Scott Bixby

The Department of Justice made a splash with the announcement that the task force created to seize the assets of Russia’s richest citizens had captured its first major acquisition: Tango, the 255-foot megayacht owned by sanctioned oligarch Viktor Vekselberg. But the economics of keeping a vessel worth an estimated $90 million afloat as the Justice Department pursues charges of bank fraud, money laundering, and sanctions violations against Vekselberg—and the legal particulars of seizing ill-gotten gains by alleged criminals—means that Tango could soon end up on the chopping block in order to pay off the phenomenal carrying costs for a vessel with […]

As the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine was beginning to unfold, Father Robert Hitchens, a pastor at the Ukrainian Catholic National Shrine of the Holy Family in Washington, D.C., received a request for help for Ukrainians who fled their country and now faced an impossible choice. “I had a call from a woman whose Ukrainian relatives are stuck in Budapest right now—the mother has a visa and the older child has a visa to come to the U.S., but the youngest child does not have a visa,” said Hitchens. “She’s not going to leave the young child behind, and they’re running into […]

The United States will no longer allow for the importation of Russian oil, President Joe Biden announced on Tuesday morning, the newest in a series of increasingly severe sanctions on Moscow following the invasion of Ukraine. “Russian oil will no longer be accepted at U.S. ports,” Biden said in remarks from the Roosevelt Room of the White House, the same location where the president has announced numerous economic measures since late February, each intended to punish Russia for its attempted occupation of neighboring Ukraine. “We will not be part of subsidizing Putin’s war.” The oil embargo, Biden said, would target “the […]

In February 2020, struggling presidential candidate Joe Biden made a pledge to voters that he would name the first Black woman to the nation’s highest court. “I’m looking forward to making sure there’s a Black woman on the Supreme Court,” Biden said during a presidential debate. “I am loyal—I do what I say.” Two years later, nearly to the date, Biden fulfilled that promise with the selection of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson as his nominee to replace outgoing Justice Stephen Breyer on the U.S. Supreme Court, a source familiar with the decision confirmed to The Daily Beast. The selection was first […]

President Joe Biden announced a wave of “firm” sanctions against Russia and its most powerful citizens on Tuesday, calling the Kremlin’s deployment of military forces in the region “the beginning of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.” “I’m going to begin to impose sanctions in response far beyond the steps we and our allies and partners implemented in 2014,” Biden said on Tuesday, speaking from the East Room of the White House. “And if Russia goes further with this invasion, we stand prepared to go further.” The long-promised sanctions come as the rapidly escalating crisis in Ukraine grows near to a full-scale […]

One year ago this week, President Joe Biden promised in his inaugural address to “heal,” “repair” and “restore” a nation at war with itself—to reset a nation that had been torn apart by a cascading series of unprecedented crises. But confronted by his administration’s stymied legislative agenda, frustrated COVID-19 response, uneven economic performance and faltering relationships with its own Democratic allies, Biden faces a different kind of reset on the eve of his second year in office: a reset of his presidency. Calling on reporters in his first solo press conference since March 2021, Biden faced nearly two hours of questions […]

Weeks ahead of the largest mass government mailing operation since the AIDS epidemic, some testing authorities, epidemiologists and public health experts are expressing concern that the beleaguered U.S. Postal Service may struggle to successfully deliver half a billion working tests to Americans who order them. “Putting it in the hands of the postal service is a risk,” said Lawrence Gostin, director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown Law Center, who bluntly told The Daily Beast that the mail carrier is “just ill equipped” to deal with sensitive pharmaceutical tests on a mass scale. “This is […]

Only weeks before he would take the oath of office, President Joe Biden watched from his home in Delaware as thousands of rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6th in hopes of preventing him from doing so. One year after the siege, which left five people dead and injured hundreds more, Biden laid the blame for the attack on Congress and attempted insurrection squarely at the feet of his predecessor, former President Donald Trump. “For the first time in our history, a president had not just lost an election—he tried to prevent a peaceful transfer of power as a violent […]

