Joe Biden awards Medal of Freedom to Fred Gray, John McCain, Gabby Giffords
President Joe Biden on Thursday presented the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, to 17 people, including gymnast Simone Biles, the late John McCain, the Arizona Republican whom Biden served with in the Senate, and gun-control advocate Gabby Giffords. “Today, she adds to her medal count,” Biden said as he introduced Biles, a former foster child whose 32 Olympic and World Championship medals make her the most decorated U.S. gymnast in history. “I don’t know how you’re going to find room,” for another medal, Biden joked. The 25-year-old is an advocate for athletes’ mental health, foster care children, and sexual assault victims. She’s also the youngest person to ever receive the medal, Biden said. The Democratic president, who took office at a critical point during the coronavirus pandemic, also honored Sandra Lindsay, the Queens, New York, nurse who was the first person to be vaccinated against COVID-19 outside of clinical trials during a live television appearance in December 2020. It was the first time Biden had awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. His recipient list included both living and deceased honorees, some of them representing various stages of the president’s life, from the Catholic nuns who taught him as a boy growing up in Claymont, Delaware, to Republican lawmakers he served with in the Senate to a college professor like his wife, Jill, to advocates of tightening access to firearms. Biden introduced Giffords as “one of the most courageous people I have ever known.” The former Arizona congresswoman founded the organization named Giffords to campaign for an end to gun violence and restrictions on access to guns. The Democrat almost died after she was shot in the head in January 2011 during a constituent event in Tucson. Biden noted that he recently signed the most sweeping gun-control legislation in decades — though he and others would like even more restrictions — and credited Giffords and families like her own whose lives have been altered by gun violence for helping to make it happen. “She’s the embodiment of a single signature American trait: never, ever give up,” Biden said. Biden also recognized former Republican Sens. Alan Simpson of Wyoming and John McCain of Arizona, recalling a less partisan era of Washington in which members of different parties would argue over issues during the day and then meet over dinner at night. McCain died of brain cancer in 2018. He spent more than five years in captivity in Vietnam while serving in the U.S. Navy. He later represented Arizona in the House and Senate and was the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, competing against Democrats Barack Obama and Biden. Biden said he didn’t appreciate the political competition, but “I never stopped admiring John … I knew his honor, his courage, and commitment.” The 17 people receiving honors “have overcome significant obstacles to achieve impressive accomplishments in the arts and sciences, dedicated their lives to advocating for the most vulnerable among us, and acted with bravery to drive change in their communities, and across the world, while blazing trails for generations to come,” the White House said. Biden himself knows what it’s like to receive the medal. Then-President Obama honored Biden’s decades of public service by awarding him a Presidential Medal of Freedom “with distinction” during a ceremony shortly before they left office in January 2017. Biden closed the ceremony by declaring, “This is America.” The other 13 medal recipients are: — Sister Simone Campbell, a member of the Sister of Social Service and a former executive director of NETWORK, a Catholic social justice organization. — Julieta Garcia, a former president of the University of Texas at Brownsville. Garcia was the first Latina to become a college president, the White House said. — Fred Gray, one of the first Black members of the Alabama Legislature after Reconstruction. He was a prominent civil rights attorney who represented Rosa Parks, the NAACP, and Martin Luther King Jr. and, at age 91, continues to practice law. — Steve Jobs, the co-founder, chief executive and chair of Apple Inc. He died in 2011. — Father Alexander Karloutsos, the assistant to Archbishop Demetrios of America. Karloutsos has counseled several U.S. presidents, the White House said. Biden said he is “one of my dear friends.”ADVERTISEMENT — Khizr Khan, an immigrant from Pakistan, Khan’s Army officer son was killed in Iraq. Khan gained national prominence, and became a target of Donald Trump’s wrath, after speaking at the 2016 Democratic National Convention. — Diane Nash, a founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee who organized some of the most important 20th-century civil rights campaigns and worked with King. — Megan Rapinoe. The Olympic gold medalist and two-time Women’s World Cup soccer champion captains the OL Reign in the National Women’s Soccer League. She is a prominent advocate for gender pay equality, racial justice, and LGBTQI+ rights. Biden said she is the first soccer player to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom. — Alan Simpson, who served in the Senate with Biden and has been a prominent advocate for campaign finance reform, responsible governance, and marriage equality. Biden called Simpson the “real deal” and joked that “he never takes himself too seriously nor takes me