Tag: Joe Biden

GOP Demands “Unity” But Ignores That a Majority of Voters Back Biden’s Proposals

Before and after President Joe Biden’s speech to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday night, Republican lawmakers repeatedly blasted him for allegedly breaking his pledge to unify the country. But the problem may actually lie in the GOP’s concept of “unity.”

Biden has indeed pressed for unity in a number of statements and speeches he’s made before, including in his inauguration speech. Overcoming the challenges presently facing the country “requires more than words,” Biden said on January 20. “It requires that most elusive of things in a democracy: Unity.”

Within that same speech, Biden noted he was for “uniting our people” and “uniting our nation.” To Republicans, however, calls for unity appear to only mean acquiescing or compromising with their demands, not the wants and needs of Americans as a whole. Continue reading.

How Biden’s paid leave proposal would benefit workers, their families and their employers too

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1. How much of a change would this be?

Federal law currently guarantees many employed Americans the right to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid job-protected leave to care for family members through the Family and Medical Leave Act. Because of eligibility restrictions, less than half of all U.S. workerscan technically access this benefit. Even fewer of those who are eligible can afford to take advantage of it.

The U.S. is truly exceptional in this regard.

Employed women get paid maternity leave in almost every nation in the world. Many countries also provide workers with paid leave to care for their ailing parents, partners or other relatives who need care, which is what the Biden administration is proposing. Continue reading.

Nicolle Wallace pans Tim Scott’s rebuttal: ‘Delivered from a planet where facts don’t matter’

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MSNBC anchors fact-checked Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) after his rebuttal speech following President Joe Biden’s first address to Congress.

“I do think it’s going to be hard for most people who are paying any attention to politics to swallow the Republican support making it easier to vote line and the long passage he had about how Democrats are the ones blocking police reform,” MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow noted. “There’s some stuff there that may make sense in a sliver of Republican world, but in the news world, I don’t think will ring.”

“This is a speech delivered from a planet where facts don’t matter, which is where the current Republican Party resides, so it’s not really his fault, but it is his responsibility to get his facts straight,” Wallace said. Continue reading.

CNN Poll: GOP Efforts To Discredit Biden Are Failing

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Republicans have been adamant that President Joe Biden’s popularity will fall as they vilify his policy proposals, including the coronavirus relief package Congress passed in March and the infrastructure bill congressional Democrats are currently trying to pass.

Yet a new CNN poll released Wednesday found that their strategy has not worked, as Biden — and his policies — remain popular nearly 100 days into his tenure, despite the GOP’s best efforts.

According to the CNN poll, 53 percent of Americans approve of the job Biden has done in his first 100 days in office. That approval rating tracks with Biden’s approval rating average from FiveThirtyEight, which has hovered around 53percent since he was sworn in on January 20 — a level he has maintained despite GOP criticism. Continue reading.

Biden releases money in push to modernize US electric grid

NEW YORK — The federal government said Tuesday it is making more than $8 billion available to build and improve the nation’s transmission lines as part of its efforts to improve America’s aging electric grid and meet President Joe Biden’s ambitious clean-energy goals.

The administration is also pledging to speed up a sluggish permitting process that has delayed the types of major transmission projects that are crucial to meeting Biden’s goals.

The president has said he wants the nation to produce 100% clean energy by 2035. But that goal faces massive hurdles. Those include an electric grid that has been pummeled by climate change and which needs enormous expansion to carry electricity from renewable energy sources to densely populated regions. Continue reading.

The false and misleading claims President Biden made during his first 100 days in office

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After four years of a presidency that swamped Americans with a gusher of false and misleading claims, the Joe Biden era has offered a return to a more typical pattern when it comes to a commander in chief and his relationship with the facts — one that features frequent spin and obfuscation or exaggeration, with the occasional canard.

Among the most notable falsehoods of President Biden’s first 100 days in office was his claim — which he made three times — that Georgia’s controversial Republican-backed election law had shortened voting hours.

The claim was one of two uttered by Biden to earn the Fact Checker’s “Four Pinocchio” rating, reserved for whoppers — the other being his wildly off-base statement, borrowed from the campaign, that federal contracts “awarded directly to foreign companies” rose by 30 percent under President Donald Trump.

Comparison of Biden to Trump 100 Days Lies


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Fresh off election falsehoods, Republicans serve up a whopper about Biden

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By the time President Biden’s aides gathered for their morning meeting on Monday, the juicy whopper of a mistruth making its way around the conservative ecosphere — that Biden’s climate plan would significantly limit America’s hamburger consumption — had officially entered mainstream public discourse.

Biden’s team looked for an opportunity to quickly debunk the falsehood. White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain retweeted a CNN fact check titled, “No, Biden is not trying to force Americans to eat less red meat,” while several press aides tweeted a photo of a grinning Biden flipping burgers at a 2019 Iowa steak fry, along with the caption, “White House to the fact-challenged: where’s the beef?”

To White House aides, the wholly fictional Biden-will-ban-hamburgers story line was in part an amusing flare-up perpetuated by Republicans who have struggled to find ways to successfully attack the president. They joked privately that White House press secretary Jen Psaki should start her daily press briefing by eating a burger. Continue reading.

Biden taps Houston-area sheriff to lead ICE

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President Biden is tapping a Houston-area sheriff to lead U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), again turning to local law enforcement beyond the Beltway to lead a major agency within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Ed Gonzalez has served as sheriff for Harris County, which includes the Houston metro area, since 2017 and previously spent 18 years with the Houston Police Department and served three terms on the Houston City Council.

Gonzalez has been a vocal critic of the Trump administration’s immigration policy and in 2017 terminated the county’s 287(g) agreement with ICE, ending the practice of allowing local officers to carry out some immigration enforcement. Continue reading.

Visualizing the unique, historic diversity of the dais at Biden’s speech

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In the first seconds of his first address to a joint session of Congress, President Biden acknowledged the historic nature of the people who sat behind him.

“Madam Speaker, Madam Vice President,” he began. “No president has ever said those words from this podium. No president has ever said those words. And it’s about time.”

He was referring, of course, to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) — the only woman to have ever held that position — and Vice President Harris, the only woman and person of Black or Asian descent to ever have done so. It was a moment without equal in American history. Continue reading.

Biden makes case for sweeping change

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President Biden on Wednesday made the case for sweeping government action in an address to a sparsely populated joint session of Congress like no other in U.S. history.

Speaking on the 99th day of his presidency in a chamber overrun by insurrectionists just more than three months ago, Biden laid out an ambitious legislative agenda before an audience of lawmakers severely limited by the coronavirus pandemic. 

Biden used his address to tout his efforts to get the nation back to normal after the pandemic and the divisive presidency of Donald Trump. He made no direct mention of his predecessor, but argued those present had a responsibility to “prove democracy still works and our government still works and we can deliver for our people.” Continue reading.