Joe Biden signs big virus aid bill before speech to nation
Marking a year of loss and disruption, President Joe Biden on Thursday signed into law the $1.9 trillion relief package that he said will help the U.S. defeat the coronavirus and nurse the economy back to health. Some checks to Americans could begin arriving this weekend. The signing came hours before Biden delivers his first prime-time address since taking office. He’s aiming to steer the nation toward a hungered-for sentiment — hope — as he marks one year since the onset of the pandemic that has killed more than 530,000 Americans. “This historic legislation is about rebuilding the backbone of this country,” Biden said as he signed the bill in the Oval Office. Most noticeable to many Americans are provisions providing up to $1,400 in direct payments, some of which could begin landing in bank accounts this weekend and extending $300 weekly emergency unemployment benefits into early September. Also included are expanded tax credits over the next year for children, child care, and family leave — some of the credits that Democrats have signaled they’d like to make permanent — plus spending for renters, feeding programs, and people’s utility bills. The House gave final congressional approval to the sweeping package by a near party-line 220-211 vote on Wednesday, seven weeks after Biden entered the White House and four days after the Senate passed the bill. Republicans in both chambers opposed the legislation unanimously, characterizing it as bloated, crammed with liberal policies, and heedless of signs the crises are easing. Biden originally planned to sign the bill on Friday, but it arrived at the White House more quickly than anticipated. “We want to move as fast as possible,” tweeted White House chief of staff Ron Klain. He added, “We will hold our celebration of the signing on Friday, as planned, with congressional leaders!” Previewing his Thursday night remarks, Biden said he would “talk about what we’ve been through as a nation this past year, but more importantly, I’m going to talk about what comes next.” Biden’s challenge will be to honor the sacrifices made by Americans over the past year while encouraging them to remain vigilant despite “virus fatigue” and growing impatience to resume normal activities given the tantalizing promise of vaccines. Speaking on the one-year anniversary of the World Health Organization’s declaration of a pandemic, he’ll mourn the dead, but also project optimism about the future. “This is a chance for him to really beam into everybody’s living rooms and to be both the mourner in chief and to explain how he’s leading the country out of this,” said presidential historian and Rice University professor Douglas Brinkley. “This is a big moment,” Brinkley added. “He’s got to win over hearts and minds for people to stay masked and get vaccinated, but also recognize that after the last year, the federal government hasn’t forgotten you.” Biden’s evening remarks in the East Room are central to a pivotal week for the president as he addresses the defining challenge of his term: shepherding the nation through the twin public health and economic storms brought about by the virus. On Monday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released initial guidance for how vaccinated people can resume some normal activities. On Wednesday, Congress approved the president’s $1.9 trillion “American Rescue Plan,” aimed at easing the economic impact of the virus on tens of millions of people. And the nation was on pace to administer its 100 millionth dose of vaccine as soon as Thursday. Biden said he would focus his remarks on what his administration plans to deliver in the coming months, but also reiterate his call for Americans to continue to practice social distancing and wear face coverings to hasten the end of the pandemic. “I’m going to launch the next phase of the COVID response and explain what we will do as a government and what we will ask of the American people,” he said. He added: “There is light at the end of this dark tunnel of the past year. There is real reason for hope.” Almost exactly one year ago, President Donald Trump addressed the nation to mark the WHO’s declaration of a global pandemic. He announced travel restrictions and called for Americans to practice good hygiene but displayed little alarm about the forthcoming catastrophe. Trump, it was later revealed, acknowledged that he had been deliberately “playing down” the threat of the virus. For Biden, who has promised to level with the American public after the alternate reality of Trump’s virus talk, the imperative is to strike the correct balance “between optimism and grief,” said Princeton history professor and presidential scholar Julian Zelizer. “Generally, the country likes optimism, and at this particular moment they’re desperate for optimism, but you can’t risk a ‘Mission Accomplished’ moment,’” he said, warning against any premature declaration that the threat has been vanquished. Fifty days into his presidency, Biden is experiencing a polling honeymoon that his predecessor never enjoyed. Yet public sentiment remains stubbornly polarized and fewer people among his critics seem willing to say they’ll give him a chance than was the case for earlier presidents. Overall, he has earned strong marks on his handling of the pandemic. According to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research released last week, 70% of Americans back the Democratic president’s handling of the virus response, including 44% of Republicans. The White House hopes that as Biden assumes the role of cheerleader for the virus relief package, the elements of the $1.9 trillion bill that are popular with Republicans will boost his support even further. Brinkley said Biden’s decision to deliver a speech aimed directly at the nation before he makes the traditional presidential address to a joint session of Congress signals that it is as much an “introduction” of the president and his administration to the American people as a status report on his first 50 days in office. Presidential addresses to Congress “tend to be a series of soundbites,” Brinkley said. “This way,
