of the jury. let s go out front. good evening, everyone. i m kate bolduan in for erin burnett. out front tonight breaking news. the country s fears confirmed. the omicron variant is now, by far, the dominant variant in the united states amid a surge of cases across the country. it makes up 73% of new cases right now, which the cdc previously estimated was just 3%. right now, the u.s. is averaging more than 130,000 cases every day. and president biden preparing for a major speech tomorrow to address this wave and announce new steps to fight the threat from omicron. this is not a speech about locking the country down. this is a speech outlining and being direct and clear with the american people about the benefits of being vaccinated. tonight, cities in the northeast are taking action. the mayor of washington, d.c. declaring a state of emergency, and reinstating the city s indoor mask mandate. boston announcing it will
and our objective and focus now is moving forward. where do the lines of communication stand at this point between either the president and joe manchin, joe manchin and the white house staff? is there a contact at all? i m just not going to give you an update on specifics from here. on covid, ahead of tomorrow s speech, should americans expect any new restrictions? this is not a speech about locking the country down. this is a speech outlining and being direct and clear with the american people about the benefits of being vaccinated, the steps we re going to take to increase access and to increase testing, and the risks posed to unvaccinated individuals. go ahead. does the president still trust senator manchin? again, i understand the questions here, but our focus is on moving forward. i think our statement yesterday made clear what the course of events were over the last couple of weeks. it was important for the american people to know and see that. he considers senator ma
questions about the pandemic. white house correspondent jacqui heinrich starts us off tonight a busy news night live from the north lawn, good evening, jackie. good evening to you, bret. president biden s year-end challenge combings down to convincing others to advance his legislative and priors both of which he framed as supporting the economic recovery convincing one democratic hold out spend ising plan and convincing unvaccinated americans to get their shots and tamp down the pandemic. both fronts are proving to be difficult. president biden will warn again tomorrow unvaccinated americans are driving hospitalizations and death. this is not a speech about locking the country down. this is a speech outlining and being direct and clear with the american people about the benefits of being vaccinated. the white house tuning its messaging as the omicron variant surges even among the fully vaccinated and boosted. while vaccinated individuals get covid due to the highly transmissibl
it had been three weeks since president biden had delivered a major speech outlining what was in his plan outside of washington. so the white house taking advantage of the pause, hitting the road, and in a critical state. there s a message being sent by president biden in being in this part of michigan. it s a county that went overwhelmingly for donald trump last year, but it s represented in congress by a democrat who is going to face a tough re-election campaign. it s represented by a democrat who has said she s for a bipartisan infrastructure bill, but isn t yet a yes on the larger reconciliation bill. one, he s trying to lobby allilisa slotkin. or it s a message from the president saying i have your back. he has campaigned in michigan more than many other places over the course of the 2020 campaign. i say that as somebody who flew a lot to the detroit airport to
democracy and human rights, values, universal values, mr. trump never talked about values. and i think then he talked, you know, i think a very noble and ambitious set of objectives that he seeks to achieve. now implementing strategies to achieve them is a different thing, but as a speech outlining broad objectives way of doing business is a normal presidential speech at the u.n. general assembly. you know, ambassador, you said something here for the first time that has stuck with how i think of sort of the herculean task on the world stage. you talk about this fight between autocracies and democracies not happening within russia, but happening within america, and within the allies with what they re struggling with within the dark forces versus the lighter forces of democratic norms. and i wonder if those are conversations that take place on