Aug. 27, 2021, 6:49 p.m. ET

Daily Political Briefing

Senate panel votes to repeal 1991 and 2002 laws authorizing wars with Iraq.

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American soldiers on patrol in Rumaylan, Syria, in June. The 2002 law that authorized the Iraq war has been cited as part of the legal justification for military action against the Islamic State.Credit...Delil Souleiman/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted on Wednesday to repeal the 1991 law that authorized the Persian Gulf War and the 2002 law that authorized President George W. Bush to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein, sending the resolution to the Senate floor.

The panel took that step by a 14-8 vote, with all Democrats and three Republicans — including Senator Todd Young of Indiana, who co-sponsored the proposal with Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia — supporting it. The House already approved a similar step in June.

The vote was preceded by a debate over the scope and limits of President Biden’s power to use military force against Iran. Mr. Biden has twice authorized missile strikes against Iranian-backed militias threatening American forces — in Syria in February and in Syria and Iraq in June — citing his constitutional authority as commander in chief.

Several Republicans at the committee meeting on Wednesday said they supported the idea of repealing the 1991 and 2002 Iraq war authorizations, or at least saw no harm in it as a matter of substance, but worried that it would send a message of weakness to Iran.

Two Republicans, Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, proposed amending the resolution with language that would have endorsed a broad view of the president’s power to attack Iran in support of American interests and without further congressional permission, but the committee voted the amendments down.

The committee vote came a day after Biden administration officials testified before a Senate panel, saying that both of the Iraq war laws were obsolete and were not being used anymore. Supporters of repealing them argue that it would be irresponsible to leave them on the books, lest a future president abuse the laws by claiming they amount to standing authorization to undertake new acts of warfare in the Middle East without coming to lawmakers for permission.

While presidents have some constitutional power to launch limited military operations on their own, a 1973 law — the War Powers Resolution — requires such missions to end after 60 days if they lack congressional blessing.

A senior State Department official at the hearing on Tuesday also addressed the far more complicated question of whether and how to tighten a much-stretched 2001 law that authorized war against the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks, and that now serves as the domestic legal basis for the open-ended “forever war” against terrorists around the world.

The deputy secretary of state, Wendy R. Sherman, favorably — but vaguely — cited ideas during the hearing to give Congress some role in any future decisions to expand counterterrorism operations to additional terrorist groups or to new countries, as well as to require periodic reviews of such groups and countries.

“I think that there is a lot of work to be done,” she said. “It may be that those kinds of ideas aren’t the right ones, but those are things that we are willing to discuss — as well as other things that the Senate might put on the table.”

U.S. airstrikes in Afghanistan could be a sign of what comes next.

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Afghan security forces Tuesday during fighting in Herat Province; the Taliban remain on the outskirts of the main city. U.S. air support in the country may end Aug. 31.Credit...Hamed Sarfarazi/Associated Press

The White House authorization of one more bombing campaign in Afghanistan, just weeks before the U.S. military mission is set to end, has a modest stated goal: to buy time for Afghan security forces to marshal some kind of defense around the major cities that are under siege by a surging Taliban.

But the dozens of airstrikes, which began two weeks ago as the Taliban pushed their front lines deep into urban areas, also laid bare the big question now facing President Biden and the Pentagon as the United States seeks to wind down its longest war. Will the American air campaign continue after Aug. 31, the date the president has said would be the end of combat involvement in Afghanistan?

The White House and the Pentagon insist these are truly the final days of American combat support, after the withdrawal of most troops this summer. Beginning next month, the president has said, the United States will engage militarily in Afghanistan only for counterterrorism reasons, to prevent the country from becoming a launchpad for attacks against the West. That would give Afghan security forces mere weeks to fix years of poor leadership and institutional failures and rally their forces to defend what territory they still control.

But administration officials say the Pentagon will most likely request authorization from the president for another air campaign in the coming months if Kandahar or Kabul, the capital, appears on the verge of falling. Mr. Biden appeared to keep that possibility open last month when he said that the United States had “worked out an over-the-horizon capacity that can be value added” if Kabul came under serious threat, phrasing the military often uses to suggest possible airstrikes.

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The Biden administration plans to require most foreign visitors to be vaccinated.

