Our live coverage has ended, but read more about Biden’s first 100 days below.
President Joe Biden marked his first 100 days in office on Thursday.
Let’s run the numbers on that milestone:
The Point: The numbers show that the Biden administration has been busy over the last 100 days.
President Biden said that the conviction of Derek Chauvin in the murder of George Floyd provides an “opportunity to make some real progress to restore the soul of this country.”
“We can do it,” Biden told the crowd at his drive in rally in Duluth, Georgia.
Biden also pointed to his American Jobs Plan as a chance to bring “equity across the board” for all races.
Chauvin was convicted last week of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.
In a victory lap marking his first 100 days in office, President Biden thanked supporters at tonight’s Duluth, Georgia, drive-in rally, but was interrupted by protesters.
“You know, we need to work and help them keep their seats, it’s important. We won the first round, but there’s more coming up,” Biden told supporters.
On the narrow passage of his administration’s signature legislative accomplishment, Biden was circumspect, telling supporters, “And I want to stop here and give thanks to both your senators, Sens. [Jon] Ossoff and [Raphael] Warnock, for making it happen, because those two votes, had we not come back and you elected them, those two votes have made the difference, it passed by a single vote.”
Biden’s remarks were disrupted by protesters who called on the President to put an end to private detention centers. The interruption prompted Biden to say that he was “working on it.”
The protesters began shouting at Biden to “end detentions now,” which the President said was in reference to private detention centers.
Biden told the protesters, “I agree with you. But I’m working on it, man. Give me another five days.”
Facing a crisis of his own, before taking office President Biden made some big promises about what he hoped to accomplish within his first 100 days. Some key priorities included containing the pandemic and launching an economic recovery.
As his first 100 days in office come to a close, here’s a look at how some of those promises measure up against reality:
Vaccines:
School reopenings:
Economic relief plan
For the last 100 days, President Biden and his top advisers have mounted an urgent, wartime effort to get millions of coronavirus vaccines into the arms of Americans in order to beat back a pandemic that has upended the world for the better part of year.
The effort, described to CNN during in-depth interviews with three of the administration’s top Covid advisers and two other White House officials, has allowed the US to go from having one of the worst Covid responses in the world to being a global leader in getting shots in arms. The interviews reveal how the Biden team inherited a pandemic at its zenith with a high demand for vaccines and little supply, along with no long-term plan to vaccinate millions of Americans. The President, at times impatient, pressed his advisers harder on ways to improve the federal government’s response to the virus.
Fully aware that success or failure in getting Americans vaccinated would make or break his presidency, Biden and his team set vaccination goals and jump started the federal response to meet them, deploying active-duty military and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help with vaccinations, establishing a federal pharmacy program and funding community health centers, all to increase vaccine access. And the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan helped fund the vaccination effort, too. According to the White House, there are now 70,000 sites around the country where people can get vaccines.
When Biden came into office, the country was experiencing about 3,000 deaths and hundreds of thousands of new cases per day, only about 15 million people were vaccinated and there was a scarce supply of shots. To turn it around, Biden’s team brought a fresh urgency and a desire to lean on the scientific experts who had been ignored so much in the previous year.
Ever since Jan. 20, there has been a dispute between current administration officials and ones from the last over exactly what plans for vaccine distribution the Trump administration had left its successor.
“There was no plan to get shots into arms,” Zients told CNN. “Those early doses of Moderna and Pfizer were being drop-shipped to states.”
The Trump team disputes that there was no long-term plan, saying they handed the Biden administration the playbook.
“I have to say it’s frustrating when they spend all of their time disparaging what we did. They say we didn’t have a plan. We had 65 plans,” said Paul Mango, a former Trump administration official who helped oversee the operation. He says their approach gave local leaders more control because of the administration’s belief that they understood their communities better than the federal government ever could.
But the nation’s top infectious disease specialist – who once disputed that the Biden team was starting from scratch – now says that the Biden team deserves credit for the current state of the vaccine roll out.
You can read more about Biden’s efforts to combat Covid-19 here.
As President Biden marks the milestone of his first 100 days in office, anti-death penalty advocates are growing frustrated with his silence and inaction on a campaign promise to end capital punishment.
While there haven’t been any federal or state executions since Biden took office, about 2,500 men and women sit on death row in federal and state prisons across the country – and advocates say that, in the absence of an executive order from the White House, a state can at any moment schedule executions or the Justice Department can decide to calendar a federal inmate’s death date.
Biden’s plan to strengthen America’s commitment to justice included a promise to pass legislation eliminating the death penalty on the federal level and to “incentivize states to follow the federal government’s example. These individuals should instead serve life sentences without probation or parole.”
During Biden’s first 100 days in office, he has signed executive orders to reverse his predecessor’s policies, signed a major economic stimulus bill and ramped up Covid vaccination rates. Virginia Democrats enacted legislation in March abolishing the state death penalty – the 23rd state, but the first southern one, to do so – yet Biden has remained focused on other agenda items.
The President has not directly addressed the death penalty since taking office – though White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in March that Biden continues to have “grave concerns” about the practice.
