The news of Moderna starting trials of its coronavirus vaccine on babies and younger children comes as Joe Biden’s White House is fighting to prevent a fourth surge in infections in the US.

The nation is nearing 30 million infections – currently the total according to the Johns Hopkins data is 29.5m, that’s almost a quarter of the global total. And the US has suffered more than 535,000 deaths, by far the highest numbers in the world.

Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the US president continue to urge Americans not to relax their guard just as we begin to see real light at the end of the tunnel, with more than 100 million shots already administered in the US.

But Walensky is alarmed about people jumping on planes again, taking spring break vacations in places like Florida, gathering without masks, and states such as Texas lifting mask mandates and other restrictions.

This as the so-called British variant of coronavirus is “increasing exponentially” in the US, according to this CNN report from earlier this month.

“We have seen footage of people enjoying spring break festivities, maskless,” Walensky said yesterday. “This is all in the context of still 50,000 cases per day.”

Back to vaccines for a moment, Moderna has today announced that it is beginning trials of its Covid vaccine in children aged from six months up to 12 years.

The Moderna vaccine already has emergency authorization for use in over-18s in the US, but Reuters report that the company is to aiming to recruit 6,750 children in the United States and Canada to trial giving them two doses, 28 days apart.

A trial on children aged between 12 and 18 has already begun – having started in December.

The announcement yesterday that California Gov Gavin Newsom was beginning to raise money to defend his seat seemed to confirm that he believes organizers behind the attempts to recallhim have collected sufficient legitimate petition signatures to place the proposal on the ballot.

Recall supporters are required to submit nearly 1.5 million signatures this week to place the proposal before voters. Organizers say they have collected more than 2 million since starting in June. Collections surged in the fall and winter as anger intensified about Newsom’s handling of the pandemic.

Newsom and his Democratic allies have cast the recall attempt as a politically driven power grab. He tweeted Monday that he won’t be distracted by a “partisan” recall attempt “but I will fight it.”

Wednesday marks the cutoff for organizers to submit signatures to county election officials, who have until 29 April to verify the authenticity and notify the secretary of state with the results.

However, given the legal hoops, it could take until September before an election date is scheduled, which strategists on both sides expect to be set for later this fall, perhaps November.

Recall organizers believe the Newsom and leaders in the Democratic-run Legislature will do everything possible to delay the election, hoping that his fortunes turn as virus cases fall, vaccinations increase and schools and businesses reopen.

“They can’t win at the ballot box. The only way they can win is to delay the system and delay the process,” said recall senior adviser Randy Economy. Thus far, more than 80% of the signatures turned in have been validated.

Two Republicans have already announced their candidacies: Kevin Faulconer, the former Republican mayor of San Diego, and Republican businessman John Cox, who was defeated by Newsom in 2018. Another name being discussed in Republican circles is former President Donald Trump’s then-acting director of national intelligence, Richard Grenell.

That issue of how much of the US population will take a vaccine has become increasingly fraught on partisan lines. Jill Colvin and Heather Hollingsworth report for Associated Press that while polls have found vaccine hesitancy falling overall, opposition among Republicans remains stubbornly strong.

A new poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 42% of Republicans say they probably or definitely will not get the shot, compared with 17% of Democrats – a 25-point split.

While demand for vaccinations still far outstrips the available supply in most parts of the country, there are already signs in some places of slowing registration. And the impact is expected to grow when supply begins to surpass demand by late April or early May, said Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health.

“This is going to be the big issue,” he said. “And if we get stuck at 60 or 65% vaccinated, we are going to continue to see significant outbreaks and real challenges in our country, and it’s going to be much, much harder to get back to what we think is normal unless we can get that number higher.”

Ron Holloway is an example of the hurdles facing health officials. The 75-year-old Forsyth, Missouri, resident and his wife, who is 74, are at a higher risk of contracting the virus. But he was steadfast in insisting that they “don’t do vaccinations.”

“This whole thing is blown way out of proportion and a bunch of nonsense,” he said of the virus. “We still haven’t lost 1% of our population. It is just ridiculous.”

Laura Biggs, a 56-year-old who has already recovered from the virus, is a Virginia conservative who voted for Trump. She said partisan differences were obvious among her friends and family in all aspects of the pandemic, including vaccine acceptance.

“Family members who lean left have not left home for a year,” she said, while she and her husband “went everywhere. We traveled more in 2020 than I have in any year of our whole life. … I just think that there was a hysteria about it.

The current death toll from Covid in the US stands at 535,283.

