At Last: President Biden and Vice President Harris

On the first episode of Quick News Daily in the Biden/Harris era, we bask in their Inauguration and the fact that the "adults are back in the room" for our government. But besides just the meaning of the change, I also detail President Biden's busy first two days in office, which include a flurry of executive orders aimed at controlling the coronavirus pandemic.

Later, I discuss the news of 12 National Guard members that were pulled from their duties at the Inauguration, 2 of which had ties to right-wing terrorism. Then I discuss the former president's ban from Facebook and YouTube, which may go on longer than originally planned.

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Sources

OPEN

Today is Thursday, January 21st, and welcome to a new age. As you heard from them there, Joe Biden is now our president, and Kamala Harris is now our vice president. It was historic, it meant so many things to so many groups, and it took a weight off the country’s shoulders. I guess I’m just jumping right into it, but it is the elephant in the room, so we might as well cut to the chase.

It just felt so great to be able to trust who was in charge again. As I’ve said many times, from the campaign until now, the differences between Trump and Biden could not be more noticeable. Based on everyone who shared their reaction on TV or on social media, I think we all felt better now that there is real experience back in the White House; we could all breathe a bit easier.  

When you think about it, it was basically an escape from a 4-year hostage situation. Trump controlled our lives for 4 years with his unpredictability and the way he always made everything a culture issue. You simply could not escape him. He came up in conversation with friends and family a lot, and whether you supported him or not became a true point of division.

Now, we have real human beings, who are decent and empathetic, back in charge. Not only that, but with the diversity Biden is bringing in, the White House looks more like America than it has in quite some time.

It really hit me when Vice President Harris was swearing in the 3 senators in the afternoon. You had a Latino, a Black man, and a Jewish man being sworn in by the first Asian, first Black, and first female vice president. That’s what America is supposed to be. That’s what those terrorists tried to stop 2 weeks ago when they stormed the Capitol. They were afraid because the administration didn’t look as much like them, and that made them so scared that they got angry.

But we won, and they lost.

Honestly, even when everybody showed up to the Inauguration in masks, you could just feel a change. There wasn’t anybody bullying these people around. And Vice President Harris even wore one when she was on the Senate floor. What a concept!

I also didn’t realize until last night that it was 50 years ago yesterday that JFK was inaugurated. He’s a personal hero/fascination of mine, so I thought that was cool.

Another thing I want to get out of the way right away is that yes, I’ll be referring to Joe and Kamala as “president” and “vice president” more today than I said “President Trump” ever, and yes, that does seem biased. However, like I said a while back, I call people by their title when they act like their title; when they deserve it. Trump never acted presidential, so I never felt like he deserved to be referred to as “president”. In fact, that’s what I mean by “this show is more informal than regular news”, because even by using those titles, you normalize Trump. What Trump did and what Trump was were not normal, and we can’t think that they were. They were awful, disgraceful, and we can’t ever let that happen again.

 

BIDEN EXECUTIVE ORDERS

Now, onto what President Biden has done so far in office. Yesterday evening, he signed 15 executive orders and 2 executive actions. So, what’s the difference between executive orders and executive actions? Well, an executive order is legally binding, so it means more. An executive action, on the other hand, is basically just symbolic. So, let’s go over those, but be warned: I’m not always sure which ones are “orders” and which ones are “actions”. When you read about them, the news media treats them like they’re interchangeable, and they’re not. At all.

There were about 9 different categories that Biden addressed. First, in terms of masks, he signed an order requiring masks and social distancing in all federal buildings and all federal property, and by all federal employees and contractors (and he even wore a mask while signing the bill, which sent a huge message).

 

Other orders included:

Stopping the United States from withdrawing from the World Health Organization, which is a great thing for people worldwide.
Extending a pause on student loan payments and foreclosures.
Several big ones on climate. First, rejoining the Paris Climate Accord. Second, revoking the permit for building the Keystone Pipeline, which I didn’t even know was being considered. Finally, he required reviews of Trump’s policies that got rid of, or weakened, protections for federal lands, as well as a review of the cuts in regulations about fossil fuel emissions. You heard Biden and his team talk about climate change more yesterday than Trump did in 4 years.
This next order was a fun one: President Biden revoked Trump’s national emergency declaration about the border wall, which means that money that was supposed to be going to other programs will actually go to those programs It also stopped the building of any new wall until a review is done to see how taxpayer money is being spent on the project.
Speaking of revoking, he also revoked the “Muslim Ban”, which banned people from 7 Muslim-majority countries.
This is the one that I suspect is more of an “action” than an “order”: Biden ordered his cabinet to preserve and protect DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), which is a relief for hundreds of thousands of people who have lived in America all of their life but are technically undocumented since they were brought here by their parents when they were very young.
Staying on that subject of undocumented immigrants, there was an order from Trump that said all 11 million people who are undocumented in the US were priorities for getting deported. Biden revoked that order as well, and instructed the Department of Homeland Security to review their enforcement priorities.
Actually, all of these last ones are related to immigration. For the census, Biden ordered that every person in America should be counted, like it says in the Constitution. Trump tried to exclude undocumented people, even though they still do live here, which is what the census tries to figure out.
And lastly, this one seems like more of a proposal than an order. The President issued an order that proposes legislation that would give green cards and a path to citizenship for every undocumented person who was living here before the start of this year.