CNN reaching out to the White House for further comment and received the same statement from Psaki.
Abolishing the death penalty statute through Congress would prevent a future administration from restarting federal executions – as former President Trump did – but members of Congress, former and current law enforcement as well as civil and human rights groups are urging Biden to use his executive pen to pause the federal death penalty.
“There are mounting calls from criminal justice, law enforcement and other leaders for the President to seize this moment as an increasing number of governors in states like Virginia have moved in the direction to abolish the death penalty,” said Miriam Krinsky, the executive director of the legal advocacy group Fair and Just Prosecution, one of dozens of legal organizations that sent letters to Biden urging him to take immediate action. “The death penalty should end in the federal landscape once and for all and in a way that can’t be resurrected by a future administration.”
You can read more on the issue here.
As early as December, President Biden was already pledging to get the majority of schools open by the end of his first 100 days in office.
Unlike other countries, the US leaves school control at the local level, and the challenges to providing in-person instruction are not the same everywhere, making it nearly impossible to create effective federal and even state-level guidance as the pandemic wears on. In some places, school authorities faced strong opposition from powerful teachers’ unions.
At first there was confusion over how the administration defined reopening. When pressed about his administration’s stance during a Feb.16 CNN town hall, Biden clarified that by the end of his first 100 days, “the goal will be five days a week” of in-person instruction or close to that for K-8 students in particular.
There are certainly more schools offering in-person instruction now than there were at the beginning of 2021. But it remains unclear whether a majority of schools are offering it five days a week for all students.
One estimate from the private data-tracking company Burbio says that about 65% of K-12 students are attending schools that offer in-person instruction each day, up from 33% the week Biden took office. About 29% currently attend schools offering hybrid models that include some in-person instruction, and less than 6% have only virtual options.
Younger students are more likely to be offered in-person learning. As of April 20, elementary and middle schools in a little more than half of the 101 largest school districts in the country are offering full five-day-a-week in-person instruction, according to CNN’s tracking.
Some experts say the transition to in-person learning could have come more quickly, arguing that guidelines released by the CDC in February made it harder for schools to reopen. The CDC relaxed its physical distancing guidelines in March, recommending that most students maintain at least 3 feet of distance, accelerating the return to school for some.
We asked viewers from across the country to tell us what issues they’d like President Biden to focus on in the next 100 days and why. Several in the audience said they want the administration to act on education and student debt forgiveness.
Here’s what they told us:
Sabrina, New York
Al from Reading, Pennsylvania
Amanda from Austin, Texas
Randa, New Jersey
Kaitlyn, Wichita Falls, Texas
Wes, Washington, DC
Note: Some responses have been shortened for length.
President Biden kicked off his presidency by naming the most racially diverse Cabinet in US history, disbanding the 1776 commission and taking steps to address racial economic inequality, including signing executive orders that could potentially help bridge the gap in homeownership between people of color and White people, strengthen the fight against bigotry faced by Asian Americans and ease the anxiety of families with incarcerated relatives.
Biden signed an executive order in January repealing a Trump-era ban on most transgender Americans joining the military. The Pentagon said in March that its updated policies, which make it easier for transgender people to join and to access medical treatment while serving, go into effect April 30. The changes will also protect transgender people from discrimination within the services.
In the wake of last week’s conviction of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in the murder of George Floyd, Biden called systemic racism “a stain on our nation’s soul” and said he was heartened by the jury’s verdict, the testimony of other police officers against Chauvin throughout the trial and the collective realization about the reality of systemic racism worldwide that has taken place since Floyd’s death.
Yet his administration said in April that it would stand down on a campaign promise to create a White House-led commission on policing and instead move forward with efforts to pass police reform through legislative channels.
President Biden has moved fast since his Jan. 20 swearing-in, signing a $1.9 trillion Covid relief bill into law less than two months into his term and issuing more executive orders so far than his three predecessors.
Those efforts have paid off, with the administration reaching the milestones of 200 million coronavirus shots delivered and vaccine eligibility opened to everyone 16 and over before Biden’s 100th day in office. Still, there are big agenda items he is yet to accomplish.
We asked viewers from across the country to share which issues they’d like Biden to focus on in the next 100 days and why. Here’s what some of them told us:
Samantha, Florida
Francisco, Alhambra, California
Ryan, Chicago
Emma, Pennsylvania
Phyllis, Central Florida
Maha, Chicago
Bharath, Sunnyvale, California
Tammy, Kingman, Arizona
Thiru, Georgia
Doug, Gulf Coast
Note: Some responses have been shortened for length.
President Biden has signed several executive actions taking aim at former President Trump’s hardline immigration policies, including reversing Trump’s travel ban targeting largely Muslim countries and fortifying the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program after Trump’s efforts to undo protections for undocumented people brought into the country as children.
