President Biden Joe Biden Biden 'disappointed' in Senate parliamentarian ruling but 'respects' decision Taylor Swift celebrates House passage of Equality Act Donald Trump Jr. calls Bruce Springsteen's dropped charges 'liberal privilege' MORE has spent his first five weeks in office peeling back his predecessor's legacy, one executive action at a time. On Sunday, former President Trump Donald Trump Donald Trump Jr. calls Bruce Springsteen's dropped charges 'liberal privilege' Schiff sees challenges for intel committee, community in Trump's shadow McConnell says he'd back Trump as 2024 GOP nominee MORE will take his first opportunity to respond. Biden moved on his first day in office to rejoin the Paris climate agreement, cut off funding for the border wall, reverse Trump’s travel ban and recommit to the World Health Organization. And the president’s rhetoric is regularly filled with swipes at Trump’s bungled handling of the coronavirus pandemic and his inability to be transparent with the public. Trump’s first media appearances since leaving office have been focused on national headlines involving the death of Rush Limbaugh and Tiger Woods’s serious car accident. But he is expected to return fire against Biden in a speech Sunday at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). ADVERTISEMENT “Joe Biden's dangerous first month failures will feature prominently in Sunday's speech,” said Jason Miller, a senior adviser to Trump. Immigration is expected to be among the dominant topics of the address, according to people familiar with the planning. Trump is likely to seize on the influx of migrants at the southern border, which has prompted the Biden administration to reopen a facility for teenagers in Texas that operated for a month during the previous administration. That decision has drawn fire from all sides, with liberals decrying the use of the facilities to house young migrants and ...
Biden health care plan
Rep. Kevin McCarthy: Dems’ $1.9 trillion COVID bill is not rescue or relief plan, it’s a Pelosi payoff
close Video Rep. Kevin McCarthy: Democrats’ $1.9T coronavirus relief bill is ‘too corrupt, liberal’ House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy provides insight into the coronavirus stimulus bill on ‘Fox and Friends.’ A year ago today, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention warned U.S. citizens to prepare for "disruption" from the coronavirus outbreak across American cities. And throughout the past 12 months, we have seen Americans make sacrifices and persevere in the fight against this virus. The progress we have seen in our economy and in our efforts to stop the spread have been substantial. In April 2020, the unemployment rate for American workers stood at 14.7 percent. Today the unemployment rate is 6.3 percent. At the same time, new COVID-19 cases continue to plummet. Thanks to a historic, heroic undertaking by the Trump administration's Operation Warp Speed, 1.45 million Americans are now receiving a vaccine shot every day. These positive signs are improvements in the right direction towards getting Americans back to work, back to school, and back to health. But there is no denying there is more work to do. About 10 million Americans remain unemployed , and millions of children are struggling from an education and mental health crisis fueled by sustained school closures and perpetuated by special interest groups. PELOSI VOWS TO KEEP MINIMUM WAGE PROVISION IN HOUSE BILL; HARRIS COULD ACT We also know that the optimal stimulus plan is to completely reopen our economy. At this point, we have the data and experience to protect our vulnerable citizens, while taking the steps to continue to return to full normalcy. Video To reclaim our lives from the virus and rebuild a prosperous economy, we must take a precise approach to continue the momentum the American people have already achieved. For that reason, House Republicans introduced 286 amendments during the mark-up process for the ...
