Joe Biden starts first full day in office as president – US politics live

By the way, here’s president Joe Biden’s public schedule for today. It’s no “President Trump will work from early in the morning until late in the evening. He will make many calls and have many meetings.”

100 days has become a cliched typical measure of a new administration, but John Nichols suggests a faster timetable in an op-ed in The Nation today – ten days. He urges Joe Biden to bury obstruction in a blizzard of executive orders:

Even as Biden issued Wednesday’s orders evidence of the congressional obstruction he will face came into focus, as noxious Missouri Senator Josh Hawley blocked quick consideration of Homeland Security nominee Alejandro Mayorkas. This Democratic president will have a Democratic House and Senate to work with, but the margins are so narrow that the fights on Capitol Hill will be difficult—especially with an impeachment trial in the offing. Biden, a veteran of 36 years in the Senate, is familiar with such difficulties. But he cannot allow obstructionists like Hawley and Texas Senator Ted Cruz—or reluctant Democrats like West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin—to delay action. The Biden administration must be prepared to govern by every means necessary. His administration is reportedly preparing to take additional action on coronavirus policies, economic relief, “Buy American” procurement standards, racial equity, climate change, health care, immigration, and international affairs and national security by 1 February. It must do all of that—and more, including the gun violence issues that Kamala Harris proposed to address with executive orders.

Some vital initiatives will take 100 days, or longer. But the identification of this new presidency as an activist response to the failures of the past, and to the demands of the future, requires a first 10 days “blizzard” of executive orders—and it looks like that’s what’s going to happen.

Read more here: The Nation – Forget about ‘100 Days.’ These are the 10 days that will define Biden’s presidency

The first jobless claims figures of the new administration are not good – around 900,000 Americans filed for initial jobless claims last week.

That’s the seasonally adjusted figure. It’s a dip on the 926,000 recorded for the week ending 9 January, and lower than economists’ projections of 925,000, but it still means that more than 18 million people in the US continue to receive some form of unemployment assistance. The figures jumped dramatically in March as the economic effects of the Covid pandemic began to bite.

You can follow reaction to the news on our business live blog with my colleague Graeme Wearden:

One group of people who will need to adapt to a change in circumstances over the next few weeks and months ahead is the diminished Republican party, which ultimately lost control of the presidency and the Senate in November’s election, despite making gains in the house of Representatives.

Steve Peoples for Associated Press reports that it is likely to be an era of diminished power, deep uncertainty and internal feuding.

He writes that the shift to minority status is always difficult, exacerbated by the fact that over the last four years, the party’s values were inexorably tied to the whims of a president who regularly undermined democratic institutions and traded the party’s longstanding commitment to fiscal discipline, strong foreign policy and the rule of law for a brash and inconsistent populism. The party now faces a decision about whether to keep moving in that direction, as many of Trump’s most loyal supporters demand, or chart a new course.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, one of the few Republican elected officials who regularly condemned Trumpism, evoked President Ronald Reagan in calling this moment “a time for choosing.”

“We have to decide if we’re going to continue heading down the direction of Donald Trump or if we’re going to return to our roots,” Hogan, a potential 2024 White House contender, said in an interview.

“The party would be much better off if they were to purge themselves of Donald Trump,” he added. “But I don’t think there’s any hope of him completely going away.”

Whether the party moves on may come down to what Republicans like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz do next.

Cruz spent weeks parroting Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud, which helped incite the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol. He belatedly acknowledged Biden’s victory on Wednesday, but refused to describe it as legitimate when pressed. “He won the election. He is the president. I just came from his inauguration,” Cruz said of Biden in an interview.

Looking forward, Cruz said Trump would remain a significant part of the political conversation, but that the Republican Party should move away from divisive “language and tone and rhetoric” that alienated suburban voters, particularly women, in recent elections.

“President Trump surely will continue to make his views known, and they’ll continue to have a real impact, but I think the country going forward wants policies that work, and I think as a party, we need to do a better job winning hearts and minds,” said Cruz, who is also eyeing a White House run.