As the country is gripped by skyrocketing COVID-19 infection rates only days before the winter holidays, President Joe Biden on Tuesday announced his latest plan to prevent what he has warned could be “a winter of severe illness and death.” “Your choice is not just a choice about you—it affects other people,” Biden said in remarks from the White House, the tone of which alternated between lecturing Americans to follow public health guidelines and pleading with the unvaccinated to do their “patriotic duty” by getting immunized. “You’re putting other people at risk. Your loved ones, your friends, neighbors, strangers you run […]

Despite the potential for constitutional chaos—and the federal government’s assumed role in detangling it—the White House has kept almost entirely mum about President Joe Biden’s plans to protect abortion access if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, as nearly all abortion advocates and legal scholars expect it to do next spring. Beyond a public policy statement backing the passage of the Women’s Health Protection Act, the White House has not indicated what the administration’s plans are for a post-Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization legal landscape, from approval of telehealth prescription of medical abortion pharmaceuticals by the Food and Drug […]

As the number of Omicron variant cases continues to rise in the United States, President Joe Biden said on Friday that he remains opposed to implementing vaccine requirements for domestic air travel, but is leaving the door open to changing his mind. Biden said he didn’t think vaccine requirements for air travel within the country were necessary “at this point.” “I continue to rely on the scientists… right now, they’re saying no,” he said. While Biden admitted the fight against the pandemic has dragged on, he said “we’ve got to beat it back before we shut it down.” “The idea that […]

In the worst days of what President Joe Biden called last year’s “dark winter,” the United States faced more than 4,000 daily deaths from COVID-19. Hospitals were crowded beyond capacity, holiday gatherings became superspreader events, and the country became the worst hot-spot for the pandemic in the world. This year, Biden declared on Thursday afternoon, must be different. “The actions I’m announcing are ones that all Americans can rally behind,” Biden said during remarks at the National Institutes of Health, detailing a plan intended to prevent another catastrophic winter surge of the coronavirus, even in the face of a disturbing new […]

At the outset of the coronavirus lockdowns last year, public health experts warned that social isolation, lack of access to treatment and the increasing lethality of the nation’s street drugs could lead to a massive surge in overdose deaths—a potential epidemic within an epidemic. Nevertheless, 100,000 people have died in a single 12-month period, according to data recently released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an increase of 28.5 percent from the previous year, leading health-care providers, treatment advocates, and addiction experts to question whether the crisis is being taken seriously enough on the federal level. “If a person […]

If it wasn’t clear by the setup—fifty state flags on the White House’s South Lawn, an 800-person cheering section, the dais loaded with senior congressional leadership, Republican allies, labor bosses, and his own vice president—President Joe Biden had a straightforward message at the signing ceremony for his $1 trillion infrastructure bill: It’s a big fucking deal. “My message to the American people is this: America’s moving again! And your life is going to change for the better!” an animated Biden told a crowd of nearly a thousand people gathered in the crisp autumn sun, some of whom chanting “JOE! JOE! JOE!”, […]

On Wednesday, President Joe Biden called it “garbage.” On Thursday, he was “perfectly comfortable” with it, to a point. On Friday, it was a matter for the Department of Justice. On Saturday, it was merely a question of dimes and cents. As the Department of Justice negotiates with attorneys representing some of the thousands of migrant families that were forcibly separated under President Donald Trump’s “zero-tolerance” immigration policy, the Biden White House has struggled to articulate its stance on a financial settlement with those families. On Oct. 28, the Wall Street Journal reported that the administration was in talks to pay […]

The historic freeze on confirmations for President Joe Biden’s ambassador nominees has finally begun to thaw—and diplomats are livid about it. “Frankly, we look ridiculous,” said one career diplomat. “Just absolutely infuriating,” one former ambassador fumed. “Pissed,” one nominee for a posting abroad said succinctly. The confirmations on Tuesday would normally be a cause for celebration after a months-long Republican hold on ambassadorial nominees. But career diplomats, already exasperated by the snail’s pace of confirmations, told The Daily Beast that the fact that a pair of former senators and two senators’ widows were given a fast-pass to confirmation is proof that […]

