Tag Archives: Biden Administration

TIME Magazine reports: The Biden administration is set to announce this week that it will reengage with the much-maligned U.N. Human Rights Council that former President Donald Trump withdrew from almost three years ago, U.S. officials said Sunday. The decision reverses another Trump-era move away from multilateral organizations and agreements. U..S. officials say Secretary of State Antony Blinken and a …

The Associated Press reports: Asserting a broad reset of American foreign policy, President Joe Biden said Thursday that he would halt the withdrawal of U.S. troops stationed in Germany, end support for Saudi Arabia’s military offensive in Yemen and make support for LGBTQ rights a cornerstone of diplomacy. In his first visit to the State Department as president, Biden called …

Politico reports: While Trump would call friends and allies seemingly at random, Biden has a list of phone calls scheduled for him. While Trump didn’t mind aides and outside allies wandering into the Oval Office, Biden has a handful of gatekeepers who control access to the room. While Trump would sometimes spend days tweeting and watching television, Biden fills his …

Axios reports: White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Wednesday that the U.S. Space Force “absolutely” has the “full support of the Biden administration.” Why it matters: After President Biden’s election, some advocated that the incoming administration disband the newest branch of the military, first established by President Trump. What’s happening: “We are not revisiting the decision to establish the …

Politico reports: The Biden administration said Tuesday it will begin distributing a limited number of Covid-19 vaccine doses directly to retail pharmacies across the nation. Many pharmacies are already administering vaccine doses that have been allocated to states. Under the new program, the federal government would ship doses directly to pharmacies. The new pharmacy initiative — which is aimed at …

ABC News reports: The Senate is poised to approve Pete Buttigieg to be transportation secretary, the first openly gay person ever confirmed to a Cabinet post, tasked with advancing President Joe Biden’s wide-ranging agenda of rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure and fighting climate change. Buttigieg’s nomination was set for a final vote Tuesday in the full Senate, after the 39-year-old former …

USA Today reports: The Biden administration on Monday announced a big push to make rapid COVID-19 home tests available with a $230 million federal contract to an Australian company. The Department of Defense’s deal will allow Ellume to open a U.S. factory and make 19 million rapid tests each month, 8.5 million of which will be provided to the federal …

The Washington Post reports: White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday that those in the Biden administration don’t spend much time thinking about Trump.  “Hard to believe, we don’t spend a lot of time talking about or thinking about President Trump here. Former President Trump, to be very clear,” Psaki told reporters at a White House briefing. Her remarks …

NBC News reports: The Federal Emergency Management Agency is deploying or supporting vaccination efforts in at least 11 states after President Joe Biden ordered the government to get on a war footing in his mission to vaccinate 300 million Americans by summer’s end. The states are Arizona, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland, Nevada, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia and Washington, …

The New York Times reports: The Pentagon is considering sending active-duty troops to large, federally run coronavirus vaccine centers, a major departure for the department and the first significant sign that the Biden administration is moving to take more control of a program that states are struggling to manage. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is hoping to set up roughly …

CBS News reports: Federal public health experts and members of the White House COVID-19 response team are holding their inaugural briefing Wednesday on the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic, after President Joe Biden announced plans to ramp up the weekly supply of COVID-19 vaccines to states and territories in the coming days. The group will take questions from reporters …

The Washington Post reports: The Senate Commerce Committee is scheduled to meet Wednesday morning to decide whether to give a thumbs-up to Pete Buttigieg’s nomination as President Biden’s secretary of transportation. Buttigieg sat for a friendly 2 1/2 hour hearing before the committee last week, delivering a wide-ranging performance that impressed Republicans and Democrats alike. Buttigieg, 39, stands to become …

The Washington Post reports: The Biden administration said Tuesday it will seek to buy another 200 million doses of the two coronavirus vaccines that have been authorized for emergency use in the United States. The purchases would increase available supply by 50 percent, bringing the total to 600 million doses by this summer. Because both products — one developed by …

The Wall Street Journal reports: President Biden on Tuesday will sign a series of executive orders that are intended to advance racial equity, including action to phase out the federal use of private prisons. Mr. Biden is expected to sign four orders in the afternoon, administration officials said. He will also deliver remarks on the need to address inequities in …

CNN reports: The Justice Department’s internal watchdog will investigate whether any department official sought to have the department overturn President Joe Biden’s election win. The office of Inspector General Michael Horowitz is launching “an investigation into whether any former or current DOJ official engaged in an improper attempt to have DOJ seek to alter the outcome of the 2020 Presidential …

Politico reports: The Justice Department has taken its first major step under President Joe Biden to reverse the Trump administration’s resistance to expansion of rights accorded to LGBTQ Americans. Greg Friel, the lawyer just named to oversee the Justice Department’s civil rights division on a temporary basis, issued a directive Friday revoking a 22-page memorandum a Trump appointee released earlier …

The Washington Post reports: President Biden’s White House has renewed subscriptions to The New York Times and The Washington Post after former President Trump canceled them out of anger over how he was portrayed. A White House source said physical copies of both papers arrived on Thursday morning, Biden’s first full day as president. Trump canceled the White House subscriptions …

Chris Johnson reports at the Washington Blade: The executive order implementing the decision in Bostock v. Clayton County comes nearly six months after the Supreme Court issued the ruling, which found anti-LGBTQ discrimination is a form of sex discrimination, thus illegal in the workplace under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The ruling has wide-ranging implications and …

PBS NewsHour reports: After Joe Biden was sworn in as the nation’s 46th president, Press Secretary Jen Psaki will hold the first White House news briefing under the new administration. With Wednesday evening’s briefing, the Biden administration will resume an activity that fell by the wayside during long stretches of former President Donald Trump’s term. Trump often eschewed traditional briefings …

NBC News reports: President Joe Biden will soon reverse the ban on transgender people serving openly in the military, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement Wednesday. While the reversal was not one of the 15 actions the new administration announced it would take Wednesday, Day One of the Biden presidency, Psaki said it would be among …