerr
Dec 15
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Guest Column by Lisa Marie Kerr
AMERICA’S CONGRESS is now wholly disabled by the whim of one man elected in one state. Mitch McConnell has rendered the Senate a legislative nullity. He has functionally amputated an entire chamber of Congress. And he has used that mutilation to erase the House as well. Hundreds of needed bills languish undebated and unvoted. Pandemic relief, election protection, immigration and tax reform—these urgent House-passed priorities never reach the Senate floor, while Trump blithely cages infants and doles out needed medicines and hospital beds to his crime cronies.
But even if Georgia’s runoff fails to produce a Democratic Senate majority, the big problem of Mitch may be a small one after January 20, 2021. Gridlock is a relatively new crisis. The Senate used to work better, and was designed to work better. Once seated as the Senate’s constitutional presiding officer, Vice President Kamala Harris can break gridlock by recognizing any senator to bring any House-passed bill to the floor. She can do that without altering any Senate rule with a procedural vote. And she should.
Vice President Harris will become President of the Senate (automatically) under Article I, Section 3, which also recognizes that the Senate can “choose their other officers,” including majority and minority leaders. But Art. I, Sec. 3 does not give such “other officers” the Vice President’s power to preside, which includes the power of “priority recognition”—that is, allowing a Senator to speak on the Senate floor, and thus to move a bill into debate. Until the mid-20th-century, the Vice President used the presiding officer’s power of priority recognition to develop the Senate into the world’s greatest deliberative body, cultivating a forum for open debate and compromise that transcended partisan lines. When the House passed a bill, any Senator recognized by the Vice President (acting as presiding officer) could move it to the floor, be seconded by another Senator, and proceed into debate and a vote.
The Standing Rules of the Senate give its presiding officer abundant power. But they do not require the Majority Leader to be that presiding officer. Delegation of priority recognition from the Vice President to the Majority Leader is not required by any written Rule of the Senate, or by any of its Standing Orders. As Vice Presidents took on greater executive duties, they simply began delegating the chair to chosen Senators. The Senate’s official history acknowledges that this “informal practice” crystalized into ongoing delegation to the Majority Leader in 1937, thus creating an “emperor without clothes.”
Delegation of presiding power has become a habit that none question—like cigarette smoking in the 60s. But the malignant cancer of delegation to Mitch McConnell is not required by the Constitution—and I argue that when delegation is chronically abused to block bills from the Senate floor, it is the duty of the Vice President to reclaim her presiding power. Obstructing is not presiding. It is blocking the air from our legislative lungs.
You may ask: “Wouldn’t reclamation of the Vice President’s constitutional presiding power required a change in the rules of the Senate? And doesn’t that need a two-thirds majority vote—which we won’t have, even if Warnock and Ossoff both win their Georgia runoffs?” Ah, but delegation of the Vice President’s constitutional presiding power is found nowhere in the Senate’s Rules. Rule XXIII, “Privilege of the Floor,” only determines who can be recognized by the presiding officer, not who can act as that presiding officer. Hence, the solution I propose—having Vice President Harris recognize, in her capacity as as presiding officer, a Senator to move a House-passed bill—would pose no conflict with Rule XXIII. Nor would it conflict with any other standing rule, because the Majority and Minority Leaders would retain their non-presiding powers. And any spurious points of order blocking such action could be rejected by the Vice President herself—as the presiding officer.
Reclaiming the presiding power would not require the Vice President to attend every session, or strip her of executive duties. She would remain free to delegate on an individual basis to a Senator chosen to move a specific bill forward. She could even restore presiding power to the Majority Leader, on condition that it not be further abused. Original Senate bills could still move through committee for preliminary analysis, pursuant to existing Senate Rules. Motions to proceed and for cloture would still be governed by Senate Manual Sec. 74 (standing order). Amendments to such House bills would still proceed in conference under Cleaves’ Manual of the Law, by precedents incorporated in Senate Manual Sec. 200, et seq.
Can courts stop the Vice President from reclaiming her power to preside on behalf of the nation? They cannot. Who would have standing to sue here? Only the Majority Leader. Would a court recognize any right to retain presiding power by a Majority Leader? No. The Constitutional power granted to the Vice President to preside over the Senate may not be limited by the Senate’s own internal deliberations.
