The morning situation - America, you're better off

This time it is about the trillion aid program that the US Congress is adopting today - and America's prospect of an early end to the pandemic.

We also look at the comeback of Brazil's ex-president Lula and whether the Union has survived the mask affair.

America is coming back

If the US House of Representatives

decides

today on

an aid and stimulus program worth around 1900 billion dollars

, one of the largest in US history, then it will be assumed by two embassies.

The first is:

America is making its comeback with all its might

.

Last summer it looked as if the US could no longer get out of the pandemic - while the Europeans were getting a grip on Corona.

Today it is the other way around: Europe has too little vaccine - and in the USA soon a fifth of the population will have received at least one vaccine dose, by May enough vaccine should be available for everyone.

The trillion stimulus package and the foreseeable end of the pandemic with the vaccinations are on

the signs of a new departure that will be a long time coming in Europe

.

Icon: enlarge

President Biden visits a vaccination center

Photo: KEVIN DIETSCH / POOL / EPA

The second message is that

the Biden Presidency has been running silently and efficiently so far

.

The president is barely visible, in contrast to his predecessor.

A competent team is at work for this, which not only successfully promotes vaccinations throughout the country, but also managed to get the large stimulus package through the congress quickly.

It is bringing billions in funding to federal and state authorities to help fight the pandemic.

People will also feel the package very quickly: many are now receiving checks for thousands of dollars for themselves and their families, and there is also unemployment benefits.

Donald Trump

wanted his name on the checks with the last aid program.

Everyone should really be able to see who the generous donor is.

Joe Biden doesn't seem to need that kind of boasting.

Citizens also see it this way: The new president and his team will lead them out of the pandemic.

This can also be seen in a new guideline from the CDC epidemiological protection agency: Those who are fully vaccinated in the USA should in future be able to meet other vaccinated persons indoors without a mask - and with members of another household.

They are small steps, but they give rise to hope.

• Corona crisis: What the US is doing differently when it comes to vaccination

The Union, the mask affair and the state elections

Has the Union

survived

the mask affair

?

In

any case, the

MPs

Nikolas Löbel and Georg Nüßlein

were successfully urged to leave the party.

The two had shamelessly pocketed hundreds of thousands of euros in commissions for mask deals.

Löbel resigned his Bundestag mandate with immediate effect.

The damage to the Union is great.

In the future, a

code of conduct will

regulate what sideline activities MPs are allowed to do.

But is that it?

Icon: enlarge

Armin Laschet

Photo: Bernd von Jutrczenka / dpa

In the Tagesthemen,

CDU boss Armin Laschet

said

yesterday evening that he had no desire to let his project of modernization be ruined by "going it alone by some MPs who have nothing on their mind but earn money."

And then he added, “If there are any more cases, now is the time to clear the table.

If not, we'll do it. ”But Laschet has to sincerely hope that these other cases don't exist.

The state elections in Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate are already on the weekend.

• Mask affair: Union parliamentary group wants to give itself a code of conduct

Bolsonaro vs. Lula

The

presidential election campaign in Brazil in 2022

is likely to be quite a spectacle: A duel is

looming

between the incumbent right-wing authoritarian

Jair Bolsonaro

and his left predecessor

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva

, in short: Lula.

The supreme court of the country surprisingly annulled four corruption judgments against Lula yesterday.

This will give him back his political rights and will be allowed to run for the presidential election next year - unless a federal court puts the judgments back into force.

Icon: enlarge

Ex-President Lula

Photo: AMANDA PEROBELLI / REUTERS

Lula and those around him had always described the judgments against him as politically motivated.

In a presidential election campaign between Lula and Bolsonaro, the dominant political figure of the past two decades would face the errant incumbent with his social media troops.

Bolsonaro has made Brazil one of the world's most dangerous corona hotspots with its mismanagement.

Critics call him a "messenger of death".

Our Latin America correspondent Jens Glüsing describes: Politically, the mass extinction hardly hurts him.

• Bolsonaro's handling of the corona pandemic: "Brazil is an open-air laboratory for the virus"

Loser of the day ...

... is the

British royal family

.

The racism allegation that

Duchess Meghan

raises

in her two-hour interview with

Oprah Winfrey

is a disaster for the royal family - and it damages the image of the Windsors internationally.

Prince Harry later made it clear: Neither

the Queen

herself nor her husband

Prince Philip

were those family members who worriedly asked before the birth of Baby Archie how black the child might be - but someone else from the family.

Icon: enlarge

Duchess Meghan in an interview with Oprah Winfrey

Photo: Rick Rycroft / dpa

The allegations hit an already ailing royal family - it has not yet been forgotten that

Prince Andrew

, the Queen's second eldest son, was

hanging

around the pedophile sex offender

Jeffrey Epstein

.

So it's more than just gossip.

A constitutional monarchy has to re-establish its legitimacy over and over again.

The drama about the royal family is harmful, the accusations of racism dangerous - even if not necessarily in their own country.

According to a YouGov poll, most Brits find the exiled millionaire couple's interview inappropriate, most Americans think it appropriate - but since Harry and Meghan see their future in the New World anyway, they arguably did everything right.

• Explosive TV interview with Meghan and Harry: And then the Duchess begins to cry

The latest news from the night

• The selection of the jury in the Floyd trial is delayed:

  Derek Chauvin had kneeled on the neck of George Floyd for minutes - now the ex-policeman has to answer for the death of the African American in court.

  But at the beginning there is confusion

• Radical Christians from Germany on trial in Spain:

  With a cross, suitcases and megaphone they entered a subway in Spain in 2018 - a little later there was a mass panic with injured people.

  Seven Germans currently have to answer for this in court

• The number of deaths after the explosion in Equatorial Guinea rises to 98: The

  first reports of explosions in the West African state of Equatorial Guinea were devastating.

  Now the government has drastically corrected the number of dead and injured upwards

The SPIEGEL + recommendations for today

• Bankrupt with the virus: The rescue debacle of Corona strategists Scholz and Altmaier

• Doctors in Sudanese refugee camp: "What keeps me alive is that I can help here"

• When old people drive a car: the insightful and the iron

• Shot photo from Ukraine: who were the victims, who were the murderers?

I wish you a good start to the day!

Heartily,

Your Mathieu von Rohr