Tuesday, July 20th marked six months since President Biden took office. He has followed through on his promise to build America back better, and the accomplishments of his administration and Democrat leadership are truly remarkable.
Highlights of the past six months:
Continue reading “President Biden’s First Six Months: We are Building Back Better”
Republicans say Tracy Stone-Manning’s past affiliation with eco-saboteurs makes her unqualified to run the Bureau of Land Management
Tracy Stone-Manning, President Biden’s pick to be the top public lands manager, moved one step closer to becoming director of the Bureau of Land Management on Thursday as the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee advanced her nomination solely with Democratic support.
For weeks, Republicans have adamantly called on Biden to withdraw Stone-Manning’s nomination due to her decision as a University of Montana graduate student to send a letter on behalf of eco-saboteurs in 1989. The group drove metal spikes into trees in Idaho set to be cut down — an act designed to make it more dangerous for loggers to saw through the trunks.
“It is hard to imagine a nominee more disqualified than Tracy Stone-Manning,” said Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), the top Republican on the committee, at one point holding up a gray metal spike. He was among the 10 Republicans on the panel who voted against her nomination. Continue reading.
The Biden administration on Thursday imposed sanctions against Cuba’s defense minister and a special forces unit of the Interior Ministry it said was directly involved in human rights abuses during a government crackdown on widespread protests on the island this month.
President Biden said in a statement that the measures were “just the beginning” of efforts to sanction “individuals responsible for the oppression of the Cuban people.”
The measures were unveiled as Biden faces increasing pressure from Congress, activist groups and Cuban Americans to take decisive action in support of protesters on the island. Continue reading.
Attorney General Merrick Garland has sharply limited how and when prosecutors can secretly obtain reporters’ phone and email records, formalizing a Biden administration decree that the government would stop using secret orders and subpoenas for journalists’ data to hunt for leakers.
The memo says the department “will no longer use compulsory legal process for the purpose of obtaining information from or records of members of the news media acting within the scope of newsgathering activities.”
The previous Justice Department rules for using reporters’ data to pursue unauthorized disclosures of classified information were widely criticized by First Amendment advocates and members of Congress, who said they gave free rein to prosecutors to secretly pursue such records if they thought telling the news organization in question might harm an investigation. Continue reading.
The United States and several allied countries on Monday publicly blamed hackers affiliated with the Chinese government for the Microsoft Exchange Server hack that left tens of thousands of organizations vulnerable to compromise earlier this year.
The move to publicly identify the hackers as linked to China is part of a broader effort by the U.S. and its allies to publicly call out Beijing’s government for malicious behavior in cyberspace.
The U.S., European Union, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Japan and NATO on Monday criticized China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) for using criminal contract hackers to conduct cyber-enabled extortion, “crypto-jacking” and other schemes. Continue reading.
Social media companies are facing new pressure from the federal government to crack down on health misinformation as the Biden administration makes a push to encourage reluctant Americans to get COVID-19 vaccines.
Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued an advisory Thursday stating that misinformation is an “urgent threat” and called on the tech companies he accused of amplifying the misinformation to take action to fight the false, and often dangerous, claims.
“Health misinformation didn’t start with COVID-19. What’s different now is the speed and scale at which health misinformation is spreading,” Murthy said at a White House briefing. Continue reading.
The United States is formally launching “Operation Allies Refuge” to evacuate Afghans who helped U.S. troops during the 20-year war and are facing threats to their lives from the Taliban, the Biden administration announced Wednesday.
Flights out of Afghanistan for those who are already in the process of obtaining special immigrant visas (SIVs) will start in the last week of July, a senior administration official said in a statement.
No further details on when the evacuations will start will be released, the statement said, citing “operational security.” Officials also did not say where the Afghans would be sent. Continue reading.
Millions of families will start to receive monthly payments from the IRS on Thursday, following the enactment of President Biden’s coronavirus relief law that included an expansion of the child tax credit.
The $1.9 trillion relief measure from March increases the credit amount for 2021 and directs the IRS to make periodic advance payments of the credit through the end of the year so that families receive funds in installments rather than in a lump sum when they file their tax returns in 2022.
Democrats say the expanded tax credit will help to substantially reduce child poverty, and the monthly payments will help families cover important expenses as they occur. Many Democratic lawmakers want to pass legislation later this year to make the one-year expansion of the credit permanent. Continue reading.
The Biden administration is working to move past the pandemic without a permanent leader for the agency that authorizes drugs and vaccines. Democrats are decrying Republican-led efforts to restrict the right to vote, but President Biden has yet to nominate a solicitor general to represent the government on voting rights and other issues that could come before the Supreme Court.
And the Office of Management and Budget has only an acting director, even as the president seeks a sweeping budget resolution in Congress that would enable his “human infrastructure” plan to pass, one of his top goals.
Biden and his aides consistently tout their “whole of government” approach to solving pressing problems, but several key agencies across the government still have no permanent leaders. As the president approaches six months in office, some of those positions have direct involvement in addressing the crises Biden promised to prioritize at the start of his administration: the pandemic, the economy, climate change and racial inequity. Continue reading.
President Biden’s sweeping executive order on competition targets industries from banking and airlines to technology and health care, declaring war on corporations over anti-competitive practices.
It aims to encourage innovation and competition, and boost the U.S. economy, through dozens of consumer-focused and worker-focused provisions.
Here are five key elements of the president’s massive executive order. Continue reading.
