President Biden's bad first year fails desperate nation
Jaden AmosToday's newsletter is being led with a column from The Editorial Board on President Biden's first year in office. We also have an opposing view from Press Secretary Jen Psaki.
President Biden's bad first year fails desperate nation
By The Editorial Board
Joe Biden entered the White House a year ago carrying Americans' hopes that he would restore the nation's confidence in itself and in its commander in chief after four years of Donald Trump's ineptness and dishonesty. But Biden in his first year as president has proved to be agonizingly ineffective.
Biden's signature piece of legislation, the $1.75 trillion Build Back Better plan, remains on the shelf after the president failed to secure enough votes for it in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
The same failure has now beset voting rights legislation, despite Biden's assertion last week that those who oppose the bills were siding with racists and traitors.
Today's Editorial Cartoon
President Biden's first year marked by tremendous progress
By Jen Psaki
A year ago, few would have imagined that 2021 would be the greatest year of job growth in American history. That the unemployment rate would be at 3.9% now, down from 6% at the start of 2021 – the biggest one-year drop in history. And that unemployment claims would be at historic lows because so many Americans were back to work, often at better jobs with better pay.
None of that was preordained. President Joe Biden entered office in a time of chaos, with a pandemic at its most deadly peak, and with an economy sputtering at only 60,000 jobs per month.
But President Biden responded with the American Rescue Plan, which he got to work on before he even came into office. It put money in families’ pockets, helping them stay afloat during a pandemic recovery we knew would be rocky.
We transformed NYC police accountability. Here's how.
By Stephen Levin
After the murder of George Floyd, the protest movement of 2020 forced many of us to take a long look in the mirror and ask, as Americans, are we doing everything we can to live up to our foundational principles and ideals?
As a New York City Council member, I decided to explore ways to make police more accountable when an officer engages in misconduct. I knew from research, history and common sense that police accountability actually enhances public safety by cultivating police-community relationships and bolstering confidence in law enforcement and the rule of law.
When I examined the most serious impediments to police accountability, one obscure concept came up again and again: qualified immunity.
Other columns to read today
- Youth mental health crisis: Telling me to 'toughen up' doesn't work
- The truth about COVID vaccines: Not perfect, but they're saving many lives.
- Antisemitism in Texas synagogue hostage crisis downplayed yet again
- Changing US maternal deaths: No woman should die giving life
Columns on qualified immunity
We are doing a series examining the issue of qualified immunity. For more on the series read here.
- Want to build trust? Quit trampling our right to hold government officials accountable.
- My son was killed by a park ranger. Qualified immunity means I may never see justice.
- Administrators who violate 1st Amendment rights do not deserve protection of qualified immunity
Calls to reform qualified immunity are coming from left and right. I'm still skeptical.
This newsletter was compiled by Jaden Amos.