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Travelers wait in a bag drop line in the ticketing area at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in May.Credit...Lindsey Wasson for The New York Times

The Biden administration is developing plans to require all foreign travelers to the United States to be vaccinated against Covid-19, with limited exceptions, according to an administration official with knowledge of the developing policy.

The plan, first reported by Reuters, will be part of a new system to be put in place after the current restrictions on travel into the country are lifted, but officials have yet to determine when that might be done.

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Biden Administration May Require Vaccinations for Foreign Visitors

The Biden administration is examining plans to require all foreign travelers to the U.S. to receive a coronavirus vaccine before arrival, in light of the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant.

So America’s businesses, large and small, universities and medical schools and many other institutions are stepping up on vaccination requirements. And our message is quite simple: We support these vaccination requirements to protect workers, communities and the country. The United States will maintain the existing travel restrictions at this point. However, you do have, as you alluded to, agency working groups that are developing plans for when we do open travel, how do we do it in a consistent and safe way? And part of that planning is a phased approach that foreign nationals traveling to the United States may, there’s still policy work being done here, may need to have some type of a vaccine requirement. But that’s not a decision at this point. That’s one of the paths that’s being looked at.

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The Biden administration is examining plans to require all foreign travelers to the U.S. to receive a coronavirus vaccine before arrival, in light of the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant.

President Biden has been under pressure for months to ease restrictions on people wishing to travel to the United States, particularly as other countries including England, Scotland and Canada relax their own measures.

Ursula Von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, the European Union’s executive arm, urged U.S. authorities on Wednesday to lift travel restrictions for E.U. residents, arguing that the epidemiological situation was similar on both sides of the Atlantic.

“This must not drag on for weeks,” Ms. Von der Leyen told the German news organization RND.

But White House officials have said in recent days that there is no plan to lift current restrictions any time soon, in light of the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant.

“Given where we are today,” Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, told reporters last week, “with the Delta variant, we will maintain existing travel restrictions at this point.”

That stance was reiterated on Wednesday evening by White House officials who said that there was no timetable yet for requiring foreign travelers to be inoculated.

“The interagency working groups are working to develop a plan for a consistent and safe international travel policy, in order to have a new system ready for when we can reopen travel,” the administration official, who was not authorized to publicly detail the plan, wrote in an email. “This includes a phased approach that over time will mean, with limited exceptions, that foreign nationals traveling to the United States (from all countries) need to be fully vaccinated.”

Travelers from Brazil, Britain, China, India, Ireland, Iran, South Africa and Europe’s Schengen area — which spans 29 countries, city-states and micro-states — are barred from entering the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control, unless they are U.S. citizens or they spend 14 days before arrival in a country that is not on that list.

The United States began restricting travel by foreigners in January 2020, when former President Donald Trump cut off some travel from China in the hope of preventing the spread of the virus. That effort largely failed.

But health officials pressed the Trump administration to expand travel bans to much of Europe during the first surge of the pandemic in spring last year, and more countries have been added to the ban as the original virus and several variants have spread.

This week, the Biden administration said that it would keep in place Title 42, a public health rule that allows the government to turn back people attempting to enter the United States from its southern border.

The decision, confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday, amounted to a shift by the administration, which had been working on plans to begin lifting the rule this summer, more than a year after it was imposed by the Trump administration.

With the eviction moratorium back in place, the Biden administration is racing to distribute aid.

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A law enforcement official spoke with a tenant after serving an eviction order last year in Phoenix, Ariz. Thousands of evictions continued despite the moratorium in place during the pandemic.Credit...John Moore/Getty Images

The reinstatement of the federal eviction moratorium on Tuesday came as a relief for progressives, but for White House officials it was just the starting gun of a 60-day sprint to distribute billions in rental aid, in a nerve-rattling race that could be stopped by the courts at any moment.

President Biden’s decision to implement a new freeze to replace the moratorium that expired on Saturday was a risky strategy intended to reset the legal clock by creating a new initiative that has not yet been subject to a court challenge from landlords.

But while most key administration players signed off on the tactic after legislative efforts to extend the freeze failed, some in the administration believed such an effort might jeopardize the administration’s authority to take action during future health emergencies.

