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    Biden’s 100 days: bold action and broad vision amid grief and turmoil

    On the 50th day of his presidency, Joe Biden marched into the Oval Office and took a seat behind the Resolute desk, where the massive, 628-page American Rescue Plan awaited his signature. Across the room hung a portrait of Franklin D Roosevelt, a nod to the transformative presidency Biden envisions for a nation tormented by disease, strife and division.The $1.9tn package was designed to tame the worst public health crisis in a century and to pave the way for an overhaul of the American economy. It overcame unanimous Republican opposition in Congress, where Democrats hold the barest majority.“This historic legislation is about rebuilding the backbone of this country and giving people in this nation, working people, middle-class folks, people who built the country, a fighting chance,” Biden said. And with the flick of a pen, he signed into law one of the most expensive economic relief bills in American history.Biden took office at a moment of profound grief and turmoil, inheriting from Donald Trump a virus that has killed more than 550,000 and exposed glaring inequalities in healthcare, education and the economy. Fear and anxiety still gripped the nation in the aftermath of the 6 January insurrection at the Capitol, when Trump loyalists stormed the building in a bloody attempt to stop lawmakers certifying Biden’s electoral victory. All of this amid a generational reckoning on race and the ever-accelerating threat of climate change.One hundred days into his term, Biden’s solution to the myriad crises is an ambitious economic agenda that promises to “own the future” by dramatically expanding the role of government in American life.The White House is guided by the belief that if it can lift the nation from the Covid-19 crisis and the economic havoc it wrought, it can begin to restore Americans’ faith in government and pave the way for the next phase of the Biden presidency.“We need to remember the government isn’t some foreign force in a distant capital,” Biden said in his first primetime address, hours after signing the American Rescue Plan. “It’s us. All of us.”The pandemic remains an inescapable challenge. But the picture is inarguably brighter than it was when Biden delivered his inaugural address in January to a sea of American flags marking the crowds absent from the Mall. Now, Biden is dangling the prospect of backyard barbecues by the Fourth of July.Marshaling a “full-scale, wartime effort”, his administration has built one of the largest and most effective mass immunization campaigns in the world.At its peak the US was administering more than 3m shots a day. In a nation of nearly 330 million, more than 50% of adults including 80% over 65 are at least partially vaccinated. Last week, Biden surpassed his goal of administering 200m shots by his 100th day. The problem is rapidly becoming too much vaccine and not enough people willing to be vaccinated.“That was arguably one of his main jobs as president – to start getting this pandemic under control,” said Dr Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, “It’s not fully under control yet, but it is clearly in much better shape than it would have been had this incredible vaccination effort not happened.”Jha credits the campaign’s success to several factors, from improving coordination between the federal government and states to tweaking the way doses are extracted from vials. He added that such success is due in part to the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed, which dramatically accelerated vaccine development.Deaths from the coronavirus have declined sharply since a peak in January, as many of the most vulnerable Americans are vaccinated. Yet infections are rising again in many parts of the country. The more contagious B117 variant of the coronavirus that was first discovered in the UK has emerged as the dominant strain in the US, and young people are at particular risk. Even so, a number of Republican states have ignored Biden’s pleas to keep mask mandates and other restrictions in place.Reaching the roughly 130 million Americans who have yet to be inoculated remains a challenge, as demand softens and vaccine hesitancy persists. As of 19 April, all adult Americans became eligible to receive a vaccine, marking what Biden called a “new phase” of the immunization effort.Public health experts are working to confront misinformation and conspiracy theories. The decision by federal health officials to temporarily halt the use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine after rare instances of blood clots among millions who have received the shot further fueled mistrust in some corners.“The biggest challenge that the administration faces over the next 100 days is in building confidence in people who are not sure they want the vaccine,” Jha said. “That is going to take an enormous amount of effort and, in some ways, it’s much harder than simply building vaccination sites because it’s sociological.”As the vaccine campaigns help Americans push past the pandemic, and the economy begins to show signs of recovery after a year of hardship, Biden is turning to the potentially legacy defining pieces of his agenda. He plans to spend trillions more on an infrastructure package.