seriously.” — Richard Trumka, who had been president of the 12.5 million-member AFL-CIO for more than a decade at the time of his August 2021 death. He was a past president of the United Mine Workers. — Wilma Vaught. A brigadier general, Vaught is one of the most decorated women in U.S. military history, breaking gender barriers as she has risen through the ranks. When Vaught retired in 1985, she was one of only seven female generals in the Armed Forces. — Denzel Washington, a double Oscar-winning actor, director, and producer. He also has a Tony award, two Golden Globes, and the Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award. He is a longtime spokesperson for the Boys & Girls Clubs of America. Washington could not attend Thursday’s ceremony after testing positive for COVID-19, the White House said. Biden said Washington
Welcome to the partisan fury, Michelle Wolf
White House Correspondents Association roaster Michelle Wolf joins a club with likes of Kathy Griffin, Khizr Khan, Stormy Daniels and David Hogg — little-known or unknown figures who suddenly became surrogates for the hyper-partisan rhetorical warfare of the Trump era. President Trump tweeted his disgust at Wolf’s weekend routine on Monday, she was a hot topic on “The View” and the subject of a long and loud CNN exchange between Chris Cuomo and a conservative official. Journalists wondered if the annual WHCA dinner should be changed or ditched. A backlash quickly surfaced. Wolf had become a political symbol, much like Parkland student Hogg when he spoke out on gun restrictions, Khan when he spoke against Trump at the Democratic National Convention, Griffin when she posted a picture of herself with a mock-up of Trump’s severed head. Trump’s supporters took up the cause. Cuomo interviewed Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union, who tweeted that he and his wife, Mercedes Schlapp, director of strategic communications at the White House, walked out of the dinner. A “Fox & Friends” chyron read: “Should all women be critical of Wolf’s jokes?” Former White House press secretary Sean Spicer called it a disgrace, to which Wolf tweeted: “Thank you.” But a backlash to the criticism quickly developed, with some wondering why the correspondents should be surprised to get edgy comedy from an edgy comedian. “The comedian did her job,” said Sara Haines on “The View” Monday. “She is there to push the envelope.” Don’t like it? “Hire a juggler next year,” ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel tweeted. In his interview with Schlapp, Cuomo pressed the point that many Trump opponents made: how can you be insulted by Wolf’s routine and not by some of the things that Trump has said or done? While Wolf’s performance was vulgar and unseemly, “the three-year performance of candidate and president Donald Trump has been vulgar, unseemly and infinitely more damaging to our civil discourse,” tweeted conservative commentator Bill Kristol. The White House quickly sniffed an opportunity. Trump, who held a rally in Michigan at the same time as the dinner, asked aides for an update soon after leaving the stage. When he watched it being talked about on cable TV the next day, he called several outside advisers to bash the comedian, saying she was unfunny and mean-spirited. He told at least one confidante that it again proved he can’t get a fair shake from the media and he was certain his base would agree with him Wolf, who begins a Netflix show later this month and is best known for work on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” was not made available to The Associated Press on Monday. She tweeted a few replies to critics. Her routine directed barbs at Congress, Democrats and the media. But the jokes that targeted Trump, his daughter Ivanka and press aides Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Kellyanne Conway attracted the most negative attention. Her comedy was risque; C-SPAN radio cut away from her routine over what its management called an “abundance of caution” about whether she’d violate FCC indecency guidelines. Wolf joked that Ivanka Trump had proven as useful to women as “a box of empty tampons.” She wished for a tree to fall on Conway, not so she’d get hurt — just stuck. Wolf suggested Sanders burns facts and uses the ashes to create perfect eye makeup. Margaret Talev, president of the reporters’ organization that puts on the dinner, said in a statement that she’d heard from members who expressed dismay with Wolf’s monologue. The WHCA wanted to honor free press and great reporting, “not to divide people,” Talev said. “Unfortunately, the entertainer’s monologue was not in the spirit of that mission.” Some reporters, notably Maggie Haberman of The New York Times in expressing support for Sanders, made their feelings known publicly. It’s not the first time comics have made people uneasy at the event, particularly since it has been televised across the country: Don Imus, Stephen Colbert and Larry Wilmore all had their critics. Trump’s absence magnified the reaction to Wolf, since no one took to the podium to punch back. Trump did so on Twitter. “The White House Correspondents’ Dinner is DEAD as we know it,” he tweeted Monday. “This was a total disaster and an embarrassment to our great Country and all that it stands for. FAKE NEWS is alive and well and beautifully represented on Saturday night!” Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
Martin Dyckman: What have we become in the time of Trump?
