President Biden
Joe BidenDNC strengthens his financial team. The Pentagon extends the presence of the National Guard at the Capitol until May 23 Blinken to appear before the Committee on Foreign Affairs MORE will mark the 50th day of his presidency on Wednesday on the brink of his first significant legislative success as the House passes its $ 1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan.
Biden looks good along the way to check out the key goals of his first 100 days in office. It has quickly unveiled the key policies of its predecessor through executive action, the country has administered tens of millions of vaccine doses and major school systems will return to face-to-face learning over the next month.
“He did exactly what he promised he would do, and in most cases he did it faster and better” than expected, said Matt Bennett, executive vice president of the Third Way centrist Democratic think tank.
The first 50 days of Biden have been consumed by the coronavirus pandemic and it is trying to overwhelm both the virus and its economic consequences. The House is set to approve Biden’s coronavirus relief package on Wednesday, which will send it to the president’s table for signature. The administration expects stimulus checks on many Americans by the end of the month.
“Whenever you involve the Congress, there will be negotiation, there will be changes. But it is getting a package that is exactly as promised, ”said Bennett.
Biden is scheduled to host an event at the White House on Wednesday with business leaders Johnson & Johnson and Merck to recognize collaboration between the two competitors to expedite the delivery of the single-dose coronavirus vaccine.
“There are limited options for the legislative movement and a country longing for COVID relief, so it now appears to be priority one, two and three,” a former Biden adviser said.
However, Biden will face significant challenges in the second half of its first 100 days, as it seeks to take steps towards management through additional legislation to drive economic recovery, rebuild infrastructure, tackle climate change and repair the immigration system. Much of his legislative agenda faces an uncertain fate in the Senate from the 50s to the 50s.
Beyond political affairs, the first 50 days of Biden have been marked by a return to normalcy and order in the White House. At midnight there is no rogue tweet from the president’s account and there are far fewer leaks from the administration to the media. The press secretary holds briefings regularly on weekdays and Biden rarely strays from the script when he appears in public, often in controlled environments.
At the same time, Biden faces pressure to hold its first press conference, after waiting noticeably longer than its predecessors. The White House says Biden will receive questions from the press for an extended period in late March and administration officials have defended the delay in noting that Biden has focused on addressing the pandemic.
“I think he wants to normalize presidential communications and, in a way, he’s going in the opposite direction,” Trump said Julian Zelizer, a professor of political history at Princeton University. “It simply came to our notice then. I think his belief is calmer and it’s better right now. “
Biden has done much of his work behind the scenes, relating to elected officials and other stakeholders to deal with multiple crises he has had to deal with since taking office on 20 January.
The White House has also used its initial actions to convey the feeling that Biden has a right to work; his series of first executive actions far surpassed those of previous presidents.
“I think it’s been a great 50 days for a president that a lot of people were skeptical that he could act boldly,” Zelizer said.
Biden has been helped by setting largely achievable goals. Experts wondered if his desire to manage 100 million shots in his first 100 days was ambitious enough, and in fact the country is expected to surpass that target in the coming weeks.
But the administration has offered mixed messages about the reopening of schools, initially setting a low bar stating that a day of face-to-face learning would qualify as reopening. Later, Biden clarified that he wanted to see face-to-face learning five days a week. New York City and other major cities plan to send children back to classrooms no later than mid-April.
Biden has tried to manage expectations about the pandemic and periodically stresses the need to wear masks and social distance, according to a public health expert approach that has been a welcome change from the previous administration.
“He promised to lead science and he has done so,” said Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health law at Georgetown University. “He has transmitted all the appropriate messages from the White House itself.”
Biden said in an interview with NBC News after the election that he wanted to send an immigration proposal to Congress in its first 100 days. He got it on his first day in office, but lawmakers introduced the bill weeks later and the move seems unlikely soon, if not.
The president also fulfilled his promises to reverse a series of Trump-era orders and initiatives by joining the Paris climate agreements and the World Health Organization, stopping the construction of the border wall and ending the ‘so-called ban on travel to Muslim-majority nations. .
But there are challenges on the horizon, many of which have been exposed in recent days. Biden’s landmark proposal has made its way into Congress along partisan lines and has increased calls among Democrats to end the filibuster in the Senate to avoid seeing the president’s agenda blocked by Republicans.
Democrats are aware of the limitations of their majority in Congress, but point out that there is still one more opportunity to use the budget conciliation process to pass a major bill without the support of the Republican Party. This would require Biden to keep all Democratic lawmakers on the same page, which could be extremely difficult when it comes to addressing issues on the agenda such as raising the minimum wage.
The steady increase in immigrant children on the southern border has also threatened to overwhelm the new administration. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki
Jen PsakiKlain: Biden is likely to deliver a joint speech in Congress after selling the relief package to the White House chief of staff: Young is a “very serious candidate” for OMB director On The Money: project COVID-19 relief law on the way to the passage of the house, Biden signing Wednesday | First new controls that will come out next week MORE On Tuesday he was filled with questions on the subject, but declined to disclose how many migrants are being held at government facilities or considered it a “crisis.”
And while Biden has enacted legislation to deal with the pandemic, the public health crisis will remain his priority. The administration projects that the United States will have enough vaccines for all adults by the end of May, but officials must overcome obstacles to distributing the vaccines and address the concerns of those hesitant to receive them, while ensuring that northerners -Americans continue to follow public health guidelines as the country inches toward herd immunity.
“The more people get vaccinated and the more fed up people have restrictions, I think it will be difficult to use the bully pulpit to get people to behave safely and governors to open up safely,” Gostin said.