Dr Anthony Fauci has been on MSNBC’s Morning Joe this morning, once again stressing caution as the US proceeds with both a vaccination program and economic re-opening following a year of the coronavirus pandemic.

Fauci, who must feel a little like a stuck record in recent weeks, said: “We’ve really got to be careful that we don’t claim victory and pull back on all the public health measures that we know work in keeping the lid on these surging of infections. So although there is good news in the sense of the vaccine continues to get rolled out… if all of a sudden we declare victory, we can risk a surge”

He had a familiar warning too about the consequences of not getting enough of the US population vaccinated, saying: “If you do not get the overwhelming proportion of the population vaccinated, you’re still going to have the virus have the capability of circulating in society because there are so many vulnerable people. So the approach we are taking is to try and reach out and explain to people and ask what are the issues that make them hesitant about getting vaccinated and try to address them with good, solid, scientific facts.”

The Democrats aren’t just out and about promoting the Covid rescue plan, they have an ad campaign going on across multiple states that resembles something more like an election campaign than a public service information campaign. Jonathan Swan reports for Axios that:

The three major Democratic campaign committees — the DNC, DSCC and DCCC — are running ads promoting the American Rescue Plan.

The DNC will run TV ads in at least eight battleground states: Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Nevada and Pennsylvania.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is running digital ads in swing districts to protect vulnerable House Democrats.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is already running digital ads targeting two Republican senators for voting against the $1.9 trillion bill: Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Marco Rubio of Florida.

And there are third party ad packages running as well.

Read more detail here: Axios – Democrats spending millions in full-scale campaign to sell Biden’s Covid relief

A couple of quotes stand out in the Politico Huddle newsletter this morning, illustrating how the Democrats and Republicans are positioning themselves over the £1.9 trillion Covid relief plan. For the Democrats, spokesperson Chris Taylor told Politico:

The American people will remember that House Republicans voted against cutting childhood poverty in half, getting stimulus checks into the hands of struggling Americans, extending unemployment insurance, giving parents confidence their kids could return to school safely and they could get back to work. House Republicans left American families out to dry – the people won’t forget that.

Unsurprisingly that’s not how the House Republicans see it. Their spokesman Michael McAdams said:

We look forward to ensuring every voter knows that Democrats passed a corrupt, $1.9 trillion boondoggle that cuts Medicare, raises taxes and doesn’t require schools to reopen and then left the taxpayers to foot the bill.

I’m not sure we hear the word “boondoggle” enough these days. But as Olivia Beavers puts it for Politico, “One of the most common and simple mantras about politics is people vote by how their pockets feel.”

There’s a lot of pockets going to feel fuller in the next few weeks as Joe Biden promises his administration will get 100 million Covid relief direct payments out to people by 25 March.

Here’s a bit more from Reuters on those words from Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas defending the US response to the number of unaccompanied minors at the nation’s border with Mexico. He said the region was on track to see more people trying to enter than any time in the last 20 years.

Mayorkas said the government is creating a joint processing center to transfer the children, as young as six, to the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services and is trying to find additional shelters for them.

“The situation we are currently facing at the southwest border is a difficult one. We are tackling it,” he said in a statement. He also said:

This is not new. We have experienced migration surges before – in 2019, 2014, and before then as well. Since April 2020, the number of encounters at the southwest border has been steadily increasing. Border Patrol Agents are working around the clock to process the flow at the border and I have great respect for their tireless efforts. To understand the situation, it is important to identify who is arriving at our southwest border and how we are following the law to manage different types of border encounters.

The administration of president Joe Biden has been racing to speed up the processing of hundreds of unaccompanied children who are crossing the southern border every day.

Officials have warned “the border is not open” and said they are sending back adults and families who have tried to cross the border illegally since Biden took office promising to reverse some of predecessor Donald Trump’s hardline policies.

Nearly 4,300 unaccompanied children were being held by border patrol officials as of Sunday, according to an agency official who requested anonymity to discuss the matter with Reuters. By law, the children should be transferred out of Customs and Border Protection facilities to HHS-run shelters within 72 hours.

“The Border Patrol facilities have become crowded with children and the 72-hour timeframe for the transfer of children from the Border Patrol to HHS is not always met,” Mayorkas acknowledged. HHS also has not had the capacity to take in the number of children, he said.

Mayorkas ended his statement saying:

I came to this country as an infant, brought by parents who understood the hope and promise of America. Today, young children are arriving at our border with that same hope. We can do this.