On Wednesday, the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, acknowledged the legal fragility of the new extension, which came after a June Supreme Court ruling in which Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh issued an explicit warning to the administration not to extend the moratorium beyond July 31 without congressional approval.

“We don’t control the courts, we don’t know what they will do,” Ms. Psaki told reporters at the White House.

But the decision, she added, was necessary — and represented Mr. Biden’s message to tenants “that he shares their concern” and “wants renters to be able to stay in their homes.”

The new evictions ban signed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is scheduled to expire on Oct. 3, and is more narrowly targeted than the first, limited to areas facing significant threats from the Delta variant of the coronavirus.

But it will still cover about 90 percent of renters nationwide. And one of its main aims is to buy more time to stand up the troubled Emergency Rental Assistance program — which has thus far allocated just $3 billion of $47 billion slated by Congress to pay for back rent accrued during the pandemic.

But the effectiveness of the massive program, which is intended to keep millions of tenants from being evicted, ultimately rests on the efforts of local officials and the removal of bureaucratic impediments that often come down to details, like making sure state aid applications are easy to fill out.

On Wednesday, the Treasury Department posted a series of sample application forms, based on streamlined paperwork used in Virginia and other states, intended to quicken the pace of payments.

Landlords and conservatives opposed the decision to extend the ban, arguing that it violated constitutional property rights and denied owners access to their main mechanism for dealing with tenants who will not pay rent or follow the rules.

“The sad reality for many smaller landlords whose obligations continued throughout the pandemic as rents went uncollected is that they may never collect the overdue amounts from judgment-proof tenants,” Joel Zinberg, a senior fellow with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington think tank, said in an email.

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The police officer killed in the Pentagon attack and his assailant are identified.

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George Gonzalez, a Pentagon police officer, was killed in an attack at the complex’s Metro bus platform on Tuesday.Credit...Pentagon Force Protection Agency, via Associated Press

ARLINGTON, Va. — The Defense Department identified George Gonzalez on Wednesday as the police officer killed in Tuesday’s attack at the Pentagon’s Metro bus platform. Officer Gonzalez, 37, was a native of Brooklyn and had been a Pentagon police officer since 2018, according to a statement.

“Officer Gonzalez embodied our values of integrity and service to others,” the statement said. “As we mourn the loss of Officer Gonzalez, our commitment to serve and protect is stronger.”

The F.B.I., which is leading the investigation into the episode, said Wednesday afternoon that a man who had just gotten off a bus at the Pentagon Transit Center attacked Officer Gonzalez with a knife, mortally wounding him.

The F.B.I. identified the attacker as Austin William Lanz of Acworth, Ga. Mr. Lanz, 27, then shot himself with the police officer’s service weapon, the F.B.I. said. Additional police officers “engaged the subject,” the statement said, and Mr. Lanz died at the scene.

A civilian bystander was injured during the attack and later released from a hospital. The F.B.I. said its investigation into the episode was still developing.

Maj. Jim Stenger, a Marine Corps spokesman, said in a statement on Wednesday that Mr. Lanz served briefly in the service, enlisting on Oct. 9, 2012. But, Major Stenger said, he was “administratively separated on Nov. 2, 2012, and never earned the title Marine.”

The attack at the Metro bus platform, just outside one of the Pentagon’s major entrances, happened around 10:37 a.m. and resulted in the building being locked down for more than an hour.

The White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, offered condolences to Officer Gonzalez’s family during a televised briefing Wednesday afternoon.

“His life was one of service,” Ms. Psaki said. “He lost his life protecting those who protect the nation.”

According to a statement from the U.S. Army, Officer Gonzalez served in field artillery on active duty from 2003 to 2005, including an 11-month deployment to Iraq. He remained in the Army Reserve until 2011, and his rank was sergeant at the time he left service, the statement said.

He was awarded the Army Commendation Medal for service in Iraq.

Secretary of the Army Christine E. Wormuth offered condolences on behalf of the service on Wednesday.

Since joining the force, Officer Gonzalez had been promoted twice and held the rank of senior officer at the time of his death, according to the Defense Department.

Officer Gonzalez had also previously served with the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the Transportation Security Administration. He was a graduate of Canarsie High School in New York City.

