Florida’s Republican senator Marco Rubio will get CPAC underway today when he delivers “remarks” at 8.45am – in little over half an hour – before 9am will see a half an hour talk titled “Sell Outs: The Devaluing of American Citizenship”.

It will feature Texas attorney general Ken Paxton, who infamously led an attempt to overturn the election in Donald Trump’s favour at the Supreme Court. It will also feature representatives Yvette Herrell and Paul Gosar.

If you thought that gold Trump statues, refusals to wear a mask in the middle of a global pandemic and doubling down on the debunked voter fraud claims that led to a deadly insurrection were about as peak CPAC as we were going to get, hold up because there’s an astonishing one-minute video here to say “hold my drink”.

The clip was apparently part of a video package shown at the Conservative pro-Trump conference on Friday. It shows Japanese political scientist and “Samurai Futurologist” Gemki Fujii (sometimes transcribed as “Genki Fujii”) waxing lyrical about the former president.

CPAC itself has promoted Fujii’s support of Trump, tweeting on Thursday about his appearance and referring to him as “the last samurai”, directing attendees to visit his booth to hear Fujii’s “view on threat of Chinese communism”.

Footage taken by a Bloomberg reporter shows CNN’s Jim Acosta at CPAC being surrounded by Trump supporters, one of whom exclaims, “Get him, get him” while he speaks to the crowd.

Some then begin to chant “CNN sucks!”, a chant popularised at Trump rallies before he lost the presidency.

Several Republican lawmakers said they could not attend Congress on Friday to vote for the coronavirus stimulus package due to the pandemic, but were due to appear in-person at the conservative conference taking place in Orlando, Florida, this weekend.

According to CNN, the Republican lawmakers included those who were former US president Donald Trump’s closest allies – some of whom were scheduled to speak at this weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Florida.

The group of twelve House Republicans said they were unable to attend a number of votes in the House of Representatives that day “due to the ongoing public health emergency”, in a written letter seen by CNN.

Former Nixon White House counsel John Dean has branded Ted Cruz as a “pathetic guy” and a “loudmouth” following the Republican senator’s performance at CPAC on Friday.

“Watching Sen. Ted Cruz at CPAC. He is not as charismatic as a toadstool,” Mr Dean tweeted.

“He has transitioned into his Trumpian mode of future demagogue. But he doesn’t do it very well. He just a shouter and loudmouth at this time. Pathetic guy who hungers for real power. May he never get it!”

Joe Biden says the United States is “weeks ahead of schedule” and will be the first country in the world to 100 million vaccinations.

The president made his confident claim at a federal vaccination site in Texas shortly after experts had recommended Johnson & Johnson’s single shot vaccine for FDA authorisation.

Mr Biden told the crowd that the US was now on pace to reach his goal of 100 million vaccinations in his first 100 days in the White House.

Donie O’Sullivan of CNN has shared a chilling clip in which he interviewed a number of QAnon conspiracy theorists and fanatical Trump supporters.

“At some point there will be arrests and that will include a lot of the lying media,” one Trump supporter told Mr O’Sullivan, adding that she believed – wrongly – that it was not the former president’s supporters who stormed the Capitol last month.

Another baselessly claimed Mr Trump would return as president on March 4, based on a false belief that the last legitimate president was Ulysses S Grant, who was inaugurated on that date in 1869.

Others said they hoped the Myanmar military coup could be replicated here, in order to reinstall Mr Trump as president.

Robert E Kelly, a professor of political science and North Korea expert, has branded the Republican Party a “cult of personality” after it emerged there was a golden statue of Donald Trump featured at this year’s CPAC.

“It’s a cult of personality alright. Not sure how much more proof of that you need than Trump-as-the-golden-calf,” Mr Kelly tweeted this morning.

“Maybe a huge North Korean-style statue? Remember this video when you watch DeMille’s ‘Ten Commandments’ this Easter.”

Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package has been approved by the US House of Representatives in his first major legislative win.

The president’s plan to send emergency financial aid to households, small businesses, and state and local governments battered by Covid-19 passed on a near party-line 219 to 212 vote early on Saturday.

The bill will now go to the evenly-divided Senate, where Democrats face a challenge in their hopes of using the package to raise the minimum wage and where vice president Kamala Harris may have to cast a tie-breaking vote.

In among the usual bile directed at the media, Democrats and Republicans not deemed sufficiently loyal to the Trump family, Donald Trump Jr on Friday also pushed against the big election lie during his speech at CPAC.

Talking about the election, Mr Trump Jr mentioned “the 80 million that voted for Joe Biden” (it was actually more than 81 million), but gestured quotation marks while saying the figure.

It comes after a riotous mob assaulted the Capitol last month, largely inspired by the Trump family’s false claims about election fraud.