By the way, if you needed a reminder that diplomacy is the velvet glove that cloaks the fist of power, Defense secretary Lloyd Austin has just the tweet for you this morning – words no doubt also intended for those listening in China:

Here’s Rebecca Shabad at NBC News with what she says we can expect from President Joe Biden’s trip to Pennsylvania today – and why he is doing it:

Biden will visit a small business in Chester, Pennsylvania, in the mid-afternoon, where he plans to talk to people about the benefits of the American Rescue Plan, which was signed into law last week.

Biden has said he wants to publicize the plan to the public, saying Democrats paid a political price for not doing so after passage of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

She reminds us that the locations for the visits have not been picked at random:

The White House is targeting key battleground states for the sales strategy. Harris and Emhoff stopped in Nevada Monday, and Biden is scheduled to visit Georgia on Friday, which, like Pennsylvania, is another key swing state he won last year — the first time a Democrat carried it in nearly three decades.

“Do not come now. Give us the time to rebuild the system that was entirely dismantled under the prior administration.”

That’s the message from Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas on television this morning, addressed to people attempting to enter the US through the southern border.

With Republicans circling and using the numbers at the border to criticise the new administration, Mayorkas isn’t the only person who has been on the airwaves this morning. Roberta Jacobson, Biden’s coordinator for the southern border, has been on CNN with a similar message:

President Joe Biden is joining top messengers already crisscrossing the country to highlight what they say are the benefits of the Democrat’s Covid-19 rescue plan. The White House have set out a theme for each day, and Tuesday is promoting aid for small businesses.

Biden is set to visit a small business in suburban Philadelphia on Tuesday, his initial trip outside Washington for the “Help is here” tour that got underway yesterday when VP Kamala Harris dropped in on a Covid-19 vaccination site and a culinary academy in Las Vegas, while first lady Dr Jill Biden toured a New Jersey elementary school.

“We want to avoid a situation where people are unaware of what they’re entitled to,” Harris said at the culinary academy. “It’s not selling it; it literally is letting people know their rights. Think of it more as a public education campaign.”

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said, “We want to take some time to engage directly with the American people and make sure they understand the benefits of the package and how it is going to help them get through this difficult period of time.”

The Associated Press report that the White House is wasting no time promoting the $1.9 trillion relief plan, which Biden signed into law last week, looking to build momentum for the rest of his agenda and anxious to avoid the mistakes of 2009 in boosting that year’s recovery effort. Even veterans of Barack Obama’s administration acknowledge they did not do enough then to showcase their massive economic stimulus package.

“Hope is here in real and tangible ways,” Biden said Monday at the White House. He said the new government spending will bankroll efforts that could allow the nation to emerge from the pandemic’s twin crises, health and economic.

“Shots in arms and money in pockets,” the president said. “That’s important. The American Rescue Plan is already doing what it was designed to do: make a difference in people’s everyday lives. We’re just getting started.”

Biden said that within the next 10 days, his administration will clear two important benchmarks: distributing 100 million stimulus payments and administering 100 million vaccine doses since he took office.

Predictably, the sales pitch is leaving Republicans cold. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell dismissed the target of doses that Biden set when he took office as “not some audacious goal” but just the pace that he inherited. And he mocked Biden’s talk of Americans working toward merely being able to gather in small groups by July 4th as “bizarre.”

Hi and welcome to our live coverage of US politics for today. Here’s a catch-up on where we are, and some of what we have in the diary for today…

• President Joe Biden said his administration was on track to achieve 100 million shots of Covid-19 vaccines since his inauguration and 100 million Covid relief direct payments by 25 March.
• In a historic confirmation, the Senate voted to confirm Deb Haaland as secretary of the interior, making her the first Native American cabinet secretary in US history.
• The defense attorney for Derek Chauvin, who is charged with George Floyd’s murder, asked the judge to delay the trial, saying the announcement by the city of a settlement for Floyd’s family could make a fair trial impossible.
• The FBI is facing new scrutiny for its 2018 background check of Brett Kavanaugh, the supreme court justice, after a lawmaker suggested that the investigation may have been “fake”.
• The Texas state senate passed a bill reversing billions charged by skyrocketing electric bills and overcharges during the storms last month.
• Gavin Newsom of California is sounding a publicly defiant note in the face of a move to recall him from the governorship.
• Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York’s legal counsel released a statement denying that conversations between his “vaccine czar” and local officials were improper.
• Joe Biden will be in Chester, Pennsylvania today at 3.30pm EDT (1930 GMT) to visit a small business and promote his American Rescue Plan.
• Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff are visiting a vaccination clinic in Colorado
• There’s no press briefing at the White House from Jen Psaki today, though she will meet the media aboard Air Force One.