The Pentagon declined to release information about his surviving family members.

Government urges workers to avoid public Wi-Fi networks.

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Cybersecurity experts have long warned about the dangers of open Wi-Fi networks.Credit...Jessica Lehrman for The New York Times

The Biden administration would like you to get a vaccine and wear a mask. Oh, and one more thing: It has just proclaimed that it’s time for government employees and contractors to get off public Wi-Fi, where they can pick up another kind of virus.

Late last week, the National Security Agency warned all federal employees, leading defense contractors and the 3.4 million uniformed, civilian and reserve personnel serving in the military against using public Wi-Fi. While it “may be convenient to catch up on work or check email,” the agency said, it can also be an invitation to attackers.

In an eight-page document, the agency said that, in a year that has included ransomware attacks on pipelines, meatpackers and even the police force in Washington, D.C., clicking on to the local coffee shop’s network was asking for trouble.

Officials say the N.S.A. warning was not prompted by any recent increase in criminals or adversarial countries using public internet to steal information or carry out hacks.

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Japan gave Pompeo a $5,800 bottle of whiskey. It’s missing, and the State Department is investigating.

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Mike Pompeo, then the secretary of state, spoke with President Donald J. Trump during a meeting with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan in June 2019.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times

The State Department is investigating the whereabouts of a $5,800 bottle of whiskey the Japanese government gave to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in 2019, according to two people briefed on the inquiry and a document made public on Wednesday.

It was unclear whether Mr. Pompeo ever received the gift, as he was traveling in Saudi Arabia on June 24, 2019, the day that Japanese officials gave it to the State Department, according to a department filing on Wednesday in the Federal Register documenting gifts that senior American officials received in 2019. Such officials are often insulated by staff members who receive gifts and messages for them.

American officials can keep gifts that are less than $390. But if the officials want to keep gifts that are over that price, they must purchase them. According to the filing, the State Department said the bottle was appraised at $5,800.

The department also took the unusual step of noting that the whereabouts of the whiskey was unknown. Similar filings over the past two decades make no mention of any similar investigations.

“The department is looking into the matter and has an ongoing inquiry,” the filing said. It was unclear what kind of whiskey the Japanese gave to Mr. Pompeo.

Mr. Pompeo, through his lawyer William A. Burck, said he had no recollection of receiving the whiskey, and no knowledge of what happened to it, or that there was an inquiry into its whereabouts.

“He has no idea what the dispensation was of this bottle of whiskey,” Mr. Burck said.

Cuomo is facing several criminal investigations.

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Protesters and elected officials gather outside of New York State Governor Andrew M. Cuomo’s office in Manhattan to rally for his impeachment and an extension of New York State’s eviction moratorium which expires at the end of August, Wednesday.Credit...Desiree Rios for The New York Times

The threat of criminal charges against Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York increased on Wednesday, as three prosecutors announced that they had opened separate criminal investigations into his conduct toward current and former staffers.

District attorneys in Manhattan, Nassau County and Westchester County requested investigative materials from the state attorney general’s office in connection with open inquiries into the governor’s behavior. They joined the Albany County prosecutor’s office, which announced its own investigation on Tuesday, shortly after a report released by the attorney general’s office found that Mr. Cuomo had sexually harassed 11 women. (A lawyer for the governor called the report “unfair,” “inaccurate” and “utterly biased.”)

A lawyer for one former employee, Lindsey Boylan, said on Wednesday that she planned to sue the governor and his close advisers for the actions they had taken to discredit her after she became the first woman to publicly accuse Mr. Cuomo of an unwanted sexual advance. The report found that these actions “constituted unlawful retaliation,” indicating that investigators believed those who worked to harm Ms. Boylan’s reputation after she made her claim had violated civil law.

The criminal investigations may increase pressure on the governor to resign, as President Biden, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other leading Democrats inside and outside New York have urged him to do. But they are no guarantee that charges will be brought, given the potential reluctance of victims to come forward and the high legal bar it would take to win a conviction.

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Trump asks a judge to block the Treasury Department from giving his tax returns to Congress.