“It is not a plan that tinkers around the edges,” Biden said, introducing the first half of a multi-trillion dollar agenda in a speech outside Pittsburgh. “It is a once-in-a-generation investment in America.”The president’s “Build Back Better” agenda widens the definition of infrastructure to include investments in home care, an expansion of broadband and a restructuring of the tax system in addition to more traditional public works projects like roads, bridges and railways. It also represents the cornerstone of Biden’s fight against climate change, which he has called the “the existential crisis of our time”. Embedded throughout the plan are proposals to reduce carbon emissions by investing in green infrastructure and technologies, electric vehicles and clean energy, as well as a clean electricity standard that aims to ​decarbonize the nation’s power sector by 2035 – and the whole economy by mid-century.At a White House virtual climate summit with world leaders, Biden unveiled an ambitious ​new pledge ​to cut US carbon emissions by at least half by 2030.A forthcoming piece of his infrastructure agenda is expected to center on expanding childcare services and making education more affordable and accessible. It too envisions hundreds of billions of dollars of spending.It is perhaps a surprising approach for a man who has spent nearly four decades in public life building a reputation as a consensus-minded moderate eager to negotiate with his “friends across the aisle”. In the Democratic primary, he was cast as the establishment alternative in a field of rising stars and progressive challengers.But since emerging as the party’s standard bearer, Biden has steadily embraced a more expansive vision, arguing that the social and economic moment demands bold action.During his first press conference last month, Biden said repeatedly he wanted to “change the paradigm” – a stark shift in tone from the early days of his presidential campaign, when he promised donors that under his leadership “nothing would fundamentally change”.Congressman Jim Clyburn, the Democratic majority whip and a close ally and friend of the president, said Biden’s tenure has so far “exceeded my expectations – not my hopes are my dreams – but my expectations.”Clyburn, who is widely credited with saving Biden’s campaign by endorsing him weeks before the South Carolina primary, said he was pleasantly surprised by Biden’s infrastructure proposal, which he “didn’t expect to be as bold as it is”.“A lot of people, I among them, felt that because of this 50-50 split in the Senate, he would go less bold,” Clyburn said. “But I think that he has calculated, the way that I would, that in the legislative process, you never get all that you ask for … so it’s much better to get some of a big bill, then some of a little bill.”Republicans are balking at the scale and cost of Biden’s plans, as well as his proposal to pay for it by raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has vowed to fight Democrats “every step of the way” on Biden’s infrastructure plan, which he has panned as a “Trojan Horse” for liberal priorities.“It won’t build back better,” he said last week. “It’ll build back never.”Democratic leaders have yet to choose a legislative path forward for Biden’s infrastructure plan, but, thanks to a recent ruling by the Senate parliamentarian, they now have multiple avenues to circumvent Republican opposition.Biden’s infrastructure plan has not sat well with moderate Republicans, who say they were expecting a governing partner in the White House.“A Senate evenly split between both parties and a bare Democratic House majority are hardly a mandate to ‘go it alone’,” Mitt Romney, a Republican senator from Utah who is part of a working group that hopes to find a bipartisan solution on infrastructure, wrote recently on Twitter.The group unveiled a counterproposal hat is a fraction of the size of Biden’s public works plan, touting it as a “very generous offer”. The White House welcomed the effort but the vast spending gap suggested the differences between the parties may be too wide to overcome.The president is keenly aware of the difficult math in the Senate, having spent more than 30 years in the chamber. Even if bipartisan discussions collapse and Democrats go it alone, Biden will still face challenges keeping his ungainly coalition together.But in choosing bold action over incrementalism, Biden is gambling that voters will forgive the price tag if Democrats can deliver tangible results like universal broadband and affordable childcare while seeking to put Republicans on the defensive over their opposition to a plan that polling suggests is broadly popular.A recent New York Times survey found that two in three Americans, including seven in 10 independents, approve of Biden’s infrastructure spending.Progressives are pressing the 78-year-old president to act urgently, knowing Democrats’ precarious hold on Congress is only guaranteed through January 2022. Declaring the “era of small government” over, they argue that there is a political risk to being too cautious. Pursuing an expansive economic agenda, they say, is not only good policy but good politics.Biden, for the most part, appears to agree. He has argued that spending too little confronting the nation’s crises is riskier than spending too much. He told Republicans at a meeting last week that he was open to compromise, but vowed that “inaction is not an option”.In a recent speech, Biden said it was time to retire the theory of “trickle down” economics, saying now was the time for building an economy that “grows from the bottom up and the middle out”.