Biden created a task force focused on identifying and reuniting migrant families separated at the US-Mexico border as a result of Trump’s controversial “zero tolerance” policy, and he revoked a Trump-era proclamation that limited legal immigration during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Biden rescinded Trump’s national emergency declaration, which allowed his predecessor to dip into additional funds for his signature border wall, and called for a review of ongoing wall projects. He narrowed immigration enforcement in the US. The President also directed relevant agencies to ensure LGBTQI+ refugees and asylum seekers have equal access to protections.
Biden went on to end Trump’s so-called “remain in Mexico” policy, which required asylum seekers to stay in Mexico until their immigration court dates in the United States, and began the gradual entry of migrants who still had active cases. His administration also initiated a review of policies “that have effectively closed the US border to asylum seekers.”
Yet the Biden administration has struggled to keep up with the influx of migrants coming to the US southern border, particularly unaccompanied minors, who have been held in Border Patrol stations as officials scramble to find sites to accommodate them.
The Department of Health and Human Services, which is charged with the care of unaccompanied migrant children, announced or opened at least 11 new temporary facilities to try to get kids out of Border Patrol stations, which are akin to jail-like conditions and not suited for children.
Vice President Kamala Harris was assigned by Biden to oversee efforts with Central American countries to stem the flow of migrants to the US southern border. It is the first major issue Biden has assigned Harris, who’s expected to travel to Mexico and Guatemala.
On legal immigration, Biden signed an order seeking to reverse Trump-era policies that targeted low-income immigrants, including calling for a review of the public charge rule, which makes it more difficult for immigrants to obtain legal status if they use public benefits such as Medicaid, food stamps and housing vouchers, and reestablished a Task Force on New Americans.
Biden has, however, gone back and forth on refugee admissions. The White House recently said the President would set a new, increased refugee cap by May 15 after facing blowback for keeping the Trump-era ceiling of 15,000, though without the restrictions put in place by Trump.
A month after he laid out a roughly $2 trillion infrastructure plan aimed at helping the nation recover from the coronavirus pandemic, President Biden unveiled an additional $1.8 trillion federal investment in education, child care and paid family leave during his first address to Congress last night.
The massive package — which Biden is calling the American Families Plan — is the second half of his effort to revitalize the nation and ensure a more equitable recovery. The proposal would also extend or make permanent enhancements to several key tax credits that were contained in the Democrats’ $1.9 trillion rescue bill, which Biden signed into law last month.
The President intends to finance the latest package by hiking taxes on the rich, saying he wants to reward work, not wealth. His new proposed measures would raise about $1.5 trillion over a decade. The families plan pairs with Biden’s infrastructure proposal, known as the American Jobs Plan, which calls for improving the nation’s roads, bridges, broadband, railways and schools.
Here’s a closer look at what is in the plan:
Read more about the proposal here.
President Biden has acted swiftly to strengthen the Affordable Care Act, one of his main campaign promises. His administration has already taken multiple steps to reverse efforts by Trump to destroy the Democrats’ landmark health care law.
Biden reopened the federal Affordable Care Act exchange in mid-February, giving uninsured Americans until mid-August to sign up for 2021 coverage and allowing existing enrollees to shop for better plans with their beefed-up subsidies, which last for two years.
That additional assistance was part of the Democrats’ $1.9 trillion relief package. Enrollees will now pay no more than 8.5% of their incomes toward coverage, down from nearly 10%. And lower-income policyholders and the jobless will receive subsidies that eliminate their premiums completely.
Also, those earning more than 400% of the federal poverty level – about $51,000 for a single person and $104,800 for a family of four in 2021 – are now eligible for help for the first time.
The 14 states, and the District of Columbia, that run their own exchanges have also extended enrollment, though the durations differ by state.
Laid-off workers who want to stay on their work-based coverage will receive subsidies that pay the full premium cost from April through September, as part of the relief package.
Biden has also started withdrawing approvals from the Trump administration that enable states to mandate work requirements in Medicaid.
And the administration has asked the Supreme Court to uphold the Affordable Care Act, reversing the position of the Trump administration, which joined Republican-led states in urging the justices to strike down the entire law. The justices have not yet ruled in the case — and if they upend Obamacare, it’s not clear what Biden and congressional Democrats will be able to pass to replace it.
Facing a crisis of his own, before taking office President Biden made some big promises about what he hoped to accomplish within his first 100 days.
Following the death of George Floyd, Biden committed to creating a national police oversight commission in the first 100 days of his presidency if elected.
Reality: This is one promise Biden has not followed through on. Mere weeks before his 100th day, his administration decided to stand down on such a commission, and will instead try to pass police reform through legislation. In the wake of another Black man being shot by police in the US, Biden’s Domestic Policy Council director, Susan Rice, released a statement announcing the decision.
According to a source familiar with the administration’s efforts, the decision was made after conversations with civil rights leaders and police unions and in “close collaboration” with the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Educational Fund and The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.
Here’s a look at how other campaign promises measure up against reality.
Days before his inauguration, President Biden put forth a massive economic relief proposal, asking Congress to approve $1.9 trillion in funding to provide Americans with another round of stimulus checks, aid for the unemployed, support for small businesses and money to help schools reopen safely.
