The Johnson & Johnson vaccine pause may have some worrying (if unavoidable) implications for vaccine hesitancy, the U.S. vaccine rollout, and the rest of the world, but health officials are hoping to limit the consequences with a clear, simple message: Vaccines Good, Still.
 

• The CDC has identified approximately 5,800 coronavirus cases among 66 million fully vaccinated Americans—just 0.008 percent of the vaccinated population, which is in line with health experts’ expectations. The vast majority of those breakthrough cases have been mild or asymptomatic. The vaccines! They work! Astoundingly well! Top health officials spent Thursday on Capitol Hill trying to amplify that fact. 
   
• And not a moment too soon. A number of states and cities have reported surplus vaccine doses starting to pile up as appointments go untaken, suggesting that some areas may be running out of residents who are willing to get vaccinated. White Evangelicals have emerged as the most vaccine-resistant group, and two polls released on Wednesday show that nearly half of Republicans still say they won’t get vaccinated. 
   
• It remains unclear whether the continued hiatus of Johnson & Johnson shots will drive up vaccine hesitancy, but it could certainly complicate efforts to bring existing skeptics around. Human Home-Improvement-Grunt Tucker Carlson seized on the news immediately to suggest it means the White House is covering up evidence that vaccines are ineffective and dangerous, and this week’s most popular Facebook post about the J&J news was written by a conspiracy theorist (sorry, “news analyst & hip-hop artist”) who believes the pandemic is a pretext for government control.

And while J&J shots didn’t make up a large enough fraction of the U.S. supply to knock us off pace to reach 200 shots in President Biden’s first 100 days, it could still cause disruptions—both at home and abroad.
 

• Because health officials have been relying on the single-shot option to vaccinate people in hard-to-reach, underserved communities, canceled clinics left thousands of students, rural residents, and homebound seniors stuck in limbo for the moment. The ripple effects of the pause outside the U.S. could be more lasting: Global health officials will need to combat the perception that wealthy countries are dumping inferior vaccines on poorer countries, which could slow the global vaccine rollout and prolong the pandemic.
   
• None of that’s to say that federal agencies screwed up royally. Once health officials spotted a potential link between the vaccine and rare, serious blood clots—unusual clots that could be fatal if treated with the go-to blood thinner—they needed to give health-care providers a heads up, which meant full disclosure. If they had tried to silently continue vaccinations to avoid freaking people out unnecessarily, the eventual discovery really would have looked like a nefarious coverup, and completely shredded public confidence in the vaccination program.

A situation with no wonderful options! It’ll be up the CDC and FDA to be clear and unequivocal about the Johnson & Johnson vaccine’s safety and efficacy if and when the pause is lifted, up to social media platforms to beat back a deluge of misinformation, up to god to strike Tucker Carlson with lockjaw, and up to the rest of us to spread the good word: Vaccines Good, Still. 

In case you missed it: In the Pod Save the People episode “Tell the Truth,” co-host Kaya Henderson tells the story of Soul City, a Black Utopia that broke ground in North Carolina in 1973— but came crashing down when the state’s Senator decided to step in and destroy it. Check out this can't miss episode in the Pod Save the People feed wherever you get your podcasts → 

The Biden administration has announced tough new sanctions on Russia, aimed at cutting off lending to the Russian government. The executive order formally blamed Russia for the SolarWinds hack and interference in the 2020 election, for the first time. The list of sanctioned individuals includes Konstantin Kilimnik, Paul Manafort’s associate who gave Russian intelligence agencies “sensitive information on polling and campaign strategy” during the 2016 election, the Treasury Department confirmed, also for the first time, on Thursday. (If you listen very quietly, you can hear Donald Trump typing “HOAX!!!!!!” into a word processor and ordering someone to print it on letterhead.) In the rarer category of Things Russia Might Not Have Done, U.S. intelligence agencies have walked back their level of confidence in intelligence suggesting Russia paid bounties to militants who killed American troops in Afghanistan. The story was based on reports from detainees, which are notoriously unreliable on their own. 