Donald Trump has been on both sides of the states’ rights argument
When it comes to states’ rights, President Donald Trump is all over the map. To battle the coronavirus, he’s told states they’re largely on their own. But when it comes to stamping out protests in cities led by Democrats, Trump is sending in federal troops and agents — even when local leaders are begging him to butt out. It’s a driven-by-expedience approach that’s been a hallmark of his stormy presidency, one that has little to do with ideology and more to do with reelection efforts. “After seeing Trump in the White House for three and a half years, anyone expecting to find classical ideological consistency is bound to be mistaken,” said Andrew J. Polsky, a political science professor at Hunter College. “All of this is done for partisan political purposes with an eye toward the election.” For months now as he’s tried to skirt responsibility for the nation’s flawed response to the coronavirus, Trump has put the onus on states, first to acquire protective gear and testing agents and then to scale testing and contact tracing. “The federal government is not supposed to be out there buying vast amounts of items and then shipping. You know, we’re not a shipping clerk,” Trump said in March when testing in the U.S. severely lagged behind other countries and governors were pleading for help as they competed against one another on the open market. Just a month later, Trump flipped to asserting vast executive authority as he pushed states to reopen their economies fast. “When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total,” he declared in April, in an inaccurate interpretation of the Constitution. He quickly reversed course, saying he’d leave reopening plans up to the states, but continued to threaten to intervene if he didn’t like what they were doing. Now, he’s pressuring schools to fully reopen in September, saying he’ll pull funding from school districts that continue to keep kids home. That approach stands in stark contrast with Trump’s view of “law and order,” the mantle under which he’s decided to run his 2020 race. After National Guard troops were deployed to Washington, D.C., to quell protests near the White House following the police killing of George Floyd, the Department of Homeland Security now has agents patrolling Portland, Oregon, to protect federal buildings, despite pleas from the mayor, governor and local activists to leave. And DHS is poised to deploy about 150 Homeland Security Investigations agents to Chicago to bolster local law enforcement, according to an official with direct knowledge of the plans who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. “Keep your troops in your own buildings, or have them leave our city,” Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler said Friday. “We are trying to help Portland, not hurt it,” Trump tweeted in response. “Their leadership has, for months, lost control of the anarchists and agitators. They are missing in action. We must protect Federal property, AND OUR PEOPLE.” Chad Wolf, the acting DHS secretary, whose agency was created after the Sept. 11 attacks to protect the country from terrorist threats, said Monday on Fox News the agency had every right to protect some 9,000 federal facilities across the country. “I don’t need invitations by the state, state mayors or state governors to do our job,” Wolf said. “We’re going to do that, whether they like us there or not.” But Jann Carson, interim executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon, said federal agents dressed in camouflage, indiscriminately using munitions and abducting people in unmarked vans have escalated tensions and made the situation worse. “What the federal agents are doing in Portland should concern people everywhere in the United States,” she said. “We know that the president is trying to change the narrative (and say) that cities like Portland are in crisis, that he’s got to send in federal agents to bring about law and order, and that couldn’t be further from the truth. “He wants to be a law-and-order president,” she said. “But he is not bringing law and order. This is lawlessness and needs to be stopped.” Oregon’s two U.S. senators and two of its House members have demanded U.S. Attorney General William Barr and Wolf immediately withdraw “these federal paramilitary forces from our state.” And top leaders in the U.S. House said Sunday they’ve called on federal inspectors general to investigate. Still, Jennifer Selin, an assistant professor of constitutional democracy at the University of Missouri whose work has focused, in part, on the separation of powers, said that, while Trump has been unusually blatant in his efforts, presidents have relied on politicized interpretations of federalism since George Washington and the Whiskey Rebellion over taxes. Selin pointed to the 1950s and 1960s as the country grappled with the extent to which it should be up to states to integrate schools and allocate housing. “I think that the short answer is that federalism can be used strategically and politically, which, to be 100% honest, is nothing new,” she said. Polsky said that, when it comes to the virus, Trump has attempted “to displace responsibility for dealing with the pandemic onto states, onto governors. I don’t think that was driven by ideology. I think that was driven by wanting to keep responsibility as far from him as possible.” But when it comes to law enforcement, Polsky sees an attempt to stoke “unrest in sites that can then be broadcast on television, at least in the conservative and right-wing media” to rouse the Republican base and scare suburban voters into believing a strong approach is needed. “It’s selective federalism,” added Julian Zelizer, a historian at Princeton University. “I think obviously when it comes to closing and how to do reopening, he has been incredibly hands-off … he hasn’t used his presidential hand in ways that he could have. And then you have protests in the city of Portland, which really shouldn’t be a center of discussion right now, and then you have these troops being sent.” “Obviously with President Trump, there’s no logic to it,” Zelizer