“This is the first time we’ve been able, since the Johnson administration and maybe even before that, to begin to change the paradigm,” the president said.Shortly after former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty of murdering George Floyd last week, Biden placed an emotional call. Huddled in the courthouse, Floyd’s family put the president on speakerphone.“At least, God, now there is some justice,” Biden told them. “We’re all so relieved.”Their attorney, Ben Crump, urged the president to pressure Congress to pass policing reform and to use this moment to confront America’s violent legacy of racism.“You got it, pal,” Biden said. “This gives us a shot to deal with genuine, systemic racism.”The murder of Floyd, who was Black, at the hands of a white police officer touched off global protests against police brutality and systemic racism. Biden said then that the long overdue racial reckoning created a once-in-a-generation opportunity to directly historic racial injustices.As president, Biden has placed emphasis on racial equity, drawing support from civil rights activists and criticism from conservatives.He assembled a cabinet that is the most diverse in history, including the first female, first African American and first Asian American vice-president, as well as the first Native American and first openly gay cabinet secretaries, the first female treasury secretary, the first African American defense secretary and the first immigrant to lead the Department of Homeland Security.Confronting systemic racism is the “responsibility of the whole of our government”, the White House declared, laying out steps the new administration would take to address inequality in housing, education, criminal justice, healthcare and the economy.He has emphasized equity in vaccine distribution and targeted underserved communities with his $1.9tn relief plan. His infrastructure plan dedicates funding to neighborhoods harmed by pollution and environmental hazards as well as to homecare aids, predominantly women of color. He endorsed statehood for the District of Columbia, a heavily Black city that does not have voting representation in Congress. He warned that some states were “backsliding into the days of Jim Crow” by imposing new voting restrictions.Yet a major voting rights bill remains stalled along with a long-promised policing overhaul. Biden’s sweeping immigration reform has yet to gain traction as Republicans hammer the administration over an influx of migrant children at the Mexico border. Spasms of gun violence have renewed calls for gun control.Biden’s first in-person meeting with a foreign leader began with the Japanese prime pinister, Yoshihide Suga, extending his condolences for a mass shooting at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis, which left eight people dead. Suga also condemned a rising tide of violence against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders since the start of coronavirus lockdowns.The summit underscored Biden’s belief that the nation’s crises are not only an inflection point for America – but for the world. Biden has framed his domestic revitalization effort as part of a global conflict between authoritarianism and democracy.“That’s what competition between America and China and the rest of the world is all about,” Biden said in his infrastructure speech. “It’s a basic question: Can democracies still deliver for their people?”Jonathan Alter, author of The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope, said Biden, like the 32nd president, has a rare opportunity to transform the political landscape for generations.“Roosevelt and his New Deal represented a new social contract between the government and the people in terms of what the government owed Americans,” he said. That lasted for nearly five decades, he said, until Ronald Reagan gave rise to a new era of small-government and free-market competition.Whether Biden can forge a new social contract to meet the most urgent challenges of the 21st century – yawning inequality, a warming climate and rising authoritarianism – is a question unlikely to be answered by his 100th day in office, Alter cautioned. But he expects the next 100 to be revealing.“It’s hard to imagine but Biden has already spent several times as much in 1933-dollars as Roosevelt did in his first 100 days,” Alter said. “And the odds that a Rooseveltian achievement in American political life will take place this year are highly likely.” More

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    Biden presidency: return to ‘normal’ belies an audacious agenda