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Even though Donald J. Trump is no longer president, his legal team is arguing that an effort by Congress to obtain his tax returns should be treated as though he were still in the White House.Credit...Cooper Neill for The New York Times

Lawyers for President Donald J. Trump argued in a new court document on Wednesday that a House committee’s request to obtain six years of Mr. Trump’s tax returns should be blocked, portraying the effort as politically motivated and illegitimate.

In a 37-page filing, Mr. Trump’s legal team picked up arguments that the Trump-era Justice Department had put forward in a bid to stonewall the congressional request, but that the Biden-era Justice Department abandoned last week when it said the Treasury Department was legally obligated to provide the documents to lawmakers.

Mr. Trump’s legal team wrote that the requests for the former president’s tax returns “are unlawful and unenforceable because they lack a legitimate legislative purpose, exceed statutory authority, violate the First Amendment, violate due process, and/or violate the separation of powers.”

The lawsuit, which dates back to the period when Mr. Trump was still president, is formally a case between the House Ways and Means Committee and the Treasury Department. But with the executive branch now having dropped its resistance to complying with the request, the Trump legal team, as intervenors, are asking for an injunction blocking that step.

The filing was expected; one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers had said on Monday that he would fight the release of his returns to Congress.

The filing argues that even though Mr. Trump is no longer the sitting president, the case must still be evaluated as if he were in office since it dates back to that period. Much of the filing reprised statements made by Democrats dating back to the 2016 campaign, when Mr. Trump broke with the norm of presidential candidates disclosing their tax returns. Democrats have repeatedly suggested that he must be hiding something politically damaging.

During the Trump administration, the Justice Department cited such statements to make the argument that the stated purpose for the request by the committee — that Congress was weighing legislative reforms regarding presidential tax return disclosure — was a pretext for what was in fact an illegitimate purpose.

Last week, however, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, now led by Dawn Johnsen, a Biden appointee, said that the executive branch must accept the committee’s stated purpose for why it is seeking the returns, and that the law permits it to obtain them.

“Even if some individual members of Congress hope to see information from the former president’s tax returns disclosed on the public record merely ‘for the sake of exposure,’” she wrote, “that would not invalidate the legitimate objectives that the committee’s receipt of the information in question could serve.”

But Mr. Trump’s legal team is asking the judge overseeing the lawsuit, Trevor N. McFadden of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, to rule otherwise. Mr. Trump appointed Mr. McFadden in 2017.

The continued legal fight means that Congress will not receive Mr. Trump’s tax returns any time soon; the committee or Mr. Trump’s legal team can appeal any adverse rulings up to the Supreme Court. Even if Congress does eventually obtain them, that would not mean they would become public immediately or at all.

Refusing to move from the Capitol steps, Cori Bush intensified pressure on the Biden administration.

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Cori Bush Protests for Eviction Moratorium Extension

Representative Cori Bush organized a sit-in on the steps of the U.S. Capitol over the weekend to demand that the Biden administration extend the eviction moratorium protecting hundreds of thousands of Americans from losing their housing.

Coming here as somebody who just cares about ending human suffering, period, that was first, but then being able to draw from the moment, thinking about all those times — because there were multiple times I had eviction notices placed on my door or where I thought that one was coming — being able to draw from that because poverty is so expensive, poverty is expensive. And once you — once you are in a place, once you get that eviction notice, once that notice hits your door, even if you had the $2,000 or whatever it is, even if somebody said, “OK, I’ll get you the money to pay the rent,” the back rent and the late fees, once you get that notice, that means it’s been to the lawyer. So now that adds more money and then all of these other fees. Now you owe an extra $2,000 or $3,000, or more. And so now where do you come up with that in three days or seven days or 10 days? There are so many pieces to being unhoused. It is not OK to say just because I don’t understand it, that it’s OK to let people go out. No, but because I do understand it, I do know what it’s like. I do know what it’s like to have babies sleeping in a car with trash bags, my belongings, everything I own in trash bags because I know what that’s like. There’s no way that I can sit back and be quiet.

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Representative Cori Bush organized a sit-in on the steps of the U.S. Capitol over the weekend to demand that the Biden administration extend the eviction moratorium protecting hundreds of thousands of Americans from losing their housing.CreditCredit...Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times

Representative Cori Bush of Missouri was 20 the first time she was evicted, tossed out by a landlord after a violent fight with her boyfriend.

