Live Tracker: US Capitol Lockdown

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U.S. Capitol Under Lockdown After Attack on Two Officers

The U.S. Capitol went into lockdown on Friday after a suspect, who was shot and killed, struck and injured two Capitol Police officers with a car, according to congressional and law enforcement officials.

[sirens]

A Capitol Police officer was killed and a second officer was injured after being rammed by a vehicle at the U.S. Capitol on Friday, the acting chief of the Capitol Police said. The suspect was shot and killed.

“The suspect exited the vehicle with a knife in hand” and “lunged” at the officers, said the chief, Yogananda D. Pittman.

At least one of the officers was medevacked to a hospital, according to one of the officials, and a National Guard quick-response team and the local police were on hand at the already heavily fortified complex. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a rapidly unfolding security incident.

It was the most serious security threat at the Capitol complex since the deadly Jan. 6 attack that injured dozens and killed five people.

Around 2:30 p.m., the Capitol Police said that the threat to the building had “been neutralized” and that people could move freely throughout the building, but that no entry or exit was permitted.

The police said on Twitter that the two officers had been taken to the hospital.

The Capitol went into lockdown around 1 p.m., with the police instructing staff to remain indoors, away from doors and windows, and to “seek cover” if they were outside. Images posted on social media appeared to show emergency workers treating someone on the driveway of the Capitol. Later, a blue car could be seen rammed into one of the security barricades outside the Capitol, with the driver’s side door and trunk open.

One member of the news media, Jake Sherman, posted a video showing a helicopter landing near the building, hovering a few feet off the ground and then careening through trees as police vehicles drove across the plaza.

With Congress in recess, most lawmakers were not on Capitol Hill, and President Biden had left Washington earlier in the day for Camp David. But many aides were in and around the Capitol working or receiving coronavirus vaccinations.

A reporter informed Jen Psaki, Mr. Biden’s spokeswoman, about the incident during her daily press briefing at the White House. She said Mr. Biden was accompanied on his trip by national security aides who would update him on developments.

The alarm came on a quiet afternoon at the complex.

“Capitol: Due to an external security threat located All U.S. Capitol Campus Buildings, no entry or exit is permitted at this time,” the Capitol Police said in an alert circulated to staff. “You may move throughout the building(s) but stay away from exterior windows and doors. If you are outside, seek cover.”

The attack came more than a week after officials removed a perimeter fence topped with razor wire that had been placed around the complex to guard against follow-up attacks after the Jan. 6 riot, and reopened the streets surrounding the Capitol to vehicle traffic.

They also announced that they would ramp down the National Guard presence on Capitol Hill, reducing the number of troops to 2,200 while extending their deployment until May 23.

An inner-perimeter fence around the actual Capitol building remains in place while the police and lawmakers continue to hash out a long-term security plan.

President Biden touted Friday’s strong jobs report as proof that his focus on the pandemic and passage of a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package is working, and he called on Congress to quickly pass a new infrastructure bill he says will create 19 million new jobs.

“The first two months of our administration has seen more new jobs created than the first two months of any administration in history. But we still have a long way to go,” said Mr. Biden in a brief statement at the White House before a planned trip to Camp David for the Easter holiday.

Mr. Biden said he was willing to compromise with Republicans on the details of his $2.3 trillion proposal, but warned that “inaction is not an option.”

Employers added 916,000 jobs in March, up from 416,000 in February and the most since August, the Labor Department said Friday, led by a robust rebound in the hard-hit restaurant, resort and construction sectors.

The heartening numbers, while not unexpected, come at a critical political moment for Mr. Biden and his allies as they make their case for the infrastructure proposal titled “The American Jobs Plan” — one which Republicans deride as a “job killer” because it hikes taxes on corporations and high earners.

Mr. Biden’s team is packed with veterans from the Obama White House intent on leveraging the good news for maximum gain. They are also determined to learn from the messaging missteps during President Barack Obama’s first term, when they were wary of trumpeting economic news for fear of prompting a political backlash, according to administration officials. Mr. Obama’s advisers struggled to take credit for a sluggish, stop-and-start recovery that began much later in his presidency.