Those close to Trump believe he will lay low in the immediate future as he focuses on his upcoming impeachment trial for inciting the riot. After that, he is expected to reemerge, likely granting media interviews and finding a new home on social media after losing his powerful Twitter bullhorn.

While his plans are just taking shape, Trump is expected to remain politically active, including trying to exact revenge by backing primary challenges against Republicans he believed scorned him in his final days. He continues to leave the door open to another presidential run in 2024. Some friends believe he might even flirt with running as a third-party candidate, which would badly splinter an already fractured Republican party.

Trump issued an ominous vow as he left the White House for the last time as president: “We will be back in some form.”

Psychologist and author Andrew Solomon writes for us this morning, musing that Trump didn’t just change America, he changed Andrew Solomon:

It’s easy and dull to catalogue the president’s particular lies and transgressions. What is both harder and more important is to assess a cumulative effect that he has lacked the perspicacity to discern himself. In seeking to undermine stories in the mainstream media case by case, he convinced many Americans that truth itself was conditional. Americans have always been divided about troubling events, but until Trump, there was at least broad agreement about what those events were. Arguing with Trump’s supporters, one is presented with narratives that bear as much relationship to what happened as creationism does to the theory of evolution.

I never bought into Ronald Reagan’s “shining city on a hill” idea of the US; even at its finest, America remained a deeply flawed, prejudiced, unequal society built on the blood of Native Americans and slaves. But flawed, too, were all the others, and the United States offered a message of hope to beleaguered places where the oppression was worse. We had defeated fascism and stood up to communism, Maoist or Stalinist. We sent aid to countries aligned with our commercial and strategic interests, but at least the glowing tinge of generosity sweetened our cultural imperialism. We entangled ourselves in fruitless wars for misbegotten reasons, but also stood by our allies in tough times. Wealth was unevenly distributed, but we emblematised, for a short while, unprecedented social mobility. We also briefly stood at the acme of invention: technical, medical, artistic, even social. How we were was badly lacking, but it seemed good enough to rationalise our talk about moral leadership.

Over the past year, research took me deep into the American hinterlands. In Trump country, I found that ordinary ethics – decency, honesty, generosity, love for one’s fellow human beings, tolerance – were not merely undervalued but effectively desecrated by people who thought such ideals corroded strength and that strength was what mattered. I patiently laid out the argument that abandoning basic standards in fact weakened the country, but I might as well have told the bully who tortured me when I was eight years old that I knew a philosophy within which his assertions of dominance constituted evidence of narcissistic inadequacy. That bully would have punched me in the mouth before I finished my sentence, and so, metaphorically, did the Trumpists.

Read more here: Andrew Solomon – Goodbye, Donald Trump. You changed America. You also changed me

Time magazine’s first cover for the Joe Biden era shows the newly installed president standing in the wreckage of an oval office vacated by Donald Trump.

The pace of new coronavirus infections fell significantly over the past week, but the virus is still out of control, and a more contagious variant is gaining ground, report Axios today.

The US averaged roughly 198,000 new cases per day in the final week of the Trump administration — a 19% drop from the week before, but still a ton of cases.

The number of new daily cases fell in 44 states, compared to the previous week. South Carolina and Virginia were the only states whose outbreaks got worse over the past week.

There’s little reason to believe the US is about to turn the corner on the pandemic, or that this one week of good news will make the Biden administration’s job any easier.

198,000 cases per day is a staggering number of cases — more than enough to continue overwhelming hospitals in some parts of the country. And experts say a more contagious variant of the coronavirus will soon become the dominant strain in the US, allowing the virus to spread even more easily.

That effort by the new Biden administration is not going to be helped by what CNN are reporting this morning. In an article that has caused more than a few jaws to drop on social media this morning, MJ Lee writes:

Newly sworn in President Joe Biden and his advisers are inheriting no coronavirus vaccine distribution plan to speak of from the Trump administration, sources tell CNN, posing a significant challenge for the new White House.