Donald Trump’s attacks seen undercutting confidence in 2020 vote
It was a startling declaration about one of the pillars of American democracy, all the more so given its source. The president of the United States last week publicly predicted without evidence that the 2020 presidential election would be “the most corrupt election in the history of our country.” “We cannot let this happen,” Donald Trump told an audience of young supporters at a Phoenix megachurch. “They want it to happen so badly.” Just over four months before Election Day, the president is escalating his efforts to cast doubt on the integrity of the vote. It’s a well-worn tactic for Trump, who in 2016 went after the very process that ultimately put him in the White House. He first attacked the Republican primaries (“rigged and boss controlled”) and then the general election, when he accused the media and Democratic rival Hillary Clinton’s campaign of conspiring against him to undermine a free and fair election. “The process is rigged. This whole election is being rigged,” he said that October when polls showed him trailing Clinton by double digits as he faced a flurry of sexual misconduct allegations. Then, as now, election experts have repeatedly discredited his claims about widespread fraud in the voting process. In a country with a history of peaceful political transition, a major-party candidate’s efforts to delegitimize an election amounted to a striking rupture of faith in American democracy. But to do the same as president, historians say, is unprecedented. “Never,” said presidential historian Douglas Brinkley when asked whether any past U.S. president had ever used such language. “What you’re seeing is someone who’s an autocrat or a dictator in action.” This year, Trump has seized on efforts across the country to expand the ability of people to vote by mail. It’s a movement that was spurred by the coronavirus, which has infected more than 2.4 million people in the U.S. and killed more than 125,000 nationwide. The virus is highly contagious and especially dangerous for older people, who typically vote in higher numbers and have been advised by federal health authorities to limit their interactions with others. There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud through mail-in voting, even in states with all-mail votes. Trump and many members of his administration have themselves repeatedly voted via absentee ballots. But that hasn’t stopped Trump from accusing Democrats of trying to “rig the election by sending out tens of millions of mail-in ballots, using the China virus as the excuse for allowing people not to go to the polls.” “People went to the polls and voted during World War I. They went to the polls and voted during World War II. We can safely go to the polls and vote during COVID-19,” he said in his Phoenix speech. Trump’s complaints come as he has been lagging in both internal and public polls. The criticism is seen by some as part of a broader effort by Trump to depress turnout by making it harder for people, especially in cities, to vote safely, and to lay the groundwork for a potential challenge to the results in November if he loses. Trump and his campaign vociferously deny this. Julian Zelizer, a presidential historian at Princeton University, said Trump may be trying to preempt the sting of a humiliation if he fails to win a second term. But Zelizer said Trump also appears to be “setting up the foundation for taking action.” “What I do think is very realistic is a replay of 2000,” he said, referring to the legal saga in which the Supreme Court stepped in to resolve a dispute over which candidate had won Florida. Republican George W. Bush‘s ultimate win in the state gave him a general election victory over Democrat Al Gore. If this year’s election is close, Zelizer said, Trump could turn to the courts “and wage a political campaign to say this is being stolen and tie up efforts to count the votes.” Brinkley was even more alarmist, questioning whether Trump would vacate the office if he lost. “Trump is laying down his markers very clearly that he’s not going to leave the White House. I think that he’s just setting the stage,” Brinkley said, to say “‘I’m not leaving. It was a fraudulent election.’” Even barring such an extreme move, Brinkley said the president’s rhetoric undermines public confidence in the electoral system. “It creates mayhem and it breaks the heart of what a democracy is.” Americans already have widespread concerns about the security and integrity of elections. A February poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that only about one-third have high confidence that votes in the 2020 election will be counted accurately. Americans’ support for mail-in voting has jumped amid concerns over the virus, with 6 in 10 now saying they would support their state allowing people to vote by mail-in ballot without requiring a reason, according to an April survey. Democrats are far more likely to support it than Republicans, a partisan split that has emerged since 2018, suggesting Trump’s public campaign may be resonating with his GOP backers. White House officials and Trump’s campaign say he has raised the issue because Democrats are trying to use the virus as an excuse to tilt voting rules their way. “I think the president is only talking about this because Democrats have been going around to try to change rules in their favor under the guise of the virus. … This isn’t a fight he picked,” said Trump campaign political adviser and senior counsel Justin Clark. “The coronavirus does not give us an excuse to radically alter our way of voting.” Officials noted Trump has voiced support for the use of absentee ballots when voters have a legitimate reason, although he has not said whether that includes fear of contracting the virus. “Imposing a new voting system in a hurried fashion ahead of November only exacerbates the real, underlying concerns about the security of voting by mail without the proper safeguards,” said White
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