How would Americans benefit if our nationally-elected Vice President followed my suggestion to break gridlock, thus allowing House-passed bills (and others) to come to the floor? It would not guarantee every bill’s passage, especially if the GOP retains a bare majority, but it would make compromise more likely, through markup and reconciliation. The number of opposing votes may change when those votes must be cast on record, after robust open debate. Public disdain and electoral consequences may deter public blocking of a bill Senators are willing to block behind closed doors. And open floor votes and debate would eliminate the travesty of a single man elected by a single state’s voters blocking legislation that the vast majority of Americans demand.
Imagine, for example, how different our Supreme Court might look if Merrick Garland’s nomination had been moved to the floor and debated. Many Republicans supported him in the past, and the seat would have been his, if the presiding power had been reclaimed by then-Vice President Biden. Imagine how glowing our national picture might have been if bills with genuine bipartisan support, like immigration reform and election protection, had passed both chambers during Obama’s administration through a robust process of debate, amendment and markup, presided over by a nationally-elected Vice President—rather than dying on the bleak desk of a man who proudly declares himself America’s “Grim Reaper.”
In short, the Senate’s historic role as “world’s greatest deliberative body” requires that open deliberation take place as described in the Constitution—not behind closed doors, and certainly not inside the head of one man elected by 1.2 million voters in the 26th most populous state in the Union. Does our Vice President have a duty to take back presiding power on behalf of the American people? I argue that she does. In a pandemic where 3,000 lives per day hang in the balance, that duty is clear. Once seated, she should exercise and/or delegate her constitutional presiding power only in a manner that allows American policy to move forward. Our entire Article I legislative power has been usurped by Mitch McConnell—contrary to the Constitution’s organizing principle of self-government.
End this nightmare, Madam Vice President. Please.
Lisa Marie Kerr is an attorney and social worker who lives in West Virginia and tweets as @thatshockratees.
For further reading, please check out the earlier take on this at NewsFlector.
Above is from: https://gregolear.substack.com/p/whos-afraid-of-mitch-mcconnell
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How the Vice President Limits the Power of Senate Majorities
“The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided.”— ARTICLE I, SECTION 3, CLAUSE 4
On September 7, 1787, delegates to the Federal Convention meeting in Philadelphia voted to make the Vice President the Senate’s Presiding Officer.
Most of the delegates present supported doing so. Yet among those in opposition was Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, who believed that the arrangement would give the President too much influence over the Senate due to “the close intimacy that must subsist between the President and Vice President.” Similarly, George Mason of Virginia asserted during the debate that the Vice President’s role would be “an encroachment on the rights of the Senate” and a violation of the separation of powers.
Notwithstanding these warnings, it is possible that the delegates did not fully appreciate the consequences of their decision at the time. For example, Connecticut’s Roger Sherman suggested prior to the vote that the arrangement was needed to give the Vice President a job to do.
Regardless of the delegates’ reasons, their decision to designate the Vice President as the Senate’s Presiding Officer has had a major impact on the institution’s development. It limits majority power, protects minority rights, and thus continues to shape the Senate and the way that its members make decisions today. In short, the Vice President’s role effectively precludes the Senate from turning into a majoritarian legislative body like the House of Representatives.
Unlike in the House, where a chamber majority can select the Speaker, the Constitution does not allow senators to choose their own Presiding Officer. The House today is organized by a majority party whose members voluntarily delegate significant authority to a powerful Speaker to preside over the institution. But in the Senate, the Constitution makes it unlikely that members will do the same because it charges the Vice President with administering the institution’s rules and ensuring order in the legislative process.
Admittedly, Article I, section 3, clause 5 of the Constitution permits senators to select a President pro tempore to fill in as Presiding Officer when the Vice President is unable to do so.
Despite this, senators have been reluctant to empower the President pro tempore to the extent that doing so would also augment the Vice President’s ability to control their deliberations. This is because they are unable to prevent the Vice President from reclaiming his position as Presiding Officer whenever he wants. In such a scenario, the Vice President would be free to exercise any powers previously delegated to the President pro tempore in a way that could be harmful to senators’ interests.
