They’re sorta eighties, sorta fun! [WNYC]
They’re sorta eighties, sorta fun! [WNYC]
Austin gets in with an overwhelming majority
Here we go again
Politico compiled a list of the “day one” promises Biden didn’t keep, and it’s pretty short
Here are the promises he didn’t keep and the reasons why:
X “On day one, I’ll move to: eliminate the Trump tax cut for the super-wealthy, cut the unjustified loopholes in our tax code, and use that money to invest in America’s future.” June 27, 2019
X “On Day One, if I’m president of the United States, you’re going to see the end of Trump’s tax cut for the top 10th of 1%.” (Said during an address to the Philadelphia AFL-CIO in September 2019, according to Bloomberg)
These two economic priorities were put forward before the pandemic and the subsequent recession that led Biden to overhaul his initial economic agenda.
X “My first day of office, I’m going to send a bill to the Congress repealing the liability protection for gun manufacturers, closing the background check loopholes and waiting period.” Feb. 20, 2020
This is the most conspicuous First Day pledge that Biden has abandoned, an apparent concession to the reality of slim Democratic margins in Congress and a shift in post-pandemic priorities.
X “I’d double that tax [on foreign profits] and do that on Day One.” July 9, 2020
This was probably a Biden ad lib.
X “On Biden’s first day in office, he will restore federal employees’ rights to organize and bargain collectively, and will direct his agencies to bargain with federal employee unions over non-mandatory subjects of bargaining.” The Biden plan for strengthening worker organizing, collective bargaining, and unions
Biden is scheduled to sign this one today. (A White House spokesman told us, “We’re thinking about ‘Day One promises’ not literally on Jan. 20, but across multiple days.”) Even without that caveat, Biden did indeed keep the overwhelming majority of Day One pledges that we could find from his speeches, press releases and interviews over the last two years.
“I’ve never in my entire career felt like I’ve been booted onto the curb and told, ‘Figure it out on your own,’” said one of the soldiers.
Scores of National Guard members were forced out of a U.S. Capitol cafeteria resting area and into a parking garage nearby, putting them in close quarters with moving cars, exhaust fumes and troops potentially infected with the coronavirus, two soldiers told The Washington Post.
The abrupt transfer came Thursday afternoon with no explanation, the soldiers said. Images of National Guard members sleeping on concrete Thursday night sparked outrage and an apparent reversal later in the night, as lawmakers said the service members would be moved back to the Capitol.
The soldiers said they were not given a reason for the initial transfer. But defense officials said Capitol police moved the Guard members off the grounds as foot traffic from lawmakers and other officials increased in the area.
Words to live by
Only somewhat?
Google suggests Bowers has neither a fun mustache nor a history of public meltdowns so it’s unclear what he’s doing on Trump’s legal team
This is what Biden is actually dealing with, contrary to Trump’s claim that he “saved or supported over 50 million jobs” and was leaving him the “greatest economy in the history of the world”
Another 900,000 people filed new unemployment claims last week, former president Donald Trump’s last in office, a snapshot of the significant labor market challenges facing President Biden.
An additional 423,000 people in 47 states filed new claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, the program created to help gig and self-employed workers.
Altogether, nearly 16 million people were claiming benefits as of Jan. 2, the last week available for that measurement. That number is expected to increase in the coming weeks as people who were dropped from the unemployment rolls after their benefits expired file new claims to take advantage of the extension passed by Congress at the last minute in December.
The number of new unemployment claims filed each week has remained above the pre-pandemic record of 695,000 since coronavirus cases starting rising last March. Jobless claims have also risen in recent weeks.
Maybe Trump wasn’t a good president?
Newly sworn in President Joe Biden and his advisers are inheriting no coronavirus vaccine distribution plan to speak of from the Trump administration, sources tell CNN, posing a significant challenge for the new White House.
The Biden administration has promised to try to turn the Covid-19 pandemic around and drastically speed up the pace of vaccinating Americans against the virus. But in the immediate hours following Biden being sworn into office on Wednesday, sources with direct knowledge of the new administration’s Covid-related work told CNN one of the biggest shocks that the Biden team had to digest during the transition period was what they saw as a complete lack of a vaccine distribution strategy under former President Donald Trump, even weeks after multiple vaccines were approved for use in the United States.
“There is nothing for us to rework. We are going to have to build everything from scratch,” one source said.
Another source described the moment that it became clear the Biden administration would have to essentially start from “square one” because there simply was no plan as: “Wow, just further affirmation of complete incompetence.”
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