    “Just imagine,” tweeted Pete Buttigieg last October, “turning on the TV, seeing your president, and feeling your blood pressure go down instead of up”.Joe Biden’s first hundred days in the White House appear to have been successful in lowering the nation’s blood pressure after a four-year white knuckle ride with Donald Trump.Americans no longer dread awakening to all caps tweets that run the gamut from threatening war to insulting some celebrity’s looks. Journalists express gratitude for getting their weekends back. Cable news has returned to its old drumbeat of hurricanes, mass shootings and the British royal family soap opera.It is evidence that Biden has adopted a get-out-of-the-way approach, returning to the stylistic norms of Trump’s predecessors and an era when citizens did not have to think about their president all day every day. The mood change in Washington is tangible.“I found myself for the last four years waking up in the morning and feeling quite happy and then this dark cloud would come over my head and I’d think: something’s wrong,” recalled Sally Quinn, an author and journalist. “And then I would think, Donald Trump got elected president! My God. That’s gone now and honestly, it’s like it never happened.“I look back on what went on and how we were all just filled with a constant anxiety and upset and disruption and chaos and anger and outrage and everything else. Everybody I know is just calmer and, of course, Biden comes at the same time that we’ve got the [coronavirus] vaccine and summer is coming. It’s such a different environment now. It’s so peaceful.”Trump’s vice-like grip on the nation’s consciousness quickly began to fade after he was banned from Facebook and Twitter following the 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol. He now releases email statements from his “45 Office”, sometimes in the style of a tweet, but most of them drift harmlessly into the ether.His interviews on Fox News and other conservative media have a similarly modest impact. An analysis by the Washington Post found that in March 2021, “Google search interest [in Trump] was lower than at any point since June 2015, as was the amount of time he was seen on cable.“The networks were covering him far less, down to the point reached last year when the pandemic overtook Trump in the national attention. Besides that, the average mentions of Trump in March were back to the levels seen in November 2015.”But this is not because Biden has emulated the shock and awe tactics that gave Trump the constant media attention he craved. The Democrat has given only one solo press conference and indulges less “chopper talk” with reporters before boarding Marine One on the White House south lawn. His press secretary, Jen Psaki, avoids the banana skins that felled her predecessors so her live briefings are seldom shown on cable news.Whereas the Trump White House produced almost nightly revelations of palace intrigue or the latest twist in the Russia investigation, Biden’s version is proving stubbornly leakproof. There has even been mental space for “dog bites man” stories involving the president’s German Shepherds, Champ and Major.One of the impacts of Biden’s 100 days on my personal life: my wife has reverted to happily listening to music in the morning instead of anxiously listening to news.— David Frum (@davidfrum) April 25, 2021
    Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington, said: “President Trump was in our faces 24/7 and Joe Biden, if anything, has moved closer to the other end of the spectrum.“He and his team appear to have decided that when it comes to presidential visibility less is more, that if presidential appearances are reserved for events of significance, whether they’re speeches, press conferences, comments on important issues or important meetings, that’s just fine. There are real advantages to not being the focal point of everything.”Although Biden is similarly unspectacular on Twitter, his chief of staff, Ron Klain, is a feistier presence. Klain frequently tweets updates on vaccination progress and other accomplishments of the administration, and is not averse to retweeting spiky posts about Republicans or whatever is the talk of Washington that day.Chris Whipple, author of The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency, said: “It’s unusual but, in a way, it’s a perfect bully pulpit for Klain, a combination of cheerleading and agenda setting that seems to work for him.“The White House chief traditionally tries to keep everybody in the administration on the same page and I think this may be one way to do it. Everybody knows what his priorities are at any given moment of the day, whenever he’s tweeting. He’s able to advance Joe Biden’s agenda by cheerleading and also keeping everybody in line. It seems to work for him.”A return to “normal” is not inherently a positive. There is a school of thought that the political status quo was what got America into trouble in the first place, giving rise to an outsider like Trump who promised to smash the system. But analysts point to a difference between Biden’s style and substance.His quiet, almost boring approach belies an audacious agenda that has earned comparisons with with Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. Ezra Klein, a columnist for the New York Times, argues that dialing down the conflict allows Biden to dial up the policy: “Speak softly and pass a big agenda.”Or to put it another way, whereas Trump’s sound and fury may have signified not very much, Biden’s near disappearing act could ultimately allow him to be far more consequential.Galston, a former policy adviser to Bill Clinton, added: “This feels a lot more normal. In many respects, it’s an administration whose mores we can recognize, whether we celebrate them or not. But the administration is not normal in the way that perhaps counts the most: namely, in its policy ambition.”Trump is not necessarily gone for good. He continues to exert huge influence over the Republican party and could soon return to the political stage, campaigning during the 2022 midterm elections and perhaps even for the White House in 2024. But for now, many of those whose dreams he haunted are enjoying a new dawn.Moe Vela, who was a senior adviser to Biden when he was vice-president, said: “It’s the biggest sigh of relief in the sense that my stress levels are reduced dramatically because I don’t have to go and read about what that idiot was tweeting or what damage did he do today.