In March, Congress approved the package, known as the American Rescue Plan. Much of it mirrored Biden’s proposal, though there were some key changes, including narrowing the scope of the $1,400 stimulus payments, trimming the federal boost to unemployment benefits and jettisoning an increase in the federal minimum wage to $15 a hour.
So far, the Biden administration has sent out more than 160 million stimulus payments worth up to $1,400 per person, released more than $80 billion in aid to state education agencies and beefed up Affordable Care Act subsidies on the federal exchange, healthcare.gov. It has also delivered $39 billion to states to help child care providers reopen or stay afloat.
States have largely implemented the $300 federal enhancement to weekly jobless benefits and the extension of two key pandemic unemployment programs through early September. Also in place is a federal income tax break on $10,200 in unemployment compensation for those earning less than $150,000.
The package provides more than $350 billion to states and local governments, territories and tribes, extends a 15% boost to food stamp benefits through September and offers billions of dollars in aid to struggling renters and homeowners. It also greatly enhances the child tax credit for one year, increasing its size, allowing more low-income parents to qualify and providing half of it as a monthly stream of income from July to the end of the year.
Separately, Biden has used his executive powers to expand food assistance, extend the federal moratorium on evictions and continue the suspension of federal student loan payments and interest charges.
Yet the rollout of relief programs hasn’t gone entirely smoothly. A new grant program for struggling restaurants that was established by the bill has yet to launch. The Small Business Administration ran into trouble standing up a grant program for closed theaters and music venues that had been approved under an earlier Covid relief package passed in December. It was taken offline hours after opening and reopened only this week. But money continues to flow through two existing aid programs for small businesses, boosted by the American Rescue Plan: the Paycheck Protection Program and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program.
Also going slowly is the Biden administration’s efforts to provide funds to low-income families whose children are missing free- or reduced-price meals in school because they are learning remotely.
While Biden increased the value of the Pandemic-EBT benefits and the US Department of Agriculture has approved many more state plans for the 2020-21 school year, about a dozen states have not yet gotten the nod, leaving millions of children waiting for the aid program created last spring. Also, many parents are still waiting for the money even in states that have been approved.
President Biden has moved fast since his Jan. 20 swearing-in, signing a $1.9 trillion Covid relief bill into law less than two months into his term and issuing more executive orders so far than his three predecessors.
Biden came into office pledging to administer 100 million vaccine shots by his 100th day in office after Trump fell short of his goal to vaccinate 20 million Americans by the end of 2020. The Biden administration reached its 100 million-shot goal in mid-March, about 40 days ahead of schedule. The administration reached 200 million vaccine doses on April 21 – a week ahead of Biden’s updated timetable.
To speed up and secure an increased vaccine supply, the President invoked the Defense Production Act with Pfizer and Moderna, as well as in a deal with pharmaceutical rivals Merck and Johnson & Johnson – though delivery of Johnson’s vaccine later was temporarily paused by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration. Biden also committed to having the US purchase hundreds of millions more coronavirus vaccine doses throughout his first months in office. Now the White House says the US will have enough vaccines for all adult Americans by the end of May.
To increase Americans’ access to vaccines, the Biden administration started a federal retail pharmacy program that turned more pharmacies into vaccination sites. It also opened up vaccinations at community health centers and set up federally run vaccination centers across the country.
The President ordered an expansion of the list of eligible vaccinators to include dentists, midwives, paramedics and optometrists, among other professionals, to meet increased demand. The administration also committed to partnering with community organizations to transport seniors and people with disabilities to get their vaccinations.
Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, which was passed in March, provided billions in funding to bolster vaccinations.
The President has also pledged up to $4 billion in a US contribution to Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access, or COVAX.
Biden has put public health experts and scientists front and center in a number of roles within the administration, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who had a contentious relationship with Trump, as chief medical adviser and elevated the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to a Cabinet-level position.
And his administration restarted frequent Covid-19 briefings featuring federal government’s public health experts, including Fauci, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, the head of the White House’s Covid-19 health equity task force.
President Biden hit the road today, traveling to Georgia to promote his sweeping economic proposals the day after making the case for the massive new government programs in his first address to a joint session of Congress.
The President and first lady will participate in a drive-in rally in Duluth, Georgia, at 6 p.m. ET to highlight Biden’s accomplishments in his first 100 days in office and make the case for his next legislative push, which is centered around infrastructure and the care-giving economy.
The trip is part of what White House officials are calling the “Getting America Back on Track” tour and comes as the White House pushes a roughly $2 trillion infrastructure and jobs plan and a $1.8 trillion plan for children and families.
The first stop on the President and first lady’s Georgia trip will be to Plains to visit former President Jimmy Carter and former first lady Rosalynn Carter. The Carters were unable to attend Biden’s inauguration, and this will be the first time Biden meets with Carter since becoming president.
The rally in Duluth later Thursday evening will come 100 days after Inauguration Day and takes place in the state that gave Democrats control of the Senate and allowed Biden’s legislative priorities to become reality. Democrats won two runoff elections in January that flipped control of the chamber. Biden was also the first Democrat to win the presidential election in Georgia in decades.