The Biden administration has released additional details on its plan to require international travelers to prove that they have been vaccinated against COVID-19, issuing a presidential proclamation on Monday that outlines the process. According to senior administration officials, almost all non-citizen visitors traveling to the United States by air after November 8 will be required to provide proof of vaccination status to airline officials prior to boarding a flight—although some vaccines, including Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine and others that have not been approved for emergency use by the World Health Organization, won’t qualify. “Vaccines will be accepted that include the FDA-approved […]

From the first day of his administration, President Joe Biden has pledged to oversee a remaking of the American economy and social safety net on a scale not seen since the New Deal and the Great Society. But on Thursday evening, as a pair of Democratic senators threatened to derail the trillion-dollar package in its entirety, Biden admitted that many of the package’s most important components are dead in the water. Medicare coverage for dental care? “That’s a reach.” Three months of paid parental leave? “It’s down to four weeks.” Tuition-free community college? “It’s not going to get us the whole […]

Seven years to the day after the murder of a Black teenager by a white Chicago police officer, the man accused of helping cover up critical evidence of the crime told the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations that his past actions shouldn’t disqualify him from being the next U.S. ambassador to Japan. Rahm Emanuel, a former congressman, White House chief of staff, and two-term mayor of Chicago, told senators on Wednesday that “there’s not a day or a week that has gone by in the past seven years and not thought about this and thought about the what-ifs” of the murder […]

After the Supreme Court unexpectedly allowed a near-total ban on abortions to go into effect in Texas earlier this month, the White House tasked a newly-formed internal office with helping coordinate an “all-of-government” response to the most aggressive strike against abortion access in nearly half a century. On Monday afternoon, the White House’s response finally began to take shape. In a policy statement released by White House officials, the Biden administration declared that it “strongly supports” the passage of the Women’s Health Protection Act, legislation that would protect the right to receive abortion services under federal law. “In the wake of […]

One day after the Taliban seized control of the Afghan government, the Biden administration found itself struggling to explain why local allies like interpreters, drivers, security guards and fixers had been left behind. The Biden administration’s justification—that many of the Afghans who had risked their lives to aid the U.S. military actually wanted to stay—left aid workers, refugee advocates and members of Congress gobsmacked. The truth, those advocates have told The Daily Beast, is simple and stark: that they simply can’t pay for it. “We don’t know of any SIV recipients that wanted to stay in Afghanistan,” said James Miervaldis, chairman […]

President Joe Biden has called on longtime friend and ally Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York to resign, hours after the release of an independent investigation that found the governor had sexually harassed nearly a dozen women. “I think he should resign,” Biden said on Tuesday afternoon, during a briefing updating the federal government’s vaccination program. Biden said that while “the state legislature may decide to impeach,” he would leave calls for Cuomo’s impeachment to leaders in Albany. It followed a similar call from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who said in a statement, “Recognizing his love of New York and […]

The White House is set to announce the largest vaccine mandate in modern history in the coming days in response to growing concern over the Delta variant of COVID-19, the latest and most abrupt change in a pandemic response strategy that has yet to get the virus under control. Federal workers and contractors will soon be required to prove that they are fully vaccinated, or will otherwise be required to wear masks and undergo routine COVID-19 testing, according to a source familiar with the upcoming mandate. But public health experts told The Daily Beast that the guidance comes months too late […]

Weeks before announcing her first official visit to the U.S.-Mexico border as vice president, Kamala Harris dismissed the notion that the “grand gesture” of an in-person trip was critical to addressing the root causes of migration from Central America. But one week after the conclusion of her first appearance at the border as vice president, even supporters of the administration’s immigration policies are concerned that the trip was little more than a photo opportunity. “Every day that goes by without more action is a day too many for the individuals caught up in these failed policies and systems,” said Efrén C. […]

The decision by right-wing Catholic leaders to begin drafting a statement that could potentially allow bishops to deny the sacrament of Holy Communion to politicians whose stances on social issues stand in conflict with those of the church has injected a political fight into one of the faith’s most sacred religious rites. The conflict has also put increasing pressure on President Joe Biden to name an ambassador to the Holy See who would help smooth the rising disputes between Pope Francis, long seen by both supporters and detractors as a would-be modernizer, and the American wing of the Catholic Church, which […]