The next time, she was 29 and had quit a low-wage job to attend nursing school, and could no longer afford her rent.

It happened a third time in 2015, as Ms. Bush threw herself into the protest movement in Ferguson, Mo., after a white police officer shot and killed Michael Brown, a Black teenager. The eviction notice was waiting on her door one night — prompted, she said, by neighbors who feared she would bring the unrest home with her.

So when it became clear on Friday night that neither Congress nor the White House was going to act to stop a pandemic-era federal eviction moratorium from expiring, leaving hundreds of thousands of low-income Americans at risk of losing their homes, Ms. Bush — now 45 and a first-term Democratic congresswoman from St. Louis — felt a familiar flood of anxiety and a flash of purpose.

As her colleagues boarded planes home for a seven-week summer recess, she took a page from her years as an activist and did the only thing she could think of: She got an orange sleeping bag, grabbed a lawn chair and began what turned into a round-the-clock sit-in on the steps of the United States Capitol that galvanized a full-on progressive revolt.

She stayed put — in rain, cold and brutal summer heat — until Tuesday, when President Biden, under growing pressure from Ms. Bush’s group and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, abruptly relented and announced a new, 60-day federal eviction moratorium covering areas overrun with the Delta variant of the coronavirus. Even as Mr. Biden reiterated his administration’s fears that the ban would run afoul of the courts, it was a striking reversal for his team, designed to give state and local governments time to distribute billions of dollars in federal rental assistance that has yet to go out the door.

“My brain could not understand how we were supposed to just leave,” Ms. Bush said in an interview on Wednesday, recounting the months she spent 20 years ago living out of a 1996 Ford Explorer. “I felt like I did sitting in that car — like, ‘Who speaks for me? Is this because I deserve it?’ ”

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Some Democrats are pushing to make oil and gas companies pay for climate disasters.

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Justin Haan wiped his face while trying to put out spot fires ahead of a wildfire, as he attempted save his in-laws’ home in Vacaville, Calif., last year.Credit...Max Whittaker for The New York Times

Democrats in Congress want to tax Exxon, Chevron and a handful of other major oil and gas companies, saying the biggest climate polluters should pay for the floods, wildfires and other disasters that scientists have linked to the burning of fossil fuels.

The draft legislation from Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, directs the Treasury Department and the Environmental Protection Agency to identify the companies that released the most greenhouse gases into the atmosphere from 2000 to 2019 and assess a fee based on the amounts they emitted.

That could generate an estimated $500 billion over the next decade, according to Mr. Van Hollen. The money would pay for clean energy research and development as well as help communities face the flooding, fires and other disasters that scientists say are growing more destructive and frequent because of a warming planet.

The bill for the largest polluters could be as much as $6 billion annually spread over 10 years, according to a draft of the plan.

The proposal comes as the Senate prepares to vote on a bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure package that includes billions of dollars to help communities prepare for and recover from extreme weather driven by climate change. Democrats hope to later pass a separate $3.5 trillion budget package that will include measures to cut carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases.

A tax on polluting companies has the support of liberal lawmakers including Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent, as well as Senators Edward J. Markey and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, all Democrats.

Mr. Van Hollen says he is optimistic that his legislation will find broad support within his party and be attached to the budget reconciliation package, which Democrats hope to pass without Republican votes. But that would require all Democrats in the narrowly divided Senate to back the measure, including Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, who has routinely argued against anti-fossil fuel legislation.

While several major oil companies, the Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute — the country’s largest oil and gas trade group — support a tax on carbon emissions, fossil fuel advocates said that targeting a handful of companies was unfair.

Thomas J. Pyle, president of the Institute for Energy Research, which supports the expanded use of fossil fuels, questioned the legality of Mr. Van Hollen’s tax plan.

“It’s laughable,” he said.

Schools must reopen, because ‘sitting behind a screen simply isn’t the same,’ Cardona says.

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“The difference this year is that we can control the virus,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said on Wednesday, adding that vaccination is “key to winning the fight against the pandemic and to fully reopening schools.” Credit...Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona took the Biden administration’s urgent message about the need for vaccinations and in-person schooling on the road Wednesday, making a full-throated pitch for every student to return to a physical classroom this year.