“I don’t think that we, as the majority of Americans that voted for Joe Biden, realised just how much that was stressful emotionally, mentally and spiritually. I feel like a tremendous burden has been lifted off my shoulders and my heart. There’s a feeling that somehow everything’s going to be OK with Joe Biden there, and that was the absolute antithesis of what I felt under Donald Trump.” More

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    Republicans fret over AOC backing for Biden as 100-day mark draws near

    As Joe Biden welcomed a series of polls showing majority approval for his first 100 days in the White House, and prepared to address Congress for the first time on Wednesday, Republicans attacked his progressive record in office.One senior senator said: “AOC said his first 100 days exceeded her expectations. That’s all you need to know.”Lindsey Graham of South Carolina was talking to Fox News Sunday about remarks by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a congresswoman and leading progressive from New York.Speaking to an online meeting on Friday, she said: “The Biden administration and President Biden have definitely exceeded expectations that progressives had.”Citing the $1.9tn Covid relief and stimulus bill, Ocasio-Cortez said Biden had been “very impressive” in negotiating with Congress to pass “progressive legislation”. She also voiced dissatisfaction with Biden’s $2.25tn infrastructure package.On Sunday, speaking to CNN’s State of the Union, Vice-President Kamala Harris trumpeted the administration’s achievements.“We are going to lift half of America’s children out of poverty,” she said. “How about that? How about that? Think about that … That’s good stuff. That’s really good stuff.”Republicans oppose the price tag on the American Jobs Plan and priorities within it, including plans to raise taxes on wealthier Americans and proposed spending on environmental initiatives.So do some Democrats – on Sunday the West Virginia senator Joe Manchin, a key vote in the 50-50 chamber, told CNN he favoured a slimmed down, “more targeted” bill.Graham was not the only senior GOP figure to complain about something many on the left have praised: that Biden campaigned as a moderate but is governing more as a progressive.Also speaking to Fox News Sunday, the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, accused Biden of “a bait and switch. The bait was he was going to govern as bipartisan but the switch is, he’s governed as a socialist”.Graham said: “During the campaign, he made us all believe that Joe Biden would be the moderate choice, that he really thought court-packing was a bonehead idea. All of a sudden we got a commission to change the structure of the supreme court. Making DC a state, I think that’s a very radical idea that will change the make-up of the United States Senate.”Progressives defend Biden’s commission on the supreme court as a necessary answer to Republican hardball tactics that skewed the panel 6-3 in favour of rightwing judges. However, Biden’s commission to examine the issue both contains conservative voices and is unlikely to produce an increase beyond nine justices any time soon.A bill to make DC a state, thereby giving the city representation it currently lacks and almost certainly electing two Democratic senators, has passed the House but is unlikely to pass the Senate.“AOC said his first 100 days exceeded her expectations,” Graham added. “That’s all you need. I like Joe Biden, but I’m in the 43%.”Sunday brought a slew of polls. Fox News put the president’s approval rating at 54% positive to 43% negative, nine points up on Donald Trump at the same time four years ago. NBC put Biden up 51%-43%, ABC made it 52%-42% and CBS reported a 58%-42% split.Graham also insisted Biden had “been a disaster on foreign policy”.The South Carolina senator was once an eager ally of John McCain, the late Arizona senator, presidential nominee and a leading GOP voice on foreign affairs. Biden was a senator from Delaware for 36 years and chaired the foreign relations committee.“The border is in chaos,” Graham said, “the Iranians are off the mat … Afghanistan is gonna fall apart, Russia and China are already pushing him around. So I’m very worried.“I think he’s been a very destabilising president, and economically thrown a wet blanket over the recovery, wanting to raise taxes a large amount and regulate America basically out of business.“So I’m not very impressed with the first 100 days. This is not what I thought I would get from Joe Biden.” More

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    Biden’s big climate pledge: can it succeed, and what noticeable changes could it bring?