Shortly before his inauguration, President Joe Biden’s transition team promised that his administration would hold immigration authorities responsible for the inhumane treatment of transgender people held in immigrant detention facilities. More than half a year later, however, the federal government’s policies on transgender migrant detention are effectively the same as they were under President Donald Trump—despite calls from former detainees who say that those policies are putting lives at risk. “They want us to wait? We don’t have time—we don’t want to have another name added to the long list of people that have died in detention,” Jennicet Gutiérrez, a founding […]

Increasingly concerned that former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel is on the verge of being awarded a plum position in President Joe Biden’s administration, activists and relatives of victims of police violence in the city are publicly urging the president to slam the brakes on considering him for a high-profile ambassadorship. But some of Emanuel’s biggest Democratic critics are conspicuously silent in response to reports that he will be nominated as the U.S. ambassador to Japan, raising questions about whether they see a prominent posting abroad as worth internecine fighting. “Rahm Emanuel covered up the murder of my son,” said Dorothy Holmes, […]

When Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland toured the Stonewall Inn in Manhattan’s West Village last Thursday, her visit to the first national monument honoring the LGBT rights movement was meant to mark the beginning of Pride Month. But instead, Haaland’s visit kicked off a seven-day countdown until the landlords who own part of the original Stonewall Inn—currently intended to serve as a permanent ranger station, visitor center and community space for the monument—put the space back on the commercial market. The empty storefront at 51 Christopher Street has been the subject of more than two years’ of negotiations between the […]

On Tuesday, after decades allying himself with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities, President Joe Biden proclaimed his first Pride Month as president, “marking a time a time of hope, progress, and promise for LGBTQ+ Americans across the country,” in the words of the White House. But on Capitol Hill, the president’s biggest commitment to LGBTQ Americans continues to languish, a likely casualty of the Senate filibuster, renewed conservative hostility to transgender people—and a slow-motion, under-the-radar dark money campaign to kill a bill nearly half a century in the making. The Equality Act, which would make it illegal to discriminate against […]

Joe Biden once had a term for politicians who were too cautious to push for meaningful gun reform legislation: cowards. “Why in God’s name can we say that we can’t do anything about 150,000 people being shot dead in the United States of America? Why are guns different?” Biden said during a campaign stop in Las Vegas in February 2020. “Because of cowardness. Because of cowards. Cowards who are afraid to take on these special interests because they are so damn powerful.” In that address, delivered a few miles from the site of the deadliest mass shooting in American history, Biden […]

Nearly three years to the day after the Trump administration first forcibly separated thousands of undocumented parents from their children in order to discourage others from seeking asylum, the Department of Homeland Security has begun reunifying families torn apart by the policy. Four families, to be exact, with a few dozen more expected in the coming weeks. The slow pace of undoing the damage caused by the Trump administration to an estimated 5,500 families has frustrated those who have been working to reunify families since “zero tolerance” first began. Advocates warn that it may take years to reunite parents and children […]

The Biden administration will more than quadruple the cap on refugee admissions into the United States this fiscal year, President Joe Biden announced on Monday, after weeks of harsh criticism from human-rights advocates and Democratic allies for his decision to keep the cap at a record low. “Today, I am revising the United States’ annual refugee admissions cap to 62,500 for this fiscal year,” Biden said in a statement, adding that the administration’s goal is to raise the cap to 125,000 refugee admissions in the next fiscal year. The previous cap, implemented under the Trump administration, was at a mere 15,000 […]

A cataclysmic rise in COVID-19 cases on the Indian subcontinent was allowed to spread for too long before the Biden administration issued restrictions on travel, public health experts warn, a decision that could make thwarting potentially vaccine-resistant variants of the disease even more difficult just as America crosses a major milestone in vaccinations. “Travel restrictions should have been imposed much earlier,” Lawrence Gostin, a professor of global health law and director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University, told The Daily Beast. “We have known for some time of the crisis in India—including worrying variants.” […]