Read more here.
On both sides of the aisle, young people told CNN that President Biden has been more progressive on certain issues than they expected during his first 100 days in office.
While a number of young Democrats say they view Biden’s first 100 days as a launching pad for more progressive action, some young Republicans say they are skeptical that Biden will follow through on his promises, especially when it comes to bipartisanship, which remains a key concern for young conservatives across the country.
“Biden is defying the ways he’s traditionally governed,” John Paul Mejia, an 18-year-old organizer with Sunrise Movement, the youth-led climate activist group, told CNN, adding that Sunrise was included in conversations about climate by the Biden administration, such as who should fill key roles on Biden’s climate team. Sunrise also helped inform the President’s messaging on building new jobs in the process of taking climate action, Mejia said.
“The action he’s taken can be thought of as a start,” Mejia said, adding that along with Biden’s early climate-focused executive orders, there’s still room for the President to champion more progressive policies.
For her part, Chelsea Miller, a frontline organizer and racial justice activist who worked in the Obama White House, agrees that while Biden has made some initial steps forward, he has not been progressive enough when it comes to racial justice.
“The first 100 days served as a stepping stone, but we are far from the destination of where we need to be,” Miller, 24, explained.
While she appreciates that Biden responded swiftly via executive action to social issues such as climate change and anti-Asian hate, Miller said she would like to see the same urgency when it comes to policy focused on Black lives and police brutality.
“I’m surprised that we are 100 days in and we haven’t seen a wide-sweeping approach on anti-racism policies,” Miller told CNN.
“The next 100 days should be about understanding what racial justice looks like in this country,” she said, adding that she envisions an intersectional approach to combating racial injustice, climate change and rebounding from the Covid-19 pandemic.
“The work is just getting started,” Daud Mumin, a 19-year-old board director of March For Our Lives, the youth-led gun violence prevention organization, told CNN.
Despite the Biden administration’s initial gun violence prevention executive orders and investment into community violence intervention, Mumin said March For Our Lives plans to hold the Biden administration accountable when it comes to further action on gun violence prevention, including pushing for legislative action.
When asked what by CNN what comes next, both Mejia and Mumin described feeling “cautiously optimistic” that Biden will work with the Democratic majority in congress to enact even more progressive change in the next 100 days and beyond.
Meanwhile, some young conservatives tell CNN they are frustrated with Biden’s agenda.
Pitts said he is disappointed by Biden, who promised bipartisanship during his campaign, but has yet to find middle ground with his GOP colleagues in Congress.
Like Pitts, Carter Morgan, a 26-year-old Republican from Florida, said his biggest frustration with Biden has been a lack of moderation and compromise.
“Biden campaigned on being a deal maker and a uniter and moderating, and all I’ve seen are party line votes,” Morgan told CNN.
“I’ve never agreed with his policies, but the way he spoke during his campaign made it sound like he was interested in uniting the country,” he said, adding “I don’t know what happened to unity.”
Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell said the United States is in a “once-in-a-generation time of opportunity” after President Biden outlined an aggressive agenda during his first address to a joint session of Congress last night.
“We see fractures in our society. We need to create jobs. … We have roads in bad shape. We’ve got lead still in pipes. Broadband — schoolchildren haven’t been able to learn. These are programs we need to fix. … We also need to look at things like childcare,” the Michigan congresswoman told CNN’s Kate Bolduan.
Dingell said she’s been speaking with Republican colleagues in an effort to work together on making these programs a reality.
“We have to have real discussions. I think that there’s a real need, a lot of hurting people and now is the time,” Dingell added.
Watch:
Sen. Joe Manchin, the powerful West Virginia Democrat, made clear Thursday that the aggressive vision for the federal government that President Biden laid out to the nation must first face scrutiny in Congress, signaling the long slog ahead facing the White House’s sweeping domestic agenda.
Manchin, who is a pivotal swing vote in the 50-50 Senate, said that with signs of a growing economy, on top of the trillions in spending already approved by Congress, lawmakers must be judicious in deciding where to pump additional resources.
As he raised concerns about the price tag along with the proposed tax increases, Manchin reiterated his demand for Senate Democrats to work with Republicans and warned that he would oppose efforts by members of his party if they try to go it alone prematurely.
Manchin did praise the President for his tone and delivery of his speech Wednesday to a joint session of Congress.
“It was a good delivery, a very good delivery. The President put a lot out there, gave people a lot of their hope. The tone is what we needed for our country,” he said.
But he made clear his concerns about key elements of the Biden plan, including calls to raise taxes on capital gains, as well as the trillions in new spending envisioned by the White House.
Asked about the massive price tag, Mahchin said: “It’s a lot. It’s a lot … Here’s the thing. We’ve got 1.9 trillion that hasn’t gone out the door yet, we just passed. American Rescue. … Let’s evaluate what we have done, what we intend=ed to do and how it works. There might be some overlap. We’re looking at everything to make sure that we just don’t spend money for the sake of putting money and causing more debt and causing more maybe increase in inflation and we can overflood the market.”