While Mr. Biden went out of his way to credit “the American people” for the gains, Ron Klain, his chief of staff, wrote on Twitter earlier Friday that “Help is here,” employing the cavalry-has-arrived slogan that Mr. Biden has often used.

“It puts the wind in their sails, the spring in their step — now they’ve got the momentum,” said Rahm Emanuel, Mr. Obama’s first chief of staff.

With the pandemic, Mr. Emanuel argued, the president has “a different permission slip” than Mr. Obama.

“The virus has been around for a year, and the meltdown associated with the virus seems to be coming to an end. Today people have empathy for 500,000 lost lives and their families. Back then people wanted to kill 500,000 bankers,” said Mr. Emanuel, the former mayor of Chicago.

But the Biden administration is also trying to strike the right balance between sobriety and self-congratulation, mindful of not appearing insensitive to the millions of Americans still suffering hardship from the devastation and dislocation caused by the pandemic.

Cecilia E. Rouse, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, speaking on MSNBC after the numbers were announced, cautioned that while the report “suggests confidence is building” in the recovery, “we’re still 8.4 million jobs fewer than we were at this time last year.”

When a reporter asked Mr. Biden how he planned to woo Republicans for his infrastructure plan, the president questioned how his congressional opponents could oppose some of the proposal’s provisions, especially funding to eliminate lead pipes.

It would be quickly passed, he said, if lead was found in water fountains on Capitol Hill.

Mr. Biden also mocked his predecessor, former President Donald J. Trump, for promising but not delivering on pledges to pass his own infrastructure bill.

“Every second week was infrastructure week, but no infrastructure was ever built,” he said.

The unaccompanied children and teenagers detained at the border nearly doubled in March compared with the previous month, according to documents obtained by The New York Times.

Altogether, border officials encountered more than 170,000 migrants in March, a nearly 70 percent increase from February and the highest monthly total since 2006. Officials advised that the statistics are preliminary and an official count will likely be released next week.

More than 18,700 children and teenagers were taken into custody after crossing the border, including at port entries, in March, nearly double the roughly 9,450 minors detained in February. Just 3,490 minors crossed in February of last year.

Border officials also encountered more than 53,000 migrants traveling as families in March, up from roughly 19,250 in the prior month, according to the documents, even as the Biden administration struggled to safely process thousands of minors already held in border detention centers. The pace of crossings by migrant families is similar to numbers in 2019, when the Trump administration struggled to safely process a surge of Central American families fleeing poverty and persecution.

President Biden has left a Trump-era pandemic emergency rule in place empowering agents to rapidly turn away migrants at the border without providing the chance to ask for asylum, but the administration has not applied the sweeping restriction to unaccompanied minors. Faced with criticism from Republicans that Mr. Biden has not asserted control at the border, administration officials have repeatedly cited the use of the rule against single adults and families.

But a majority of the families crossing the border are now being taken into custody and subsequently released into the United States because of restricted capacity in facilities on both sides of the southwest border, according to government documents and homeland security officials.

To relieve overcrowding in border detention facilities, border agents are now releasing many families at bus stations along the border, including some without full information for their upcoming court appearances, according to officials.

The administration has attributed the inability to expel families to a change in Mexican law that prohibits the detention of small children. Authorities in Mexico have also refused the expulsions because of restricted space in shelters where they could house the families.

The spokesman for Representative Matt Gaetz, the Florida Republican under federal investigation into whether he violated laws against sex trafficking, has abruptly resigned amid mounting scrutiny of his boss, the congressman’s office confirmed on Friday.

Luke Ball, a longtime aide to Mr. Gaetz who was serving as his communications director, did not publicly give a reason for his departure and could not immediately be reached for comment. As recently as this week, he had been helping Mr. Gaetz mount a defense against the newly disclosed Justice Department investigation.

