Category: Joe Biden

Biden pledges action on guns amid resistance

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White House officials met last week with several gun violence prevention groups as they weigh how to move forward on an issue that has stymied Democrats for years.

The White House says President Biden is “personally committed” to action on an issue he has tackled many times in the past. Less than a month into the new administration, Biden officials are meeting with advocates backing reforms that Democrats have been pushing for in Congress, like strengthening background checks.

However, Americans’ views on guns may be even more divided than the last time Biden confronted the issue. A November Gallup poll found support for stricter gun laws is at its lowest level since 2016. Continue reading.

Key players to watch in minimum wage fight

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The battle over whether to keep a minimum wage hike in President Biden’s COVID-19 relief package is heating up, with key players on both sides of the issue digging in for the fight.

The debate is threatening to create deep divisions among Democrats as they move forward with an economic rescue package without GOP support.

Outside groups are also exerting pressure on progressive and moderate Democrats to boost the rate from $7.25, where it’s stood since 2009, to $15 an hour.

Kamala Harris reveals what the new administration discovered about Trump’s COVID-19 response plan

In an interview with Axios on HBO, Vice President Kamala Harris claimed ‘there was no national strategy or plan for vaccinations’ in the Trump administration’s COVID-19 plan. Harris claims what many in the Biden administration have surmised after taking over governing.

‘We were leaving it to the states and local leaders to try and figure it out,” Harris told reporter Mike Allen. 

President Joe Biden made a similar claim when he announced the next steps for the vaccine plan. Continue reading.

Biden Orders Halt To Trump’s War On Medicaid Families

The Biden administration is ending Medicaid work requirements the previous occupiers of the executive branch foisted on the nation’s working poor. Two weeks ago, President Joe Biden signed an executive order instructing officials at the Department of Health and Human Services to remove barriers to Medicaid, and that’s just what they are doing.

Three states—Arkansas, Kentucky, and New Hampshire—tried to impose the requirements, but two levels of federal courts have struck them down so the order doesn’t have immediate effect. But it means no state will be able to create the needless, humiliating, ridiculous hoop of requiring people to prove they’re working, all as a means of keeping needy and deserving people from applying for the benefit.

The proof that this measure is intended just to make life more difficult for poor people is in the fact that 93% of people on Medicaid—who aren’t ill or disabled, elderly, taking care of family members, or in school full time—already work. Medicaid is there to help all those people, and work requirements have never been about work. Continue reading.

The Chamber embraces Biden. And Republicans are livid.

The influential trade organization says it’s taking the same approach to the new administration as it did with Trump.

Washington’s most powerful trade group is having a political identity crisis.

Over the past month, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has taken a series of steps that have enraged its traditional Republican allies. It applauded much of President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion plan to Covid relief bill; cheered Biden’s decision to rejoin the Paris climate agreement; backed the former leader of the liberal Center of American Progress, Neera Tanden, for Office of Management and Budget director; and expressed openness to raising the minimum wage, though not to $15 an hour.

That’s left the Chamber, a K Street institution known for its bruising battles with past Democratic administrations, occupying an increasingly lonely political center, caught between angry Republicans who feel the trade group has abandoned them and Democrats who are pursuing policies anathema to many of their members. Continue reading.

CDC releases guidelines on safely reopening schools

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School reopenings should be contingent on community transmission rates and should be a priority over restaurants and other nonessential businesses, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended Friday.

Why it matters: America’s educators have been calling on the health agency to issue clear and useful guidance for schools, following mixed signals sent by the Trump administration last year. 

The state of play: K–12 schools should close only after all other mitigation measures in the community have been employed, and the first to reopen when they can do so safely, the guidance says.  Continue reading.

Biden rescinds national emergency proclamation Trump used to fund border wall

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President Biden informed Congress on Thursday that he has terminated the national emergency over the U.S.-Mexico border that former President Trump first declared in Feb. 2019.

Why it matters: Trump used the national emergency proclamation to divert billions of dollars in Pentagon funds toward building a border wall, after it became clear that Congress was opposed to additional funding. The declaration prompted dozens of lawsuits and attempts by Congress to block Trump from fulfilling one his top 2016 campaign promises.

What they’re saying: “I have determined that the declaration of a national emergency at our southern border was unwarranted. I have also announced that it shall be the policy of my Administration that no more American taxpayer dollars be diverted to construct a border wall, and that I am directing a careful review of all resources appropriated or redirected to that end,” Biden wrote in a letter to congressional leaders. View the post here.

Bipartisanship in Congress isn’t about being nice – it’s about cold, hard numbers

Before he was even inaugurated as president, Joe Biden, elected at a time of strong political polarization, emphasized the importance of bipartisanship in dealing with Congress: “I think I can work with Republican leadership in the House and Senate. I think we can get some things done.” 

Incoming presidents routinely make such appeals, and for good reason. 

Senate rules require a “supermajority” – 60 out of 100 senators, including both Democrats and Republicans – to pass major legislation. But presidents have found it difficult to fulfill the promise of bipartisanship, which would require negotiation between Democratic and Republican leaders and the agreement of substantial numbers of lawmakers from both parties. Continue reading.

Republicans criticized a Biden nominee for her tweets. Democrats see a ‘whole new level of hypocrisy.’

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For the second time this week, Republican senators grilled President Biden’s pick to head the White House budget office over her history of controversial tweets — infuriating critics of the GOP who said the lawmakers were hypocritical for chastising nominee Neera Tanden while failing to speak up about former president Donald Trump’s incendiary tweetstorms now at the center of an impeachment inquiry.

During a heated back-and-forth, Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.), known for his colorful expressions, accused Tanden of attacking lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

“You called Senator Sanders everything but an ignorant slut,” he said, evoking the sexist term famously satirized on “Saturday Night Live.” Continue reading.

Biden holds first call as president with China’s Xi Jinping

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President Biden on Wednesday evening held his first call with Chinese President Xi Jinping since taking office, raising thorny issues including human rights in Hong Kong and Xinjiang.

The big picture: Ahead of the call, senior administration officials offered reporters the most detailed portrait to date of Biden’s policies toward China, and how they will build on — and diverge from — Donald Trump’s approach.

Driving the news: “President Biden underscored his fundamental concerns about Beijing’s coercive and unfair economic practices, crackdown in Hong Kong, human rights abuses in Xinjiang, and increasingly assertive actions in the region, including toward Taiwan,” according to a White House readout of the call. Continue reading.