Some more context: The White House is working on trying to cut a bipartisan deal on a piece of an infrastructure package with Republicans. But it’s unclear how long those talks will play out, and when Democratic leaders may try to go — it alone and use a budget process to pass legislation along party lines, a tactic they used to approve the $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief law.
And it remains to be seen how much of Biden’s push to approve his $1.8 trillion American Families Plan, on top of his $2.5 trillion American Jobs Plan, can be approved with bipartisan support.
Watch:
In 100 days, the US has gone from being heavily criticized for its Covid-19 response – with more than 570,000 recorded deaths, the highest number in the world – to the envy of the world on vaccinations, with an inoculation rate more than four times the global average.
But the country is now at a tipping point. With vaccine supply secured, it’s now set to outpace demand at a critical moment, with Covid-19 variants on the rise. And the Biden administration’s success or failure in reaching the hesitant and convincing everyone to take the vaccine will be critical in determining whether the country can finally win the war against the virus and move forward.
The administration insisted it would always lead with the science, but the science has often moved too slowly for a public eager to get back to normal. Some critics have said the Biden team should have put out earlier guidance about travel and socializing after vaccination, as an incentive to get the shot.
More than half of adults in the US have now had at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, but reaching the second half may be much harder.
Hesitancy remains a huge hurdle to reaching herd immunity, as vaccination numbers are starting to decline. Some communities of color are skeptical, vaccinations in rural areas are lagging and half of Republican men say they won’t take the vaccine.
“It’s absolutely crazy,” Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said of vaccine hesitancy among Republicans. “The only way we ever get life back to normal is if we get enough people to get that vaccine.”
With all American adults now eligible for a shot, the country has reached a new phase of the vaccination effort: A massive PR campaign on social media, on TV and radio and in newspapers that enlists celebrities, politicians, doctors and local community leaders to tout the benefits and safety of the vaccine, and urge people to sign up.
“We always have to make sure that messages are tailored,” Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, chair of the White House Covid-19 Equity Task Force, said. “So that’s about saying, what are your particular concerns? What misinformation often, and disinformation have you heard? And how can we debunk that?”
Read more here.
Last week, President Biden fulfilled his pledge to host a global climate summit within his first 100 days in office. During the event, he committed the US to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 50% to 52% below its 2005 emissions levels by 2030.
While the goals are part of the Paris climate agreement, which Biden rejoined upon taking office, they are non-binding and the administration has not rolled out a plan on how the US will meet them.
The wide range of leaders attending the two-day summit included a number of American allies, such as France’s Emmanuel Macron and the United Kingdom’s Boris Johnson, as well as leaders with whom Biden anticipates having a more confrontational relationship, like China’s Xi Jinping and Putin.
While some countries reiterated during the summit that they were working toward their previously set climate goals, others, including Canada and South Korea, announced they were upping their targets.
Biden signed an executive order on his first day in office reversing Trump’s 2017 decision to withdraw from the 2015 Paris climate accords, the landmark international agreement to limit global warming championed by Obama. The US was the first and only country to pull out of the agreement, officially exiting in late 2020.
As part of the global deal, which the US formally rejoined in February after a 30-day review, countries are expected to enhance their commitments to curb greenhouse gas emissions every five years. The goals of the global pact are to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius and pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Read more about what Biden has done in his first 100 days here.
While the US-China relationship was a key issue during the campaign, Biden has focused on three other areas since taking office: Afghanistan, Iran and Russia.
Two decades after the US launched what would become America’s longest war, Biden has committed to withdrawing troops from Afghanistan before Sept. 11, the 20th anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and at the Pentagon, just outside Washington.
Biden said the withdrawal will begin May 1, in line with an agreement made with the Taliban during the Trump administration. Some US troops will remain in Afghanistan to protect American diplomats, but a precise number of remaining troops has not been disclosed. US humanitarian and diplomatic efforts will continue in Afghanistan and the US will continue to support peace efforts between the Afghan government and the Taliban, Biden said.
The President has also moved to salvage the US-Iran nuclear deal put in place in 2015 under President Barack Obama, which was abandoned by the Trump administration in 2018.
The US and Iran resumed talks in Vienna in April, though delegations from the two countries did not interact directly but instead exchanged views through officials from the global powers still party to the deal. A State Department official stressed earlier this month that the Vienna conversations were “just the first step of this first phase of a potential return to” the nuclear deal.
And the Biden administration issued sweeping sanctions and diplomatic expulsions against Russia in response to Moscow’s interference in the 2020 US election, its SolarWinds cyberattack and its continued occupation and “severe rights abuses” in Crimea.
The US pointed to the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service as the group behind the SolarWinds hack. The White House also said it is expelling 10 Russian diplomats in Washington, including “representatives of Russian intelligence services,” for the hack and the election meddling.
The Biden administration also barred US financial institutions from participating in the primary market for bonds issued by Russia’s central bank and other leading financial institutions. Two days before issuing the sanctions, Biden spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin and proposed a summit between the two countries later this year.
Read more about what Biden has done in his first 100 days here.