    Joe Biden has closed out a two-day climate summit of more than 40 world leaders by warning that the planet risks reaching the “point of no return” if more isn’t done to escalate efforts to constrain the climate crisis.Biden, along with several other national leaders, made a number of new promises in the summit. Here’s what it all means.What has Joe Biden promised at the summit?As its centerpiece announcement, the Biden administration has said planet-heating emissions will be cut by 50%-52% by 2030. The target was officially submitted to the United Nations as part of an overarching global system where countries submit voluntary emissions reduction goals in order to collectively avoid dangerous global heating.On top of this, the summit saw an American promise to double financial aid for developing countries struggling with the escalating droughts, floods, heatwaves and other impacts of the climate crisis, as well as a new US push to work with other countries on clean energy innovation.The White House hopes the new commitments will spur other countries to do more, as well as signal the return of the US to the top table to climate leadership after a ruinous self-imposed exile under Donald Trump.Is that enough to deal with the threat of climate change?No. But then very little at this stage is sufficient. Despite decades of warnings from scientists, global greenhouse gas emissions have continued to soar, only dipping last year due to pandemic-related shutdowns. The cuts required to stave off truly disastrous global heating are now precipitously steep – reduce by around half this decade and then to zero by 2050.Some activists feel the US could be doing more, with a group of protesters dumping wheelbarrows of manure outside the White House on Thursday. The climate aid pledge has also been criticized as “very low” by ActionAid USA.Conversely, the US goal is one of the most ambitious for a developed country, will make a significant dent in overall emissions and has generally been received as striking the right balance between ambitious and feasible by governments desperate to see the world’s largest economy rejoin the climate battle.“Is it enough? No,” said John Kerry, Biden’s climate envoy. “But it’s the best we can do today and prove we can begin to move.”How will big reductions in emissions change Americans’ lives?Emissions have been gradually declining in the US for several years, largely due to the collapse of the ailing coal industry. Cutting emissions in half within a decade will require far more aggressive, and noticeable, changes – an explosion in solar and wind jobs, a rapid shift to electric cars, the refitting of energy inefficient buildings, the demise of coal country, a revamp of farming practices.Biden has framed this unprecedented transition as a glorious economic opportunity – “when I think of climate change, I think of jobs” has become a presidential slogan – and while experts agree that millions of new jobs can flow from a shift to clean energy the change will be jarring to some, particularly those working in fossil fuels.Regulations to force oil, coal and gas out of the energy system, along with mandates for electric cars, will have to materialize. But the climate problem is manifest – if the US is to get to net zero emissions by 2050 the focus at some point will shift to everything from airline and shipping emissions to gas stovetops in homes to whether a switch away from meat eating could help lower the sizable methane pollution from cattle.Biden’s task is to help accelerate a shift already under way to renewables while cushioning the blow to those left by the wayside, all while avoiding a backlash from an American public wary of personal sacrifice.How likely is it Biden will be able to deliver this?There are record levels of alarm among the American public over the climate crisis, with majorities of Democratic and Republican voters supporting action to bring down emissions. Big business, unions and city leaders have also swung strongly behind the push for a federal response.Imposing barriers remain in Congress, however, where Republicans have clung on to Trump-era rhetoric that acting on the climate crisis will harm the economy. The Biden climate target will put “good-paying American jobs into the shredder,” warned Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate leader.Biden will be able to unilaterally shut off new oil and gas drilling on public lands and set new pollution standards for cars and power plants, but