During a visit to a Baltimore school, Mr. Cardona signaled that the administration doesn’t intend to see the nation’s 50 million public school students endure another year of haphazard or nonexistent remote learning, which led to significant setbacks in academic achievement and mental health for children last year, especially among the most vulnerable populations.

“Over the last year, what was made clear is that sitting behind a screen simply isn’t the same for a child as learning in a classroom,” Dr. Cardona said in remarks broadcast from Graceland Park/O’Donnell Heights Elementary/Middle School, where he toured classrooms and visited students in a summer enrichment program. “And we know that many students may have been disconnected from their school communities for weeks, months, and for some, over a year.”

Dr. Cardona echoed messages in the past week from President Biden and Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, indicating that closing schools is not part of the administration’s equation for fighting the surge in coronavirus cases being driven by the Delta variant.

When the C.D.C. revised its guidance last week and called for all teachers, other staff members, students and visitors to wear masks in schools, Dr. Walensky cited the need for students to get back to school in the fall. Mr. Biden said bluntly in a speech: “We can and we must open schools this fall, full time. It’s better for our children’s mental and emotional well-being, and we can’t afford another year out of the classroom.”

In his remarks on Wednesday, Dr. Cardona called the rise in Delta-variant cases “concerning” and said vaccines were “key to winning the fight against the pandemic and to fully reopening schools.”

“The difference this year,” he said, “is that we can control the virus.”

Fully vaccinated people are protected against the worst outcomes of Covid-19 caused by the Delta variant. Students 12 and older are now eligible to be vaccinated, but no vaccine has yet been authorized for children under 12.

The Education Department has released a “Return to School Roadmap” to help schools navigate reopening plans. Dr. Cardona spoke about the road map on Wednesday, as well as about the billions of dollars in relief money approved by Congress that the department has released to states to help schools recover from the pandemic.

In some states, though, school districts are contending with resistance to the administration’s plans. For example, Florida’s second-largest school district, Broward County Public Schools, abandoned its requirement that students wear masks after Gov. Ron DeSantis issued an executive order forbidding such mandates and threatening to cut off state aid to districts that tried to impose them.

Citing the situation in Florida, Mr. Biden said on Tuesday that Republican governors who were making it harder to fight the virus with such orders should “get out of the way.”

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A Democratic insider and a Republican backed by Trump win closely watched primaries in Ohio.

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Shontel Brown, who won a Democratic primary in northern Ohio on Tuesday, was endorsed by an array of officials who prided themselves on their ties to leadership in Washington.Credit...Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

A Democratic candidate backed by the party establishment and a Republican endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump won two primary races for open House seats in Ohio on Tuesday, an assertion of dominance for the leadership of both political parties as they face questions over unity in their ranks.

In a Democratic primary in northern Ohio, Shontel Brown, who vowed to be “a partner” with the Biden administration and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, prevailed over Nina Turner, a party outsider who openly rejected the idea that Democrats are more effective through conciliation and compromise.

And in a Republican primary near Columbus, Mike Carey, a newcomer to elected office who was largely unknown before being endorsed by Mr. Trump, easily beat out 11 rivals, many of them with much longer records in Ohio politics.

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Mike Carey, a newcomer to elected office, was largely unknown before being endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump.Credit...Scott Olson/Getty Images

Between the two races, the Democratic fight for the deep-blue 11th District around Cleveland and Akron was the most closely watched as a national bellwether. Prominent Democratic politicians and money from national interest groups cascaded into the district over the past several weeks, leaving a trail of ill will and weariness in their wake.

Though Ms. Turner was helped on the ground by hundreds of organizers and volunteers from left-leaning organizations and outspent Ms. Brown in the early phase of the race, it was not enough in the end to overcome the onslaught of advertising against her, or the unified wall of resistance to her candidacy from pillars of the Democratic establishment.

Ms. Brown, 45, a county Democratic Party chair, was endorsed by an array of local, state and federal officials who prided themselves on their ties to leadership in Washington. That coalition rallied against Ms. Turner, an unapologetically sharp-tongued progressive activist and former state senator who campaigned as a disrupter of the political status quo.