Unvaccinated Americans have one more good reason to book an appointment to receive the coronavirus vaccine, President Joe Biden announced on Tuesday: the ability to go outside and hang out with friends without wearing a facial covering. “Because of the extraordinary progress we’ve made in fighting this virus,” Biden said in remarks from the White House, “starting today, if you’re fully vaccinated and you’re outdoors, and not in a big crowd, you no longer need to wear a mask.” “Gathering with a group of friends in a park, going for a picnic, as long as you are vaccinated and outdoors, you […]

Breaking with decades of political tradition set by predecessors from both parties, President Joe Biden has kept his word. He announced on Saturday that the United States officially views the systemic killing of more than one million ethnic Armenians by the Ottoman Empire a century ago as a genocide—a promise that previous presidents have made on the campaign trail only to get cold feet in office at the prospect of alienating Turkey. “We remember the lives of all those who died in the Ottoman-era Armenian genocide and recommit ourselves to preventing such an atrocity from ever again occurring,” Biden said in […]

Amidst growing calls to lift the historically low yearly cap on refugee admissions into the United States, President Joe Biden on Friday signed an emergency order intended to speed the admissions process for those fleeing war, natural disaster or persecution abroad—but did not lift the cap itself, setting up a potential conflict with Democratic allies on Capitol Hill. The order, first reported by the Associated Press, will eliminate restrictions on entry for refugees from Somalia, Syria and Yemen, while allowing for more admissions from Africa, Central America and the Middle East. Under President Donald Trump’s administration, which was defined by Trump’s […]

The White House is calling for a massive reinvestment in education, housing, and other core public services in its first budget proposal submitted to Congress on Friday, in the hopes of “reversing” stark cuts to non-defense spending of the previous administration. “We want to use every lever at our disposal to address the challenges we face,” an administration official told reporters in a background briefing outlining the discretionary budget request, calling it “a complimentary but separate proposal” to President Joe Biden’s trillion-dollar jobs plan. “In the budget we release in the coming months, we’ll put forward a unified agenda for the […]

President Joe Biden on Thursday will announce six executive actions intended to address the “epidemic” of gun violence in the United States, senior administration officials said on Wednesday evening, the administration’s first concrete steps to address an issue that Biden has wrestled with since his time in the U.S. Senate. “We know that Americans are dying from gun violence, every single day in this country,” an official told reporters in a phone briefing previewing the executive actions. “That’s why we are pursuing an agenda that will address not only mass shootings, but also community violence that is proportionately affecting black and […]

If March 2020 lasted for 396 days, then “Infrastructure Week” has lasted since the dawn of time. Former President Donald Trump’s myriad trillion-dollar infrastructure plans began and ended in fits and starts for the nearly entirety of his presidency, usually ending when the president lost interest or got sidetracked by the latest scandal. The idea of “Infrastructure Week” eventually devolved into a running joke, a metonym for the administration’s chaotic mishandling of nearly every aspect of traditional governance. With the introduction of a $2 trillion bill this week, however, President Joe Biden is hoping to finally change that. Source link

President Joe Biden pledged to sign a bill that would ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity within his first 100 days. But 71 days into the Biden presidency, the prospects of a signing ceremony for the landmark legislation are starting to look like dreams. When it was adopted by Congress in 1972, the Equal Rights Amendment appeared to most observers as a lock for swift ratification. It was widely popular among the general public and had cross-party support even during an era of increasing political polarization, plus the coordinated backing of dozens of women’s organizations that had labored […]

“Help is on the way.” President Joe Biden’s message on Thursday afternoon was a simple one, but the act of signing the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act into law officially kickstarted one of the most complex and far-reaching economic relief packages in history—at a moment when any missteps on vaccinations, school re-openings and direct payments to struggling Americans could have devastating consequences. The plan is the culmination of nearly two months of effort by the White House to deliver financial aid to struggling states, schools and individuals, allocating billions for $1,400 direct payments to taxpayers, unemployment assistance, and scaling up […]