The result of all of this is that the Senate keeps its Presiding Officer relatively weak. Yet that makes it harder for the majority party to exert control over the legislative process. In general, the Senate’s operations have remained relatively decentralized and its rules permissive while the House has grown centralized and restrictive.
The consequence of this is that Senate minorities have more power to obstruct the majority than their counterparts in the House. While the recent use of the nuclear option in 2013 and 2017 to eliminate the judicial filibuster suggests that majorities may be less likely to tolerate obstruction in the future, the Vice President’s role as the Senate’s Presiding Officer makes it possible for a minority to obstruct the majority, even if the legislative filibuster is eventually nuked.
For example, a minority may object to routine unanimous consent requests to confirm presidential nominations and pass legislation. This would limit the majority’s ability to move its agenda through the Senate by significantly increasing the institution’s workload in terms of time spent conducting recorded votes.
The majority is unable to limit the minority’s ability to use this tactic on a permanent basis. This is because Article I, section 5, clause 3 of the Constitution states “and the Yeas and Nays of the Members of either House on any question shall, at the Desire of one fifth of those present, be entered on the Journal.” In other words, any senator can force a recorded vote on a question before the Senate with the support of a sufficient second, which is defined as one fifth of the members present. As such, any effort by the minority to systematically force recorded votes on nominations and legislation to obstruct the majority would need at least eleven, but not more than twenty, members to be successful.
Theoretically, the majority could ask the Presiding Officer to refuse recognition to a senator for such purposes. But doing so on a repeated basis would require delegating to whomever was presiding over the Senate the discretionary power to recognize members and to determine if a sufficient second is present. And since senators cannot guarantee how the Vice President would use such power in the future, such a delegation of authority is unlikely.
The Vice President’s role also highlights the relative weakness of the Senate leadership compared to its counterpart in the House. In contrast to the Speaker, who is chosen by the entire House membership, the majority leader is not selected via a vote of the full Senate. Rather, the floor leader of the party that controls most of the Senate’s seats becomes the majority leader by default.
The majority leader’s power is derived from the fact that his colleagues defer to him to order the chamber’s deliberations. But the leader’s ability to do that job depends on his being recognized first by the President pro tempore (or the Vice President depending on who is presiding).
Since any member can technically make a motion to consider legislation or a nomination under the Senate’s rules, being the first to do so enables the majority leader to set the schedule and control the agenda to a limited degree.
Priority of recognition also allows the leader to block votes on undesirable amendments. The ability to be recognized first before other members enables the majority leader to “fill the amendment tree,” or offer the maximum allowable number of amendments to legislation, and file cloture on a bill before other senators have a chance to debate the measure and offer amendments.
The right of recognition is thus the foundation on which leadership power is based in the contemporary Senate.
Yet the majority leader’s priority of recognition ultimately depends on the Vice President.
The leader was first granted priority of recognition in 1937 pursuant to a ruling made by Vice President John (“Cactus Jack”) Nance Garner while presiding over the Senate. But the 1937 ruling is not irreversible. Any Vice President presiding over the Senate in the future could just as easily break with past practice and recognize another senator in lieu of the Majority Leader.
The result of the Vice President’s role in the Senate is that the institution is less efficient than it would otherwise be if it had a powerful Presiding Officer like the House. Yet senators have tolerated such inefficiency to the extent that it is the price of their retaining control over the legislative process.
Senate majorities have exhibited an interest in empowering their leadership in recent years as obstruction and the value of floor time have both increased significantly. Nevertheless, it remains unlikely that senators would reevaluate delegating significant authority to the Presiding Officer due to the polarization and partisan conflict in the contemporary environment.
Imagine a Democratic majority allowing Vice President Dick Cheney or Mike Pence, or a Republican majority allowing Vice President Joe Biden, a significant voice in how the Senate sets its agenda and conducts its business!
And if that remains the case, Senate minorities will be able to obstruct the majority, with or without the filibuster.
Above is from: https://www.legislativeprocedure.com/blog/2018/8/10/how-the-vice-president-limits-the-power-of-senate-majorities
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For a fuller development of the history of Senate Majority Leader and the Priority of Recognition GO TO: https://mappingsupport.com/p2/political/_pdf/priority-recognition-mitch-mcconnell.pdf
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