“The Office of Congressman Matt Gaetz and Luke Ball have agreed that it would be best to part ways,” the office said in a brief statement relayed by Mr. Gaetz’s chief of staff. “We thank him for his time in our office, and we wish him the best moving forward.”

Mr. Ball had worked with Mr. Gaetz, a third-term congressman representing the Florida Panhandle, since he first began serving in the House in 2017, earning a reputation as one of Mr. Gaetz’s closest aides. Starting as a part-time staff member in the congressman’s Pensacola office, Mr. Ball later became Mr. Gaetz’s deputy campaign manager in 2018 and then his press secretary and communications director in Washington.

The New York Times first reported this week that the Justice Department has been investigating whether Mr. Gaetz, 38, had sex with a 17-year-old girl and whether she received anything of value. Then on Thursday, The Times reported that the inquiry was broader and investigators were examining involvement by the congressman and an indicted Florida associate with women who were recruited online for sex and received cash payments.

Mr. Gaetz has denied paying for sex or having sex with a minor. He has undertaken a media blitz in recent days to shift attention to what he claims was a plot to extort his family of $25 million to make his legal liability “go away.”

President Biden’s attempt to muscle through a $2 trillion plan to rebuild the country’s infrastructure — along with tax increases to pay for it — will be a defining test of his belief that bipartisan support for his proposals can overwhelm traditional Republican objections in Congress.

Instead of paring back his ambitions in an effort to limit opposition from Republicans in the Senate or appease moderate Democrats in the House, Mr. Biden and his allies on Capitol Hill are barreling ahead with unapologetically bold, expensive measures, betting that they can build bipartisanship from voters nationwide rather than from elected officials in Washington.

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, and other members of his party are working to brand the bill as a liberal wish list of wasteful spending and a money grab from a Democratic administration that will drag down the economy with tax hikes.

But Mr. Biden is predicting that the broad appeal of wider roads, faster internet, high-speed trains, ubiquitous charging stations for electric cars, shiny new airport terminals and upgraded water pipes will undercut the expected barrage of ideological attacks that are already coming from Republican lawmakers, business groups, anti-tax activists and former President Donald J. Trump.

In his first cabinet meeting at the White House on Thursday, Mr. Biden directed several of his top officials to travel the country during the next several weeks to sell the benefits of the infrastructure plan. Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, also told reporters that the president would host Democrats and Republicans in the Oval Office to discuss the measure and their ideas.

“I hope and believe the American people will join this effort — Democrats, Republicans and independents,” Mr. Biden said in Pittsburgh on Wednesday as he formally announced his plan. He compared it to the popularity of the nearly $1.9 trillion pandemic relief bill that passed last month, saying, “If you live in a town with a Republican mayor, a Republican county executive or a Republican governor, ask them how many would rather get rid of the plan.”

But generating sustained support for the proposal is shaping up to be a major challenge for the White House. The business lobby is preparing to wage a full-scale campaign against the tax increases in the president’s plan, with influential groups like the Business Roundtable and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce warning lawmakers against raising taxes as the United States emerges from a deep economic crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

At an event in his home state on Thursday, Mr. McConnell called Mr. Biden “a first-rate person” whom he liked personally. But he argued that the president was running a “bold, left-wing administration” and warned “that package that they’re putting together now, as much as we would like to address infrastructure, is not going to get support from our side.”

The U.S. jobs rebound picked up steam last month, fueled by the accelerating pace of vaccinations and a new injection of federal aid.

Employers added 916,000 jobs in March, up from 416,000 in February and the most since August, the Labor Department said Friday. The leisure and hospitality sector led the way, adding 280,000 jobs as Americans returned to restaurants and resorts in greater numbers. Construction firms added 110,000 jobs as the housing market stayed strong and activity resumed following winter storms in February.

The unemployment rate fell to 6 percent, down from 6.2 percent in February.

