Tag Archives: Biden Administration

The New York Times reports: The Biden administration, under intense pressure to address the devastating coronavirus crisis in India, intends to share up to 60 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine with other nations, so long as the doses clear a safety review conducted by the Food and Drug Administration, officials said Monday. The announcement came after President Biden spoke …

Roll Call reports: The Housing and Urban Development Department recommitted to Obama-era protections that ensure transgender people experiencing homelessness can stay in shelters that correspond with their gender identities. The department on Thursday withdrew a proposal put forward under President Donald Trump last year that would have rolled back the protections in HUD’s 2012 Equal Access rule for transgender and …

The Daily Beast reports: That big vacation still seems a long way away. The State Department announced Monday that it will massively extend its “Do Not Travel” guidance to cover about 80 percent of countries around the globe. That will mean adding around 130 countries to the list of of 34, which already includes places such as Brazil, Argentina, and …

ABC News reports: Roughly half of U.S. adults have received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released Saturday. Across the country, more than 128 million people ages 18 and older have received at least one shot, with more than 82 million fully vaccinated with one of …

The Washington Post reports: The White House announced Friday that it will allocate $1.7 billion to fight coronavirus variants as the nation races to vaccinate people before the pathogen can mutate in new and concerning ways. The funding, which will come from the most recent federal stimulus package, will target the detection, surveillance and mitigation of the variants. The original …

The Associated Press reports: Russia on Friday responded in kind to a barrage of new U.S. sanctions, saying it would expel 10 U.S. diplomats and take other retaliatory moves in a tense showdown with Washington. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also said Moscow will add eight U.S. officials to its sanctions list and move to restrict and stop the activities …

The Washington Post reports: The Biden administration has asked the Supreme Court not to take up a lawsuit that calls the all-male military draft unconstitutional. Because Congress is considering whether women should also be required to sign up, Acting Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar said in a brief to the court, “any reconsideration of the constitutionality of the male-only registration …

The New York Times reports: The Biden administration is set to announce on Thursday a string of long-awaited measures against Russia, including far-reaching financial sanctions, for the hacking of government and private networks and a range of other activity, according to people who have been briefed on the moves. The sanctions will be among what President Biden’s aides say are …

ABC News reports: Women seeking an abortion pill will not be required to visit a doctor’s office or clinic during the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. health officials said Tuesday in the latest reversal in an ongoing legal battle over the medication. The Food and Drug Administration announced the policy change a day earlier in a letter to the American College of …

Tampa’s Fox News affiliate reports: Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is optimistic that cruises can resume by mid-summer, as operators struggle to stay afloat one year after sailing was shut down due to coronavirus concerns. “Well, the bottom line is safety… I can’t wait for us all to be on the move …

The Washington Post reports: President Biden created a bipartisan commission Friday to study structural changes to the Supreme Court, giving the group 180 days to produce a report on a range of thorny topics including court expansion and term limits. The commission, composed of 36 legal scholars, former federal judges and practicing lawyers, fulfills Biden’s campaign promise to establish such …

The Washington Post reports: President Biden will announce a top official from a leading gun-control group as his nominee to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — a key agency in combating gun violence that has gone without a permanent director for years. Two people familiar with the matter said Biden plans to nominate David Chipman, a …

The Washington Post reports: White House press secretary Jen Psaki batted down the suggestion that the Biden administration was eying a national vaccine verification card, saying unequivocally that the president would not support that. “The government is not now, nor will we be supporting a system that requires Americans to carry a credential,” Psaki said. “There will be no federal …

CNN reports: President Joe Biden plans to announce Tuesday that he is moving up his deadline for states to make all American adults eligible for a coronavirus vaccine by almost two weeks. Biden will announce that every adult in the country will be eligible to be vaccinated by April 19, according to an administration official, instead of Biden’s original deadline …

The Washington Post reports: More than four million people in the United States received a coronavirus vaccine on Saturday — the nation’s highest one-day total since the shots began rolling out in December — amid a rising caseload and increase in hospitalizations. An average of 3.1 million shots were administered each day over the past seven days, and nearly 1 …

The Hill reports: The Department of Justice (DOJ) has told federal agencies that gay and transgender students are protected from discrimination under civil rights laws, reversing Trump administration guidance that limited the impact of a landmark Supreme Court decision last year extending employment discrimination protections to LGBT workers. In an memo to federal agencies, Pamela Karlan, the head of the …

Politico reports: Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Sunday that President Joe Biden’s American Jobs Plan would pay for itself while upgrading infrastructure from decades past. “Right now, we’re still coasting off of infrastructure choices that were made in the 1950s,” Buttigieg said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “Now’s our chance to make infrastructure choices for the future that are going …

The Associated Press reports: In a sharp rebuke to Trump-era policies, Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday formally scrapped a blueprint championed by his predecessor to limit U.S. promotion of human rights abroad to causes favored by conservatives like religious freedom and property matters while dismissing reproductive and LGBTQ rights. Blinken said a report prepared for former Secretary of …

Axios reports: President Biden on Tuesday announced plans to nominate 11 judges to the federal courts, including D.C. District Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to replace former D.C. Circuit Court Judge Merrick Garland, who is now U.S. attorney general. The nominees include three Black women, and could seat the first Muslim federal judge in the country’s history, the first AAPI …

The Washington Post reports: The Biden administration and private companies are working to develop a standard way of handling credentials — often referred to as “vaccine passports” — that would allow Americans to prove they have been vaccinated against the novel coronavirus as businesses try to reopen. The effort has gained momentum amid President Biden’s pledge that the nation will …