further legislation will be required. Given the paper-thin Democratic control of Congress, the fate of even broadly popular measures such as Biden’s $2tn infrastructure plan – which would greatly expand electric vehicle charging stations, boost public transit and push forward renewable energy deployment – appear uncertain.At some point Biden will have to bring in “sticks” as well as “carrots”, such as a tax on carbon emissions and a directive to utilities to phase out fossil fuels. Again, such measures face huge hurdles in Congress.If he does get all of that done, is it problem solved?As the administration is keen to point out, the rest of the world is responsible for about 85% of all emissions and only through a coordinated, determined international effort will humanity avoid the punishing ravages of the climate crisis.Canada and Japan announced upgraded emissions reduction targets at the climate summit but China, the world’s leading carbon polluter, didn’t bring anything new and some countries, such as Brazil and Australia, have deeply recalcitrant leaders. Ahead of key UN climate talks in Scotland later this year, Biden will not only have to corral an unusually divided domestic polity to achieve his goals but also prod other countries to do more. It’s an unenviable task. More

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    Does Biden’s cabinet ‘look like America’? Politics Weekly Extra – podcast

    Joe Biden promised to build the most diverse administration in history. So how did he do? Jonathan Freedland talks to Paul Begala, the former adviser to Bill Clinton

    How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know

    When Bill Clinton was elected president in 1992, he promised to pick a cabinet that would “look like America”. Nearly three decades later, and Joe Biden has tried to do the same thing. According to this week’s guest though, diversity is more complicated than one might think. So how did Biden do? CNN political analyst Paul Begala, a former adviser to President Clinton, discusses the issue with Jonathan Freedland You can find Paul Begala’s book You’re Fired: The Perfect Guide to Beating Donald Trump Send us your questions and feedback to podcasts@theguardian.com Help support the Guardian by going to gu.com/supportpodcasts More

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    Biden gets serious about going green | First Thing

    Good morning.The US will cut its carbon emissions by at least half by 2030, the White House has promised. The news comes before a two-day virtual White House climate summit, beginning today. The summit brings together 40 world leaders to discuss how to fulfil the 2015 Paris climate agreement, and speed up their plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions.But poorer countries have said they need the money to be able to make environmental change happen, and argue that richer countries, which have more capital and emit more carbon dioxide, should be putting their hands in their pockets. Poorer countries were promised $100bn a year in climate finance from 2020, but last year that was not met.
    The summit also marks the first meeting of Biden and China’s president, Xi Jinping. With their interests overlapping on climate, will it be a step in the right direction for their fraught relationship?
    Offering money is not the right approach to Brazil’s climate denial, two former Brazilian environment ministers argue. “Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon is not the result of a lack of money,” they write, “but a consequence of the government’s deliberate failure of care.” They say giving Brazil money to stop chopping down the Amazon could funnel funds to the “very land-grabbers behind the destruction”.
    The justice department is going to investigate the Minneapolis police forceThe justice department will launch a sweeping investigation into policing practices in Minneapolis, it announced yesterday. The news came less than a day after a former police officer in the force was found guilty of murdering George Floyd, after kneeling on his neck for more than nine minutes during an arrest.
    What will the investigation look into? The attorney general, Merrick Garland, said the investigation would determine whether the force had “engaged in a pattern and practice of unconstitutional or unlawful policing”. It will examine the use of force by officers, including during protests, potential discriminatory practices, and accountability.