President Joe Biden’s agenda for his first 100 days can’t be criticized for a lack of ambition. But as key components of his policy priorities, from raising the national minimum wage to wage discrimination against workers with disabilities, have fallen victim to the filibuster, stakeholders in the Equality Act—one of his key legislative goals—grew increasingly frustrated with the White House’s white-knuckle commitment to an item that never appeared on his long list of commitments to voters during the campaign: confirming Neera Tanden as director of the Office of Management and Budget. For reasons both high-minded and mundane, Tanden’s nomination to the […]

The Biden administration’s path to a fully staffed Cabinet hit its largest hurdle yet on Tuesday evening, when the White House announced that it was pulling the nomination of Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress, to lead the Office of Management and Budget, long after it had become clear that she would not have the votes to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. “I have accepted Neera Tanden’s request to withdraw her name from nomination for Director of the Office of Management and Budget,” President Joe Biden said in a statement released on Tuesday evening. “I have the […]

Dr. Rachel Levine, the first transgender person to be nominated for a Senate-confirmed position in the federal government, had been seated in her confirmation hearing to become the nation’s assistant secretary of health for a little less than an hour when she was grilled about “genital mutilation” of minor children by a Republican committee member. “American culture is down normalizing the idea that minors can be given hormones,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said on Thursday, likening standards of care for transgender minors to castration and female circumcision and blaming increasing rates of trans-identified youth on “the social pressure to conform and […]

After weeks of what President Joe Biden might dub “mistakes in the communication” on where the White House stands on one of the most critical provisions in the government’s guidelines for reopening public schools, the administration is finally in sync with scientific experts on vaccinations for teachers. But while most teachers’ unions and rank-and-file educators support the guidelines, some teachers say that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendations on vaccinations don’t always account for conditions on the ground—and that agreement on the theory doesn’t mean much if there’s no money to put that theory into practice. “If you want […]

In the weeks since his inauguration, President Joe Biden has publicly taken on the role of reassurer-in-chief, telling Americans that the long-promised solution to the coronavirus pandemic and the rebuilding of the nation’s economy are on their way. “Don’t be scared, honey—don’t be scared,” Biden told an attendee during a town hall event at the Pabst Theater in Milwaukee on Tuesday evening. “You’re gonna be fine, and we’re gonna make sure that Mommy’s fine too.” Biden’s words of comfort were intended to assuage the fears of a seven-year-old girl worried about the pandemic’s effect on children, but they channeled the tone […]

They wrote massive checks. They encouraged their deepest-pocketed friends to do the same. They sat through Zoom concerts with James Taylor and Zoom roundtables hosted by Diane Lane and helped pay for an inauguration they didn’t even get to attend. Now, some of President Joe Biden’s most generous financial backers want what’s coming to them: an ambassadorship—both extraordinary and plenipotentiary, if possible. And they’re getting sick of waiting. “It’s bullshit,” one Democratic fundraiser vented. “The number of asks over the course of the campaign, and over the course of the transition, and let’s not even talk about the Zoom convention, and […]

When a parent and their child are forcibly separated by hundreds of miles, every second apart is excruciating—and every delay is torture, no matter the justification. That urgency is what immigration advocates, attorneys and activists are increasingly anxious to convey to President Joe Biden after he signed three executive orders relating to immigration on Tuesday evening. The orders each begin a long and complex process to dismantle his predecessor’s defining policy legacy, but those advocating for major reform are concerned that when the well-being of children is at stake, Biden’s deliberative approach could have disastrous consequences. “What we need now is […]

President Joe Biden is set to formally create a task force charged with reuniting migrant families that were separated under his predecessor’s hardline immigration policies. But with an unknown number of immigrant children still separated from their parents across national borders, it remains unclear how many of those families will be reunited on American soil. Biden will seek to undo the “moral shame” that the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” immigration policies brought on the United States, one senior administration official said ahead of the order’s signing, with agencies partnering “across the hemisphere” to find parents and children who were separated. The order, […]