Lessons from past public health emergencies could have saved 2020
The last 11 months could have been so different. Imagine we had clear plans in place for last-mile vaccination, persuasive communications to explain its value and strategies to distribute these life-saving drugs equitably. For me — for all public health emergency response professionals — the tragedy of COVID-19 is that this alternate reality was entirely possible . We have worked enough public health emergencies over the last 20 years to know that the lessons we are learning the hard way now, have been learned and forgotten over and over again. How is it possible, you might ask, that our public health system has forgotten crucial information about managing pandemics? After all, airline accidents kill far fewer people, yet the National Transportation Safety Board is there to learn their lessons. Similar programs exist to lower crime rates , improve education and improve population health . ADVERTISEMENT But unlike many in the developed world, the United States has no systemic way to study and learn from public health emergencies. A three-year National Academies of Medicine consensus study on which I served, led by Ned Calonge , concluded that science in this area was “seriously deficient...hampering the nation’s ability to respond to emergencies [and] save lives. ” We must resolve this problem immediately in the Biden administration’s latest relief package — before we miss our chance to learn the key lessons from COVID-19, also. How big is the issue? Look at vaccination, the center of our hopes right now. A recent study showed that from 2008-2017, the federal government spent $16 billion to fund purely pharmaceutical research into health threats. Operation Warp Speed, the prior administration’s rapid vaccine push, was possible because of decades of studies driven by emergencies like SARS, H1N1 and Ebola. Yet the same study showed we spent a tiny fraction — only $100,000 — to ...
Labor expands jobless aid for workers who reject employers skirting COVID-19 rules
The Labor Department on Thursday expanded eligibility for unemployment benefits to those who refused to return to work or declined a job offer because the worksite was not following coronavirus safety protocols. Under the new guidance, jobless individuals can receive Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) if they turn down an offer from a business “not in compliance with local, state, or national health and safety standards directly related to COVID-19.” Those protocols include wearing face masks, maintaining social distance and providing personal protective equipment. PUA was created by the CARES Act in March to expand jobless aid to gig workers, contractors and others who do not qualify for traditional unemployment insurance. ADVERTISEMENT The persistence of the pandemic has forced many Americans to make tough choices about whether to return to work and risk contracting COVID-19 or take the financial hit to protect their health. The Labor Department’s expansion of PUA is meant to take that decision off the table. “It’s great news that these workers are not going to be forced to choose between their health — and the health of their family members — and their ability to pay rent and buy groceries,” said Sen. Ron Wyden Ronald (Ron) Lee Wyden Biden nominee previews post-Trump trade agenda Labor expands jobless aid for workers who reject employers skirting COVID-19 rules Democrats hesitant to raise taxes amid pandemic MORE (D-Ore.), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, in a statement. The department also expanded PUA eligibility to workers who provide services to schools and educational facilities but have suffered significant losses in work, and those who’ve been either permanently or temporarily laid off and do not qualify for other jobless benefit programs. Roughly 7.5 million Americans were receiving PUA benefits as of Feb. 7. The program is set to expire next month, but President Biden Joe Biden ...
The $15 Minimum-Wage Debate Clarifies the Partisan Economic Divide
Republican “populists” are on the wrong side of this fight. Photo: J Scott Applewhite/AP/Shutterstock For many left-wing pundits, America’s partisan divide in 2021 is defined by its lack of a strong material basis . After all, a voter’s income level tells you less about her political allegiances today than it has for most of our nation’s modern history . In 2020, some of the wealthiest Zip Codes in the United States backed the party of organized labor by a landslide margin, while some of the poorest broke overwhelmingly for the party of libertarian billionaires. The ties that bind blue America’s tech entrepreneurs to its nonwhite gig workers — or red America’s oil barons to its white rural poor — are those of culture , not economics. Democrats stand for a multiethnic conception of American identity, secularism, cosmopolitanism, racial justice, and gender equality; Republicans, for a normatively white and Christian America, the patriarchal family, and zero-sum nationalism. In geographic terms, these divisions cleave the nation less by region than by density : All across the country, navy-blue urban cores fade into baby-blue inner-ring suburbs, red-violet exurbs and deep-red countryside. This “culture war trumps all” thesis elides many nuances. For one thing, the prominence of zero-sum nationalism in factory towns decimated by globalization surely cannot be attributed to culture alone. For another, a large segment of nonwhite Democrats espouse right-of-center views on immigration and gender, and thus, vote less on the basis of cultural attitudes than some combination of communal bonds, historical memory, and economic interest. Nevertheless, if liberals’ culturalist account of America’s political divide has its flaws, the “populist” right’s efforts to cast the conflict between red and blue in strictly materialist terms — with Republicans representing the interests of blue-collar workers in the heartland, and Democrats of cosseted professionals in ...
