The Senate voted 64-35 on Thursday to confirm former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm as secretary of the Department of Energy.
Why it matters: Granholm, only the second woman to head the department, will play a key role in President Biden’s efforts to accelerate the U.S. shift to clean energy and help other countries do the same.
President Biden‘s top priority thus far has been combating the coronavirus pandemic, but he’s doing so without a Senate-confirmed secretary of Health and Human Services.
The White House has been vexed by messaging on reopening schools, and it’s still without an Education secretary to steer the process.
And the administration has punted to the Justice Department on issues like Biden’s authority to cancel student loan debt and whether former President Trump should face prosecution for his role in the Jan. 6 riot, a strategy that has been complicated by the lack of a confirmed attorney general. Continue reading.
First lady Jill Biden is picking up where she left off four years ago.
The former second lady has eased into her new role as first lady by reviving the Obama-era military families program Joining Forces, bringing baked goods to National Guard troops protecting the U.S. Capitol, appearing in a Super Bowl public service announcement with the family dogs encouraging people to wear masks and staging hearts on the White House North Lawn for Valentine’s Day.
She has held various virtual engagements to showcase her advocacy for military families, students and community colleges and will appear in her first one-on-one broadcast interview later this month. Continue reading.
The Senate voted 78-20 on Tuesday to confirm Linda Thomas-Greenfield as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
The big picture: Thomas-Greenfield has promised to restore the U.S. role as a defender of human rights and will look to repair multilateral relationships that fractured under former President Trump. She will play a key role in the administration’s China strategy — her “highest priority,” she has said.
The United States is formally back in the Paris climate agreement as of Feb. 19, 2021, nearly four years after former President Donald Trump announced it would pull out.
We asked five scholars what the U.S. rejoining the international agreement means for the nation and the rest of the world, including for food security, safety and the changing climate. Nearly every country has ratified the 2015 agreement, which aims to keep global temperature rise well below 2 degrees Celsius. The U.S. was the only one to withdraw.
Morgan Bazilian, Public Policy Professor and Director of the Payne Institute, Colorado School of Mines
Amanda Gorman, the National Youth Poet Laureate, wrote in her poem for U.S. President Joe Biden’s inauguration, “When day comes we step out of the shade.” That’s a good articulation of why the United States is now rejoining the Paris Agreement.
The United States officially returned to the Paris global climate accord on Friday, and President Joe Biden and other U.S. leaders declared the nation could not afford to sideline the growing climate crisis again.
“We can no longer delay or do the bare minimum to address climate change. This is a global existential crisis, and all of us will suffer if we fail,” Biden told European leaders at a Munich security conference by video Friday.
“We’re back,” Biden said, renewing assurances the U.S. was back in global initiatives at large.
Officially, President Donald Trump’s removal of the nation from the worldwide global climate pact stood for only 107 days. It was part of Trump’s withdrawal from global allegiances in general and his often-stated but false view that ongoing global warming was a laughably mistaken take by the world’s scientists. Continue reading.
President Biden’s comprehensive immigration bill quickly exposed firm battle lines on Capitol Hill, raising questions about whether the White House might break the legislation into smaller bipartisan pieces if it hopes to pass any immigration reform.
Congressional Democrats rolled out Biden’s legislation with force, emphasizing there would be little room for compromise on a measure that would create a pathway for citizenship for some 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S.
“The reason we have not gotten immigration reform over the finish line is not because of a lack of will. It is because time and time again, we have compromised too much and capitulated too quickly to fringe voices who have refused to accept the humanity and contributions of immigrants to our country,” said Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), who is sponsoring the Senate side version of the legislation. Continue reading.
The White House is throwing its support behind a global push to distribute coronavirus vaccines equitably, pledging $4 billion to a multilateral effort the Trump administration spurned.
At a Group of Seven meeting of leaders of the world’s largest economies Friday, President Biden will announce an initial $2 billion in funding for Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, to be used by the Covax Facility, senior administration officials said in a briefing.
The United States will release an additional $2 billion over two years once other donors have made good on their pledges and will use this week’s G-7 summit to rally other countries to do more. Continue reading.
The Biden administration formally rolled out its major immigration bill Thursday, introducing legislation that would give 11 million people a path to U.S. citizenship.
The bill, which will be shepherded by Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.) and Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), represents President Biden’s chance to deliver major changes to a system where both parties see a need for reform but are sharply divided on how to deliver it.
White House officials called the bill a chance to “reset and restart conversations on immigration reform,” labeling the bill as Biden’s “vision of what it takes to fix the system.” Continue reading.
Under a Biden administration, the nominations are expected to go from the Pentagon to the White House within weeks and then to the Senate for approval.
WASHINGTON — Last fall, the Pentagon’s most senior leaders agreed that two top generals should be promoted to elite, four-star commands.
For the defense secretary at the time, Mark T. Esper, and Gen. Mark A. Milley, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the tricky part was that both of the accomplished officers were women. In 2020 America under President Donald J. Trump, the two Pentagon leaders feared that any candidates other than white men for jobs mostly held by white men might run into turmoil once their nominations reached the White House.
Mr. Esper and General Milley worried that if they even raised their names — Gen. Jacqueline D. Van Ovost of the Air Force and Lt. Gen. Laura J. Richardson of the Army — the Trump White House would replace them with its own candidates before leaving office. Continue reading.