In the immediate hours following Biden being sworn into office on Wednesday, sources with direct knowledge of the new administration’s Covid-related work told CNN one of the biggest shocks that the Biden team had to digest during the transition period was what they saw as a complete lack of a vaccine distribution strategy under former president Donald Trump, even weeks after multiple vaccines were approved for use in the United States.

“There is nothing for us to rework. We are going to have to build everything from scratch,” one source said.

Another source described the moment that it became clear the Biden administration would have to essentially start from “square one” because there simply was no plan as: “Wow, just further affirmation of complete incompetence.”

Read more here: CNN – Biden inheriting nonexistent coronavirus vaccine distribution plan and must start ‘from scratch,’ sources say

One of those headlines that always makes a journalist think “There but for the grace of the dear lord…”

Yesterday the US recorded 182,695 new coronavirus cases, taking the total caseload of the pandemic in the nation up to 24,418,143. There were 4,375 further deaths – the second highest daily toll of the pandemic so far. The total death toll stands at 405,825.

Hospitalizations stood at 122,700 people. There’s some good news there, as that is the eigth consecutive day that the number has fallen from 131,326 on 12 January. Nevertheless the Covid Tracking Project has now recorded fifty consecutive days with more than 100,000 people hospitalized with Covid in the US.

Madeline Holcombe at CNN reports that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is making the grim forecast of up to 100,000 more Covid-19 deaths in the next few weeks. She writes:

By 13 February, the number of deaths could reach 508,000, according to an ensemble forecast published by the CDC. The last forecast, on 13 January, projected up to 477,000 deaths by 6 February.

New CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky on Wednesday described the toll of the pandemic as “truly heartbreaking” but that “healthier days lie ahead” — although that getting there would require a rapid acceleration of testing, surveillance and vaccination.

She said the agency will be conducting a review of all of its guidance regarding the pandemic, so “people can make decisions and take action based upon the best available evidence.”

Incoming president Joe Biden’s fitness regime is potentially causing an unexpected headache for security services charged with keeping the new president of the United States safe in the White House – his Peloton exercise bike is viewed by some as a potential cybersecurity risk.

At home in Wilmington, Delaware, Biden is reported to start each day with a workout in a gym equipped with weights, treadmill, and the Peloton bike. Peloton combines a stationary exercise bike with an interactive tablet that allows the rider to take part in group training sessions remotely. Already gaining traction before the coronavirus pandemic, the use of stay-at-home orders and social distancing have led to a surge in the product’s popularity among those unable to get to their regular gym.

However as well as watching an instructor, participants in the classes are also viewed – meaning the table comes equipped with a webcam and a microphone, which will be in a sensitive area of the White House.

Popular Mechanics magazine spoke to cybersecurity expert Max Kilger at the University of Texas about the risk, who said “Because you’re connected to the internet, even though there are firewalls and intrusion detection software … those things can be gotten around if you’re really good and skilled. If you really want that Peloton to be secure, you yank out the camera, you yank out the microphone, and you yank out the networking equipment … and you basically have a boring bike. You lose the shiny object and the attractiveness.”

It is not the first time the issue has come up with the Peloton. A 2017 review revealed that former first lady Michelle Obama had been supplied with a specially modified Peloton that came without a camera or microphone.

Prior to the pandemic, in late 2019 Peloton saw its value plunge by $1.5bn after a ‘dystopian, sexist’ advert in which a man surprises his already super-slim partner with the equipment in a bid to get her to lose weight.

The problem for Biden is not insoluble, and White House security experts have to adapt to changing technology all the time, although the issue may be particularly sensitive at the moment given the recent cyber-attack on federal agencies. At least six government departments were breached in a likely Russian intelligence operation thought to have begun in March.

Garrett Graff, the director of the cybersecurity initiative at the Aspen Institute, told the New York Times: “The threat is real, but it is presumably a manageable risk given enough thought and preparation.”

It does, though, raise the prospect that in the coming months other US Peloton users may suddenly and unexpectedly find themselves in a riding class with their commander-in-chief.