President has promised US will re-engage globally after isolationist Trump era

• No Republican action against Cheney or extremist Greene after vote
• Indigenous Americans dying from Covid at twice rate of white Americans
• Canada designates Proud Boys as terrorist organization
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12.13pm GMT

A Texas county judge has temporarily blocked the state’s efforts to remove Planned Parenthood from Medicaid, report CNN. Caroline Kelly writes:

A slew of Texas Planned Parenthood affiliates asserted in a lawsuit filed Wednesday that the Texas Health and Human Services Commission failed to issue “a proper notice of termination” from the program. The state had promised to remove the groups from the Medicaid program Thursday.

The chief press officer for the Texas Health & Human Services Commission, Christine Mann, declined to comment on the case citing pending litigation.

12.06pm GMT

Sam Baker and Andrew Witherspoon have a relatively upbeat analysis of the coronavirus situation across the US today for Axios. They write:

New coronavirus infections slowed by nearly 16% over the past week, continuing a trend of rapid improvement. The US still has a ton of coronavirus, and there’s still the potential for dark days ahead. But this is progress, and the improvement is significant. If this trend keeps going, the country will be in a far better and safer position as vaccines continue to roll out.

Nationwide, the US is averaging about 139,000 new cases per day — a 16% improvement over last week, which was a 16% improvement over the week before. The number of new hospitalizations was also down last week, by just over 26%. And deaths fell by about 6%, to an average of 3,097 deaths per day.

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• Two unconnected cases of variant identified in South Carolina
• US economy shrank by 3.5% in 2020, worst year since second world war
• Biden to reopen Obamacare markets for special Covid coverage
• US death toll predicted to hit 500,000 by February
  
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5.13pm GMT

South Carolina state health officials said Thursday that two cases of the coronavirus variant identified in South Africa had been detected in the state- the first time the variant has been found in the US.

South Carolina’s department of health and environmental control said the two cases don’t appear to be connected and the two people affected did not have a history of recent travel. One was detected by the state’s public health lab and the other by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

4.55pm GMT

Survivors of the 2018 mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, asked congressional Republicans to publicly censure Marjorie Taylor Greene for suggesting the school shooting was a “false flag” and for harassing a teenage survivor on Capitol Hill in 2019.

House Republicans this week announced that Greene, a newly elected Georgia congresswoman, had been appointed to the House Education and Labor Committee.

House EdLabor committee chair @BobbyScott on Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s appointment to the committee:

“House Republicans have appointed someone to this Committee who claimed that the killing of 20 children and six educators at Sandy Hook... was a hoax” pic.twitter.com/VoPgJ3tSLF

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