“March’s jobs report is the most optimistic report since the pandemic began,” said Daniel Zhao, senior economist of the career site Glassdoor. “It’s not the largest gain in payrolls since the pandemic began, but it’s the first where it seems like the finish line is in sight.”

The report came one year after the pandemic ripped a hole in the American labor market. The U.S. economy lost 1.7 million jobs in March 2020 and more than 20 million in April, when the unemployment rate peaked at nearly 15 percent.

The job market bounced back quickly at first, but progress began to slow as virus cases surged and states reimposed restrictions on businesses. Over the winter, the recovery stalled out, with employers cutting more than 300,000 jobs in December.

Economists said the latest data marked a turning point. Last month was the third straight month of accelerating hiring, and even bigger gains are likely in the months ahead. The March data was collected early in the month, before most states broadened vaccine access and before most Americans began receiving $1,400 checks from the federal government as part of the most recent relief package.

“The tide is turning,” said Michelle Meyer, chief U.S. economist for Bank of America. The report, she said, “reaffirms this idea that the economy is accelerating meaningfully in the spring.”

The United States still has 8.4 million fewer jobs than it did before the pandemic. Even if employers kept hiring at the pace they did in March, it would take months to fill the gap. More than four million people have been out of work for more than six months, a number that continued rising in March.

And the virus remains a risk. Coronavirus cases are rising again in much of the country as states have begun easing restrictions. If that trend turns into a full-blown new wave of infections, it could force some states to backpedal, impeding the recovery.

But few economists expect a repeat of the winter, when a spike in Covid-19 cases pushed the recovery into reverse. More than a quarter of U.S. adults have received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, and more than two million people a day are being inoculated. That should allow economic activity to continue to rebound.

“This time is different, and that’s because of vaccines,” said Julia Pollak, a labor economist at the job site ZipRecruiter. “It’s real this time.”

Negotiations on how to bring both the United States and Iran back into compliance with the 2015 Iran nuclear deal will take place among all parties in Vienna next week, but there will be no direct talks between Iran and the United States.

How to sequence the return of both countries to the terms of the deal has been a complicated political and technical question, with both sides insisting the other move first. The Vienna talks, which will begin on Tuesday, will be the first serious effort since President Biden took office to figure out how that can happen.

Mr. Biden wants to return to the deal, negotiated while he was vice president, and which placed tough but temporary limits on Iran’s nuclear activities in exchange for lifting American and international sanctions on Tehran.

Indirect talks in Vienna between Iran and the United States, which the participants agreed in on Friday will be carried out in person through intermediaries, will seek to agree on a road map on how to synchronize steps to return to their commitments, including the lifting of economic sanctions, a U.S. official said. The United States would not seek to retain some sanctions for leverage, the official said, arguing that the previous “maximum pressure” campaign waged against Iran by the Trump administration had failed.

Once Iran and other signatories, including Germany, France, Britain and the European Union, as chair, work out the road map, the official said, then Iran and the United States would ideally meet to finalize the details to get to where both say they want to be.

President Donald J. Trump had pulled the United States out in May 2018 — calling it “the worst deal ever negotiated” — and restored and then enhanced harsh economic sanctions against Iran, trying to force it to renegotiate. Iran responded in part by enriching uranium significantly beyond the limits in the agreement and building more advanced centrifuges.

Mr. Biden’s team has said that once there is mutual compliance with the nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Washington wants to negotiate further with Iran. Other goals include extending the time limitations in the deal and trying to limit Iran’s missile programs and military support in the Middle East for groups like Hezbollah, Hamas and Shia militias, let alone for the Syrian leader, Bashar al-Assad.

Both sides have been trying through the Europeans to find a way back to the agreement without causing political problems at home. Iran has a key presidential election in June and the government clearly wants to show some progress toward the lifting of punishing sanctions before then. Mr. Biden will likely be aiming not to give Republicans in the Senate, most of whom opposed the deal in the first place, any sense that he is giving in to Iranian demands.