In the election in the Republican-leaning 15th Congressional District near Columbus on Tuesday, Mr. Carey, an energy lobbyist, handily prevailed over a crowded field after the former president endorsed him and elevated him from virtual anonymity.

Mr. Trump’s credibility as the gatekeeper for the Republican Party had been dented somewhat after the candidate he endorsed in a special House election in Texas lost last week. In that race, a state representative, Jake Ellzey, beat Susan Wright, the widow of the former congressman who held the seat until he died in February after battling lung cancer and being hospitalized for Covid-19.

“Great Republican win for Mike Carey,” Mr. Trump said in a statement on Tuesday night. “Big numbers! Thank you to Ohio and all of our wonderful American patriots.”

Last week, the pro-Trump group Make America Great Again Action made a last-minute purchase of nearly $350,000 in text messages, digital ads and television commercials in support of Mr. Carey. Throughout the race, Mr. Carey pointed to a singular selling point as he campaigned: the Trump seal of approval.

Obama scales back his 60th birthday party, citing the spread of the Delta variant.

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President Barack Obama in Martha’s Vineyard in 2009.Credit...Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times

Former President Barack Obama has canceled his 60th birthday party, which had been scheduled for Saturday at his island mansion on Martha’s Vineyard, with hundreds of former administration officials, celebrities and Democratic donors invited.

“Due to the new spread of the Delta variant over the past week, the President and Mrs. Obama have decided to significantly scale back the event to include only family and close friends,” Hannah Hankins, a spokeswoman for the former president, said in a statement Wednesday morning.

The party had been months in the making and some guests had already arrived on Martha’s Vineyard. Others were en route on the ferry or scheduling the required coronavirus tests whose results they had to submit to a medical “coronavirus coordinator” to gain entry to the Obama compound. The New York Post reported that George Clooney, Steven Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey were all expected to attend.

“They’ve been concerned about the virus from the beginning, asking invited guests if they had been vaccinated, requesting that they get a test proximate to the event,” said David Axelrod, a former top Obama adviser. “But when this was planned, the situation was quite different. So they responded to the changing circumstances.”

Mr. Obama’s belated change of plans came days after President Biden conceded that the pandemic had come roaring back, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in an internal document that the Delta variant was much more contagious and more likely to break through vaccine protections than all other known versions of the virus.

Mr. Obama had at first appeared eager to carry on with his plans, but some invitees had already decided it was best not to attend, including Ronald A. Klain, the White House chief of staff.

Alan Dershowitz, a Martha’s Vineyard denizen who served on former President Donald J. Trump’s defense team in his first impeachment trial, said the community in Chilmark, a town on the island, was critical of the party plans and said it was wise for Mr. Obama to cancel or postpone.

“Everyone is talking about it and no one is talking about it positively,” Mr. Dershowitz said in an interview on Tuesday. “Some people are making excuses for it. No one is saying it’s a good idea.”

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Political Memo

After a string of primary losses, progressives should rethink their strategy, ‘Biden Democrats’ argue.

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Nina Turner after conceding to Shontel Brown in the Democratic primary for an Ohio congressional seat on Tuesday.Credit...Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

In the most important elections of 2021, the center-left Democratic establishment has enjoyed an unbroken string of triumphs, besting the party’s activist wing from New York to New Orleans and from the Virginia coastline to the banks of the Cuyahoga River in Ohio.

Nina Turner, the hard-punching Bernie Sanders ally who lost a special election for Congress in Ohio this week, had unique political flaws from the start. A far-left former state legislator, Ms. Turner declined to endorse Hillary Clinton over Donald J. Trump in 2016. Last year, she described voting for President Biden as a grossly unpalatable option.

Where some primary voters welcomed an angrier message during the Trump years, Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York, said there is less appetite now for revolutionary rhetoric casting the Democratic Party as a broken institution.

“The extreme left is obsessed with talking trash about mainstream Democrats on Twitter, when the majority of the electorate constitute mainstream Democrats at the polls,” Mr. Jeffries said. “In the post-Trump era, the anti-establishment line of attack is lame — when President Biden and Democratic legislators are delivering millions of good-paying jobs, the fastest-growing economy in 40 years and a massive child tax cut.”

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