Only seven days into President Joe Biden’s administration, and his immigration agenda has already hit multiple roadblocks. His 100-day pause on deportations has been blocked by a Trump-appointed federal judge, and Republicans are vowing to slow-walk his nominee to lead the Department of Homeland Security over objections to his record on immigration. Which is why immigration advocates were stunned on Tuesday to see Biden miss an opportunity to enact long-promised reform to immigrant detention with no risk of such interference. “It’s unacceptable for the Biden-Harris administration to exclude immigrant prisons from today’s executive order,” Laura Rivera, an immigration attorney for the […]

As President-elect Joe Biden’s Democratic allies work to convict President Donald Trump for incitement of insurrection, and as those working to pull off his inauguration weigh the importance of turning the page against the increasing fears of terrorist violence, Biden is trying to refocus attention back on the twin emergencies to which Americans have grown accustomed over the past twelve months: the coronavirus pandemic and the economic calamity being left in its wake. On Thursday night, Biden unveiled a $1.9 trillion rescue package that, he said, would fund vaccination initiatives and provide much-needed fiscal relief. “It will tackle the pandemic and […]

Like many young people she knew, Barbara Boch-Sojo could list a dozen reasons why she wanted to leave Cuba. But it was being beaten and jailed for the crime of sitting in a public park while transgender that finally forced her hand. “I was sitting in a public park with my friend, and the police came in to say that we needed to move from there, because we were not a good example for other people to see. And we didn’t want to,” Boch-Sojo, a 25-year-old trans woman, recalled. After a brief argument with the officers, the police beat her and […]

One month out from the first primary contest of the 2020 cycle, the Democratic Party was in disarray, again. For months, the party’s two dozen presidential hopefuls had grown more and more divided over whether defeating President Donald Trump required a restoration of past small-d democratic norms, or a wholesale rebuilding of the system that had allowed him to be elected. Every presidential debate had begun with a 20-minute knockdown dragout over universal health-care coverage versus a single-payer system. Even the rules about who qualified to be present on debate stages were a topic of furious debate. And Joe Biden was […]

President-elect Joe Biden made it clear last week he had heard concerns that his incoming cabinet that was shaping up to be more of a reunion of Obamaworld holdovers than a launching pad for the next generation of party leaders. “Some are familiar faces. Some are in new roles. All are facing new circumstances and challenges,” Biden summed up his fledgling cabinet last Friday. “That’s a good thing—they bring deep experience and bold new thinking. Above all, they know how government should and can work for all Americans.” Biden then introduced Tom Vilsack, 70, as his nominee to run the Department […]

Defending himself against the federal government’s increasingly indefensible handling of the coronavirus, President Donald Trump has routinely declared that “nobody” could have predicted, or prepared for, a deadly pandemic that could strike at any moment. But the man now tasked with running President-elect Joe Biden’s incoming administration saw it coming—and according to public health officials, may be the only person with the first-hand experience necessary to turn the tide of an unparalleled public health emergency. “Ron Klain did something that was unprecedented in modern American history, in sharp contrast to what President Trump has done with COVID,” Lawrence Gostin, director of […]

It’s no secret that Sen. Lindsey Graham is in the fight of his political life in the closing days of his campaign to win reelection to the U.S. Senate. “I’m getting overwhelmed,” Graham begged on-air with Fox News’ Sean Hannity last month, as his Democratic rival Jaime Harrison brought in a record-shattering $57 million in donations to unseat him. “Help me—they’re killing me money-wise. Help me.” But with ersatz ally President Donald Trump nowhere to be seen, a group that once despised Graham—and whose most prominent members have spent months propping up bizarre conspiracy theories, posting wildly racist content on social […]

As former Vice President Joe Biden rides consistently high in national polls and internal numbers indicate that red-leaning states are tantalizingly close to abandoning President Donald Trump in next week’s election, the Democratic nominee’s campaign is feeling the same rush that Clinton did—and they’re going for it. With only seven days until Election Day, the Biden campaign has announced a rash of in-person campaign appearances in states that haven’t voted for a Democratic presidential candidate in decades, even generations. Dr. Jill Biden is headed to Macon and Savannah on Monday; Biden himself will be in Atlanta the next day; and Sen. […]