President Biden signed a flurry of executive actions in his first 100 days in office, primarily aimed at curbing the coronavirus pandemic and dismantling many of former President Donald Trump’s policies.
The executive actions include halting funding for the construction of Trump’s border wall, reversing Trump’s travel ban targeting largely Muslim countries, imposing a mask mandate on federal property, ramping up vaccination supplies, canceling the Keystone XL pipeline, ending federal use of private prisons and reversing Trump’s ban on transgender Americans joining the military.
In his first 100 days in office, Biden signed more than 60 executive actions, 24 of which are direct reversals of Trump’s policies.
Biden has defended the number as necessary to undo what he considers “bad policy” inherited from Trump, especially on immigration.
To date, 10 of his 12 actions on immigration are reversals of Trump’s policies.
You can see all of Biden’s first 100 days of executive actions here.
A new CNN Poll conducted by SSRS finds 53% of Americans approve of the way President Biden is handling the job and say he has had the right priorities, and 59% say he is doing a good job keeping his campaign promises.
Biden earns broad approval for his handling of the defining issue of the last year of American life, the coronavirus pandemic. Overall, 66% approve of his handling of it, up 6 points since early March.
He earns near universal approval on the issue from Democrats (97% approve), 65% approval among independents, and 30% approval from Republicans — 16 points higher than GOP approval for Biden on any other issue tested in the poll.
Biden earns net positive approval ratings on seven of the nine issues tested in the poll. After coronavirus, the President earns his highest ratings for his handling of environmental policy and racial injustice (54% approve of each). Further, 52% approve of his handling of the role of commander-in-chief, and about half each approve of his handling of the economy (51%), taxes (50%) and foreign affairs (48%).
The poll suggests Americans are starting to see signs of life in an economy that has been stalled for much of the last year. Most, 54%, say economic conditions are very or somewhat good, up from 43% who felt that way in January. And nearly 6 in 10 say they expect the economy to be in good shape a year from now (58%).
Vice President Kamala Harris also holds a 53% approval rating in the poll. Her disapproval number is lower than Biden’s (37% disapprove of Harris, 43% Biden), and a larger share say they are unsure how they feel about her work.
There is a stark gender gap in views of Harris, the first woman to become vice president: 58% of women approve of her handling of the job compared with 48% of men. That is nearly identical to the gender divide in Biden’s numbers as well, but Harris’ ratings feature gender gaps among Democrats and independents that are not there for Biden. Among Democratic women, 94% approve of the way Harris is handling her job, and 88% of Democratic men agree. And most independent women approve (52%), while only 46% of independent men do. For Biden, there are just 2-point gaps by gender among Democrats and independents.
President Biden has moved fast since his Jan. 20 swearing-in, signing a $1.9 trillion Covid relief bill into law less than two months into his term and issuing more executive orders so far than his three predecessors.
Those efforts have paid off, with the administration reaching the milestones of 200 million coronavirus shots delivered and vaccine eligibility opened to everyone 16 and over before Biden’s 100th day in office. Unemployment is falling, with new jobless claims hitting a pandemic low, and schools are reopening for in-person learning, returning kids and families to a semblance of normal life.
As the President begins his next 100 days, what issues do you want him to focus on and why? Leave your comments in the box below and we may feature some of them.
President Biden laid out a far-reaching agenda last night to Congress, one that implored his former Senate colleagues and House of Representatives to get to work and close out nearly a dozen issues Biden has worked on for most of his career.
The wish list, however, faces a harsh reality in Congress where lawmakers may be more engaged in policy than we’ve seen for years, but the dynamics of a narrow majority and ideologically diverse Democratic caucus threatens Biden’s legacy as a transformative President and none of those agenda items is more ambitious than his plan to redefine infrastructure.
Bottom line: The President said as much with what he did say last night as what he didn’t. Biden wasted little time trying to convince Republicans, instead focusing his time and energy on running through a series of agenda items that lawmakers have been grappling with for years: gun reform, policing, infrastructure, immigration, raising the minimum wage, providing more education for workers and raising taxes on corporations and wealthy Americans that Biden argued last night do not always pay their fair share. But, while many of those items are within reach within the Democratic caucus, as Sen. Joe Manchin put it yesterday, “the devil is in the details” and on infrastructure, it’s especially true.
On infrastructure: This week, the White House formally unveiled part two of their infrastructure plan, providing 12 weeks of paid emergency and family leave, expanding access to childcare, expanding Obamacare subsidies and extending the expansion of the more generous child tax credit that passed in the Covid-19 relief bill.
But, Biden’s frameworks shouldn’t be seen as the final step. Congress is not going to take the plan, put it into a bill and pass it in the next month. The White House spent this week educating lawmakers and key committee staff on what their priorities are when it comes to the families’ plan, but Congress won’t be passing a carbon copy. As aides have put it to me, all that has happened so far is the first leg of a relay is over. Now, Congress has the baton and their leg of the race? It’s a lot longer and way more fraught.
Read more here.