A young woman who works at a store that we frequent told of a recent experience that haunts my mind, as I hope it will yours. She and her husband were homebound from a European vacation. As the aircraft waited on the tarmac at Amsterdam’s airport, an announcement told three named passengers to identify themselves to a flight attendant. Every name, she noted, sounded Middle Eastern. Each was asked to produce a passport, even though all the passengers had had theirs inspected at least twice before boarding. A young man near her was one of those singled out. As he stood to retrieve his bag from the overhead bin, she saw that his hands were trembling. She wondered whether he would even be able to handle the bag. A flight attendant checked the passport and left him alone. He took his seat, still shaking. “Are you all right?” she asked him. “I am an American,” he said. “I was born here.” So that is what we have come to in the time of Trump. Concurrently, wire services reported that Khizr Khan, the Gold Star parent who denounced Donald Trump at the Republican convention and challenged him to read the U.S. Constitution, had canceled a speaking engagement in Canada after being told, or so it was said, that “his travel privileges are being reviewed.” His son, Captain Humayun Khan, was protecting his troops in Iraq when he was killed by a suicide bomber. “This turn of events is not just of deep concern to me but to all my fellow Americans who cherish our freedom to travel abroad. I have not been given any reason as to why,” Kahn said. The statement did not say who told him about it. The cancellation was announced on the same day as Trump signed a new travel ban targeting Muslims abroad. The speech Khan had been scheduled to give in Toronto was on the subject of “tolerance, understanding, unity and the rule of law.” Khan, a native of Pakistan, has been an American citizen for more than 30 years. There is no legal ground for the government to restrict travel of a citizen who is not accused of crime. A statement from an unnamed Customs and Border Patrol official, quoted by POLITICO, declined to comment on the specific report but asserted that the agency doesn’t contact travelers in advance of their foreign trips. It hinted, however, that questions might have been raised about Kahn having or having applied for trusted traveler status, which speeds up airport security checks. We need to know more about this. Was it only a rumor that reached Kahn? Was it a misunderstanding? Or something more sinister? In any event, it was reasonable for Kahn to be concerned in the time of Trump. Now imagine, if you will, the terror of that young man aboard the airplane multiplied millions of times by Americans with dark skins or foreign-sounding names now that ICE — Immigration and Customs Enforcement — agents are on a rampage. It’s about American citizens, not just immigrants who are unauthorized. It’s no longer about targeting only those who commit serious crimes — which they do less frequently than legal residents. It’s about expelling everyone that ICE and its allies in some police agencies can get their hands on. Even Dreamers, those brought here as children, whom a humane president had promised to suspect, are being swept up. There are an estimated 11 million of these vulnerable people, by the way and they are your neighbors. They could be the people who built your house, picked the fruit for your breakfast, and tidied up the hotel room where you last stayed. Think of our country without them. It will be a different country if Trump has his way, and it won’t be a better one. The statistics are sobering. According to a draft paper published in November by the National Bureau of Economic Research, unauthorized immigrants account for about 3 percent of our gross domestic product (GDP). Take that away, and it spells recession. They represent 18 percent of the workforce in agriculture, 13 percent of construction employment, and 10 percent of the leisure and hospitality sector. They’re particularly significant to the economies of five states: California, Texas, New York, Illinois and, yes, Florida. The report’s authors, professors at Queens College of the City University of New York, calculated that if their presence were legalized, their contribution to GDP would increase, significantly, to 3.6 percent. It would no longer be easy for unscrupulous employers to exploit them. “Documented foreign-born workers,” they added, “are about 25 percent more productive … with the same levels of education and experience,” as the undocumented. Legal workers would not replace most of them. A 2013 North Carolina study noted that “natives prefer almost any labor market outcome … to carrying out menial harvest and planting labor.” Here, from The New York Times, are some other pertinent facts: About 60 percent of the 11-million have been here 10 years or more. Many are homeowners. A third of those 15 or older live with at least one child born here, who has citizenship by birth. (Where will the foster care be for so many Trump orphans?) The proportion of the estimated 300,000 with felony records is half the rate of felons in the overall population. Illegal border crossings are declining; a growing number of unauthorized immigrants simply overstayed their visas. The 11 million are here, for the most part, because America has needed their labor and the taxes they pay. The entire nation collectively turned a willfully blind eye to the underlying illegality, just as it did during Prohibition. Every president before now has tried to reform the situation in a humane way. Only now is one catering to a minority — and they are a minority — who vote their hatreds instead of the religions they profess. A young citizen trembling on a plane. A prominent naturalized citizen who fears to travel. Parents