    Biden briefed on the fatal police shooting of a 16-year-oldJoe Biden has been briefed on the fatal shooting of a black teenage girl by police in Ohio, the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, said. An officer shot dead 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant on Tuesday, just minutes before the jury convicted a former police officer of murdering George Floyd.Psaki said Ma’Khia’s death cast a shadow “just as America was hopeful of a step forward”, adding: “She was a child. We’re thinking of her friends and family, in the communities that are hurting and grieving her loss.”
    What do we know about Ma’Khia’s death? Police in Columbus, Ohio, were called to reports of someone being attacked. Bodycamera footage released by Columbus police shows Ma’Khia appearing to hold a knife and clashing with two people, before an officer shoots her four times and she falls to the ground. Authorities in the city said police intervened to save the life of another girl whom Bryant had closed in on.
    Columbus has one of the highest rates of fatal police shootings in the US, according to a recent study, but is by no means the only area grappling with issues around police conduct:
    In North Carolina, a sheriff’s deputy shot dead a black man while serving a search warrant, according to authorities. Andrew Brown was killed yesterday morning, apparently while driving away. Details about the warrant have not been released, but court records show Brown had a history of drug charges.
    A Virginia police officer has been sacked after the Guardian revealed he had donated to and expressed support for Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager accused of killing two people during a protest against police brutality last year.
    More than 200m coronavirus shots have been administered in the USThe US has administered 200m vaccine doses since Biden took office, achieving the goal he set for his first 100 days. He had initially promised 100m doses in his first 100 days, but doubled the goal after the program gained unexpected pace. As of this week, all US adults are eligible to a receive a vaccine.
    More than 80% of Americans over 65 will have had one dose by today, according to Biden. More than 50% of adults are at least partially vaccinated, with about 28m vaccine doses being administered each week.
    The president also announced a new federal programme to give workers paid leave to receive their vaccination, saying: “No working American should lose a single dollar from their paycheck because they chose to fulfil their patriotic duty of getting vaccinated.”In other news …
    Biden is likely to formally recognise the Armenian genocide at the hands of the Ottoman empire during the first world war, according to officials. As a candidate, Biden promised this, but it could add to an already tense relationship with the Turkish leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
    Four people have been killed in a car bomb at a hotel hosting a Chinese ambassador in Pakistan. A dozen others were wounded at the luxury hotel, but the ambassador was out for a meeting when the bomb exploded. The Pakistan Taliban has claimed responsibility.
    Stat of the day: in Corona, Queens, just 37% of residents have received their first Covid vaccine dose. In the wealthier Upper East Side, the figure is 64%. Why is the difference so stark?Corona, Queens, is home to many of New York’s undocumented migrants and essential workers. Last year, when the city was the centre of the global coronavirus outbreak, the neighbourhood was considered the “epicenter of the epicenter”. But now it has one of the lowest rates of vaccinations, 37% compared with 64% in the Upper East Side. Amanda Holpuch asks what coronavirus has shown us about inequality in the city.Don’t miss this: a globally unprecedented coronavirus surge is pushing India to the brinkA new increase in coronavirus in India is pushing hospitals to the brink of collapse. The unprecedented spread resulted in India recording 314,835 new cases over the previous 24 hours, the highest daily increase of any country during the pandemic. Rebecca Ratcliffe shares more information about this dire situationwhich, Peter Beaumont argues, serves as a warning to other countries.Last Thing: an Italian man managed to skip work for 15 years An Italian man been coined the “king of absentees” after skipping work for 15 years. The 67-year-old hospital employee in the Calabrian city of Catanzaro continued to take home a salary of €538,000 ($648,000), despite not having turned up to work since 2005. Now the holiday is over and he is facing charges of abuse of office, forgery, and aggravated extortion.Sign upSign up for the US morning briefingFirst Thing is delivered to thousands of inboxes every weekday. If you are not already signed up, subscribe now. More