 

Now, all of that was just day one. Today, if he hasn’t already done so by the time you hear this, President Biden plans on signing 10 more executive orders.

As the Huffington Post points out, some are more specific than others. The specific ones include things like requiring the Department of Education and Department of Health and Human Services to create new guidelines for reopening schools, ordering OSHA to issue new standards to protect workers from COVID, ordering FEMA to fully reimburse states for various expenses they had from COVID and using the National Guard to open and operate 100 mass vaccination clinics. There was also an order to develop online dashboards to offer COVID-related data. He wants that data to get as detailed as information about your specific county.

Another big one was using the Defense Production Act to “force” companies to make supplies that are necessary for COVID-related products. These are things like needles and the solution that mixes with the medicine part of the vaccine, and N95 masks, which are going to be important in defending against these new mutations.

Some of the broader orders are:

Ordering the CDC to work with states to update their pandemic plans
Requesting the creation of a plan to figure out how to speed up our development and distribution of therapeutic treatments.
Creating public education campaigns about the vaccines to make people more comfortable with them
Reminding the different agencies involved about the disparities based on race, geography, disability, etc. to make sure the vaccine is distributed equally. I’m sure this is to prevent people from “buying” their spot in line, and so we don’t forget about the minority communities that have been most affected by this, but also are usually forgotten about in these programs.

Overall, it’s been a very busy 24-36 hours since Biden was officially sworn in, and boy, do things feel different. Maybe it’s just because I pay such close attention to this stuff, but everything seems different already. There are actual plans being made and actions being taken to help with COVID; it doesn’t feel like we’re just on our own anymore.

Negotiations for new nuclear deal with Russia, sec of education paused student loan payments and put interest rate for them at 0%

 

I’m no historian, but I would guess that this has to be the most productive first two days in presidential history. They didn’t even know how to turn on the lights for god’s sake.

 

NATIONAL GUARD

12 National Guard members were removed from duties for President Biden. Two of them were relieved for possible links to right-wing extremist movements, according to the New York Times.

The two who were directly linked to the extremists made “inappropriate comments or sent inappropriate texts”, according to defense officials. The other 10 that were taken off the detail were apparently removed “for reasons unrelated to recent events in the Capitol”. I find that hard to believe, but hey, I’m not complaining; I’m glad that they were that thorough.  

According to this article, out of the 100ish people that the FBI has arrested so far, 6 of them have had military ties of some kind.

This isn’t necessarily related to the story, but I just want to mention that this story was behind a paywall on the New York Times’ website. In case you want to get around that without subscribing, there’s a website called printfriendly.com where you can copy the URL link for the story, paste it in on printfriendly, and then it basically transforms it into a PDF, even if it’s behind the paywall. Just a life hack tip there.   

TRUMP YOUTUBE/NEW PARTY

I have to say, I was pretty impressed with the media basically forgetting Trump for the day yesterday and keeping the focus on President Biden and Vice President Harris. Maybe it’s just because I was watching “the radical left MSDNC”, but even on Twitter, I didn’t see a single video of Trump landing in Florida. I guess I’ll have to break the streak, but just for a minute or two, because I think there’s also a risk that if we just don’t talk about him ever, we’ll just pretend like it never happened. I know I sound like I’m trying to have it both ways, but forgetting the past is how we got Trump in the first place.

First, YouTube has extended its ban on Trump’s account for another week, so I think that means he won’t be able to upload new videos or do livestreams until next Wednesday. Additionally, they said that comments will be disabled on his videos indefinitely. The Google CEO, since Google owns YouTube, said that there aren’t any plans to completely delete his account, but that he’ll be treated like any normal person. This means that if he violates the company’s policies 3 times in the span of 90 days, then he’ll have his account terminated.

This was also interesting to me: Facebooks COO and Communications Director have indicated that Trump might be banned longer than they originally said, according to NBC News and The Hill. Both of those officials have said that there are “no plans” to lift the ban, and the Comms Director even added that “the indefinite block we placed on the President's ability to post from those accounts remains in place and there are no plans to lift it”. They must really be getting nervous about Democrats holding them accountable.

Also, just quickly, Trump has apparently been floating the idea of forming a new political party, separate from the Republicans. According to these sources, he would want to call the new party the “Patriot Party”, because nothing says “patriot” more than trying to violently overturn a free and fair election.

Obviously, I’m all in on this idea; I think he should do it. He can divide the Republican vote as much as he wants so that they can never win another election. They deserve it.

COVID

I was going to talk about some new COVID mutations out of South Africa and Denmark, but it’s honestly just confusing and sounds unnecessarily scary, in my opinion.