But time is a factor for Washington, too: Iran is now thought to be only a few months away from having enough highly enriched uranium to create at least one nuclear weapon.

Looking to correct what Democrats largely view as a failure of the Obama administration to sell its health care and economic stimulus laws to the public, American Bridge, the Democratic super PAC, this week began the first major advertising campaign backing President Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief legislation.

The first advertisements, which are part of a planned $100 million campaign leading into the 2022 midterm elections, are airing on television in Phoenix and Macon, Ga., and feature testimonials from small-business owners and military veterans promoting the federal stimulus package, vouching for Mr. Biden by name with the same refrain: “Help is here.”

“These bills are popular, but not enough people have heard about them,” said Jessica Floyd, the president of American Bridge. “We can’t afford as Democrats to not be communicating and telling that story to voters.”

Selling the economic relief plan and tying it to Mr. Biden is critical for a Democratic Party still grappling with the consequences of the 2010 election, when Republicans rode a wave of anger with President Barack Obama to seize power in Congress and take control of many state governments, which allowed them to draw gerrymandered district lines to cement their majorities for a decade.

The American Bridge ad campaign is beginning in Arizona and Georgia, states where there are key Senate Democratic incumbents on the ballot next year, and will continue in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where Republican-held seats are expected to be competitive.

“If you just look at history, midterms are not good for the party in power,” said Bradley Beychok, a senior adviser to the organization. “If we’re able to put some Teflon on Biden and tout his success and hopefully lay the groundwork, we’ll put better political terrain on the ground for people in ’22.”

American Bridge has become a landing spot for in-between-jobs Democratic officials. The group’s co-chairs now include Tom Perez, the former Democratic National Committee chairman who is weighing a run for Maryland governor; Steve Bullock, the former Montana governor who lost a 2020 Senate race in the state; Deval Patrick, the former Massachusetts governor who was briefly a 2020 candidate for president; and Cecile Richards, the former president of Planned Parenthood.

Danny Kazin, a longtime Democratic official who in 2020 worked for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, has joined American Bridge to oversee its political advertising for the 2022 campaign cycle.

Georgia has sharply limited voting access, making drop boxes less available and forbidding anyone to hand out water to voters in line. Florida and Texas are poised to advance similar legislation. Alabama’s strict voter identification law is being used as a template elsewhere.

But Virginia is bolting in the opposite direction.

The Democratic governor, Ralph Northam, this week capped a multiyear liberal movement for greater ballot access by signing sweeping legislation to recreate pivotal elements of the federal Voting Rights Act that were struck down by the Supreme Court’s conservative majority in 2013.

Alone among the states of the former Confederacy, Virginia is increasingly encouraging its citizens — especially people of color — to exercise their rights. In the last 14 months, the state’s Democratic-controlled General Assembly and Mr. Northam have repealed the state’s voter ID law, enacted 45 days of no-excuse absentee voting, made Election Day a holiday and enacted automatic voter registration for anyone getting a state driver’s license.

Virginia, which for nearly 50 years had to get approval from the federal government for any election changes under the Voting Rights Act’s preclearance requirements, has now, in an extraordinary move, effectively imposed the same covenants on itself.

The new law approved on Wednesday, called the Voting Rights Act of Virginia, requires all local elections administrators to receive public feedback or advance approval from the state’s attorney general for changes like moving voting precincts, and allows voters and the attorney general to sue over voter suppression.

“I have an aunt who marched against the poll tax. My grandparents both had to pay poll taxes,” said Marcia Price, a Democratic state delegate who sponsored the legislation. “Just knowing that they lived under a system that was unfair and unequal, I learned very early that it was wrong, and that it needs to be changed.”

Republican state legislators all opposed the measure, arguing that it would inundate local election administrators with lawsuits and complicate routine changes to voting.

Mr. Northam’s career was nearly derailed by a blackface scandal in 2019. Since then, he has been at the forefront of many of the state’s racial justice initiatives and has enjoyed high approval ratings.