• Democrats have introduced legislation to expand the Supreme Court from nine to 13 justices, arguing that it would be unpacking a Court the GOP had already packed: “The Republicans stole two seats on the Supreme Court and now it is up to us to repair that damage,” said Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA). House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she thinks it’s an idea worth studying, but has no plans to bring the bill to the floor.
   
• Chicago authorities have released body-cam footage from the fatal police shooting of 13-year-old Adam Toledo last month, which shows that Toledo had his hands in the air when an officer shot him, and that police and prosecutors lied about the incident.
   
• It’s been another brutal week of anti-trans bills advancing in state legislatures: Alabama and North Dakota lawmakers have approved trans sports bans, the Florida House has passed a bill that would subject student athletes to genital inspections, and the Texas Senate is considering a bill that would take children away from their parents if parents provided them with gender-affirming health care. 
   
• Republican state lawmakers have been introducing proposals to ban the kind of private charity grants that allowed the 2020 election to run smoothly. Cutting off funding for election officials would force some polling places to close, further restricting voting access for minority and low-income voters.
   
• Matt Gaetz’s former friend/current snitch Joel Greenberg made more than 150 Venmo payments to dozens of young women, and a girl who was 17 at the time, with brilliant misdirection memo fields like “Salad” ($1000).
   
• Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-UT) and other Republicans used a confirmation hearing for Kristen Clarke, Biden's nominee to lead the DOJ civil rights division, to yell about the necessity of GOP voter-suppression measures, prompting this perfect response from Clark: “I view voting rights issues in a nonpartisan sense. And I thank you for being one of the 390 people who voted to reauthorize section five in 2006.”
   
• President Biden is moving forward with Trump-era plans for a $23.4 billion arms deal with the United Arab Emirates, a sale that nearly all Senate Democrats voted unsuccessfully to block back in December. Biden put the deal under review shortly after taking office, and it will take years to actually complete the transfers.
   
• The Biden administration believes that Austin Tice, an American journalist who’s been missing in Syria since 2012, is still alive.
   
• Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly, one of the three Louisville, KY police officers who fired a hail of bullets into Breonna Taylor’s apartment while she slept, has gotten a book deal to profit off her death. The book will be distributed by Simon & Schuster, if anybody has a book deal they need to relocate.
   
• Pat Robertson has come out against police violence and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has decided climate change is real. The secret vaccine microchips are functioning beautifully. 
   
• A woman in Poland called animal control on a croissant that was lurking in a tree outside her home. A slow-moving but underestimated predator, the croissant. 

Local NBC and ABC affiliates in Arizona, Georgia, and Virginia have been airing propaganda segments against the PRO Act, paid for by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. What looked like normal interviews with the CEO of the Chamber of Commerce were in fact scripted segments attacking a bill that would make it easier for American workers to form unions. At least one “anchor” involved was actually an actor. Some of the networks briefly flashed a chyron indicating that the segment was sponsored by Chamber of Commerce (which doesn’t quite convey the fact that it was literally scripted by lobbyists), while one NBC affiliate in Atlanta aired the whole thing with no mention that it was paid content until after it ended. Just an incredibly insidious corruption of local news.

Lucky presents the inside story of the historic 2020 presidential election and Joe Biden’s harrowing ride to victory, from the #1 New York Times bestselling authors of Shattered, the definitive account of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes use their unparalleled access to key players inside the Democratic and Republican campaigns to unfold how Biden’s nail-biting run for the presidency vexed his own party as much as it did Trump. Grab your copy of Lucky wherever books and audiobooks are sold.

The House Judiciary Committee has sent reparations legislation to the House floor for the first time since 1989.

The House has passed the Paycheck Fairness Act, aimed at reducing gender-based pay discrimination.

Gov. Dan McKee (D-RI) has signed into law a bill that prohibits landlords from discriminating against renters based on their source of income.

The Illinois House has passed a bill that would require public schools to teach Asian-American history.