White House senior adviser Anita Dunn said Thursday there is not a specific timeline for Congressional Democrats to go it alone on President Biden’s sweeping infrastructure proposals as negotiations continue on Capitol Hill, emphasizing a desire for bipartisanship.
Biden, she said during an appearance on MSNBC, would “prefer to work in a bipartisan way, he would prefer to have Congress work in a bipartisan way.” But, she added, “At the end of the day, if we have to move forward, we will move forward.”
Asked if there was a deadline for making a decision to proceed via the reconciliation process, which would require a simple majority of Democrat votes in the Senate, she explained that the nation “was in a crisis” during efforts to pass the Covid relief package, when that process was last employed.
“We really could not wait for a long, protracted legislative process,” she said of the Covid-19 relief bill.
But with the infrastructure proposals now, Dunn said, “These are investments in our future, so they don’t have the same crisis that the rescue plan had, but they’re important. And as the President has said, inaction is not an option.”
She continued, “We’re going to work with Democrats and Republicans, we’re going to see how far we can get. So we don’t have a firm deadline out there. We’re going to wait and see how much real cooperation. What kind of good faith negotiations we can get and so far we’ve been encouraged, as the President said last night, by Republicans in the Senate who are engaging with us on infrastructure and other issues.”
Pressed on the narrow majority in Congress, she said it is the “beginning of the process” and Biden will be talking with bipartisan lawmakers.
Dunn also previewed efforts to sell the package to Americans more broadly during a travel blitz titled the “Getting America Back on Track” tour.
“We’re gonna be out there, Cabinet members, everybody, telling the American people what’s in these plans, and what’s in it for them,” she said.
Last month, President Biden laid out a massive plan to improve the nation’s infrastructure and shift to greener energy.
The roughly $2 trillion proposal, which Congress will spend months on, would provide funding for roads, bridges, trains, broadband, airports, waterways and ports. He would put billions toward manufacturing, job retraining, housing, schools, veterans’ hospitals and federal buildings.
He would also lay out $400 billion to enhance long-term-care services for elderly Americans and those with disabilities, as well as improve the pay of home health workers.
To pay for the package, he would increase a variety of taxes on businesses, including raising the corporate rate to 28% from 21%, where it was set by the 2017 Republican tax cuts.
The President unveiled an additional $1.8 trillion federal investment in education, child care and paid family leave during his first address to Congress on Wednesday.
The proposal calls for making community college free for two years, investing in a universal preschool program for 3- and 4-year-olds, providing paid family and medical leave and helping families afford child care. It would also extend or make permanent enhancements to several key tax credits that were contained in the rescue bill.
To pay for the plan, Biden would raise taxes on the wealthy. In particular, he would reverse a key part of the Republicans’ 2017 tax cuts by returning the top marginal income tax rate to 39.6% for those in the top 1%. The GOP law had reduced it to 37%. The President would also raise the capital gains tax rate for households earning more than $1 million annually.
President Biden’s joint address to Congress may have been the primetime marker of his first 100 days in office, but it also served as the launch point for an all-out, administration-wide blitz to highlight accomplishments – and the ambitious legislative push ahead.
The Biden administration said they would launch what officials are calling the “Getting America Back on Track” tour the day after Biden’s speech on Wednesday, with Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, their spouses and key Cabinet officials fanning out to roughly a dozen states to highlight their first 100 days in office and Biden’s ambitious economic legislative agenda, a White House official tells CNN.
Biden and first lady Jill Biden are scheduled to travel to Atlanta, Georgia, the state that gave his White House its crucial Senate majority today. Biden will then head to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the next day. Harris will travel to Baltimore, Maryland, on Thursday, then head to Ohio for a stop on Friday.
The purpose of the trips will be two-fold, the official said. There will be an element of a victory lap, with Biden highlighting the $1.9 trillion Covid relief law, his cornerstone legislative achievement to this point, as well the administration’s vaccine rollout which has already clinched Biden’s goal of 200 million doses delivered in his first 100 days in office.
But a significant component of the travel will be to add rhetorical heft around the country to Biden’s next major legislative push – a sweeping two-part package totaling more than $4 trillion that would provide once-in-a-generation investments in physical infrastructure, but also transformative spending on what White House officials are calling the “human infrastructure.”
President Biden made a sweeping case Wednesday for massive new programs that would transform the government’s role in Americans’ lives, claiming nothing less than the future of the country is at stake as he delivered his first address to Congress.
Coming later than usual, on the eve of his 100th day in office, Biden delivered his speech amid swirling health and economic crises he has spent his term combating.
But his message went beyond simply ridding the country of coronavirus or getting Americans back to work. In Biden’s telling, the results of those efforts could determine whether American Democracy survives at all: a live-or-die proposition that escalated his calls for trillions of dollars in new spending into an existential question for his audience of lawmakers.
His speech was laden with symbolism, from its scaled-down audience to the historic pair of women sitting behind him. It was a speech decades in the making for a president who has waited longer than most to be introduced with the familiar call: “Madam Speaker, the President of the United States.”
Here are some key takeaways from Biden’s speech:
Read more here.
